Doctrine is meant the adhering to that Doctrine which God hath revealed as necessary in his Word but by the Definitions of the teaching Church you understand a Power to make more things necessary to the Salvation of all than Christ hath made so that joyn these two together the Consequence is this If the Pastors of the Church may and ought to keep men from believing any other Doctrine then they have power to impose another Doctrine which things are so contradictious to each other that none but one of your faculty would have ventured to have set one to prove the other Therefore when you would prove any thing by this Argument your Medium must be this That the Pastors of the Church are a Foundation of constancy in Doctrine by laying New Foundations of Doctrines by her Definitions which is just as if you would prove That the best way to keep a House entire without any additions is to build another house adjoyning to it But say you further Were not the Apostles in their times who were Ecclesia docens by their Doctrine and Decrees a Foundation to the Church which was taught by them Doth not S. Paul expresly affirm it superaedificati supra Fundamentum Apostolorum c. To which I answer 1. That the Apostles were not therefore said to be the Foundation on which they were built who believed on that Doctrine because by virtue of their Power they could define or decree any thing to be necessary to Salvation which was not so before but because they were the Instruments whereby the things which were necessary to Salvation were conveyed to them And because their Authority by virtue of their Mission and the Power accompanying it was the means whereby they were brought to believe the Doctrin of the Gospel as in it self true But there is a great deal of difference between teaching what is necessary to Salvation and making any thing necessary to Salvation which was before meerly because it is taught by them 2. I grant that those things did become necessary to be believed which the Apostles taught but it was either because the things were in themselves necessary in order to the end declared viz. Man's Salvation or else it was on the account of that evidence which the Apostles gave that they were persons immediately imployed by God to deliver those Doctrines to them But still here is nothing becoming necessary by virtue of a Decree or Definition but by virtue of a Testimony that what they delivered came from God 3. When the Apostles delivered these things the Doctrine of the Gospel was not made known to the world but they were chosen by God and infallibly assisted for that end that they might reveal it to the world And this is certainly a very different case from that when the Doctrine of Salvation is fully revealed and delivered down to us in unquestionable records And therefore if you will prove any thing to your purpose you must prove as great and as divine assistance of the Spirit in the Church representative of all Ages as was in the Apostles in the first Age of the Christian Church 4. When you say from hence That the Apostles as the teaching Church laid the Foundation of the Church taught that can only be understood of those Christians who became a Church by the Apostles preaching the Doctrine of the Gospel to them but this is quite a different thing from laying the Foundation of a Church already in being as your Church taught and diffusive is supposed to be Can you tell us where the Apostles are said to lay further Foundations for Churches already constituted that they made or declared more things necessary to Salvation than were so antecedently to their being a Church But this is your case you pretend a power in your Church representative to make more things necessary to Salvation than were before to a Church already in Being and therefore supposed to believe all things necessary to Salvation You see therefore what a vast disparity there is in the case and how far the Apostles declaring the Doctrine of Christ and thereby founding Churches is from being an Argument that the representative Church may lay the Foundation of the Church diffusive which being a Church already must have its Foundation laid before all new Decrees and Definitions of the teaching Church So that still it unavoidably follows upon your principles That the Church must lay her own Foundation and then the Church must have been in absolute and perfect Being before so much as her Foundation is laid Your weak endeavour of retorting this upon the Bishop because of the Apostles teaching the Church of their Age only shews that you have a good will to say something in behalf of so bad a cause but that you want ability to do it as appears by the Answers already given as to the difference of the Apostles case and yours The subsequent Section which is spent in a weak defence of A. C's words hath the less cause to be particularly examined and besides its whole strength lyes on things sufficiently discussed already viz. the sufficient Proposition of matters of Faith and the Material and Formal Object of it That which follows pretending to something New and which looks like Argumentation must be more distinctly considered Cs. words are That if one may deny or doubtfully dispute against any one Determination of the Church then he may against another and another and so against all since all are made firm to us by one and the same Divine Revelation sufficiently applied by one and the same full Authority of the Church which being weakned in any one cannot be firm in any other To which his Lordship answers 1. That this is understood only of Catholick Maxims which are properly Fundamental by Vincentius Lirinensis from whom this Argument is derived 2. He denies that all Determinations of the Church are made firm to us by one and the same Divine Revelation 3. He denies that all Determinations of the Church are sufficiently applied by one and the same full Authority of the Church Of each of these he gives his reasons the examination and defence of which is all that remains of this Chapter To the first you answer three things for I must digest your Answers for you 1. That there is no evidence that A. C. borrowed this from Vincentius and you give an excellent reason for it because good wits may both hit on the same thing or at least come near it which had it been said of your self had been more unquestionable but to let that pass 2. You tell us That the Doctrine is true whosoever said it For which you give this reason For the same reason which permits not our questioning or denying the prime Maxims of Faith permits not our questioning or denying any other Doctrine declared by the Church because it is not the greatness or smalness of the matter that moves us to give firm Assent
of the Catholick Church of all Ages comprehending the Apostles and Evangelists in it and in this sense he saith that place of S. Augustine is to be understood But what advantage this is to your cause I cannot imagine For what if the Catholick Church be taken in that comprehensive sense to include not only the Apostles but the Church successively from their times Doth it hence follow That it is not day though the Sun shines Or rather Doth it not follow That you are not so quick-sighted as you would seem to be And Whether his Lordship or you come nearer the meaning of Occham's words let any one judge For they who speak of the Church in that comprehensive sense do only suppose the Infallibility to have been in the Primitive Apostolical Church but the successive Church to be only the chanel of conveyance of that Testimony down to us and so they say no more than we do Thus Driedo expounds that place of S. Augustine who understands it of the Catholick Church which was from the beginning of the Christian Faith increasing according to the course of succession of Bishops to these times which Church comprehends in it the Colledge of Apostles Do you think that these men did believe a present Infallibility in the Church If so To what end are they so careful to carry it so high as the Apostles Whereas on your Principle we can have no Assurance concerning any thing that the Apostles did or said but only for the Infallibility of the present Church You must therefore understand the present Church exclusively of the Apostolical Church and therefore if S. Augustine be understood in their sense he is far enough from serving your purposes But say you It is evident that S. Augustine must speak of the Church in his time because he speaks of that Church which said to him Noli credere Manichaeo which was not true of the Apostolical Church But Why might not the Apostolical Church be a reason to S. Augustine not to believe Manichaeus because he found no footsteps of his Doctrine in the Records of that Church Again suppose he means the present Church Doth he mean the infallible Testimony of the present Church Might not the Testimony of the Church supposing it fallible be sufficient for what S. Augustine saith of it I doubt it not And you seem to have no great confidence in this Testimony your self when you add That though it be a point of Faith to believe that the Church is infallible in delivering Scripture to us yet it is not a point of Faith that her Infallibility is proved out of the cited place of S. Augustine But when you say it is sufficient that it be clear and manifest out of the Text it self what Text do you mean S. Augustines or the Scriptures If S. Augustines you would do well to shew by what engines you force Infallibility out of his words if the Scriptures What becomes of our good Motives of Credibility When his Lordship objects That according to your Principles the Tradition of the present Church must be as infallible as that of the Primitive you very learnedly distinguish That if he means the one must be as truly and really infallible quoad substantiam as the other you grant it But if he mean the one must be as highly and perfectly infallible as the other quoad modum you deny it Very good still It seems there are higher and lower degrees in Infallibility I pray tell us What that is which is more than infallible The present Church you say is infallible but not so highly and perfectly infallible therefore there must be degrees in Infallibility and since the lowest degree is infallible that which is highly infallible must be more than infallible Again What difference is there between the substance and the mode in Infallibility I had thought the substance of Infallibility had layn in the mode and I should rather think Infallibility it self to be a mode of Apprehension then talk of substances and modes in it But it may be you mean such kind of modes of Infallibility as absolute and hypothetical If you do so explain your self by them and that we may better understand your meaning shew us whether the Church be at all capable of absolute Infallibility if not What difference there is in degrees between the hypothetical Infallibility of the present and Primitive Church supposing both infallible in delivering their Testimony and no otherwise For you yet again add Of the Churches Testimony being infallible but not simply Divine but it is the infallible Testimony of a desperate cause to have but one bad shift and to use it so often Because you would be apt to say That upon his Lordships rejecting the Infallibility of Tradition he left no use at all of it He therefore tells you Notwithstanding that it is serviceable for very good ends that it induces Infidels to the reading and consideration of Scripture and that it instructs novices and doubters in the Faith which two ends you say fall short of the end of Tradition For say you it founds and establishes Believers even the greatest Doctors of the Church for which you cite again this same place of S. Augustine But did not his Lordship tell you that some of your own understood that very place either of Novices or Infidels For which besides the Testimony of some of your own party he adds this reason because the words immediately before are If thou find one qui Evangelio nondum credit which did not yet believe the Gospel What wouldst thou do to make him believe Ego vero non c. To which you very prudently say nothing Concerning Almayn's Opinion That we are first and more bound to believe the Church than the Scripture you would seem in terms to disavow it though very faintly it is not altogether true and hope to salve it by a distinction of priority of time and nature and you acknowledge That in priority of nature we are first bound to believe the Church and I suppose in priority of time too if we believe the Scripture for the Churches sake Yet you would not have it said That we are more bound to believe the Church than Scripture but it is not what you would have properly said but what follows from that antecedent which Jacobus Almayn puts It is certain saith he that we are bound to believe all things contained in the Sacred Canon upon that account alone because the Church believes them therefore we are first and more bound to believe the Church than the Scripture which is so evident a consequence that nothing but shame would make you deny it Touching Almayn's and Gerson's reading compelleret for commoveret his Lordship saith That Almayn falsifies the Text notoriously you say No but you had rather charitably think they both read it so in some Copies his Lordship produceth a very ancient M.S. for the common reading you none at all for
The several Testimonies to the contrary of S. Ambrose S. Hierom John Patriarch of Constantiople S. Augustine Optatus c. particularly examined and all found short of proving that the Roman Church is the Catholick Church The several Answers of his Lordship to the Testimonies of S. Cyprian S. Hierom S. Greg. Nazianzen S. Cyril and Ruffinus about the Infallibility of the Church of Rome justified From all which it appears that the making the Roman Church to be the Catholick is a great Novelty and perfect Jesuitism p. 289. CHAP. II. Protestants no Schismaticks Schism a culpable Separation therefore the Question of Schism must be determined by enquiring into the causes of it The plea from the Church of Rome's being once a right Church considered No necessity of assigning the punctual time when errours crept into her An account why the originals of errours seem obscure By Stapletons Confession the Roman and Catholick Church were not the same The falsiâ—y of that assertion manifested that there could be no pure Church since the Apostles times if the Roman Church were corrupt No one particular Church free from corruptions yet no separation from the Catholick Church How far the Catholick Church may be said to erre Men may have distinct communion from any oâ—e particular Church yet not separate from the Catholick Church The Testimony of Petrus de Alliaco vindicated Bellarmin not mis cited Almain full to his Lordships purpose The Romanists guilty of the present Schism and not Protestants In what sense there can be no just cause of Schism and how far that concerns our case Protestants did not depart from the Church of Rome but were thrust out of it The Vindication of the Church of Rome from Schism at last depends upon the two false Principles of her Infallibility and being the Catholick Church The Testimonies of S. Bernard and S Austin not to the purpose The Catalogue of Fundamentals the Churches not erring c. referr'd back to their proper places p. 324. CHAP. III. Of keeping Faith with Hereticks The occasion of this Dispute The reason why this Doctrine is not commonly defended Yet all own such Principles from whence it necessarâ—ly follows The matter of fact as to the Council of Constance and John Hus opened Of the nature of the safe conduct granted him by the Emperour that it was not a general one salvâ justitiâ but particular jure speciali which is largely proved The particulars concerning Hierom of Prague Of the safe-conduct granted by the Council of Trent Of the distinction of Secular and Ecclesiastical Power and that from thence it follows that Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks Simancha and several others fully assert this Doctrine Of the Invitation to the Council of Trent and the good Instructions there and of Publick Disputation p. 343. CHAP. IV. The Reformâ—tion of the Church of England justified The Church of Rome guilty of Schism by unjustly casting Protestants out of Communion The Communion of the Catholâ—ck and particular Churches distinguished No separation of Protestants from the Catholick Church The Devotions of the Church of England and Rome compared Particular Churches Power to reform themselves in case of general Corruption proved The Instance from the Church of Judah vindicated The Church of Rome paralleld with the ten Tribes General Corruptions make Reformation the more necessary Whether those things we condemn as errours were Catholick Tenets at the time of the Reformation The contrary shewed and the dâ—fference of the Church of Rome before and since the Reformation When things may be said to be received as Catholick Doctrines How far particular Churches Power to reform themselves extends His Lordships Instances for the Power of Provincial Councils in matters of Reformation vindicated The particular case of the Church of England discussed The proceedings in our Reformation defended The Church of England a true Church The National Synod 1562. a lawful Synod The Bâ—shops no intruders in Queen Elizabeth's time The justice and modâ—ration of the Church of England in her Reformation The Popes Power here a forcible and fraudulent Usurpation p. 356. CHAP. V. Of the Roman Churches Authority The Question concerning the Church of Rome's Authority entred upon How far our Church in reforming her self condemns the Church of Rome The Pope's equality with other Patriarchs asserted The Arabick Canons of the Nicene Council proved to be supposititious The Polity of the Ancient Church discovered from the sixth Canon of the Council of Nice The Rights of Primats and Metropolitans settled by it The suitableness of the Ecclesiastical to the Civil Government That the Bishop of Rome had then a limitted Jurisdiction within the suburbicary Churches as Primate of the Roman Diocese Of the Cyprian Priviledge that it was not peculiar but common to all Primats of Dioceses Of the Pope's Primacy according to the Canons how far pertinent to our dispute How far the Pope's Confirmation requisite to new elected Patriarchs Of the Synodical and Communicatory Letters The testimonies of Petrus de Marcâ concerning the Pope's Power of confirming and deposing Bishops The Instances brought for it considered The case of Athanasius being restored by Julius truly stated The proceedings of Constantine in the case of the Donatists cleared and the evidence thence against the Pope's Supremacy Of the Appeals of Bishops to Rome how far allowed by the Canons of the Church The great case of Appeals between the Roman and African Bishops discussed That the Appeals of Bishops were prohibited as well as those of the inferiour Clergy C's fraud in citing the Epistle of the African Bishops for acknowledging Appeals to Rome The contrary manifested from the same Epistle to Boniface and the other to Coelestine The exemption of the Ancient Britannick Church from any subjection to the See of Rome asserted The case of Wilfrids Appeal answered The Primacy of England not derived from Gregory's Grant to Augustine the Monk The Ancient Primacy of the Britannick Church not lost upon the Saxon Conversion Of the state of the African Churches after their denying Appeals to Rome The rise of the Pope's Greatness under Christian Emperours Of the Decree of the Sardican Synod in case of Appeals whether ever received by the Church No evidence thence of the Pope's Supremacy Zosimus his forgery in sending the Sardican Canons instead of the Nicene The weakness of the Pleas for it manifested p. 382. CHAP. VI. Of the Title of Universal Bishop In what sense the Title of Vniversal Bishop was taken in Antiquity A threefold acceptation of it as importing 1. A general care over the Christian Churches which is attributed to other Catholick Bishops by Antiquity besides the Bishop of Rome as is largely proved 2. A peculiar dignity over the Churches within the Roman Empire This accounted then Oecumenical thence the Bishops of the seat of the Empire called Oecumenical Bishops and sometimes of other Patriarchal Churches 3. Noting Vniversal Jurisdiction over the whole Church as Head of it so never given
you had said before but only this that what was not once necessary to salvation cannot by any after-declaration of the Church be made necessary as shall be abundantly manifested in the Controversie of Fundamentals What follows must be more particularly considered because therein you would fain remove the Article of Filioque from being the cause of the Schism between the Eastern and Western Churches and impute it wholly to the Pride and Ambition of the Eastern Prelates Your words are But it is also true That the addition of Filioque to the Creed was made many years before the difference brake out between the Latins and Greeks so that the inserting this word Filioque into the Creed was not the first occasion of Schism But grudges arising among the Greeks who had been a large flourishing Church with a number of most learned and zealous Prelates and held the Articles still though upon emptier heads such quickly filled with wind thinking their swelling places and great City of Constantinople might hold up against Rome they began to quarrel not for places that was too mean a motive for such as look'd so big but first they would make it appear they could teach Rome nay they spyed out Heresies in it the old way of all Hereticks and so fell to question the Procession of the Holy Ghost and must needs have Filioque out of the Creed These words of yours lay the charge of Schism on the Greeks wholly and therefore in order to our vindication of them from that two things must be enquired into 1. Whether it was in your Churches Power to make the Addition of Filioque to the Creed 2. Whether the Greeks Ambition and Pride were the only cause of the Separation between the Eastern and Western Churches 1. Concerning the addition of Filioque two things must be enquired into 1. When it began and by whom it was added to the Creed 2. Whether they who added it had power so to do and to impose on all others the use of it 1. Concerning the time of this Addition nothing seems more dark in Church-history than the precise and punctual time of it And so much you acknowledge your self elsewhere But it seems it is your concernment to say That the Addition was made before the difference brake out To that I answer if you mean that in some Churches the Procession from the Son was acknowledged before that difference I grant it as is clear by some Councils of Toledo and that the doctrine of the Procession was received in France too about the time of Charls the Great I acknowledge and that it was admitted into the solemn Offices of the Church but that it was added to the Nicene and Constantinopolitan Creed to be received by all Churches so that it should not be lawful for any to use that Creed without such Addition that I deny to have been before the Schism but assert it to have been a great occasion of it It is acknowledged that in Spain several Councils of Toledo in their profession of Faith do mention the Procession from the Son but this they delivered only as their own private judgments and not as the publick Creed received by all Churches For Petavius confesseth that in Symbolo ipso nihil adjecerunt they added nothing at all to the Creed And although the custom of singing the Constantinopolitan Creed in the Liturgy seems first to have begun in Spain from whom Petavius supposeth both the French and Germans received it yet even there it appears it was not universally received For the Church of Sevil contented it self still with the Mozarabick Liturgy in which only the bare Nicene Creed was used You tell us indeed That the inserting the Article in the Councils of Toledo is supposed to have been done upon the authority of an Epistle they had received from Pope Leo which though it be not barely supposed but asserted with great confidence by Baronius yet as most other things in him which are brought to advance the Pope's Authority it hath no other ground but his confident assertion There being not the least shadow of proof for it but only that this Leo in a certain Epistle of his to the Spaniards did once upon a time mention that the Son proceeded from the Father Therefore in Spain I grant the Doctrine to be received I deny the Addition to be made to the Constantinopolitan Creed although it be read as added to it in the 8. or 10. Council of Toledo under Reccesuintus A. D. 653. But this was still only the declaration of their own Faith in this Article and no imposing it on others In France that it began to be received in publick Use A. D. 809. must be acknowledged by the proceedings of the Legats from the Council of Aquisgrane to Pope Leo 3. But it appears as clearly that Pope Leo did then condemn the use of it as will be shewed afterwards When it should creep into the Athanasian Creed seems as hard to find out as when first added to the Constantinopolitan but if we believe Pithaeus the whole Creed was of a French Composition there being many Arguments to perswade us it never was made by Athanasius of which in their due place and Vossius adds That it is very probable it was composed about the time of Charls the Great the Controversie being then so rise about the Procession But that seems the less probable because the Article of Filioque is not found in the Ancient Copies of that Creed For Spalatensis saith That in all the Greek Copies he had seen there was only mention made of the Procession from the Father And the Patriarch Cyril saith That not only the Symbol of Athanasius is adulterated among the Latins but that it is proved to be so by the more ancient and genuine Copies But however this be we deny not but the Article of Procession from the Son grew into use especially in the Gallican and Spanish Churches before the Schism broke out between the Eastern and Western Churches but our enquiry is not concerning that but concerning the time when it was so added to the Constantinopolitan Creed that it was required to be used only with that addition For this you tell us That Hugo Eterianus affirms that it was added by the Pope in a full Council at Rome but he names not the Pope So likewise the Latin Divines at the Council of Florence pretended still that it was added by the Pope in a full Council but very carefully forbare the mention of the person or the punctual time But it is your unhappiness if there be divers opinions to be followed to make choice of the most improbable as you do here when you embrace that of Socolovius which is That the Fathers of the first Council at Constantinople sending the Confession of their Faith to Pope Damasus and his Council at Rome the Pope and Council at Rome approved of their said Confession but yet
all opportunities to disgrace it and infringe the liberties of it Thence came the rage of Leo against Anatolius the Patriarch of Constantinople in the time of Martianus thence the feud between Simplicius and Felix 3. of Rome and Acacius of Constantinople for defending the Priviledges of his See in opposition to the Pope's insomuch that Felix fairly excommunicates him because he would not submit to the Pope's tryal in the case of the Patriarch of Alexandria which continued so long that Euphemius who succeeded Acacius though he excommunited Petrus Moggus of Alexandria yet could not be received into the Communion of the Roman Church by Felix because he would not expunge the name of Acacius out of the Diptychs of the Church and afterwards Gelasius refused it on the same grounds which Euphemius still denying to do the Schism continued And although afterwards the Emperour Anastasius and the Greek Church desired the making up of this difference yet no other terms of communion would be accepted by Hormisdas without the expunging the name of Acacius So implacably were they bent against the very memory of Acacius for defending the Priviledge of his See that they would rather continue that lamentable Schism than not avenge themselves upon him and consequently make all future Patriarchs fearful of opposing the Pope's Authority If we look yet further we shall still find the ambition of the Popes to have caused all the disturbance in the Greek Churches although some of the Patriarchs of Constantinople cannot be excused from the same faults In the time of the second Council at Nice Pope Adrian not only contends for the enlargement of his Jurisdiction but threatens to pronounce them Hereticks who did not consent to it which makes Petrus de Marcâ say That he supposeth that the first time ever any were charged with Heresie on such an account The same pretence we find still in all the Schisms which after happened as that in the time of Photius that afterward in the time of Michael Cerularius and in the successive ages still the terms of communion were Submission to the Church of Rome and acknowledgledging the supremacy of that See which the Greeks did then and do still constantly deny so that it was not the Greeks Levity but the Romanists ambition and usurpation which gave occasion to that fearful Schism But for all this It must still be lawful for your Church to add and Anathematize too which his Lordship thought a little unreasonable but it seems you do not For say you The Church did rightly Anathematize all such denyers why so Because the meaning of the Latin Church being understood by the Addition of Filioque and that whosoever denyed must be supposed to deny the Procession then it became Heresie to deny it and the Church did rightly Anathematize all such denyers So you say indeed but you would do well 1. To shew that the understanding the meaning of the Latin Church is sufficient to make the denyers of what she affirms to be Hereticks 2. How any one that denies the Filioque must be supposed to deny the Procession if you mean the Procession à Filio you speak very wisely but prove nothing for some might grant the Procession and yet deny the lawfulness of your Churches adding to the Creed 3. All this while we are to seek how the Latin Church can make any thing to be a Heresie which was not so before And therefore if your Anathema's have no better grounds the Greeks need not much fear the effects of them That your Church on any occasion is apt enough to speak loud words we may very easily believe but whether she had just cause to speak so big in this cause is the thing in question and we have already manifested the contrary His Lordship sayes It ought to be no easie thing to condemn a man of Heresie in foundation of Faith much less a Church least of all so ample and large a Church as the Greek especially so as to make them no Church Heaven Gates were not so easily shut against multitudes when S. Peter wore the Keyes at his own Girdle To this you answer Neither is the Roman-Catholick Church justly accusable of cruelty though the Bishop taxes her of it because she is quick and sharp against those that fall into Heresie But if she hath power to pronounce whom she please Hereticks and on what account she please as Hadrian I. in case of his Patrimony and then it be commendable in her to deal with them as Hereticks it must needs be dangerous opposing her in any thing for such who dread her Anathema's But his Lordship was not speaking of what was to be done in case of notorious Heresie but what tenderness ought to be used in condemning men for Heresie and much more in condemning whole Churches for it on such slender accounts as you do the Greek Church You should shew When S. Peter or any of the Apostles did exclude Churches from communion for denying such Articles as that you charge the Greek Church with And it would be worth your enquiry why those in the Corinthian Church who at least questioned the Resurrection those in the Galatian and other Churches who asserted the Necessity of the Ceremonial Law under the Gospel both which errours are by the Apostle said to be of so dangerous a nature are not Anathematized presently by the Apostle and thrown out of the Church at least to prevent the infection of other Christians if not for the good of the Libertine Hereticks as you speak Your mentioning S. Peters proceeding with Ananias and Sapphira must be acknowledged a very fit resemblance for your Churches dealing with Hereticks only they whom you are pleased to account Hereticks have cause to rejoyce that since your Churches good will is so much discovered she hath not the same miraculous Power For then she would be sure to have few left to oppose her But do you really think Anania's and Sapphira's fault was no greater than that of the Greek Church that you produce this instance and do you think the Church enjoyes still the same power over offenders which S. Peter then had If not to what purpose do you mention such things here unless to let us see that it is want of some thing else besides will which makes you suffer any whom you call Hereticks to live That S. Paul chastised his untoward Children indeed you tell us from 1 Cor 5.5 1 Tim. 1.20 but if you bring this to any purpose you must make the Greeks Errour as bad as Incest or a denying the Faith and when you have done so you may hear of a further answer On what account your Church punisheth Delinquents will be then necessary to be shewed when you have a little further cleared what Power your Church hath to make Delinquents in such cases as you condemn the Greek Church for But as long as your Church is Accuser Witness and Judge too you must never
them and to acknowledge their words for infallible Oracles of Truth Was not here then sufficient ground for assent in the Primitive Christians to the Apostles Doctrine Not as you weakly imagine because the Doctrine of the Apostles was suitable to the Doctrine of Christ for the ground why they assented to the Doctrine of Christ was because of the Testimony of the Apostles And therefore to say They believed the Doctrine of the Apostles because it was agreeable to the Doctrine of Christ and then that they believed the Doctrine of Christ because it was suitable to the Testimony of the Apostles is a Circle fit for none but your self and that silly person of your own moulding whom you call the Sectary It were worth considering too How the works of Christ could prove the Doctrine of the Apostles suitable to his own I had thought Christs works had proved his own Testimony to be true and not the Apostles Doctrine to be consonant to his The works of Christ shew us the reason why he was to be believed in what he delivered and did not the works of the Apostles do so too What need then any rational person enquire further why the Apostles Doctrine was to be believed Was it not on the same account that the Doctrine of Christ was to be believed But say you How should you know their Doctrine was the same What do you want an infallible Testimony for this too or do you believe that God can contradict himself or that Christ should send such to deliver his Doctrine to the world and attest it with miracles who should falsifie and corrupt it Now you will say I am come over to you and answer as you do that the Apostles Testimony was to be believed because of the pregnant and convincing Motives of Credibility This I grant but must be excused as to what follows That these same Motives moved the Primitive Christians and us in our respective times to believe the Church Prove but that and I yield the cause But till then I pray give us leave to believe that still you prove idem per idem and your Answers are like your Proofs for this we have had often already and have sufficiently examined before as likewise your other Coccysm about the Formal Object of Faith and certain inducements to accept the Churches Infallibility which I shall not think worth repeating till you think what I have said against it before worth answering Your second Instance is ad hominem whereby you would prove That if he acknowledge the Church infallible in Fundamentals he must prove idem per idem as much as you do For say you if he be demanded a reason why he believes such Points as he calls Fundamental his Answer is because they are agreeable to the Doctrine of Christ. If he be asked How he knows them to be so he will no doubt produce the words sentences and works of Christ who taught the said Fundamental Points But if he be asked a third time By what means he is assured that these Testimonies do make for him then he will not have recourse to the words themselves i. e. to the Bible but his final Answer will be He knows them to be so and that they do make for him because the present Church doth infallibly witness so much from Tradition and according to Tradition which is say you to prove idem per idem as much as we Things are not alwaies just as you would have them If we allow you to make both Objections and Answers for us no doubt you are guilty of no Absurdity so great but we shall be equally guilty of it But it is the nature both of your Religion and Arguments not to be able to stand a Tryal but however they must undergo it I say then that granting the Church infallible in the belief of Fundamentals it doth not follow that we must prove idem per idem as you do For when we ask you Why you believe your Doctrine to be the sole Catholick Faith your final Answer is because your Church is infallible which is answering by the very thing in Question for you have no other way to judge of the Catholick Faith but by the Infallibility of your Church but when you ask us Why we believe such an Article to be Fundamental as for Instance That Christ will give Eternal Life to them that obey him we answer not because the Church which is infallible in Fundamentals delivers it to be so which were answering idem per idem but we appeal to that common reason which is in mankind Whether if the Doctrine of Christ be true this can be other than a Fundamental Article of it it being that without which the whole design of Christian Religion comes to nothing Therefore you much mistake when you think we resolve our Faith of Fundamentals into the Church as the infallible Witness of them for though the Church may be infallible in the belief of all things Fundamental for otherwise it were not a Church if it did not believe them it doth not thence necessarily follow That the Church must infallibly witness what is Fundamental and what not It is sufficient that the Church doth deliver from the consent of universal Tradition that infallible Rule of Faith which to be sure contains all things Fundamental in it though she never meddle with the deciding what Points are Fundamental and what not If you therefore ask me Why I believe any Point supposed Fundamental I answer By all the evidence which assures me that the Doctrine containing that Point is of Divine Revelation If you aske me How I know that this Point is part of that Doctrine I appeal to the common sense and reason of the world as to things plainly Fundamental and therefore by this means your third Question is prevented How I know this to be the meaning of those words for I suppose no one that can tell that two and two make four can question but if the Doctrine of Christ be true the belief of it is necessary to Salvation which is it we mean by Fundamental Either therefore prove it necessary that the Church must infallibly witness what is Fundamental and what not and that we must rely on such a Testimony in the belief of Fundamentals or you prove nothing at all to your purpose no more than your convincing Motives of Credibility which were they made into a grand Sallad would know the way to the Table they are served so often up But I have found them so dry and insipid already I have no encouragement to venture on them any more But still you are deservedly afraid we should not think worthily enough of your Churches Infallibility You therefore tell us very wisely that this Infallibility is not a thing that is not infallible For say you Which Infallibility must come from the Holy Ghost and be more than humane or moral and therefore must be truly supernatural c. It
freely expatiate super hanc â—etram Touching Ruffinus I grant his Lordship is of opinion That he neither did nor could account the Roman Church Infallible for which he gives this reason For if he had so esteemed of it he would not have dissented from it in so main a point as is the Canon of Scripture as he plainly doth For reckoning up the Canonical Books he most manifestly dissents from the Roman Church Therefore either Ruffinus did not think the Church of Rome was Infallible or else the Church of Rome at this day reckons up more Books within the Canon than heretofore she did If she do then she is changed in a main point of Faith the Canon of Scripture and is absolutely convinced not to be Infallible for if she were right in her reckoning then she is wrong now and if she be right now she was wrong then and if she do not reckon now more then she did when Ruffinus lived then he reckons fewer than she and so dissents from her which doubtless he durst not have done had he thought her judgement Infallible Yea and he sets this mark upon his dissent besides that he reckons up the Books of the Canon just so and no otherwise then as he received them out of the Monuments of the fore-Fathers and out of which the assertions of our Faith are to be taken Now what have you to say to this strong and nervous Discourse of his Lordship Why forsooth this argument of the Bishop is far from being convincing And why so For say you though it should be granted that the Catholick Church the Roman you mean at present declares more books to be contained in the Canon than she did in Ruffinus his time yet this could be no errour in her That is strange that the Church should declare the Canon to be compleat then without these books and now not to be and yet neither time be in an errour No say you unless it be shewed which I am sure cannot be that she condemned those books then as not Divine Scripture or not Canonical which now she declares to be Divine or Canonical Excellent good still that which you are sure cannot be shewed is obvious to any one that hath eyes in his head For I only ask you Whether the Church of Rome did declare any Canon or no in that age If not according to your principles those who lived in that age could have no Divine Faith as to the Scripture if she did declare the Canon of Scripture without these Books did she not thereby condemn these Books to be not Canonical For you say that all are bound to take her judgement what is in the Canon and what not if therefore she did not put them into the Canon did she not leave them out of the Canon or Can you find any medium between being put in and being left out Yes say you these Books were left then under dispute with whom were they under dispute with the Church of Rome or not If with her was she not Infallible the mean while when so great a matter as the Canon of Scripture was under dispute with her But this whole business concerning the Canon of Scripture is largely discussed already only here it is sufficient to shew how you are pent in on every side so that there is no possibility of getting out As to the strait his Lordship takes notice of that the Church of Rome is driven to in borrowing a testimony for her Infallibility from one whom she branded with Heresie in that very Book from whence this testimony is taken You answer That it evidently argues the truth and uncorruptedness of that Church which is so clear that even her Adversaries cannot but confess it But if they confess it no better then Ruffinus doth she will have little cause to applaud her self for her Integrity in that respect And although a Testimony may be taken from persons suspected in some things yet it argues those have but very few friends who are fain to make use of their enemies to bear witness for them What follows concerning a particular Church being Infallible because you disown it although not consonantly to the principles of your party as was shewed in the occasion of the Conference I pass by The errours of the Church of Rome which his Lordship mentions but you say proves not you shall find abundantly proved before our task is over Your vindication of Bellarmin from inconsistency in saying A proposition is most true and yet but peradventure as true as another is so fine and subtil that it were an injury to the Reader to deprive him of the pleasure of perusing it And yet when all is done a Proposition very false might be as true as this which Bellarmin speaks of viz. That the Pope when he teacheth the whole Church in matters of Faith cannot erre And thus I have cleared that there can be no ground of an imputation of Schism on our Church from hence that the Roman Church is the Catholick Church which acception of the Catholick Church I have manifested to be as great a stranger to Antiquity as it is an enemy to Reason And that the calling the Roman Church the Catholick Church is as his Lordship truly saith a meer Novelty and perfect Jesuitism CHAP. II. Protestants no Schismaticks Schism a culpable separation therefore the Question of Schism must be determined by enquiring into the causes of it The plea from the Church of Rome's being once a right Church considered No necessity of assigning the punctual time when errours crept into her An account why the originals of errours seem obscure By Stapleton's confession the Roman and Catholick Church were not the same The falsity of that assertion manifested That there could be no pure Church since the Apostles times if the Roman Church were corrupt No one particular Church free from corruptions yet no separation from the Catholick Church How far the Catholick Church may be said to erre Men may have distinct communion from any one particular Church yet not separate from the Catholick Church The Testimony of Petrus de Alliaco vindicated Bellarmin not mis-cited Almain full to his Lordships purpose The Romanists guilty of the present Schism and not Protestants In what sense there can be no just cause of Schism and how far that concerns our case Protestants did not depart from the Church of Rome but were thrust out of it The Vindication of the Church of Rome from Schism at last depends upon the two false Principles Of her Infallibility and being the Catholick Church The Testimonies of S. Bernard and S. Austin not to the purpose The Catalogue of Fundamentals the Churches not erring c. referr'd back to their proper places BEfore I come to examine the particulars of this Chapter it will be necessary to see what the state of the Controversie was concerning Schism between his Lordship and his Adversary His Lordship delivers his sense clearly
formal guilt of Schism it being impossible any person should have just cause to disown the Churches Communion for any thing whose belief is necessary to salvation And whosoever doth so thereby makes himself no member of the Church because the Church subsists on the belief of Fundamental truths But in all such cases wherein a division may be made and yet the several persons divided retain the essentials of a Christian Church the separation which may be among any such must be determined according to the causes of it For it being possible of one side that men may out of capricious humours and fancies renounce the Communion of a Church which requires nothing but what is just and reasonable and it being possible on the other side that a Church calling her self Catholick may so far degenerate in Faith and practise as not only to be guilty of great errours and corruptions but to impose them as conditions of Communion with her it is necessary where there is a manifest separation to enquire into the reasons and grounds of it and to determine the nature of it according to the justice of the cause which is pleaded for it And this I hope may help you a little better to understand what is meant by such who say There can be no just cause of Schism and how little this makes for your purpose But you go on and I must follow And to his calling for truth c. I Answer What Hereticks ever yet forsook the Church of God but pretended truth and complain'd they were thrust out and hardly dealt with meerly because they call'd for truth and redress of abuses And I pray what Church was ever so guilty of errours and corruptions but would call those Hereticks and Schismaticks who found fault with her Doctrine or separated from her Communion It is true Hereticks pretend truth and Schismaticks abuses but is it possible there should be errours and corruptions in a Churches Communion or is it not if not prove but that of your Church and the cause is at an end if it be we are to examine whether the charge be true or no. For although Hereticks may pretend truth and others be deceived in judging of it yet doubtless there is a real difference between truth and errour If you would never have men quarrel with any Doctrine of your Church because Hereticks have pretended truth would not the same reason hold why men should never enquire after Truth Reason or Religion because men have pretended to them all which have not had them It is therefore a most senseless cavil to say we have no reason to call for truth because Hereticks have done so and on the same grounds you must not be call'd Catholicks because Hereticks have been call'd so But those who have been Hereticks were first proved to be so by making it appear that was a certain truth which they denyed do you the same by us prove those which we call errours in your Church to be part of the Catholick and Apostolick Faith prove those we account corruptions to be parts of Divine worship and we will give you leave to call us Hereticks and Schismaticks but not before But say you He should have reflected that the Church of God is stiled a City of Truth by the Prophet and so it may be and yet your Church be a fortress of Errour And a pillar and foundation of Truth by the Apostle but what is this to the Church of Romes being so And by the Fathers a rich depository or Treasury of all Divine and Heavenly Doctrines so it was in the sense the Fathers took the Church in for the truly Catholick Christian Church And we may use the same expressions still of the Church as the Prophets Apostles and Fathers did and nevertheless charge your Church justly with the want of truth and opposition to the preaching of it and on that ground justly forsake her Communion which is so far from being inexcusable impiety and presumption that it was only the performance of a necessary Christian duty And therefore that Woe of scandal his Lordship mentioned still returns upon your party who gave such just cause of offence to the Christian world and making it necessary for all such as aimed at the purity of the Christian Church to leave your Communion when it could not be enjoyed without making shipwrack both of Faith and a good Conscience And this is so clear and undeniable to follow you still in your own language that we dare appeal for a tryal of our cause to any Assembly of learned Divines or what Judge and Jury you please provided they be not some of the parties accused and because you are so willing to have Learned Divines I hope you will believe the last Pope Innocent so far as not to mention the Pope and Cardinals What follows in Vindication of A. C. from enterfeiring and shuffling in his words because timorous and tender consciences think they can never speak with caution enough for fear of telling a lye will have the force of a demonstration being spoken of and by a Jesuite among all those who know what mortal haters they are of any thing that looks like a lye or aequivocation And what reason there is that of all persons in the world they should be judged men of timorous and tender consciences But whatever the words were which passed you justifie A. C. in saying That the Protestants did depart from the Church of Rome and got the Name of Protestants by protesting against her For this say you is so apparent that the whole world acknowledgeth it If you mean that the Communion of Protestants is distinct from yours Whoever made scruple of confessing it But because in those terms of departing leaving forsaking your Communion you would seem to imply that it was a voluntary act and done without any necessary cause enforcing it therefore his Lordship denyes that Protestants did depart for saith he departure is voluntary so was not theirs But because it is so hard a matter to explain the nature of that separation between your Church and Ours especially in the beginning of it without using those terms or some like them as when his Lordship saith that Luther made a breach from it It is sufficient that we declare that by none of these expressions we mean any causeless separation but only such acts as were necessarily consequential to the imposing your errours and corruptions as conditions of Communion with your Church To the latter part his Lordship answers That the Protestants did not get that name by Protesting against the Church of Rome but by Protesting and that when nothing else would serve against her errours and superstitions Do you but remove them from the Church of Rome our Protestation is ended and our Separation too This you think will be answered with our old put off That it is the common pretext of all Hereticks when they sever themselves from the Roman Catholick
the stage in the Questions of the Pope's Authority and Infallibility of General Councils I come to your following Chapter in which you enter upon the Vindication of the Roman Churches Authority 2. That which his Lordship hath long insisted on and evidently proved is The Right which particular Churches have to reform themselves when the General Church cannot for impediments or will not for negligence do it And your Answers to his proofs have had their weakness sufficiently laid open the only thing here objected further is Whether in so doing particular Churches do not condemn others of Errours in Faith To which his Lordship answers That to reform themselves and to condemn others are two different works unless it fall out so that by reforming themselves they do by consequence condemn any other that is guilty in that point in which they reform themselves and so far to judge and condemn others is not only lawful but necessary A man that lives Religiously doth not by and by sit in judgement and condemn with his mouth all prophane livers but yet while he is silent his very life condemns them To what end his Lordship produceth this Instance any one may easily understand but you abuse it as though his Lordship had said That Protestants only by their Religious lives do condemn your Church and upon this run out into a strange declamation about Who the men are that live so Religiously They who to propagate the Gospel the better marry wives contrary to the Canons and bring Scripture for it Yes surely much more then they who to propagate your Church enjoy Concubines for which if they can bring some Canons of your Church I am sure they can bring no Scripture for it They who pull down Monasteries both of Religious men and women I see you are still as loth to part them as they are to be parted themselves but if all their lives be no more Religious then the most of them have been the pulling of them down might be a greater act of Religion then living in them They who cast Altars to the ground More certainly then they who worshipped them They who partly banish Priests and partly put them to death Or they who commit treasons and do things worthy of death But you are doubtless very Religious and tender-hearted men whose consciences would never suffer you to banish or put any to death for the sake of Religion no not in Queen Maries time here in England They who deface the very Tombs of Saints and will not permit them to rest even when they are dead Or they who profess to worship dead Saints and martyr living ones with Fire and Faggot If this be your religious living none who know what Religion means will be much taken with it I shall easily grant that you stick close to the Pope but are therein far enough from the Doctrine or life of St. Peter If any of you have endured Sequestrations Imprisonments Death it self I am sure it was not for any good you did not for the Catholick Faith but if you will for some Catholick Treasons such as would have enwrapt a whole Nation in misery If this be your suffering persecution for righteousness sake you will have little cause to rejoyce in your Fellow-sufferers But if you had not a mind to calumniate us and provoke us to speak sad truths of you all this might have been spared for his Lordship only chose this Instance to shew that a Church or person may be condemned consequentially which was not intentionally But you say Our Church hath formally condemned yours by publick and solemn censures in the 39. Articles Doth his Lordship deny that our Church in order to our own reformation hath condemned many things which your Church holds No but that our Churches main intention was to reform it self but considering the corruption and degeneracy of your Church she could not do it without consequentially condemning yours and that she did justly in so doing we are ready on all occasions to justifie But his Lordship asks If one particular Church may not judge or condemn another What must then be done where particulars need reformation To which his Adversary gives a plain Answer That particular Churches must in that case as Irenaeus intimateth have recourse to the Church of Rome which hath more powerful principality and to her Bishop who is the chief Pastour of the whole Church as being St. Peters Successour c. This is the rise and occasion of the present Controversie To this his Lordship Answers That it is most true indeed the Church of Rome hath had and hath yet more powerful Principality then any other particular Church But she hath not this power from Christ. The Roman Patriarch by Ecclesiastical constitutions might perhaps have a Primacy of order but for principality of power the Patriarchs were as even as equal as the Apostles were before them The truth is this more powerful Principality the Roman Bishops got under the Emperours after they became Christian and they used the matter so that they grew big enough to oppose nay to depose the Emperours by the same power which they had given them And after this other particular Churches especially here in the West submitted themselves to them for Succour and Protections sake And this was one main cause that swel'd Rome into this more powerful Principality and not any right given by Christ to make that Prelate Pastour of the whole Church To this you Answer That to say that the Roman Churches Principality is not from Christ is contrary to St. Austin and the whole Milevitan Council who in their Epistle to Innocent the first profess that the Popes Authority is grounded upon Scripture and consequently proceeds from Christ. But whoever seriously reads and throughly considers that Epistle will find no such thing as that you aim at there For the scope of the Epistle is to perswade Pope Innocent to appear against Coelestius and Pelagius to that end they give first an account of their Doctrine shewing how pernicious and contrary to Scripture it was after which they tell him that Pelagius being at Jerusalem was like to do a great deal of mischief there but that many of the Brethren opposed him and especially St. Hierom. But we say they do suppose that through the mercy of our Lord Christ assisting you those which hold such perverse and pernicious principles may more easily yield by your Authority drawn out of Scripture Where they do not in the least dream of his Authority as Vniversal Pastor being grounded on Scripture but of his appearing against the Pelagians with his Authority drawn out of Scripture that is to that Authority which he had in the Church by the reputation of the Roman See the Authority of the Scripture being added which was so clear against the Pelagians or both these going together were the most probable way to suppress their Doctrine And it hath been sufficiently proved
the lawfulness of his doing it because he was thereto appointed by the Emperour But when you say St. Austin gives this answer only per 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by way of condescension to his adversaries way of speaking you would do well to prove elsewhere from St. Austin that when he lay's aside his Rhetorick he ever speaks otherwise but that it would have been an Vsurpation in the Pope to challenge to himself the hearing of those causes which had been determined by African Bishops But what St. Augustines judgement as well as the other African Fathers was in this point abundantly appears from the Controversies between them and the Bishop of Rome in the case of Appeals It sufficiently appears already That neither our Saviour nor the Canons of the Vniversal Church gave the Pope leave to hear and judge the causes of St. Athanasius and other Patriarchs and Bishops of the Church and therefore you were put to your shifts when you run thither for security But that which follows is notoriously false That when he did so interpose no man no not the persons themselves who were interessed and suffered by his judgement complained or accused him of usurpation when in the case of Athanasius it is so vehemently pleaded by the Eastern Bishops that the Pope had nothing at all to do in it but they might as well call in Question what was done at Rome as he what was done at Antioch Nay name us any one cause in that age of the Church where the Pope did offer to meddle in matters determined by other Bishops which he was not opposed in and the persons concern'd did not complain and accuse him of meddling with what he had no right to which are but other words for Vsurpation You say The Bishops whom the Emperour sent as Judges with the Pope were an inconsiderable number to sway the sentence It seems three to one are with you an inconsiderable number But say you The Pope to shew his authority added fifteen other Bishops of Italy to be his Colleagues and Assistants in the business Either these fifteen Bishops were properly Judges in the cause or only assistants for better management and speedier dispatch if they were Judges how prove you that Constantine did not appoint them if they were only assistants and suffragans to the Bishop of Rome as is most probable except Merocles Bishop of Milan what authority did the Pope shew in calling his Suffragans to his assistance in a matter of that nature which required so much examination of Witnesses But the Pope had more effectually shewn his authority if he had refused the Bishops whom Constantine sent and told him he medled with that which did not concern him to appoint any Judges at all in a matter of Ecclesiastical Cognisance and that it was an unsufferable presumption in him to offer to send three underling Bishops to sit with him in deciding Controversies as though he were not the Vniversal Pastour of the Church himself to whom alone by Divine right all such things did belong Such language as this would have become the Head of the Church and in that indeed he had shewn his authority But for him sneakingly to admit other Bishops as joynt-commissioners forsooth with him and that by the Emperours appointment too What did he else but betray the rights of his See and expose his Infallible Headship to great contempt Do you think that Pope Hildebrand or any of his Successours would have done this No they understood their power far better then so and the Emperour should have known his own for offering such an Affront to his Holiness And if his Bay-leaves did not secure him the Thunder-bolts of Excommunication might have lighted on him to his prejudice For shame then never say That Pope Miltiades shewed his authority but rather give him over among those good Bishops of Rome but bad Popes who knew better how to suffer Martyrdom then assert the Authority of the Roman See I pray imagine but Paul 5. or any other of our stout-spirited Popes in Miltiades his place Would they have taken such things at Constantines hands as poor Miltiades did and for all that we see was very well contented too and thought he did but his duty in doing what the Emperour bid him Would they have been contented to have had a cause once passed the Infallible judgement of the Roman See to be resumed again and handled in another Council as though there could be any suspicion that all things were not rightly carried there and that after all this too the Emperour should undertake to give the final decision to it would these things have been born with by any of our Infallible Heads of the Church But good Miltiades must be excused he went as far as his knowledge carried him and thought he might do good service to the Church in what he did and that was it he looked at more then the grandeur of his See The good Bishops then were just crept out of the Flames of persecution and they thought it a great matter that they had liberty themselves and did not much concern themselves about those Vsurpations which the Pride and Ease of the following ages gave occasion for They were sorry to see a Church that had survived the cruel Flames of Dioclesians persecution so suddenly to feel new ones in her own bowels that a Church whose constitution was so strong as to endure Martyrdomes should no sooner be at ease but she begins to putrifie and to be fly-blown with heats and divisions among her members and that her own Children should rake in those wounds which the violence of her professed enemies had caused in her and therefore these good Bishops used their care and industry to close them up and rather rejoyced they had so good an Emperour who would concern himself so much in healing the Churches breaches then dispute his Authority or disobey his Commands And if Constantine doth express himself unwilling to engage himself to meddle in a business concerning the Bishops of the Church it was out of his tender respect to those Bishops who had manifested their piety and sincerity so much in their late persecutions and not from any Question of his own Authority in it For that he after sufficiently asserted not only in his own actions but when the case of Felix of Aptung was thought not sufficiently scanned at Rome in appointing about four months after the judgement at Rome Aelianus the Proconsul of Africa to examine the case of Felix the Bishop of Aptung who had ordained Caecilian To this the Donatists pleaded That a Bishop ought not to be tryed by Proconsular judgement to which St. Austin Answers That it was not his own seeking but the Emperours appointing to whose care and charge that business did chiefly belong of which he must give an account to God And can it now enter into any head but yours that for all this the Emperour looked on the judgement
Nice For if this be taken care for as to the Inferiour Clergy and Laity How much more would it have it to be observed in Bishops that so they who are in their own Province suspended from communion be not hastily or unduly admitted by your Holiness Let your Holiness also reject the wicked refuges of Priests and Inferiour Clerks for no Canon of the Fathers hath taken that from the Church of Africk and the decrees of Nice hath subjected both the Inferiour Clergy and Bishops io their Metropolitans For they have most wisely and justly provided that every business be determined in the place where it begun and that the Grace of the Holy Spirit will not be wanting to every Province that so equity may be prudently discovered and constantly held by Christ's Priests Especially seeing that it is lawful to every one if he be offended to appeal to the Council of the Province or even to an Vniversal Council Vnless perhaps some body believe that God can inspire to every one of us the justice of examination of a cause and refuse it to a multitude of Bishops assembled in Council Or How can a judgement made beyond the Sea be valid to which the persons of necessary witnesses cannot be brought by reason of the infirmity of their sex and age or of many other intervening impediments For this sending of men to us from your Holiness we do not find commanded by any Synod of the Fathers And as for that which you did long since send to us by Faustinus our Fellow-Bishop as belonging to the Council of Nice we could not find it in the truest Copies of the Council sent by holy Cyril our Colleague Bishop of Alexandria and by the venerable Atticus Bishop of Constantinople which also we sent to your predecessor Boniface of happy memory by Innocent a Presbyter and Marcellus a Deacon Take heed also of sending to us any of your Clerks for executors to those who desire it lest we seem to bring the swelling pride of the world into the Church of Christ which beareth the light of simplicity and the brightness of humility before them that desire to see God And concerning our Brother Faustinus Apiarius being now for his wickedness cast out of the Church of Christ we are confident that our brotherly love continuing through the goodness and moderation of your Holiness Africa shall no more be troubled with him Thus I have at large produced this noble Monument of the prudence courage and simplicity of the African Fathers enough to put any reasonable man out of the fond conceit of an Vniversal Pastorship of the Bishop of Rome I wonder not that Baronius saith There are some hard things in this Epistle that Perron sweats and toils so much to so little purpose to enervate the force of it for as long as the records of it last we have an impregnable Bulwark against the Vsurpations of the Church of Rome And methinks you might blush for shame to produce those African Fathers as determining the Appeals of Bishops to Rome who with as much evidence and reason as courage and resolution did finally oppose it What can be said more convincingly against these Appeals than is here urged by them That they have neither authority from Councils nor any Foundation in Justice and Equity that God's presence was as well in Africk as Rome no doubt then they never imagined any Infallibility there that the proceedings of the Roman Bishop were so far from the simplicity and humility of the Gospel that they tended only to nourish swelling pride and secular ambition in the Church That the Pope had no authority to send Legats to hear causes and they hoped they should be no more troubled with such as Faustinus was All these things are so evident in this testimony that it were a disparagement to it to offer more at large to explain them I hope then this will make you sensible of the injury you have done the African Fathers by saying that they determined the causes of Bishops might be heard at Rome Your Answer to the place of S. Gregory which his Lordship produceth concerning Appeals viz. that the Patriarch is to put a final end to those causes which come before him by Appeal from Bishops and Arch-Bishops is the very same that it speaks only of the Inferiour Clergy and therefore is taken off already But you wonder his Lordship should expose to view the following words of S. Gregory where there is neither Metropolitan nor Patriarch of that Diocese there they are to have recourse to the See Apostolick as being the Head of all Churches Then surely it follows say you the Bishop of Rome 's Jurisdiction is not only over the Western and Southern Provinces but over the whole Church whither the Jurisdiction of Patriarchs and Metropolitans never extended See how well you make good the common saying That Ignorance is the cause of Admiration for Wherefore should you wonder at his Lordships producing these words if you had either understood or considered the abundant Answers which he gives to them 1. That if there be a Metropolitan or a Patriarch in those Churches his judgement is final and there ought to be no Appeal to Rome 2. It is as plain that in those ancient times of Church-Government Britain was never subject to the See of Rome of which afterwards 3. It will be hard for any man to prove that there were any Churches then in the world which were not under some either Patriarch or Metropolitan 4. If any such were 't is gratis dictum and impossible to be proved that all such Churches where-ever seated in the world were obliged to depend on Rome And Do you still wonder why his Lordship produces these words I may more justly wonder why you return no Answer to what his Lordship here sayes But still the Caput omnium Ecclesiarum sticks with you if his Lordship hath not particularly spoken to that it was because his whole discourse was sufficient to a man of ordinary capacity to let him see that no more could be meant by it but some preheminence of that Church above others in regard of order and dignity but no such thing as Vniversal Power and Jurisdiction was to be deduced from it And if Gregory understood more by it as his Lordship saith 'T is gratis dictum and Gregory himself was not a person to be believed in his own cause But now as you express it his Lordship takes a leap from the Church of Rome to the Church of England No neither his Lordship nor we take a leap from thence hither but you are the men who leap over the Alps from the Church of England to that of Rome We plead as his Lordship doth truly That in the ancient times of the Church Britain was never subject to the See of Rome but being one of the Western Dioceses of the Empire it had a Primate of its own This you say his Lordship should
Christ intended to institute such Government in his Church but much against it The Communicatory letters in the primitive Church argued an Aristocracy Gersons Testimony from his Book de Auferibilitate Papae explained and vindicated St. Hieromes Testimony full against a Monarchy in the Church The inconsistency of the Popes Monarchy with that of Temporal Princes The Supremacy of Princes in Ecclesiastical matters asserted by the Scripture and Antiquity as well as the Church of England WE are now come to the places of Scripture insisted on for the proof of the Popes Authority which you have been so often and successfully beaten out of by so many powerful assaults of our Writers that it is matter of admiration that you should yet think to find any shelter there For those which you yet account Fortresses and Bulwarks for your cause have not only been triumphed over by your Adversaries but have been slighted by the wisest of your party and deserted as most untenable places As I shall make it appear to you in the progress of this dispute In which I shall not barely shew the palpable weakness of your pretended proofs but bring unanswerable arguments against them from persons of your own Communion For the force of that reason by which the Protestants have prevailed over you in this dispute hath been so great that it hath brought over some of the learnedst of your party not only to an acknowledgement of the insufficiency of these proofs but to a zealous opposition against that very Doctrine which you attempt to prove by them But such is the fate of a sinking cause that it catcheth hold of any thing to save it self though it be the Anchor of the ship which makes it sink the sooner Thus it will appear to be in these baffled Proofs which you only bring into the Field to shew what streights you are in for help and no sooner appear there but they fall off to the conquering side and help only to promote your ruine But since they are in the place where Arguments should be we must in civility consider them as if they were so The first place then is Luke 22.32 I have pray'd for thee that thy faith fail not What would a Philosopher think were he chosen as Vmpire between us as once one was between Origen and his Adversaries to hear this place produced to prove the Popes Authority and Infallibility And when a reason is demanded of so strange an Inference from a promise of recovery to St. Peter to an impossibility of falling in the Pope nothing else produced but the forged Epistles of some Popes and the partial Testimonies of others in their own cause Could he think otherwise but that these men loved their cause dearly and would fain prove it if they could tell how but since there was neither evidence in reason or more indifferent writers in it yet to let them see how confident they were of the Popes Infallibility they would produce their Infallible Testimonies to prove they were Infallible For we ask What evidence is there that the priviledge obtained for St. Peter whatever it is must descend to his Successours if to his Successours whether to all his Successours or only to some if only to some why to those at Rome more then at Antioch or any other place if to them at Rome why it must be understood of a Doctrinal and not a saving Faith as it was in St. Peter if of Doctrinal why not absolutely but only conditionally if they teach the Church For all these and several other enquiries of this nature we are told It must be so understood but if you ask Why all the Answer we can get is Because seven Popes at one time or other said so But at this you grow very angry and tell us 1. That Bellarmine besides these gives several pregnant reasons from the Text it self What were it worth to have a sight of them If you had thought them so pregnant you are not so sparing of taking out of Bellarmine but you would have given them us over again Bellarmins excellent proofs are two or three sine Dubio's Sine dubio saith he hic Dominus speciale aliquid Petro impetravit And who denies it but we grant it was so special to him that it never came to his Successours and again Sine dubio ipsis praecipuè debeat esse nota suae sedis auctoritas speaking of the Popes Testimonies for themselves Without all doubt they knew best their own Authority They were wonderfully to blame else but all the difficulty is to perswade others to believe them sine dubio when they speak in their own Cause And for that I can find no pregnant reason in him at all Well but we have a third sine dubio yet which may be more to the purpose than either of the other two For Bellarmin distinguishes of two priviledges which Christ obtained for St. Peter the first is That himself should never lose the true Faith though he were tempted of the Devil and this his Lordship grants that it was the special grace which Christs prayer obtained that notwithstanding Satans sifting him and his threefold denyal of his Master he should not fall into a final Apostacy The second priviledge is That he as Bishop should not be able to teach any thing against the Faith sive ut in sede ejus nunquam inveniretur qui doceret contra veram fidem or that there should be none found in his See who should do it Is not here an excellent conjunction disjunctive in this Sive Or that he should not do it himself or that his Successours should not do it Doth not this want pregnant proofs and we have them in the next words The first of these it may be very modestly did not descend to his Successours but secundum sine Dubio manavit ad posteros sive successores the second without all doubt did descend to his Successours Are not these pregnant reasons three sine dubio's given us by Cardinal Bellarmin For when he comes to confirm this last sine dubio he produces nothing but those Testimonies which his Lordship excepts against as not fit to be Judges in their own Cause If these then be Bellarmins pregnant reasons out of the Text no wonder that his Lordship was not pleased to Answer them But yet you are displeased that his Lordship should think that Popes were interessed persons in their own Cause No no all that ever sat in that See were such holy meek humble self-denying men that they would not for a world let a word fall to exalt their own Authority in the Church And we are mightily to blame to think otherwise of them Is it possible to think that Felix 1 and Lucius 1 should speak for their own interest though the Epistles under their names be such notorious counterfeits that all sober men among you are ashamed of them Is it possible that Leo 1. should do it who was so humble a
would not do How they bait them in Council by the flouting Italians what private Cabals were kept by the Legats what dispatching and posting to Rome what numbers of jolly Italians are made Bishops and sent away to over-vote them And when the French-Bishops were come what Spies did they keep upon them what bones were thrown to divide the French and Spanish Bishops what caressing the Cardinal of Lorrain to bring him off by the Court of Rome And when any others durst speak freely what checks and frowns and disgraces did they meet with And all this to keep the Pope safe who was still in bodily fear till the Council was ended to his mind and then what rejoycing that they had cheated the world so that that which was intended to clip the wings of the Court of Rome had confirmed and advanced the Interest of it This was truly the Head 's presiding over the members for all the life and motion they had proceeded from the Influence of their Head the Pope Call you this Presiding in a Council It is rather riding of it that by the spurring some and bridling others they may go just as the Pope would have them And that this is a true account of it appears notwithstanding whatever your Cardinal Palavicino hath been able to object against the impartial history of it whose two volumes pretended in Answer to it consist of so many impertinencies and hath so very little material in it that a Roman Catholick himself hath declared to the world that he hath done more disservice to the Church of Rome by his Answer then ever Father Paul did by his History By whom his two great Books are compared to those Night-birds that make a great shew but are all Feathers and very little Flesh. This then being the way of management of things at Trent judge you or any reasonable man Whether the Protestants have not just cause to except against the Presidentship which the Pope had in that Council and name you any General Council that was truly accounted so where ever he had any thing like it The particulars you mention will be considered afterwards But you say All this was because the Pope was not justly accusable of any crime but what must involve not only the Council but the whole Church as much as himself If so there was the greater reason that he should leave it to the Church in a Free Council to have impartially debated things without his acting and interposing so much as he did But the Pope was wiser then to think so he knew there were many things in the Court of Rome which many other Bishops struck at as well as the Protestants and that they desired a Reformation of Abuses as well as the other especially the German French and Spanish Bishops Nay it is strange to see how much interest or prejudice blinds men that they will not acknowledge now that there was any such need of Reformation when Pope Adrian 6 confessed at the Dyet at Norimberg A.D. 1522. by Cheregatus his Legat that the Popes themselves had been the fountain and cause of all those evils in the Church In these remarkable words part of which have been cited already on another occasion Scimus in hâc sancta Sede aliquot jam annis multa abominanda fuisse abusus in Spiritualibus excessus in mandatis omnia denique in perversum mutata Nec mirum si aegritudo à capite in membra à summis Pontificibus in alios praelatos descenderit Omnes nos sc. praelati Ecclesiastici declinavimus unusquisque in viâ—s suas nec fuit jamdiu qui faceret bonum non fuit usque ad unum Quamobrem necesse est ut omnes demus gloriam Deo humiliemus animas nostras ei videat unusquisque nostrûm unde exciderit se potius quilibet judicet quà m à Deo in virga furoris sui judicari velit Qua in re quod ad nos pertinet polliceberis Nos omnem operam adhibituros ut primum Curia haec unde forte omne hoc malum processit reformetur ut sicut inde corruptio in omnes inferiores emanavit ita ab eadem sanitas reformatio omnium emanet Ad quod procurandum nos tanto arctius obligatos reputamus quando universum mundum hujusmodi reformationem avidiùs desiderare videmus Can you now for shame say There was no need of Reformation at that time and that the Popes were no more concerned then the whole Church The whole Church was indeed concerned to see the Court of Rome reformed and we see the Pope confesseth that all the world desired a Reformation Doth not he ingenuously acknowledge That many abominable things had been for many years in the Holy See and very holy it was the mean time that all things were out of order That the distemper had fallen from the Head to the members from the Popes to other Prelates that they had all gone out of the way that for a long time there had been none that did good no not one That therefore it was necessary that all should give glory to God and humble their souls and every one see whence he was fallen and judge himself rather then be judged by God in the rod of his fury Wherefore saith he to his Legat thou shalt promise for us that we will use our utmost endeavour that this Court from whence all the mischief hath proceeded may be reformed that as the corruption hath flowed from thence unto inferiours so the health and reformation of all may come from thence too And we look on our selves as the more obliged to procure this because we see the whole world doth earnestly desire such a Reformation Whom must we now believe the Pope or you the Pope ingenuously and Christianly bemoaning the corruptions that had been in Popes themselves and from them had spread to others or you who basely and untruly flatter the Popes as though they needed no Reformation but what concerned the Council and Church as well as them And the Pope gives you the true reason of it Because the corruptions had been so great at Rome that from thence they had spread over all others And can you think now that the Pope was not justly accused of any crime but that he might sit as President and manage the affairs of the Council as though there had been no need at all of any Reformation But I remember an observation of Baronius that the providence of God was so great in watching over the Roman Seâ— that the Popes who were unfit to Govern it seldom continued long in it which he makes upon Siricius his favour to Ruffinus and such a Pope was this Adrian accounted this confession of his being very distastful at Rome he continued not long after it But yet I know you have another Answer ready at hand That all this concerned only some abuses in manners and management of affairs but nothing confessed to
ground than not being able to distinguish between the submission of Obedience and Faith For his Lordship saith It may be our duty not to oppose General Councils in case they erre and yet it may be no pride not to believe known and gross errours of General Councils and I pray What shadow of a contradiction is here And if it be pride in us not to believe gross errours imposed on us Is it not much more intolerable in them who offer to impose them What Authority the Pope hath either to order or confirm Councils it is not here a place to enter upon again since it hath been so largely discoursed of in so many places But you force me though not to the repetition of matter yet to the repeating my saying that I will not oftener than I should but only to shew how little you deserve any further answer There is nothing now remaining to the end of your Book which hath not been over and over even in these last Chapters but only a long discourse touching Succession which you shew your self of how little importance it is when after you have endeavoured at large to prove the necessity of personal Succession you grant That it is not sufficient without succession of Doctrine too And on that account you deny the Greek Church to have a true Succession And in vindication of Stapleton you say All the Succession which he and you contend for is a Succession of Pastors which hold entire both the Vnity and the Faith of the Church So that it comes to this at last that you are bound to prove a continual Succession of all that which you call the Faith of your Church in every age from the Apostles times if you would have us believe that Doctrine or own your Church for the true Church of Christ. And therefore I conclude these general Answers with his Lordships words If A. C. T. C. or any Jesuit can prove that by a visible continued Succession from Christ or his Apostles to this day either Transubstantiation in the Eucharist or the Eucharist in one kind or Purgatory or Worship of Images or the Intention of the Priest of necessity in Baptism or the Power of the Pope over a General Council or his Infallibility with or without it or his Power to depose Princes or the publick Prayers of the Church in an unknown tongue with divers other points have been so taught I for my part will give the Cause CHAP. VI. The Sense of the Fathers concerning Purgatory The Advantage which comes to the Church of Rome by the Doctrine of Purgatory thence the boldness of our Adversaries in contending for it The Sense of the Roman Church concerning Purgatory explained The Controversie between the Greek and Latin Church concerning it The Difference in the Church of Rome about Purgatory Some general Considerations about the Sense of the Fathers as to its being an Article of Faith The Doubtfulness and Vncertainty of the Fathers Judgments in this particular manifested by S. Austin the first who seemed to assert a Purgation before the day of Judgement Prayer for the Dead used in the Ancient Church doth not inferr Purgatory The Primate of Armagh vindicated from our Adversaries Calumnies The general Intention of the Church distinguished from the private Opinions of particular persons The Prayers of the Church respected the day of Judgement The Testimonies of the Fathers in behalf of Purgatory examined particularly of the pretended Dionysius Tertullian S. Cyprian Origen S. Ambrose S. Hierom S. Basil Nazianzen Lactantius Hilary Gregory Nyssen c. And not one of them asserts the Purgatory of the Church of Rome S. Austin doth not contradict himself about it The Doctrine of Purgatory no elder than Gregory 1. and built on Credâ—lity and Superstition The Churches Infallibility made at last the Foundation of the belief of Purgatory The Falsity of that Principle and the whole concluded THese general Answers being dispatched there remains only now this Question concerning Purgatory to be discussed Which being the great Diana of your Church no wonder you are so much displeased at his Lordship for speaking against it for by that means your craft is in danger to be set at nought There being no Opinion in your Church which brings in a more constant revenue by Masses for the dead and Indulgencies besides Casualties and Deodands by dying persons or their friends in hopes of a speedier release out of the pains of Purgatory So that if this Opinion were once out of Countenance in the world you would lose one of the best Arts you have of upholding the Grandeur of your Church For then farewel Indulgences and years of Jubilee farewel all those rich Donations which are given by those at their death who hope by that means to get the sooner out of the Suburbs of Hell to a place of rest and happiness For What Engine could possibly be better contrived to extort the largest gifts from those whose riches were as great as their sins than to perswade them that by that means they would be sooner delivered out of the Flames of Purgatory and need not doubt but they should come to Heaven at last And Would not they be accounted great Fools that would not live as they pleased in this world as long as they could buy themselves out of the pains of another And by this means your Church hath not only eaten but grown fat by the sins of the people it being truly observed by Spalatensis That the Doctrine of Purgatory hath been that which hath most inriched the Church of Rome which he gives as the reason of the most zealous contending for that Doctrine among those of your party who find so much advantage by it And we might easily believe there was something extraordinary in it when you tell us It is therefore firmly to be believed by all Catholicks that there is a Purgatory yea we are as much bound to believe it as we are bound to believe for Instance the Trinity or Incarnation it self because since it is defined by the Church we cannot lawfully or without sin and peril of damnation deny or question this doctrine We had need then look to our selves who look on this Doctrine as a meer figment that hath no foundation at all either in Scripture Reason or Tradition of the Primitive Church but much more had you need to look to your selves who dare with so much confidence obtrude so destructive a Doctine to a Christian life without any evidence of the truth of it to be believed as much as the Trinity or Incarnation it self which expressions take them in the mildest sense you can give them carry a most insufferable boldness with them But these are not all the bold words which you utter on this Subject for you say elsewhere That Bellarmin doth not more boldly than truly affirm yea evidently prove that all the Fathers both Greek and Latin did constantly teach Purgatory
in Antiquity to the Bishop of Rome The ground of the Contest about this Title between the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople Of the proceedings of the Council of Chalcedon about the Popes Supremacy Of the Grammatical and Metaphorical sense of this Title Many arguments to prove it impossible that S. Gregory should understand it in the Grammatical sense The great absurdities consequent upon it S. Gregory's Reasons proved to hold against that sense of it which is admitted in the Church of Rome Of Irenaeus his opposition to Victor Victor's excommunicating the Asian Bishops argues no authority he had over them What the more powerful principality in Irenaeus is Ruffinus his Interpretation of the 6. Nicene Canon vindicated The Suburbicary Churches cannot be understood of all the Churches in the Roman Empire The Pope no Infallible Successour of S. Peter nor so acknowledged to be by Epiphanius S. Peter had no Supremacy of Power over the Apostles p. 422. CHAP. VII The Popes Authority not proved from Scripture or Reason The insufficiency of the proofs from Scripture acknowledged by Romanists themselves The impertinency of Luke 22.32 to that purpose No proofs offered for it but the suspected testimonies of Popes in their own cause That no Infallibility can thence come to the Pope as S. Peters Successour confessed and proved by Vigorius and Mr. White The weakness of the evasion of the Popes erring as a private Doctor but not as Pope acknowledged by them Joh. 21.15 proves nothing towards the Popes Supremacy How far the Popes Authority is owned by the Romanists over Kings C's beggings of the Question and tedious repetitions past over The Argument from the necessity of a living Judge considered The Government of the Church not Monarchical but Aristocratical The inconveniencies of Monarchical Government in the Church manifested from reason No evidence that Christ intended to institute such Government in his Church but much against it The Communicatory letters in the primitive Church argued an Aristocracy Gersons testimony from his Book de Auferibilitate Papae explained and vindicated S. Hieroms testimony full against a Monarchy in the Church The inconsistency of the Popes Monarchy with that of temporal Princes The Supremacy of Princes in Ecclesiastical matters asserted by the Scripture and Antiquity as well as the Church of England p. 451. CHAP. VIII Of the Council of Trent The Illegality of it manifested first from the insufficiency of the Rule it proceeded by different from that of the first General Councils and from the Popes Presidency in it The matter of Right concerning it discussed In what cases Superiours may be excepted against as Barties The Pope justly excepted against as a Party and therefore ought not to be Judge The Necessity of a Reformation in the Court of Rome acknowledged by Roman Catholicks The matter of fact enquired into as to the Popes Presidency in General Councils Hosius did not preside in the Nicene Council as the Popes Legat. The Pope had nothing to do in the second General Council Two Councils held at Constantinople within two years these strangely confounded The mistake made evident S. Cyril not President in the third General Council as the Popes Legat. No sufficient evidence of the Popes Presidency in following Councils The justness of the Exception against the place manifested and against the freedom of the Council from the Oath taken by the Bishops to the Pope The form of that Oath in the time of the Council of Trent Protestants not condemned by General Councils The Greeks and others unjustly excluded as Schismaticks The Exception from the small number of Bishops cleared and vindicated A General Council in Antiquiâ—y not so called from the Popes General Summons In what sense a General Council represents the whole Church The vast difference between the proceedings in the Council of Nice and that at Trent The Exception from the number of Italian Bishops justified How far the Greek Church and the Patriarch Hieremias may be said to condemn Protestants with an account of the proceedings between them p. 475. PART III. Of Particular Controversies CHAP. I. Of the Infallibility of General Councils HOw far this tends to the ending Controversies Two distinct Questions concerning the Infallibility and Authority of General Councils The first entred upon with the state of the Question That there can be no certainty of faith that General Councils are Infallible nor that the particular decrees of any of them are so which are largely proved Pighius his Arguments against the Divine Institution of General Councils The places of Scripture considered which are brought for the Churches Infallibility and that these cannot prove that General Councils are so Matth. 18.20 Act. 15.28 particularly answered The sense of the Fathers in their high expressions of the Decrees of Councils No consent of the Church as to their Infallibility The place of St. Austin about the amendment of former General Councils by latter at large vindicated No other place in St. Austin prove them Infallible but many to the contrary General Councils cannot be Infallible in the conclusion if not in the use of the means No such Infallibility without as immediate a Revelation as the Prophets and Apostles had taking Infallibility not for an absolute unerring Power but such as comes by a promise of Divine Assistance preserving from errour No obligation to internal assent but from immediate Divine Authority Of the consistency of Faith and Reason in things propounded to be believed The suitableness of the contrary Doctrine to the Romanists principles p. 505. CHAP. II. Of the Use and Authority of General Councils The denying the Infallibility of General Councils takes not away their Vse and Authority Of the submission due to them by all particular persons How far external obedience is required in case they erre No violent opposition to he made against them Rare Inconveniencies hinder not the effect of a just power It cannot rationally be supposed that such General Councils as are here meant should often or dangerously erre The true notion of a General Council explained The Freedom requisite in the proceedings of it The Rule it must judge by Great Difference between external obedience and internal assent to the Decrees of Councils This latter unites men in errour not the former As great uncertainties supposing General Councils Infallible as not Not so great certainty requisite for submission as Faith Whether the Romanists Doctrine of the Infallibility of Councils or ours tend more to the Churches peace St. Austin explained The Keyes according to him given to the Church No unremediable inconvenience supposing a General Council erre But errours in Faith are so supposing them Infallible when they are not The Church hath power to reverse the Decrees of General Councils The power of Councils not by Divine Institution The unreasonableness of making the Infallibility of Councils depend on the Popes Confirmation No consent among the Romanists about the subject of Infallibility whether in Pope or Councils No evidence from
things before mentioned concerning the Father and the Son where he useth dicimus non dicimus as well as here And therefore Aquinas was much wiser who plainly condemns Damascen for a Nestorian in this licet à quibusdam dicatur c. Although it be said by some that in these words he neither affirms or denys it wherein I am much mistaken if he reflects not on Bonaventure Vasquez Petavius and several others think to bring Damascen off by the distinctions of à filio and per filium much to your purpose but in the great dispute at the Council at Florence between Bessarion and Marcus Ephesius about the importance of the Articles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Marcus Ephesius produceth the words of Damascen expresly that the Spirit doth not proceed from the Son but by the Son whereby it is plain that he understood per filium in opposition to à filio And Bessarion had nothing else to return in answer to it but that he could produce but one out of Antiquity who said so Thus we see if Theophylact and Damascen as well as Theodoret and Photius be Ancient Greeks your distinction comes to nothing But besides this it appears by the disputations of Hugo Etherianus against the Greeks who lived saith Bellarmin A. D. 1160. still extant in the Bibliotheca Patrum that the Greeks held the very same then that they do now And so in the Synod of Bar in Apulia when Anselm disputed so stoutly against the Greeks that Pope Vrban said he was alterius orbis Papa as the story is related by Eadmerus and Wilhelmus Malmesburiensis it appears they denyed the Procession of the Spirit absolutely from the Son and this was A. D. 1096. as is evident from the Letter of Hildebertus to him about the publishing his Disputation and from the Book of Anselm still extant on that subject We find not therefore any ground for this distinction of yours concerning the Ancient and Modern Greeks and therefore they who said that there was no real difference in any matter of Faith between the Ancient Greeks and Latins must be understood as well of the Modern Greeks as them Their words being no more capable of such a tolerable interpretation as you speak of than the words of any of the Modern Greeks are His Lordship was proving that the point was not fundamental that the Greeks and Latins differed in from that acknowledgement of Peter Lombard and the Schoolmen that is to say The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of the Father and the Son and that he is or proceeds from the Father and the Son is not to speak different things but the same sense in different words Now in this cause saith he where the words differ but the sentence of Faith is the same penitùs eadem even altogether the same can the point be fundamental But say you he was to prove that such as were in grievous errour in Divinity erred not fundamentally and for proof of this he alledges such as have no real errour at all in Divinity But do you not herein wilfully mistake his Lordships meaning For in the Paragraph foregoing his Lordship first declares his own judgement concerning the denying the Procession of the Holy Ghost viz. That he did acknowledge it to be a grievous errour in Divinity but yet he could not judge the Greeks guilty of a fundamental errour which he proves by a double medium 1. Because they did not thereby deny the Equality and Consubstantiality of the persons 2. Because divers learned men were of opinion that à filio per filium in the sense of the Greek Church was but a question in modo loquendi and therefore not fundamental now for this he produceth those testimonies Now I pray do you put no difference between the making the denyal of a Proposition to be an errour and the saying that such persons are guilty of the denyal of that Proposition His Lordship grants the denyal of the Procession to be a grievous errour in Divinity but he questioned as the Greeks expressed themselves for those very words he inserts whether they were guilty of denying that Proposition as appears by the authorities of the Schoolmen and therefore certainly much less guilty of a fundamental errour Thus you see his Lordship fully proves what he intends for if they agreed in sense they were much less guilty of a fundamental errour than if they had plainly denyed the Procession which he supposeth from those Authorities that they did not And therefore when you Sarcastically ask Is not this strong Logick The only answer I shall give you is That if you apprehend it not to be so it is because of the weakness of your Theological Reason And therefore you put his Lordships Defender on a strange task to prove from those Authorities that those Greeks who erre grievously in Divinity erre not fundamentally When the only design of his Lordship in producing those Authorities was to shew that according to their opinion the Greeks were so far from erring fundamentally that they did not erre grievously in Divinity And to this purpose the citation of Peter Lombard was pertinent who saith That because the Greeks acknowledge that the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of the Son though he doth not proceed from him therefore the difference between the Greeks and Latins is in words and not in sense but you say He speaks only of such as differed in words and not in substance as though he put a difference between the Greeks that some differed in words and others really which is quite beside his meaning for he takes not the least notice of any such difference among themselves but saith The difference it self concerning the Procession the Greeks acknowledging the Holy Ghost to be the Spirit of the Son is more verbal than real And that the present Greeks say full as much is evident for they acknowledge the same things in express words The testimony of Bonaventure hath been already considered as far as concerns Damascen as for the rest it was sufficient for his Lordships purpose to produce such a Confession from so bitter an enemy of the Greeks as Bonaventure was so his Lordship in his Marginal Citation sayes truly of him licèt Graecis infensissimus c. that he doth not deny but that salvation might be had without the article of Filioque but whether on that supposition there were sufficient reason to add it to the Creed will be considered afterwards Though Bonaventure held the Greeks to be Hereticks and Schismaticks I hope you do not think that is Argument enough to perswade us that they were so That any thing without which salvation might have been had before may by the definition of your Church become so necessary that men cannot be saved without the belief of it had need be more than barely asserted either by Bonaventure or you and we must wait for the proof of it for any thing here said
to prove the Infallibility of the Church and Scripture to You tell us That when you prove the Infallibility of the Church by Scripture you make use only of Arguments ad hominem and argue ex principiis concessis against Sectaries who deny the Infallibility of your Church but admit the Divine Authority of the Scriptures and therefore you may justly use Scripture-arguments against them I grant it but still I say you avoid not the Circle by this subterfuge neither For 1. The question is not Which way you will prove the Infallibility of the Church against those who deny it but which way you resolve your own faith of the Churches Infallibility therefore this signifies nothing at all as to your Question about the resolution of Faith for I suppose you build not that on any thing which your adversary grants or denyes Is there no difference between the way of proving a thing to an adversary and the resolving ones own Faith I question not but you may dispute with him upon Principles he grants and you deny but I should think you no wise man to build your Faith upon such Principles So that this evasion comes not near the business 2. Even in disputing against your Adversaries you cannot avoid the circle which I thus prove You offer to prove to them the Church to be Infallible out of Scripture for this you bring them particular places and think presently to vanquish them with Super hanc Petram Pasce oves Dabo tibi claves but hence ariseth another Question How you come infallibly to know that this is the sense of those places You know your Adversaries presently deny any such thing as Infallibility to be proved out of them And what way have you to assure them this is the sense of them but because your Church which is infallible delivers this to be the sense of them And is not this then a plain circle You are to believe the Church infallible because the Scripture saith so and you are to believe the Scripture saith so because the Church is infallible If this be not still a plain circle you may question whether there be any such figure in Mathematicks 3. I prove you cannot avoid the Circle from your own Confession of the nature of that Infallibility which you say is in the Church For you tell us That the Churches Testimony doth not suppose any new Revelation from God but only a supernatural Assistance of the Holy Ghost preserving her from all errour in defining the Points of Christian Faith By this Assertion you destroy all possibility of avoiding the Circle by the Motives of Credibility for if these had proved an immediate Divine Revelation in the Church I confess you had proved the Churches Infallibility independently on Scripture but when you offer to prove only a Divine Assistance with the Church in delivering former Revelations you cannot and the reason is because you can bring no ground at all why such an Assistance should be necessary in the Church or why it should be expected but from the Promises made in Scripture concerning such an Assistance of God's Spirit to be with the Church and therefore the utmost your Motives of Credibility can pretend to is only to notifie that Church from others which you suppose infallible but still the formal reason of your beleeving this Infallibility cannot be from those Motives but upon those Promises which you suppose to import such an Assistance of the Holy Ghost with the Church which shall secure her from errour So that still the Circle returns upon you For you believe the Scriptures infallible because of the Churches Testimony and you believe the Church infallible because of the Promises in Scripture concerning the Assistance of the Holy Ghost with the Church so as to secure her from all errour And thus I hope I have made good this general Attempt upon your way of resolving Faith by manifesting the great unreasonableness and manifest insufficiency of it I now come to handle the particulars of this Chapter which consists of two things Proofs and Evasions the Proofs you produce for your Churches Infallibility and your Evasions as to those Arguments which are objected by his Lordship Both of these will deserve our Consideration and if it appear that your Proofs are weak and your Evasions silly you will have no great cause to triumph in this Attempt of yours As to your Proofs two things are considerable your Method of proving and the Proofs themselves I begin with the first which you deliver in these words Wherefore as to the last demand in which only there is difficulty viz. How we know the Church to be infallibly governed by the Holy Ghost we answer that we prove it first in general not by the Scripture but by the Motives of Credibility which belong to the Church in the same manner as the Infallibity of Moses and other Prophets of Christ and his Apostles was proved which was by the Miracles they wrought and by other signs of an Infallible Spirit direction and guidance from God which appeared in them Whence it is clear that we incurr no circle That supposing all that true which you said before yet thereby you avoid not the circle I shall take it for granted I have already proved till you better inform me Our business now therefore is to consider which way you prove this Infallibility of your Church which you tell us is not by Scripture for which I commend your ingenuity but by the Motives of Credibility But lest any should think this a weak way of probation you tell us It is in the same manner that the Infallibility of all persons divinely inspired was proved not excepting Christ himself A most heroical and generous Attempt For which the Church of Rome is infinitely obliged to you if you make it good For then it necessarily follows that there is as great danger in not believing the Infallibility of your Church as in not believing Moses and the Prophets Christ and his Apostles For where there is an equal obligation to believe there is an equal sin in not believing and where the sin is equal it stands to reason that the punishment should be so too I suppose you deny not but Where there are equal Motives inducing to believe there results an equal Obligation to Faith because the Grounds obliging to assent can be no other than the Motives inducing to it and if these Motives be as strong and evident for your Churches Infallibility as for that of Moses and Christ men must be as much obliged now to believe your Church infallible as that Moses and Christ were so So that the denial of your Churches Infallibility must needs be accounted by you to be as high a piece of Infidelity as if one should call in question the Infallibility of Christ himself For you assert That you have the same Proofs for the Infallibility of your Church which there were to prove him infallible I
produced is That a Tradition may be known to be such by the Light it hath in it self in which you say you find not one word of Tradition being known by its own Light But who are so blind as those who will not see I pray what difference is there between a Tradition being known to be such by its own Light and a Tradition being known by its own Light Yes say you known to be such implies that is to be God's unwritten Word but are not doctrinal Traditions and an unwritten Word with you the same thing Can therefore a Tradition be known to be an unwritten Word by its own Light and not be known to be a Tradition by its own Light Nay How can it possibly be known to be an unwritten Word unless it first appears to be a Tradition for Tradition containing under it both those that are unwritten Words and those that are not it must in order of nature be known to be a Tradition before it can be known to be the other As I must first know you to be a living Creature before I can know you to be a reasonable Creature and I may much sooner know the one than the other You do therefore very well when you have given us such occasion for sport to give us leave to laugh at it as you do in your next words But before you leave this point you have some graver matter to take notice of which is that you desire the reader to consider what the Relator grants viz. That the Church now admits of St. James and St. Judes Epistles and the Apocalypse which were not received for diverse years after the rest of the New Testament From which you wisely inferr That if some Books are now to be admitted for Canonical which were not alwayes acknowledged to be such then upon the same authority some Books may now be received into the Canon which were not so in Ruffinus his time And therefore the Bishop doth elsewhere unjustly charge the Church of Rome that it had erred in receiving more Books into the Canon then were received in Ruffinus his time To which I Answer 1. By your own confession then the Church of Rome doth now receive into the Canon more Books then she did in Ruffinus his time from whence I enquire whether the present Church of Rome were Infallible in Ruffinus his time in determining the Canon of the Scripture If not then the present Church is no Infallible propounder of the Word of God and then all your discourse comes to nothing If she were Infallible then she cannot be now for now she determins otherwise as to a main point of Faith than she did then unless you will say your Church can be Infallible in determining both parts of a contradiction to be true 2. Is the integrity of the Canon of Scripture an Apostolical tradition or no I doubt not but you will say It is if so Whether were these Books which you admit now and were not admitted then known to be of the Canon by this Apostolical tradition If not by what right come they now to be of the Canon if so then was not your Church in Ruffinus's time much to seek for her Infallibility in defining what was Apostolical tradition and what not 3. Your main principle on which the lawfulness of adding more books to the Canon of the Scripture is built is That it is in the power of your Church judicially and authoritatively to determine what books belong to the Canon of the Scripture and what not which I utterly deny For it is impossible that your Church or any in the world can by any definition make that Book to be Divine which was not so before such a definition For the Divinity of the Book doth meerly arise from Divine revelation Can your Church then make that to be a Divine revelation which was not so All that any Church in the world can do in this case is not to constitute any new Canon which were to make Books Divine which were not so but to use its utmost diligence and care in searching into the authenticalness of those Copy's which have any pretence to be of the Canon and whether they did originally proceed from such persons as we have reason to believe had an immediate assistance of the Holy Ghost and according to the evidence they find the Church may declare and give in her verdict For the Church in this case is but a Jury of grand Inquest to search into matters of Fact and not a Judge upon the Bench to determine in point of Law And that is the true reason why the Books of the New Testament were gradually received into the Canon and some a great while after others as St. James St. Jude the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse because at first the Copyes being not so publickly dispersed there was not that occasion ministred to the Church for examination of them upon which when by degrees they came to be more publick it caused scruples in many concerning them because they appeared no sooner especially if any passages in them seemed to gratifie any of the Sects then appearing as the Epistle to the Hebrews the Novatians and the Apocalypse the Millenary's But when upon a through search and examination of all circumstances it did appear that these Copyes were authentical and did originally proceed from Divine Persons then they came to be admitted and owned for such by the Vniversal Church which we call being admitted into the Canon of the Scripture Which I take to be the only true and just account of that which is called the constituting the Canon of Scripture not as though either the Apostles met to do it or St. John intended any such thing by those words in the end of the Apocalypse for that Book being as much lyable to question as any how could that seal the Canon for all the rest much less that it was in the power of any Church or Council and least of all of the Pope to determine what was Canonical and what not but only that the Church upon examination and enquiry did by her Universal reception of these Books declare it self satisfied with the evidence which was produced that those were true and authentick Copyes which were abroad under such names or titles and that there was great reason to believe by a continued tradition from the age and time these Books were written in that they were written by such persons who were not only free from any design of imposture but gave the greatest Rational evidence that they had a more special and immediate assistance of Gods Spirit You see then to how little advantage to your Cause you made this digression As to the third way propounded for resolving the Question How we know the Scriptures to be the Word of God viz. by the testimony of the Holy Ghost three things you object against the Bishops discourse about it First that his discourse
speaks of i. e. that act of the Apostles whereby they delivered the Doctrine of Christ upon their Testimony to the world If you mean this Tradition for my part I do not understand it as any thing really distinct from the Tradition of the Scripture it self For although I grant that the Apostles did deliver that Doctrine by Word as well as Writing yet if that Tradition by Word had been judged sufficient I much question whether we had ever had any written Records at all But because of the speedy decay of an oral Tradition if there had been no standing Records it pleased God in his infinite Wisdom and Goodness to stir up some fit persons to digest those things summarily into writing which otherwise would have been exposed to several corruptions in a short time For we see presently in the Church notwithstanding this how suddenly the Gnosticks Valentinians Manichees and others did pretend some secret Tradition of Christ or his Apostles distinct from their writings When therefore you can produce as certain evidence any Apostolical Tradition distinct from Scripture as we can do that the Books of Scripture were delivered by the Apostles to the Church you may then be hearkened to but not be before 2. We have other waies to judge of the Identity of the Copies of Scripture which we have with those delivered by the Primitive Church besides the Testimony of the present Church And the judgement of the present Church considered meerly as such can be no argument to secure any man concerning the integrity and incorruption of the Books of Scripture We do therefore justly appeal to the ancient Copies and M. SS which confirm the incorruption of ours But say you What infallible Certainty have we of them besides Church Tradition Very wisely said in several respects as though no Certainty less than infallible could serve mens turn as to ancient Copies of Scripture and as though your Church could give men Infallible certainty which Copy's were ancient and which were not But for our parts we should not be at all nearer any certainty much less Infallibility concerning the authenticalness of any ancient Copy's because your Church declared it self for them neither can we imagine it at all necessary in the examination of ancient Copy's to have any Infallible certainty at all of them For as well you may pretend it as to any other Authours when all that we look after in such Copy's is only that evidence which things of that nature are capable of But you make his Lordship give as wise an answer to this question of yours They may be examined and approved by the authentical Autographa's of the very Apostles Where is it that this answer is given by his Lordship If you may be allowed to make questions and answers too no doubt the one will be as wise as the other But I suppose you thought nothing could be said pertinent in this case but what you make his Lordship say and then by the unreasonableness of that answer because none of these Autographa's are supposed extant and because if they were so all men could not be Infallibly certain of them you think you have sufficient advantage against your adversary because thereby it would appear there can be no certainty of Scripture but from the authority of your Church To which because it may seem to carry on your great design of rendring Religion uncertain I shall return a particular answer 1. Supposing we could have no certainty concerning the Copy's of Scripture but from Tradition this doth not at all advantage your cause unless you could prove that no other Tradition but that of your Church can give us any certainty of it Give me leave then to make this supposition That God might not have given this supernatural assistance to your Church which you pretend makes it Infallible Whether men through the Vniversal consent of persons of the Christian Church in all Ages might not have been undoubtedly certain That the Scripture we have was the same delivered by the Apostles i. e. Whether a matter of fact in which the whole Christian world was so deeply engaged that not only their credit but their interest was highly concerned in it could not be attested by them in a credible manner Which is as much as to ask Whether the whole Christian world was not at once besotted and infatuated in â—he grossest manner so as to suffer the records of those things which concerned their eternal welfare to be imbezeled falsified or corrupted so as to mistake them for Apostolical writings which were nothing so If it be not then credible that the Christian world should be so monstrously imposed upon and so grosly deceived then certainly the Vniversal Tradition of the Society may yield unquestionable evidence to any inquisitive person as to the integrity and incorruption of the body of Scriptures And if it may yield such evidence why doth it not so when we see this was the very case of the Christian world in all Ages Some writings were delivered to the Church of the Age they lived in by the Apostles these writings were so delivered as that the Christians understood they were of things of more concernment to them than the whole world was these writings were then received embraced and publickly read these writings were preserved by them so sacred and inviolable that it was accounted a crime of the highest nature to deliver the Copy's of them into the hands of the Heathen persecutors these writings were still owned by them as Divine and the rule and standard of Faith these were appealed to in all disputes among them these were preserved from the attempts of Hereticks vindicated from the assaults of the most learned Infidels transcribed into the Books of the most diligent Christians transmitted from one Generation to another as the most sacred depositum of Heaven And yet is it possible to suppose that these writings should be extorted out of their hands by violence abused under their eyes by fraud or suffered to be lost by negligence Yet no other way can be imagined why any should suspect the Books of Scripture which we have are not the same with those delivered by the Apostles All which are such unreasonable suppositions that they could hardly enter into any head but yours or such whose cause you manage in these disputes the most profligate Atheists or most unreasonable Scepticks If then we entertain but mean and ordinary thoughts of the Christians of all Ages if we look upon them as silly men abused into a Religion by fraud and imposture yet we cannot doubt but that these persons were careful to preserve the records of that Religion because they were so diligent in the study of it so venturous for it such enemies to the corrupters of it so industrious in propagating the knowledge of it to their friends and Posterity Do you think our Nation did ever want an Infallible Testimony to preserve the Magna Charta supposing no authentick
Is it not sufficiently known to all persons who deal in this Controversie what you mean by the Catholick Church in this Controversie that it shall not be lawful for his Lordship in a Parenthesis to shew where you place this Infallibility but he must be charged with declining the Question This only shews a desire to cavil at little things when you were unable to answer greater Besides in the way you take of proving the Churches Infallibility by the Motives of Credibility there is a necessity even in this Controversie of declaring what that Catholick Church is which must be known by these Motives and therefore you have no cause to look upon this as running away from the Question That A. C. after a long and silent attention did meerly through the heat of his zeal become earnest in this business to do his Adversary good I must believe it because you tell me so though I see no great Motive of Credibility for it And on that account did desire him to consider the Tradition of the Church as of a Company of men infallibly assisted For such assistance you say is necessary as well to have sufficient assurance of the true Canon of Holy Scripture as to come to the true meaning and interpretation thereof But this is as easily denied as said We wait therefore for your proofs That which only seems here intended for that end is That when the Relator had said The Prophets under the Old Testament and the Apostles under the New had such an Infallible Divine Assistance but neither the High Priest with his Clergy in the Old nor any Company of Prelates or Priests in the New since the Apostles ever had it To this you reply That the like assistance with the Prophets and Apostles the High Priest with his Clergy had in the Old Testament as we gather out of Deut. 17.8 c. Where in doubts the people were bound not only to have recourse to the High Priest and his Clergy but to submit and stand to their judgement Much more then ought we to think that there is such an obligation in the New Testament which could not stand without Infallibility Witness the infinite dissentions and divisions in Points of Faith amongst all the different Christians that deny it Two things the force of this argument lyes in 1. That there was Infallibility in the High Priest and his Clergy under the Law 2. That if there were so then there ought to be so now Both these must be considered 1. That there was Infallibility in the High Priest and his Clergy under the Law which you prove from Deut. 17.8 Because there the people were not only to have recourse to them but to submit and stand to their judgement This argument in form is this Where there is to be not only a recourse but an obligation to submission there must be Infallibility but there were both these among the Jews as to the High Priest and his Clergy ergo You may see how forcible this argument is in a like case Where there is to be not only a recourse in matters of difficulty but an obligation to submit and stand to their judgement there must be Infallibility but to the Parliament of England there ought to be not only a recourse in matters of difficulty but a submission to their judgement therefore the Parliament of England is as infallible as the High Priest and Clergy under the Law by the very argument by you produced The same will hold for all Courts of Justice But Can you by no means distinguish between an obligation to submission and an obligation in conscience to assent to what is determined as infallibly true Is every person in all judiciary Cases where submission is required bound to believe the Judges sentence infallible If so we need not go over the Alps for Infallibility we may have it much cheaper at home But I suppose you will reply The case is very different because in the Text by you produced 1. Not Civil Matters but Religious are spoken of 2. That not any Civil Magistrates but the High Priest and his Clergy are the Judges mentioned 3. That not every kind of Judgement but an Infallible Judgement is there set down But if every one of these be false you will see what little advantage comes to your cause by this Testimony which I shall in order demonstrate 1. That this place speaks not of Religious Causes as such but of Civil Causes i. e. not of matters of Doctrine to be decided as true or false but matters of Justice to be determined as to right and wrong Not but that some things concerning the Ecclesiastical Polity of the Nation might be there decided for it was impossible in a Nation whose Laws depended on their Religion to separate the one from the other But that the Judgement given there did not determine the truth and falshood of things so as to oblige mens consciences to believe them but did so peremptorily decide them that the persons concerned were bound to acquiesce in that determination For the proof of this one would think the very reading of the place were sufficient If there arise a matter too hard for thee in Judgement between blood and blood between plea and plea and between stroke and stroke being matters of controversies within thy gates then shalt thou arise and get thee up into the place which the Lord thy God shall chuse c. Which words are so generally expressed on purpose to take in all manner of controversies which might rise among them whether civil criminal or ceremonial And herein God makes provision against any rupture which might be among them upon any emergent Controversie by establishing a Court of Appeals to which all such causes should be brought in which the lesser Courts could not agree For that seems to be the main scope of the words by the following expression of Controversies within thy gates by which it seems evident that the Controversies were such as could come to no resolution in those inferiour Courts which sate in the Gates of the Cities by which it appears that these could be no momentous Controversies of Religion which never came under the cognizance of those inferiour and subordinate Courts By these words then God doth erect a Supreme Court of Judicature among them to which they might appeal not only in case of injury but in case of difficulty and those lesser Courts as well as particular persons were to submit to the Decree of the great Sanhedrin sitting in the place which God should chuse which was Shilo first and Hierusalem after And thence Maimonides so often saith That the establishment and coagmentation of all the Israelites did depend upon this place for hereby God set up such a Tribunal to which the last Resort should be made and from whose determinations there should remain no further appeal And according to the Tradition of the Jews these appeals were to be gradual i. e.
with the power of the City the potentior principalitas in Irenaeus which advanced its reputation to the height it was then at What matters of doctrine do you find brought to the Church of Rome to be Infallibly decided there in St. Cyprians time how little did St. Cyprian believe this when he so vehemently opposed the judgement of Stephen Bishop of Rome in the case of rebaptization Doth he write speak or carry himself in that Controversie like one that owned that Church of Rome to be head of all other Churches to which they must be subordinate in matter of doctrine Nay in the very next words St. Cyprian argues against appeals to Rome and is it possible then to think that in these words he should give such an absolute power and authority to it And therefore any one who would reconcile St. Cyprian to himself must by those words of Ecclesia principalis only understand the dignity and eminency and not the power much less the Infallibility of the Church of Rome And no more is implyed in the Second That it is said to be the fountain of Sacerdotal Vnity which some think may probably referr to the Priesthood of the Church of Africk which had its rise from the Church of Rome as appears by Tertullian and others in which sense he might very well say that the Vnity of the Priesthood did spring from thence or if it be taken in a more large and comprehensive sense it can import no more then that the Church of Rome was owned as the Principium Vnitatis which certainly is a very different thing from an infallible judgement in matters of Faith For what connexion is there between Vnity in Government and Infallibility in Faith Suppose the Church of Rome should be owned as the principal Member of the Catholick Church and therefore that the Vnity of the Church should begin there in regard of the dignity of it doth it thence follow that there must be an absolute subordination of all other Churches to it Nothing then can be inferr'd from either of those particulars that by perfidia errour in Faith must be understood taking those two expressions in the most favourable sense that can be put upon them But considering the present state of the Church of Rome at the time when Felicissimus and Fortunatus came thither I am apt to think another interpretation more probable than either of the foregoing For which we must remember that there was a Schism at Rome between Novatianus and Cornelius the former challenging to be Bishop there as well as the latter upon which a great breach was made among them Now these persons going out of Africa to Rome that they might manage their business with the more advantage address themselves to Cornelius and his party upon which St. Cyprian saith Navigare audent ad Petri Cathedram atque ad Ecclesiam principalem unde Vnitas sacerdotalis exorta est thereby expressing their confidence that they not only went to Rome but when they were there they did not presently side with the Schismatical party of the Novatians there but as though they had been true Catholicks they go to Cornelius who being the legal successour of St. Peter in opposition to Novatianus calls his See the chair of St. Peter and the principal Church and the spring of the Vnity of the Priesthood because the contrary party of Novatianus had been the cause of all the Schism and disunion which had been among them And in this sense which seems very agreeable to St. Cyprians words and design we may easily understand what this perfidia was viz. that falseness and perfidious dealing of these persons that although they were Schismaticks themselves yet they were so farr from seeming so at their coming to Rome that as though they had been very good Catholicks they seek to joyn in communion with Cornelius and the Catholick party with him By which we see what little probability there is from those expressions that perfidia must be taken for an errour in Faith But 3. You say To what purpose else doth he mention St. Pauls commendation of their Faith if this perfidia were not immediately opposite to it But then inform us what part of that Apostolical Faith was it which Felicissimus and Fortunatus sought to violate at Rome It is apparent their whole design was to be admitted into communion with the Church of Rome which in all probability is that access here spoken of if therefore this perfidia imported some errour in Faith it must be some errour broached by those particular persons as contrary to the old Roman Faith which was extold by the Apostle And although these persons might be guilty of errours yet the ground of their going to Rome was not upon any matter of Doctrine whereby they sought to corrupt the Church of Rome but in order to the justifying of their Schism by being admitted into the communion of that Church Notwithstanding then any thing you have produced to the contrary there is no necessity of understanding perfidia for an errour in matter of Faith And St. Cyprians mentioning the praise given to the Romans for their Faith by the Apostle was not to shew the opposition between that and the perfidia as an errour in Faith but that being the greatest Elogium of the Church of Rome extant in Scripture he thought it now most convenient to use it the better to engage Cornelius to oppose the proceedings of the Schismaticks there Although withall I suppose St. Cyprian might give him some taste of his old office of a Rhetorician in the allusion between fides and perfidia without ever intending that perfidia should be taken in any other sense then what was proper to the cause in hand You having effected so little in the solution of his Lordships first answer you have little cause to boast in your following words That hence his other explication also vanishes into smoak viz. when he asserts that Perfidia non potest may be taken hyperbolically for non facile potest because this interpretation suits not with those high Elogiums given by St. Cyprian to the Roman Church as being the principal Church the Church whence Vnity of Faith and Discipline is derived to all other Christian Churches If you indeed may have the liberty to interpret St. Cyprians words as you please by adding such things to them of which there is no intimation in what he saith you may make what you please unsuitable to them For although he calls it the principal Church from whence the Vnity of the Priesthood is sprung yet what is this to the Vnity of Faith and Discipline as derived from thence to all other Churches as you would perswade the unwary reader that these were St. Cyprians words which are only your groundless interpretation of them And therefore there is no such improbability in what his Lordship sayes That this may be only a Rhetorical excess of speech in which St. Cyprian may
and fully in these words T is too true indeed that there is a miserable rent in the Church and I make no question but the best men do most bemoan it nor is he a Christian that would not have Vnity might he have it with Truth But I never said nor thought that the Protestants made this rent The cause of the Schism is yours for you thrust us from you because we call'd for truth and redress of abuses For a Schism must needs be theirs whose the cause of it is The woe runs full out of the mouth of Christ ever against him that gives the offence not against him that takes it ever And in the Margent shewing that a separation may sometimes be necessary he instanceth in the orthodox departing from the communion of the Arrians upon which he sayes It cannot be that a man should do well in making a Schism There may be therefore a necessary separation which yet incurrs not the guilt of Schism and that is when Doctrines are taught contrary to the Catholick Faith And after saith The Protestants did not depart for departure is voluntary so was not theirs I say not theirs taking their whole body and cause together For that some among them were peevish and some ignorantly zealous is neither to be doubted nor is there danger in confessing it Your body is not so perfect I wot well but that many amongst you are as pettish and as ignorantly zealous as any of ours You must not suffer for these nor we for those nor should the Church of Christ for either And when A. C. saith That though the Church of Rome did thrust the Protestants from her by excommunication yet they had first divided themselves by obstinate holding and teaching Opinions contrary to the Roman Faith His Lordship answers So then in his Opinion Excommunication on their part was not the prime cause of this division but the holding and teaching of contrary Opinions Why but then in my opinion saith he that holding and teaching was not the prime cause neither but the corruptions and superstitions of Rome which forced many men to hold and teach the contrary So the prime cause was theirs still And A. C. telling him That he said that it was ill done of those who first made the separation He answers That though he remembred not that he said those words yet withall adds If I did not say it then I do say it now and most true it is That it was ill done of those whoere they were who first made the separation But then A. C. must not understand me of Actual only but of Causal separation For as I said before the Schism is theirs whose the cause of it is and he makes the separation that gives the first just cause of it not he that makes an actual separation upon a just cause preceding And this is so evident a Truth that A. C. cannot deny it for he sayes it is most true These passages I have laid together that the Reader may clearly understand the full state of this great Controversie concerning Schism the upshot of which is that it is agreed between both parties that all separation from communion with a Church doth not involve in it the guilt of Schism but only such a separation as hath no sufficient cause or ground for it So that the Question comes to this Whether your Church were not guilty of such errours and corruptions as gave sufficient cause for such a separation The Question being thus stated we now come to consider how you make good your part in it Your first pretence is if reduced into argument for you seem to have a particular pique against a close way of disputing That your Church is a right and orthodox Church and therefore could never give any just cause of separation from it For the Lady asked as A. C. would have it Whether the Roman Church was not the right Church not be not but was not that is relating to the times before the breach was made Now his Lordship tells him That as to the terms he might take his choice For the Church of Rome neither is nor was the right Church as the Lady desired to hear A particular Church it is and was and in some times right and in some times wrong but the right Church or the Holy Catholick Church it never was nor ever can be And therefore was not such before Luther and others left it or were thrust from it A particular Church it was but then A. C. is not distinct enough here neither For the Church of Rome both was and was not a right or orthodox Church before Luther made a breach from it For the word ante before may look upon Rome and that Church a great way off or long before and then in the prime times of it it was a most right and orthodox Church But it may look also nearer home and upon the immediate times before Luther or some ages before that and then in those times Rome was a corrupt and tainted Church far from being Right And yet both these times before Luther made his breach And so he concludes that Section with this clause That the Roman Church which was once right is now become wrong by embracing superstition and errour And what say you now to all this Two things you have to return in answer to it or at least to these two all that you say may be reduced 1. That if the Roman Church was right once it is so still 2. That if the Roman Church were wrong before Luther the Catholick Church was so too These two containing all that is said in this case must be more particularly discussed 1. That if the Roman was the right Church it still is so seeing no change can be shewn in her Doctrine If there have been a change let it appear when and in what the change was made Thus you say but you know his Lordship never granted that the Roman Church ever was the right Church in the sense you take those words for the true Catholick Church that it was once a right particular Church he acknowledged and as such was afterwards tainted with errours and corruptions If so you desire to know what these were and when they came in to the former I shall reserve an Answer till I come to the third part of my task where you shall have an account of them to the latter the time when these came in because this is so much insisted on by your party I shall return you an Answer in this place And that I shall do in these following Propositions 1. Nothing can be more unreasonable than to deny that errours and corruptions have come into a Church meerly because the punctual time of their coming in cannot be assigned For Will any one question the birth of an Infant because he cannot know the time of his conception Will any one deny there are tares in the field because
Church If your Church indeed were what she is not the Catholick Church we might be what we are not Hereticks but think it not enough to prove us Hereticks that you call us so unless you will likewise take it for granted that the Pope is Antichrist and your Church the Whore of Babylon because they are as often and as confidently call'd so And if your Church be truly so as she is shrewdly suspected to be Do you think she and all her followers would not as confidently call such as dissented from her Hereticks and the using those expressions of her virulent execrations against her as you do now supposing her not to be so What therefore would belong to your Church supposing her as bad as any Protestants imagine her to be cannot certainly help to perswade us that she is not so bad as she is When you say still That Protestants did really depart from the Roman Church and in so doing remained separate from the whole Church you very fairly beg the thing in dispute and think us uncivil for denying it You know not what that passage means That the Protestants did not voluntarily depart taking their whole body and cause together since there is no obscurity in the expression but a defect elsewhere I can only say That his Lordship was not bound to find you an Vnderstanding as oft as you want it But it were an easie matter to help you for it is plain that he speaks those words to distinguish the common cause of Protestants from the heats and irregularities of some particular persons whom he did not intend to justifie such as he saith Were either peevish or ignorantly zealous And if you distinguish the sense of your Church from the judgements of particular persons I hope it may be as lawful for us to distinguish the body and cause of Protestants from the inconsiderate actings of any particular men All that which follows about the name of Protestants which his Lordship saith Took its rise not from protesting simply against the Roman Church but against the Edict at Worms which was for the restoring all things to their former state without any reformation is so plain and evident that nothing but a mind to cavil and to give us the same things over and over could have made you stay longer upon it For what else means your talk of Innovation in matters of Religion which we say was caused by you and protesting against the Roman Church and consequently against all particular Visible Churches in the world and that which none but Hereticks and Schismaticks used to do Do you think these passages are so hard that we cannot know what they mean unless we have them so often over But they are not so hard to be understood as to be believed and that the rather because we see you had rather say them often than prove them once If the Popes professed Reformation necessary as to many abuses I hope they are not all Schismaticks who call for the redress of abuses in your Church But if all the Reformation we are to expect of them be that which you say was effectually ordained by the Council of Trent if there had not been an Edict at Worms there were the Decrees of that Council which would have made a Protestation necessary Although we think your Church needs Reformation in Manners and Discipline as much as any in the world yet those are not the abuses mainly insisted on by the Protestants as the grounds of their Separation and therefore his Lordship ought to be understood of a Reformation as to the errours and corruptions of the Roman Church and doubtless that Edict of Worms which was for the restoring all things to their former state did cut off all hopes of any such Reformation as was necessary for the Protestants to return to the Roman Communion And whatever you say till you have proved the contrary better than as yet it is done it will appear that they are the Protestants who stand for the ancient and undefiled Doctrine of the Catholick Church against the novel and corrupt Tenets of the Roman Church And such kind of Protestation no true Christian who measures his being Catholick by better grounds than communion with the Church of Rome will ever have cause to be ashamed of But A. C. saith his Lordship goes on and will needs have it that the Protestants were the cause of the Schism For saith he though the Church of Rome did thrust them from her by excommunication yet they had first divided themselves by obstinate holding and teaching Opinions contrary to the Roman Faith and practice of the Church which to do S. Bernard thinks is pride S. Austin madness At this his Lordship takes many and just exceptions 1. That holding and teaching was not the prime cause neither but the corruptions and superstitions of Rome which forced many men to hold and teach the contrary So the prime cause was theirs still Now to this your Answer is very considerable That the Bishop of Rome being S. Peter 's successor in the Government of the Church and Infallible at least with a General Council it is impossible that Protestants or other Sectaries should ever find such errours or corruptions difinitively taught by him or received by the Church as should either warrant them to preach against her Doctrine or lawfully to forsake her communion We say Your Church hath erred you say It is impossible she should we offer you evident proofs of her errours you say She is Infallible we say It is impossible that Church should be Infallible which we can make appear hath been deceived you tell us again It is impossible she should be deceived for let Hereticks say what they will she is Infallible And if this be not a satisfactory way of answering let the world judge But having already pulled down that Babel of Infallibility this Answer falls to the ground with it and to use your phrase The truth is all that you have in effect to say for your Church is that she is Infallible and the Catholick Church and by this means you think to cast the Schism upon us and these things are great enough indeed if you could but make any shew of proof for them but not being able to do that you do in effect as much as if a man in a high feaver should go about to demonstrate it was impossible for him to be sick which the more he takes pains to do the more evident his distemper is to all who hear him And it is shrewdly to be suspected if your errours had not been great and palpable you would have contented your selves with some thing short of Infallibility But as the case is with your Church I must confess it is your greatest wisdom to talk most of Infallibility for if you can but meet with any weak enough to swallow that all other things go down without dispute but if men are left at liberty to
you say The Pope's Confirmation was required to all new elected Patriarchs To that I shall return the full and satisfactory Answer of the late renowned Arch-Bishop of Paris Petrus de Marcâ where he propounds this as an Objection out of Baronius and thus solves it That the confirmation of Patriarchs by the Bishop of Rome was no token of Jurisdiction but only of receiving into Communion and a testimony of his consent to the consecration already performed And this was no more than was done by other Bishops in reference to the Bishop of Rome himself for S. Cyprian writing to Antonianus about the election of Cornelius saith That he was not only chosen by the suffrage of the people and testimony of the Clergy but that his election was confirmed by all their consent May not you then as well say That the Bishop of Carthage had power over the Bishop of Rome because his ordination was confirmed by him and other African Bishops But any one who had understood better than you seem to do the proceedings of the Church in those ages would never have made this an argument of the Pope's Authority over other Patriarchs since as the same Petrus de Marcâ observes It was the custom in those times that not only the Patriarchs but the Roman Bishop himself upon their election were wont to send abroad Letters testifying their ordination to which was added a profession of Faith contained in their Synodical Epistles Upon the receipt of which Communicatory Letters were sent to the person newly ordained to testifie their Communion with him in case there were no just impediment produced So that this was only a matter of Fraternal Communion and importing nothing at all of Jurisdiction but the Bishops of Rome who were ready to make use of all occasions to advance their own Grandeur did in time make use of this for quite other ends than it was primarily intended for in case of any suspicions and jealousies of any thing that might tend to the dis-service of their See they would then deny their Communicatory Letters as Simplicius did in the case of the Patriarch of Alexandria And in that Confirmation of Anatolius by Leo 1. which Baronius so much insists on Leo himself gives a sufficient account of it viz. to manifest that there was but one entire Communion among them throughout the world So that if the Pope's own judgement may be taken this Confirmation of new elected Patriarchs imported nothing of Jurisdiction But in case the Popes did deny their Communicatory Letters that did not presently hinder them from the execution of their office as appears by the instance of Flavianus the Patriarch of Antioch for although three Roman Bishops successively opposed him Damasus Syricius and Anastasius and used great importunity with the Emperour that he might not continue in his place yet because the Churches of the Orient Asia Pontus and Thracia did approve of him and communicate with him he opposed their consent against the Bishops of Rome Upon which and the Emperour 's severe checking them for their pride and contention they at last promised the Emperour that they would lay aside their enmity and acknowledge him So that notwithstanding whatever the Roman Bishops could do against him he was acknowledged for a true Patriarch and at last their consent was given only by renewing Communion with him which certainly is far from being an instance of the Pope's power over the other Patriarchs Whereby we also see What little power he had in deposing them although you tell us That it belonged likewise to him to depose unworthy ones restore the unjustly deposed by others But that the power of deposing Bishops was anciently in Provincial Councils appears sufficiently by the fifth Canon of the Nicene Council and by the practice of the Church both before and after it and it is acknowledged by Petrus de Marcâ that the sole power of deposing Bishops was not in the hands of the Bishop of Rome till about eight hundred years since and refutes the Cardinal Perron for saying otherwise and afterwards largely proves that the Supreme authority of deposing Bishops was still in Provincial Councils and that the Pope had nothing to do in it till the decree of the Sardican Synod in the case of Athanasius which yet he saith did not as is commonly said decree Appeals to be made to Rome but only gave the Bishop of Rome power to Review their actions but still reserving to Provincial Councils that Authority which the Nicene Council had established them in All the power which he then had was only this that he might decree that the matters might be handled over again but not that he had the power himself of deposing or restoring Bishops Which is proved with that clearness and evidence by that excellent Author that I shall refer you to him for it and consider the instances produced by you to the contrary We read say you of no less than eight several Patriarchs of Constantinople deposed by the Bishop of Rome Surely if you had read this your self you would have quoted the place with more care and accuracy than you do for you give us only a blind citation of an Epistle of Pope Nicolaus to the Emperour Michael neither citing the words nor telling us which it is when there are several and those no very short ones neither But however it is well chosen to have a Pope's testimony in his own cause and that such a Pope who was then in contest with the Patriarch of Constantinople and that too so long after the encroachments of the Bishops of Rome it being in the ninth Century and yet for all this this Pope doth not say those words which you would fasten upon him that which he saith is That none of the Bishops of Constantinople or scarce any of them were ejected without the consent of the Bishop of Rome And then instanceth in Maximus Nestorius Accacius Anthimus Sergius Pyrrhus Paulus Petrus but his design in this is only to shew that Ignatius the Patriarch ought not to have been deposed without his consent But what is all this to the Pope's sole power of deposing when even at that time the Pope did not challenge it But supposing the Popes had done it before it doth not follow that it was in their power to do it and that the Canons had given them right to do it but least of all certainly that they had a Divine right for it which never was in the least acknowledged by the Church as to a deposition of Patriarchs which you contend for But besides this you say Sixtus the third deposed Polychronius Bishop of Hierusalem Whereas Sixtus only sent eight persons from a Synod at Rome to Hierusalem who when they came there did not offer to depose Polychronius by vertue of the Popes power but a Synod of seventy or more neighbour Bishops were call'd by whom he was deposed and yet after all
the Canons of Sardica 3. Why not at all mentioned in them 1. How comes the Pope's Supremacy if of Divine Right to depend at all upon the Canons of the Church We had thought it had been much more to your purpose not to have mentioned any Canons at all of the Church about it but to have produced evidences that this was constantly acknowledged as of Divine Institution But we must bear with you in not producing that which is not to be found For nothing can be more apparent than that when the Popes began to pierk up they pleaded nothing but some Canons of the Church for what they did as Julius to the Oriental Bishops Zosimus to the African and so others If it had been ever thought then that this Supremacy was of Divine Right What senseless men were these to make use of the worst pleas and never mention the best For supposing they had such a Supremacy granted them by the Canons of the Church Doth not this imply that their authority did depend upon the Churches grant and what the Church might give for her own conveniency she might take it away when she saw it abused to her apparent prejudice And therefore if they had thought that God had commanded all Churches to be subject to them it was weakly done of them to plead nothing but the Canons of the Church for it 2. Why no sooner than the Canons of Sardica Was the Church of Rome without her Supremacy till that time Will no Canons of the Church evidence it before them When this Council was not held till eleven years after the death of Constantine Had the Pope no right of Appeals till it was decreed here Yes Zosimus pleads the Nicene Canons for it But upon what grounds will appear suddenly 3. Why is not the Pope's Supremacy mentioned as the ground of these Appeals then Certainly those Western Bishops who made those Canons should have only recognized the Divine Right of the Pope's Supremacy and not made a Canon in such a manner as they do that would make any one be confident they never knew the Popes Supremacy For their decree runs thus That in case any Bishop thought himself unjustly condemned if it seem good to you let us honour the memory of Peter the Apostle that it be written by those who have judged the cause to Julius the Bishop of Rome and if it seem good let the judgement be renewed and let them appoint such as may take cognizance of it Were these men mad to make such a Canon as this if they believed the Popes Supremacy of Divine Institution What a dwindling expression is that for the Head of the Church to call him Bishop of Rome only when a matter concerning his Supremacy is decreeing And why to Julius Bishop of Rome I pray Had it not been better to S. Peter's successor whosoever he be so it would have been no doubt if they had intended a Divine or Vniversal Right And why for the honour of S. Peter 's memory Had it not been more becoming them to have said out of obedience to Christ's Commands which made him Head of the Church And all this come in with an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if it please you What if it please you Whether the Pope should be Vniversal Pastor or no If it please you Whether the Church should be built super hanc Petram or no If it please you Whether the Bishop of Rome succeeds S. Peter or no Are these the men that give such evidence for the Popes Supremacy You had better by far never mention them for if that was the Lesson they had to say never any Boyes at School said their Lesson worse than they do They wanted such as you among them to have penned their Canon for them and no doubt it had run in a better strain For as much as our Lord and Saviour did appoint S. Peter Head of the Church and the Bishop of Rome to succed him as Christ's Vicar upon earth these are to let you know that he hath an absolute power by Divine Right over all persons and causes and that men are bound to obey him upon pain of eternal damnation This had been something like if you could have found in some Canons of the Church but to produce a poor sneaking If it please you What do you else but betray the Majesty and Grandeur of your Church And yet after all this no such thing as absolute Appeals to Rome are decreed here neither but only that the Bishop of Rome should have power to review the case and in case it was thought necessary that other persons should be appointed to examine it But How much a Review differs from an Appeal and that nothing but a power to review cases is here given to the Bishop of Rome are fully manifested by Petrus de Marcâ to whom I again referr you So that we see from hence you have very comfortable evidence for the Pope's Supremacy 2. Suppose it had been decreed here you had not gained much by it Because notwithstanding this decree it was far from being acknowledged by the Vniversal Church Which I prove from hence That the Sardican Canons were not received by the Church Nothing can be more evident than that these Canons were not so much as known by the African Bishops when Pope Zosimus fraudulently sent them under the name of the Nicene Canons insomuch that Cusanus questions Whether ever any such thing were determined by the Sardican Synod or no And it appears by S. Austin that the Council of Sardica was of no great credit in Africa for when Fortunius the Donatist-Bishop would prove that the Sardican Synod had written to some of their party because one Donatus was mentioned in it S. Austin tells him It was a Synod of Arrians by which it seems very improbable that they had ever received the decrees of the Western but only of the Eastern part of it which adjourned to Philippopolis Neither was this ever acknowledged for an Oecumenical Council for although it was intended for such by the Emperours Constans and Constantius yet but 70. of the Eastern Bishops appeared to 300. of the Western and those Eastern Bishops soon withdrew from the other and decreed things directly contrary to the other So that Balsamon and Zonaras as well as the elder Greeks say The decrees of it can at most only bind the Western Churches and the arrogating of this power of reviewing causes decided by the Eastern Churches by Western Bishops was apparently the cause of the divisions between them the Eastern and Western Churches being after this divided by the Alpes Succiae between Illyricum and Thracia And although Hilary and Epiphanius expresly call this a Western Council yet it was a long time before the Canons of it were received in the Western Church Which is supposed to be the reason Why Zosimus would not mention the Sardican but called them the Nicene Canons which forgery was
first because he is called by his private name Simon and not by his Apostolical name Peter 2. Because Christ immediately subjoyns after St. Peters answer his threefold denyal of him 3. The event it self makes it appear by the Apostles flight St. Peters temptation and fall his conversion and tears when Christ looked on him and by his confirming the Disciples after Christs resurrection But saith he if this place be taken as respecting the future times of the Church the same thing must be expected in St. Peters Successours which fell out in St. Peter himself viz. that either through fear or some other motive they may be drawn into the shew of Heresie or into Heresie it self but so as either in themselves or their Successours they should be restored to the Catholick Faith But what reason there is for this latter interpretation though destructive to the Popes infallibility neither doth that person acquaint us nor can I possibly understand All the evasion that you have to avoid the force of what ever is brought against you out of this place is by conjuring up that rare distinction of the Popes not erring when he defines any thing as matter of Faith But see what that same person saith of this distinction of yours Excipiunt aliqui saith he Papam posse esse haereticum sed non posse haeresim promulgare Adeò quidlibot effutire pro libidine etiam licitum est Some Answer that the Pope may be a Heretick but cannot promulge or define Heresie So far do men think it lawful to say what they please But can any man saith he be guilty of so much incogitancy as not to see that these things are consequent upon each other It is a Pear tree and therefore it will bear Pears It is a Vine and therefore it will bring forth Grapes Christ saith An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit but these say an evil tree cannot bring forth bad fruit The Apostle saith the wisdom of the Flesh cannot be subject to God but these say it cannot but be subject to God And then he further presseth That they would declare from what Authour they brought this contradiction into the Church of God lest men should believe they were inspired by the Father of lyes when they made it Nay he goes further yet in these stinging expressions An putatis licere in re quae totum Ecclesiae statum aâ—vivum tangit novitatem adeò inauditam adeò rationi adversantem adeò excedentem omnem fidem ex somniis cerebri vestri inferre Do you think it lawful in a matter which toucheth the whole state of the Church to the quick to produce so unheard of a novelty so repugnant to reason so far above all Faith out of the dreams of your own brain Go now and answer these things among your selves complain not that we account such evasions silly absurd and ridiculous you see they are accounted so by some of your own Communion or at least who pretend to be so and those no contemptible persons neither But such as have seen so much of the weakness and absurdity of your common doctrine that they openly and confidently oppose it and that upon the same grounds that Protestants had done it before them And I hope this is much more to our purpose to shew the insufficiency of these proofs than it was for you to produce the Testimonies of several Popes in their own Cause Which was all the proof that Bellarmin or you had that these words are extended to St. Peters Successours when we bring men from among your selves who produce several reasons that they ought not to be so interpreted But yet there is another place as pertinent as the former the celebrated Pasce oves agnos John 21.15 16 17. But sheep and Lambs say you are Christs whole flock So there are both these saith his Lordship in every flock that is not of barren Weathers and every Apostle and every Apostles successour hath charge to feed both sheep and Lambs that is weaker and stronger Christians not people and Pastours subjects and Governours as A. C. expounds it to bring the necks of Princes under the Roman Pride No say you no such charge is given to any other Apostles in the places his Lordship cites Matth. 28.19 Matth. 10.17 for these speak of persons unbaptized but that place of St. John of those who were actually Christs Flock and the words being absolutely and indefinitely pronounced must be understood generally and indefinitely of all Christs sheep and Lambs that is of all Christians whatsoever not excepting the Apostles themselves unless it appear from some other place that the other Apostles had the feeding of all Christs sheep as universally and unlimitedly committed to them as they were here to St. Peter But all this is nothing as Vigorius speaks about the solvere ligare pascere but dudum explosis cantilenis aures Christianorum obtundere to bring us those things over and over which have been answered as oft as they have been brought For how often have you been told that these words contain no particular Commission to St. Peter but a more vehement exhortation to the discharge of his duty and that pressed with the quickness of the question before it Lovest thou me How often that the full Commission to the Apostles was given before As the Father hath sent me so send I you And that as Christ was by his Fathers appointment the chief Shepheard of the Sheep and Lambs too so Christ by this equal Commission to all the Apostles gives them all an equal power and authority to govern his Flock How often that nothing appears consequent upon this whereby St. Peter took this office upon him but that afterwards we find St. Peter call'd the Apostle of the Circumcision which certainly he would never have been had he been looked on as the Vniversal Pastour of the Church we find the Apostles sending St. Peter to Samaria which was a very unmannerly action if they looked on him as Head of the Church How often that these indefinite expressions are not exclusive of the Pastoral charge of other Apostles over the Flock of Christ when they are not only bid to preach the Gospel to every creature but even those Bishops which they ordained in several Churches are charged to feed the Flock and therefore certainly the Apostles themselves had not only a charge to preach to unbaptized persons as you suppose but to govern the Flock of those who were actually Christs Sheep and Lambs as well as St. Peter How often I say have you been told all these and several other things in Answer to this place and have you yet the confidence to object it as though it had never been taken notice of without ever offering to take off those Answers which have been so frequently given But you must be pardoned in this as in all other things of an equal impossibility Well
this way If you say that experience shews Christ never intended this by the errours of particular men in all ages To the same purpose we answer you as to Councils that large experience shews that when Bishops have solemnly met in Council they have been grosly deceived as you confess in all the Arrian Councils If your argument would have ever held from the power and goodness of Christ Would it not have held at that time when so great a matter of Faith was under debate If Christ therefore suffered so many Bishops so grosly to erre in a matter of such importance wherein the Church was so highly concerned How can you inferr from his power and goodness that he will never suffer General Councils to erre If you answer That these erred for not observing the conditions requisite in order to Christs hearing them viz. that they were not met in the name of Christ did not come without prejudice nor rely on Divine Assistance I pray take the same Answer as to all other Councils that we cannot know that Christ hears them or that they are Infallible till we are assured of their performance of the conditions requisite in order to that Infallibility And when you can assure us that such a Council met together in the name of Christ and came meerly with a desire to find out truth and relyed wholly on his assistance for it we do not so much distrust the power and goodness of Christ as to think he will suffer them to be deceived For we know upon those conditions he will not suffer any good man to erre much less an Assembly of them met in a General Council But here you have the hardest task of all lying upon you which is to prove that a General Council hath observed all these conditions without which nothing can be inferred from this place as to Christs being in any sense in the midst of them The last place mentioned for the Infallibility of General Councils is that Act. 15.28 Where the Apostles say of themselves and the Council held by them It seems good to the Holy Ghost and to us And saith his Lordship they might well say it For they had infallibly the assistance of the Holy Ghost and kept close to his direction But there is a great deal of difference between them and succeeding Councils who never arrogated this to their definitions though they presumed of the assistance of the Holy Ghost and though that form might be used yet they did not assume such an Infallibility to themselves as the Apostles had And therefore it is little less than blasphemy in Stapleton to say That the Decrees of Councils are the very Oracles of the Holy Ghost And that all Councils are not so Infallible as was this of the Apostles nor the causes handled in them as there they were is manifest by the ingenuous confession of Ferus to that purpose This is the substance of his Lordships Answer to this place Which you think to take off by saying That there 's no essential difference between the certainty of the things determined by the Apostles and those decided by a General Council confirmed by the Roman Bishop and though after-Councils use not the same expression in terms yet they do it in effect by enjoyning the belief of their decisions under the pain of Anathema If this be the meaning of the Anathema's of Councils there had need indeed be no great difference between the Apostles Decrees and theirs But this had need be very well proved and so it is by you for you produce several expressions of Cyril Athanasius Austin Leo Gregory and some others out of Bellarmin in which they magnifie the Decrees of General Councils calling them a Divine Oracle a Sentence inspired by the Holy Ghost not to be retracted and some others to the same purpose by which you vindicate Stapleton and tell us he said no more than the Fathers had done before him Yet all this is far from any vindication of Stapleton or proving your assertion as to the equal certainty of the Decrees of Councils and of the Apostles For the ground of all those expressions and several others of the same nature was not the supposition of any inherent Infallibility in the Decrees of General Councils but their great assurance of the truth of that Doctrine which was determined by those first General Councils For although I am far enough from believing the Council of Trent Infallible yet if that had determined the same points of Faith which were determined in the first four General Councils and nothing else I might have said That the Decree of that Council was a Holy and Divine Oracle a Sentence inspired by the Holy Ghost c. not that I thought the Council in the least Infallible in determining these things but that they were of themselves Divine Truths which the Council determined And in this sense Athanasius might well term the definition of the Nicene-Council against Arius the word of our Lord which endureth for ever and Constantine stile it a coelestial mandate and Gregory might reverence the four first Councils as the four Gospels though Bellarmin tells you that expression must be taken in a qualified sense yet all these and any other of a like nature I say import no more than that they were fully assured the matters decreed by them were revealed by God in his Word and not that they believed that they became such holy and divine Oracles meerly by the Councils definition For the contrary might be abundantly manifested by many expressions in them quite to another purpose and if instead of all the rest you will but read Athanasius and Hilary concerning Councils you will find your self strangely deceived if you believed they ever thought them Infallible What you add afterwards that it is sufficient that there be a real Infallibility though not like to that of the Apostles will not be sufficient for me till you can shew me the degrees of Infallibility for I will promise you if you can once prove that Councils are really Infallible I shall not stick to say That they are alike Infallible with the Apostles As for your discarding Ferus as a prohibited Authour it only shews the great integrity of the man who spoke too much truth to be born by the tender ears of the Roman Inquisition Before I had proceeded any further I had thought because of a former promise to have looked back to the place where you speak in vindication of the decretal Epistles but because you only referr to Turrianus his defence of them I shall only return you an equal courtesie and referr you to the abundantly sufficient Answer to him by David Blondel One would have thought you should have been ashamed of so notorious an imposture as those decretal Epistles are but we see what shifts a bad cause puts you upon that such men as Ferus Cassander Erasmus are under an Index Expurgatorius but the
this pretence That we are to believe the Pope and Council Infallible because implicitly they define themselves to be so Than which one could hardly meet with a more absurd Answer from the highest Enthusiast for he can tell you as boldly that he hath the Spirit of God because he hath it and just so much you say and no more Pope and Council are Infallible because they are Infallible But I must pity you I know you would not willingly have run into these absurdities but it was your hard fortune to maintain a bad cause and you could not possibly help it for the straights you were in were so great that you must venture thorow some great absurdity to get out of them But all the pity I have for you is gone when I read your next words Thus we conceive the Relator's Achilles is fallen How fallen If he be it is only with Antaeus to rise the stronger But I assure you so far was he from falling by any force of your Answer that he stands more impregnably than ever having not so much as a heel left that you can wound him in And if you have nothing more to say than what you here give us in answer to this argument which you tell us is the common Answer of Divines I am so far from wondring that his Lordship took no notice of it that I shall only wonder at the weakness of your judgement or largeness of your Faith that can so contentedly swallow such grand absurdities If this be but as you say the Prologue to the Play I doubt you will find but a sad Catastrophe in it The main business you tell us is about the Priests intention concerning which he positively layes down that it is not of absolute necessity to the essence of a Sacrament so as to make it void though the Priests thoughts should wander from his work at the instant of using the essentials of a Sacrament yea or have in him an actual intention to scorn the Church What now have you to shew to the contrary If the Priests intention be not absolutely necessary to the essence or validity of a Sacrament you desire a reason of your adversaries Why we should not think a Priest consecrates the body of Christ as much at a Table where there is Wheaten Bread before him and that eieither by way of disputation or reading the 26. Chapter of St. Matthew he pronounces the words Hoc est corpus meum as he doth at the Altar since here is the true form Hoc est corpus meum the true matter Wheaten Bread and he that pronounces the form is a true Priest and yet in all mens judgement here 's no true Sacrament made Something else therefore is requisite to the essence of a Sacrament and What can that possibly be if it be not the intention which the Church requires Since your request is reasonable I shall endeavour your satisfaction and the rather because it tends to the full clearing the business in hand To your Enquiry then I answer That the Institution of Christ requiring such a solemnity for the administration of it and such a disposition in the Church for the receiving it and the performance of such acts in order to the administration by the dispenser of it these do sufficiently distinguish the Lords Supper from all other actions what matter form or person soever be there Were not in the Apostles times the assembling of the people together for this end and the solemn performance of the acts of administration sufficient to discriminate the Lords Supper from reading the 26. of Matthew by an Apostle at the Table when there was Bread and Wine upon it And I must confess I cannot but wonder that you should be so much to seek as not to know the one from the other unless you knew the Priests intention But I consider your Question was not made for Apostolical times but for private Masses wherein the Priest may mumble over the words of Consecration to himself and none else be the wiser or better for what he saith or doth Here it was indeed very requisite you should make the Priests intention necessary to discriminate this action from that you mentioned but where-ever the Lords Supper is duly administred according to the Primitive Institution the solemnity of the action and circumstances do so far individuate it as sufficiently to difference it from any other formalities whatsoever And so it is in conferring Orders Is there not enough do you think in the solemnity of the action with the preceding circumstances and the Bishops laying on of his hands with the using the words proper to that occasion to difference it from the Bishops casual laying his hands on the head of a man and in the mean time reading perchance the words of ordination We assert then that no further intention is at all necessary to the essence of a Sacrament but what is discoverable by the outward action Which being of that nature which may difference it self by reason of peculiar circumstances from others there is no imaginable necessity to have recourse to the private intention of the Priest for satisfaction But see how unreasonable you are herein for you would make that to be necessary to distinguish a Sacramental action from any other which it is impossible any man should be acquainted with For if I had no other way to distinguish in the case you mention but the Priests intention I must be as much to seek as ever unless I cerrainly knew what the Priests intention was which if you have an art of being acquainted with I pretend not to it Is it then necessary to distinguish the one from the other or not If not To what end is your Question If it be To what purpose is the Priests intention when I cannot know it But you would seem to object against the circumstances discriminating a Sacramental action 1. If the circumstances do shew to the standers by that the Priest really intends to make a Sacrament and this signification be necessary then the Priests intention is necessary or else Why is it necessary it should be signified I answer The circumstances are not intended to signifie the Priests intention any further than that intention is discoverable by the actions themselves so that it is not any inward intention which is thereby signified but only such an intention as the outward action imports which is the celebration of the blessed Sacrament So it is not the Priests intending to make a Sacrament as you phrasify it but his intending to celebrate it i. e. not such an intention as is unitive of matter and form as your Schools speak in this case but such as relates to the external action But against this you urge 2. That such external signification is not at all necessary for say you Might not a Catholick Priest to save the soul of some dying Infant baptize it if he could without any such signification by circumstances
they were and yet be changed into something else And although a great Controversie hath been raised about the reading of these words yet this reading is not only justified by many Authours of competent Antiquity but by two MSS. in the K. of France's Library besides many others elsewhere and all editions but that at Rome and others which follow it So that this Authour plainly asserts that the substance of the elements does remain still and therefore can only be understood of a sacramental change Thus I have to satisfie you examined your testimonies in behalf of Transubstantiation but whereas you referr me for more to Bellarmin and other Catholick Authours I shall referr you for Answer to those no less Catholick Authours though no believers of Transubstantiation who have taken large and excellent pains in answering what they have brought either from Scripture or Antiquity But you having done your best in the latter come at last to the former but so pitifully manage your business as to Scripture that it had been more for the interest of your cause you had never medled with it For you only say That the words of Scripture taken in their proper and litteral sense do evidently shew that the only substance which is delivered in this Sacrament is the body of Christ and that the substance of bread is no more there And all this comes only from hence because Christ saith This is my body which you parallel with one pointing to a hogshead of wine saying This is wine and with one holding up a purse full of mony saying This is gold who if they intend to speak truth must signifie that the only liquor contained sub propriâ formâ in the hogshead is wine and all the mony in the purse gold But how weak this is will easily appear 1. That you take it for granted that the expression of Christ is not at all figurative but of the same nature with those Propositions you mention whereas it is largely proved from the nature of a Sacrament from many parallel expressions in Scripture from evidence of Antiquity Sense and Reason that these words of Christ cannot be otherwise than figuratively understood 2. You suppose that Christ must speak of the individual bread when he said This is my body as our parallel instances are of such individuals as are pointed to But Bellarmin will tell you That if Christ had spoken of the bread when he said This is my body absurdissima esset locutio it had been a most absurd speech And Vasquez saith If the Pronoune Hoc This should relate to the bread he confesses that by virtue of those words there could be no substantial change made in it for the bread must remain still So that by the confession of your own Authours your parallel is absurd and destructive to the Doctrine of Transubstantiation The third errour of a General Council confirmed by the Pope which his Lordship insists on is That of administring the B. Sacrament to the Laiety under one kind only Of this he had spoken before and thither you referr us for your Answer but I purposely omitted the handling it there because it comes in more properly in this place There his Lordship hath these words To break Christs Institution is a damnable errour and so confessed by Stapleton The Council of Constance is bold and defines peremptorily that to communicate in both kinds is not necessary with a non obstante to the Institution of Christ and although Bellarmin answers that the non obstante only belongs to the time of receiving it after supper yet his Lordship shews from the words of the Council that the non obstante must relate to both clauses foregoing and hath as much force against receiving under both kinds as against receiving after supper Yea and the after words of the Council couple both together in this reference for it follows similiter And so likewise though in the Primitive Church c. And a man by the definition of this Council may be an Heretick for standing to Christs Institution in the very matter of the Sacrament And the Churches Law for one kind may not be refused but Christs Institution under both kinds may And yet this Council did not err no take heed of it But all this cannot perswade you That the non obstante relates to any thing but to the receiving after supper which I much wonder at since the design of the Decree of the Council was not to determine so much concerning the time of receiving as the kinds in which it was to be received Now to have said point-blank that notwithstanding the Institution of Christ to the contrary they decreed that the Sacrament should be received in one kind only would have been too plain and gross and therefore they fetch it about with a compass and put in something not so much controverted then the better to disguise the opposition between their Decree and Christs Institution But yet by the adding the administration in both kinds to the time of receiving and the non obstante following both and the decree being against that which is acknowledged to have been done by Christ nothing can be more evident then that the sense of the Decree implyes a non obstante to Christs Institution For otherwise To what purpose do they say Although Christ administred the Sacrament in both kinds and although the Primitive Church so received it if they did not intend to decree something contrary to that administration and the practise of the Primitive Church Therefore whether by the meer form of words the non obstante doth relate to Christs Institution or no is not material since the Decree it self is directly opposite to it Although therefore they did not put receiving in one kind immediately after the non obstante which is that you object as they do not consecrating after supper and receiving fasting yet the force of it reacheth to what follows after as not only appears by the connexion And likewise but chiefly by the scope of the Decree it self For the Proctors of the Council Henricus de Piro and Johannes de Scribanis in their â—uthentick Instrument never exhibited any Controversie at all concerning the time of receiving but only concerning the Communion in both kinds because they said there was an ill custome so the observing Christs Institution was call'd for some Priests to give the Cup to the Laity therefore they desired the Council c. So that it appears this bringing in the time of receiving was only the artifice of the contrivers of the Decree that they might with less noise and clamour thwart the plain Institution of Christ. And accordingly it appears by the title of the Decree that the intent of it was to forbid the giving the Sacrament to the people in both kinds and so Carranza delivereth the Canon it self Praecipimus sub poenâ excommunicationis quòd nullus presbyter communicet populum sub utrâque
Judges of these things then the Fathers themselves Are they not the men who have bid us distinguish what comes from them in a heat from that which they deliver as the Doctrine of the Church Have not they told us that the popular Orations uttered in Churches are no rules of opinion Have not some of them when they have seemed extream vehement and earnest at last come off with this That they have been declaiming all that while Witness St. Hierome against Helvidius and if you make not use of the same rule to put a favourable construction on his Books against Jovinian Vigilantius Ruffinus and others you will as little be able to excuse him from strange Doctrines as from intemperate heats What put-off then is it for us to say that St. Basil in his Oration on Mammas and the forty eight Martyrs that S. Gregory Nazianzen in his Panegyrical Orations on St. Basil St. Athanasius St. Cyprian his sister Gorgonia St. Gregory Nyssen in his commendation of Theodorus do make use of their Rhetorick in Apostrophe's to the persons whom they praise without any solemn Invocation of them What is there herein unsuitable to their present purpose Is it any more then Oratours have commonly done What strange thing is it then that those great Masters of Rhetorick should make use of their art to raise the people not only to a high esteem of their persons but of those vertues which rendred them so illustrious Might not such expressions by way of Apostrophe be still used by such who are furthest from the Invocation of Saints although by their example we are taught how dangerous it is to indulge Rhetorick too much in such cases But as though they foresaw the ill use would be made of them they add such expressions as sufficiently tell us they made no solemn Invocation of them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the like Had these persons a mind to deliver a Doctrine of Invocation of Saints who speak with such hesitation and doubt as to their sense of what was spoken For it is a groundless shift to say that those expressions imply an affirmation and not doubt That which we say then is this That the Doctrine of the Church is not to be judged by such Encomiastick Orations wherein such Rhetorical flourishes are usual and when you bring us their plain and positive assertions we will by no means give you that Answer That those are flourishes of wit and Rhetorick But his Lordship very well knew how far you were from any such dogmatical assertions of the Fathers in this point and that the most plausible testimonies which you had were taken out of those three great Oratours in their Panegyricks in praise of their Friends or of the Martyrs and therefore it was he said Though some of the ancient Fathers have some Rhetorical flourishes about it for the stirring up devotion as they thought yet the Church then admitted not of the Invocation of Saints That is it we stand on that no such thing was admitted by the Church if we should yield that any particular though great persons were too lavish in their expressions this way must these be the standard which we must judge of the Doctrine of the Church by We must consider the Church was now out of persecution and ease and honour attended that profession of Christianity for which such multitudes had endured the flames and the people began to grow more loose and vain then when they still expected Martyrdoms This made these great men so highly commend the Martyrs in their popular Orations not to propound them as objects of Invocation but as examples for their imitation Thence they encouraged them to frequent the Memoriae martyrum that by their assemblies in those places they might revive something of that pristine heat of devotion which was now so much abated among them But the event was so far from answering their expectation that by this means they grew by degrees to place much of their Religion rather in honouring the former Martyrs and Saints then in striving to imitate them in their vertues and graces And from the frequenting the places where the Martyrs were enshrined through the pretence of some extatical dreams and visions or some rare occurrences which they say happened at those places they began to turn their real honour into superstitious devotion which at last ended in solemn Invocation To which no small encouragement was given when such persons as S. Hierom and others were so far from putting a stop to the growing evil that though they confessed many miscarriages committed yet they rather sought to palliate them and make the best construction of them still hoping that this zeal in the people to the honour of the Martyrs would promote devotion among them whereas it sunk gradually into greater superstitions This I take to be the truest and most faithful account of those first beginnings and tendencies to Invocation of Saints which appeared in the latter end of the fourth Century For before that time we meet with nothing that can bear the face of any positive and plain assertions instances examples histories or reports tending that way Which is so clear that Cardinal Perron after the best use of his wit and diligence to find out something to this purpose within the three first Centuries at last confesses that in the Authours who lived nearer the Apostles times no footsteps can be found of the Invocation of Saints But when he gives this account of it That most of the writings of that time are lost it makes us see what poor excuses bad causes will drive the greatest wits to For are not the writings of Justin Martyr Irenaeus Clemens Alexandrinus Origen Tertullian Cyprian Arnobius Lactantius and others still extant who were pious and learned men And is it possible that such men should all of them conceal such a Doctrine as this which would so easily appear in the face of the Church But it is well we have the confession of so great a man for the best ages of the Church and not only so but he acknowledges withall That there is neither precept nor example for it in the Scripture Which others not only assert but offer to give reasons for it for the Old Testament Because the Fathers were not then admitted to the beatifical vision and for the New Testament Because the Apostles were men of such piety and humility that they would not admit of it themselves and therefore made no mention of it in their writings and withall Because in the beginning of Christianity there would have been a suspicion that they had only changed the names of Heathen Deities and retained the same kinds of worship These for the new Testament we admit of not as Rhetorical flourishes but as plain and positive assertions which contain a great deal of truth and reason in them So that here is a confessed silence as to this Doctrine throughout all the story of Scripture and for three
he ever speak so concerning the Trinity or the Incarnation of Christ which you parallel with Purgatory What would men have thought of him if he had said of either of those Articles It is not incredible they may be true and it may be enquired into whether they be or no Whatever then St. Austins private opinion was we see he delivers it modestly and doubtfully not obtruding it as an Article of Faith or Apostolical Tradition if any be And the very same he repeats in his Answer to the first Question of Dulcitius so that this was all that ever he asserted as to this Controversie What you offer to the contrary from other places of St. Austin shall be considered in its due place 4. Where any of the Fathers build any Doctrine upon the sense of doubtful places of Scripture we have no further reason to believe that Doctrine then we have to believe that it is the meaning of those places So that in this case the enquiry is taken off from the judgement of the Fathers and fixed upon the sense of the Scriptures which they and we both rely upon For since they pretend themselves to no greater evidence of the truth of the Doctrine then such places do afford it is the greatest reason that the argument to perswade us be not the testimony of the Father but the evidence of the place it self Unless it be evident some other way that there was an universal Tradition in the Church from the Apostles times concerning it and that the only design of the Father was to apply some particular place to it But then such a Tradition must be cleared from something else besides the sense of some ambiguous places of Scripture and that Tradition manifested to be Vniversal both as to time and place These things being premised I now come particularly to examine the evidence you bring That all the Fathers both Greek and Latin did constantly teach Purgatory from the Apostles times and consequently that it must be held for an Apostolical Tradition or nothing can be And as you follow Bellarmin in your way of proving it so must I follow you and he divides his proofs you say into two ranks First Such who affirm prayer for the dead 2. Such who in the successive ages of the Church did expresly affirm Purgatory First with those who affirm prayer for the dead Which you say doth necessarily infer Purgatory whatever the Bishop vainly insinuates to the contrary The Question then between us is Whether that prayer for the dead which was used in the ancient Church doth necessarily inferr that Purgatory was then acknowledged This you affirm for say you If there were no other place or condition of being for departed souls but either Heaven or Hell surely it were a vain thing to pray for the dead especially to pray for the remission of their sins or for their refreshment ease rest relaxation of their pains as Ancients most frequently do From whence you add that Purgatory is so undenyably proved that the Relator finding nothing himself sufficient to Answer was forced to put us off to the late Primate of Armagh 's Answer to the Jesuits Challenge Which you say You have perused and find only there that the Authour proves that which none of you deny viz. That the prayers and commemorations used for the dead had reference to more souls than those in Purgatory But you attempt to prove That the nature and kind of those prayers do imply that they were intended for other ends than meerly that the body might be glorified as well as the soul and to praise God for the final happy end of the deceased Whereas that Answerer of the Jesuite would you say by his allegations insinuate to the Reader a conceit that it was used only for those two reasons and no other Which you say you must needs avouch to be most loudly untrue and so manifestly contrary to the Doctrine and practise of the Fathers as nothing can be more A high charge against two most Reverend and learned Primates together against the one as not being able to Answer and therefore turning it off to the other against the other for publishing most loud untruths instead of giving a true account of the grounds of the Churches practise It seems you thought it not honour enough to overcome one unless you led the other in triumph also but you do neither of them but only in your own fancy and imagination And never had you less cause to give out such big words then here unless it were to amuse the spectatours that they might not see how you fall before them For it was not the least distrust of his sufficiency to Answer which made his Lordship to put it oft to the Primate of Armagh but because he was prevented in it by him Who as he truly saith had very learnedly and at large set down other reasons which the Ancients gave for prayer for the dead without any intention to free them from Purgatory Which are not only different from but inconsistent with the belief of Purgatory for the clearing of which and vindicating my Lord Primate from your calumnies rather then answers it will be necessary to give a brief account of his Discourse on that subject He tells us therefore at first That we are here prudently to distinguish the Original institution of the Church from the private opinions of particular Doctors which waded further herein then the general intendment of the Church did give them warrant Now he evidently proves that the memorials oblations and prayers made for the dead at the beginning had reference to such as rested from their labours and not unto any souls which were thought to be tormented in that Vtopian Purgatory whereof there was no news stirring in those dayes This he gathers first by the practise of the ancient Christians laid down by the Authour of the Commentaries on Job who saith The memorials of the Saints were observed as a memorial of rest to the souls departed and that they therein rejoyced for their refreshing St. Cyprian saith they offered Sacrifices for them whom he acknowledgeth to have received of the Lord Palms and Crowns and in the Authour of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy the party deceased is described by him to have departed this life replenished with Divine joy as now not fearing any change to worse being come unto the end of all his labours and publickly pronounced to be a happy man and admitted into the society of the Saints and yet the Bishop prayes that God would forgive him all his sins he had committed through humane infirmity and bring him into the light and band of the living into the bosoms of Abraham Isaac and Jacob into the place from whence pain and sorrow and sighing flyeth And Saint Chrysostom shews that the funeral Ordinances of the Church were appointed to admonish the living that the parties deceased were in a state of joy and not of grief and