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
answer that when you say It is necessary we must believe the Scriptures to be the VVord of God with Divine Faith this Divine Faith must be taken in one of these three senses either first that Faith may be said to be Divine which hath a Divine Revelation for its Material Object as that Faith may be said to be a Humane Faith which is conversant about natural causes and the effects of them And in this sense it cannot but be a Divine Faith which is conversant about the Scripture because it is a Divine Revelation Or secondly a Faith may be said to be Divine in regard of its Testimony or Formal Object and so that is called a Divine Faith which is built on a Divine Testimony and that a Humane Faith which is built on a Humane Testimony Thus I assert all that Faith which respects particular Objects of Faith supposing the belief of the Scriptures is in this sense Divine because it is built on a properly Divine Testimony but the Question is Whether that Act of Faith which hath the whole Scripture as its Material Object be in that sense Divine or no. Thirdly Faith may be said to be Divine in regard of the Divine Effects it hath upon the soul of man as it is said in Scripture to purifie the heart overcome the world resist Satan and his Temptations receive Christ c. And this is properly a Divine Faith and there is no Question but every Christian ought to have this Divine Faith in his soul without which the other sorts of Divine Faith will never bring men to Heaven But it is apparent that all who heartily profess to believe the Scriptures to be the VVord of God have not this sort of Divine Faith though they have so firm an assent to the Truth and Authority of it that they durst lay down their lives for it The Assent therefore we see may be firm where the effects are not saving The Question now is Whether this may be called a Divine Faith in the second sense that is Whether it must be built on a Testimony infallible For clearing which we must further consider the meaning of this Question How we know Scripture to be Scripture which may import two things How we know that all these Books contain God's VVord in them Or secondly How we know the Doctrine contained in these Books to be Divine If you then ask me Whether it be necessary that I believe with such a Faith as is built on Divine Testimony that these Books called the Scripture contain the principles of the Jewish and Christian Religion in them which we call God's VVord I deny it and shall do so till you shew me some further necessity of it than you have done yet and my reason is because I may have sufficient ground for such an Assent without any Divine Testimony But if you ask me On what ground I believe the Doctrine to be Divine which is contained in those Books I then answer affirmatively On a Divine Testimony because God hath given abundant evidence that this Doctrine was of Divine Revelation Thus you see what little reason you have to triumph in your Argument from Divine Faith inferring the necessity of an unwritten VVord of God But the further explication of these things must be reserved till I come to the positive part of our way of resolution of Faith I now return Having after your way that is very unsatisfactorily attempted the vindicating your resolution of Faith from the Objections which were offered against it by his Lordship you come now to consider the second way propounded by him for the resolving Faith which is That Scripture should be fully and sufficiently known as by divine and infallible Testimony by the resplendency of that light which it hath in it self only and by the witness it can so give to it self against which he gives such evident reasons that you acknowledge the Relator himself hath sufficiently confuted it and you agree with him in the Confutation Yet herein you grow very angry with him for saying That this Doctrine may agree well enough with your grounds in regard you hold that Tradition may be known for God's VVord by its own light and consequently the like may be said of Scripture This you call aspersing you and obtruding falshoods upon you Whether it be so or no must appear upon examination Two Testimonies are cited from A. C. to this purpose the first is Tradition of the Church is of a Company which by its own light shews it self to be infallibly assisted Your Answer is That the word which must properly relate to the preceding word Company and not to the more remote word Tradition But what of all this Doth any thing the less follow which the Bishop charged A. C. with For it being granted by you That there can be no knowing an Apostolical Tradition but for the Infallibility of the present Church the same light which discovers the Infallibility of that Company doth likewise discover the Truth of Tradition If therefore your Church doth appear infallible by its own light which is your own confession May not the Scripture as well appear infallible by its own light For is there not as great self-evidence at least that the Scripture is infallible as that your Church is infallible And therefore that way you take to shift the Objection makes it return upon you with greater force For I pray tell me how any Company can appear by its own Light to be assisted by the Holy Ghost and not much more the Holy Scripture to be divine Especially seeing you must at last be forced to derive this Infallibility from the Scriptures For you pretend to no other Infallibility than what comes by a promise of the immediate assistance of the Holy Ghost How then can any Company appear by its own Light to be thus infallibly assisted unless it first appear by its own Light that there was such a Promise and how can that unless it antecedently appear by its own Light that the Scripture in which the Promise is written is the VVord of God You tell us A. C ' s. intention is only to affirm That the Church is known by her Motives of Credibility which ever accompany her and may very properly be called her own Light How well you are acquainted with A. C ' s. intention I know not neither is it much matter for granting this to have been his intention may not the Scripture be known by her Motives of Credibility as well as the Church and do not these accompany her as much as the Church and may they not be called her Light as properly as those of the Church It is plain then by all the senses and meanings you can find out in the very same that you say the Church may be known by her own Light the Scripture may much more and therefore you have no reason to quarrel with his Lordship or affirming it The second Testimony
the proper actings of my Faculties I may judge such things to have connexions and depâ—ndencies one upon another which really have nothing so And therefore so far your distinction concerning Science and Faith will not hold But 2. If the meaning of this distinction be only this That there is a different proceeding in a demonstration from what there is in an act of Faith I deny it not but suppose it nothing to your purpose For though the evidence be discovered in a different way yet there is in both proportionable evidence to the nature of the Assent When I assent because I know that the thing is true the evidence of the thing it self is the ground of that Assent but when I assent upon the Authority of any person the Credibility of his Testimony is the evidence on which that Assent is grounded Though this latter evidence be of another kind yet it is sufficient for that act of the mind which is built upon it and that Testimony which I establish a firm Assent upon must be as evident in its kind i. e. of Credibility as the evidence of a thing demonstrable in the nature of a Demonstration 3. The main strength of your Answer seems to lye in this That in such an Assent as is built upon Authority as in the case of Faith when we do not immediately hear God speaking but it is conveyed to us by the Testimony of others it is necessary that this Testimony be infallible But good Sir this is not our present Question Whether it be necessary that this Testimony be infallibly conveyed to us but supposing such an infallible Conveyance Whether that infallible Testimony must not be more credible than the matters which are believed upon it But as though never any such thing had been started You give us a long discourse of the different proceeding of Science and Faith but never offer to apply it to the business in hand I must therefore ingenuously commend you for an excellent Art of gliding insensibly away from a business you cannot answer and casting out a great many words not to the purpose that you may seem to touch the matter when you are far enough from it And therefore I say Secondly That however the evidence proceeds in matters of Faith yet whatever is the Foundation of Assent must be more evident than the thing assented to Especially where you suppose the Assent to be infallible and the Testimony infallible which must ascertain it to us This will be plainer by an instance If I ask you Why you believe the Resurrection of the dead your Answer is because of the Authority of him that reveals it The next Question then is Why you believe that God hath revealed it your Answer is Because the Testimony of the Church is infallible which delivers it Whereby it is plain That though your first Answer be from God's Authority yet the last resolution of your Faith is the Infallibility of your Churches Testimony and that being the last resolution that Infallibility must be the Principle on which the belief of the rest depends For according to your Principles though God had revealed it yet if this Revelation were not attested by the infallible Testimony of your Church we should not have sufficient ground to believe it And if without that we can have no sufficient ground to believe then this Principle The Church is infallible must be more credible than the Resurrection of the dead Which was the Absurdity his Lordship charged upon you and you are far from being able to quit your self of The next thing which you busie your self much in answering of is That according to these Principles of resolution of Faith you make the Churches Testimony the formal Object of Faith which you acknowledge your self to be a great Absurdity and therefore make use of many shifts to avoid I shall reduce the substance of your verbose and immethodical Answer into as narrow a compass as I can without defalking any thing of the strength of it You tell us then That our Faith is resolved into God's Revelations whether written or unwritten as its Formal Object and our Infallible Assurance that the things we believe as God's Revelations are revealed from him is resolved into the Infallibility of the Churches Definitions teaching us that they are his Revelations And that the Formal Cause of our Assent in Divine Faith is God's Revelation delivered to the Church without writing but because that is as it were at distance from us it is approximated or immediately applied to us by the infallible Declaration of the present Church Hence it appears our Faith rests only upon God's Revelation as its Formal Object though the Churches Voice be a condition so necessary for its resting thereon that it can never attain that Formal Object without it And lastly you tell us The Churches Authority then being more known to us than the Scriptures may well be some reason of our admitting them yet the Scriptures still retain their prerogative above the Church and thence you distinguish of the certainty of the Object and Subject from all which you conclude That the Churches Definition is not the Formal Object of Faith but that our Faith relyes upon it as an Infallible Witness both of the written and unwritten Word of God which is the Formal Object This is the substance in your long Answer of what hath the face of reason and pertinency Which I come to a close and particular examination of And that you may not say I pass over this important Controversie without a through discussion of it I shall first prove that it necessarily follows from your Principles That the Churches Infallible Testimony must be the Formal Object of Faith And 2. That the Answers you give are far from being satisfactory that it is not 1. That it necessarily follows from your Principles That the Churches Infallible Testimony must be the Formal Object of Faith In order to which we must consider what the scope and design of this Discourse is concerning the Resolution of Faith The Question started by Mr. Fisher in the Conference was How his Lordship knew Scripture to be Scripture or How the Divine Authority of the Scriptures was to be proved To this his Lordship returns a large Answer to which you attempt a Reply in this Chapter and mention this to be the main Question How Scriptures may be known to be the Word of God To this you tell us No satisfactory Answer can be given but from the infallible Testimony of the Church and the great reason given by you in all your discourse is this That this is an Article to be believed with Divine Faith and Divine Faith must be built on an Infallible Testimony The Question then resulting hence is Whether on these Principles you do not make the Infallible Testimony of the Church the Formal Object of Faith You deny and we affirm it but before I come to the particular Evidences of the Cause
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
a revelation for what he did And the answer to this had been only pertinent and satisfactory So that he might have no reason to question it although he did not believe any thing more then common fidelity in his Fathers testimony For God never when revelations were most common thought it necessary to multiply revelations so far as to make one necessary to attest another but that revelation which was communicated to one was obligatory to all concerned in it though they could have nothing but Moral certainty for it By this it appears that when we now speak of the resolution of Faith though the utmost reason of our assent is that Infallibility which is supposed in Divine Testimony yet the nearest and most proper resolution of it is into the grounds inducing us to believe that such a Testimony is truly Divine and the resolution of this cannot be into any Divine Testimony without a process in infinitum 2. That when we speak of the resolution of Faith by Faith we understand a rational and discursive act of the mind For Faith being an assent upon evidence or reason inducing the mind to assent it must be a rational and discursive act and such a one that one may be able to give an account of to another And this account which men are able to give why they do believe or on what ground they do it is that which we call resolving Faith And by this it appears that whatever resolves Faith into its efficient cause which some improperly call the Testimony of the spirit though it may be true yet comes not home to the question For if by the Testimony of the spirit be meant that operation of the spirit whereby saving Faith is wrought in us then it gives no account from the thing to be believed why we assent to it but only shews how Faith is wrought in us by way of efficiency which is rather resolving the question about the necessity of Grace than the grounds of Faith Our question is not then concerning the necessity of infused habits of Grace but of those rational inducements which do incline the mind to a firm assent For Faith in us however it is wrought being a perswasion of the mind it is not conceivable how there should be any discursive act of the mind without some reason causing the mind to assent to what is propounded to it For without this Faith would be an unaccountable thing and the spirit of revelation would not be the spirit of wisdom and Religion would be exposed to the contempt of all unbelievers if we were able to give no other account of Faith then that it is wrought in us by the Spirit of God When we speak therefore of the resolving Faith we mean what are the rational inducements to believe or what evidence there is in the object propounded to make us firmly assent to it 3. According to the different acts of Faith there must be assigned a different resolution of Faith For every act being rational and discursive must have its proper grounds belonging to it unless we suppose that act elicited without any reason for it which is incongruous with the nature of the humane understanding There are then in the question of resolution of Faith these three questions to be resolved First Why I believe those things to be true which are contained in the Book called the Scripture 2. Why I believe the Doctrine contained in that Book to be Divine 3. Why I believe the Books themselves to be of Divine revelation Now every one of these questions admits of a different way of resolution as will appear by the handling each of them distinctly 1. If I be asked On what grounds I believe the things to be true which are contained in Scripture my answer must be From the greatest evidence of truth which things of that nature are capable of If therefore the persons who are supposed to have writ these things were such who were fully acquainted with what they writ of if they were such persons who cannot be suspected of any design to deceive men by their writings and if I be certain that these which go under the name of their writings are undoubtedly theirs I must have sufficient grounds to believe the truth of them Now that the writers of these things cannot be suspected of ignorance appears by the time and age they writ in when the story of these things was new and such multitudes were willing enough to have contradicted it if any thing had beeen amiss besides some of the writers had been intimately conversant with the person and actions of him whom they writ most of That they could have no intent to deceive appears from the simplicity and candour both of their actions and writings from their contempt of the world and exposing themselves to the greatest hazards to bear witness to them That these are the very same writings appears by all the evidence can be desired For we have as great if not much greater reason to believe them to be the Authors of the Books under their Names than any other writers of any Books whatsoever both because the matters are of greater moment and therefore men might be supposed more inquisitive about them and that they have been unanimously received for 〈◊〉 from the very time of their being first written except some very few which upon strict examination were admitted too and we find these very Books cited by the learned Christians under these Names in that time when it had been no difficulty to have found out several of the Original Copy's themselves When therefore they were universally received by Christians never doubted of by Jews or Heathen Philosophers we have as great evidence for this first act of Faith as it is capable of And he is unreasonable who desires more 2. If I be asked why I believe the Doctrine contained in these Books to be Divine I must give in two things for answer 1. That in the Age when the Doctrine was delivered there was sufficient reason to believe it Divine 2. That if there was sufficient reason then we have sufficient reason now 1. That in the Age when the Doctrine was delivered there was sufficient reason to believe it Divine Supposing then that we already believe upon the former answer that all the matters of fact be true I answer that if Christ did such unparalleâ—d miracles and rose from the dead they who heard his Doctrine had reason to believe it to be of God and this I suppose the greatest Infidel would not deny if himself had been one of the witnesses of his actions and resurection 2. That if they had reason then we have so now because tradition to us doth only supply the want of our senses as to what Christ did and spake i. e. That tradition is a kind of derivative and perpetuated sensation to us it being of the same use to us now which our eyes and ears had been if we had been
not from hence that Heresie was supposed to dissolve that obligation to obedience which otherwise men lay under And if it doth destroy that Faith which men owe to their Soveraigns in case of Heresie Will it not equally destroy that Faith which Princes promise to their subjects in case of Heresie too For what reason can be given for the one which will not hold for the other also And who were they I pray but those loyal persons the Jesuits who broached fomented and propagated that Doctrine Was not Father Creswell a Jesuit who under the name of Andreas Philopator delivers this excellent Doctrine That the whole School of Divines teach and it is a thing certain and of Faith that any Christian Prince if he manifestly falls off from the Religion of the Catholick Roman Church and endeavours to draw others from it doth by Law of God and man fall from all power and authority and that before the sentence of the Pope and Judge delivered against him and that all his subjects are free from the obligation of any Oath to him of obedience and loyalty and that they may and ought cast such a one out of his power as an Apostate and a Heretick lest he infect others I might mention many more who write after the same nature but I spare you only this one may serve instead of many for he delivers it not only as his own judgement but the consent of the School and as a thing most certain as being of Faith And will you still say That no Jesuits own such principles as That Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks For if Heresie doth thus destroy all obligation to obedience in subjects to Heretical Princes Will it not much more in Princes toward heretical subjects because certainly Princes have a greater power and right to command over subjects than subjects over them even in your own case of Heresie Since this therefore is the avowed Doctrine of the Jesuitical School perswade whom you can to believe that you look on an obligation to Faith remaining in a case of Heresie Certainly none who understand your principles and practices will have much cause to rely on your Faith in this particular So much at present of the Jesuits Integrity as to this principle of keeping Faith with Hereticks What you add further about the Council of Constance and John Husse and Hierom of Prague is only serving up the very same matter in somewhat different words for there is nothing contained in them but what hath been sufficiently disproved already for it all depends on the nature of the safe-conduct and the difference of the Secular and Ecclesiastical Power His Lordship very pertinently asks supposing men might go safely to Rome To what purpose is it to go to a General Council thither and use freedom of speech since the Church of Rome is resolved to alter nothing and you very pertinently answer That they were invited thither to be better instructed and reclaimed from their errours But Will no place serve to reclaim them but Rome Can they not be as well instructed elsewhere and by other means than by being summoned to a General Council We had thought the intention of General Councils had been to have had free debates concerning the matters which divide the Church But it seems the Protestants must have been summoned as guilty persons i. e. Hereticks and their Adversaries must have sate as their proper Judges and such who were accused as the great Innovators must have believed themselves Infallible and by your own saying If an Angel from Heaven had come as a Protestant thither he would not have been believed nay it had been well he had escaped so if your power were as great over spirits as over our grosser bodies So I suppose John Husse and Hierom of Prague were invited to Constance to be better instructed and it is well we know by their example what you mean by your good instructions and out of a desire to avoid them care not how little we appear where our Adversaries not only intend to be Judges but resolve beforehand to condemn us whatsoever we say For so you tell us That Rome and the Fathers of Trent were resolved to stick to their own Doctrine which they call Catholick notwithstanding any pretended difficulties or objections brought against it either by Bishops or any other person Your kind invitations then of the Protestants were wonderful expressions of your Churches civility towards them that they might be present to hear themselves condemned and then escape how they could themselves The offer of a publick Disputation his Lordship truly tells you signifies nothing without an indifferent arbitration and the impossibility of agreeing on that renders the other useless and only becomes such Thrasonical persons as Campian was who yet had as little reason as any man to boast of his Atchievements in his disputations When you therefore say His Lordship would have some Atheist Turk or Jew to fit as indifferent persons you shew only your Scurrility and want of understanding For his Lordship only insists on the necessity of that to shew the uselesness of publick Disputations where such cannot be agreed on as in this case And he truly saith This is a good Answer to all such offers that the Kings and Church of England had no reason to admit of a publick Dispute with the English Romish Clergy till they shall be able to shew it under the Seal or Powers of Rome that that Church will submit to a Third who may be an indifferent Judge between us and them or to such a General Council as is after mentioned not such a one as you would have wherein the Pope should sit as Head of the Church for that is to make the greatest Criminal Judge in his own cause And this saith he is an honest and I think a full Answer And without this all Disputation must end in Clamour and therefore the more publick the worse Because as the Clamour is the greater so perhaps will be the Schism too CHAP. IV. The Reformation of the Church of England justified The Church of Rome guilty of Schism by unjustly casting Protestants out of Communion The Communion of the Catholick 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 difference 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
E Typographiâ prodeat opus istud cui Titulus A Rational Account of the Grounds of Protestant Religion being a Vindication of the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury's Relation of a Conference c. from the Pretended Answer by T. C. Humfr. London 2. Novemb. 1664. A Rational Account OF THE GROUNDS OF Protestant Religion BEING A VINDICATION OF THE Lord Archbishop of Canterbury's RELATION Of a CONFERENCE c. From the pretended ANSWER by T. C. Wherein the true GROUNDS of FAITH are cleared and the False discovered the CHURCH of ENGLAND Vindicated from the imputation of Schism and the most important particular Controversies between Us and Those of the Church of ROME throughly examined By EDWARD STILLINGFLEET B. D. LONDON Printed by Rob. White for Henry Mortlock at the Sign of the Phoenix in St. Pauls Church-yard near the little North-door 1665. TO HIS MOST Sacred Majesty CHARLES II. By the Grace of God King of Great Britain France and Ireland Defender of the Faith c. Most Gracious Soveraign SInce that great Miracle of Divine Providence in your Majesties most happy restauration we have seen those who before triumphed over the Church of England as dead as much expressing their envy at her resurrection Neither could it otherwise be expected but that so sudden a recovery of her former lustre would open the mouths of her weak but contentious Adversaries who see her shine in a Firmament so much above them But it is a part of her present Felicity that they are ashamed of that insulting Question What is become of your Church now and are driven back to their old impertinency Where was your Church before Luther They might as well alter the date of it and ask Where she was before your Majesties restauration For as she only suffered an Eclipse in the late confusions no more did she though of a longer stay in the times before the Reformation And it was her great Honour that she was not awakened out of it as of old they fancied by the beating of drums or the rude clamours of the people but as she Gradually regained her light so it was with the Influence of Supream Authority Which hath caused so close an union and combination of Interests between them that the Church of England and the Royal Family have like Hippocrates his Twins both wept and rejoyc'd together And nothing doth more argue the excellent constitution of our Church than that therein the purity of Christian Doctrine is joyned with the most hearty Acknowledgment of your Majesties Power and Supremacy So that the Loyalty of the members of it can neither be suspected of private Interest or of depending on the pleasure of a Forreign Bishop but is inlaid in the very Foundations of our Reformation Which stands on those two Grand Principles of Religion and Government The giving to God the things that are God's and to Caesar the things that are Caesar's And as long as these two remain unshaken we need not fear the continuance and flourishing of the Reformed Church of England and your Majesties Interest in the members of it Which it is hard to conceive those can have any zeal for who are the busie Factours among us for promoting so opposite an Interess as that of the Church of Rome For what a contradiction is it to suppose it consistent with your Majesties Honour and Interess to rob your Imperial Crown of one of the richest Jewels of it to expose Your Royal Scepter to the mercy of a Forreign Prelat to have another Supreme Head acknowledged within Your Dominions and thereby to cut off the dependence of a considerable part of the Nation wholly from Your Self and to exhaust the Nation of an Infinite Mass of Treasure meerly to support the Grandeur of the See of Rome They who can make men believe that these things tend to Your Majesties Service think they have gained thereby a considerable step to their Religion which is by baffling mens reason and perswading them to believe contradictions But if notwithstanding the received principles of their Church any have continued Faithful in their Loyalty to Your Majesty we have much more cause to attribute it to their Love to their King and Country than to their Religion We deny not but there may be such rare tempers which may conquer the malignity of poison but it would be a dangerous Inference from thence that it ought not to be accounted hurtful to humane nature If any such have been truly Loyal may they continue so and their number increase and since therein they so much come off from themselves we hope they may yet come nearer to us whose Religion tends as much to the settling the only sure Foundations of Loyalty as theirs doth to the weakning of them And were this the only Controversie between us there need not many Books be written to perswade men of the Truth of it But if these men may be believed we can as little please God on the principles of our Church as they Your Majesty on the principles of theirs A strange Assertion and impossible to be entertain'd by any but those who think there is no such way to please God as to renounce the judgement of Sense and Reason And then indeed we freely confess there are none so likely to do it as themselves With whom men are equally bound to believe the greatest repugnancies to sense and reason with the most Fundamental Verities of Christian Faith As though no Faith could carry men to Heaven but that which can not only remove but swallow Mountains Yet these are the persons who pretend to make our Faith Infallible while they undermine the Foundations of it as they advance Charity by denying Salvation to all but themselves and promote true Piety by their gross Superstitions By all which they have been guilty of debauching Christianity in so high a measure that it cannot but heartily grieve those who honour it as the most excellent Religion in the World to see its beauty so much clouded by the Errours and Superstitions of the Roman Church That these are great as well as sad truths is the design of the ensuing Book to discover Which I humbly present to Your Majesties hands both as it is a Defence of that Cause wherein Your Majesties Interess is so highly concern'd and of that Book which Your Royal Father of most Glorious Memory so highly honoured not only by his own perusal and approbation but by the commendation of it to his Dearest Children On which account I am more encouraged to hope for your Majesties acceptance of this because it appears under the Shadow as well as for the Defence of so great a Name And since God hath blessed Your Majesty with so happy and rare a mixture of Power and Sweetness of Temper May they be still imployed in the Love and Defence of our Reformed Church which is the hearty prayer of Your Majesties most Loyal and Obedient Subject E. STILLINGFLEET THE PREFACE TO THE READER IT
is now about a twelvemonth since there appeared to the world a Book under the Title of Dr. Lawd's Labyrinth but with the usual sincerity of those persons pretended to be Printed some years before It is not the business of this Preface to enquire Why if Printed then it remained so long unpublished but to acquaint the Reader with the scope and design of that Book and of this which comes forth as a Reply to it There are three things mainly in dispute between us and those of the Church of Rome viz. Whether they or we give the more satisfactory account of the Grounds of Faith Whether their Church or ours be guilty of the charge of Schism And Whether their Church be justly accused by us of introducing many Errours and Superstitions In the handling of these all our present Debate consists and therefore for the greater Advantage of the Reader I have distributed the whole into three distinct parts which I thought more commodious than carrying it on in one continued discourse And lest our Adversaries should complain that we still proceed in a destructive way I have not only endeavoured to lay open the palpable weakness of their Cause but to give a rational account of our own Doctrine in opposition to theirs Which I have especially done in the great Controversie of the Resolution of Faith as being the most difficult and important of any other I hope the Reader will have no cause to blame me for false or impertinent Allegations of the Fathers since it hath been so much my business to discover the fraud of our Adversaries in that particular which I have chiefly done from the scope and design of those very Books out of which their testimonies are produced In many of the particular Differences I have made use of several of their late Writers against themselves both to let them see how much Popery begins to grow weary of it self and how unjustly they condemn us for denying those things which the moderate and rational men of their own side disown and dispute against as well as we and chiefly to undeceive the world as to their great pretence of Unity among themselves Since their Divisions are grown to so great a height both at home and in foreign parts that the dissenting parties mutually charge each other with Heresie and that about their great Foundation of Faith viz. the Popes Infallibility The Jansenists in France and a growing party in England charging the Jesuits with Heresie in asserting it as they do them with the same for denying it As to my self I only declare that I have with freedom and impartiality enquired into the Reasons on both sides and no interest hath kept me from letting that side of the ballance fall where I saw the greater weight of reason In which respect I have been so far from dissembling the force of any of our Adversaries Arguments that if I could add greater weight to them I have done it being as unwilling to abuse my self as the world And therefore I have not only consulted their greatest Authours especially the three famous Cardinals Baronius Bellarmin and Perron but the chiefest of those who under the name of Conciliators have put the fairest Varnish on the Doctrine of that Church However I have kept close to my Adversary and followed him through all his windings from which I return with this satisfaction to my self that I have vindicated his Lordship and Truth together As to the style and way of writing I use all that I have to say is that my design hath been to joyn clearness of Expression with evidence of Reason What success I have had in it must be left to the Readers judgement I only desire him to lay aside prejudice as much in judging as I have done in writing otherwise I despair of his doing me right and of my doing him good For though reason be tractable and ingenuous yet prejudice and interest are invincible things Having done thus much by way of Preface I shall not detain thee longer by a particular Answer to the impertinencies of our Authours Preface since there is nothing contained therein but what is abundantly answered in a more proper place And I cannot think it reasonable to abuse so much the Readers Appetite as to give him a tedious Preface to cloy his stomach If any after perusal of the whole shall think fit to return an Answer if they do it fairly and rationally they shall receive the same civility if with clamour and impertinency I only let them know I have not leisure enough to kill Flyes though they make a troublesome noise If any service be done to God or the Church by this present work next to that Divine Assistance through which I have done it thou owest it to those great Pillars of our Church by whose command and encouragement I undertook it Who the Authour was of the Book I answer I have been the less solicitous to enquire because I would not betray the weakness of my cause by mixing personal matters in debates of so great importance And whether he be now living or dead I suppose our Adversaries cannot think it at all material unless they judge that their Cause doth live and dye with him THE CONTENTS PART I. Of the Grounds of Faith CHAP. I. The Occasion of the Conference and Defence of the Greek Church T. Cs. Title examined and retorted The Labyrinth found in his Book and Doctrine The occasion of the Conference about the Churches Infallibility The rise of the dispute about the Greek Church and the consequences from it The Charge of Heresie against the Greek Church examined and she found Not-guilty by the concurrent testimony of Fathers General Councils and Popes Of the Council of Florence and the proceedings there That Council neither General nor Free. The distinction of Ancient and Modern Greeks disproved The debate of the Filioque being inserted into the Creed The time when and the right by which it was done discussed The rise of the Schism between the Eastern and Western Churches mainly occasioned by the Church of Rome Page 1. CHAP. II. Of Fundamentals in General The Popish Tenet concerning Fundamentals a meer step to the Roman Greatness The Question about Fundamentals stated An enquiry into the nature of them What are Fundamentals in order to particular persons and what to be owned as such in order to Ecclesiastical Communion The Prudence and Moderation of the Church of England in defining Articles of Faith What judged Fundamental by the Catholick Church No new Articles of Faith can become necessary The Churches power in propounding matters of Faith examined What is a sufficient Proposition Of the Athanasian Creed and its being owned by the Church of England In what sense the Articles of it are necessary to Salvation Of the distinction of the material and formal object of Faith as to Fundamentals His Lordship's integrity and T. C. his forgery in the testimony of Scotus Of Heresie and how far
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
judgement or not sufficiently versed in the Scriptures as at present to make them acknowledge the places are not so clear as they imagined them to be yet they being alwaies otherwise interpreted by the Catholick Church or the Christian Societies of all ages layes this potent prejudice against all such attempts as not to believe such interpretations true till they give a just account why if the belief of these Doctrines were not necessary the Christians of all ages from the Apostles times did so unanimously agree in them that when any began first to oppose them they were declared and condemned for Hereticks for their pains So that the Church of England doth very piously declare her consent with the Ancient Catholick Church in not admitting any thing to be delivered as the sense of Scripture which is contrary to the consent of the Catholick Church in the four first ages Not as though the sense of the Catholick Church were pretended to be any infallible Rule of interpreting Scripture in all things which concern the Rule of Faith but that it is a sufficient Prescription against any thing which can be alledged out of Scripture that if it appear contrary to the sense of the Catholick Church from the beginning it ought not to be looked on as the true meaning of the Scripture All this security is built upon this strong presumption that nothing contrary to the necessary Articles of Faith should he held by the Catholick Church whose very being depends upon the belief of those things which are necessary to Salvation As long therefore as the Church might appear to be truly Catholick by those correspondencies which were maintained between the several parts of it that what was refused by one was so by all so long this unanimous and uncontradicted sense of the Catholick Church ought to have a great sway upon the minds of such who yet profess themselves members of the Catholick Church From whence it follows that such Doctrines may well be judged destructive to the Rule of Faith which were so unanimously condemned by the Catholick Church within that time And thus much may suffice for the first Inquiry viz. What things are to be esteemed necessary either in order to Salvation or in order to Ecclesiastical Communion 2. Whether any thing which was not necessary to Salvation may by any means whatsoever afterwards become necessary so that the not believing it becomes damnable and unrepented destroyes Salvation We suppose the Question to proceed on such things as could not antecedently to such an act whereby they now become necessary be esteemed to be so either from the matter or from any express command For you in terms assert a necessity of believing distinct from the matter and absolute command and hath the Churches Definition for its formal object which makes the necessity of our Faith continually to depend upon the Churches Definition but this strange kind of Ambulatory Faith I shall now shew to be repugnant to the design of Christ and his Apostles in making known Christian Religion and to all evidence of Reason and directly contrary to the plain and uncontradicted sense of the Primitive and Catholick Church 1. It is contrary to the design of Christ and his Apostles in making known the Christian Religion to the world For if the design of Christ was to declare whatever was necessary to the Salvation of mankind if the Apostles were sent abroad for this very end then either they were very unfaithful in discharge of their trust or else they taught all things necessary for their Salvation and if they did so how can any thing become necessary which they did never teach Was it not the great Promise concerning the Messias that at his coming the Earth should be full of the Knowledge of the Lord as the Waters cover the Sea that then they shall all be taught of God Was not this the just expectation of the people concerning him That when he came he would tell them all things Doth not he tell his Disciples That all things I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you And for all this is there something still remaining necessary to Salvation which neither he nor his Disciples did ever make known to the world Doth not he promise Life and Salvation to all such as believe and obey his Doctrine And can any thing be necessary for eternal life which he never declared or did he only promise it to the men of that Age and Generation and leave others to the mercy of the Churches Definitions If this be so we have sad cause to lament our condition upon whom these heavy loyns of the Church are fallen how happy had we been if we had lived in Christs or the Apostles times for then we might have been saved though we had never believed the Pope's Supremacy or Transubstantiation or Invocation of Saints or Worshipping Images but now the case is altered these Milstones are now hung about our necks and how we shall swim to Heaven with them who knows How strangely mistaken was our Saviour when he said Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed For much more blessed certainly were they who did see him and believe in him for then he would undertake for their Salvation but now it seems we are out of his reach and turned over to the Merciless Infallibility of the present Church When Christ told his Disciples His yoke was easie and burden light he little thought what Power he had left in the Church to lay on so much load as might cripple mens belief were it not for a good reserve in a corner call'd Implicit Faith When he sent the Apostles to teach all that he commanded them he must be understood so that the Church hath power to teach more if she pleases and though the Apostles poor men were bound up by this commission and S. Peter himself too yet his Infallible Successors have a Paramount Priviledge beyond them all Though the Spirit was promised to the Apostles to lead them into all Truth yet there must be no incongruity in saying They understood not some necessary Truths for how should they when never revealed as Transubstantiation Supremacy c. Because though they never dreamt of such things yet the Infallible Church hath done it since for them and to say truth though the Apostles names were put into the promise yet they were but Feoffees in trust for the Church and the benefit comes to the Church by them For they were only Tutors to the Church in its minority teaching it some poor Rudiments of Christ and Heaven of Faith and Obedience c. But the great and Divine Mysteries of the seven Sacraments Indulgences Worship of Images Sacrifice of the Mass c. were not fit to be made known till the Church were at age her self and knew how to declare her own mind When S. Paul speaks so much of the great Mysteries hidden from Ages and Generations but
now made known it must be understood with a reference to those silly people who lived in that Age but there were greater Mysteries than these which neither Christ nor any of his Apostles were ever acquainted with as Purgatory and those before mentioned for these were reserved as the Churches Portion when her Infallibility-ship should come to Age. S. Paul honest man spake as he thought when he told not the common people but the Bishops of the Church That he had not shunned to declare unto them all the Counsel of God but if he had lived to our Age he would have heard of this mistake with both ears and if he had not sworn the contrary he must have been contented to have been call'd Schismatick and Heretick a thousand times over These are all the just and rare consequences of your Churches blessed Infallibility and Power of Defining things necessary which were not so in Christ or his Apostles times But the greatest knack of all is yet behind for men are bound to believe all the Doctrines of your Church to be Apostolical and yet that your Church hath power to make things necessary to be believed which were not so in the Apostolical times Yes say you They were Doctrines then but not so necessary as now because they had not the Churches Definition It seems at last the Apostles knew them but did not understand the worth of them else no doubt they were such charitable souls they would have declared them to the world Blessed S. Paul who was continually employed in teaching and instructing men in the way to Salvation could he have held back any thing that had tended to it when he sayes He kept back nothing that was profitable to them but shewed them and taught them publickly and from house to house testifying to the Jews and also to the Greeks Repentance towards God and Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ What not one word of the necessary Points all this while nothing of the Church of Rome nor Christ's Vicar on Earth and his Infallibility How slily and cunningly did S. Paul and the rest of the Apostles carrie it if they had believed these things never let one word drop from their mouths or pens concerning them and instead of that speak so and write so that one that believes them honest would swear they never heard of them In what another kind of strain would S. Paul have writ to the Church of Rome if he had had but any inckling of the Chair of Infallibility being placed there How soon would he have blotted out the whole 14. Chapter of his Epistle to the Corinthians if he had known his Holiness his pleasure about serving God in an unknown tongue How well might he have spared saying That a Bishop should be the Husband of one Wife if he had known de jure divino he must have none at all At what another rate would he have discoursed of the Eucharist had he believed Transubstantiation Sacrifice of the Mass Communion under one kind What course would he have taken with the Schismatical Corinthians that were divided like other Churches if he had known the Infallible Judge of Controversie If he had but understood the danger of reading Scriptures he might have spared his exhortations to the people of the Word of God dwelling richly in them and filled his Epistles with Pater Nosters and Ave Mary's or given good directions about them But he must be pardoned he was ignorant of these things as well as we only S. Paul never heard of them and we do not believe them because neither he nor his Brethren ever revealed them to us though they were the Stewards of the Mysteries of God and they tell us themselves That it is requisite such should be faithful which we cannot understand how they could be if they knew these deep Mysteries but never discovered them that we can learn But if they knew them not I pray from whence is it your Church learns them By immediate inspiration no as bold as you are you dare not challenge that but whence then come you to know them to be necessary infallibly forsooth But whence comes this Infallibility must there not be a peculiar Revelation to discover that to be necessary which was never discovered to be so before But if discovered before and declared before the things were as necessary before your Churches Definition as after and therefore your Churches Definition adds nothing of necessity to them If neither discovered nor declared you must have particular Revelation for them and then work miracles and we will believe you but not otherwise but before you do it consider what S. Paul hath said concerning an Angel from Heaven preaching another Gospel let him be accursed and what can be more preaching another Gospel than making other things necessary to Salvation than Christ or his Apostles did and think then what your Church hath deserved for all her Definitions concerning Articles of Faith or things necessary to be believed in order to Salvation But yet further you say That these things were declared by the Apostles but they need a further Declaration now And why so shew us the Apostle's Declaration and it sufficeth us we shall not believe them one jot the more for your additional Definition And it is surely a sign you did not think the Apostles Declaration sufficient or else you would never pretend to new ones Perhaps you will tell us It was to their Age but not to ours why not as well as the other necessary Articles of Faith contained in Scripture I know your Answer is We can know no necessary Article of Faith at all but from your Church So then we have brought all into a narrow compass and instead of new Definitions of the Church concerning necessary things we can know nothing at all to be necessary to be believed but from your Church This is high but the higher it is the better Foundation it had need stand on which we shall throughly search into in the Controversie of the resolution of Faith to which we referr it and return If there were once a Declaration but still there needs another What is become of that Declaration was it lost in its passage down to us how then was that present Church infallible which lost a Declaration in matter of Faith was it necessary to be believed in the intermediate Age or no if it was then it was not lost and then what need a new Declaration if not then a thing once necessary to Salvation may be not necessary to Salvation and become necessary to Salvation again But still we have cause to envy their happiness who lived in the Age when they might be saved without believing these things for the case goes hard with us for you tell us Unless we believe them necessary we cannot be saved and our consciences tell us that if we did profess to believe them necessary when we do not and cannot we cannot be saved
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
are for he speaks of those things which all Christians who have a care of their Salvation are to avoid of such things as are contrary to all Antiquity and such kind of Dogmata I freely grant the Definitions of your Church to be Your second citation is as happy as the first cap. 28. Crescat saith he speaking of the Church sed in suo duntaxat genere in eodem scilicet Dogmate eodem sensu eâdemque sententiâ An excellent place no doubt to prove it in the Churches power to define new Articles of Faith because the Church must alwaies remain in the same Belief sense and opinion When his words but little foregoing are Profectus sit ille fidei non permutatio which without the help of English Lexicons you would willingly render by leaving out that troublesome Particle non that the best progress in Faith is by adding new Articles though it be as contrary to reason as it is to the sense of Vincentius Lerinensis If Vincentius saith that the Pelagians erred in Dogmate fidei which words neither appear cap. 24. nor 34. he gives this reason for it because they contradict the Vniversal sense of Antiquity and the Catholick Church cap. 34. So that still Vincentius where-ever he speaks of this Dogma fidei speaks in direct opposition to your sense of it for new definitions of the Church in matters of Faith There being scarce any book extant which doth more designedly overthrow this opinion of yours then that of Vincentius doth To shew therefore how much you have wronged his Lordship and what little advantage comes to your cause by your insisting on Vincentius his testimony I shall give a brief account both of his Design and Book The design of it is to shew what wayes one should use to prevent being deceived by such who pretend to discover new matters of Faith and those he assigns to be these two setling ones faith on the Authority of Scripture and the tradition of the Catholick Church But since men would enquire The Canon of Scripture being perfect and abundantly sufficient for all things what need can there be of Ecclesiastical tradition He answers For finding out the true sense of Scripture which is diversly interpreted by Novatianus Photinus Sabellius Donatus Arrius Eunomius Macedonius Apollinaris c. In the following Chapter he tells us what he means by this Ecclesiastical tradition Quod ubique quod semper ab omnibus creditum est that which hath Antiquity Vniversality and Consent joyning in the belief of it And can any new Definitions of the Church pretend to all or any of these He after enquires what is to be done in case a particular Church separates it self from the communion of the Catholick He answers We ought to prefer the health of the whole body before any pestiferous or corrupted member But in case any Novel Contagion should spread over not a part only but endanger the whole Church then saith he a man must adhere to Antiquity which cannot be deceived with a pretence of Novelty But if in Antiquity we find out the errour of two or three particular Persons or City or Province what is then to be done then saith he the Decrees of General Councils are to be preferred But in case there be none then he adds The general consent of the most approved writers of the Church is to be enquired after and what they all with one consent openly frequently constantly held writ and taught that let every man look on himself as bound to believe without hesitation Now then prove but any one of the new Articles of Faith in the Tridentine Confession by these rules of Vincentius and it will appear that you have produced his Testimony to some purpose else nothing will be more strong and forcible against all your pretences than this discourse of Vincentius is which he inlarges by the examples of the Donatists Arrians and others in the following Chapters in which still his scope is to assert Antiquity and condemn all Novelties in matters of Faith under any pretext whatsoever For this ch 12 14. he cites a multitude of Texts of Scripture forbidding our following any other Doctrine but what was delivered by Christ and his Apostles and Anathematizing all such as such as should Preach any other Gospel and concludes that with this remarkable speech It never was never is never will be lawful to propose any thing as matter of Faith to Christian Catholicks besides what they have received And it was is and will be becoming Christians to Anathematize all such who declare any thing but what they have received Do you think this man was not of your minde in the Doctrine of Fundamentals could he do otherwise then believe it in the Churches power to define things necessary to Salvation who would have all those Anathematized who pretend to declare any thing as matter of Faith but what they received as such from their Ancestours And after he hath at large exemplified this in the Photinian Nestorian Apollinarian Heresies and shewed how little the Authority of private Doctors how excellent soever is to be relyed on in matters of faith he concludes again with this Whatsoever the Catholick Church held universally that and that alone is to be held by particular persons And after admires at the madness blindness perverseness of those who are not contented with the once delivered and ancient rule of Faith but are still seeking new things and alwaies are itching to add alter take away some thing of Religion or matter of Faith As though that were not a Heavenly Doctrine which may suffice to be once revealed but an earthly institution which cannot be perfect but by continual correction and amendment Is not this man now a fit person to explain the sense of your Churches new Definitions and Declarations in matters of Faith And have not you hit very right on this sense of Dogma when here he understands by it that Doctrine of Faith which is not capable of any addition or alteration And thus we understand sufficiently what he means by the present controverted place that if men reject any part of the Catholick Doctrine they may as well refuse another and another till at last they reject all By the Catholick Doctrine or Catholicum dogma there he means the same with the Coeleste dogma before and by both of them understands that Doctrine of Faith which was once revealed by God and which is capable of no addition at all having Antiquity Vniversality and Consent going along with it and when you can prove that this Catholicum dogma doth extend beyond those things which his Lordship calls Catholick Maxims or properly Fundamental Truths you will have done something to the purpose which as yet you have failed in And thus we say Vincentius his rule is good though we do not say that he was infallible in the application of it but that he might mention some such things to
were proved to be so Of the Motives of Credibility and how far they belong to the Church The difference between Science and Faith considered and the new art of mens believing with their wills The Churches testimony must be according to their principles the formal object of Faith Of their esteem of Fathers Scripture and Councils The rare distinctions concerning the Churches infallibility discussed How the Church can be Infallible by the assistance of the Holy Ghost yet not divinely Infallible but in a manner and after a sort T. C. applauded for his excellent faculty in contradicting himself HE that hath a mind to betray an excellent Cause may more advantagiously do it by bringing weak and insufficient Evidences for it then by the greatest heat and vigour of Opposition against it For there cannot possibly be any greater prejudice done to a weighty and important truth then to perswade men to believe it on such grounds which are if not absolutely false yet much more disputable then the thing it self For hereby the minds of men are taken off from the native evidence which the truth enquired after offers to them and build their assent upon the certainty of the medium's suggested as the only grounds to establish a firm assent upon By which means when upon severe enquiry the falsity and insufficiency of those grounds is discovered the person so discovering lyes under a dangerous temptation of calling into question the truth of that which he finds he assented to upon grounds apparently weak and insufficient And the more refined and subtle the speculations are the more sublime and mysterious the matters believed the greater still the danger of Scepticism is upon a discovery of the unsoundness of those principles which such things were believed upon Especially if the more confident and Magisterial party of those who profess the belief of such things do with the greatest heat decry all other wayes as uncertain and obtrude these principles upon the world as the only sure foundation for the belief of them It was anciently a great question among the Philosophers whether there were any certainty in the principles of knowledge or supposing certainty in things whether there were any undoubted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or rules to obtain this certainty of knowledge by If then any one Sect of Philosophers should have undertaken to prove the certainty that was in knowledge upon this account because whatever their Sect or Party delivered was infallibly true they had not only shamefully beg'd the thing in dispute but made it much more lyable to question then before Because every errour discovered in that Sect would not only prove the fondness and arrogance of their pretence of being Infallible but would to all such as believed the certainty of things on the authority of their Sect be an argument to disprove all certainty of knowledge when they once discovered the errours of those whose authority they relyed upon Just such is the case of the Church of Rome in this present Controversie concerning the Resolution of Faith The question is What the certain grounds of our assent are to the principles and rule of Christian Religion the Romanists pretend that there can be no ground of True and Divine Faith at all but the Infallible testimony of Their Church let then any rational man judge whether this be not the most compendious way to overthrow the belief of Christianity in the world For our assent must be wholly suspended upon that supposed Infallibility which when once it falls as it unavoidably doth upon the discovery of the least errour in the doctrine of that Church what becomes then of the belief of Christianity which was built upon that as it s only sure foundation So that it is hardly imaginable there could be any design more really destructive to Christianity or that hath a greater tendency to Atheism then the modern pretence of Infallibility and the Jesuits way of resolving Faith Which was the reason why his Lordship was so unwilling to engage in that Controversie How we know the Scriptures to be the Word of God not out of any distrust he had of solving it upon Protestant Principles as you vainly suggest nor out of any fears of being left himself in that Labyrinth which after all your endeavours you have lost your self and your cause in as appears by your attempting this way and that way to get out and at last standing in the very middle of that circle you thought your self out of If his Lordship thought this more a question of curiosity then necessity it was because out of his great Charity he supposed them to be Christians he had to deal with But if his charity were therein deceived you shall see how able we are to make good the grounds of our Religion against all Adversaries whether Papists or others And so far is the answering of this question from making the weakness of our cause appear that I doubt not but to make it evident that our cause stands upon the same grounds which our common Christianity doth and that we are Protestants by the same reason that we are Christians And on the other side that you are so far from giving any true grounds of Christian Faith that nothing will more advance the highest Scepticism and Irreligion then such Principles as you insist on for resolving Faith The true reason then why the Archbishop declared any unwillingness to enter upon this dispute was not the least apprehension how insuperably hard the resolution of this question was as you pretend but because of the great mischief your Party had done in starting such questions you could not resolve with any satisfaction to the common reason of mankind and that you run your selves into such a Circle in which you conjure up more Spirits then ever you are able to lay by giving those advantages to Infidelity which all your Sophistry can never answer on those principles you go upon That this was the true ground of his Lordship's seeming averseness from this Controversie appears by his plain words where he tells you at first of the danger of mens being disputed into infidelity by the Circle between Scripture and Tradition and by his expressing his sense of the great harm you have done by the starting of that question among Christians How we know the Scriptures to be the Word of God But although in this respect he might be said to be drawn into it yet lest you should think his averseness argued any consciousness of his own inability to answer it you may see how closely he follows it with what care and accuracy he handles it with what strength of reason and evidence he hath discovered the weakness of your way which he hath done with that success that he hath put you to miserable shifts to avoid the force of his arguments as will appear afterwards I am therefore fully of his mind that it is a matter of such consequence it deserves to be
some generall postulata must be laid down which by the very state of the Controversie must be acknowledged by you which are 1. That the Question in dispute is not concerning the Formal Object of all things divinely revealed but concerning the believing this to be a particular Divine Revelation For it is obvious to any one that considers what vast difference there is between those two Questions Why you believe that to be True which God hath revealed the plain and easie resolution of this is into the veracity and infallibility of God in all his Revelations But it is quite another Question when I ask Why you believe this to have been a True Divine Revelation Or that such particular Books contain the Word of God And it is apparent by the whole process of the the Dispute that the Question is not concerning the first but the second of these two 2. That the Question is not concerning any kind of perswasion as to this Divine Revelation but concerning that which you call Divine Faith 3. That this Divine Faith must be resolved into some Testimony supposed infallible These three are things agreed on between both parties as appears by the whole management of this Controversie Only you suppose this Infallible Testimony to be the Church which your Adversary denies and saith It will follow from thence that you make your Churches Testimony the Formal Object of Faith which I thus prove 1. That which is the only Ground and Foundation whereon a Divine Faith is built must be the Formal Object of Faith but the Infallible Testimony of your Church is the only Foundation whereon Faith is built By the Formal Object of Faith I suppose you and I mean the same thing which is the Foundation whereon the Certainty of the Assent is grounded or the principal Objective Cause of Faith viz. not every account that may be given Why men believe but that which is the only Certain Foundation to establish a Divine Faith upon Now let any one but consider what the Question is and what your resolution is and then judge Whether you make not the Churches Testimony the Formal Object The Question is How we know the Scriptures to be the Word of God which in other terms is What the ground is why I assent to the Doctrine contained in Scripture as a Divine Revelation You say The Testimony of the Scripture it self cannot be that ground You say The Testimony of the Spirit cannot be it You say A Moral Certainty cannot be it because then it is not Divine Faith What then is the reason why you believe it Do you not over and over say It is because of the infallible Testimony of the Church which gives us unquestionable assurance that this was a Divine Revelation and yet for all this this Testimony is not the Formal Object of this Divine Faith The most charitable apprehension I can have of you when you write things so inconsistent is either that you understand not or consider not what you write of but take what hath been said in such cases by men of your own party and right or wrong that serves for an Answer But for all this you tell us confidently That your Faith is not resolved into the voice of the Church as into its Formal Object but it is enough to say Our Faith is resolved into God's Revelations whether written or unwritten as its Formal Object and our infallible assurance that the things we believe are Divine Revelations is resolved into the Infallibility of the Churches Definitions These are excellent Notions if they would hang together But 1. We enquire not what is enough to say in such a case but what ground you have for saying what you do You have enough to say upon many subjects in this Book or else your Book would never have swell'd to the bulk it hath but you have generally very little reason for what you say 2. Is that infallible Assurance that the things we believe as God's Revelations are revealed from him a thing call'd Faith or no If it be as I hope you will not deny it then by your own Confession Faith is resolved into the Churches Testimony as its Formal Object for you say This Infallible Assurance is resolved into the Infallibility of the Churches Definitions teaching us that they are his Revelations These are your own words And do you yet deny this Testimony of the Church to be the Formal Object of this infallible Assurance 3. What is it you mean when you say That Faith is resolved into God's Revelations as its Formal Object Is it that the reason why we believe is Because God hath revealed these things to us But that you know is not the matter at all in question but How we come to assent to such a Doctrine as a Divine Revelation Answer me punctually to it Can you possibly resolve your Faith into any thing else as its Formal Object If you can I pray do us the favour to name it If you resolve this Faith as you seem to express your mind into Divine Revelation as its Formal Object Shew us where that Revelation is extant for which you believe Scripture to be the Word of God Is it the Scripture it self or a Revelation distinct from it If you say It is the Scripture it self then you must make the infallible Testimony of your Church needless for then we may have infallible Assurance that the things we believe are Divine Revelations without your Churches Testimony or Definitions Then what is become of the unwritten Tradition you mention in these words If then it be demanded Why we believe such Books as are contained in the Bible to be the Word of God we answer Because it is a divine unwritten Tradition that they are his Word and this Divine Tradition is the Formal Object whereon our Faith relyes Well then our last resolution of Faith is into this Divine unwritten Tradition But whence come you to know that this Tradition is Divine Into what Revelation is the belief of that finally resolved Doth it appear to be so by it self and then why may not the Scripture or hath it some other Revelation and Divine Tradition to attest it And then the same Question returns concerning that and so in infinitum or else of necessity you must acknowledge one of these two things Either that some Divine Revelation may sufficiently manifest it self without any infallible Testimony of your Church Or else that this infallible Testimony must be the Formal Object of Faith Of these two chuse which you please 2. I prove that you must make the Churches Testimony the Formal Object of Faith because either you must make it so or you must deny Divine Revelation to be the Formal Object of Faith because the reason is equal for both I demand then How you resolve your Belief of the Truth of the Doctrine of Christ you tell me into Divine Revelation as its Formal Object I ask yet further Why
you believe the Revelation made by Christ to be Divine Your Answer must be either that your Churches Testimony gives you infallible Assurance of it and then the former Argument returns or else that Christ manifested his Testimony to be infallible and therefore his Revelation Divine because of the Motives of Credibility which accompanied his preaching If this be your Answer as it must be by your former discourse then by the same reason I prove your Churches Testimony to be the Formal Object of Faith because you have endeavoured to prove the Churches Infallibility by the same Motives of Credibility that Moses and Christ proved theirs Either therefore retract all your former discourse or else confess that by the same reason that the Divine Revelation made by Christ is the Formal Object of Faith the infallible Testimony of your Church must be so too For according to your own supposition there are equal Motives of Credibility and therefore equal obligation to believe the Infallibility of one as of the other 3. If the only reason which makes any thing be the Formal Object agrees to the Testimony of your Church then that Testimony must be the Formal Object of Faith to them that believe it Now that which is the only reason which makes any thing to be the Formal Object of Faith is the Supposition that it is infallible For why do you resolve your Faith finally into Divine Revelation Is it not because you suppose God to be infallible in all Revelations of himself and therefore if your Church be infallible as you say it is by the same reason that must be the Formal Object of Faith as if it were by the revelation of God himself But here you think to obviate this objection by some strange distinctions concerning your Infallibility You tell us therefore The Churches Infallibility is not absolutely and simply Divine or that God speaks immediately by her Definitions but only that she is supernaturally infallible by the assistance of the Holy Ghost preserving her from all errour in defining any thing as a point of Christian Faith that is as a Truth revealed from God which is not truly and really so revealed A rare Distinction this You say afterwards The Churches Definition is absolutely infallible but yet this Infallibility is not absolutely and simply Divine I pray tell us What is it then You say It is Supernatural but not Divine and this Supernatural Infallibility by the Assistance of the Holy Ghost securing from all errour but yet not absolutely and precisely Divine I pray tell us What kind of Infallibility that was which the Apostles had in delivering the Doctrine of Christ was that any more than such a Supernatural Infallibility as you fondly arrogate to your Church viz. such a one as might secure them from all errour in defining any thing as a point of Christian Faith which was not so that is as a Truth revealed from God which was not truly and really so revealed And yet I suppose you will not deny but those who lived in the Apostles times might resolve their Faith into that Infallibility which they had as its Formal Object and therefore why not as well into your Churches Infallibility since you pretend to as great Infallibility in your Church as ever was in the Apostles Thus I hope I have shewn it impossible for you not to make the Churches Testimony the Formal Object of Faith since you make it infallible as you do 2. We come now to consider the little evasions and distinctions whereby you hope to get out of this Labyrinth But having so manifestly proved that it follows from your Principles That the Churches Testimony is the Formal Object of Faith all your distinctions fall of themselves for thereby it appears that your Churches Testimony is not meerly a necessary Condition of believing but is the Formal Cause and Reason of it therefore your instance of approximation in natural Causes is nothing to the purpose No more is that of a Commonwealth's practising the same Laws being an Argument that those were its primitive Laws Unless you suppose it impossible 1. That a Common-wealth should ever alter its Laws Or 2. That it should practise contrary to its primitive Laws Or 3. That it should be supernaturally Infallible in judging which are primitive Laws and which not without these Suppositions I say That Instance signifies nothing to the business in hand and when you have proved these true I will give you a further Answer Your Answer to Aristotles Text or rather to that undoubted Maxim of Reason with which the citation of Aristotle concurred hath been considered already Your Answer to the Testimony of Canus is like the rest of your discourse trivial and not to the purpose for Canus doth not only deny the Churches Testimony to be the Formal Object of Faith but the necessity of believing its Testimony to be infallible Non intelligitur necessariò quod credo docenti Ecclesiae tanquam testi infallibili are the very words of the Testimony cited in the Margin of his Lordships Books Your next Section affords us some more words but not one drachm more of reason For How do you prove that the Churches Authority is more known to us than the Scriptures or How can you make it appear that there is any Authority but what is relative to us and therefore the distinction is in it self silly of Authority in se quoad nos For whatever hath Authority hath thereby a respect to some it hath its Authority over And Can any thing be a ground of Faith simply and in it self which is not so towards us For the Formal Object of Faith is that for whose sake we believe and therefore if Divine Revelation be as you say the Formal Object of Faith then it must be more known to us than the Testimony of the Church For that must be more known to us which is the main cause of Believing But if all your meaning be that we must first know what the Church delivers for Scripture before we can judge whether it were divinely revealed or no I grant it to be true but what is this to your Infallibility Will you prove the Infallibility of your Church to be more known to us than that of the Scriptures and on supposition that were true can you then prove that the Scriptures should still retain their prerogative above the Church What your Authors distinguish concerning objective and subjective Certainty pertains not to this place for the worth and dignity of the Scriptures may exceed that of Tradition yet when the knowledge of that worth relyes on that Tradition your esteem of the one must be according to your esteem of the other I will not here enquire Whether the adhesion of the Will can exceed the clearness of the Vnderstanding nor Whether Aristotle was unacquainted with subjective Certainty nor Whether our adhesion to Articles of Faith be stronger than to any Principles evident to natural
is roving and uncertain 2. That notwithstanding his brags he must have recourse to a private spirit himself 3. That though the Bishop would seem to deny it diverse eminent Protestants do resolve their Faith into the private spirit This being the substance of what you say I shall return a particular Answer to each of them For the first you tell us He delivers himself in such a roving way of discourse as signifies nothing in effect as to what he would drive at No that is strange when that which his Lordship drives at is to shew how far this opinion is to be allowed and how far not which he is so far from roving in that he clearly and distinctly propounds the state of the question and the resolution of it which in short is this If by the testimony of the spirit be meant any special revelation of a new object of Faith then he denies the truth of it at least in an ordinary way both because God never sends us to look for such a testimony and because it would expose men to the danger of Enthusiasms but if by the testimony of the Spirit be meant the habit or the act of Divine infused Faith by vertue of which they believe the object which appears credible then he grants the truth but denyes the pertinency of it because it is quite out of the state of the question which inquires only after a sufficient means to make this object credible against all impeachment of folly and temerity in believing whether men do actually believe or not And withal adds that the question is of such outward and evident means as other men may take notice of as well as our selves Judge you now whether this may be called roving if it be so I can freely excuse you from it in all the discourses I have met with in your Book who abhorre nothing more then a true stating and methodical handling any question But yet say you the Bishop cannot free himself from that imputation of recurring to the private Spirit against any that should press the business home Sure you refer us here to some one else who is able to press a business home for you never attempt it your self and instead of that only produce a large testimony out of A. C. That he did not acquit the Bishop wholly of this Whether he did or no is to little purpose and yet those very words which his Lordship cites are in your testimony produced out of him Only what you add more from him that he must be driven to it that his Lordship denies and neither A. C. or you have been able to prove it But though the Bishop seems not only to deny any such private revelation himself but will not confess that any Protestants hold it yet you say there can be no doubt in this since Calvin and Whitaker do both so expresly own it But according to those principles laid down before both these testimonies are easily answered For 1. Neither of them doth imply any private revelation of any new object but only a particular application of the evidence appearing in Scripture to the conscience of every Believer 2. That these testimonies do not speak of the external evidence which others are capable of but of the internal satisfaction of every ones conscience Therefore Calvin saith Si conscientiis optimè consultum volumus c. if we will satisfie our own consciences not If we will undertake to give a sufficient reason to others of our Faith So Whitaker Esse enim dicimus certius illustrius testimonium quo nobis persuadeatur hos libros esse sacros c. There is a more certain and noble testimony by which we may be perswaded that these Books are sacred viz. that of the Holy Ghost 3. Neither of these testimonies affirm any more than the more judicious Writers among your selves do Your Canus asserts the necessity of an internal efficient cause by special assistance of the Spirit moving us to believe besides and beyond all humane authorities and motives which of themselves are not sufficient to beget Faith and this a little after he calls Divinum quoddam lume◠incitans ad credendum A divine light moving us to believe and again Interius lumen infusum à Spirit◠Sancto An inward light infused by the Spirit of God There is nothing in the sayings of the most rigid Protestants is more hard to explain or vindicate from a private revelation then this is if as you say one would press it home Nay hath not your own Stapleton Calvins very phrase of the necessity of the secret testimony of the Spirit that one believe the testimony and judgement of the Church concerning Scripture And is there not then as much danger of Enthusiasm in believing the Testimony of your Church as in believing the Scriptures Nay doth not your Gregory de Valentiâ rather go higher then the testimonies by you produced out of Calvin and Whitaker on this very subject in the beginning of his discourse of the resolution of Faith It is God himself saith he in the first place which must convince and perswade the minds of men of the truth of the Christian Doctrine and consequently of the Sacred Scriptures by some inward instinct and impulse as it appears from Scripture it self is fully explained by Prosper If you will then undertake to clear this inward instinct and impulse upon the minds of men whereby they are perswaded of the truth of Christianity and Scripture from Enthusiasm and a private spirit you may as easily do it for the utmost which is said by Calvin or Whitaker or any other Protestant Divine This therefore is only an argument of your desire to cavil and as such I will pass it over For what concerns the influence which the Spirit hath in the resolution of Faith it will be enquired into afterwards The last way mentioned in order to the resolution of Faith is that of Reason which his Lordship saith cannot be denyed to have some place to come in and prove what it can According to which he tells us no man can be hindred from weighing the tradition of the Church the inward motives in Scripture it self all testimonies within which seem to bear witness to it and in all this saith he there is no harm the danger is when a man will use no other scale but reason or prefer reason before any other scale Reason then can give no supernatural ground into which a man may resolve his Faith that the Scripture is the word of God infallibly yet Reason can go so high as it can prove that Christian Religion which rests upon the authority of this Book stands upon surer grounds of nature reason common equity and justice then any thing in the world which any Infidel or meer naturalist hath done doth or can adhere unto against it in that which he makes accounts or assumes as Religion to himself This
such Miracles as 〈◊〉 did besides all which they do tends to advance these evil spirits in the world but the design of the true Prophets is to declare the True God and his Son Christ. But May then any one by the innate power of his mind yield a divine assent to these things No but pray earnestly to God to enlighten your mind for this is the effect of Divine Grace in and through Christ. What part is there now of our resolution of Faith which is not herein asserted If you ask Why you believe there were such men in the World as these Prophets The continuance of their Books and common Fame sufficiently attest it If you ask Why you should believe them to be True Prophets The excellency of their Doctrine joyned with the fulfilling Prophecies and working Miracles abundantly prove it But if you lastly ask Whether besides objective evidence there be not some higher efficient requisite to produce a Divine Faith The Answer is That depends upon the Grace of God in Christ So that here we have most evidently all those things concurring which his Lordship asserts in the resolution of Faith Moral inducement preparing the mind rational evidence from the thing into which Faith is resolved and Divine Grace requisite in the nature of an efficient cause But Where is there the least intimation of any Churches Infallibility requisite to make men believe with a firm and Divine Faith No doubt that was a Divine Faith which Justin was bid to pray so heartily for and which was only in those to whom it was given and yet even this Faith had no other assurance to build it self upon but that rational evidence which is before discovered That Divine Person never thought of mens believing with their Wills much less that the Books of Scripture had no more evidence of themselves than distinction of colours to a blind man he did not think Christ an Ignoramus or Impostor because he left no Church infallible nor that God by the Prophets laid a Foundation upon sand or that would last but a few years because he did not continue such an Infallible Assistance as the Prophets had to the Church in all ages yet these are all brave assertions of yours which doubtless you would be ashamed of and recant if you had not as Casaubon saith of the Person whom you could not tell whether he was a Jesuit or no but by that character you might guess it that he had frontem ferream cor involutum a brow of steel and a heartfull of Meanders to use your own fine expression Upon this Justin tells us a divine ardour was raised in his mind and a love of the Prophets and such as were the Friends of Christ and upon further consideration 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I found this the only certain and profitable Philosophy and thereupon commends the Doctrine of Christ to Trypho and his Company for something which was certainly innate to it that it had a kind of awe and majesty in it and is excellent at terrifying and perswading those who were out of the right way and brings the sweetest tranquillity to such as are conversant in it And afterwards undertakes to demonstrate the truth of our Religion from the reasonableness of it that we have not yielded our assent to vain and empty Fables nor to assertions uncapable of evidence and demonstration but to such as are filled with a Divine Spirit overflowing with Power and flourishing with Grace And accordingly manageth his discourse quite through shewing the insufficiency of the Ceremonial Law and the Truth and Excellency both of the Person and Doctrine of Christ. But what need all this if he had believed your Doctrine It had been but proving the Church Infallible by Motives of Credibility and then to be sure whatever was propounded to be believed by it was infallibly true But older and wiser it seems must hold here to Justin though so near the Apostles times went a much further way about but it was well for him he lived so long ago else he might have been accused of Heresie or making Faith uncertain if he had lived in our times and such Doctrine of his might have merited an Index Expurgatorius But it seems he was not afraid of it then for he often elsewhere speaks to the same purpose For in his Paraenesis to the Greeks he makes it his business first to shew the unreasonableness of believing those who were the great Authours of all their superstitions for the Poets were manifestly ridiculous the Philosophers at continual dissentions among themselves so that there was no relying on them for the finding out of Truth or the redress of the miseries of humane nature and then comes to the Authours of our Religion who were both much elder than any of theirs and did not teach any thing of their own heads nor dissented from one another in what they delivered or sought to confute each other as the Philosophers did but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without all jarring and contention they delivered to men the Doctrine which they received from God For saith he it was not possible for them to know such great and divine things by nature or humane wit but by a heavenly gift descending from above upon holy men It seems Justin believed there was such evidence in the matters contained in Scripture which might perswade men to believe that they came from God that they were but as instruments to that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he expresseth it to that Divine Spirit which did strike upon them whence with one consent and harmony they sound forth the Doctrine of God the worlds Creation and Mans the Immortality of the soul Judgment to come and all things else which are necessary for us to know which they unanimously deliver to us though at great distances from each other both in regard of time and place And so proves the Antiquity of the Writings of Moses above all the Wise men of the Greeks by the testimony of their own Authours Polemon Appion Ptolomaeus Mendesius and many others and concludes his discourse with this speech That it is impossible for us to know any thing certainly concerning God or Religion but from Divine Inspiration which alone was in the Prophets In his first Apology for the Christians he tells us what it was while he was a Platonist which brought him to a good Opinion of Christianity which was the observing the power and efficacy that Doctrine had upon the Christians to undergo with so much courage what was accounted most terrible to humane nature which are death and torments From whence he reasoned with himself that although the Christians were so much calumniated yet certainly they could not be vitious persons who were so little fearful of those great Bug-bears of humane nature For Who is there that is a lover of pleasure or intemperate or cruel that can chearfully embrace death so as thereby to be deprived
thought Man had been a compound of substance and accidents as well as a Church Or Did you mean some transubstantiated man that had accidents without substance But as his Lordship spake of a true real man who yet might want moral Integrity so he supposed there might be a true real Church as to the essential parts of it which yet might be in other respects a corrupted and defiled Church But when you add That the notion of a Church implies Integrity and Perfection of Conditions still you betray your weak or wilful mistakes of a Church morally for Metaphysically true If you will prove it impossible for a Church to retain its Being that hath any errours in Doctrine or corruptions in Practice you will do something to the purpose but when you have done it see what you get by it for then we shall not so much as acknowledge your Church to be Metaphysically a true Church If his Lordship therefore be so charitable as to say That because your Church receives the Scripture as a Rule of Faith though but as a partial and imperfect Rule and both the Sacraments as Instrumental causes and seals of Grace though they add more and misuse these it cannot but be a true Church in essence And you on the other side say If it doth misuse the Sacraments and make the Scripture an imperfect Rule of Faith it would be unchurched Let the Reader judge whether his Lordships charity for or your own Testimony against your Church be built on better grounds What follows concerning the Holy Catholick Church in the Apostles Creed the entire Catholick Faith in the Athanasian Creed the Churches being the Spouse of Christ and a pure Virgin are all things as true in themselves as your Church is little concerned in them The truly Catholick Church being quite another thing from that which goes under the name of the Roman Catholick Church and this latter may prostitute her self to errour while the other remains a pure Virgin and it is only your saying That yours only is the Catholick Church which is in effect to say That Christ hath a Harlot to his Spouse as you speak To omit that which you call A further skirmishing about the form of words and whether it savoured more of prudence and charity or cunning in the Jesuite to instruct the Lady what Questions she should ask we come to that which is the main subject of this chapter viz. Whether the Church be stiled Catholick by its agreeing with Rome which you say was a received and known Truth in the Ancient Church but is so far from being in the least true that his Lordship deservedly calls it A perfect Jesuitism For saith he in all the Primitive times of the Church a Man or a Family or a National Church were accounted right and orthodox as they agreed with the Catholick Church but the Catholick was never then measured or judged by Man Family or Nation But now in the Jesuits new School the One Holy Catholick Church must be measured by that which is in the Diocese or City of Rome or of them which agreed with it and not Rome by the Catholick So upon the matter belike the Christian Faith was committed to the custody of the Roman not of the Catholick Church and a man cannot agree with the Catholick Church of Christ in this new doctrine of A. C. unless he agree with the Church of Rome but if he agree with that all is safe and he is as orthodox as he need be To which you seem to answer at first by some slight tergiversations as though this did not follow from A. C 's words and that the Lady did not trouble her self with such punctilio's as those of the agreement of the Catholick Church with Rome or Romes agreeing with the Catholick Church but at last you take heart and affirm stoutly That the Church is stiled Catholick from its agreement with Rome and that this is no Jesuitism but a received and known Truth in the Ancient Church In these terms then I fix my self and this present dispute as containing the proper state of the Controversie concerning the Catholick Church And if you can make it appear that the Church is stiled Catholick by agreeing with Rome and that this was a received Truth in the Ancient Church then you may very plausibly charge us with Schism in our separation from Rome but if the contrary be made evident by your own pretence we are freed from that charge Now in the handling this Controversie you first explain your terms and then produce your Testimonies In the explication of your terms you tell us The word Catholick may be used in three different Acceptions viz. either formally causally or by way of participation Formally the Vniversal Church i. e. the society of all true particular Churches united together in one body in one Communion under one Head is called Catholick Causally the Church of Rome is stiled Catholick because it hath an influence and force to cause Vniversality in the whole body of the Church Catholick to which two things are necessary Multitude and Vnity The Roman Church therefore which as a Center of Ecclesiastical Communion infuses this Vnity which is the form of Vniversality into the Catholick Church and thereby causes in her Vniversality may be called Catholick causally though she be but a particular Church As he that commands a whole Army is stiled General though he be but a particular person Thirdly every particular orthodox Church is termed Catholick participative by way of participation because they agree in and participate of the Doctrine and Communion of the Catholick Church For which you bring the instance of the Church of Smyrna writing to the Catholick Church of Philomilion c. Thus we see say you both how properly the Roman Church is called Catholick and how the Catholick Church it self takes causally the denomination of Vniversal or Catholick from the Roman considered as the chief particular Church infusing Vnity to all the rest as having dependence of her and relation to her Thus I have recited your words that we may fully understand your meaning the substance of which is couched in your last words That the reason why any Church was accounted Catholick was from its Vnion with the Church of Rome But if it appear that this sense of the Catholick Church is wholly a stranger to Antiquity That the Catholick Church was so call'd upon farr different accounts than those mentioned by you If the Church of Rome had no other relation to the Catholick Church but as a member of it as other Churches were then all this discourse of yours comes to nothing and that is it which I now undertake to prove Now the Vnity of the Catholick Church lying in two things the Doctrine and the Government of it if in neither of these it had any dependence of the Church of Rome then certainly it could not be call'd Catholick causally from the
laudando praecipere by commending them to be such instruct them that such indeed they ought to be to whom perfidiousness should not get access And for this he instanceth in such another Rhetorical expression of Synesius to Theophilus of Alexandria wherein he tells him that he ought to esteem what his Throne should determine as an Oracle or Divine Law And certainly this comes nearer Infallibility than that of St. Cyprian doth But what inconveniency there should be that St. Cyprian by this interpretation should give no more prerogative to the Church of Rome than to that of Alexandria or Antioch I cannot easily imagine till you prove some greater Infallibility attributed then to the Church of Rome than was to other Apostolical Churches which as yet we are to seek for But at length you tell us after much ado he grants perfidia may be taken for errour in Faith or for perfidious misbelievers and Schismaticks who had betrayed their Faith but then say you he cavils with the word Romanos This must be limited only to those Christians who then lived in Rome to whom quà tales as long as they continued such errour in Faith could not have access What you say his Lordship doth at length and after much ado he did freely and willingly but that you might have occasion for those words you altered the course of his answers and put the second in the last place But still you have the unhappiness to misunderstand him For although he grants that perfidia may relate to errour in Faith yet as it is here used it is not understood of it abstractly but concretely for perfidious misbelievers i. e. such perfidious persons excommunicated out of other Churches were not likely to get access at Rome or to find admittance into their communion And in this sense it is plain that St. Cyprian did not intend by these words to exempt the Romans from possibility of errour but to brand his adversaries with a title due to their merit calling them perfidious i. e. such as had betrayed or perverted the Faith When you therefore ask is not this great praise I suppose none but your self would make a question of it viz. that the Church of Rome had then so great purity as not to admit such perfidious misbelievers into her communion And it were well if the present Church of Rome were capable of the same praise But when you add It is as if St. Cyprian should say St. Peters See could not erre so long as it continued constant in the truth you wilfully misunderstand his Lordships meaning who speaks of the persons and not meerly of their errours but however is it not a commendation to say that the Church of Rome consisted of such persons then who adhered to the Apostolical Faith and therefore errour could not have access to them And I look on it as so great a commendation that I heartily wish it could be verified of your Church now Neither is this any such Identical proposition as that you produce but only a declaration of their present constancy and inferring thence how unlikely it was that errours should be admitted by them His Lordship to make it plain that St. Cyprian had no meaning to assert the unerring Infallibility of either Pope or Church of Rome insists on the contest which after happened between St. Cyprian and Pope Stephen upon which he saith expresly That Pope Stephen did not only maintain an errour but the very cause of Hereticks and that against Christians and the very Church of God And after this he chargeth him with obstinacy and presumption And I hope this is plain enough saith his Lordship to shew that St. Cyprian had no great opinion of the Roman Infallibility To this you answer With a famous distinction of the Popes erring as a private Doctor and as the Vniversal Pastor and that St. Cyprian might very well be supposed to think the Pope erred only in the first sense Not to spend time in rifling this distinction of the Popes erring personally but not judicially or as a private Doctor but not as Vniversal Pastor which it were an easie matter to do by manifesting the incongruity of it and the absurdities consequent upon it in case that doctrine which the Pope erres in comes to be judicially decided by him It is sufficient for us at present to shew that this distinction cannot relieve you in our present case For your Doctors tell us the Pope then erres personally and as a private Doctor when he erres only in his own judgement without obliging others to believe what he judges to be true but then he erres judicially and as Vniversal Pastor when he declares his judgement so as to oblige others to receive it as true Now can any thing be more evident then that St. Cyprian judged Pope Stephen to erre in this latter and not in the former sense For doth he not absolutely and severely declare himself against St. Cyprians opinion condemning it as an errour and an innovation But say you He did not properly define any doctrine in that contestation but said nihil innovetur nisi quod traditum But was not that the question what was traditum and what not for Cyprian and his party denyed it to be a tradition which Stephen asserted was so and doth he not therefore undertake to define something in this cause But say you If this argument hold good against the Infallibility of Popes viz. that St. Cyprian held Pope Stephen erred therefore the Pope may erre in matters of Faith it will be a good consequence also to say St. Cyprian held Pope Stephen erred even whilst he maintained an universal immemorial tradition therefore the Pope may erre whilst he follows such a tradition I answer 1. Who besides you would not have seen that the question was not Whether the Pope was Infallible or no but whether St. Cyprian judged him to be Infallible or no for if it appear that St. Cyprian did not judge him Infallible then those former words cannot be interpreted to such a sense as doth imply Infallibility 2. No doubt if the Pope may err in other things he may err when he thinks he follows an universal immemorial tradition not that he doth err when he doth really follow such a one but he may err in judging that to be an universal immemorial tradition which is not and this was the case between St. Cyprian and Pope Stephen the Pope pretended to follow an universal tradition St. Cyprian judgeth him to err in it and that it was not so And is it not plain still notwithstanding these frivolous pretences that St. Cyprian had no opinion at all of the Popes Infallibility in any sense and therefore out of honour to him you are bound to interpret his former words to some other sense then that of any Infallibility in the Church of Rome Thus all his Lordships answers standing good you have gained no great matter by this first testimony of St.
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
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
examine particulars they would as soon believe it was impossible for that man to fall whom they see upon the ground as your Church to be infallible which they find overspread with errour and corruptions Much such another Answer you return to his Lordship's second Exception which is at his calling the Christian Faith the Roman Faith For you say It is no incongruity so to call it for the Bishop of Rome being Head of the whole Christian or Catholick Church the Faith approved and taught by him as Head thereof though it be de facto the general Faith and Profession of all Christians may yet very well be called the Roman Faith Why because the root origine and chief Foundation under Christ of its being practised and believed by Christians is at Rome But if the Bishop of Rome be no such thing as Head of the Christian Church and they must have a very wide Faith which must swallow that Vniversal Headship with all the appurtenances upon your bare affirmation if it belongs no more to him to approve and teach the Faith then to any other Catholick Bishop if the coming from Rome affords no credibility at all to the Christian Faith then still there remains as great an incongruity as may be in calling the Christian Faith the Roman Faith And as to all these my denial is as good as your affirmation when you undertake to prove I shall to answer If A. C. adds the practice of the Church to the Roman Faith I see no advantage is gotten by it for the first must limit the latter and the Faith being Roman the Church must be so too and therefore all your cavils on that subject come to nothing The third Exception is against the place out of S. Bernard and S. Austin which his Lordship saith are mis-applied for neither of them saith he spake of the Roman and S. Bernard perhaps neither of the Catholick nor the Roman but of a particular Church or Congregation His words are What greater pride than that one man should prefer his judgement before the whole Congregation Which A. C. conveniently to his purpose rendred before the whole Congregation of all the Christian Churches in the world Whereas no such thing is in him as all the Christian Churches in the world And his Lordship saith He thinks it is plain that he speaks both of and to the particular Congregation to which he was then preaching This you deny not but say The argument holds â minori ad majus to shew the more exorbitant pride of those who prefer their private fanatick Opinions before the judgement of the whole Catholick Church The Roman Church you should have said for you own no Catholick Church but what is Roman and therein the argument you mention will hold yet further against those who prefer the Novel Opinions of the Roman Church before the ancient Apostolical Faith of the truly Catholick Church His Lordship adds That it is one thing to prefer a mans private judgement before the whole Congregation and another for an intelligent man in something unsatisfied modestly to propose his doubts even to the Catholick Church And much more may a whole National Church nay the whole body of Protestants do it Now you very wisely leave out this last clause that you might take an opportunity to declaim against Luther Zuinglius Calvin c. for want of modesty But what pretext could there have been for such virulency had they been guilty of what you charge them if you would but have given us all that his Lordship said And may not I now therefore more justly return you your own language in the same page upon a far less occasion That here 's a manifest robbery of part of his Lordships words for which you are bound to restitution For his Lordship as it were foreseeing this cavil warily adds that concerning a whole National Church and the whole body of Protestants which you for reasons best known to your self craftily leave out But we must excuse our adversary for this slip though it be an unhandsome one For the truth is he had no other way to hide the guiltiness of his own pen c. These are your own words only applied and that much more justly to your self for a more palpable fault in the very same page wherein you had accused his Lordship for one of that kind But you go on further and supposing the doubts had been modestly proposed yet this could not at all help the Protestant cause in regard their doubts were in points of Faith already determined for such by authority of the Catholick Church to question any of which with what seeming modesty soever is sinful heretical and damnable Were it our present business it were easie to make it appear that the far greatest part of the matters in Controversie were never determined as points of Faith before the Council of Trent and I hope you will not say that was before the Reformation or any proposal of doubts But if they had been defined by your Church for matters of Faith and our great doubt be How your Church comes to have this power of determining points of Faith to whom should this doubt be propounded to your Church no doubt then we should hear from her as now we do from you That to question it with what seeming modesty soever is sinful heretical ond damnable And Is it not then likely that your Church should ever yield to the proposal of doubts and you do well to tell us so for it will save Protestants a great deal of labour when they see your Church so incurable that she makes it sinful heretical and damnable to question any thing she hath determined Although we do with much more reason assert it to be sinful heretical and damnable in your Church to offer to obtrude erroneous Doctrines on the Faith of the Christian world as points necessary to be believed and to urge superstitious practices as the conditions of communion with her To the place of S. Austin wherein he saith That it is a part of most insolent madness for any man to dispute Whether that be to be done which is usually done in and through the whole Catholick Church of Christ. His Lordship answer 1. Here 's not a word of the Roman Church but of that which is all over the world Catholick which Rome never yet was and for all your boast of having often shewn That the Roman and the Catholick are all one I dare leave it to the indifferent Reader Whether you have not miserably failed in your attempts that way 2. He answers That A. C. applies this to the Roman Faith whereas S. Austin speaks expresly of the rites and ceremonies of the Church and particularly about the manner of offering upon Maundy-Thursday whether it be in the morning or after supper or both 3. T is manifest by the words themselves that S. Austin speaks of no matter of Faith
grants a safe-conduct or makes promise of any thing to the prejudice of that Jurisdiction it shall not hold The reason is because 't is a promise made of a thing not pertaining to the Jurisdiction of that Prince nor wholly in his power to see performed To this I answer 1. That if I understand any thing this is expresly to say That no Prince is to keep Faith with Hereticks and that is it which you are charged with and you made use of this distinction to free your selves from Now that this is the plain meaning of it thus appears you say in the words immediately after But the Council no where teaches That Faith or safe-conduct given in temporal causes properly pertaining to the Princes Jurisdiction is not to be kept by all and to all persons of what condition soever so far as it is possible Which is as much as to say That in any other case but that of Heresie they are to keep Faith but not in that for this of Heresie is that which you oppose to all Temporal Causes and challenge it as belonging to an Ecclesiastical Tribunal when therefore the Council of Constance decrees That no Secular Power is obliged by any safe-conduct to any thing which may hinder the Ecclesiastical Tribunals proceeding in causes of Heresie what doth it else but declare in express terms That Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks i. e. in any thing relating to their Heresie for this you say they have nothing to do with and therefore let Kings and Princes make never so solemn promises and engagements to men suspected of Heresie to their peril be it who rely upon them for they have nothing to do to promise in such matters and though their Faith be given never so publickly and solemnly they are not bound to keep it nay they are bound not to keep it for if they should it would be to the apparent mischief and prejudice of the Church This necessarily follows from your own words and the distinction here used by you So that now we need seek no further than your self and Becanus for the open avowing of this Principle That no Prince is bound to keep Faith with Hereticks but if he doth promise safe-conduct to them though it be more than he can do yet the Church can make that good use of it that by that means she may get the Hereticks under her power and when she hath them it is but then declaring this promise to be null and she may do with them as she pleases Neither is it only Becanus and you who say this but it is the received Principle among you whatever you say or pretend to the contrary I mean not that you say in express terms That Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks but by this distinction of the Secular and Ecclesiastical Power as you use it you say that from whence it necessarily follows But yet I answer 2. Though this distinction should be granted yet it cannot really excuse the Emperour from violating his Faith For I say he promised nothing but was in his power which was to secure him as to life and liberty Now although the Emperour had suffered the Ecclesiastical Tribunal to do what belonged to it which was to enquire into the charge of Heresie and to give sentence upon the person yet the execution belonged wholly to the Secular Power as the Council it self acknowledged when after the sentence of Heresie was pronounced against John Husse there was nothing of the executive part which was pleaded as belonging to the Church but only degradation and that was performed in the presence of the Council upon which the Sacred Synod declares That they had no more to do with him but to deliver him over to the Secular Power and accordingly decrees it to be done Now when the Synod declares this Is it not plain that what concerns his life doth properly and only belong to the Secular Power if therefore the Emperour was bound to do all which lay in him to do he was effectually bound to secure him as to life and liberty for both those lay within his power And therefore when he gave order for his execution he was highly guilty of the violation of his Faith and if the Council of Constance declared him absolved as to this too it is yet more evident that they not only decreed That no Faith was to be kept with Hereticks in matters concerning the Ecclesiastical Tribunal but in such as concerned the Secular Power which is much as to say Not at all And by this the vanity of this distinction of the Secular and Ecclesiastical Power is sufficiently manifest and that it evidently appears that the Council of Constance did decree That no Faith was to be kept with Hereticks And thus I have proved that his Lordship hath not as you calumniate him ignorantly or maliciously wronged the Council but that no other tolerable sense besides that which his Lordship saith can be made of the decree then passed and notwithstanding your arts and distinctions nothing can be more plain than that John Husse was trepanned into his ruine by the Faith of the Emperour given to him It can be therefore nothing but either palpable ignorance or a deceit as gross as trusting your safe-conduct in a matter of Heresie for you so confidently to assert That if the Relator had not mangled the words of the Council to deceive his Reader but set down the decree fairly and fully as it is the business had been so clear that it would scarce have any dispute Whereas his Lordship only sets down the title of the decree and so he tells you himself and this he doth as faithfully as may be and whereas nothing can more evidence the juglings of the Council than the Decree it self doth in which nothing is more plain than that In case of Heresie no Prince is bound to keep Faith with any persons whatsoever From the Council of Constance we proceed to other Authors to see whether they do not concurr with it in this Opinion For this his Lordship cites Simancha a Spanish Bishop and a Canonist as well as Civilian who expresly saith That Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks as neither with Tyrants Pyrates or other publick Robbers and plainly justifies the proceedings of the Council of Constance in that respect in that Hereticks by their solemn judgement were burnt although publick security had been given them Let us now see what answer you return to these clear Citations In general you say The Bishop was insincere or unadvised in quoting this Author I wonder wherein I am sure not so much as you are in your Answers to him For you say Simancha holds not this absolutely and universally but only in cases wherein that which is promised cannot be lawfully performed Hence say you Simancha hath these words Veruntamen ut Marius Salomonius ait promissa contra Christum fides si praestetur perfidia
I heartily wish had been as orderly and happily pursued as the work was right Christian and good in it self But humane frailty and the heats and distempers of men as well as the cunning of the Devil would not suffer that For even in this sense also the wrath of man doth not accomplish the will of God St. James 1.20 but I have learnt not to reject the good which God hath wrought for any evil which men may fasten upon it Now to this you answer 1. By a fair Concession again that a Provincial Council is the next Chirurgion when a Gangrene endangers life but still the Popes assistance is required For fear the Chirurgion should do too much good of himself you would be sure to have the Pope as Physitian to stand by whom you know too much concerned in the maladies of the Church to give way to an effectual cure 2. But you say further That the most proper expedient is an Oecumenical Council and this you spoil again with saying Such as the Council of Trent was For what you say in vindication of that being General and free we shall consider in the Chapter designed for that purpose What you object against our National Synod 1562. will be fully answered before the end of this which that we may make way for we must proceed to the remainder of these general grounds in which his Lordship proves That when the Vniversal Church will not or for the iniquity of the times cannot obtain and settle a free General Council 't is lawful nay sometimes necessary to reform gross abuses by a National or a Provincial To this you answer in General That you deny not but matters of less moment as concerning rites and ceremonies abuses in manners and discipline may be reformed by particular Councils without express leave of the Pope but that in matters of great moment concerning the Faith and publick Doctrine of the Church Sacraments and whatever else is of Divine Institution or universal obligation particular Councils if they duly proceed attempt nothing without recourse to the Sea Apostolick and the Pope's consent either expresly granted or justly presumed Fair hopes then there are of a cure when the Imposthume gathers in the Head we are indeed by this put into a very good condition for if a small matter hurts a Church she hath her hands at liberty to help her self but if one comes to ravish her her hands are tyed and by no means must she defend her self For in case say you it be any matter of great moment it must be left to the Pope and nothing to be done without his consent no not although the main of the distempers come through him But thanks be to God our Church is not committed to the hands of such a merciless Physitian who first causeth the malady and then forbids the cure we know of no such obligation we have to sleep in St. Peters Church as of old they did in the Temple of Aesculapius in hopes of a cure God hath entrusted every National Church with the care of her own safety and will require of her an account of that power he hath given to that end It will be little comfort to a Church whose members rot for want of a remedy to say The Pope will not give leave or else it might have been cured I wonder where it is that any Christian Church is commanded to wait the Popes good leasure for reforming her self Whence doth he derive this Authority and sole power of reforming Churches But that must be afterwards examined But is it reasonable to suppose that there should be Christian Magistrates and Christian Bishops in Churches and yet these so tyed up that they can do nothing in order to the Churches recovery though the distempers be never so great and dangerous Do we not read in the Apostolical Churches that the Government of them was in themselves without any the least mention of any Oecumenical Pastour over all if any abuses were among them the particular Governours of those Churches are checked and rebuked for it and commanded to exercise their power over offenders and must the encroachments of an usurped and arbitrary power in the Church hinder particular Churches from the exercise of that full power which is committed to the Governours of them Neither is this only a Right granted to a Church as such but we find this power practised and asserted in the history of the Christian Churches from the Apostles times For no sooner did the Bishops of Rome begin to encroach but other Bishops were so mindful of their own priviledges and the Interess of their Churches that they did not yield themselves his Vassals but disputed their rights and withstood his usurpations As hath partly appeared already and will do more afterwards And that particular Churches may reform themselves his Lordship produceth several Testimonies The first is of Gerson who tells us plainly That he will not deny but that the Church may be reformed by parts And that this is necessary and that to effect it Provincial Councils may suffice and in some things Diocesan And again Either you should reform all estates of the Church in a General Council or command them to be reformed in Provincial Councils But all this you say doth not concern matters of Faith but only personal abuses But I pray what ground is there that one should be reformed and not the other Is it not the reason why any reformation is necessary that the Churches purity and safety should be preserved and is not that as much or more endangered by erroneous doctrines then by personal abuses Will not then the parity of reason hold proportionably for one as well as the other that if the Church may be reformed by parts as to lesser abuses then much more certainly as to greater Besides you say Gerson allowed no Schismatical Reformations against the Churches head neither do we plead for any such but then you must shew Who the Churches head is and By what right he comes to be so otherwise the cause of the Schism will fall upon him who pretends to be the head to direct others and is as corrupt a member as any in the body But his Lordship adds This right of Provincial Synods that they might decree in causes of Faith and in cases of Reformation where corruptions had crept into the Sacraments of Christ was practised much above a thousand years ago by many both National and Provincial Synods For which he first instanceth in the Council at Rome under Pope Sylvester An. 324. condemning Photinus and Sabellius whose heresies were of a high nature against the Faith but here you say The very title confutes his pretence for it was held under the Pope and therefore not against him But however whether with the Pope or against him it was no more then a Provincial Synod and this decreed something in matters of Faith though according to your own
Doctrine the Pope could not be Infallible there for you restrain his Infallibility to a General Council and do not assert that it belongs to the particular Church of Rome As well then may any other Provincial Synod determine matters of Faith as that of Rome since that hath no more Infallibility belonging to it as such then any other particular Church hath and the Pope himself you say may erre when he doth not define matters of Faith in a General Council To his Lordships second instance of the Council of Gangra about the same time condemning Eustathius for his condemning marriage as unlawful you answer to the same purpose That Osius was there Pope Sylvester's Legat but what then if the Pope had been there himself he had not been Infallible much less certainly his Legat who could have only a Second-hand Infallibility To the third of the Council of Carthage condemning rebaptization about 348. you grant That it was assembled by Gratus Bishop of Carthage but that no new Article was defined in it but only the perpetual tradition of the Church was confirmed therein Neither do we plead for any power in Provincial Councils to define any new Articles of Faith but only to revive the old and to confirm them in opposition to any Innovations in point of Doctrine and as to this we profess to be guided by the sense of Scripture as interpreted by the unanimous consent of the Fathers and the four first General Councils To the fourth of the Council of Aquileia A. D. 381. condemning Palladius and Secundinus for embracing the Arrian Heresie St. Ambrose being present you answer That they only condemned those who had been condemned already by the Nicene Council and St. Ambrose and other Bishops of Italy being present Who can doubt but every thing was done there by the Popes authority and consent But if they only enforced the decrees of the Council of Nice What need of the Pope's authority to do that And do you think that there were no Provincial Councils in that part of Italy which was particularly distinguished from the suburbicarian Churches under the Bishop of Rome wherein the Pope was not present either by himself or Legats If you think so your thoughts have more of your will then understanding in them But if this Council proceeded according to that of Nice Will it not be as lawful for other Provincial Councils to reform particular Churches as long as they keep to the Decrees not barely of Nice but of the four General Councils which the Church of England looks on as her duty to do In the two following Instances of the second Council of Carthage declaring in behalf of the Trinity and the Milevitan Council about the Pelagian Heresie you say The Bishops of Rome were consulted But what then Were they consulted as the Heads of the Church or only as eminent members of it in regard of their Faith and Piety Prove the former when you are able and as to the latter it depends upon the continuance of that Faith and Piety in them and when once the reason is taken away there can be no necessity of continuing the same resort The same answer will serve for what you say concerning the second Council of Aurange determining the Controversies about Grace and Free-will supposing we grant it assembled by the means of Felix 4. Bishop of Rome as likewise to the third of Toledo We come therefore to that which you call his Lordships reserve and Master-allegation the fourth Council of Toledo which saith he did not only handle matters of Faith for the reformation of that people but even added also something to the Creed which were not expresly delivered in former Creeds Nay the Bishops did not only practise this to condemn Heresies in National and Provincial Synods and so to reform those several places and the Church it self by parts but they did openly challenge this as their right and due and that without any leave asked of the See of Rome For in this fourth Council of Toledo they decree that If there happen a cause of Faith to be setled a general that is a National Synod of all Spain and Gallicia shall be held thereon And this in the year 643. where you see it was then Catholick Doctrine in all Spain that a National Synod might be a competent Judge in a cause of Faith But here still we meet with the same Answer That all this might be done with a due subordination to the See Apostolick but that it doth not hence follow that any thing may be done in Provincial Councils against the authority of it Neither do we plead that any thing may be done against the just authority of the Bishop of Rome or any other Bishop but then you must prove that he had a just authority over the Church of England and that he exercised no power here at the Reformation but what did of right belong to him But the fuller debate of these things must be left to that place where you designedly assert and vindicate the Pope's Authority These things being thus in the general cleared we come to the particular application of them to the case of the Church of England As to which his Lordship say's And if this were practised so often and in so many places Why may not a National Council of the Church of England do the like As she did For she cast off the Pope's usurpation and as much as in her lay restored the King to his right That appears by a Book subscribed by the Bishops in Henry the eighths time And by the Records in the Archbishops office orderly kept and to be seen In the Reformation which came after our Princes had their parts and the Clergy theirs And to these two principally the power and direction for Reformation belongs That our Princes had their parts is manifest by their calling together of the Bishops and others of the Clergy to consider of that which might seem worthy Reformation And the Clergy did their part for being thus call'd together by Regal power they met in the National Synod of sixty two And the Articles there agreed on were afterwards confirmed by acts of State and the Royal assent In this Synod the Positive truths which are delivered are more then the Polemicks So that a meer calumny it is that we profess only a Negative Religion True it is and we must thank Rome for it our Confession must needs contain some Negatives For we cannot but deny that Images are to be adored Nor can we admit maimed Sacraments Nor grant Prayers in an unknown tongue And in a corrupt time or place 't is as necessary in Religion to deny falshood as to assert and vindicate Truth Indeed this latter can hardly be well and sufficiently done but by the former an Affirmative verity being ever included in the Negative to a falshood As for any errour which might fall into this as any other Reformation if
by the Bishops of their own Province But this Answer is very unreasonable on these accounts 1. If Appeals do of right belong to the Bishop of Rome as Vniversal Pastor of the Church then Why not the Appeals of the Inferiour Clergy as well as Bishops Indeed if Appeals were challenged only by virtue of the Canons and those Canons limit one and not the other as the most eager pleaders for Appeals in that age pleaded only the Canons of the Church for them then there might be some reason Why one should be restrained and not the other but if they belong to him by Divine Right then all Appeals must necessarily belong to him 2. If Appeals belong to the Pope as Vniversal Pastor then no Council or persons had any thing to do to determine who should appeal and who not For this were an usurping of the Pope's priviledge for he to whom only the right of Appeals belongs can determine Who should appeal and who not and where and by whom those Controversies should be ended So that the very act of the Council in offering to limit Appeals implies that they did not believe any such Vniversal Pastorship in the Pope for had they not done so they would have waited his judgement and not offered to have determined such things themselves 3. The Appeals of the upper and inferiour Clergy cannot be supposed to be separate from each other For the Appeal of a Presbyter doth suppose the impeachment of the Bishop for some wrong done to him as in the case of Apiarius accusing Vrban the Bishop of Sicca for excommunicating him So that the Bishop becomes a party in the Appeal of a Presbyter And if Appeals be allowed to the Bishop it is supposed to be in his favour for clearing of his right the better and if it be denied to the Presbyter it would savour too much of injustice and partiality 4. The reason of the Canon extends to one as well as the other which must be supposed to prevent all those troubles and inconveniencies which would arise from the liberty of Appeals to Rome and would not these come as well by the Appeals of Bishops as of Inferiour Clergy Nay Doth not the Canon insist on that that no Appeals should be made from the Council of Bishops or the Primates of Africa but in case of Bishops Appeals this would be done as well as the other and therefore they are equally against the reason and design of the Canon 5. The case of Presbyters may be as great and considerable as that of Bishops and as much requiring the judgement of the Vniversal Pastor of the Church As for instance that very case which probably gave occasion to the Milevitan Canon viz. the going of Coelestius to Rome being condemned of Heresie in Africa Now What greater cause could there be made an Appeal to Rome in than in so great a matter of Faith as that was about the necessity of Grace And therefore Petrus de Marcá proves at large against Perron that in the Epistle of Innocent to Victricius where it is said That the greater causes must be referred to the Apostolick See is not to be understood only of the causes of Bishops but may referr to the causes of Presbyters too i. e. when they either concern matter of Faith or some doubtful piece of Church-discipline 6. The Pope notwithstanding this Canon looked on himself as no more hindred from receiving the Appeals of Presbyters than those of Bishops If therefore any difference had been made by any act of the Church surely the Pope would have remanded Presbyters back to their own Provinces again but instead of that we see he received the Appeal of Apiarius But for this a rare Answer is given viz. that though the Presbyters were forbidden to appeal yet the Pope was not forbidden to receive them if they did appeal But to what purpose then were such prohibitions made if the Pope might by his open incouragement of them upon their Appeals to him make them not value such Canons at all for they knew if they could but get to Rome they should be received for all them Notwithstanding all which hath been said you tell us That in the Council of Africk it was acknowledged that Bishops had power in their own cause to appeal to Rome for which you cite in your Margent part of an Epistle of the Council to Boniface But with what honesty and integrity you do this will appear by the story Apiarius then appealing to Zosimus he sends over Faustinus to Africa to negotiate the business of Appeals and to restore Apiarius for which he pleads the Nicene Canons an account of which will be given afterwards the Fathers all protest they could find no such thing there but they agree to send Deputies into the East to fetch the true Canons thence as hath been related already in the mean time Zosimus dyes and Boniface succeeds him but for the better satisfaction of the Pope the Council of Carthage dispatch away a Letter to Boniface to give him an account of their proceedings in which Epistle extant in the African Code of Canons after they have given an account of the business of Apiarius they proceed to the instructions which Faustinus brought with him to Africa the chief of which is that concerning Appeals to be made to Rome and then follow those words which you quote in which they say That in a Letter written the year before to Zosimus they had granted liberty to Bishops to appeal to Rome and that therein they had intimated so much to him Thus far you are right but there is usually some mystery couched in your c. for you know very well where to cut off sentences for had you added but the next words they had spoiled all your foregoing there being contained in them the full reason of what went before viz. that because the Pope pretended that the Appeals of Bishops were contained in the Nicene Canons they were contented to yield that it should be so till the true Canons were produced And is this now all their acknowledgement that Bishops might in their own causes appeal to Rome when they made only a Provisional decree What should be done till the matter came to a resolution But if you will throughly understand what their final judgement was in this business I pray read their excellent Epistle to Pope Celestine who succeeded Boniface after they had received the Nicene Canons out of the East Which being so excellent a Monument of Antiquity and giving so great light to our present Controversie I shall at large recite and render it so far as concerns this business After our bounden duty of Salutation we earnestly beseech you that hereafter you admit not so easily to your ears those that come from hence and that you admit no more into communion those whom we have cast out for your Reverence will easily perceive that this is forbid by the Council of
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
But all this proceeds from want of understanding the Discipline of the Church at that time for excommunication did not imply any such authoritative act of throwing men out of the Communion of the whole Church but only a declaring that they would not admit such persons to communion with themselves And therefore might be done by equals to equals and sometimes by Inferiours to Superiours In equals it is apparent by Johannes Antiochenus in the Ephesine Council excommunicating Cyril Patriarch of Alexandria and I suppose you will not acknowledge it may be done by Inferiours if we can produce any examples of Popes being excommunicated and what say you then to the African Bishops excommunicating Pope Vigilius as Victor Tununensis an African Bishop himself relates it Will you say now that Victors excommunicating the Asian Churches argued his authority over them when another Victor tells us that the African Bishops solemnly excommunicated the Pope himself And I hope you will not deny but the Bishop of Rochester might as well excommunicate the Archbishop of York as these Africans excommunicate the Bishop of Rome What say you to the expunging the name of Felix Bishop of Rome out of the Diptychs of the Church by Acacius the Patriarch of Constantinople What say you to Hilary's Anathema against Pope Liberius If these excommunications did not argue just power and authority over the persons excommunicated neither could Pope Victors do it For it is apparent by the practise of the Church that excommunication argued no such superiority in the persons who did it but all the force of it lay in the sense of the Church for by whomsoever the sentence was pronounced if all other Churches observed it as most commonly they did while the Vnity of the Church continued then they were out of the Communion of the Catholick Church if not then it was only the particular declaration of those persons or Churches who did it And in this case the validity of the Popes excommunication of the Asian Bishops depended upon the acceptance of it by other Churches which most consenting to it he could not throw them out of the communion of the whole Church but only declare that if they came to Rome he would not admit them to communion with him And therefore Ruffinus well renders that place in Eusebius out of Irenaeus his Epistle to Victor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by these words Nunquam tamen ob hoc repulsi sunt ab Ecclesiae societate aut venientes ab illis partibus non sunt suscepti so that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may as well signifie not to receive as to cast out for the Churches not receiving is her casting out Thus I hope it is evident that his Lordship hath received no injury by these lighter skirmishes We now follow you into hotter service For you say he ventures at last to grapple with the Authority it self alleadged by A. C. out of St. Irenaeus where in the first place you wink and strike and let your blows fall besides him for fear he should return them or some one for him You quarrel with his translation of the Authority cited by him but that the ground of this quarrel may be understood we must first enquire what his Lordship hath to say for himself The place of Irenaeus is To this Church he speaks of Rome propter potentiorem principalitatem for the more powerful Principality of it 't is necessary that every Church that is the faithful undique round about should have recourse Now for this his Lordship saith there was very great reason in Irenaeus his time that upon any difference arising in the faith Omnes undique Fideles all the faithful or if you will all the Churches round about should have recourse that is resort to Rome being the Imperial City and so a Church of more powerful Principality then any other at that time in those parts of the world But this his Lordship saith will not exalt Rome to be Head of the Church Vniversal Here your blood rises and you begin a most furious encounter with his Lordship for translating undique round about as if say you St. Irenaeus spake only of those neighbouring Churches round about Rome and not the Churches throughout the world whereas undique as naturally signifies every where and from all parts witness Thomas Thomasius where the word undique is thus Englished From all parts places and corners every where Can you blame me now if I seek for a retreat into some strong-hold or if you will some more powerful Principality when I see so dreadful a Charge begun with Thomas Thomasius in the Front You had routed us once before with Rider and other English Lexicons but it seems Rider had done service enough that time now that venerable person Thomas Thomasius must be upon duty and do his share for the Catholick Cause You somewhere complain how much Catholicks are straitned for want of Books Would any one believe you that find you so well stored with Thomas Thomasius Rider and other English Lexicons You would sure give us some cause of suspition that there is some Jesuits School taught in England and that you are the learned Master of it by your being so conversant in these worthy Authours But although the Authority of Th. Thomasius signifie very little with us yet that of the Greek Lexicons might do much more if we had the original Greek of Irenaeus instead of his barbarous Latin Interpreter For now it is uncertain what word Irenaeus used and so it is but a very uncertain conjecture which can be drawn from the signification of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unless we knew which of them was the genuine word in the Greek of Irenaeus But you say all of them undeniably signifie from all parts Vniversally and that because they are rendred by the word undique So that this will make an excellent proof undique must signifie from all parts because 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 do signifie so in Greek and that these do undeniably signifie so much appears because they are rendred by undique And I grant they are so for in the old Glossary which goes under the name of Cyril undique is rendred by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and â—ully than whom we cannot possibly desire a better Authour in this case renders 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by undique For in his Book de Finibus he translates that of Epicurus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by undique complerentur voluptatibus and so he renders that passage in Plato's Timaeus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by undique aequabilem although as Hen. Stephanus notes that be rather the signification of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but still there is some difference between 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Greek Authours notes ex omni parte terrae but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 only ex quâvis parte so 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 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
but his Lordship objects a shrewd Consequence from this Universal Pastourship that this brings the necks of Princes under the Roman Pride And if Kings be meant his Lordship saith yet the command is pasce feed them but deponere or occidere to depose or kill them is not pascere in any sense Lanii id est non Pastoris that 's the Butchers not the Shepheards part This you call his Lordships winding about and falling upon that odious Question of killing and deposing Kings An odious Question indeed whether we consider the grounds or the effects and consequents of it But yet you would seem to clear your selves from the odium of it First By saying that it is a gross fallacy to argue a negatione speciei ad negationem generis which is a new kind of Logick It is indeed for it is of your own coyning for his Lordship argues ab affirmatione generis ad affirmationem speciei and I hope this is no new Logick unless you think he that saith He hath power over all living creatures hath not thereby power over men too His Lordship therefore doth not argue against the Popes Vniversal Supremacy from the denyal of that but deduces that as a consequence from your assertion and explication of what you mean by Sheep and Lambs But this is but a sleight Answer in comparison of what follows Secondly we answer That the point of Killing Kings is a most false and scandalous Imputation scandalous enough indeed if false and though your Popes have not given express warrant for the doing it yet it is sufficiently known How the Pope in Consistory could not contain his joy when it was done in the case of Henry 3. of France And it hath been sufficiently confessed and lamented by persons of your own communion How much the Doctrine of the Jesuits hath encouraged those Assassinations of those two successive Henryes of France Will you or dare you vindicate the Doctrines of Mariana and others which do not obscurely deliver their judgement as to that very thing of Killing Haeretical Princes But if we should grant you this That the Pope may not command to kill What say you to that of deposing Princes which seldome falls much short of the other As to this you dare not cry It is a false and scandalous imputation as you did to the other but you answer 'T is no point of your Faith that the Pope hath power to do it and therefore you say it is no part of your task to dispute it Is this all the security Princes have from you that it is no point of your Faith that the Pope hath power to do it Is it not well enough known that there are many things which are held undoubtedly by the greatest part of your Church which yet you say are no points of Faith And yet in this you are directly contradicted by one who knew what were points of Faith among you as well as you and that was Father Creswell whose testimony I have cited already and he saith expresly Certum est de fide It is a thing certain and of Faith that the subjects of an Haeretical Prince are not only freed from Allegiance but are bound ex hominum Christianorum dominatu ejicere to cast him out of his power which certainly is more than the deposing of him And Sanders plainly enough saith That a King that will not submit to the Popes Authority is by no means to be suffered but his subjects ought to do their utmost endeavour that another may be placed in his room Indeed he saith not as the other doth That this is de fide but that is the only reserve you have when a Doctrine is odious and infamous to the world to cry out It is not de side when yet it may be as firmly believed among you as any that you account de fide And if you believe the Duke of Alva in his Manifesto at the siege of Pampelona when the Pope had deposed the King of Navarre to whom that City belonged he saith That it is not doubted but the Pope had power to depose Heretical Princes And if you had been of another opinion you ought to have declared your self more fully than you do If you had said that indeed some were of that opinion but you abhorred and detested it you had spoken to the purpose but when you use only that pitiful evasion That it is not of Faith c. you sufficiently shew What your judgement is but that you dare not publickly own it It seems you remember what was said by your Masters in reference to Emanuel SÃ Non fuit opus ad ista descendere There was no need to meddle with those things It seems if there had been there was no hurt in the Doctrine but only that it was unseasonable I pray God keep us from that time when you shall think it needful to declare your selves in this point But you conclude this with a most unworthy and scandalous reflection on Protestants in these words But what Protestants have both done and justified in the worst of these kinds is but too fresh in memory But Were those the practices and principles of Protestants Were they not abhorred and detested in the highest manner by all true Protestants both at home and abroad It will be well if you can clear some of your selves from having too much a hand in promoting both those principles and practices I suppose you cannot but have heard Who it was is said to have expressed so much joy at the time of that horrid execution What counsels and machinations are said to have been among some devoted Sons of the Church of Rome abroad about that time Therefore clear your selves more than yet you have done of those imputations before you charge that guilt on Protestants which they express the highest abhorrence of And let the names of such who either publickly or privately abett or justifie such horrid actions be under a continual Anathema to all Generations After all this discourse about the Popes Authority A. C. brings it at last home to the business of Schism For he saith The Bishop of Rome shall never refuse to feed and govern the whole Flock in such sort as that neither particular man nor Church shall have just cause under pretence of Reformation in manners of Faith to make a separation from the whole Church This his Lordship saith by A. C 's favour is meer begging the Question For this is the very thing which the Protestants charge upon him namely that he hath governed if not the whole yet so much of the Church as he hath been able to bring under his power so as that he hath given too just cause of the present continued Separation And as the corruptions in the Doctrine of Faith in the Church of Rome were the cause of the first Separation so are they at this present day the cause why the Separation continues
And the oppression of the Church of Rome he further adds is the great cause of all the errours in that part of the Church which is under the Roman Jurisdiction And for the Protestants they have made no separation from the General Church properly so called but their Separation is only from the Church of Rome and such other Churches as by adhering to her have hazarded themselves and do now miscall themselves the whole Catholick Church Nay even here the Protestants have not left the Church of Rome in her essence but in her errours not in the things which constitute a Church but only in such abuses and corruptions as work towards the dissolution of a Church Let now any indifferent Reader be judge Whether his Lordship or A. C. be the more guilty in begging the Question For all the Answer you can give is That his Lordship begs it in saying that the Roman Church is not the whole Catholick Church and that the Roman Catholick Church may be in an errour but the former we have proved already and I doubt not but the latter will be as evident as the other before our task be ended But as though it were not possible for you to be guilty of begging the Question after you have said that the Roman Church cannot erre you give this as the reason for it Because she is the unshaken Rock of Truth and that she hath the sole continual succession of lawfully-sent Pastors and Teachers who have taught the same unchanged Doctrine and shall infallibly continue so teaching it to the worlds end Now Who dares call this Begging the Question No it must not be called so in you it shall be only Taking it for granted Which we have seen hath been your practice all along especially when we charge your Church with errourâ— for then you cry out presently What your Church erre No you defie the language What the Spouse of Christ the Catholick Church erre that is impossible What the unshaken Rock of Truth to sink into errours the Infallible Church be deceived she that hath never taught any thing but Truth be charged with falshood she that not only never did erre but it is impossible nay utterly impossible nay so impossible that it cannot be imagined that ever she should erre This is the summ of all your arguments which no doubt sound high to all such who know not what confident begging the Question means or out of modesty are loath to charge you with it Much to the same purpose do you go on to prove that Protestants have separated not from the errours but the essence of your Church And if that be true which you say That those things which we call Errours are essential to your Church we are the more sorry for it for we are sure and when you please will prove it that they are not cannot be essential to a true Church and if they be to yours the case is so much the worse with you when your distempers are in your vitals and your errours essential to your Churches Constitution What other things you have here are the bare repetitions of what we have often had before in the Chapters you refer us to And here we may thank you for some ease you give us in the far greatest remaining part of this Chapter which consists of tedious repetitions of such things which have been largely discussed in the First part where they were purposely and designedly handled as that concerning Traditions chap. 6. that concerning necessaries to salvation chap. 2 3 4. that concerning the Scriptures being an Infallible Rule throughout the Controversie of Resolution of Faith and that which concerns the Infallibility of General Councils we shall have occasion at large to handle afterwards and if there be any thing material here which you omit there it shall be fully considered But I know no obligation lying upon me to answer things as often as you repeat them especially since your gift is so good that way It is sufficient that I know not of any material passage which hath not received an Answer in its proper place That which is most pertinent to our present purpose is that which concerns the necessity of a Living Judge besides the Scriptures for ending Controversies of Faith As to which his Lordship saith That supposing there were such a one and the Pope were he yet that is not sufficient against the malice of the Devil and impious men to keep the Church at all times from renting even in the Doctrine of Faith or to soder the Rents which are made For oportet esse Haereses 1 Cor. 11.19 Heresies there will be and Heresies there properly cannot be but in the Doctrine of Faith To this you answer That Heresies are not within but without the Church and the Rents which stand in need of sodering are not found among the true members of the Church who continue still united in the Faith and due obedience to their Head but in those who have deserted the true Church and either made or adhered to Schismatical and Heretical Congregations A most excellent Answer His Lordship sayes If Christ had appointed an Infallible Judge besides the Scripture certainly it should have been for preventing Heresies and sodering the Rents of the Church So it is say you for if there be any Heresies it is nothing to him they are out of the Church and if there be any Schisms they are among those who are divided from him That is he is an Infallible Judge only thus far in condemning all such for Hereticks and Schismaticks who do not own him And his only way of preventing Heresies and Schisms is the making this the only tryal of them that whatever questions his Authority is Heresie and whatever separation be made from him is Schism Just as Absalom pretended that there was no Judge appointed to hear and determine causes and that the Laws were not sufficient without one and therefore he would do it himself so doth the Pope by Christ he pretends that he hath not taken care sufficient for deciding Controversies in Faith therefore there is a necessity in order to the Churches Vnity he should take it upon himself But now if we suppose in the former case of Absalom that he had pretended he could infallibly end all the Controversies in Israel and keep all in peace and unity and yet abundance of Controversies to arise among them by what right and power he took that office upon him and many of them cry out upon it as an Vsurpation and a disparagement to the Laws and Government of his Father David and upon this some of the wiser Israelites should have asked him Whether this were the way to end all Controversies and keep the Nation in peace Would it not have been a satisfactory Answer for him to have said Yes no doubt it is the only way For only they that acknowledge my power are the Kings lawful subjects and all
Authority and Jurisdiction given by Christ to one Bishop above another St. Hierom was not so sensless as not to see that the Bishops of Rome Constantinople and Alexandria had greater Authority and larger Jurisdiction in the Church then the petty Bishops of Eugubium Rhegium and Tanis but all this he knew well enough came by the custom of the Church that one Bishop should have larger power in the Church then another But saith he if you come to urge us with what ought to be practised in the Church then saith he Orbis major est urbe it is no one City as that of Rome which he particularly instanceth in which can prescribe to the whole world For saith he all Bishops are of equal merit and the same Priesthood wheresoever they are whether at Rome or elsewhere So that it is plain to all but such as wilfully blind themselves that St. Hierom speaks not of that which you call the Character of Bishops but of the Authority of them for that very word he useth immediately before Si authoritas quaeritur orbis major est urbe And where do you ever find merit applyed to the Bishops Character They who say It is understood of the merit of good life make St. Hierom speak non-sense For are all Bishops of the same merit of good life But we need not go out of Rome for the proper importance of merit here For in the third Roman Synod under Symmachus that very word is used concerning Authority and Principality in the Church ejus sedi primum Petri Apostoli meritum sive principatus deinde Conciliorum venerandorum authoritas c. where Binius confesseth an account is given of the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome the first ground of which St. Peters merit or principality apply now but this sense to S. Hierom and he may be very easily understood All Bishops are ejusdem meriti sive principatus of the same merit Dignity or Authority in the Church But you say he speaks not of the Pope as he is Pope good reason for it for St. Hierom knew no such Supremacy in the Pope as he now challengeth And can you think if St. Hierom had believed such an authority in the Pope as you do he would ever have used such words as these are to compare him with the poor Bishop of Agobio in Merit and Priesthood I cannot perswade my self you can think so only something must be said for the cause you have undertaken to defend And since Bellarmine and such great men had gone before you you could not believe there were any absurdity in saying as they did Still you say He doth not speak of that Authority which belongs to the Bishop of Rome as S. Peter 's Successor But if you would but read a little further you might see that S. Hierom speaks of all Bishops whether at Rome or Eugubium c. as equally the Apostles Successors For it is neither saith he riches or poverty which makes Bishops higher or lower Caeterùm omnes Apostolorum successores sunt but they are all the Apostles Successors therefore he speaks of them with relation to that Authority which they derived from the Apostles And never had there been greater necessity for him to speak of the Popes succeeding S. Peter in the Supremacy over the Church than here if he had known any such thing but he must be excused he was ignorant of it No that he could not be say you again for he speaks of it elsewhere and therefore he must be so understood there as that he neither contradict nor condemn himself But if the Epistle to Damasus be all your evidence for it a sufficient account hath been given of that already therefore you add more and bid us go find them out to see Whether they make for the purpose or no. I am sure your first doth not out of his Commentary on the 13. Psalm because it only speaks of S. Peters being Head of the Church and not of the the Popes and that may import only dignity and preheminence without authority and jurisdiction besides that Commentary on the Psalms is rejected as spurious by Erasmus Sixtus Senensis and many others among your selves Your second ad Demetriadem Virginem is much less to your purpose for that only speaks of Innocentius coming after Anastasius at Rome qui Apostolicae Cathedrae supradicti viri successor filius est Who succeeded him in the Apostolical Chair But Do you not know that there were many Apostolical Chairs besides that of Rome and had every one of them supreme authority over the Church of God What that should be on the 16. of S. Matthew I cannot imagine unless it be that S. Peter is called Princeps Apostolorum which honour we deny him not or that he saith Aedificabo Ecâ—lesiam meam super te But how these things concern the Popes Authority unless you had further enlightened us I cannot understand That ep 54. ad Marcellam is of the same nature with the last for the words which I suppose you mean are Petrus super quem Dominus fundaâ—it Ecclesiam and if you see what Erasmus saith upon that place you will have little cause to boast much of it Your last place is l. 1. Cont. Lucifer which I suppose to be that commonly cited thence Ecclesiae salus in summi Sacerdotis dignitate pendet but there even Marianus Victorius will tell you it is understood of every ordinary Bishop Thus I have taken the pains to search those places you nakedly refer us to in S. Hierom and find him far enough from the least danger of contradicting or condemning himself as to any thing which is here spoken by him So that we see S. Hierom remains a sufficient testimony against the Popes Monarchical Government of the Church His Lordship further argues against this Monarchy in the Church from the great and undoubted Rule given by Optatus that wheresoever there is a Church there the Church is in the Common-wealth and not the Common-wealth in the Church And so also the Church was in the Roman Empire Now from this ground saith his Lordship I argue thus If the Church be within the Empire or other Kingdom 't is impossible the Government of the Church should be Monarchical For no Emperour or King will endure another King within his Dominion that shall be greater than himself since the very enduring it makes him that endures it upon the matter no Monarch Your answer to this is That these two Kingdoms are of different natures the one spiritual the other temporal the one exercised only in such things as concern the worship of God and the Eternal Salvation of souls the other in affairs that concern this world only Surely you would perswade us we had never heard of much less read Bellarmin's first Book de Pontifice about the Popes Temporal Power which was fain to get license for the other four to pass at Rome and although he minces
the matter as much as may be and much more than Baronius and others did who pleaded downright for the Popes Temporal Power yet he must be a very weak Prince who doth not see how far that indirect and reductive power may extend when the Pope himself is to be Judge What comes under it and what not And What may not come under it when deposing of Princes shall be reduced under that you call The Worship of God and absolving subjects from their obedience tend to promote their Eternal Salvation But if the Pope may be Judge What temporal things are in ordine ad spiritualia and bring them under his power in that respect Why may not the Prince be Judge what spiritual things are in ordine ad temporalia and use his power over them in that respect too But in the mean time Is not a Kingdom like to be at peace then If the Pope challenged no other authority but what Christ or the Apostles had his Government might be admitted as well as that authority which they had but What do you think of us the mean while when you would perswade us that the Popes Power is no other than what Christ or the Apostles had you must certainly think us such persons as the Moon hath wrought particularly upon as you after very civilly speak concerning his Lordship Your instance from the Kings of France and Spain his Lordship had sufficiently answered by telling you That he that is not blind may see if he will of what little value the Popes Power is in those Kingdoms further than to serve their own turns of him which they do to their great advantage And when you would have this to be upon the account of Faith and Conscience Let the Pope exercise his power apparently against their Interest and then see on what account they profess obedience to him But as long as they can manage such pretences for their advantage and admit so much of it and no more they may very well endure it and his Lordship be far enough from contradicting himself When you would urge the same inconvenience against the Aristocratical Government of the Church you suppose that Aristocratical Government wholly Independent on and not subordinate to the Civil Government whereas his Lordship and the Church of England assert the Kings Supremacy in Government over all both persons and causes Ecclesiastical And therefore this nothing concerns us And if from what hath gone before it must as you say remain therefore fully proved that the external Government of the Church on earth is Monarchical It may for all that I see remain as fully proved that you are now the man who enjoy this Monarchical Power over the Church And whatever you stile the Pope Whether the Deputy or Vicar General of Christ or Servus servorum or what you will it is all one to us as long as we know his meaning whatever fair words you give him As though men would take it one jot the better to have one usurp and Tyrannize over them because he doth not call himself King or Prince but their humble servant Is it not by so much the greater Tyranny to have such kind of Ecclesiastical Saturnalia when the servus servorum must under that name tyrannize over the whole world We have already at large shewed How destructive this pretended Supremacy is to that Government of the Church by Bishops which his Lordship proves from the ancient Canons and Fathers of the Church doth of right belong to them viz. from several Canons of the Councils of Antioch and Nice and the testimonies of S. Augustine and S. Cyprian To all this you only say That you allow the Bishops their portion in the Government of Christs Flock But it is but a very small portion of what belongs to them if all their Jurisdiction must be derived from the Pope which I have shewed before to be the most current Opinion in your Church And I dare say you will not dispute the contrary His Lordship was well enough aware to what purpose Bellarmine acknowledged that the Government of the Church was ever in the Bishops for he himself saith It was to exclude temporal Princes but then he desires A. C. to take notice of that when Secular Princes are to be excluded then it shall be pretended that Bishops have power to govern but when it comes to sharing stakes between them and the Pope then hands off they have nothing to do any further than the Pope gives them leave What follows concerning the impossibility of a right executing of this Monarchy in the Church hath been already discussed of and you answer nothing at all to it that hath any face of pertinency for when you say it will hold as well against the Aristocratical Form I have plainly enough shewed you the contrary That which follows about the design of an Vniversal Monarchy in the State as well as the Church about Pope Innocent 's making the Pope to be the Sun and the Emperour the Moon the Spanish Friers two Scutchions Campanella 's Eclogue since you will not stand to defend them I shall willingly pass them over But what concerns the Supremacy of the Civil Power is more to our purpose and must be considered His Lordship therefore saith That every soul was to be subject to the higher power Rom. 13.1 And the higher Power there mentioned is the Temporal And the ancient Fathers come in with a full consent that every soul comprehends all without exception All spiritual men even to the highest Bishop even in spiritual causes too so the Foundations of Faith and good Manners be not shaken And where they are shaken there ought to be prayer and patience there ought not to be opposition by force Nay Emperours and Kings are custodes utriusque Tabulae They to whom the custody and preservation of both Tables of the Law for worship to God and duty to man are committed A Book of the Law was by Gods own command in Moses his time to be given to the King Deut. 17.18 And the Kings under the Law but still according to it did proceed to necessary Reformation in Church-businesses and therein commanded the very Priests themselves as appears in the Acts of Hezekiah and Josiah who yet were never censured to this day for usurping the High-Priests office Nay and the greatest Emperours for the Churches honour Theodosius the elder and Justinian and Charls the Great and divers others did not only meddle now and then but enact Laws to the great settlement and encrease of Religion in their several times Now to this again you answer That the civil and spiritual are both absolute and independent powers though each in their proper Orb the one in spirituals the other in temporals But What is this to that which his Lordship proves That there can be no such absolute independent spiritual power both because all are bound to obey the Civil Power and because the
assemblies was taken up and hath for its pattern the example of the Apostles Act. 15. yet surely there is little doubt to be made but the Apostles had both direction and precept too for doing it so often as just occasion required from Christ himself The whole force of which Answer lyes in those well placed words Surely there is little doubt to be made for as to any thing of reason you never offer at it Just such another of Bellarmins Sine dubio's comes after Though a General Council be the Church representative and do not meet or assemble together hic nunc but by order and deputation from man yet it follows not but the power and authority by which they act when they are met may be from God as doubtless it is Can any man have the face to question Whether the Authority of General Councils be of Divine Institution or no when you say Yes surely there is no doubt to be made of it doubtless it is We do not question as you would seem to imply afterwards Whether the people or the Pastours have right to send to General Councils but what ground you have to assert that General Councils are an immediate Divine Institution But I must needs say I never saw any thing affirmed oftener and offered to be proved less then that is here and yet as though you had done it invincibly you triumphantly proceed General Councils then are a principal and necessary part of that Ecclesiastical Hierarchy which Christ instituted for the Government of his Church and not an humane Expedient only taken up by the Church her self meerly upon prudential considerations as the Bishop will needs conceive It strangely puzzles me to find out any thing that Particle then relates to and after all my search can find nothing but surely without doubt and doubtless I pray Sir think not so meanly of us that we should take these for Arguments or Demonstrations Deal fairly with us and if we fall by the force of reason we yield our selves up to you But you are very much deceived if you think these things are taken for proofs with us we can easily discern the weakness of your cause through the most confident affirmations If you had brought any Law of Christ appointing that General Councils should be in the Church any Apostolical precept prescribing or giving directions concerning them you had done something but not so much as to offer at a proof and yet conclude it as confidently as if it were impossible to resist the force of your Demonstrations is an evidence that either you know your cause to be weak or suppose us to be so Much such another discourse is that which follows wherein you pretend to give a reason Why what is defined by one Council in point of Doctrine cannot be reversed by another Which is because the true Christian Faith is ex natura rei unchangeable that it admits not of yea and nay but only yea that it is alwayes the same that it must stand without alteration for ever nay that it is to be invariable and admit no change All these expressions we have in one Paragraph and for all that I see are the greatest strength of it But what is it you mean by all this Do you think we could not understand what you meant by the unchangeableness of Christian Faith without so many diversified expressions of it And what follows now from all this That one Council cannot repeal the Decrees of another How so was not the Faith of Christ as unchangeable in the time of the Arrian Councils as it is now and yet then one Council repealed the Decrees of others in point of Doctrine and yet by that nothing was derogated from the Institution or honour of Christ by such a reversing those Decrees Though the Faith i. e. The Doctrine of Christ be alwayes the same Doth it thence follow then men shall alwayes believe all this unalterable Doctrine If so how came Arrianism to overspread the Church How came six hundred Bishops at the Council of Ariminum to be deceived in a Doctrine of Faith by your own confession It is therefore a profound mistake to infer from the fallibility of General Councils the alteration of the Faith of Christ. The Faith of Christ is founded on a surer bottom then the Decrees of Councils though all men are lyars God is true and Christ the same yesterday to day and for ever But of this more afterwards You would seem to argue more pertinently in the following pages against his Lordships opinion for you say He sayes and unsayes the same and what he seems to attribute to General Councils in one proposition he takes away in another That which his Lordship sayes is That the definitions of a General Council are binding to all particulars and it self but yet so that they cannot bind the whole Church from calling again and in the after-calls upon just cause to order and if need be to abrogate former acts And after adds And because the whole Church can meet no other way the Council shall remain the Supream external living temporary Ecclesiastical Judge of all Controversies Only the whole Church and she alone hath power when Scripture or Demonstration is found and peaceably tendered to her to represent her self again in a new Council and in it to order what was amiss Now we must consider what we find contradictious and repugnant to themselves in these words Three things if I mistake not the main of this charge may be reduced to 1. That men should be bound to that which Scripture and Demonstration be against But this is very easily answered for his Lordship doth not say Men are bound to believe it but not so to oppose it as to break the peace of the Church by it 2. That another Council cannot be call'd without opposition to the other this his Lordship prevented by supposing that the just reasons against the decrees of the former Council ought to be peaceably tendred to the Church but no boisterous opposition to be made against it 3. To what purpose should another Council be call'd if the whole Church be satisfied that there is Scripture and Demonstration against the decrees of the former But 1. His Lordship supposes there may Scripture and Demonstration be where the whole Church is not satisfied and therefore there may be necessity of calling another Council 2. That the Council may free all those who may suppose themselves still bound not to oppose the former errour 3. That no erroneous Decree of a Council may remain unrepealed in the Church that so no erroneous person may challenge such a Decree of a Council as a ground for his opposition to the Doctrine of the Church And where now lyes any such appearance of contradiction in his Lordships words 3. The last thing his Lordship chargeth your way with unreasonableness in is That you do not only make the definition of a General Council
Yes and a very charitable man he would be in it too if without any signification by circumstances he could save the soul of a dying Infant But I should think his meer intention were sufficient and well as the chief Priest would supply the rest as the Schools determine in a like case For they put a very hard Question to themselves If the intention of a Priest be necessary to the validity of a Sacrament then What becomes of the soul of an Infant which dyes being baptized without the Priest's intention To which they answer It may very piously be believed that in that case summus Sacerdos supplebit the High Priest will supply that defect and what they say of intention is much more true of Baptism it self for in case it be not done out of contempt I say that summus Sacerdos supplebit it is not the meer want of Baptism will damn the soul of the Infant as you suppose when you make it so necessary to use such shifts as you speak of to save the soul of a dying Infant But Do you think seriously that is the way to do it for a Priest under a Physical pretence to sprinkle water on the Childs face often and once among the rest to say softly or by way of discourse Ego te baptizo c. with intention to conferr the Sacrament But you ask however Whether the Child be not really baptized by this although none took notice of what the Priest did I answer though we should grant it yet it proves not that the Priests inward intention was it which made it a Sacrament but the observation of the institution of Christ in the external actions and so far as that is observed in this odd kind of baptizing so far it is Baptism and no more There are two things therefore to be observed in Sacramental actions 1. The differencing of them from other common or ordinary actions and this we say is done by the circumstances attending them 2. The validity of them as Sacraments and this depends wholly and only on the observation of Christs Institution For as it is Institution which makes a Sacrament so it is the observation of it which makes this a Sacramental action and not another But in neither case is the Priests intention necessary to the essence of a Sacrament for it may have its full force in all respects it was appointed for whatever the Priests inward intention be So that neither of your Instances as to the Sacraments of Baptism or the Eucharist do at all imply the necessity of the Priests intention in order to the essence of a Sacrament in either of them As for the inconvenience which you say the Bishop pretends would follow out of this Doctrine viz. that no man can rest secure that he hath been really made partaker of any Sacrament no not of Baptism it self You answer 1. That as to the far greater part of Christians the inconvenience follows as much out of the Bishops principles as yours that they cannot be absolutely certain that they are baptized because the Priest may vitiate something pertaining to the essentials of Baptism 2. You answer That moral Assurance is sufficient in such cases i. e. such as is liable to no just cause of doubting and suspecting the contrary We accept of this latter Answer in reference to your retortion of the inconvenience upon us as to which we say That where is no sufficient cause of doubting a man ought to rest satisfied But I shall now shew you that this moral Assurance cannot be sufficient in your case and that for these Reasons 1. Because you build a main principle of Faith upon it and you say That moral Assurance cannot be a sufficient foundation for Faith for then all your discourse of the resolution of Faith comes to nothing which runs upon this principle That nothing short of Infallibility can be a sufficient foundation for Faith Now that you build a principle of Faith upon it is evident as I have proved already even all that Infallibility you pretend to in Church Pope and Council for all depends upon this that you certainly know that such persons in your Church have had the Sacrament of Baptism truly administred which cannot be without knowing the Priests intention 2. Because you acknowledged before that there must be such a certainty as is sufficient to ground an Infallible belief for this you placed in his Lordships Objection and this you pretended to satisfie by saying That the Pope and Council implicitly define themselves to be Infallible and therefore you fall much beneath your self now when you say Moral Assurance is sufficient 3. Because we have far greater ground for moral Assurance than you for we make no more requisite to the essence of a Sacrament than what all men are competent judges of and our Church allows no such Baptisms wherein none but the Priest is present therefore if he vitiates any thing essential to Baptism it may easily be discovered but in your case you have no positive Assurance at all of the Priests intention the utmost you can pretend to is your having no ground to suspect it which in many cases there may be So that you cannot have properly a moral Certainty which hath some evidence to build it self upon but in your case there can be no evidence at all of the Priests intention and therefore the knowledge of it is uncertain and conjectural So that there is a vast difference between that moral Assurance which we may have from the external action and that which you can possibly have from the Priests intention 4. The danger is far greater in not having this Assurance upon your principles than upon ours and yet we have far greater Assurance than you can possibly pretend to Your danger is manifestly greater as appears by this evident demonstration of it viz. that in case the Priests intention be wanting you must by your own confession be guilty of gross Idolatry and yet you cannot certainly know what the Priests intention was This is plain in the case of the Eucharist whose adoration you profess to be lawful because you suppose Christ to be present there Now this depends upon a thing impossible for you certainly to know and that is the Priests intention in the Consecration For if the Priest wanted that inward intention which you make necessary to the essence of a Sacrament then for all his pronouncing the words of Consecration Hoc est corpus meum Christs body may not be there and in case it be not there you are by your own confession guilty of Idolatry for you do not then worship Christ but meerly the Bread Therefore supposing adoration of the Eucharist upon your principle of Transubstantiation were not Idolatry yet since that depends upon a thing impossible to be known Who can with a good conscience do that which he cannot be certain but in the doing it he may commit the greatest Idolatry Wherefore