truths for the preservation of unity among us and the extirpation of some growing errors Secondly He adds that the deteyning of the Cup could be no sufficient grounds of separation because Protestants doe confesse That it is an indifferent matter of it self and no just cause to seperate Communion Doth the Church of England confesse it to be an indifferent matter No nor any Protestant Church All their publick confessions doe testifie the contrary Nay more I doe not believe that any one Protestant in his right wits did ever confesse any such thing But this it is to nible at Authors and to stretch and tenter their words by consequences quite beyond their sense It may be that Luther at some time said some such thing but it was before he was a formed Protestant whilest he was half sleeping half waking Bellarmine stiles it in initio Apostasiae But after his eies were well opened he never confessed any such thing but the just contrary Suppose that Brentius saith that abstemious persons such whose nature doth abhorre wine may receive under one kinde what a pittifull argument is this drawn from a particular rare case of invincible necessity to the common and ordinary use of the Sacrament The Elephant was exempted from doing obeisance to the Lion because he had no knees But it is the height of injustice to withhold his right from one man because another cannot make use of it Suppose that Melancthon declare his own particular opinion that those Countries where Wine is not to be had should doe well to make use of honied water in the Sacrament What doth this signifie as to the cause he hath in hand whether they use some other liquor in the place of Wine or use no liquor at all Invincible necessity doth not only excuse from one kinde but from both kindes And where the Sacrament cannot be had as it ought the desire to have it sufficeth before God We read of some Christians in India where they had no Wine that they took drie Raisons and steeped them in water a whole night and used that liquor which they squeesed out of them in the place of Wine for the Sacrament It would trouble one as much in many parts of the World to finde right Bread as Wine That nourishment which Indians eat in the place of Bread being made of the roots of Plants doth differ more from our Bread made of Wheat then Cyder or Perry or honnied water doe differ from the juice of the Grape which are such many times as are able to deceive a good tast If Wine were as rare and precious in the World as right Balm which they make to be the matter of a Sacrament there were more to be said in it They themselves doe teach that it is absolutely necessary that the Sacrament be consecrated in Wine and that it be consumed by the Priest They who can procure Wine for the Priest may procure it for the People also if they will The truth is all these are but made Dragons No man ever was so abstemious but that he might taste so much Wine tempered with water as they use it as might serve for the Sacrament where the least imaginable particle conveieth Christ to the receiver as well as the whole Chalice full Neither is there any Christian Country in the World where they may not have Wine enough for this use if they please So notwithstanding any thing he saith to the contrary their dayly obtruding new Articles of Faith and their deteining the Cup in the Sacrament were just grounds of separation but not our only grounds We had twenty other grounds besides them And therefore he had little reason to say That at least the first Protestants were Schismaticks and in this respect to urge the authority of Optatus against us to prove us to be the Heirs of Schismaticks Optatus in the place by him cited speaks against the traditors with whom we have nothing common and the Donatists their own Ancestors not ours whose case is thus described there by Optatus cujus in Cathedra tenet quae ante ipsum Majorinum originem non habebat whose Chair thou possessest which had no originall before Majorinus a schismaticall Donatist This is not our case We have set up no new Chairs nor new Altars nor new Successions but continued those which were from the beginning There is a vast difference between the erecting of a Chair against a Chair or an Altar against an Altar which we have not done and the repairing of a Church or an Altar wherein it was decayed which we were obliged to doe In the next place he endeavoreth to prove by the generall Doctrine of Protestants that they differ from Papists in fundamentall points necessarie to salvation If they doe it is the worse for the Romanists In the mean time the charitie of Protestants is not to be blamed We hope better of them And for any thing he saith to the contrarie we beleeve that they doe not differ from us in fundamentalls But let us see what it is that the Protestants say Some say that Popish errors are damnable Let it be admitted many errors are damnable which are not in fundamentalls Errors which are damnable in themselves are often pardoned by the mercie of God who looks upon his Creatures with all their prejudices Others say that Popish and Protestant opinions are diametrally opposite That is certain they are not all logomachies But can there be no diametrall opposition except it be in fundamentalls There are an hundred diametrall oppositions in opinion among the Romanists themselves yet he will not confess that they differ in fundamentalls Lastly others say that the Religion of Protestants and the Religion of the Church of Rome are not all one for substance I answer first that the word substance is taken sometimes strictly for the essentialls of any thing which cannot be separated without the destruction of the subject Thus a man is said to be the same man in substance while his soul and body are united though he have lost a legg or an arme or be reduced to skin and bone And in this sense the Protestant and Popish Church and Religion are the same in substance At other times the word substance is taken more largly for all reall parts although they be separated without the destruction and sometimes with the advantage of the subject And so all the members yea even the flesh and blood and other humors are of the substance of a man So we read Thine eyes did see my substance being yet unperfect and in thy books were all my members written And in this sense the Protestant and Popish Religion are not the same in substance Secondly the word substantialls may either signifie old substantialls beleeved and practised by all Churches in all ages at all times which are contained in the Apostles Creed And thus our Religion and the Roman Religion are the same in substance Or new
the Pope or his Office If Luther proceeded not in form of Law against the Pope it is no marveil I remember no process in Law that was between them He challenged only verbum informans not virgam reformantem Doe you think that if he or any other had cited the Pope to have appeared in Germanie or England he would have obeyed the Summons They might as well have called again yesterday Howsoever Luther's acts concern not us Their third objection is that we have quitted our lawfull Patriarch which argument he saith he will omit because we have spoken enough of that before Either I am mistaken or this is a fallacie of no cause for a cause The true cause why he omitteth it being not because we have spoken enough of it for he hath continually declined it but rather because he seeth that it is incompatible with that sovereignty and universality of Power which the Roman Bishops doe challenge at this day Let them lose the substance whilest they catch at the shadow But in the place of this he proposeth another objection which he calleth their most forcible argument against us which in brief is this No Church is to be left in which salvation is to be had but we confess that the Roman Church is a true Church in substance the true Church c. I cannot but observe what difference there is in the judgements of men for of all their objections I take this to be the weakest And so would he also if he would cease to confound the Catholick Church with a Catholick Church that is the universall Church with a particular Church and distinguish the essentialls of a Church from the corruptions of a Church and make a difference between a just reformation of our selves and a causless separation from others But be the argument what it will forcible or weak it hath been answered abundantly in this Treatise over and over again And therefore though he pleased I use his own expressions to say it often to repeat it often to inculcate it Yet I dare not abuse the patience of the Reader with so many needless tautologies He taxeth me for not answering some testimonies which he hath collected in a book of his called the Protestants plain Confession which he saith I have read and therefore I ought not to have dissembled them but perhaps I thought them too hard to be answered I confess I have read some of his books formerly but I deny that I have one of them in-present If I had doth he think it reasonable or indeed possible that in one Chapter I should take notice of all that hath been written upon this Subject I confess I have answered many impertinences in this Treatise but a man would not willingly go so far out of his way to seek an impertinence When I did read some of his Treatises I pitied the mispending of so much time in weeding and wresting of Authors of severall reformations who writ in the beginning of the Controversie between sleeping and waking Sometimes he condemneth us of Schism for communicating with them some other times he citeth them as our Classicall Authors and at other times from the different Opinions of the Sons of the same Church he impugneth the conclusion wherein they doe all accord As if I should argue this If the bread be transubstantiated into the body of Christ it is either by production or aâ—duction but such and such Roman catholick Authors doe deny that it is by produduction and such and such other Roman catholick Authors doe deny that it is by adduction therefore by the plain confession of Roman Catholicks there is no transubstantiation If I had omitted any testimonies of weight cited by him in this Treatise as he hath done the most of all my grounds then with better reason he might have called it dissembling He seemeth to me to take this course only to make his credulous Reader beleeve that there is more in his books then there is It is the Church of England which he hath undertaken to combate Let him not leave his chosen Province to seek out petty adversaries among strangers and think to wound the Church of England through their sides He needeth not to be so much abroad whilest he may have enough to doe at home He urgeth that there is no salvation out of the Church no more then there was out of the Arke of Noah howsoever or for whatsoever one went out That Noahs Arke was a figure of baptisme St. Peter doth assure us and it may also very fitly represent the Church but that is the catholick or universall Church and then we yeeld the conclusion that there is no salvation out of the Church But particular Churches are like severall Chambers or Partitions within the Arke of Noah A man might goe out of one of them untill it was cleansed into another without any danger The Church of Rome is not Noahs Arke but St Peters Boat The rest of the Apostles had their Boats as well as Saint Peter He beateth but the aire in citing Saint Austin and Saint Hierome against us who have neither left the Church nor the Communion of the Church He maketh our Church to be in worse condition then the Church of the Donatists because Protestants grant that the Church of Rome doth still retein the essence of a true Church but the Donatists did deny that the catholick Church of their time was a true Church Doth he not see that he argueth altogether against himself The Schism of the Donatists consisted therein that they did uncharitably censure the catholick Church to have lost the essence of the Church this was indeed to goe schismatically out of the Communion of the Church and on the other side this is our safety and security that we are so far from censuring the catholick Church that we doe not censure the Roman Church which is but a particular Church to be no Church or to have lost its Communion with Christ nor have separated from it in any essentiall of Christian Religion but only in corruptions and innovations Our Charity freeth us from Schism The uncharitableness of the Donatists rendred them Schismaticks It may be a good lesson for the Romanists who tread too much in the steppes of the Donatists What Calvine saith That God accounteth him a forsaker of his Religion who obstinately separateth himself from any Christian Society which keepeth the true Ministery of the Word and Sacraments Or that there may some vice creep into the Ministery of the Word and Sacraments which ought not to alienate us from the communion of a true Church Or lastly that we must pardon errors in those things which may be unknown without violaâ—ing the summe of Religion or without losse of Salvation or we shall have no Church at all doth not concern us who doe not dream of an Anabaptisticall perfection and upon this very ground doe admit them to be a true Church though imperfect who
been spoken in R. C. his sense yet Ealred was but one Doctor whose authority is not fit to counterbalance the publick Laws and Customes and Records â—f a whole Kingdome Neither doth it appear â—hat they who sate at the sterne in those dayes did either suffer it or so much as know of it Books were not published then so soon as they were written but lay most commonly dormient many years or perhaps many ages before they see the Sun But Ealred his sense was not the same it could not be the same with R. C. his No man in those dayes did take the Church of Rome for the Roman Catholick or Universall Church but for the Diocess of Rome which their best protectors doe make to be no otherwise infallible then upon supposition of the inseparability of the Papacy from it which Bellarmine himself confesseth to be but a probable opinion Neque Scriptura neque traditio habet sedem Apostolicam ita fixaem esse Romae ut inde auferré non possit There is neither Scripture nor Tradition to prove that the Apostolick See is so fixed to Rome that it cannot be removed from it Therefore these words of Ealred cannot be applyed to this present question because the subject of the question is changed And if they be understood simply and absolutely of an universall communion with the Church of Rome both present and future they are unfound in the judgment of Bellarraine himself It remains therefore that they are either to be understood of communicating in essentials and so we communicate with the Church of Rome at this day Or that by the Church of Rome Ealred did understand the Church of Rome of that age whereas all those exceptions which we have against them for our not communicating with them actually in all things are either sprung up since Ealreds time or at least since that time made or declared necessarie conditions of their communion Lastly I desire the Reader to take notice that these words of Ealred doe contain nothing against the politicall Supremacy of Kings nor against the liberties of the English Church nor for the Jurisdiction of the Court of Rome over England and so might have been passed by as impertinent They endited their Letters to the Pope in these words Summo universali Ecclesiae Pastori Nicholao Edwardus Dei gratia Angliae Rex debitam subjectionem omnimodum servitium It seemeth that the Copies differ some have not Pastori but Patri nor universali but universalis Ecclesiae and no more but obedientiam for omnimodum servitium But let him read it as he list it signifies nothing There cannot be imagined a weaker or a poorer argument then that which is drawn from the superscription or subscription of a Letter He that enrolls every man in the catalogue of his friends and servants who subscribe themselves his loving or obliged friends or his faithfull and obedient servants will finde his friends and servants sooner at a feast then at a fray Titles are given in Letters more out of custome and formality then out of judgment and truth The Pope will not stick to endite his Letter To the King of the Romans and yet suffer him to have nothing to doe in Rome Every one who endited their Letters to the high and mighty Lords the States Generall did not presently beleeve that was their just Title before the King of Spains resignation Titles are given sometimes out of curtesie sometimes out of necessity because men will not lose their business for want of a complement He that will write to the great Duke of Muscovia must stile him Emperour of Russia How many have lost their Letters and their labours for want of a mon Frere or mon Confine my Brother or my Cousin It were best for him to quit his argument from superscriptions otherwise he will be shewed Popes calling Princes their Lords and themselves their Subjects and Servants yea Princes most glorious and most excellent Lords and themselves Servants of Servants that is Servants in the snperlative degree They will finde Cyprian to his brother Cornelius health and Justinian to John the most holy Archbishop of the City of Rome Patriarch Did St. Cyprian beleeve Cornelius to be his Master and stile him Brother or owe obedience and service and send but health Had is been comely to stile an ecclesiasticall Monarch plaine Archbishop and Patriarch and for the Christian World to set down only the Citie of Rome But what doth he take hold on in this superscription to their advantage Is it the word summo That cannot be it is confessed generally that the Bishop of Rome had priority of order among the Patriarchs Or is it the word universali Neither can that be all the Patriarchs were stiled oecumenicall or universall not in respect of an universall power but their universall care as Saint Paul saith The care of all the Churches did lie upon him and their presidence in generall Councels It cannot be the word Pastori all Bishops were anciently called Pastors Where then lies the strength of this Argument In the words due subjection No. There is subjection to good advise as well as to just commands The principall Patriarchs bore the greatest sway in a generall Councell in that respect there was subjection due unto them The last words all forts of service are not in some Copies and if they were verborum ut nummorum as they are commonly used as well from Superiors to their Inferiors as from Inferiors to their Superiors they signifie nothing I wonder he was not afraid to cite this superscription considering the clause in Pope Nicholas his letter to King Edward Vobis veroì posteris vestris Regibus committimus Advocationem tuitionem ejusdem loci omnium totius Angliae Ecclesiarum ut vice nostrâ cum consilio Episcoporum Abbatum constituas ubique quae justa sunt King Edward by the fundamentall Law of the Land was the Vicar of God to govern the Church of God within his dominions But if he had not here is a better title from the See of Rome it self then that whereby the King of Spain holds all the Ecclesiasticall jurisdiction of Sicily to him and his heirs at this day They professed that it was Heresie to deny that the Pope omni praesidet creaturae is above every creature That is no more then to say that the Bishop of Rome as successor to Saint Peter is principium unitatis the beginning of unity or hath a principality of order not of power above all Christians It will be hard for him to gain any thing at the hands of that wife and victorious Prince Edward the third who disposed of Ecclesiastical dignities received homage and fealty from his Prelats who writ that so much admired Letter to the Pope for the liberties of the English Church cui pro tunc Papa aut Cardinales rationabiliter respondere nesciebant to which the Pope and
take another Perhaps the Popes in justice might by Gods just disposition be an occasion but it was no ground of the Reformation And if it had yet neither this nor his other exceptions doe concern the cause at all There is a great difference between bonum and bene between a good action and an action well done An action may be good and lawfull in it self and yet the ground of him that acteth it sinister and his manner of proceeding indirect as we see in Iehu's reformation This concerned King Henries person but it concerns not us at all King Henrie protested that it was his conscience they will not beleeve him Queen Katherine accused Cardinall Wolsey as the Author of it she never accused Anne Bolen who was in France when that business began The Bishop of Lincoln was imployed to Oxford Bishop Gardiner and Dr. Fox to Cambridge to see the cause debated Besides our own Universities the Universities of Paris Orleans Angew Burges Bononia Padua Tholouse and I know not how many of the most learned Doctors of that age did all subscribe to the unlawfullness of that Marriage which he calleth lawfull The Bishop of Worcester prosecuted the divorce The Bishops of York Duresme Chester were sent unto Queen Katherine to perswade her to lay aside the title of Queen The Bishops of Canterbury London Winchester Bath Lincoln did give sentence against the Marriage Bishop Bonner made the appeal from the Pope The greatest sticklers were most zealous Roman Catholicks And if wise men were not mistaken that business was long plotted between Rome and France and Cardinall Wolsey to breake the league with the Emperour and to make way for a new Marriage with the Duchess of Alenson sister to the King of France and a stricter league with that Crown But God did take the wife in their own crastiness Yea even Clement the seventh had once given out a Bull privately to declare the Marriage unlawfull and invalid if his Legate Campegius could have brought the King to comply with the Popes desires I will conclude this point with two testimonies the one of Stephen Gardiner Bishop of Winchester Quid aliud debuit aut potuit c. What else ought the King or could the King doe then with the full consent of his People and judgment of his Church to be loosed from an unlawfull contract and to enjoy one that was lawfull and allowed and leaving her whom neither Law nor Equity did permit him to hold to apply himselfe to a chaste and lawfull marriage In which cause whereas the sentence of the Word of God alone had been sufficient to which all ought to submit without delay yet his Majestie disdained not to use the censures of the gravest men and most famous Universities The second is the testimonie of two Archbishops two Dukes three Marquesses thirteen Earls five Bishops six and twenty Barons two and twenty Abbats with many Knights and Doctors in their Letter to the Pope Causae ipsius justitia c. The justice of the cause it self being approved every where by the judgments of most learned men determined by the suffrages of most famous Universities being pronounced and defined by English French Italians as every one among them doth excell the rest in learning c. Though he call it a lawfull Marriage yet it is but one Doctors opinion And if it had been lawfull the Pope and the Clergy were more blame worthy then King Henry Secondly he faith he wanted due moderation because he forced the Parliament by fear to consent to his proceedings I have shewed sufficiently that they were not forced by their Letter to the Pope by their Sermons preached at St. Pauls Crosse by their perswasions to the King by their pointed looks to which I may add their Declaration called the Bishops Book signed by two Archbishops and nineteen Bishops Nor doe I remember to have read of any of note that opposed it but two who were prisoners and no Parliament men at that time Sir Thomas More yet when King Henry writ against Luther he advised him to take heed how he advanced the Popes authority too much left he diminished his own And Bishop Fisher who had consented in convocation to the Kings title of the Supreme Head of the English Church quantum per Christi legem licet But because Bishop Gardiner is the only witness whom he produceth for proof of this allegation I will shew him out of Stephen Gardiner himself who was the Tyrant that did compell him Quin potius orbirationem neddeâ—e volui c. I desired rather to give an account to the World what changed my opinion and compelled me to dissent from my former words and deeds That compelled me to speak it in good time which compelleth all men when God thinketh fit the force of truth to which all things at length doe obey Behold the Tyrant not Henry the eight but the force of truth which compelled the Parliament Take one testimonie more out of the same Treatise But I fortified my self so that as if I required the judgment of all my senses I would not submit nor captivate my understanding to the known and evident truth nor take it to be sufficiently proved unless I first heard it with mine eares and smelt it with my nose and see it with mine eyes and felt it with my hands Here was more of obstinacie then tyranny in the case Either Stephen Gardiner did write according to his conscience and then he was not compelled or else he dissembled and then his second testimonie is of no value It is not my judgment but the judgment of the Law it self Semel falsus semper presumitur falsus To the third condition he faith only that Henry the eight had not sufficient authority to reforme first because it was the power of a small part of the Church against the whole I have shewed the contrarie that our Reformation was not made in opposition but in pursuance of the acts of generall Councells neither did our Reformers meddle without their own spheres And secondly because the Papacy is of divine right Yet before he told us that it was doubtfull and very courteously he would put it upon me to prove that the Regiment of the Church by the Pope is of humane institution But I have learned better that the proof rests upon his side both because he maintains an affirmative and because we are in possession It were an hard condition to put me to prove against my conscience that the universall Regency of the Pope is of humane right who doe absolutely deny both his divine right and his humane right His next exception is that it is no sufficient warrant for Princes to meddle in spirituall matters because some Princes have done so If he think the externall Regiment of the Church to be a matter meerly spirituall he is much mistaken I cite not the exorbitant acts of some single