the Novatians unreasonable who preached Penance and denied the Fruit of it lib. 1. de Poenit. c. 16. Frustra dicitis vos praedicare Poenitentiam qui tollitis c. And lib. 2. cap. 3. Merendi gratia Sacramenti ad precandum impellimur hoc auferre vultis propter quod agitur Poenitentia Tolle gubernatori perveniendi spem in mediis fluctibus incertus errabit Tolle luctatori coronam lentus jacebit in stadio Tolle piscatori capiendi efficaciam desinet jactare retia In hopes of arriving at his Haven the Pilot steers his Ship The Wrestler strives in hope to throw his Adversary The Fisher casts his Nets in hope of catching some Fish All these would relent were they persuaded the thing they aimed at were impossible How then do you expect that Men should practise good Works when you teach them to hope for no good from them It were indeed to be wished that Men would serve God for God without regarding any Reward But that is a Perfection all do not arrive to and even the best are fain to use some other Motives A Fifth Your Clergy is utterly unfit to Direct and Instruct such Houses our Works have a greater influence on our Neighbors than our Words S. Jerom thought it incongruous that a Man with a full Belly should Preach Fasting And how can a Man Preach Chastity to others who comes himself from the Embraces of his Wife if he hath one or hath his Head full of Amourettes and Designs to get one if he be a Batchelor It is in vain therefore that you seek the advantage of those withdrawing Places from the noise and trouble of the World to those devout Solitudes your Lives are not fit for them your Doctrin is inconsistent with them and your past Actions have shut that Door of Mercy unto you As for Books of Devotion the Author of the Fiat Lux says you have Printed several such composed by ours under your own Names So you hang us and cherish our Writings as the Jews stoned the Prophets and canonized their Books You own we have many excellent Books all the World sees you have scarce any nor can rationally hope for any For he who writes a Spiritual Book ought to aim at two things The First to instruct the Understanding with Divine and Eternal Truths The Second to move the Will to a Hatred of Sin a Contempt of the World and to the Love of God above all things The first may be an Effect of Study but the second cannot be attained unto unless the Author be such himself He must as S. John be A burning and shining Light Joh. 5.35 Burn to God by a true and unfeigned Love of him Shine to Men by the clear Truths which he delivers He must feel within himself those Motions which he endeavors to communicate to his Reader Si vīs me flere dolendum est primum ipsi tibi A Soul possessed with Hope with Fear with Joy with Grief with Love with Hatred in fine with any Passion doth express not only the Thoughts but the Passion it self with Tropes proper by which means it not only informs the Understanding but also stirs the Will of the Hearer or Reader to like Inclinations Read Seneca's Epistles or other Moral Works or Cicero's you shall find a great many excellent Truths yet I never knew any Man the better in his Morality for them As they themselves notwithstanding those Lights were far from being Good Men as you may see in Lactantius lib. 3. Divin Instit from Chap. 13. On the contrary the reading of Saints Works hath a great force to move us to Good. S. Austin l. 8. Confess c. 6. says some were Converted by reading the Life of S. Antony Several have taken serious Resolutions of leading a Christian Life by reading those Confessions And I have known several moved to love Mental Prayer by reading S. Teresa's Works and to the Love of God by using those of S. Francis de Sales This is a great defect in all our Protestant Writers I will instance in two who seem each in his kind to overtop his Confreres quantum lenta solent inter viburna Cupressi The one Bishop Andrews who by Divisions and Subdivisions instructs well only sometimes verborum minutiis rerum pondera frangit The other is the Author of The whole Duty of Man who hath many excellent Truths and very practical as well as the first yet seem not to move the Will because of their cold way of treating their Doctrins They shine but they do not Burn. This Heat is not to be attained unto but by Prayer Which enflames our Heart with the Love of God In meditatione meâ exardescet ignis Psal 38.4 It is this Love which unites us to God and this Union makes us capable of doing great things For an Instrument must be in the Hand of the Workman to do compleatly what is intended if it be distant from him and not held but by a small Thred the Work will be difficult and imperfect if there can be any We are all the Instruments of God in order to all good Works especially in writing Spiritual Books in which if there be any thing good it must come from God the Fountain of all Good. The Apostles after the Ascension expecting the coming of the Holy Ghost Act. 1.14 continued with one accord in Prayer S. John Baptist althô sanctified in his Mothers Womb and designed for the Office of Praecursor and by consequence fitted from above for that Office yet he was in the Desert till the days of his shewing unto Israel Luc. 1.80 sequestring himself from the company of Men and conversing only with God and his Angels the far greatest part of his Life And the Word Incarnate not for any need of his own but to give us Example passed Forty days in Fasting and Prayer in a Desert before he began to Preach Mat. 4.2 And when he had begun he passed the Days with Men and the Nights in Prayer with his Heavenly Father Luc. 6.12 Erat pernoctans in oratione Dei. Species tibi datur forma tibi praescribitur quam debeas amulari says S. Ambr. l. 6. in Luc. This was the Practice of S. Greg. Naz. S. Basil S. Chrysostom And in later Times Ignatius de Loyola before he began the Society past a Retreat in a Cave at Manresa God alone is in peculiar manner the Father of Lights all is darkness but what is received from him The greatest Spiritualists that ever held a Pen even the Writers of Scripture at the same time they taught us received their Lesson from the Holy Ghost And first the Ears of their Heart were open to hear what God spoke to them Psal 84.9 Then they opened their Mouth to speak out of the abundance of their Heart to us Mat. 12.34 Now what Years what Months what Weeks or at least Days do you of the Ministry pass in Solitude in Prayer I find little footsteps of it in any
Catholics when they commend the Gospel but you do not well in believing them when they blame Manioheus do you think me such a Fool as without any reason I should believe what pleases you and not believe what you dislike Certainly it is much more reasonable seeing I must believe the Catholics that I abandon your Communion unless you can give me an evident Demonstration for the contrary Wherefore if you will alledge Reason lay by the Gospel If you retain the Gospel I will stick to those upon whose word I have admitted the Gospel and their Authority forces me to renounce you Now if perchance you can shew out of the Gospel any evident proof of Manichaeus his Apostleship you will indeed weaken in me the Authority of Catholics who forbid me to believe you But that Authority being weakned I shall no more be able to believe the Gospel which I received by it and so whatsoever you prove thence will fall to the ground Therefore if no clear proof of Manichaeus his Mission is extant in the Gospel I will rather believe the Catholics than you If a clear proof be found there I will neither believe the Catholics nor you Not them because they were false in the Opinion they delivered of you Not you because you rely on that Scripture which I received on the testimony of those who have deceived me Yet God forbid I should reject the Gospel and believing it I see no possibility of believing you Thus the great Saint which I have cited at large because the whole Discourse holds against all Heresies changing only the Name of Manichaeus or Manichean into that which signifies the Heresie as for Example into that of Protestant or Luther Morcover it contains a clear Confutation of what hath hitherto by the Learnedst of our Adversaries been said in Answer to it The first Interpretation of this Place is delivered by W. L. in his Relation of a Conference pag. 81. Some of your own says he will not endure it should be understood save of the Church in the time of the Apostles only and then cites Ockam Dial. p. 1. l. 1. c. 4. Where he hath not one word of that But says Mr. Still in his Rational Account p. 198. the words are in Durandus l. 3. Insent d. 24. q. 1. n. 9. where he says Intelligitur solùm de Ecclesiâ quae fuit tempore Apostolorum It is understood only of the Church which was in the time of the Apostles The same Author borrows another Explication of Biel Lect. 2. in Can. Missae That the words are to be understood of the Church in general as it contains the first and later Ages A tempore Christi Apostolorum c. And to this he sticks for he adds And so doth S. Augustin take Eccles contra Fund And Dr. Still p. 198 199 approves the same and confirms it out of Gerson and Driedo Neither of these two Explications can stand with the Text as appears out of those words Quibus obtemperavi dicentibus Credite Evangelio cur eis non obtemperem dicentibus mihi noli credere Manichaeo Whom I obeyed in saying Believe the Gospel should I not obey in saying Do not believe Manichaeus Hence I frame this Argument St. Augustin professeth he received the Gospel upon the credit of that Church which condemned Manichaeus But that Church which condemned Manichaeus was that of his time and not that of the Apostles who never mentioned Manichaeus Ergo the Church on whose word he received the Gospel was that of his time and not that of the Apostles When therefore E. S. p. 220. says It is plain St. Austin means not the Judgment of the present Church but of the Catholic Church as taking in all Ages and Places he evidently contradicts the very Text of St. Austin whence I conclude that either he speaks against his Conscience which I am unwilling to believe or else which is more excusable that he had not read the Text which he undertakes to Explicate A Third and yet more improbable Explication is delivered by W. L. p. 82. He speaks it either of Novices or Doubters in the Faith or else of such as were in part Infidels Mr. Fisher the Jesuit at the Conference would needs have it that St. Austin spake it even of the Faithful which I cannot yet think for he speaks to the Manichees and they had a great part of the Infidel in them And the words immediately before these are If thou shouldst find one qui Evangelio non credit which did not believe the Gospel what wouldst thou do to make him believe Thus W. L. This is likewise plainly false for S. Austin was neither a Novice nor a Doubter in the Faith nor in part an Infidel when he writ that Book for he writ it after he was made Bishop as you may see Lib. 2. Retract c. 2. But he speaks of himself and describes the ground of his own Faith Ergo he doth not speak of Novices Doubters or half Infidels nor describes the ground of their Faith but of those who are firm Believers I prove that S. Austin speaks of his own Faith and shews the ground on which it relied For first he says I would not believe the Gospels without the Authority of Catholics commending them Secondly he says If you weaken the Authority of Catholics I will reject the Gospel This I believe Mr. Stillingst saw and therefore said pag. 20. If you extend this beyond Novices and Weaklings I shall not oppose you in it And I cannot think that W. L. had read that place at least with attention when he writ He could not think S. Austin spoke of the Faithful Stilling pag. 220. Neither you nor any Catholic Author is able to prove that S. Austin by these words ever dreamt of any infallible Authority in the present Church Ans Seeing S. Austin expresly says He would renounce the Gospel if the Authority of Catholics were weakned in him by discovering they had delivered any one Lye he must either think them exempt from all possibility of Lying or else he adhered very loosly to the Gospel I hope E. S. will not assert the later part wherefore he must grant that S. Austin thought the Church free from all possibility of Error Let us return to Mr. G. B. G. B. pag. 43. Christ's Prophetic Office is invaded by the pretence of the Churches Infallibility in Expounding Scriptures And why good Sir should the Infallibility in Expounding Scriptures be an Invasion of the Prophetic Office of Christ seeing Infallibility in writing them was no such thing Certainly it is more to compose a Writing than to understand it as many can understand Cicero's Speech pro Milone who cannot compose such an one And your old Women pretend to understand several parts of Scripture which yet I think will scarce undertake to Pen the like By this say you the whole Authority is devolved on the Church No more than it was on S. John when he writ his Gospel
but only on such Occasions for as for such who do absent themselves either for Ambition or Envy or Pleasure or Friendship or any other unlawful Design or for some good but so little as not to countervail that of their Duty to their Flock we no less blame them than you our Canons for Residence are as severs as can be and those often executed with the utmost rigor What do you more Commendams offend you that is the recommending the Means of Abbeys to those who are not Monks Yet we give them only to Clergy you to meer Laymen Secondly we give them only for their Lives you give them to their Heirs Executors Administrators and Assigns Thirdly we leave the Abby and its legal Superiors a competent Subsistence for the Monks you turn them a begging out of God's Blessing into the warm Sun. When you have proved that it is more lawful for your Church to steal a Goose than for ours to pluck a Quill I shall believe your Procedure legal and ours illegal G. B. ibid. They strugled hard against the honest Attempt of those who labored to have had Residence declared to be of Divine Right in the Council of Trent Answ What might the Catholic Church do to please you Had she pass'd that Declaration you would have clamored at your ordinary rate against new Definitions of Faith now she rejected that Definition she opposed the honest Attempt to promote it and she must be in the wrong and those who oppose her in the right whatever she or they do because she is the Church and they a discontented Party in her In fine as the Jews proceeded with our Saviour the Bridegroom so do you with the Bride the Catholic Church her Actions whatever they are are blamed To what are the men of this genertion like They are like unto children sitting in the market-place and saying We have piped unto you and ye have not danced we have mourned unto you and you have not wept Luc. 7.32 For doth the Church make a Decree you blame her for it doth she not make it you blame her for that too But Wisdom is justified by all her children A Conclusion of the First and Beginning of the Second Part. G. B. p. 116. I Have run around the great Circle I proposed to my self and have examined the Designs of Christian Religion and have found great contradiction given to them by the Doctrins of that Church Answ You have indeed run a Round and that so long that you are giddy with it as appears by your frequent and great Falls so evidently against common Sense as I have all along observed and yet I have not observed all for that would have been too tedious to the Reader and have taken up more time than I can bestow upon Trifles You have shewn no Contradiction betwixt the Doctrin of the Catholic Church and the Designs of Christianity I have shewn their Conformity But your Book discovers a Design against Charity which is the Heart of Religion it being a heap of rash Judgments evident Calumnies or uncharitable Surmises I say nothing of your Faults against Reason your incoherent Notions groundless Judgments and perpetual Sophisms because althô these are great Faults in themselves yet not considerable in presence of those others against Charity And these Faults are the greater for being brought to uphold a Schism a Design contrary to Christianity it being a most certain Truth that No Man can have the Love of God who withstands the Vnion of all Men in one Church Non habet Dei Charitatem qui Ecclesiae non diligit unitatem Aug. l. 3. de Baptis cont Donat. c. 16. And all your Pretences of Causes given of your Separation are but frivolous this tearing in pieces the my stical Body of Christ is so great a Sacrilege that no Pretext can excuse it Apparet saith S. Austin l. 2. contra Epist Parmen c. 11. non esse quicquam gravius sacrilegio schismatis quia praecidendae unitatis nulla est justa necessitas When I saw you reflect on your running so long round in a Circle I hoped you would come out of it and was in hopes that either I might have been a Spectator of your following Course or else that you would have led me a more pleasing Walk The Design of S. Austin Lib. 1. Retract cap. 7. came to my Mind who represented the Piety of Catholics and the vicious Lives of the Manichees in his two Books De moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae and De moribus Manichaeorum and I imagined you might design the like in the two Parts of this Book I expected you would have given us a Panegyric of your own Church after you had spent your Satyrical Vein in your Invective against ours I thought we should have seen described the Beauty of the Protestant Church the Advantages of Communion with it the Perfection of its Faith the Decency of its Ceremonies the Majesty of its Hierarchy the Reasonableness of its Canons the Fulness of its Conducency to Piety in this Life and Bliss in the next and all these confirmed with Examples of the vertuous Lives of its Devotes But how much have I been mistaken for casting an Eye a little farther after some few words in commendation of your Faith I find you throwing Dirt again as fast as before or rather faster as if in the First Part you had only essayed what in the Second you act in earnest Doth your Garden the Church Cant. 4.12 is compared to one afford only that one Flower Is the Soil so barren or so ill cultivated as none else should be found in it Or if there be any other do they thrive so ill as not to be worth being pointed to Or doth it come from a morosity of Nature which inclines you to blame and reprehend Or from a propensity to entertain thoughts only of Faults and Imperfections as Flies pitch upon Ulcers and some other Creatures wallow in Mire Or from another Quality worse than that which turns all to bad as a foul Stomach turns all Food into peccant Humors and a Spider draws Poyson from that Flower whence a Bee draws Hony Something of this must be for I will neither say there is nothing reprehensible in the Lives of Catholics it is a Propriety of the Triumphant Church to be free from any Spot or Wrinkle nor that all is bad in Protestants besides their Faith that being the Condition of the Damned Spirits in Hell. But I supersede these Personal Reflections and follow thô with little comfort you in the new Maze you lead me into CHAP. XXX Catholic Faith delivered by Men Divinely Inspired Rules to know true Tradition Faith never changed G. B. p. 116. THE first Character of our Faith is that it was delivered to the World by Men sent of God and Divinely Inspired who proved their Mission by Miracles Answ All Divine Faith is built on the Veracity of God the Men who delivered it at first were but the
any thing hath been taken as some English in France have experienced In fine a newness of Life Of all this what is in use among Protestants Nothing Are they judged fit to approach the Divine Table they do it with a lively Faith believing it is the true real and substantial Body of Christ with his Blood and Divinity per concomitantiam Concil Trid. Sess 13. cap. 13. by reason of the inseparable Vnion betwixt them With a profound Humility professing with the Centurion Luc. 7.6 their unworthiness to receive their Lord and desiring him to make them worthy And with a Love proportionable to that Christ shewed by instituting this Sacrament What do Protestants Sometimes something for their Ministers distribute a Morsel of Bread and a Sup of Wine and they may expect to meet only with Dispositions proportionable to those Beggerly Elements Amongst us Is any sick He calls for the the Priests of the Church they pray over him anointing him with oyl in the Name of the Lord that the Prayer of Faith may save the Sick and God may raise him up in case it be for the Glory of God and the good of the Patient and if he have committed Sins they may be forgiven him Jac. 5.14 15. Thus in an Apostles words I have delivered our Practice in Administring the Sacrament of Extreme Vnction Of which Protestants nothing Besides Mass which all hear every Day commonly three times a day a Bell rings to mind us of the Incarnation of the Son of God and move all with an Act of Faith to acknowledge it and return God thanks for it Of which amongst Protestants nothing I may conclude this Comparison betwixt you and us as to the Practice of Piety with S. Austin's words Lib. de moribus Eccles c. 34. very pat to our purpose Istis Manichaei Protestantes si potestis obsistite istos intuemini isto's sine mendacio si audetis cum contumeliâ nominate Istorum jejuniis vestra jejunia castitati castitatem vestitum vestitui epulas epulis modestiam modestiae charitatem charitati quod res maximè postulat praeceptis praecepta conferte Jam videbitis quid inter ostentationem sinceritatem inter viam rectam errorem intersit Nunc vos illud admoneo ut aliquando Ecclesiae Catholicae maledicere desinatis vituperando mores hominum quos ipsa condemnat quos quotidie tanquam malos filios corrigere studet Sed quisquis illorum bonâ voluntate Deique auxilio corriguntur quod amiserunt peccando poenitendo recuperant Qui autem voluntate mala in pristinis vitiis perseverant aut addunt graviora prioribus in agro quidem Domini sinuntur esse cum bonis seminibus crescere sed veniet tempus quo zizania separentur Considering them well see whether without offending against Truth you can reproach any thing Compare your Fasts with ours your Chastity your Modesty and chiefly your Doctrin with ours you will presently perceive what difference there is betwixt vain boasting and sincerity going the straight way and wandring At present I advise you to cease from detracting from the Catholic Church blaming the Lives of Men whom she condemns and whom she daily endeavors to correct as naughty Children If any of them with the help of God's Grace are converted they recover in the Catholic Church by Repentance what they lost by Sin. If any notwithstanding all these helps to Piety continue obstinate in their Wickedness or add more grievous Sins to those they have committed they are indeed tolerated in the Field of God the Church until the time come designed for the separation of the Cockle from the good Corn. Thus S. Austin Glory then as much as you please with the lukewarm Laodicean Angel That you are rich and encreased in Goods and want nothing yet assure your self that as he so you are poor and wretched and miserable and blind and naked Your boasting of the Advantages of your Instructions and Discipline amongst your deluded Admirers is like those Nurses who wanting Milk entertain their Children with Rattles and Bibs and some insignificant Nourriture In reality there seems to be as much difference betwixt the Spiritual Food Souls receive in the Catholic Church and that of Protestants as there is betwixt the Nourriture a Child receives sucking a Breast stretched with Milk. and that he gets by sucking a moistned Finger Which shall be further shewn in the CHAP. XXXVII No Houses of Devotion nor Spiritual Books amongst Protestants G. B. p. 145. A Temptation to become Papists is the solitary and retired Houses among them for leading a devout and strict Life and the many excellent Books of Devotion have been published by many of that Communion And pag. 147. I deny not that is the greatest defect of the Reformation that there are not in it such Encouragements to a devout Life And pag. 148. It is not to be denied to be a great Defect that we want Recluse Houses But it fixeth no Imputation on our Church her Doctrin or Worship that she is so poor as not to be able to maintain such Seminaries Answ This is as pretty a Sophism of non causa pro causâ as I have seen As if the small number of English Catholics were richer than the whole Body of Protestants for we have founded many great Families of Religious and you with all your Industry could never settle one There are Reasons for your Church's being so unsuccessful in these Attempts without doubt as real and true as that which you give is false and it shall be my work to lay them out before you The First and chiefest Reason is a Judgment of God Almighty upon you for breaking up and dispersing so many Houses of Piety God was served in those Houses he was offended with that Sacrilege and therefore denies you that Blessing of which you are unworthy A Second Each one had rather keep his Means to himself than see them pass against his will to another Lay-Family for whom he hath no kindness If any give it to God and Religion they design it should continue there which cannot be expected in England as long as the Memory is fresh of Henry VIII and Elizabeth A Third The Foundation of your Reformation is inconsistent with a Superstructure of Religion or living in Community together Men cannot live together without a setled Rule or Order established peculiar to that manner of Life and proper for it Your Reformation is inconsistent with this it teaching to reject all Human Injunctions as contrary to Christian Liberty When out of that Principle you have taught Men to despise all Decrees even of General Councils received by the whole Church and confirmed by the Practice of many Ages how can you hope they should esteem Rules given by modern new Men A Fourth Your Doctrin denying all Merits or Reward due to our Actions Hopes of Advantage encourages us to Labor our Industry is dull'd as soon as those vanish S. Ambr. thinks