did not know who were obstinate and who were not who erred for want of light and who erred contrary to the light of their own consciences The like Spirit did possess Optatus who in the treatise cited by R. C. doth continually call the Donatists Brethren not by chance or inanimadvertence but upon premeditation he justifieth the title and professeth himself to be obliged to use it he would not have done so to Idolaters And a little before in the same Book he wonders why his Brother Parmenian being only a Schismatick would rank himself with Hereticks who were falsifiers of the Creed that is the old primitive Creed which the Councel of Trent it self placed in the front of their Acts as their North-star to direct them I wish they had steered their course according to their compass To cut off a lim from a man or a branch from a tree saith he is to destroy them most true But the case may be such that it is necessary to cut off a limb to save the whole body as in a gangreen The word of errour is a canker or gangreen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not cancer a crabfish because it is retrograde which was Anselmes mistake So when superfluous branches are lopped away it makes the tree thrive and prosper the better His second conclusion from hence is that there can be no just or sufficient cause given for Schism because there can be no just cause of committing so great a sinne And because there is no salvation out of the Church which he proveth out of St. Cyprian and St. Austin to little purpose whilest no man doubts of it or denies it And hence he inferres this corollary that I say untruely that the Church of Rome is the cause of this Schism and all other Schisms in the Church because there ean be no just cause of Schism My words were these that the Church of Rome or rather the Pope and Court of Rome are causally guilty both of this Schism and almost all other Schisms in the Church There is a great difference between these two But to dispell umbrages and to clear the truth from these mists of words We must distinguish between the Catholick oecumenicall Church and particular Churches how eminent soever As likewise between criminous Schism and lawfull separation First I did never say that the Catholick or universall Church either did give or could give any just cause of separation from it yea I ever said the contrary expresly And therefore he might well have spared his labour of citing St. Austin and St. Cyprian who never understood the Catholick Church in his sense His Catholick Church was but a particular Church with them And their Catholick Church is a masse of Monsters and an Hydra of many Heads with him But I did say and I doe say that any particular Church without exception whatsoever may give just cause of separation from it by heresy or Schism or abuse of their authority in obtruding errours And to save my self the labour of proving this by evidence of reason and by authentick testimonies I produce R. C. himself in the point in this very Survey Neither can there be any substantiall division from any particular Church unlesse she be really hereticall or schismaticall I say really because she may be really hereticall or schismaticall and yet morally a true particular Church because she is invincibly ignorant of her heresy or schism and so may require profession of her heresy as a condition of communicating with her In which case division from her is no schism or sinne but virtue and necessary And when I urge that a man may leave the communion of an erroneous Church as he may leave his Fathers house when it is infected with some contagious sicknesse with a purpose to returne to it again when it is cleansed he answers that this may be true of a particular Church but cannot be true of the universall Church Such a particular Church is the Church of Rome Secondly I never said that a particular Church did give or could give sufficient cause to another Church of criminous Schism The most wicked society in the world cannot give just cause or provocation to sinne Their damnation is just who say let us doe evil that good may come of it Whensoever any Church shall give sufficient cause to another Church to separate from her the guilt of the Schisme lies not upon that Church which makes the separation but upon that Church from which the separation is made This is a truth undenyable and is confessed plainly by Mr. Knott They who first separated themselves from the primitive pure Church and brought in corruptions in faith practise liturgy and use of Sacraments may truely be said to have bene Hereticks by departing from the pure faith and Schismaticks by dividing themselves from the externall communion of the true uncorrupted Church We maintain that the Church of Rome brought in these corruptions in Faith Practise Liturgie and use of the Sacraments and which is more did require the profession of her errors as a condition of communicating with her And if so then by the judgement of her own Doctors the Schism is justly laid at her own door and it was no sinne in us but virtue and necessary to separate from her I acknowledge that St. Austin saith praescindendae unitatis nulla est justa necessitas there is no sufficient cause of dividing the unity of the Church But he speaks not of false doctrines or sinful abuses in the place alledged as if these were not a sufficient cause of separation He proves the express contrary out of the words of the Apostle Gal 1.8 and 1. Tim. 1.3 He speaks of bad manners and vitious humors and sinister affections especially in the preachers as envy contention contumacy incontinency This was his case then with the Donatists and is now the case of the Anabaptists That these are no sufficient cause of dividing unity he proveth out of Phil. 1. v. 15.16.17.18 He saith that in these cases there is no sufficient cause cum disciplinae severitatem consideratio custodiendae pacis refraenat aut differt when the consideration of preserving peace doth restrain or delay the severity of Ecclesiasticaâ—ll discipline He saith not that in other cases there can be no sufficient cause what doth this concern us who beleeve the same His second note is this that Protestants have forsaken the Pope the Papacy the universal Roman Church and all the ancient Christian Churches Grecian Armenian Ethiopian in their communion of Sacraments and to clear themselves from Schism must bring just cause of separation from every one of these I answer that we are separated indeed from the Pope and Papacy that is from his primacy of power from his universality of jurisdiction by divine right which two are already established from his superiority above general Councels and infallibility of judgment which are the most received Opinions
first sight think the shore leaves them terraeque urbesque recedunt but straightwaies they finde their error that it is they who leave the shore To Strangers c. that is to unskillfull Judges A true diamond and a counterfeit doe seem both alike to an unexperienced person Strangers did beleeve easily the Athenian fables of Bulls and Minotaures in Creete But the Crecians knew better that they were but fictitious devises The seeming strength lyeth not in the objections themselves but in the incapacity of the Judges But to his reason the more things are remote from the matter and devested of all circumstances of time and place and persons the more demonstrable they are that is the reason why Mathematicians doe boast that their Principles are so evident that they doe not perswade but compell men to beleeve Yet in the matter of fact and in the application of these evident rules where every particular circumstance doth require a new consideration how easily doe they erre in so much as let twenty Geometricians measure over the same plot of ground hardly two of them shall agree exactly So it seemeth that an error in point of doctrine may be more easily and more evidently convinced than an error in matter of fact He saith the separation is visible True but whether the separation be criminous whether party made the first separation whether there was just cause of separation whether side gave the cause whether the Keies did erre in separating whether there was not a former separation of the one party from the pure primitive Church which produced the second separation whether they who separated themselves or others without just cause doe erre invincibly or not whether they be ready to submit themselves to the sentence of the Catholick Church is not so easy to be discerned How many separations have sprung about elections or jurisdiction or precedency all which Rites are most intricate and yet the knowledge of the Schisme depends altogether upon them This Surveier himself confesseth That a Church may be really hereticall or schismaticall and yet morally a true Church because she is invincibly ignorant of her Heresy or Schisme in which case it is no Schisme but a necessary duty to separate from her In this very case proposed by himself I desire to know how it is so easie by the only view of the separation to judge or conclude of the Schisme But the true ground why Schisme is more probably objected to the Church of England than Heresie is a false but prejudicate opinion That the Bishop of Rome is the right Patriarch of Britain That we deserted him and that the differences between us are about Patriarchall Rites all which with sundry other such like mistaken grounds are evidently cleared to be otherwise in the vindication This is all that concernes my first Chapter The rest is voluntary The next thing observable in his Survey is that Protestants confesse that they have separated themselves not only from the Roman Church but also from all other Christian Churches in the communion of the Sacraments and publick worship of God And that no cause but necessity of salvation can justifie such a separation from the crime of Schisme And it must needs seem hard to prove that it was necessary for the salvation of Protestants to make such a separation from all Churches in the World As if there had been no Christian Church in whose communion in Sacraments they could finde salvation whence it will follow that at that time there was no true Church of God upon earth For proof of the first point That Protestants have separated from all Christian Churches he produceth Calvin Chillingworth and a treatise of his own It were to be wished that Professors of Theology would not cite their testimonies upon trust where the Authours themselves may easily be had only impossibility is stronger than necessity as the spartan Boy once answered the old Senator after the Laconicall manner and that they would cite their Authors fully and faithfully not by halves without adding to or new molding their authorities according to their own fancies or interest It may seem ludicrous but it was a sad truth of a noble English Gentleman sent Ambassador into forrein parts and with him an honorable Espy under the notion of a Companion by whom he was accused at his return to have spoken such and such things at such and such times The Gentleman pleaded ingenuously for himself that it might be he had spoken some of those things or it might be all those things but never any one of them in that order nor in that sense I have said he several Suits of apparel of purple cloth of green Velvet of white and black Sattin If one should put my two purple Sleeves to my green velvet Dublet and make my Hose the one of white Sattin the other of black and then swear that it was my apparrell they who did not know me might judge me a strange man To disorder authority to contract or enlarge them to misapply them besides the scope contrary to the sense of the Author is not more discommendable than common I have seen large volumes containing some hundreds of controversies as was pretended between Protestants and Papists And among them all not above five or six that I could owne as if they desired that the whole woven Coat of Christ should be torn more insunder than it is or that they might have the honor to conquer so many fictious Monsters of their own making I have seen authorities mangled and miâ—applied just like the Ambassadors clothes so as the right Authors would hardly have been able to know them So much prejudice and partiality and an habit of alteration is able to doe like a tongue infected with Choler which makes the sweetest meates to taste bitter or like coloured glass which makes every object we see through it to appear of the same colour Wherefore I doe intreat R. C. to save himself and me and the Reader so much labor and trouble for the future by forbearing to charge the private errors or opinions of particular persons it skilleth not much whether upon the Church of England the most of which were meer strangers to our affaires and many of them died before controversies were rightly stated or truly understood for none of which the Church of England is any way obliged to be responsable And likewise by forbearing to make so many empty references to what he beleeves or pretends to have proved in some of his other books See the Author of the Protestant Religion See the distinction of fundamentals and not fundamentals See the sufficient proposer of faith See the Protestants plain confession See the Flowers of the English Church See the Epistle to King James See the prudential Ballance See the collation of Scripture To what end can this serve but either to divert us from the question we have in hand or to amuse the Reader and put him into a
beliefe of some great atchievements which he hath made elsewhere or to excuse his present defects upon pretense of large supplies and recruits which he hath ready in another place but where the Reader cannot come to see them And what if the Reader have them not to see as it is my condition in present What am I or he the worse If he see no more in some of them then I have seen heretofore he will see a great many of mistated and mistaken questions a great many of Logomachies or contentions about words a great many of private errours produced as common principles of Protestants a great many of authours cited contrary to their genuine sense and meaning and very little that is materiall towards the discussion of this or any other question Just as Master Chillingworth is cited here to prove That Protestants have separated themselves in communion of Sacraments and publick service of God not only from the Roman Church but also from all other Christian Churches in the World which is not only contrary to his sense but also contrary to his very words in the place alleged It is not all one saith he though you perpetually confound them to forsake the errour of the Church and to forsake the Church or to forsake the Church in her errours and simply to forsake the Church c. The former then was done by Protestants the later was not done Nay not only not from the Catholick Church but not so much as from the Roman did they separate per omnia but only in those practises which they conceived superstitious or impious Not only from the Roman Church but from also all other Christian Churches in the world saith R.C. Not only not from the Catholick Church but not so much as from the Roman Church saith Mr. Chillingworth In communion of Sacraments and publick worship of God saith R. C. Only in those practises which they conceived superstitious or impious saith Mr. Chillingworth But because there is no question wherein they studdy more to blunder and trouble the water and to involve themselves in dark Clouds of obscure generalities I will doe my endeavour to distinguish that which is deceitfull and confused and represent the naked truth to the eies of the Reader First I acknowledge that the Church of Rome is a true Christian Church in that sense that I have declared that is metaphysically because it still reteins all the essentialls of a true Church To have separated from it in any of these had been either formall Heresie or formall Schisme or both But we have reteined all these as much as themselves and much more purely than themselves For it may seem doubtfull whether some of their superstitious additions doe not virtually overthrow some of the fundamentalls of Religion But with us there is no such danger Secondly I acknowledge that besides the Essentials of Christian Religion the Church of Rome reteins many other truths of an inferior nature in Doctrine in Discipline in Sacraments and many lawfull and laudable Practises and Observations To have separated from these had been at least materiall Schisme unless the Church of Rome should obtrude them upon other Churches as necessary and fundamentall Articles of Christian Religion and so presume to change the ancient Creed which was deposited with the Church by the Apostles as the common Badge and Cognisance of all Christians for all suceeding Generations Thirdly It is agreed that one may not one must not separate himself from the communion of a true Christian Church for the vices or faults of particular Persons in point of manners We may not leave the Lords Field because there are Tares nor his Floare because there is Chaff nor his House because there are Vessels of dishonor nor his College because there was a Iudas Fourthly Some errors and abuses are not simply sinfull in themselves but to those that did first introduce them to those who maintain and practise them for ambitious or avaritious ends they are sinfull These are pressures and grievances to the Christian Flock rather than sins They suffer under the burthen of them but they are innocent from the guilt of them And so reum facit Superiorem iniquitas imperandi innocentem subditum ordo serviendi A Superior may sin in his commands and yet his Subject be innocent in his obedience These are no just cause of separation to a private Christian Charity covers a multitude of sinnes But they are just cause of Reformation to a nationall Church or a Synod Fiftly There are some errors in disputable points and some abuses are meer excesses without guilt rather blemishes than sinnes And for these alone no man ought to separate himself from a Christian Society or abandon a true Church for triviall dissentions Our duty in such a case is to pray and perswade without troubling the peace of the Church and to leave the rest to God Let us therefore as many as be perfect be thus minded and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded God shall reveal even this unto you Lastly We affirm that in the superstructions of Christian Religion the Church of Rome hath added and mixed sundry errors and abuses of greater consequence and sinfull innovations in point of Doctrine and Discipline and administration of the Sacraments and Feasts and Fasts c. This we are ready to maintain Neither doth she only profess and practise these errors and abuses which perhaps by some persons at some times might be separated without a separation but she obtrudes them upon all others as essential Truths and necessary Articles She injoins sundry of them as a condition of her Communion She commands all Christians to beleeve and practise them under pain of damnation and whosoever refuseth she casteth them out of her society Such is their new Creed in point of Faith directly contrary to the Canon of the generall Councel of Ephesus Such is the Popes Supremacy of power in point of Discipline expressly contrary to the determinations of the Councells of Constance and Basile Such is the adoration of the species of Bread and Wine the detention of the Cup from the People their unknown langguage c. in the administration of the Sacraments and in the publick service of God From these sinfull duties thus injoined as necessary all men ought to separate Lawfull authority of man may oblige one to suffer but no authority of man can warrant or oblige one to doe sinfull duties Such a cause justifies a separation untill the abuse be reformed for which the separation was made And being thus separated from sinfull Innovations it may be lawfull or convenient to reform lesser errors which were not of such dangerous consequence nor had been a sufficient cause of separation of themselves But here I must advertise the Reader of a double manner of expression used by English Protestants concerning this separation They agree that the Roman Church reteineth the Essentials of a true Church They
receive it when God shall reveal it to them How far this may excuse not the crime but their persons from formall Schisme either a toto or a tanto I determine not but leave them to stand or fall before their own Master But though these Protestants were worthy of this contumely yet surely the Romanists are no fit persons to object it whose opiniastrety did hinder an uniform Reformation of the western Church Who did first invest Presbyters with Episcopall Jurisdiction and the power of ordeining and confirming but the Court of Rome by their commissions and delegations for avaritious ends And could they think that the world would beleeve that necessity is not as strong and effectuall a dispensation as their mercicinary Buls It is not at all materiall whether Episcopacy and Priesthood be two distinct Oâ—ders or distinct degrees of the same Order the one subordinate to the other whether Episcopal ordination doe introduce a new Character or extend the old For it is generally confessed by both parties Protestants and Roman Catholicks that the same power and authority is necessary to the extensioâ— of a Character or grace given by ordination which is required to the institution of a Sacrament that is not humane but divine These avaritious practises of that Court though it be not commonly observed were the first source of these present controversies about Episcopacy and ecclesiasticall Discipline which doe now so much disturb the peace of the Church The second fault which he imputeth to me is That I endeavor to clear the English Church from Schisme only in relation to the Church of Rome not to all other Churches It was altogether needless to have troubled his own head or his Readers with this For first he esteems none of all those Churches to be true Churches but a Mass of Monsters an Hydra of many heads or so many Packs of Hereticks and Schismaticks making the Roman Church and the Catholick Church to be Convertibles Secondly it had not only been vain but a sign of guilt to make a defence before we were accused None of those Churches nor any body else that ever I heard of hath accused us for deserting them before R. C. and he hath received his answer If it had been needfull the Church of Rome had saved us that labour by excommunicating them before hand I only wish more intelligence between us and them My third fault is That I endeavour principally to justifie our separation from the Roman Church for the personall faults of Popes And my fourth fault is That I justifie our separation from the Court of Rome for their evill manners That this is not lawfull to doe he proves by sundry authorities and arguments I think the rather because no man denyes it or doubts of it or because he would insinuate to his Reader that we doe deny it If he had pleased he might have contracted these two faults into one The Pope and his Court make but one consistory and personall faults and evill manners are the same thing It had been needfull to have joyned them together to give them a little more weight for being twisted they weigh not half a graine First I deny that we hold personal faults or evil manners a sufficient cause of separation Secondly that separation which was made was made by themselves not by us Thirdly I deny that the Pope or Court of Rome ever had right to any Jurisdiction over us And if they ever had any pretence of right we had other manner of grounds for separation than evill manners As new Articles of faith obtruding of idolatrous superstitions and sinfull duties gross usurpation of the rights of the soveraign Prince and all orders and degrees of Subjects the overthrow or endangering of the publick peace and tranquillity of the Kingdome unlawfull oaths contrary to our allegiance to our King contrary to that duty which all Christians doe owe to generall Councells and lastly the Popes quitting of his Patriarchall power Yet by his leave tyranny and oppression and rapine are somewhat more than personall faults and may be just grounds to Princes and Common-wealths to substract obedience untill there be a reformation of exorbitant abuses Some personall faults as Simony aud Schism may give just occasion to Christians to separate from pretended Popes But there are other faults inherent in the Office of the Pope not his Episcopall Office which was instituted by Christ or his Apostles nor his Patriarchall Office which was instituted by the Church but his pretended Monarchicall Office whereby he hath usurped a power paramount over the highest Tribunall of the Church that is a generall Councell whereof more shall be said in due place These faults give just cause to a generall Councell to separate the Popes themselves and to take away their domineering Courts or to a soveraign Prince with a Nâ—tionall Councell to shake off their tyrannicall Yoke CHAP. 2. Concerning the stating of the Question IN stating the Question I observed this Method first to shew what Ecclesiasticall Separations were not Schismaticall As first those Separations which proceed out of a sudden passionate heat without attempting to make any parties as those between St. Paul and Barnabas St. Hierome and Ruffinus St. Chrysostome and Epiphanius Secondly premeditated clashings of Bishops or Churches long maintained if they forbear to censure one another and be ready to submit to the determination of a generall Councell are not schismaticall as those between the Roman and African Bishops about appeals and rebaptization Thirdly where just cause of separation is given for there the Separaters are innocent and they who give the cause are Schismaticks Fourthly separation from an erroneous Church or Pastor in their errors Of all these and their proofs R C. takes no notice at all but passeth silently by them without either granting denying or distinguishing The first Exception that he takes is against my two supposed definitions of Schisme the former is Schisme is a criminous scissure rent or division in the Church an ecclesiasticall sedition like to a mutiny in an Army or a faction in a Sate The second meer Schisme is a culpable rupture or breach of the Catholick Communion And to supply my defect he promiseth a better definition of his own True Schisme is a voluntary division in some substantiall part of the true Church Really I doe not wonder if my definitions be not complete I doe not take my self to have so happy a vein that all that I utter should be a definition I did not hold it needfull nor had any purpose to define Schisme but only to explane it which my very words might have taught him Schisme signifies a criminous scissure not is but signifies And those two similitudes added to the foot of my pretended definition like a mutiny in an Army or faction in a State Similitudes are apt to illustrate but not to define The definition and the thing defined are ever the same Those
precepto That was not by the Authority of Pope Adrian All the poor pretence which he catcheth from hence is that Charles the great said that summi Pontificis universalis Episcopi Adriani praecepto by the precept of the chief and universall Bishop Adrian he had bestowed this Bishoprick upon Wilehade Yet all men know that praeceptum signifies a lesson or instruction or advise as well as a command At the most it was but a complement or command of curtesie or a ghostly advise honored with that name which is familiarly done True Patrons doe dispose their Churches themselves not give mandates to others to dispose them for them It were ridiculous to imagine that Charles the great was the Patron of the Bishoprick of Rome it self as without doubt he was and that he was not the Patron of the Church of Breme which he had newly conquered or that Adrian who resigned Rome should continue Patron of Breme His seventh witnesse is Iustinian to Pope Iohn the second We suffer not any thing which belongs to the state of Churches not to be known to your Holynesse who is the Head of all holy Churches I wish he had been pleased to set down the title of the Letter Victor Justinianus pius faelix inclytus triumphator sempâ—r Augustus Joanni Sanctissimo Archiepiscopo almae Vrbis Romae Patriarchae Where Archbishop and Patriarch are his highest titles there is no Monarchy intended The words are rightly cited saving that he omitteth a clause in the middle although that which is changed be manifest and undoubted and a dangerous reason at the end for in all things as it is said we hasten to augment the honor and authority of your See If the Papacy had been a Spirituall Monarchy instituted by Christ it did not lie in Iustinians power to augment it But it is plain the honor and authority of the Roman See proceeded from the bounty of Christian Emperors and the Decrees of the Fathers Neither is there any thing in the words above mentioned worthy of a reply Suppose Iustinian made known his own Ecclesiasticall Ordinances to the Pope to the end that he might obey them and execute them This is no great matter So doth a Sovereign Prince to every Governor of an inferior Corporation Lawes are no Lawes untill they be promulged If the Pope had made the Lawes and made them known to the Emperor it had been more to his purpose But all the strength of his argument lies in these words who is Head of all holy Churches And yet he cannot chuse but know that Iustinian doth mean and must of necessity mean an Head of Order and cannot possibly mean an Head of Power and Jurisdiction having himself exalted severall other Churches as Iustiniana and Carthage to an equall degree of Power and Privileges with Rome it self A man may see to what streits he is driven when he is forced to produce such witnesses as Charles the great and Iustinian I say Iustinian who banished Pope Silverius who created Iustiniana prima and Carthage new Patriarchates by his Emperiall Power who made so many Lawes concerning Ecclesiasticall persons and Benefices and holy Orders and Appeals and the Patronage of Churches concerning Religion the Creed Sacraments Heresie Schism Sanctuaries Simony and all matters of Ecclesiasticall cognisance that if all other presidents ancient and modern were lost Iustinians alone who was the Father of the Imperiall Law were sufficient to evince the politicall Supremacy of Sovereign Princes over the Church within their own Dominions His three last witnesses are King Edgar King Withred and Edward the third But these three have been produced by him before in this very treatise and there fully answered and seeing no new weight is added in this place to his former discourse I will not weary the Reader or my self with unnecessary repetitions CHAP. 8. That the Pope and Court of Rome are most guilty of the Schism WE are come now to my sixth and last ground that the guilt of the Schism rests upon the Pope and the Court of Rome The first thing which I meet with is his marginall note out of Saint Austin Cathedra quid tibi fecit Ecclesiae Romanae What hurt hath the See of Rome done thee But first Petilians case to whom those words were spoken is not our case He called all the Catholick Sees thoughout the World Chairs of Pestilence so doe not we Neither doth Saint Austin attribute any thing singular to the See of Rome in this place more then to the See of Hierusalem or any other Catholick See Si omnes per totum orbem tales essent quales vanissime criminaris Cathedra tibi quid fecit Ecclesiae Romanae in qua Petrus sedit in qua hodie Anastatius sedet vel Ecclesiae Hierosolymitanae in qua Jacobus sedit in qua hodie Joannes sedet Quibus nos in Catholica unitate connectimur a quibus vos nefario furore separastis It is not we that have furiously separated our selves from either of these Sees But it is the Court of Rome which hath made the separation both from Hierusalem and from us In the next place he inquireth what I intend by this present Schism whether the Schism of Protestants in generall or of English Protestants in particular and whether by causually I understand a sufficient cause that freeth from sinne Doubtless I must understand a sufficient cause that freeth the innocent party from sinne or understand nothing For an unsufficient cause is no cause But his induction is imperfect I doe neither understand the Schism of the Protestant Church in generall nor the Schism of the English Church in particular but directly the Schism of the Roman Church which did first give just cause of separation not only to Protestant Churches but to all the Eastern Churches and then did make the separation by their unjust and uncharitable censnres But he saith there can be no just cause of Schisms The greater is their fault who are the true Schismaticks first by giving just cause of separation from their errors and then making the separation by their censures It is true there can be no just cause of criminous Schism because there can be no just cause of sinne It is not lawfull to doe evill that good may come of it But there may be both just cause of separation and just separation without any crime or sinne yea vertuous and necessary as is confessed by themselves In all such cases the sinne of criminous Schism lies at their dores who introduced the errors and thereby first separated themselves from the uncorrupted Church which was before them Before he come to answer my arguments he proposeth an objection of his own that neither the Church nor Court of Rome did give any sufficient cause of separation either to Luther or to Henry the eighth In prosecution whereof he supposeth that Luther had no cause of separation but the abuse of some Preachers
Latins Hereticks and Schismaticks and principally upon this ground of the Popes claim of a spiritual Monarchy And that Gerson apprehended their words in this sense it may appear by the context His position is this that men ought not generally to be bound by the positive determinations of Popes to hold and beleeve one and the same forme of government in things that do not immediately concerne the truth of our Faith and the Gospel From thence he proceedeth to set down some different Customes of the Greek Latine Churches both which he doth justifie citing S. Austin to proove that in all such things the custome of the country is to be observed And among the rest of the differences this was one that the Greek Church paid not such Subsidies and Duties as the Gallicane Church did It seemeth that the Pope would have exacted them and that thereupon the Grecians did separate from him using this free expression potentiam tuam recognoscimus avaritiam tuam implere non possumus vivite per vos We know thy might we are not able to satisfie thy covetousness live by your selves And from thence the aforesaid author draweth this conclusion that per hanc consider ationem bene captam c. upon this consideration they might proceed to the reformation of the French Church and the liberties thereof notwithstanding the contradiction which perhaps some of the Court of Rome would make There is not one word or syllable herein that maketh against me but there is both the practise of the Greek Church the opinions of Gerson for the justification of our Reformation and Seperation from the Court of Rome FINIS Sect. 1. Three Essentials of a true Church Great difference between a true Church and a perfect Church Actuall want of essentials not conclusive to God Ch 8. Sect. 3. Particular Rites Formes Opinions no Essentials Schism is not always about esentials Schism is not a greater sin than Idolatry 1. Cor. 10.10.21 Aust. l. 1. de bapt c. 8. Opt l. 1. Aust. Ep. 48. ibidem 1 Tivi 2.17 There may be just cause of separation no just cause of Schâ—sm C. 2. S 6 Particular Churches may give just cause of separation C. 2 Sect. 4. Pref p. 20. Rom. 3.8 Inf. unmask ch 7. sect 112 p. 534. Lib. 2. cont ep Parmen e. 11. Sect. 2. Proâ—â—stans have forsaken no ancient Churches in Sacraments 1. Cor. 19 Math. 26.27 Sect. 3. The true cause of the separation of some Protestants Psal. 19. Essences of things are indivisible destroied by addition as well as subtraction How the Church of Rome is and is not a true Church 1 Cor. 13.12 Iohn 4.22 Eph. 5.26 We have not left the Roman Church in essentialls Con. eph p. 2. Act 6 c 7. Aust ep 118. Nor differ in substance from the Roman Church Aust y. 1. de hapt c. 8. It is not lawfull or prudent to leave the English Church and adhere to the Roman for fear of Schism The present Church of Rome departed out of the ancient Church of Rome Sect. 4. 1 Cor. 13.9 12. Iam. 2.1 To communicate with Schismaticks is not alwaies Schism Sozâ—m l 4 â— 19 The Church of England doth not communicate with Schismaticks 1 Cor. 1.2 11. c. 15 12. Rev 2.14 15.20 Sect. 1. Objections against the Church of England in point of Schisme are colourable not forcible Authors ought to be cited fully and faithfully Protestants conâ—esse no separation from the universall Church I hil c. 3 p. 132. c. 1 s. 1. Nor from the Roman but only in her errors 1. Pâ—t 4. 8. Phil 3 15. Sect. 5. Not the separation but the cause makes the Schism It is necessary to Salvation to forsake known errours C. 9. Sect. 5 Our reformation no separation 2 Gal 9. Aâ—t 30. Lawfull to communicate with the Eastern Churches Calv. epâ—st 141. Ratio ordinis discipline Fratrum Bohemo rum ibid. Calvin no enemy to Episcopacy Epist. ad Mart. Schaling Epl. ad Reg. Polo mae Calv. ep Impres Gen. an 1570. pag. 340. Ep. ad R. Polon 4 Inst. c. 18. sect 18. Doctor Potter cleared Ch. 9. Sect. 5. Ibid Sect. 2. p. 49. â—el l 2. de Eccl Mâ—l c 6. Aust de Veâ— Reâ— c. 6. Ibid. And Master Chillingwoâ—â—h p 245. p. 312. p. 191. 6.5 p. 273. Teâ—t L. 4 Cont. Don c. 23. c. 5. P. 302. As great differences among the Romanists as between them and the Eastern Churches or us C. 1. S. 13. Sect. 2. c. 2. s. 3. Whâ—thâ—r all those be Schismaticks who want Bishops The Romanists no fit persons to object Schism to Protestants c 2. s 6. 5. c. 2. s. 8. The Church of England had better grounds than personall faults of Popes Inf. c. 7 s Sect. 1. P. 8. P. 12. P. 16. All Schisme is not in essentials Bar. Annal an 878. Antimachâ—aveil in â—â—ist ad Lect. Errours in faith obtruded justifie a separation Sect. 2. Meâ—â—rall Schâ—sm 1 Iohn 3. 15. Rom 2 29. Sect. 3. Communion in all points of faith not necessary alwayes Sacraments purely and corruptly administred the same Sacraments Sect. 4. Schismaticks in part doe stâ—ll remain in the Catholick Church Aâ—â—t l. 1. dâ— bapt cont Donâ—istas Idemo 10 Aug. ep 48. R. C. his confession Sect. 5. The Britannick Churches never judged Schismaticks Sect. 6. What is the true Catholick Church Inâ—erest makes Catholickâ— with the Court of Rome Thâ—m a Iesu. cited by Doctor Field l. 3 c. 1. 〈◊〉 ibid. Babing upon Numbers c 7. Cam Annal Elis. An. 1560. Sect. 7. The Church of Rome is materially Idolatrous 1 Cor. 12.16 Bell l. 4. â—e Sac. Euch. c. 29 Speciall Faith is no Article of our Creed Rom. 8 33 Mark 16.16 Papists can pretend to no other Sacrifice then Protestants Bell l 1. de Mâ—sâ— c. 25. Sect. 8. 4 Waies to incurre hereticall pravity Bell. de Eccles. milit l. 3. c. 15. The Power of general Councâ—ls The Popes câ—nfirmation addes noâ—hing to general Councels Platina Acquiescence to the decrees of a generall Councell is necessary 1 Cor 9. Bell de Ro. pont c. 4. c. 2. Sect. 9. Mixt ordination The English Church lawfully established Not lawfully suppressed The English Church nor deaâ— But under persecution Sect. 10. â— 4. cont Cresion c. 61. Sect. 1. Protestants not Authors of the Schism Hiâ—t Conc. Trid an 1538. Sect. 2. The Parliament not compelled Camd. An. Eliz. anno 1559. Bishop Gardiner Speed in Hen. 8. c. 21 n. 1 c 5. De vera obâ—dientia in fine Archbishop Cranmer Speed Baker c. in Henr. 8. Image of both Churches second edition pag. 413. Sand de Schism pag 115. Sacrificio missae intersuit quotidie dum regnabat Henricus Crumwell Barnes Speed l. 9. c. 21. L 1. Cont. Parm. Papists are the right Heirs of the Donâ—rists not Protestants Opt. l 1. Cont. Par. inâ—initio Opt. l. 2. Cont. Parm. in initio Psal. 2. Roman Catholâ—cks sinnâ—d not against conscience in their sâ—paration Henry the eight no Protestant â—ul
and near establishâ—ng in the Roman Church We have renounced their Patriarchall power over us because they never exercised it in Britain for the fiâ—st six hundred years nor could exercise it in after ages without manifest usurpation by reason of the Canon of the Oecumenicall Councell of Ephesus Yea because they themselves waved it and implicitely quitted it presently after the six hundreth year Disuse in law forfeits an office as well as abuse But we have not separated from the Pope or Papacy as they were regulated by the Canons of the Fathers We look upon their universal Roman Church as an upstart innovation and a contradiction in adjecto We finde no footsteps of any such thing throughout the primitive times Indeed the Bishops of Rome have somtimes been called Oecumenicall Bishops so have the other Patriarchs for their universal care and presidency in general Councels who never pretended to any such universality of power But for all ancient Churches Grecian Armenian Ethiopian c. none excluded not the Roman it self we are so farre from forsaking them that we make the Scriptures interpreted by their joint beleef and practice to be the rule of our reformation And wherin their Successors have not swerved from the examples of their Predecessors we maintain a strict Communion with them Only in Rites and Ceremonies and such indifferent things we use the the liberty of a free Church to chuse out such as are most proper for our selves and most conducible to those ends for which they were first instituted that is to be advancements of order modesty decency gravity in the service of God to be adjuments to attention and devotion furtherances of edification helpes of memory exercises of Faith the the leaves that preserve the fruit the shâ—ll that preserves the kernell of Religion from contempt And all this with due moderation so as neither to render Religion sordid and sluttish nor yet light and garish but comely and venerable Lastly for communion in Sacraments we have forsaken no Sacraments either instituted by Christ or received by the primitive Christians We refuse no Communion with any catholick Christians at this day and particularly with those ancient Churches which he mentions though we may be and have been misrepresented one unto another yea though the Sacraments may be administred in some of them not without manifest imperfection whilst sinfull duties are not obtruded upon us as conditions of communion Under this caution we still retein coÌ„munion in Sacraments with Roman Catholicks If any person be baptized or admitted into holy Orders in their Church we baptize them not we ordain them not again Wherein then have we forsaken the Communion of the Roman Church in Sacraments not in their ancient Communion of genuine Sacraments but in their septinary number and suppositious Sacraments which yet we retein for the most part as usefull and religious Rites but not under the notion of Sacraments not in their Sacraments but in their abuses and sinfull injunctions in the use of the Sacrament As their administration of them in a tongue unknown where the people cannot say Amen to the prayers and thanksgivings of the Church contrary to Saint Paul As their deteining the Cup from the Laity contrary to the institution of Christ drink ye all of this that is not all the Apostles only for the Apostles did not consecrate in the presence of Christ and according to the doctrine of their Schools and practise of their Church as to the participation of the Sacrament at that time were but in the condition of Laymen As their injunction to all Communicants to adore not only Christ in the use of the Sacrament to which we doe readily assent but to adore the Sacrament it self And lastly as their double matter and form in the ordination of a Priest never known in the Church for above a thousand years after Christ. These and such like abuses were the only things which we did forsake so as I may truly say non tellus Cymbam tellurem Cymba reliquit It was not we that did forsake them in the Communion of their Sacraments but it was their Sacraments that did forsake us And yet we doe not censure them for these innovations in the use of the Sacraments or the like nor thrust them out of the communion of the Catholick Church but provide for our selves advise them as Brethren and so leave them to stand or fall to their own Master So on our parts there is a reformation but no separation His third point is that Protestants vary in giving the pretended just cause of their separation from the Roman Church For at the first their only cause was the abuse of some that preached Indulgences Since some others give the adoration of the blessed Sacrament or communion in one kind others give the Oath made by Pius the 4 th which they call a new creed others other causes Which variety is a certain sign of their uncertainty of any true just cause of their separation That the Pardoners and Preachers of Indulgences and the envy of other Orders and the passionate heat of the Court of Rome tange montes fumigabunt touch the high mountains and they will smoak did contribute much to the breach of this part of Christendome is confâ—ssedly true But it is not only the abuse of some Preachers of Indulgences but much more the abuse of Indulgences themselves which we complain of that a treasury should be composed of the blood of Christ and the sufferings and supererogatory works of the Saints to be disposed by the Pope for money What is this but to mingle Heaven and Earth together the imperfect works of man with the sacrified blood of Christ Neither was it the Doctrine and abuse of Indulgences alone but the injunction to adore the Sacrament also and Communion in one kind and the new Creed of Pius the 4 th or the new Articles since comprised in that Creed and the Monarchy of the Pope by divine right and sundry other abuses and innovations all put together which gave just cause to some Protestants to separate themselves so far as they were active in the separation But we in England were first chased away by the Popes Buls If these abuses were perhaps not discovered or at least not pleaded all at once what wonder is it Dies diei eructat verbum nox nocti indicat scientiam day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night sheweth knowledge His fourth point which he saith is much to be noted is reduced by himself to a Syllogism Whosoever separate themselves in substance that is in essentials from the substance of a Catholick and true Church in substance are true Schismaticks But Protestants have separated themselves in substance from the Roman Church which is a Catholick and true Church in substance therefore Prostants are true Schismaticks His proposition is proved by him because the substances of things doe consist in indivisibili and the changing
upon uncertain suspicions No. In doubtfull cases it is alwaies presumed pro Rege lege for the King and for the Law Neither is it lawfull as a Father said some Virgins who cast themselves desperately into a River for fear of being defloured to commit a certain crime for fear of an uncertain Yea to rise yet one step higher though it were lawfull yet it were not prudence but folly for a man to thrust himself into more more apparent more real danger for fear of one lesser lesse apparent and remoter danger Or for fear of Charybdis to run headlong into Scylla He who forsakes the English Church for fear of Schism to joyn in a stricter communion with Rome plungeth himself in greater and more reall dangers both of Schism and Idolatry and Heresy A man may live in a schismaticall Church and yet be no Schismatick if he erre invincibly and be ready in the preparation of his mind to receive the truth whensoever God shall reveal it to him nor want R. C. himself being Judge either Faith or Church or Salvation And to his reason whereby he thinks to free the Church of Rome from Schism because they never went out of any Christian Society I answer two waies first It is more schismaticall to cast true Churches of Christ out of the communion of the Catholick Church either without the Keies or Clave errant with an erring Key then meerly and simply to goe out of a particular Church This the Romanists have done although they had not done the other But they have done the other also And therefore I add my second answer by naming that Christian Society out of which the present Church of Rome departed even the ancient primitive Roman Church not locally but morally which is worse by introducing corruptions in Faith Liturgy and use of the Sacraments whereby they did both divide themselves schismatically from the externall communion of the true primitive uncorrupted Church of Christ and became the cause of all following separation So both waies they are guilty of Schism and a much greater Schism then they object to us All that followes in his preface or the most part of it is but a reiteration of the same things without adding one more grain of reason to enforce it If I did consider that to divide any thing in any of its substantiall parts is not to reform but to destroy the essence thereof c. If I did consider that there are three substantiall parts of a true Church in substance c. If I did consider that any division of a true Church in any substantiall part thereof is impious because it is a destruction of Christs mysticall body c. If I did consider all these things c. I should clearly see that the English Protestant Church in dividing her self from the substance of the Roman Church in all her formall substantiall parts committed damnable sinne and that I in defending her therein commit damnable sinne I have seriously and impartially weighed and considered all that he saith I have given him a full account of it that we have neither separated our selves from the mysticall body of Christ nor from any essentiall or integrall part or member thereof I have shewed him the originall of his mistake in not distinguishing between sacred institutions and subsequent abuses between the genuine parts of the body and wenns or excrescences And in conclusion waving all our other advantages I doe not for the present finde on our parts the least shadow of criminous Schism He praies God to open my eies that I may see this truth I thank him for his charity in wishing no worse to me then to himself But errours goe commonly masked under the cloak of truth Fallit enim vitium specie virtutis umbra I pray God open both our eies and teach us to deny our selves that we may see his truth and preferre it before the study of advancing our own party For here the best of us known but in part and see as through a glasse darkly that we may not have the faith of Christ in respect of persons That which followes is new indeed To communicate with Schismaticks is to be guilty of Schism But the English Church joynes in communion of Sacraments and publick Praiers with Schismaticks namely Puritans and Independants This is inculcated over and over again in his book But because this is the first time that I meet with it and because I had rather be before hand with him then behind hand I will give it a full answer here And if I meet with any new weight added to it in any other place I shall endeavour to cleer that there without wearying the reader with tautologies and superfluous repetitions And first I deny his proposition To communicate with hereticks or Schismaticks in the same publick Assemblies and to be present with them at the same divine offices is not alwaies Heresy or Schism unlesse one communicate with them in their hereticall or schismaticall errours In the primitive Church at Antiâ—ch when Leontius was Bishop the Orthodox Christians and the Arrians repaired to the same Assemblies but they used different formes of doxologies the orthodox Christians saying Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the holy Ghost And the Arrians saying Glory be to the Father by the Son in the Spirit At which time it was observed that no man could discerne what form the Bishop used because he would not alienate either party So they communicated with Arrians but not in Arrianism with hereticks but not in Heresy Take another instance the Catholicks and Novatians did communicate and meet together in the same Assemblies Illo autem tempore parum aberat quin Novatiani Catholici penitus conspirassent Nam eadeâ— de Deo sentientes communiter ab Arrianis agitati in similibus calamitatibus constituti se muâ—ua complecti benevolentia in unum convenire pariter orare caeperunt And further decreverunt deinceps inter se communicare At that time it wanted little that the Novatians and Catholicks did not altogether conspire in one for having both the same Faith concerning God suffering the same persecution from the Arrians and being both involved in the same calamities they began to love one another to assemble together and to pray together And they decreed from that time forward to communicate one with another The primitive Catholicks thought it no Schism to communicate with Novatians that is with Schismaticks so long as they did not communicate with them in their Novatianism that is in their Schism Have the English Protestants matriculated themselves into their congregational Assemblies Have they justified the unwarrantable intrusion of themselves into sacred Functions without a lawfull calling from Christ or his Church Or their dispensing the greatest mysteries of religion with unwashen or it may be with bloody hands As for communicating with them in a schismaticall Liturgy it is impossible they have
doe neither finde any such confession nor remember any such nor finde any thing like it in the place cited except peradventure he mean this that Calvine justifying Episcopacy and condemning the Papacy hath these words It is one thing to receive moderate honour such as man is capable of and another thing to rule the whole World that is as the Pope would doe Calvine speakes of the Popes ambitious affectation of an universall Empire not of his just right or possession I hope he doth not presently separate from all Christian Churches who separates from the Pope because the Pope pretends an universall Jurisdiction Thus it is when men make their own collections to be other mens confessions But supposing that Calvine had said any such thing it must be understood Synechdochically of the Western Churches the whole for a part as they say at Paris le Mond de Paris the World of Paris or as a Father said The World mourned and wondred to see it self turned Arrian But Calvine said further That the Idolatrous Masse had possessed all Kings and People from the first to the last This confirms the former exposition all Kings and People that is in these Occidentall parts of Christendome Certainly Calvine did not dream of the Duke of Muscovia or Prester Iohn much lesse of the great Turke or Sophy of Persia within whose territories most of these Churches are They have Masses indeed but no adoration of the Elements and consequently no Idolatrous Masses which Calvine disliked Perhaps he will speed better with Doctor Potters testimony To let R. C. see plainly what credit is to be given to such citations I will reduce his argument out of Doctor Potter to a syllogism All separation from the universall Church is schismaticall but Protestants confess that their separation is from the universall Church His proposition is proved out of Doctor Potter Sect. 3. p. 74. This is true Doctor Potters words are these There neither was nor can be any just cause to depart from the Church of Christ no more then from Christ himself His assumption is proved out of Doctor Potter Sect. 2. p. 48. Some separation voluntary from all visible Churches doth not exclude from Heaven If Protestants lie open to the lash and have no better memories it is an easie matter to confute them out of their own confessions or rather let the Reader judge what credit is to be given to such citations Doctor Potters words are these If separation such as hath been said from all visible Churches doe not exclude from Heaven First R. C. omits these words such as hath been said which words quite destroy his proof The separation whereof he speaks there is only externall not internall from all particular visible Churches not from the universall Church His words are these A man may be a true visible Member of the holy Catholick Church who is not actually otherwise then in vow a Member of any true visible Church The instances or cases which he produceth are two the one of a man unjustly excommunicated clave-errante who is not in the actuall externall communion of any Particular Church yet if he communicate in desire sufficit ei ad salutem it is sufficient to save him which he proves out of Bellarmine and St. Austine and others Neither will R.C. himself deny it The other instance is of Tertullian who in his later daies did fall off from the Catholicks out of an indiscrete piety why may we not hope that God pardoned the errours of his honest zeal And herein also he hath the consent and concurrence of R. C. himself That they who erre invincibly and hold the truth implicitely doe want neither Church nor Faith nor Salvation What doe these cases concern the present controversie Not at all And as R. C. subtracts so he adds the word voluntary upon his own head which is not in Doctor Potter He who is excommunicated unjustly is not excommunicated with his good will Tertullian did not wilfully run into errour Ignorance destroyes liberty in many cases as well as force Doctor Potter speaks only of such who are in vote in their desires or willingly within the communion of the Church and declares the contrary expresly that voluntary and ungrounded separation from the Catholick Communion is without doubt a damnable Schism Lastly Doctor Potter speaks not of the ordinary way of Salvation but of Gods extraordinary mercy Why may we not hope that God pardoned the errours of his honest zeale Cannot God pardon formall much more materiall Schism and convert a Schismatick at the last gasp if it please him The primitive Church refused to receive some sorts of offenders to their actuall communion and yet left them to the mercy of God for their Salvation But his chiefest testimonies are taken out of Master Chillingworth c. 5. p. 273. That Protestants did forsake the externall communion of the visible Church And p. 274. Master Knott objecting that seeing there was no visible Church but corrupted Luther forsaking the externall communion of the corrupted Church could not but forsake the externall communion of the Catholick Church Master Chillingworth answers Let this be granted And p. 291. It is not improbable that it may be lawfull and noble for one man to oppose in Faith the World I answer first that by externall communion Master Chillingworth meant nothing but errours in the externall communion and by the visible Church a considerable part of the visible Church Hear himself Indeed that Luther and his followers left off the practice of those corruptions wherein the whole visible Church did communicate formerly which I meant when I acknowledged above that they forsooke the externall communion of the visible Church or that they left that part of the visible Church in her corruption which would not be reformed These things if you desire I shall be willing to grant and that by a Synechdoche of the whole for the part he might be said to forsake the visible Church that is a part of it and the greater part But that properly speaking he forsooke the whole visible Church I hope you will excuse me if I grant not this And he gives this reason because a great part of the Church joyned with Luther He might have added a stronger reason as I think that Luthers first quarrell with the Pope was about Indulgences and the Supremacy c. wherein Luther did not desert but joyn in communion with the much greater part of the visible Church If afterwards Luther fell upon other questions not so agreeable to the Eastern Church yet they were no Articles of the Creed nor necessary points of Christian Religion The same interpretation he gives elswhere The first reformers as well as the Donatists c. opposed the commands of the visible Church that is of a great part of it Secondly I answer that what is said of the universall corruption of the visible Church is not delivered positively
things which are like one another are never the same But let us view his grand exceptions to my supposed definitions My first great fault is That I doe not express it thus in some substantiall part or parts of the Church For all Schisme is in essentials otherwise division in ecclesiasticall Ceremonies or scholasticall Opinions should be Schism Here is nothing new but his reason to which I answer that all differences in Rites and Ceremonies are not schismaticall but if unlawfull or sinfull Rites be obtruded by any Church as a condition of their Communion and a separation ensue thereupon the Obtruders of sinfull Rites and they who break the unity of the Church for difference in indifferent Rites are guilty of Schism So likewise scholasticall Opinions are free and may be defended both waies scholastically but if they be obtruded Magisterialy upon Christians as necessary Articles of faith they render the Obtruders truly schismaticall This is the case of the Church of Rome in both these particular instances and therefore it is not true that all Schism is a division in the essentialls of Religion or its substantiall parts When Pope Victor excommunicated the Eastern Churches about the observation of Easter the difference was but about a Rite aut Ritus potius tempore saith a Roman Catholick or rather the time of a Rite Yet it occasioned a Schisme for either Victors Key did erre and then he was the Schismatick or it did not erre and then they were the Schismaticks What the opinion of Ireneus and the Fathers of that age was Eusebius tells us that their letters were extant wherein they chid Victor sharply about it There was much and long contention between the Sees of Rome and Constanstinople concerning the Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction of Bulgaria a meere humane Rite nothing to the substance of the Church And Iohn the 8 th excommunicated Ignatius the Patriarch about it Here was a Schisme but no essentiall of Religion concerned How many gross Schismes have been in the Church of Rome meerly about the due election of their Popes a matter of humane right which was sometimes in the Emperors sometimes in the People sometimes in the whole Roman Clergy and now in the Colledge of Cardinals Essentialls of Religion use not to be so mutable Nay I beleeve that if we search narrowly into the first source and originall of all the famous Schismes that have been in the Church as Novatianisme and Donatisme c. we shall finde that it was about the Canons of the Church no substantialls of Religion Novatians first separation from Cornelius was upon pretense that he himself was more duely elected Bishop of Rome not about any essentiall of Religion The first originall of the Schism of the Donatists was because the Catholick Church would not excommunicate them who were accused to have been traditores On the other side Felicissimus raised a Schism in the Church of Carthage and set up Altar against Altar because the lapsi or those who had fallen in time of persecution might not presently be restored upon the mediation of the Confessors or as they then stiled them Martyrs What Schismes have been raised in the Church of England about round or square white or black about a Cup or a Surpless or the signe of the Cross or kneeling at the receiving of the blessed Sacrament or the use of the Ring in marriage What bitter contentions have been among the Franciscans in former times about their habits what colour they should be white or black or gray and what fashion long or short to make them more conformable to the rule of St. Francis with what violence have these petty quarrells been prosecuted in so much as two succeeding Popes upon two solemn hearings durst not determine them And nothing was wanting to a complete Schism but a sentence He might have spared his second proofs of his three substantiall parts he meaneth essentiall properties of the Church untill it had been once denyed Yet I cannot but observe how he makes Heresie now worse than Schism because Heresie denyeth the truth of God which simple Schism doth not whereas formerly he made Schisme worse than Idolatry The second fault which he imputeth to me is That I confound meer Schism with Schism mixed with Heresie and bring in matters of faith to justifie our division from the Roman Church This second fault is like the former both begotten in his own brain Let him read my supposed definition over and over again and he shall not finde the least trace of any such confusion in it To bring in their errours in matters of faith to justifie us not only from Heresie but from meer Schism is very proper He himself hath already confessed it I hope he will stand to his word for it is too evident a truth to be denyed that supposing they hold errours in matters of faith and make these their errours a condition of their Communion it is not only lawfull but necessary and a virtue to separate from them Their very errours in matters of faith and their imposing them upon us as necessary Articles doth justifie a separation from them and acquit us before God and man from all criminous Schism whether meer or mixed The sinne of Korah Dathan and Abiran was not meer Schism but ambition treason and rebellion Korah would have had the High-priesthood from Aaron and Dathan and Abiran would have been soveraign Princes in the place of Moses by right of the Primogeniture of Ruben So he proceeds to my other definition Meer Shcism is a culpable rupture or breach of the Catholick Communion to which he saith I add in the next page without sufficient ground and should have added also in Sacraments or lawfull ministry and lastly have shewed what is a sufficent ground But he mistakes throughout for first to have added without sufficient grounds had been a needless tautology which is not tolerable in a definition To say that it is culpable implies that it wants sufficient grounds For if it had sufficient grounds it were not culpable Secondly to have added in Sacraments or lawfull Ministry had been to spoil the definition or description rather and to make it not convertible with the thing defined or described I have shewed that there are many meer Schismes that are neither in Sacraments nor lawfull Ministry Lastly I have shewed what are sufficient grounds and that the Church of Rome gave sufficient cause of separation if he please to take it into consideration He saith internall communion is not necessary to make a man a Member of a visible Church or to make him a Catholick neither is it put into the definition of the Church Let it be so I am far from supposing that none but Saints are within the communion of a true visible Church But I am sure it is a good caution both for them and us There is a mentall Schisme as well as a mentall Murther Whosoever hateth his Brother
the Popes at their pleasures gave legislative interpretations of other of their ecclesiasticall Laws as they thought good in order to their own Dominions made ecclesiasticall Corporations appropriated ecclesiasticall Benefices translated episcopall Sees forbid Appeals to Rome rejected the Popes Bulls protested against his Legats questioned both the Legates and all those who acknowledged them in the Kings Bench condemned the Excommunications and other sentences of the Roman Court enlarged or restrained the priviledges of the Clergy prescribed the endowment of Vicars set down the wages of Priests and made Acts to remedy the oppressions of the Roman Court And all this was shewed evidently not out of the single testimonies of some obscure Authors but out of the Customes and Common Law of the Realm out of the Reports of our Judges and greatest Lawyers out of the Laws of Edward the Confessor the Statutes of Clarendon and Carlile the Articles of the Clergy the Statutes of Provisors and many other Statutes made with the generall consent of the whole Kingdome It is not possible in any cause to produce more authenticall proofs then these are To all which in particular R. C. answers not one word So as once more I take it for granted that Henry the eight did nothing in his separation from the Court of Rome but what his most renowned Ancestors had chalked forth unto him All that he saith with any shew of opposition to this is first That whatsoever Kings doe is not lawfull Whereas I spake not of any single Kings but of the whole succession of British Eâ—glish Danish and Norman Kings nor of Kings alone but of them with the consent and concurrence of the whole Kingdome Clergy and Laity whiâ—h proves irrefragably that what they did was the Custome and common fundamentall Law of the Kingdome And that there is no Prescription nor can be against it That they did it de facto is enough to make good my assertion that Henry the eight did no new thing but what his Predecessors in all ages had done before him Secondly he saith That Kings may resist the exercise or Acts of Papall power sometimes and yet acknowledge the power Whereas the Laws and testimonies which I produced doe not only speak against some acts of Papall power but against the power it self against the Popes power to make Laws to send Legats or Bulls or Excommunications without license the power to receive Appeals the power to make ecclesiasticall Coâ—porations the power to dispose of ecclesiasticall Benefices c. What lawfull power had the Pope in the eye of the Law of England who by the Law of England could neither send a Legate thither to doe Justice there nor call the Delinquents or Litigants to Rome to doe Justice there without license Our Laws speak not only against Pandulphus or this or that Legate but against all Legates that come without license nor against the Bull or Excommunication of Paul the third alone but against all Bulls and Excommunications which were brought from Rome into the Kingdome without license Frustranea est ea potentia quae nunquam deduci potest in actum In vain is an absolute power given to a single person to execute that which he cannot execute without another mans license Lastly our Laws do ascribe this very power to the King which the Pope doth challenge The Patronage of the Church the power to make ecclesiasticall Laws the power to call ecclesiasticall Synods the power to dispose of all things which concern the externall regiment of the Church by the advise of his Clergy and Councell within his own Dominions In vain doth he distinguish between the acts or exercise of Papall power and the power it self seeing our ancient Law doth not only forbid the exercise of Papall power but deny the power it self He saith If I would indeed prove that Henry the eight did but vindicate his ancient liberty I should prove that English Kings before him did challenge to be heads of the Church immediatly under Christ by which headship as it was expressed in King Edwards time all Iurisdiction both in spirituall and temporall causes descended from the Crown To prove that Henry the eighth did but vindicate his ancient Liberty it is not necessary that I should justifie all the extravagant expressions or oylie insinuations of parasiticall flatterers Our Kings neither doe challenge nor ever did challenge all Jurisdiction in spirituall causes nor any part of the power of the Keyes either to their own use or to derive it to others Great Pallaces seldome want their Moths or great Princes their Flatterers who are ready to blow the coals of ambition and adorn their Masters with stollen plumes such as the Canonists were of old to the Popes It is not much to be wondred at if some Protestants did overshoot themselves in some expressions upon this subject having learned that language from a Roman Catholick before them Bishop Bonner being the Kings Embassador with Clement the seventh did so boldly and highly set forth his Masters Supremacy in the Assembly of the Cardinalls that they thought of burning him or casting him into a vessell of scalding lead if he had not provided for his own safety by flight Acworth contra Monarch Sanderi l. 2. p. 195. It would better become him and me if any such thing had beene to give unto Caesar that which is Caesars and unto God that which is Gods It is enough to my purpose to have shewed that all King Henries Predecessors did both challenge and enjoy this politicall headship of the Church as I have shewed throughout all the parts branches thereof if he could see wood for trees These very flowers and jewels of the Crown enumerated by me in this Chapter and demonstrated out of our Laws in my vindication doe make up that politique headship that is a power paramount to see that all persons doe their duties in their callings and that all things be acted by fit Agents which are necessary to that great and Architectonicall end that is the safety and tranquility of the Commonwealth This is that title which Edward the Confessor did enjoy before the Conquest namely The Vicar of God to govern the Church within his own Dominions which is neither more nor lesse then the politicall head of the Church In a great Family there are severall offices as a Divine a Physitian a Schoolmaster and every one of these is supreme in his own way yet the Master of the Family hath an oeconomicall power over them all to see that none of them doe abuse their trust to the disturbance of the Family Our Parliament Rolles our ecclesiasticall Registers the Records of the Kings Bench and Common Pleas doe all prove that it is no innovation for our Kings to interpose in ecclesiasticall affairs I doe confesse that some of these flowers which were peculiar to the King as the Patronage and investitures of Bishops in later dayes were snatched from the Crown by the violence of
substantialls lately coyned and obtruded upon the Chrurch as those Articles which are comprehended in the Creed of Pius the fourth And in this sense our Religion and theirs are not the same in substance The former substantialls were made by God the later substantialls devised by man I pleaded that when all things were searched to the bottome Roman Catholicks doe acknowledge the same possibility of Salvation to Protestants which Protestants doe afford to Roman Catholicks And for proof thereof I produced two testimonies of his own To this he answers first that Protestants doe allow saving faith and salvation to the Roman Church and to formall Papists But Roman Catholicks doe denie saving faith and salvation to the Protestant Church and to formall Prrtestants and grant it only to such Protestants as are invincibly ignorant of their errours who are not formall Protestants but rather Protestantibus credentes persons deceived by giving too much trust to Protestants We say the very same that we allow not saving faith or salvation to the Popish Church as it is corrupted but as it reteins with Protestants the same common principles of saving truth and is still jointed in part to the Catholick Church Nor to formall Papists but to such as erre invincibly and are prepared in their mindes to receive the truth when God shall reveal it Such are not formall Papists but Papist is credentes such as give too much trust to Papists His second answer is a second errour grounded only upon those imaginarie ideas which he hath framed to himself in his own head of the opinions of particular Protestants and laboured much to little purpose to prove by conjecturall consequences which hang together like a roap of sand That Protestants affirm that such as erre in fundamentall Articles and such as erre sinfully in not fundamentalls may be saved Neither the Church of England against which he ought to bend his forces in this question nor any genuine sonne of the Church of England nor any other Protestant Church ever said that Papists might be saved though they held not the fundamentalls of saving truth or though they held lesser errors pertinaciously without repentance If any particular Protestants were ever so mad to maintain any such thing in an ordinarie way for we speak not now of the extraordinarie dispensations of Gods grace in case of invincible necessity we disclaime them in it Let him not spare them But I beleeve that when all is done about which he makes such a stirre it will prove but Moonshine in the water To what I said that our separation is from their errours not from their Church he answereth that it shews my ignorance what their Church is For their Church is a society partly in their pretended errors and therefore they who separate from them separate from their Church In my life I never heard a weaker plea But I desire no other advantage then what the cause it self affords Doth he himself beleeve in earnest that any errors are essentialls of a Church Or would he perswade us that weeds are essentials of a Garden or ulcers and wenns and such superfluous excrescences essentials of an humane body Or doe weeds become no weeds aud errors no errors because they are called pretended weeds or pretended errors or because they are affirmed to be essentials This is enough to justifie my distinction So it was not my ignorance but their obstinacy thus to incorporate their errors into their Creeds and matriculate their abuses among their sacred Rites In vain doe they worship me saith God teaching for Doctrines the commandements of men Suppose an Arrian or a Pelagian should charge him to be a Schismatick or an Apostate because he deserted their communion To which he should answer that his separation was from their Arrian or Pelagian errours not from their Church as it was a Christian Church and that he held all other common principles of Christianity with them And suppose the Arrian or Pelagian should plead as he doth that their Church is a society partly in their pretended errors or that their pretended errors are essentials of their Church and of their Religion This might well aggravate their own faults but not infringe the truth of his answer Errors continue errors though they they be called essentials There was a time before Arrianism did infest the Church and there succeeded a time when it was cast out of the Church Their old essentials which were made essentials by Christ we doe readily receive Their new essentials which were lately devised by themselves we doe as utterly reject and so much the rather because they have made them essentials Their Church flourished long without these errors and we hope the time will come when it shall be purged from these errors In setting forth the modderation of our English Reformers I shewed that we doe not arrogate to our selves either a new Church or a new Religion or new holy orders Upon this he falls heavily two waies First he saith it is false as he hath shewed by innumerable testimonies of Protestants That which I say is not the falser because he calls it so nor that which he saith the truer because I forbear For what I said I produced the authority of our Church he letteth that alone and sticketh the falshood upon my sleeve It seemeth that he is not willing to engage against the Church of England For stiâ—l he declineth it and changeth the subject of the question from the English Church to a confused companie of particular Authors of different opinions of dubious credit of little knowledge in our Engâ—ish affairs tentered and wrested from their genuine sense Scis tu simulare Cupressum quid hoc It was not the drift or scope of my undertaking to answer old volumes of impertinencies If he have any testimonies that are materiall in the name of God let him bring them into the lists that the Reader may see what they say and be able to compare the evidence with the answer and not imagine more then is true Let him remember that I premonish him that all his innumerable testimonies will advantage him nothing Secondly he would perswade us that if it were so that our Church Religion and holy Orders were the same with theirs then what need had we to goe out of theirs for salvation then we are convinced of Schism Alas poor men what will become of us Hold what we will say what we can still we are Schismaticks with them If we say our Church Religion and holy Orders are the same with theirs then we are Schismaticks for deserting them If we say they are not the same then we are Schismaticks for censuring and condemning them But we appeale from the sentence of our Adveâ—sarie to the sentence of that great Judge who judgeth righteous judgment We are either Wheat or Chaff but neither their tongues nor their pennes must winnow us If we say our Church Religion and holy Orders be
of indulgences whom the Pope of that time rebuked severely Nor Henry the eighth but the excommunication of Clement the seventh That of Luther is altogether without the compass of the question between him and me which concerneth only the Church of England I shall only make bold to tell him that whensoever it comes to be examined it will be found that Luther had many other causes of what he did then the abuse of some Preachers of Indulgences If he will not give me credit let him cousult the hundred grievances of the German Nation That the Pope rebuked those Preachers of Indulgences severely is more then I have read only this I have read that Carolus Militius did so chide Tecelius the Popes Pardoner about it that shortly after he died of grief Concerning Henry the eighth the excommunication of Clement the seventh was so far from being a totall adequate cause of his separation that it was no more but a single occasion The originall priviledges of the British Churches the ancient liberties and immunities of the English Church daily invaded by the Court of Rome the usurpation of the just Rites and Flowers of his own Crown the otherwise remediles oppression of his Subjâ—â—ts and the examples of his noble Predecessors were the chief grounds of his proceedings against the Court of Rome He asketh could not Henry the eighth have been saved though he was excommunicate yes why not Justice looseth unjust bonds But I see that this question is grounded upon a double dangerous error First that all reformation of our selves is a sinfull separation from other Churches Whereas he himself confesseth that it is sometimes vertuous and necessary Nay every reformation of our selves is so far from being a sinfull separation from others that it is no separation at all except it be joyned with censuring and condemning of others The second error intimated in this question is this that so long as there is possibility of salvation in any Church it is not lawfull or at least not necessary to separate from the abuses and corruptions thereof A Church may continue a true particular Church and bring forth Children to God and yet out of invincible ignorance maintain materiall Heresie and require the profession of that Heresie as a condition of communicating with her in which case it is lawfull nay necessary after conviction to separate from her errors Those errors and corruptions are pardonable by the goodness of God to them who erre out of invincible ignorance which are not pardonable in like manner to them who sinne contrary to the light of their own conscience He addeth that this excommunication was not the fault of the Roman Church which neither caused it nor approved it Yea saith he divers of them disliked it both then and since not as unjust but as imprudent and some have declared themselves positively that a Prince and a multitude are not to be excommunicated It were to be wished for the good of both parties that all men were so moderate To his argument I give two answers First as the Church of Rome did not approve the excommunication of Henry the eighth So neither did Henry the eighth separate himself from the Cchurch of Rome but only from the Pope and Court of Rome Secondly what are we the better that some in the Roman Church are moderate so long as they have no power to help us or hinder the acts of the Roman Court They teach that a Prince or a multitude are not to be excommunicated But in the mean time the Court of Rome doth excommunicate both Princes and multitudes and whole Kingdomes and give them away to strangers Whereof there are few Kingdomes or Republicks in Europe that have not been sensible more or less and particularly England hath felt by wofull experience in sundry ages Clement the seventh excommunicated King Henry but Paul the third both excommunicated and interdicted him and the whole Kingdome and this was the first separation of the Church of England from the Church of Rome and the originall of the Schism wherin the Church of England was meerly passive So the Court of Rome was the first cause of the Schism We are come now to my first argument to prove the Court of Rome to be causually schismaticall My proposition is this whatsoever doth leave its proper place in the body either naturall or politicall or ecclesiasticall to usurp the Office of the Head or to usurpe an higher place in the body then belongs unto it is the cause of disorder disturbance confusion and Schism among the Members my assumption is this but the vertuall Church of Rome that is the Pope wiâ—h his Court being but a coordinate Member of the Catholick Church doth seek to usurpe the Office of the Head being but a Branch doth châ—llenge to himself the place of the Root being but a Stone in the building will needles be an absolute Foundation for all persons places and times being but an eminent Servant in the Familie takes upon him to be the Master To the proposition he taketh no exception And to the assumption he confesseth that the Church of Rome in right of the Pope doth seek to be Mistriss of all other Churches and an externall subordinate foundation of all Christians in all times and places which is no more then is conteined in the new Creed of Pius the fourth I acknowledg the Roman Church to be the Mother and Mistriss of all Churches And I promise and swear true obedience to the Bishop of Rome as to the Vicar of Iesus Christ. But all this he justifieth to be due to the Pope and included in the Supremacy of his Pastorall Office But he saith that it is not the Doctrine of the universal Roman Church that the Pope is the root of all spiritual Iurisdiction Though it be not the Doctrine of the whole Roman Church yet it is the Doctrine of their principall Writers at this day It is that which the Popes and their Courtiers doe challenge and we have seldome seen them fail first or last to get that setled which they desired The Pope hath more Benefices to bestow then a Councell If the Church of Rome be the foundation of all Christians then Linus and Cletus and Clemens were the foundations of St. Iohn who was one of the twelve foundations laid immediately by Christ How can the Church of Rome be the foundation of all Christians when they doe not agree among themselves that the Chair of St. Peter is annexed to the See of Rome by divine right How can the Church of Rome be the foundation of all Christians at all times when there was a time that there were Christians and no Bishop or Church at Rome when it happens many times as in this present vacancy that there is no Bishop at Rome St. Peter was Bishop of Antioch before he was Bishop of Rome then there was a time when Antioch was the Mistriss and foundation of all
Consciences then of Papists in those dayes throughout the whole Kingdome of England In the Citie of London alone we finde an hundred and twenty Pastors of Parish Churches whereof fourty were Doctors in Theologie turned out of their Benefices and homes plundred imprisoned and many of them dead under the burthen of their grievous pressures besides all the numerous Dignitaries Prebends and inferior Clergy men belonging to the Cathedrall Church of St. Paul and the Collegiate Church of St. Peter and their respective Quires I could say more touching your Romish Confessors at that time That they refused the Oath of Supremacy more out of compact then Conscience hoping by their unanimity and for fear of wanting means of ordination to necessitate the State to continue them all But when they see how miserably they were deceived and their Churches filled with such as were returned from banishment of whom they dreamed not conjurationis eos poenituit they repented of their foolish plot And when it was too late multi ad Iudices recurrunt contumaciam agnoscunt ac petunt sibi contra pontificem jurare licere many of them run to the Iudges confessed their obstinacy and desired leave to take the Oath as they had done in King Henries dayes But let the faith of this rest upon the Author To my third Argument he giveth no answer in his Survey but what was taken away in the vindication before it was made The sum of my Argument was this That Court which rebelleth against the highest tribunall of the Church assumeth a sovereign Power over it to it self is schismaticall but the Court of Rome rebelleth against the supreme Tribunall or Judicatory of the Militant Church that is the Representative Church or a general Councel The Reader will excuse me if I doe sometimes complicate two or three medios terminos together for brevity sake His first exception is That whereas I should prove that the Papacy is the cause of Schism I doe seek to prove that the Papacy is Schism To say the Papacy is Schism is non sense I hope I may have leave to write common sense But I did say and I doe say that the Court of Rome is in Schism or Schismaticall To say it is in Schism and to say it is the cause of Schism is the same thing for it is not the separation but the cause that makes the Schism They who give just cause of separation are Schismaticall and they who take it are innocent Secondly he demandeth how the Papacy as it is now maintained by many could be a sufficient ground of separation to the Protestants especially of separation from the whole Roman Church I answer very well because it was then and two or three ages before that maintained in the same manner or rather an higher degree by the Court of Rome and some others of the Roman Church though not so many as at this day Our separation from the Court of Rome is totall and absolute because we know no legall Subjection which we owe to the Court of Rome But I know no such absolute separation on our parts from the Church of Rome but only a difference from them in their erroneous Opinions and a forbearance to practise some other things which are made by them conditions of their externall Communion wherein we cannot joyn with them with a good conscience The making of their errors to be essentialls and necessary conditions of Catholick Communion makes the breach appear greater then it is That this is clearly the sense of our Church I have shewed out of the thirtieth Canon So he comes to his main answer That to rebell against a complete generall Councell joyned with the Pope as Head thereof is gross Schism But not to resist an incomplete generall Councell without the Pope This answer is sufficiently confuted in the vindication first by the authority of Saint Gregory who makes it to be schismaticall in the Pope to challenge such an universall headship of Power Secondly by the Popes own Laws and by their professions of obedience to the Canons Thirdly by the Appeales made by Princes and Prelates and Universities from the Popes to generall Councells And lastly by the express Decrees of the Councells of Constance and Basile in the point To which I adde that those very Decrees of generall Councells which have been not only not ratified but opposed by the Popes have nevertheless been evermore received and obeyed as Lawes in the Catholick Church for the authority of the Councell As the Decree of the Councell of Chalcedon for equalling the Patriarch of Constantinople to the Patriarch of Rome was protested against by the Popes Legates in the name and on the behalf of their Master and yet was ever held and practised as an authentick Rule by the Catholick Church and reverenced by Saint Gregory as a part of the Gospell Iustinian the Emperor called the fifth generall Councell at which Vigilius the then Pope refused to be present or to give any consent unto it for which his frowardness he was banished by the Emperor This in R. C. his judgement was an incomplete generall Councell Yet in all succeeding ages and by the Popes themselves it was honored and esteemed as a true general Councell I confess a generall Councell was not held complete in the primitive times when such an assembly might be had without the presence of the five Protopatriarchs by themselves or their Deputies But to think that any one of these either the Roman Patriarch or any other had an Headship of Power over the Councell or a negative voice against the Councell is a most groundless fancy whereof we finde not the least footstep in all antiquity And therefore R. C. might well have forborn his comparison of King and Parliament as altogether impertinent The King was confessedly an Head of Power over the Parliament so was not the Pope over a generall Councell The King had evermore a negative voice in Parliament so had the Pope never in a generall Councell When the Parliament had made up their Billes they preferred them alwaies to the King by way of petition but the Bishops in a generall Councell by way of definition Ego A. definiens subscripsi In a generall Councell the President who is no more then a Prolocutor or Speaker in Parliament makes his last address to the body of the Councell in this sort placet aut non placet doth it please you or not But in Parliament after the Members have voted content or not content the last address must be to the King and he is free to say the King will have it or the King will advise If a generall Councell have not the Rites and Priviledges of a generall Councell unless the Pope be present as the Head thereof and concurre with it to what purpose were those questions so canvased in the Western Church whether a generall Councell be above the Pope and whether a generall Councell can depose
which continue in communion with it are the onely Churches which have true doctrine in vertue of the first principle above mentioned and the right governement in virtue of the second and consequently are the entire Catholick or Vniversall Church of Christians all others by misbelief or Schisme being excluded Our answer is ready that the Church of Rome or the Court of Rome have sophisticated the true doctrine of Faith by their supplementall Articles and erroneous additions contrary to the first principle and have introduced into the Church a tyrannical and unlawfull government contrary to the second principle and are so far from being the entire Catholick Church that by them both they are convicted to have made themselves guilty of supertio n and Schisme And lastly where he saith that my onely way to clear our Church from Schisme is either by disproving the former to be the necessary rule of unity in Faith or the latter the necessary bond of governement he is doubly mistaken First we are the persons accused our plea is negative or not guilty So the proof lieth not upon us but upon him to make good his accusation by proving us Schismaticks Secondly if the proof did rest upon our sides we do not approve ofâ—his adviâ—e It is not we who have altered the Doctrine or Discipline which Christ left to his Church by our substractions but they by their additions There is no doubt but Christs legacy ought to be preserved inviolable but we deny that Christ bequeathed spiritual Monarchy over his Church to S. Peter and that the Bishop of Rome is S. Peters heir by Christs ordination And that this was the constant beliefe of the Catholick world at any time This is his province let him either make this good or hold his peace Sect. 2. So his Prologue is ended now we come to his animadversions upon my arguments My first ground was because not Protestants but Roman Catholicks themselves did make the first separation To which his first answer is If it were so how doth that acquit us since continuance in a breach of this nature is as culpable as the beginning Many waies First it is a violent presumption of their guilt and our innocence when their best friends and best able to judge who preached for them and writ for them who acted for them and suffered for them who in all other things were great zeloâ—s of the Roman Religion and persecuted the poor Protestants with fire and Fagot did yet condemn thâ—m and justify this separation Secondly though it doth not alwaies excuse a tâ—to from all guilt and punishment to be misled by others into errour If the blind llead the blind both fall into the ditch yet it doth alwaies excuse a tanto it lesseneth the sin and extenuateth the guilt Persons misled by the example and authority of others are not so cuipable as the first authors and ringleaders in Schisme If this separation be an Errour in Protestants the Roman Catholicks do owe an account to God both for themselves and us did they find cause to turne the Pope out of England as an intruder and usurper and could Protestants who had no relation to Rome imagine that it was their duties to bring him in again Thirdly in this case it doth acquit us not onely a tanto but a toto not onely from such a degree of guilt but from all criminus Schisme so longas we seek carefuly after truth and do not violate the dictates of our Consciences If he will not believe me let himbeleeve S. Austin He that defends not his false opinion with pertinacious animosity having not invented it himself but learned it from his erring parents if he enquire carefully after the truth and be ready to embrace it and to correct his errours when he finds them he is not to be reputed an hereticke If this be true in the case of heresy it is more true in the case of Schisme Thus if it had been a crime in them yer it is none in us but in truth it was neither crime in them nor us but a just and necessary duty Secondly he answereth that it is no sufficient proof that they were no Protestants because they persecuted Protestants For Protestants persecute Protestants Lutherans Calvinists Zwinglians Puritans and Beownists persecute one another VVhat then were VVarham and Heath aud Thureleby Tunscall and Stokesley and Gardiner and Bonner c. all Protestants did Protestants enjoy Arch-Bishopricks and Bishopricks iâ— England and say Masses in those daies will he part so easily with the greatest Patrons and Champions of their Church and opposers of the Reformation If he had wriâ— thus much whilest they were living they would have been very angry with him Yet at the least if they were Protestants let him tell me which of these Sects they were of Lutheranâ— c. But he telleth us that the reouncing of the Pope is the most essentiall part of our reformation and so they had in them the quintessence of a Protestant He is mistaken This part of the reformation was done to our hands it was their reformation not ours But if he will needs have the kingdomes and Churches of England and Ireland to have been all Protestants in Henry the eighths daies onely for renouncing the Popes absolute universall Monarchy I am well contented we shall not lose by the bargain Then the Primitive Church were all Protestants then all the Grecian Russian Armenian Abyssen Christians are Protestants at this day then we want not store of Protestants even in the besome of the Roman Church it self Sect. 3. My second Ground saith he was because in the separation of England from Rome there was no new law made but onely their ancient Liberties vindicated This he is pleased to call notoriously false impudence it self because a law was made in Henry the eighths time and an oath invented by which was given to the King to be head of the Church and to have all the power the Pope did at that time possess in England Is this the language of the Roman Sâ—hooles or doth he think perhaps with his outcriâ—s and clamours as the Turks with their Alla Alla to daunt us and drive us from our cause Christian Reader of what Communion soever thou art be but indifferent and I make thee the Judge where this notorious falshood and impudence doth rest between him and me I acknowledge this was the Title of my fourth Chapter that the King and Kingdom of England in the separation from Rome did make no now law but vindicate their ancient Liberties It seemeth he confureth the Titles without looking into the Chapters did I say they made no new statutes No I cited all the new statutes which they did make and particularly this very statute which he mentioneth here Yet I said they made no new law because it was the law of the land before that statute was made The Customs and liberties of England are the ancient and common Law of the
Alan Apol. c. 4. p. 59. Sond de Schism p 103 b. Denique nulla in re a side Catholica discessit nisi libidinis luxuâ—iâ— causa Sect. 4. A full justification of our penall Laws L 3. L. 1. de Orator Leg. 12. tal Aen Gaz. in Theo. phâ—asium Cont Aristâ—câ—aetem Timocratem Sand de Schis l. 1. Camd Annal Eliz. l. 2. p. 7. Id. l. 2. p. 98. Id l 4. p. 145 p. 150. p 164. Câ—md Annal l 3 p. 11 Ibid. l. 3. p. 44. l. 3. p. 74. Camd. An. l. 3. p. 132 Apol. Marc. p. 329. Camd. An. l 3. p. 11. Apr. 1. El. 23. ex Apol. Mart. Edm. Camp epist. ad Conc. R. Aug. pag. 127. Camb. Annal Eliz an 1581. Camb. Annal. Eliz an 1581. Sect. 1. The Kings of England alwaies politicall Heads of the English Church Not only acts of Papall Power but the Power it self contrary to our Laws Jurisdiction is from Ordination but Princes apply the matter Jurisdidiction enlarged and fortified with coercive power by Princes Henry the eighth not exempt from the power of the Keyes An. 25. H. 8. C. xxi Sect. 2. Saint Wilfrid Spel. conc An. 705. Bed l. 5. Ecc. hist c. 20. St. Austin and his â— Fellowes Bed l. 2. c 4. Bed l. 1. e. 25. See Speed l. 6 c. 9. 11.22 Fed. l. 1. c. 29. Bed l. 2. c. 2. Bed l. 2. c. 4. St. Melit L. 2. c. 4. Ibidem Bed l. 3. c 29. An Aâ—ch bâ—shop sent from Rome L. 4 c. 1. Bed l. 3. c 25. St. Peter Poâ—ter of Heaven Camd. Brit. p. 165. St Peter Superior to Saint Paul L. 2. Flor. c. 11. St. Peter a Monarch Bed l. 4 c. 18. John the precentor Malm. l 2â— Reg. c 9. Bishoprickâ— erâ—cted in England by the Pope answered Wil Malmes l. 1. Reg. c. 6. L. 2â— Floâ— c. 11. Edgar apud Ealred in orati ad Episcopos withred a pud Speim Conc p. 192 Clergy-men not exempted from seculaâ— Judges Plat. in politico Ibâ—dem 〈◊〉 Ser. 25 in 14 c 〈◊〉 Rome hath no certainâ—y of iâ—tallibilitiâ— Bell. de Ro. Pont. l. 4. â— 4. Aclred de vita Mirac Edw. Conf. superseriptions to Popes 2 Cor. 11. 28. Aclred ibidem Walsing Aâ— 133 How the Pope presideth above all Creatures Wâ—lsiâ—g â— An 1343. 25 E. 3. Wals. An. 1343. Wals. ibidem Aust. Ep. 50. Sect. 2. Patriarchs indâ—pâ—ndent upon a single Superior Socrat. l. 2. â— 11 Cypr. Epist. l. 1. Ep. 3. Conc. â—â—hâ—sia part 1. act 7. Bâ—itain enjoyed the Cyprian pâ—iviledge Math Paris in H 3. an 1238. Itineâ—az Caâ—â—b l 2. c 1. Bellarmine maâ—â—s the Apostles all equal in power I. 4 de Rom. Pont. c. 23. L. 4 de Ro. pont c. 16. L 1. de Ro Pont. c. 12. Cypr. de unit Ecclesiae Cont. Iovin l. 1. c. 14. How Peter head of the rest A superiority of Order is sufficient to prevent Schisme The rest Pastors as well as Peter De Rom. Pont. l. 4. c. 25. l. 1. c. 9. Sect. 2. Universality an incommunicable qualification of the Apostles 9 c. 8. s. 2. Bel l. 4. de Ro. Pont c â—4 All Episcopall jurisdiction is not derived from the Pope Sect. 3. The Chair of St. Peter not fixed to Rome by Divine right l. 2. de Pont. Ro. c. 12. Bel. de Pont. Ro. l. â—â— c. 23. Io 21.18 Bel de Râ— Poâ— 2. c. 12. Ibidem Nor by humane right Sect. 4. Gild. in Prol. Whether St. Peter converted Britain Onuph Of Eleutherius his sending into Engand And Victors into Scotland Ninian Bed l. 3â— c. 4. Palladius and S. Patrick Bed in viâ—a St. Patriâ— l. 1. Germanus and Lupus Prosp. in Chron. Constant de vita Germ. l. 1. Bed l 1. c. 17. Baron an 429. Constant l. c. 19. Idem c. 23 Austine Dubritius St. Samson Vind. p. 150. Pol. Virg. l 13 hist. Angl. Itiâ— Camb l. 1. c. 1. Râ—g â—â—ved An. anno 1â—99 King Iames. Matrix Ecclesia Sect. 5. Bed l. 2. c. 2. â—ed l. 3. c. 25. Vind. p. 115 116. Aqui. ◠〈◊〉 2.2 quaest 88. Art 2. 10. A King hath all power needfull for the preservation of his Kingdome A respective necessity is a sufficient ground of a Reformation Act. 15.28 Act. 21 20 Senec. Our Reformation was necessary Hall 24. Hen. 8. sol 205. The Regiment of the Church conformed to that of the Commonwealth conc chalc c. 11. vel 12. Dist. 99. In gain or losse all circumstances to be considered 1 Pet. 1.7 Our Reformation not contrary to the Decrees of generall Councels Novell 11 131. p. 127. But in pur suance of them King Henries Divorce lawfull but no ground of the Reformation Hall in Hen. 8. an 20. sol 180. b. an 21 f. 182. All the Cardinals of Rome opposed the Dispensation Hall An. 1. H. 8. Acworth emt Sand 1 2. c 13. 14 Hall An. 19. H 8. fâ—l 161. Sand de Schism p. 11. 12. Steph. Wint. de vera Obedientia apnd Gild. t. 1. p. 721. Ld. Cherb in Hen 8. An 1530. p. 303. Sufficere sant alioqui debuisset causae ipsius c. The Parliament not forced Idem p. 334. Anno. 1530. De vera Obedien tia Ibâ—dem p. 719. King Henry did not act against conscience c 3. s. 5. Ld. Cherb H. 8. an 1530. p. 305. Consilio divino Sand. de Sâ—hism p. 102. Lord Cherb fol. 398. P 128. Our separation from the Papacy was not for the faults of Popes but of the Papacy it self Luk. 13.7 whether Popes have done more good or hurt to England not materiall 2 King 18.4 Sect. 2. Conc. Turor Râ—sp ad Art 3. 48. It was lawfull to withdraw obedience from Papâ—ll Authority corrupted Princes the last Judges of the injuries done to their Subjâ—cts by Popes Bish. Epist. ad Reg. Iocob p. 11. Rom. 13.1 2. Prov. â— 15 Kingly Authority from God not Papal Sect. 3. The grounds of our sâ—paration An. 30. Sect. 4. The Popes new Articles of Faith a just cause of separation The deâ—â—ining of the Cup in the Sacrament a just cause of separation Odoardus Barlosa forma Celebrandi c. Papists right Heirs of the Donatists Optat. l. 2. Whether Protestants and Papists differ in Essentials Psal. 139.16 Sect. 5. Papists acknowledge possibility of our salvation as much as we of theirs Sect. 6. Our separation only from errors Math. 15.9 We arrogate to our selves no new Church c. Whether our Religion be the same with theirs or not we are no Schismaticks Quaest 14. de side Aâ—t 1. Justification by speciall faâ—â—h no Aâ—â—icle of our Church Probl. 22. Probl. 26. Our negatives no Articles of Faith Sect. 7. An implicite submission to the Catholick Church sufficient to salvation 〈…〉 Papists agree not what is their infallâ—ble proponent Aust. epist. 48. The name of Catholick from universall Communion not right beleefe c. 2 sect 6. More dangerous to exclude then to include others in our Communion The politick Supremacy of Princes in
Ecclesiasticall causes Hist conc Trid. An. 1544 An. 1545. An. 1548. The Oath of Supremacy justified Sand. de Schism p 59. De Schis Ang p. 57. Hail an 22. H. 8. Pol de Conc Resp. ad qu 74. 75. 1 Pet. 2.13 Aâ—t â—ccl Angl. Art 37. Memor de Samag Catholicâ— cap. 10. A Sancta Clara. Expos. Parapb in Art 37 Ibidem Sect. 2. No contradiction in my words Sect. 3. Constantine Ruffin l. 1. c. 2. Theodorit l. 1. c. 11. Euseb. de vita Constant l. 1. c. 35. Idem l 3. c. 23 Euseb. hist. l. 10. c. 5. Aust. epist. 162. Euseb hist. l. 10. c. 6. Socrat. l. 1. c. 22. Sozom l. 2. c. 27. Euseb. de vit Const. l. 1. c. 37. Theodor. l. 1. c. 19 Valentinian Theodosius Socrat l 7. c. 22. Evagr. l. 9. c. 12. Valentinian the elder Sozo l. 6 c. 7. Idem l. 6. c. 6. Theod. l 4 c 7 8. cod Thâ—od l 4. c. 5. In praemio l. 5. Basilius An. 869. Charles the great Albert Crantz metr l. 1. c. 7. Vindicat. c. 7. pag. 167. Epist. ad Ioan. 2. in Cedice Iustinian Sup. c. 4. sect 1. L 2. Cont. Petili c. 51. Sup c. 2. s. 4 infid unmasked c. 7 s. 112. p. 534. Indulgences The excommunication of Henry the eighth Sect. 2. Bâ—â— Pii 4. The Church of Rome no foundation of Christians Rev. 21.24 l. 2. de Pont. Rom. c. 12. 1 Pet 5.1 Sect. 3. The Church of Rome obtrudeth new Articles of Faith and excommunicateth for not receiving them An. 1564. An. 1569. The Papacy a cause of separation Bull. Pauli 4. The Pope excommunicates the Eastern Churches No Recusants in England or few in the beginning of Q Elizabeths reign The disclosing of the great Bull. Camd Elizab an 1â—70 Image of both Chuâ—ches edit an 1653 p. 442. Camd. Elizab. an 1559. More Protestants suffer now then Roman Catholicks at the Reformation Acworth Cont. Sander l. 2. p. 197. Sect. 4 Vind. c 6. s. A generall Councell complete without the Pope Greg l. 1. epist. 24 Bron. Annot in Conc. 5. The Decree of the Councel of Constance for its superiority above the Pope lawfail Sect. 1. Some Rom. Cath. formal Schismaticks The present Roman Church dâ—parted out of the ancient Roman Church And which is worse out of the Catholick Church Lib 2. Gent. Pet. c. 38. The Romanists true Donatists Ibid. Sect. 1. 2. The Roman Church not the Catholick Church L. de unit c. 6. If denyall of the Popes Supremacy maketh Protestants the World is full of Protestanns Our separation not in essentialls The Eastern Churches true parts of the catholick Church Sect. 3. The Councell of Trent not general Nor free Nor lawfull Hist Conc. Tâ—id l. 2. an 1545. The Protestants not condemned by the Patriarch of Constantinople but the Romanists 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Knolles Turk bist in the life of Am. â— p. 1503. Ib p. 1500. Sect. 4. Why R C. not willing to argue of the Popes Patriarchall Power Answ. to the pres S. c. 1. s. 1. 1 Pet. 3.20 The Church of Rome St. Petes. Boat not Noahs Arke Our charity freeth us from Schism Sect. 6. Cal. Inst. l. 4 c. 1. c. Sect. 5. Sup. c. 1. sect 1. Sect. 6. Our Ordination justified Greg. Resp. ad Int. 8. August Continuation of the Tuck Histin the life of Amurath 4. No diffrence about sacrifice if rightly understood Sect. 7. There are fundamentalls Hebr. 5.12 and c. 6.1 c. How much is necessary to be beleeved to salvation ordinarily All revealed truths not essâ—ntialls Ancient Popes challenged not sovereignty jure divino Of the Church l. 5. a c. 31. ad c. 36. L. 2 Cont. Iovin Sup. c. 5. sect 1. Cent. Epist. Theol. ep 74. A moderate Papacy might prove usefull but dangerous Mont. Orig. Eccles. part post p. 185. The Conclusion Epist. 161. Vind. ch 4. pag. 86. â—â— H 8. c. â—2 16 R. 2. c. 5. Malm. l. 1. de Gâ—st pont Aug. Reg. Honed in h. â— 20. H. 3. c. 9. Stat. Clarendo Stat. CarLile Art Cleri 25 Ed. 3. 37 Ed. 3. ch â— â—6 Rich. 2. c. â— Placit an 1. H. 7. Placit an 32. 34. Edv 1. Ch. 7. p. 196. Ch. â— L. 2. de Roâ— Pont. c. 3â— Act. 16. Britt histâ— L. 11. c. 3. Pag. 106 Dialog de Eccles. Mcne distinct 3. Nilus de primatis 1. Cor. 3.12 C. 3. Sect. 4. Sop. cap. 3. Sect. 4. Eph. 4.4 Eph. 5. â— Bernard de consider l. 4. De concil l. 2 c. 17. De concil l. 2. c. 13. De Roma Pont. l. 4. c. 22. 24 Judg. 6. Bellarmâ—ce concil l. 1. c. 17. Pag. 24â— Vind. pag 101. Gers. p. 4. Serm. de pace unit Cyril considerat â—â—
substantiall parts of a Society as much as rationability being but a faculty or specificall quality is a substantiall part of a man because it is a part of his definition or his essentiall difference But I suppose that by substantiall parts he means essentialls as we use to say the same Church in substance or the same religion in substance that is in essence And if so then he might have spared the labour of proving it and pressing it over and over For we maintain that an entire profession of saving truth a right use of the Word and Sacraments and an union under lawfull Pastors being taken joyntly doe distinguish the Church essentially from all other Societies in the World We have been told heretofore of other notes of the Church which did not please us so well as Antiquity and Universality and Splendour c. which may be present or absent with the Church or without the Church As if a man should describe money by the weight and colour and sound or describe a King by his Crown and Scepter or describe a man as Plato did to be a living creature with two leggs without feathers which Diogenes easily confuted by putting a naked Cock into his School saying behold Plato's man Such separable communicable accidents are not notes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 absolutely and at all times but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 accidentally and at sometimes whereas these three doe belong unto the Catholick Church and to all true particular Churches inseparably incommunicably and reciprocally and are proper to the Church quarto modo to every true Church only to a true Church and alwaies to a true Church Yet I foretell him that this liberall concession will not promote his cause one hairs breadth As will appear in the sequell of this discourse But yet this essentiality must not be pressed too farre for fear least we draw out blood in the place of milk I like Stapletons distinction well of the nature and essence of a Church from the integrity and perfection thereof These three essentials doe constitute both the one and the other both the essence and the perfection of a Church Being perfect they consummate the integrity of a Church being imperfect they doe yet contribute a being to a Church It doth not follow that because Faith is essentiall therefore every point of true Faith is essentiall or because discipline is essentiall therefore every part of right discipline is essentiall or because the Sacraments are essentiall therefore every lawfull rite is essentiall Many things may be lawfull many things may be laudable yea many things may be necessary necessitate praecepti commanded by God of divine institution that are not essentiall nor necessary necessitate medii The want of them may be a great defect it may be a great sinne and yet if it proceed from invincible necessity or invincible ignorance it doth not absolutely exclude from Heaven The essences of things are unalterable and therefore the lowest degree of saving Faith of Ecclesiasticall discipline of Sacramentall Communion that ever was in the Catholick Church is sufficient to preserve the true being of a Church A reasonable Soul and an humane Body are the essentiall parts of a man Yet this body may be greater or lesser weaker or stronger yea it may lose a legg or an arm which before they were lost were subordinate parts of an essentiall part and yet continue a true humane body though imperfect and maimed without destroying the essence of that individuall man Sensibility and a locomotive faculty are essentiall to every living creature Yet some living creatures doe want one sense some another as sight or hearing Some flie some runne some swimme some creep some scarcely creep And yet still the essence is preserved Naturalists doe write of the Serpent that if there be but two inches of the body left with the head the Serpent will live a true Serpent but much maimed and very imperfect Much lesse may we conclude from hence that the want of true essentialls in cases of invincible necessity doth utterly exclude from Heaven or hinder the extraordinary influence of divine Grace No more then the actuall want of circumcision in the Wildernesse did prejudice the Jews God acts with means without means against means And where the ordinary means are desired and cannot be had he supplies that defect by extraordinary Grace So he fed the Israelites in a barren Wildernesse where they could neither sow nor plant with Manna from Heaven True Faith is an essentiall yet Infants want actuall Faith Baptism the laver of regeneration is an essentiall yet there may be the baptism of the Spirit or the baptism of Blood where there is not the Baptism of water He that desires Baptism and cannot have it doth not therefore want it So likewise Ecclesiasticall discipline is an essentiall of a true Church yet R. C. himself will not conclude from thence that actuall subordination to every link in the chain of the hierarchy is so essentially necessary that without it there can be no salvation Thus he saith We professe that it is necessary to salvation to be under the Pope as Vicar of Christ. But we say not that it is necessary necessitate medii so as none can be saved who doe not actually beleeve it unlesse it be sufficiently proposed to them What he confesseth we lay hold on that subjection to the Pope is not essentially necessary What he affirmeth further that it is preceptively necessary or commanded by Christ we doe altogether deny I urge this only for this purpose that though Ecclesiasticall discipline be an essentiall of the Church yet by his own confession every particular branch of it may not be essentiall though otherwise lawfull and necessary by the commandment of God But if by profession of faith he understand particular formes of confession often differing in points of an inferiour nature not comprehended either actually or virtually in the Apostles Creed or perhaps erroneous opinons If by communion in Sacraments he understand the necessary use of the same rites and the same forms of Administration whereof some may be lawfull but not necessary to be used others unlawfull and necessary to be refused Lastly if by lawfull ministery he understand those links of the Hierarchy which have either been lawfully established by the church as Patriarchall authority or unlawfully usurped as Monarchicall power we are so farre from thinking that these are essentiall to the Church that we beleeve that some of them are intollerable in the Church The other Branch of this first note that Schisme is a division in som substantiall parts of the Church of God is true but not in his sense All Schisme is either between Patriarchall Churches or Provinciall Churches or Diocesan Churches or some of these respectively or some of their respective parts But his sense is that all Schism is about the essence of Religion A strange paradox Many Schisms have arisen in the
of them either by addition or by subtraction is not a reformation but a destruction of them And therefore it is a contradiction to say that a Church which hath the substance or the essence of a Church can give just cause to depart from her in her essentials and not only a contradiction but plain blasphemy to say that the true Church of Christ in essence his mysticall body his Kingdome can give just cause to forsake it in essentials The assumption is proved by him because we confesse that the Roman Church is a true Church in substance and yet have forsaken it in the essentials of a true Church namely the Sacraments and the publick worship of God His proposition admits little dispute I doe acknowledge that no Church true or fals no society of Men or Angâ—â—s good or bad can give just or sufficient cause to forsake the essentials of Christian Religion or any of them and that whosoever do so are either heriticks or schismaticks or both or which is worse then both down right Infidels and Apostates For in forsaking any essential of Christian Religion they forsake Christ and their hopes of Salvation in an ordinary way But here is one thing which it behoveth R. C. himself to take notice of That if the essences of all things be indivisible and are destroied as well by the addition as by the subtraction of any essential part how will the Roman Church or Court make answer to Christ for their addition of so many not explications of old Articles but new pretended necessary essentiall Arricles of Faith under pain of damnation which by his own rule is to destroy the Christian Faith who have coined new Sacraments and added new matter and form that is essentials to old Sacraments who have multiplied sacred Oâ—ders and added new lincks to the chain of the Hierarchy This will concern him and his Chuâ—ch more neerly then all his notes and points doe concern us Concerning his assumption two questions come to be debated first whether the Church of Rome be a true Church or not secondly whether we have departed from it in essentials Touching the former point a Church may be said to be a true Church two waies metaphysically and morally Every Church which hath the essentials of a Church how tainted or corrupted soever it be in other things is metaphysically a true Church for ens verum convertuntur So we say a theef is a true man that is a reasonable creature consistng of an humane body and reasonable soul. But speaking morally he is a faulty filching vitious person and so no true man So the Church of Rome is metaphysically a true Church that is to say hath all the essentials of a Christian Church but morally it is no true Church because erroneous contraries as truth and errour may be predicated of the same subject so it be not ad idem secundum idem codem tempore Truth in fundamentalls and errour in superstructures may consist together The foundation is right but they have builded much hay and stuble upon it And in respect of this foundation she may and doubtless doth bring forth many true Members of Christ Children of God and Inheritors of the Kingdome of Heaven The Church of the Jews was most erroneous and corrupted in the dayes of our Saviour yet he doubted not so say Salvation is of the Iews I know it is said that Christ hath given himself for his Church to sanctifie it and cleanse it and present it to himself a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle But that is to be understood inchoactively in this life the perfection and consummation thereof is to be expected in the life to come To the second question whether the Church of England in the Reformation have forsaken the essentials of the Roman Church I answer negatively we have not If weeds be of the essence of a Garden or rupt Humors or Botches or Wennes and Excrescences be of the essence of man If Errors and Innovations and Superstitions and sperfluous Rites and pecuniary Arts be of the essence of a Church then indeed we have forsaken the Roman Church in its essentials otherwise not We retein the same Creed to a word and in the same sense by which all the primitive Fathers were saved which they held to be so sufficient that in a general Councell they did forbid all persons under pain of deposition to Bishops and Clerks and anathematisation to Laymen to compose or obtrude any other upon any Persons converted from Paganisme or Judaisme We retein the same Sacraments and Discipline which they reteined we derive our holy Orders by lineall succession from them we make their doctrine and their practise under the holy Scriptures and as best Expositors thereof a Standard and Seal of truth between the Romanists and us It is not we who have forsaken the essence of the modern Roman Church by substraction But they who have forsaken the essence of the ancient Romau Church by addition Can we not forsake their new Creed unless we forsake their old faith Can we not reduce the Liturgy into a known tongue but presently we forsake the publick worship of God Can we not take away their tradition of the Patine and Chalice and reform their new matter and form in Presbyterian ordination which antiquity did never know which no Church in the World besides themselves did ever use but presently we forsake holy Orders The truth is their errours are in the excesse and these excesses they themselves have determined to be essentials of true Religion And so upon pretence of interpreting they intrude into the Legislative office of Christ and being but a Patriarchall Church doe usurpe a power which the universal Church did never own that is to Constitute new essentials of Christian Religion Before the determination their excesses might have past for probable Opinions or indifferent Practises but after the determination of them as Articles of faith extra quam non est salus without which there is no salvation they are the words of the Bull they became inexcusable errors So both the pretended contradiction the pretended blasphemy are vanished in an instant It is no contradiction to say that a true humane body in substance may require purgation nor blasphemy to say that a particular Church as the Church of Rome is may erre and which is more than we charge them withall may apostate from Christ. In the mean time we preserve all due respect to the universal Church and doubt not to say with St. Austin that to dispute against the sense thereof is most insolent madness His fifth point to be noted hath little new worth noting in it but tautologies and repetitions of the same things over and over Some Protestants saith he doe impudently deny that they are substantially separated from the Roman Church If this be impudence what is ingenuity If this be such a gross error for man to
no Liturgy at all but account it a stinting of the Spirit And for the Sacrament of the blessed body and blood of Christ it is hard to say whether the use of it among them be rarer in most places or the congregations thinner But where the ministers are unqualified or the form of Administration is erroneous in essentials or sinfull duties are obtruded as necessary parts of Gods service the English Protestants know how to abstain from their communion let the Roman Catholicks look to themselves for many say let the Faith be with the authours that sundry of the Sons of their own Church have been greater sticklers in their private Conventicles and publick Assemblies then many Protestants Secondly I deny his assumption that the Church of England doth joyn in communion of Sacraments and publick Praiers with any Schismaticks What my thoughts are of those whom he terms Puritans and Independants they will not much regard nor doth it concern the cause in question Many Mushrome Sects may be sprung up lately in the world which I know not and posterity will know them much lesse like those mishapen creatures which were produced out of the slime of Nilus by the heat of the Sun which perishâ—d soon after they were generated for want of fit organs Therefore I passe by them to that which is more materiall If the Church of England have joyned in Sacraments and publick Praiers with Schismaticks let him shew it out of her Liturgy or out of her Articles or out of her Canons and constitutions for by these she speaks unto us Or let him shew that any genuine son of hers by her injunction or direction or approbation did ever communicate with Schismaticks or that her principles are such as doe justify or warrant Schism or lead men into a communion with Schismaticks otherwise then thus a nationall Church cannot communicate with Schismaticks If to make Canons and Constitutions against Schismaticks be to cherish them If to punish their Conventicles and clandestine meetings be to frequent them If to oblige all her sons who enter into holy Orders or are admitted to care of souls to have no communion with them be to communicate with them then the Church of England is guilty of communicating with Schismaticks or otherwise not But I conceive that by the English Church he intends particular persons of our communion If so then by his favour he deserts the cause and alters the state of the question Let himself be judge whether this consequence be good or not Sundry English Protestants are lately turned Romish Proselytes therefore the Church of England is turned Roman Catholick A Church may be Orthodox and Catholick and yet sundry within its communion be hereticks or Schismaticks or both The Church of Corinth was a true Church of God yet there wanted not Schismaticks and hereticks among them The Churches of Galatia had many among them who mixed circumcision and the works of the Law with the faith of Christ. The Church of Pergamos was a true Church yet they had Nicholaitans among them and those that held the doctrine of Balaam The Church of Thyatira had a Preaching Iesabel that seduced the servants of God But who are these English Protestants that communicate so freely with Schismaticks Nay he names none We must take it upon his word Are they peradventure the greater and the sounder part of the English Church Neither the one nor the other Let him look into our Church and see how many of our principall Divines have lost their Dignities and Benefices only because they would not take a schismaticall Covenant without any other relation to the Warres Let him take a view of our Universities and see how few of our old Professors or Rectors and Fellows of Colledges he findes left therein God said of the Church of Israell that he had reserved to himself seven thousand that had not bowed their knees unto Baall I hope I may say of the Church of England that there are not only seven thousand but seventy times seven thousand that mourn in secret and wish their heads were waters and their eies fountain of teares that they might weep day and night for the devastation and desolation of the City of their God And if that hard weapon Necessity have enforced any perhaps with an intention to doe good or prevent evill to complie further than was meet I doe not doubt but they pray with Naman The Lord be mercifull to me in this thing Suppose that some Persons of the English Communion doe go sometimes to their meetings it may be out of conscience to hear a Sermon it may be out of curiosity as men go to see May games or Monsters at Faires it may be that they may be the better able to confute them As St. Paul went into their heathenish Temples at Athens and viewed their Altars and read their Inscriptions yet without any approbation of their Idolatrous devotions Is this to communicate with Schismaticks or what doth this concern the Church of England CHAP. 1. A Replie to the first Chapter of the Survey HOw this Chapter comes to be called a Survey of the first Chapter of my vindication I doe not understand unless it be by an antiphrasis the contrary way because he doth not survey it If it had not been for the title and one passage therein I should not have known whither to have referred it In the first place he taxeth me for an omission that I tell not Why the objection of Schisme seemeth more forcible against the English Church then the objection of Heresie And to supply my supposed defect he is favorably pleased to set it down himself The true reason whereof saith he is because Heresy is a matter of doctrine which is not so evident as the matter of Schisme which is a visible matter of fact namely a visible separation in communion of Sacraments and publick worship of God I confess I did not think of producing reasons before the question was stated but if he will needs have it to be thus before we inquire why it is so we ought first to inquire whether it be so for my part I doe not beleeve that either their objections in point of Heresy or in point of Schisme are so forcible against the Church of England So he would have me to give a reason of a non entity which hath neither reason nor being All that I said was this that there is nothing more colourably objected to the Church of England at first sight to Strangers unacquainted with our affaires or to such Natives as have looked but superficially upon the case then Schisme Here are three restrictions Colourabley at first sight to Strangers Colourably that is not forcibly nor yet so much as truly He who doubteth of it may doe well to trie if he can warme his hands at a Glowe-worm At first sight that is not by force but rather by deception of the sight So fresh water Seamen at
it But we doe not think Schismaticks to be equally in the Church with Catholicks nor to be capable of salvation without repentance particular or generall He saith That universall Schism or a division from the whole Church is alwaies wicked because the universall Church can give no just cause of division from her And he proves it out of St. Austin His words are these sâ— possunt quod fieri non potest aliqui habere justam causam qua communionem suam separent a communione orbis terrarum If any could have a just cause to separate their commuion from the whole communion of the whole World which cannot be Let him alwaies bring such proofs which concern not us but make directly against himself It is they who have separated themselves from the communion of the whole World Grecian Russian Armenian Abissine Protestant by their censures We have made no absolute separation even from the Roman Church it self I say more that all Schism whether universall or particular is wicked But still he confounds Schism which is alwaies unlawfull with separation which is many times lawfull I take the word according to its use not according to its derivation Hear R.C. his ingenuous confession in this place which overthrowes and casts flat to the ground all that he hath endeavoured to build in this Survey Neither indeed can there by any substantiall division from any particular Church unlesse she be really hereticall or schismaticall I say really because she may be really hereticall or schismaticall and yet morally a true particular Church because she is invincibly ignorant of Heresie or Schism and so may require profession of her Heresie as a condition of communicating with her in which case division from her is no Schism or sin but virtue and necessary Applie but this to the Roman and English Churches and the controversy is ended The Roman Church is such a particular Church as he hath here described The English Church hath been separated but we will suppose that it had seperated it self from the Roman In this case by his own confession the Schism lies at the dore of the Roman Church from which the separation was made if they separated first from the pure primitive Church which was before them not locally but morally Yet saith he this erroneous Church is still morally a true particular Church either this Church hath not all the essentials of a Christian Church and then how doth it still continue a true Church Or it hath all the essentials and then a true Church in substance may give just ground to separate from her in materiall Heresie and Schism I will be as free with him concerning the universall Church If any man or Society of Christians separate themselves from the united communion of the whole Catholick Church dispersed throughout the World I cannot excuse him from Schism For whether the Catholick Church of this present age may erre or not this is certain she cannot erre universally in any thing that is necessary to Salvation nor with obstinacy And other inferiour errours if there be any such are not of weight enough to yeeld sufficient ground of separation from the communion of the Catholick Church united But for the divided parts of the Catholick Church a man may differ from all of them in inferiour points some in one thing some in another wherein they differ one from another and separate from some of them in their errors without criminous Schism And yet maintain a perfect union with the Catholick Church united I must not here forget to put R. C. in minde of sundry propositions laid down by me in this place tending much to the clearing of this present controversy all which he passeth by untouched as this That externall communion may sometimes be lawfully suspended or withdrawn That there is not the like necessity of communicating in all externals That Catholick communion implies not unity in all opinions That inferiours in some cases may lawfully substract communion from their Superiours and in speciall the Bishop of Rome that in tract of time abuses will creep into Christian Churches and ought to be reformed Only whereas I said in the vindication that the ancient Britannick Churches were never judged that is censured by a judgement of Jurisdiction to be Schismaticks for their different observation of Easter he saith they were judged Schismaticks both by Catholicks of that time and since and Protestants and that he hath proved it in one of his Treatises I never see his treatise but I know his manner of proof well enough I say it over again that I doe not believe that they were ever judged Schismaticks for it either by the Church or by a Councel or by any lawfull or supposed Superiour which shews plainly that they were not under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome For it is not credible that he should excommunicate the Asiatick Bishops for that observation and suffer his own Subjects to differ from him under his Nose which is the only reason why I urged it And I expect the proof of the contrary at the Greeks Calends My assertion is negative that they were not sentenced as Schismaticks this is affirmative that they were censured The burthen of the proof lies upon him Let him shew who judged them when and where or that they were censured at all I shewed cleerly in the vindication out of the Colloquy between the Catholicks and Donatists at Carthage that the Catholick Church is no Church of one denomination but the whole Christian World True saith he Neither the Church of the City of Rome nor of Africk is the Catholick Church but the whol Church of Christ. By the Church of Rome I understand not either the Church of the City of Rome or the Diocesse of Rome or the Patriarchate of Rome but all Churches of the Roman communion which altogether doe not make the fourth part of the Christian World yea saith he but the whole Church is not such a multitude or multitudes of Christians who agreed only in Fundamentals but disagree in other points of Faith and differ wholy in Communion of Sacraments All these great multitudes of Christians he feareth not to call a masse of Monsters and an Hydra of many Heads because they are not wholly one in profession of Faith Communion of Sacraments and lawfull Ministery as that Catholick primitive Church was I wonder he should forget their own distinction of the virtual representative and essentiall Church that is these multitudes of dispersed Christians I hope there be others that will not sleight them so much I confesse that primitive Catholick Church had an exact communion in all essentials or fundamentals and in many other things But that they had differences also of lesser moment in points of Doctrine and Discipline and forms of Administration of the holy Sacraments and Liturgies no man can doubt that hath his eies in his head Yet these lesser inconsiderable differences could
might even as well say that two or three common Soldiers of the Carthaginian Army and perhaps not one of them at the fight were the Authors of the Roman overthrow at Cannae It was the Universities that approved the separation unanimously It was the Synods that directed the separation It was the King that established the separation It was the Parliament that confirmed the separation How could two or three Privados without Negromancy have such an efficatious influence upon the Universities and Synods and Parliaments and the King himself Yet they might have an hand in it no nor so much as a little finger As much as the Flie that sate upon the Cart-wheel had in raising of the dust The two Houses of Parliament alone did consist of above 600. of the most able and eminent persons in the Kingdome what had these three been able to doe among them supposing they had been then Protestants and of the House Even as much as three drops of hony in a great vessell of vinegar or three drops of vinegar in a great vessell of hony But let us see what it is which he objects against Cranmer and the rest That Cranmer whom I will not deny to have been a friend and favourer of Protestants advised that the King should seek no more to the Court of Rome And that bidding adieu to the Court of Rome he should consult with the most learned in the Universities of Europe at home and abroad There was no hurt in all this There could be no suspicion that the most learned in all the Universities of Europe should be enemies to the just rights of the Roman Court But upon this saith he it was by Commission disputed by the Divines in both Universities And so he concludes triumphantly Behold Cranmer the first author of secession from the Pope I answer That this secession was no secession of the Church of England nor this disputation any disputation concerning the jurisdiction of the Roman Court over the English Church but only concerning a particular processe there depending between King Henâ—y and Queen Katherine about the validity or invalidity of their marriage and the Popes dispensation which Cranmer maintained to be determinable by Divine law not by Canon law The truth is this Doctor Stephens and Doctor Fox two great Ministers of King Henry and Doctor Cranmer chanced to meet without any designe at Waltham where discourse being offered concerning this processe Cranmer freely declared his judgement that the marriage of a Brother with his Brothers Wife was unlawfull by the Law of God and that the Pope could not dispense with it And that it was more expedient and more proper to seek to have this cause determined by the best Divines and Universities of Europe then by the dilatory proceeding of the Roman Court This was related to the King The King sent for Cranmer He offered freely to justifie it before the Pope And to demonstrate both that this was no separation from Rome and that Cranmer himself was no Protestant at that time it is acknowledged by all our Historiographers that after this Cranmer with others was sent as an Ambassador or Envoy to Rome and returned home in the Popes good Grace not without a mark of his favour being made his penitentiary Likewise saith another Cranmer that unworthy Archbishop of Canterbury was his the Earl of Hartfords right hand and chief assistant in the work although but a few moneths before he was of King Harries Religion yea a great Patron and Prosecutor of the six Articles That is as much as to say no friend no favourer of Protestants So this victorious argument failes on both sides Some other places he citeth concerning Cranmer That he freed the Kings conscience from the yoke of Papall dominion that is to say in that processe That by his counsell destruction was provided divinely to the Court of Rome that is occasionally and by the just disposition of Almighty God That the King was brought by Cranmers singular virtue to defend the cause of the Gospell that is in that particular case that the Pope cannot dispense contrary to the Law of God And lastly That the Papall power being discovered by King Henries authority and Cranmers did easily fall down I much doubt if I had the Book whether I should finde these testimonies such as they are cited Howsoever it may be true distinguendo tempora and referendo singula singulis They could not be spoken of the first separation when Cranmer had no more authority then a private Doctor but of the following times King Henry suppressed the Papall tyranny in England by his Legislative Power and Cranmer by his discovery of their usurpations and care to see the Lawes executed Against Crumwell he produceth but one testimony That it was generally conceived and truly as never thought That the politick waies for taking away the Popes authority in England and the suppression of Religious Houses were principally devised by Crumwell First this is but an argument from vulgar opinion Secondly when Archbishop Warham and the Synod did first give to King Henry the Supremacy and the Title of Head of the English Church Crumwell was no Protestant he had lately been Cardinall Wolsies Soliciter and was then Master of the Jewel House of no such power to doe any great good or hurt to the Protestants And at his death he professed that he was no Sacramentary and that he died in the Catholick Faith Lord Cherbury in H. 8. anno 1540. Holl. an 32. H. 8. fol. 242. But for the suppression of Religious Houses it is not improbable He might well have learned that way under Cardinall Wolsy when he procured the suppression of fourty Monasteries of good note for the founding of his two Colleges at Oxford and Ipswich In which businesse our historians say the Pope licked his own Fingers to the value of twelve Barrels full of Gold and Silver Lastly for Doctor Barnes poor man he was neither Courtier nor Councelor nor Convocation man nor Parliament man All the grace which ever he received from King Henry was an honourable death for his Religion He said That he and such other wretches as he had made the King a whole King by their Sermons If they did so it was well done The meaning of a whole King is an Head of the Church saith R. C. It may be so but the consequence is naught Perhaps he meant a Soveraign independant King not feudatory to the Pope which he that is is but half a King Not only of old but in later times the Popes did challenge a power Paramount over the Kings of England within their own dominions as appeareth by the Popes Bull sent to Iames the fifth King of Scotland wherein he declareth that he had deprived King Henry of his Kingdome as an Heretick a Schismatick an Adulterer a Murtherer a Sacrilegious person and lastly a Rebell and convict of laesae Majestatis for that he had risen
Popes but for many of the rest and especially for that which did virtually include them all that is the Legâ—slative power in ecclesiasticall causes wherein the whole body of the Kingdome did claim a neerer interest in respect of that receptive Power which they have ever injoyed to admit or not admit such new Laws whereby they were to be governed it had been folly and madness in the Popes to have attempted upon it One doubt still remains How ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction could be said to be derived from the Crown For they might be apt enough in those dayes to use such improper expressions First with the Romanists themselves I distinguish between habituall and actuall Jurisdiction Habituall Jurisdiction is derived only by ordination Actuall Jurisdiction is a right to exercise that habit arising from the lawfull application of the matter or subject In this later the Lay Patron and much more the Soveraign Prince have their respective Interests and concurrence Diocesses and Parishes were not of divine but humane institution And the same persons were born Subjects before they were made Christians The ordinary gives a School master a license or habituall power to teach but it is the Parents of the Children who apply or substract the matter and furnish him with Scholars or afford him a fit subject whereupon to exercise this habituall power Secondly we must also distinguish between the interior and exterior Court between the Court of Conscience and the Court of the Church For in both these Courts the power of the Keies hath place but not in both after the same manner That power which is exercised in the Court of Conscience for binding and loosing of sinnes is soly from Ordination But that power which is exercised in the Court of the Church is partly from the Soveraign Magistrate especially in England where Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction is enlarged and fortified with a coercive power and the bounds thereof have been much dilated by the favour and piety of Christian Princes by whom many causes have been made of Ecclesiasticall cognisance which formerly were not from whom the coercive or compulsory power of summoning the Kings Subjects by processes and citations was derived It is not then the power of the Keies or any part or branch thereof in the exercise of Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction even in the exterior Court of the Church which is derived from the Crown But it is coercive and compulsory and coroboratory power it is the application of the matter it is the regulating of the exercise of actuall Ecclesiasticall Jurisdicton in the Court of the Church to prevent the oppressions of their Subjects and to provide for the tranquillity of the Common-wealth which belongs to Sovereign Princes As to his corollary that never any King of England before Henry the eighth did challenge an exemption from all Iurisdiction under Christ it is as gross a mistake as all the rest For neither did Henry the eighth challenge any such exemption in the Court of Conscience Among the six bloody Articles established by himself that of auricular confession was one Nor in the Court of the Church seeing the direct contrary is expressly provided for in the Statute it self The Archbishop of Canterbury for the time being and his Successors shall have power and authority from time to time by their discretions to give grant and dispose by an instrument under the Seal of the said Archbishop unto your Majesty and to your Heirs and Successors Kings of this Realm as well all manner of such Licences Dispensations Compositions Faculties Grants Rescripts Delegacies Instruments and all other Writings for causes not being contrary or repugnant to holy Scriptures and Lawes of God as heretofore hatâ— been used and accustomed to be had and obtained by your Highnes or any of your most noble Progenitors or any of yours or their Subjects at the See of Rome So vain a suggestion it is That King Henry the eighth did free himself not only from Papall Authority but also and as well from Episcopall Archiepiscopall and all Spirituall Authority either abroad or in England And his Argument which he presseth so seriously to prove it is as vain That the Head of a Company is under none of that Company The Pope himself is under his Confessor who hath power to binde him or loose him in the Court of Conscience The Master of a Family is under his own Chaplain for the regiment of his Soul and under his Physitian for the government of his Body What should hinder it that a Politicall Head may not be under an Ecclesiasticall Pastor The Kings of England are not only under the forrein Jurisdiction of a generall Councell but also under their Ecclesiasticall Pastors though their own Subjects Only they are exempted from all coercive and compulsory power Let us trie whether he be more fortunate in opposing then he hath been in answering The Kings of England saith he permitted Appeales to Rome in ecclesiasticall causes as is evident in St. Wilfrides case who was never reproved nor disliked for appealing twice to Rome not so but the clear contrary appeareth evidently in Saint Wilfrides case Though he was an Archbishop and if an Appeal had been proper in any case it had been in that case This pretended Appeal was not only much disliked but rejected by two Kings successively by the other Archbishop and by the body of the English Clergy as appeareth by the event For Wilfride had no benefit of the Popes sentences but was forced after all his strugling to quit the two Monasteries which were in question whether he would or not and to sit down with his Archbishoprick which he might allwnies have held peaceably if he would This agrees with his supposed Vision in France that at his return into his Country he should receive the greatest part of his possessions that had been taken from him that is praesulatum Ecclesiae suae his Archbishoprick but not his two Monasteries But this is much more plain by the very words of King Alfride cited by me in the Vindication to which R. C. hath offered no answer That he honored the Popes Nuncios for their grave lives and honorable lookes Here is not a word of their credentiall Letters O how would a Nuncio storm at this and take it as an affront The King told them further That he could not give any assent to their legation So that which R. C. calles permitting was in truth downright dissenting and rejecting The reason followes because it was against reason that a person twice condemned by the whole Councel of the English should be restored upon the Popes Letter Is not this disliking What could the King say more incivillity then to tell the Popes Nuncios that their Masters demands were unreasonable or what could be more to the purpose and to the utter ruin of R. C. his cause then that the Decrees of the pope were impugned not once but twice not by a few
if it had been a solemn interdict in those dayes And this nameless Author calls it but an Epistle Moreover he tells us of honourable presents sent to the Pope but not a word of any absolution which had been more to his purpose if this had been an excommunication It could be nothing but a threatning That unless this abuse were reformed he would hold no communion with them As Victor a much better Pope and in much better times dealt with the Asiaticks over whom he had no Jurisdiction There is a vast difference between formall excommunication and withholding of communion as also between imposing ecclesiasticall punishment and only representing what is incurred by the Canons Where observe with me two things First R. C. his great mistake that here was a command to erect new Bishopricks to which the Canons of the Fathers oblige not and therefore it must proceed from soveraign Authority whereas here was only a filling or supplying of the empty Sees The Authors words are de renovandis Episcopatibus of renewing not erecting Bishopricks and per septem annos destituta Episcopis they had wanted Bishops for seven years Lastly the names of the Sees supplyed which were all ancient episcopall Sees from the first conversion of the West-Saxons doe evince this Winchester Schireborne or Salessbâ—ry Wells Credinton now Exceter and the Bishoprick of Cornwall called anciently St. Germans Secondly observe that whatsoever was done in this business was done by the Kings Authority congregavit Rex Edwardus Synodum King Edward assembled a Synod saith the same Author in the place cited And he calls the sentence of the Synod Decretum Regis the Kings Decree This is more to prove the Kings politicall headship in convocating Synods and confirming Synods then all his conjectures and surmises to the contrary They with all humility admitted Legates of the Pope in the time of Kinulphus and Offâ— and admitted the erection of a new Archbishoprick in England Why should they not admit Legates What are Legates but Messenges and Ambassadors The office of an Ambassador is sacred though from the Great Turk But did they admit them to hold Legantine Courts and swallow up the whole ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction of the Kingdome King Offa desired to have a new Archbishoprick established at Lichfeild within his own Dominions and before he had the concurrence of Pope Adrian had excluded the Archbishop of Canterbury out of the Mercian Kingdome by royall Authority On the other side Kenulphus desired to have the Archbishoprick setled as it was formerly at Canterbury This is nothing to enforced Jurisdiction England alwaies admitted the Popes Legates and his Bulls with consent of the King but not otherwise Here again he cites no Authority but his own They professed that it belonged to Bishops to punish Priests and religious men and not to Kings No man doubts of it in their sense but they who leave nothing certain in the World Here is nothing but a heape of confused generalities In some cases the punishment of Clergy men doth not belong to Kings but Archbishops that is cases of Ecclesiasticall cognisance tryable by the Cannon Law in the first instance In other cases it belongs not to Archbishops but to Kings to be their Judges as in cases of civill cognisance or upon the last appeale Not that the King is bound to determine them in his own person but by fit Deputies or Delegates Plato makes all Regiment to consist of these three parts knowing commanding and executing The first belongs to the King and his Councell The second to the King in hâ—s person The third to the King by his Deputies So the King governs in the Church but not as a Church-man in the Army but not as a Souldier In the City but not as a Merchant in the Country but not as an Husbandman Our Kings did never use to determine Spirituall or Ecclesiasticall causes in their own persons but by meete selected Delegates Persons of great maturity of judgement of known dexterity in the Cannon Laws of approved integrity And lastly such at least some of the number as were qualified by their callings to exercise the power of the Keyes and to act by excommunication or absolution according to the exigence of the cause and who more proper to be such Delegates in questions of moment then Archbishops and Bishops This is so evident in our Laws and Histories that it is not only lost labour but shame to oppose it King Edgars words in the place alleged were these Meae solicitudinis est c. It belongs to my care to provide necessaries for the Ministers of Churches c. and to take order for their peace and quiet the examination of whose manners belongs to you whether they live continently and behave themselves honestly to them that are without whether they be solicitous in performing divine offices diligent to instruct the People sober in their conversations modest in their habits discreet in their judgments No man doubts of this But for all this Edgar did not forget his Kingly office and duty See the conclusion of the same oration to the Clergy contempta sunt verba veniendum est ad verbera c. words are dispised it must come to blows Thou hast with thee there the venerable father Edelwald Bishop of Winchester and Oswald the most reverend Bishop of Worcester I commit that busines to you that persons of bad conversation may be cast out of the Churches and persons of good life brought in by your episcopall censure and my royall Authority So Edgar did not forget his politicall headship What King Withred said was spoken in the Councell of Becancelde where he himself fate as a civill president and where the Decrees of the Councell issud in his name and by his Authority firmiter decernimus c. His words are these It belongs to him the King to make Earls Dukes Noble men Princes Presidents and secular Iudges but it belongs to the Metropolitan or Archbishop to govern the Churches to choose Bishops Abbats and other Prelates c. If King Withred had said It belongs to the Pope to govern the Churches it had made for his purpose indeed But saying as he doth it belongs to the Metropolitan it cuts the throat of his cause and shews clearly what we say that our Metropolitans are not subordinate to any single ecclesiasticall Superior As for the bounds between the King and the Archbishop we know them well enough he needed not trouble his head about it They suffered their Subjects to professe that qui non communicat Ecclesiae Romanae Hereticus est quicquid ipsa statuerit suscipio quod damnaverit damno He is an Heretick that holds not communion with the Church of Rome what she determines I receive what she condemns I condemn Supposing these to be the very words of Ealred though I have no reason to trust his citations further then I see them and supposing them to have
Cardinals did not know at that time how to give a reasonable answer Wherein he pleads that his Ancestors had granted free elections ad rogatum instantiam dictae sedis upon the earnest entreaty of the See of Rome which now they endeavoured to usurpe and seize upon who made himself in Parliament the Judge of all the grievances which the Kingdome sustained from the Pope who made expresse Lawes against the oppressions of the Roman Court declaring publickly That it was his duty and that he was bound by his oath to make remedies against them This was more then twenty such complements as this which is most true in a right sense That it was but a complement appeareth evidently by this The question was about Edward the thirds right to the Crown of France and his confederation with Lewis of Bavaria these were no Ecclesiasticall matters the King sent his Ambassadors to the Pope to treat with him about his right to the Crown of France But notwithstanding his supereminent judgment he gave them in charge to treat with the Pope not as a Iudge but as a private person and a common friend not in form nor in figure of judgement He attributeth no more to the Pope then to another man according to the reasons which he shall produce His own words are these parati semper nedum a vestro sancto cunctis presidente judicio imo a quolibet alio de veritate contrarii si quis eam noverit humiliter informari qui sponte rationi subjicimur aliam datam nobis intelligi veritatem cum plena humili gratitudine complectemur Being ready alwaies humbly to be informed of the truth of the contrary if any man know it not only from your holy judgement being placed in dignity before all or as it is in another place before every Creature but from any other And we who are subject to reason of our own accord will embrace the truth with humility and thankfulnesse when it is made known unto us This was Edward the thirds resolution to submit to reason and the evidence of the truth from whomsoever it proceeded Yet though the case was meerly Civil and not at all of Ecclesiasticall cognizance and though Edward the third did not would not trust the Pope with it as a Judge but as an indifferent Friend yet he gives him good words That his judgement was placed in dignity above all Creatures which to deny was to allow of Heresie Why doe we hear words when we see Deeds The former Popes had excommunicated Lewis of Bavaria and all who should acknowledge him to be Emperor Neverthelesse Edward the third contracted a firm league with him and moreover became his Lieutenant in the Empire Pope Benedict takes notice of it writes to King Edward about it intimates the decrees of his predecessors against Lewis of Bavaria and his adherents signifying that the Emperor was deprived and could not make a Lieutenant The King gives fair words in generall but notwithstanding all that the Pope could doe to the contrary proceeds renews his league with the Emperor and his Commission for the Lieutenancy and trusted more to his own judgement then co the supereminent judgement of the Pope So he draws to a conclusion of this Chapter and though he have proved nothing in the world yet he askes What greater power did ever Pope challenge then here is professed Even all the power that is in controversie between us and them He challenged the politicall headship of the English Church under pretence of an Ecclesiasticall Monarchy He challenged a Legislative power in Ecclesiasticall causes He challenged a Dispensative power above the Lawes against the Lawes of the Church whensoever wheresoever over whomsoever He challenged liberty to send Legates and hold legantine Courts in England without licence He challenged the right of receiving the last Appeals of the Kings Subjects He challenged the Patronage of the English Church and investitures of Bishops with power to impose a new Oath upon them contrary to their Oath of Allegiance He challenged the first Fruits and Tenths of Ecclesiasticall livings and a power to impose upon them what pensions or other burthens he pleased He challenged the Goods of Clergy-men dying intestate c. All which are expresly contrary to the fundamentall Lawes and Customes of England He confesseth That it is Lawfull to resist the Pope invading either the Bodies or the Souls of men or troubling the Common-wealth or indeavoring to destroy the Church I aske no more Yea forsooth saith he if I may be judge what doth invade the Soul No I confesse I am no fit Judge No more is he The main question is who shall be Judge what are the Liberties and Immunities of a nationall Church and what are the grievances which they sustain from the Court of Rome Is it equall that the Court of Rome themselves should be the Judges Who are the persons that doe the wrong Nothing can be more absurd In vain is any mans sentence expected against himself The most proper and the highest judicature upon Earth in this case is a generall Councell as it was in the case of the Cyprian Bishops and their pretended Patriarch And untill that remedy can be had it is lawfull and behooveth every Kingdome or nationall Church who know best their own rights and have the most feeling where their Shoe wrings them to be their own Judges I mean only by a judgment of discretion to preserve their own rights inviolated and their persons free from wrong sub moderamine inculpatae tutelae And especially Sovereign Princes are bound both by their Office and by their Oaths to provide for the security and indemnity of their Subjects as all Roman Catholicks Princes doe when they have occasion And here he fals the third time upon his former Theme that in things instituted by God the abuse doth not take away the use Which we doe willingly acknowledge and say with Saint Austine Neque enim si peccavit Cecilianus ideo haereditatem suam perdidit Christus sceleratae impudentiae est propter crimina hominis quae orbi terrarum non possis ostendere communionem orbis terrarum velle damnare Neither if Cecilian offended did Christ therefore lose his inheritance And it is wicked impudence for the crimes of a man which thou canst not shew to the World to be willing to condemn the communion of the World But neither was that authority of the Bishop of Rome which we have rejected either of Divine or Apostolicall institution Nor have we rejected it for the personall faults of some Popes but because it was faulty in it self Nor have we separated our selves from the conjoyned communion of the Christian World in any thing I wish the Romanists were no more guilty thereof then we Of King Henries exemption of himself from all spirituall jurisdiction we have spoken formerly in this very Chapter CAAP. 5. THe scope of my fifth Chapter was to
shew that the Britannick Churches were free from all forrein jurisdiction for the first six hundred yeers and so ought to continue For the clearing of which point I shewed that there was a parity of power among the Apostles And that the Sovereignty did not rest in any single Apostle but in the Apostolicall college I shewed that in the age of the Apostles and the age next succeeding the highest Order in the Church under the Apostles were nationall Protarchs or Patriarchs And by what means and upon what grounds in after ages some of these Patriarchs came to be exalted above the rest and to obscure their fellowes But each of these within their own Patriarchates did challenge a jurisdiction independent upon any single Superior As might be made clear by many instances when Athanasius and Paulus procured the Letters of Pope Iulius for their restitution I meddle not with the merits of the cause the Bishops of the East took the reprehension of Iulius as a contumely they called a Councell at Antioch they accused Iulius sharply and shewed that he had nothing to doe to contradict them more then they did contradict him when he thrust Novatus out of the Church Neither did the great Protopatriarchs challeng this independency only but other lesser Patriarchs also as Saint Cyprian When Fortunatus Faelicissimus and others being sentenced and excommunicated in Africk addressed their complaint to the Bishop of Rome let us hear what Saint Cyprian said of it What cause had they to come and relate the making of a false Bishop against true Bishops Either that which they have done pleaseth them and they persevere in their wickednesse or if it displease them and they fall from it they know whether to return for whereas it is decreed by us all and it is equall and just that every ones cause should be heard there where the crime was committed and a certain portion of the Lords flock is assigned to each Pastor which he is to govern and to give an account of his actions to the Lord. Therefore it behooveth those whom we are over not to run up and down nor to break the firm concord of Bishops by their subtle and deceitfull rashnesse But to plead their cause there where they may have both accusers and witnesses of their crimes unlesse the authority of the African Bishops who have sentenced them already seem to a few desperate cast awaies to be inferior c. To say with Bellarmine that Saint Cyprian speaks only of the first instance is to contradict Saint Cyprian himself who saith expressely that the cause had been sentenced already in Africk Then I shewed the bounds of the ancient Roman Patriarchate out of Ruffinus The rest of the Chapter may be reduced to a Syllogisme Whatsoever Church or Churches were free and exempted from the forrein Jurisdiction of the Roman Court from the beginning untill the generall Councell of Ephesus and after untill the six hundreth year of Christ ought to continue free and exempted for ever notwithstanding the subsequent usurpation of any forrein Prelate or Patriarch This was clearly and irrefragably proved out of the words of the Councel it self And if the Bishop of Rome did intrude himself after that time he is a Robber and an Usurper and can never prescribe to a legall possession according to the famous rule of the Law Adversus furem aeternae authoritas esto But the Britannick Churches were free and exempted from the forrein Jurisdiction of the Roman Court from the beginning untill the generall Councell of Ephesus and after untill the six hundreth year of Christ. This assumption was proved first by their silence upon whom the proofe in law doth rest being not able to produce one instance of the exercise of their Jurisdiction in Britain or any of the Britannick Islands for the first six hundred yeares and in some parts of them scarcely for 1200. years When the Popes Legate would have entred into Scotland to visite the the Churches there about the year 1238. Alexander the second then King of the Scots forbad him to doe so alleging that none of his Predecessors had ever addmitted any such neither would he suffer it and therefore willed him at his own perill to forbear Secondly by priority of foundation the Britannick Church being the elder Sister and ancienter then the Roman and therefore could not be subject to the Roman Church from the beginning that was before there was a Roman Church Thirdly it was proved by the right of ordination and election of all our Primats For all other right of Jurisdiction doth follow or pursue the right of Ordination But it is most evident that all our British Primates or Archbishops were nominated and elected by our Princes with Synods and ordained by their own Suffragans at home as Dubricius St. David Samson c. not only in the reigns of Aurelius Ambrosius and King Arthur but even untill the time of Henry the first after the eleven hundreth year of Christ as Giraldus Cambrensis witnesseth Semper tamen c. Yet alwayes untill the full Conquest of Wales by the King of England Henry the first the Bishops of Wales were consecrated by the Archbishop of St. Davids And he likewise was consecrated by other Bishopâ— as his Suffragans without professing any manner of subjection to any other Church But principally it was proved by the answer of Dionothus the reverend and learned Abbat and Rector of the Monastery and University of Bangor and from the solemn Sentence or Decree of two British Synods in the point recorded by all our Historiographers who write the Acts of those times I confess he nâ—bles here and there at some odde ends of this discourse but taketh no â—â—ner of notice of the main grounds especially the two British Synods which are express in the point and the Answer of Dionâ—thus that they refused absolutely to submit to the Jurisdiction of the Pope or to receive Austin for their Archbishop That as for that man whom they called the Pope they oâ—â—gâ—â—t 〈◊〉 no obedience but the obedience of love that they were immediately under God subject to the Bishop of Caer Leon But let us take a view of his exceptions First he saith That Bellarmine hath not these words That Christ in saying these words As my Father sent use so send I you did endue his Apostles with all fullness of power that mortall men were capable of Neither did I cite his words but his sense as he might see by the Character but that Bellarmine said as much or more then this I will now make it good Let him speak for himself Therefore that the Apostles received theâ—r Iurisdiction immediately from Christ first the words of our Lord doe testifie John 20. As my Father sent me so send I you which place the Fathers Crysostome and Theophylact doe so expound that they say plainly that the Apostles were made by these words the Vicars of
nothing of Jurisdiction From St. Ninian he proceeds to Palladius and St. Patrick Pope Caelestine consecrated Palladius and sent him into Scotland And not forgetfull of Ireland sent thither S. Patrick In all the instances which he hath brought hitherto we finde nothing but Preaching and Converting and Christening not one syllable of any Jurisdiction Will the British Records afford us so many instances of this kinde and not so much as one of any legislative or judiciary act Then certainly there were none in those dayes Whether Palladius was sent to the British or Irish Scots is disputable But this is certain that whithersoever he was sent he was rejected and shortly after died In whose place succeeded St. Patrick Therefore his Disciples hearing of the death of Palladius the Archdeacon c. came to St. Patrick and declared it who having received the Episcopall degree from a Prelate called Arator straightway took ship c. Here is nothing of Caelestinus but of Arator nor of a Mandate but St. Patricks free devotion He saith The same Pope sent thither St. German and Lupus to confute the Pelagian Heresie and both Britans Scots Picts and Irish willingly accepted these Legates of the Popes nor denyed that they had any authoritie over them I am wearie of so many impertinencies Still here is not one word of any Jurisdiction of the Roman Bishops over the British Church but of their charity and devotion which we wish their Successors would imitate I confesse that Prosper saith that Peladius was sent by Caelestinus If it were so it concernes not this cause But Constantius and venerable Bede and almost all other Authors doe affirm positively that they were both sent by a French Synod to assist the Britans their neighbours against the Pelagians And it is most probable for they were both French Bishops St. German of Anxewe Lupus of Troyes Baronius labours to reconcile these two different relations thus It may be the Pope did approve the choyse of the Synod or it may be that Caelestine left it to the election of the Synod to send whom they pleased Admit either of these suppositions was true it will bring no advantage to his cause but much disadvantage If the Bishop of Rome had been reputed to be Patriarch of Britain and much more if he had been acknowledged to be a spirituall Monarch it is not credible that the Britannick Church should have applyed it self for assistance altogether to their neighbours and not at all to their Superior He addeth that they willingly accepted these Legates of the Popes He is still dreaming of Legates if they were Legates they were the Synods Legates not the Popes As much Legates and no more then the Messengers of the Brittish Church which they sent to help them were Legates eodem tempore ex Britanniâ directa Legatio Gallicanis Episcopis nunciavit c. at the same time the British Legates shewed their condition to the French Bishops what need the Catholick Faith did stand of their present assistance Had they not reason to wellcome them whom themselves had invited who were come only upon their occasion Or what occasion had they to deny their authority who neither did usurpe any authority nor pretend to any authority They came to dispute not to judge Aderat populus Spectator futurus ac Iudex I know Constantius and venerable Bede doe call them Apostolicus Sacerdotes Apostolical Bishops not from their mission but most plainly for their Apostolical Endowments erat in illis Apostolorum instar gloria authoritas c. That Saint Gregory did send Austin into England to convert the Saxons is most true that the British Churches did suffer him to exercise any Authority or Jurisdiction over them is most untrue Touching the precise time of his coming Historiographers doe not agree exactly All accord that it was about the six hundreth year of Christ a little more or less Before this time Cyprus could not be more free from forrein Jurisdiction then Britain was After this time we confess that the Bishops of Rome by the consent or connivence of the Saxon Kings as they came to be converted by degrees did pretend to some formalities of right or authority over the English Church at first in matters of no great consequence as bestowing the Pall or the like But without the consent or against the good pleasure of the King they had no more power at all Jeoffry of Monmouth saith that Dubritius primate of Britain was Legate of the See Apostolick I should sooner have beleeved it if he had proved it out of Gildas who lived in or about the age of Dubritius then upon the credit of Ieoffry of Monmouth who lived so many hundred years after his death whose Writings have been censured as too full of Fables It were over supine credulity to give more credit to him then to the most eminent Persons and Synods of the same and the ensuing age Dubritius was Primate of Wales in the dayes of King Arthur and resigned his Archbishoprick of Caer Leon to St. David who removed his Archiepiscopall See from thence to Minevia now called St. Davids by the licence of King Arthur not of the Pope King Arthur began his reign as it is commonly computed about the year 516. perhaps something sooner or later according to different accounts But certainly after the Councell of Ephesus from whence we demonstrate our exemption And so it can neither advantage his cause nor prejudice ours We are told of store of Roman Legats yet not so much as any one act of Jurisdiction pretended to be done by any of them Certainly either they were no Papall Legates or Papall Legates in those daies were but ordinary Messengers and pretended not to any legantine Court or legantine Power such as is exercised now a dayes St. Samson saith he had a Pall from Rome wherefore untruly saith L. D. that the Pall was first introduced in the reign of the Saxon Kings after six hundred years of Christ. He mistakes my meaning altogether and my words also I said not that the first use of the Pall began after the six hundreth year of Christ but the abuse of it that is the arbitrary imposition thereof by the Popes upon the British Churches When they would not suffer an Archbishop duely ellected and invested to exercise his function untill he had bought a Pall from Rome I know the contrary that they were in use formerly But whether they were originally Ensignes of honour conferred by Christian Emperours upon the Church namely Constantine and Valentinian as is most probable or assumed by Patriarches is a disputable point This is certain other Patriarches and Archbishops under them had their Palls in the primative times which they received not from Rome This Samson was Archbishop of Wales and had his Pall But it appeareth not at all that he had it from Rome It may be that they had
take another Perhaps the Popes in justice might by Gods just disposition be an occasion but it was no ground of the Reformation And if it had yet neither this nor his other exceptions doe concern the cause at all There is a great difference between bonum and bene between a good action and an action well done An action may be good and lawfull in it self and yet the ground of him that acteth it sinister and his manner of proceeding indirect as we see in Iehu's reformation This concerned King Henries person but it concerns not us at all King Henrie protested that it was his conscience they will not beleeve him Queen Katherine accused Cardinall Wolsey as the Author of it she never accused Anne Bolen who was in France when that business began The Bishop of Lincoln was imployed to Oxford Bishop Gardiner and Dr. Fox to Cambridge to see the cause debated Besides our own Universities the Universities of Paris Orleans Angew Burges Bononia Padua Tholouse and I know not how many of the most learned Doctors of that age did all subscribe to the unlawfullness of that Marriage which he calleth lawfull The Bishop of Worcester prosecuted the divorce The Bishops of York Duresme Chester were sent unto Queen Katherine to perswade her to lay aside the title of Queen The Bishops of Canterbury London Winchester Bath Lincoln did give sentence against the Marriage Bishop Bonner made the appeal from the Pope The greatest sticklers were most zealous Roman Catholicks And if wise men were not mistaken that business was long plotted between Rome and France and Cardinall Wolsey to breake the league with the Emperour and to make way for a new Marriage with the Duchess of Alenson sister to the King of France and a stricter league with that Crown But God did take the wife in their own crastiness Yea even Clement the seventh had once given out a Bull privately to declare the Marriage unlawfull and invalid if his Legate Campegius could have brought the King to comply with the Popes desires I will conclude this point with two testimonies the one of Stephen Gardiner Bishop of Winchester Quid aliud debuit aut potuit c. What else ought the King or could the King doe then with the full consent of his People and judgment of his Church to be loosed from an unlawfull contract and to enjoy one that was lawfull and allowed and leaving her whom neither Law nor Equity did permit him to hold to apply himselfe to a chaste and lawfull marriage In which cause whereas the sentence of the Word of God alone had been sufficient to which all ought to submit without delay yet his Majestie disdained not to use the censures of the gravest men and most famous Universities The second is the testimonie of two Archbishops two Dukes three Marquesses thirteen Earls five Bishops six and twenty Barons two and twenty Abbats with many Knights and Doctors in their Letter to the Pope Causae ipsius justitia c. The justice of the cause it self being approved every where by the judgments of most learned men determined by the suffrages of most famous Universities being pronounced and defined by English French Italians as every one among them doth excell the rest in learning c. Though he call it a lawfull Marriage yet it is but one Doctors opinion And if it had been lawfull the Pope and the Clergy were more blame worthy then King Henry Secondly he faith he wanted due moderation because he forced the Parliament by fear to consent to his proceedings I have shewed sufficiently that they were not forced by their Letter to the Pope by their Sermons preached at St. Pauls Crosse by their perswasions to the King by their pointed looks to which I may add their Declaration called the Bishops Book signed by two Archbishops and nineteen Bishops Nor doe I remember to have read of any of note that opposed it but two who were prisoners and no Parliament men at that time Sir Thomas More yet when King Henry writ against Luther he advised him to take heed how he advanced the Popes authority too much left he diminished his own And Bishop Fisher who had consented in convocation to the Kings title of the Supreme Head of the English Church quantum per Christi legem licet But because Bishop Gardiner is the only witness whom he produceth for proof of this allegation I will shew him out of Stephen Gardiner himself who was the Tyrant that did compell him Quin potius orbirationem neddeâ—e volui c. I desired rather to give an account to the World what changed my opinion and compelled me to dissent from my former words and deeds That compelled me to speak it in good time which compelleth all men when God thinketh fit the force of truth to which all things at length doe obey Behold the Tyrant not Henry the eight but the force of truth which compelled the Parliament Take one testimonie more out of the same Treatise But I fortified my self so that as if I required the judgment of all my senses I would not submit nor captivate my understanding to the known and evident truth nor take it to be sufficiently proved unless I first heard it with mine eares and smelt it with my nose and see it with mine eyes and felt it with my hands Here was more of obstinacie then tyranny in the case Either Stephen Gardiner did write according to his conscience and then he was not compelled or else he dissembled and then his second testimonie is of no value It is not my judgment but the judgment of the Law it self Semel falsus semper presumitur falsus To the third condition he faith only that Henry the eight had not sufficient authority to reforme first because it was the power of a small part of the Church against the whole I have shewed the contrarie that our Reformation was not made in opposition but in pursuance of the acts of generall Councells neither did our Reformers meddle without their own spheres And secondly because the Papacy is of divine right Yet before he told us that it was doubtfull and very courteously he would put it upon me to prove that the Regiment of the Church by the Pope is of humane institution But I have learned better that the proof rests upon his side both because he maintains an affirmative and because we are in possession It were an hard condition to put me to prove against my conscience that the universall Regency of the Pope is of humane right who doe absolutely deny both his divine right and his humane right His next exception is that it is no sufficient warrant for Princes to meddle in spirituall matters because some Princes have done so If he think the externall Regiment of the Church to be a matter meerly spirituall he is much mistaken I cite not the exorbitant acts of some single
case they make themselves Judges of the difference between them and the Court of Rome as whether the Pope have invaded their priviledges or usurped more Authority then is due unto him or in contemning his censures which the Councell of Towers doth expresly allow them to doe and judging whether the Popes Key have erred or not Yeeld thus much and the question is at an end That sovereign Princes within their own Dominions are the last Judges of their own Liberties and of papall oppressions and usurpations and the validity or invalidity of the Popes censures There is one thing more in this discourse in this place which I may not omit That Papall Authority is instituted immediately by God but not Regall Cujus contrarium verum est He was once or seemed to be of another minde For of almighty God his meer bounty and great grace they Kings receive and hold their Diadems and Princely Scepters Saint Paul saâ—th expresly speaking of civill Powers The Powers that be are ordeined of God and whosoever resisteth the Power resisteth the Ordinance of God and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation The eternall Wisdome of the Father hath said By me Kings reign and Princes decree Iustice. If they be ordeined by God and reign by God then they are instituted by God Therefore they are justly stiled the living Images of God that saveth all things He who said by me Kings reign never said by me Popes reign Kings may inherit by the Law of man or be elected by the Suffrages of men But the Regall Office and Regall Power is immediately from God No man can give that which he himself hath not The People have not power of Life and Death That must come from God By the Law of nature Fathers of Families were Princes and when Fathers of Families did conjoyn their power to make one Father of a Country to whom doth he owe his power but to God from whom Fathers of Families had their power by the Law of nature As for the Pope he derives his Episcopall power from Christ his Patriarchall power from the Church and Monarchicall power from himself After this in the vindication I descended to severall new considerations as namely the power of Princes to reform new Canons by the old Canons of the Fathers the subjection of Patriarchall power to Imperiall which I shewed by a signall example of Pope Gregory who obeied the command of Mauritius the Emperor though he did not take it to be pleasing to Almighty God the erection of new Patriarchates by Emperors and the translation of primacies by our Kings And so I proceeded to the grounds of their separation first the intolerable rapine and extortions of the Roman Court in England Secondly their unjust usurpations of the undoubted rights of all orders of men and particularly how they made our Kings to be their vassals and the Succession to the Crown arbitrary at their pleasures Thirdly because our Ancestors found by experience that such forrein jurisdiction was destructive to the right ends of Ecclesiasticall discipline Fourthly sundry other inconveniences to have been dayly subject to the imposition of new Articles of Faith to be exposed to manifest perill of Idolatry to have forsaken the Communion of three parts of Christendome to have approved the Popes rebellion against generall Councels and to have their Bishops swear to maintain him in his rebellious usurpations Lastly the priviledge of the Britannick Churches the Popes disclaiming all his Patriarchall authority and their challenging of all this by Divâ—ne right which made their sufferings irremediable from Rome Lastly I shewed that our Ancestors from time to time had made more addresses to Rome for remedy then either in duty or in prudence they ought to have done All this he passeth by in silence as if it did not concern the cause at all Only he repeats his former distinction between the Pope the Papacy and the Roman Church which hath been so often confuted already and blameth Protestants for revolting from the Roman Church for the faults of some few Popes As if all these things which are mentioned here and set down at large in the vindication were but some infirmitives or some petty faults of some few Popes I have shewed him clearly that the most of our grounds are not the faults of the Popes but the faults of the Papacy it self And as for forsaking the Church of Rome he doth us wrong I shewed him out of our Canons in this very place that we have not forsaken it but only left their Communion in some points wherein they had left their Ancestors we are ready to acknowledge it as a Sister to the Britannick Church a Mother to the Saxon Church but as a Lady or Mistrisse to no Church Afterwards he descendth to two of the grounds of our Reformation to shew that they were insufficient The new Creed of Pius the 4 th and the withholding the Cup from the Laity Two of two and twenty make but a mean induction He may if he please see throughout this Treatise that we had other grounds bâ—sides these Yet I confesse that in his choise he hath swerved from the rules of prudence and hath not sought to leap over the Hedge where it was lowest First saith he The new Creed could not be the cause of the separation because the separation was made before the Creed He saith true if it had been only the reduction of these new mysteries into the form of a Creed that did offend us But he knoweth right well that these very points which Pius the 4 th comprehended in a new Symball or Creed were obtruded upon us before by his predecess ors as necessary Articles of the Roman Faith and required as necessary conditions of their Communion So as we must either receive these or utterly lose them This is the only difference that Pius the 4 th dealt in grosse his predecessors by retaile They fashioned the severall rods and he bound them up into a bundle He saith That the new Creed is nothing but certain points of Catholick Faith proposed to be sworn of some Ecclesiasticall Catholick persons as the 39 Articles were in the Protestants new Creed proposed by them to Ministers Pius the 4 th did not only injoyn all Ecclesiasticks Seculars and Regulars to swear to his new Creed but he imposed it upon all Christians as veram fidem Catholicam extra quam nemo salvus esse potest they are the very words of the Bull as the true Catholick Faith without believing of which no man can be saved This is a greater Obligation then an Oath and as much as the Apostles did impose for the reception of the Apostolicall Creed We doe not hold our 39 Articles to be such necessary truths extra quam non est salus without which there is no Salvation nor injoin Ecclesiastick persons to swear unto them but only to subscribe them as theologicall
determine causes of Religion The Emperor did not trouble himself much at it But the Pope having created three Spanish Cardinals he forbad them to accept the armes or use the name or habit And not long after published a Reformation of the Clergy conteining twenty three points First of Ordination and Election of Ministers Secondly of the Office of Ecclesiasticall Orders Thirdly of the Office of Deans and Canons Fourthly of Canonicall hours Fifthly of Monasteries Sixtly of Schools and Universities Seventhly of Hospitals Eighthly of the Office of a Preacher Ninthly of the Administration of the Sacraments Tenthly of the Administration of Baptism Eleventhly of the Administration of Confirmation Twelfthly of Ceremonies Thirteenthly of the Masse Fourteenthâ—y of the Administration of Penitence Fifteenthly of the Administration of extreme Unction Sixteenthly of the Administration of Matrimomy Seventeenthly of Ecclesiasticall Ceremonies Eighteenthly of the Discipline of the Clergy and People Nineteenthly of plurality of Benefices Twentithly of the Discipline of the People One and twentithly of Visitations Two and twentithly of Councels Three and twentithly of Excommunication Charles the fifth and the German Dyet did assume to themselves a Legislative power in Ecclesiasticall causes None of our Princes was ever more devoted to Rome then Queen Mary yet when Paul the 4 th revoked Cardinall Poolos Legantine power in England and designed one Petus a Franciscan to come Legate in his place She shut all the Ports of England against all messengers from Rome and commanded all the Briefs and Bulls to be taken from the bearers and delivered unto her So well was she satisfied that no Roman Legate hath any thing to doe in England without the Princes licence But I have brought instances enough untill he be pleased to take notice of them To all which he returns no answer but these generall words Seeing L. D. hath alleged diverse facts of Catholick Princes in disobeying Papall Authority and thence inferreth that they did as much as King Henry who not only disobeyed but denied Papall Authority let us allege both more ancient and greater Emperors who have professed that they had no Authority in Ecclesiasticall causes and avowed Papall Authority After this rate he may survey the whole World in a few minutes Let the Reader judge whether I have not just cause to call upon him for an answer Are they only diverse facts of Catholick Princes By his leave they are both facts and decrees and constitutions and Laws and Canons of the most famous Emperors and Princes of Christendome with their Dyets and Parliaments and Synods and Councels and Universities Or doth it seem to him that they only disobeyed Papall Authority When he reads them over more attentively he will finde that they have not only disobeyed Papall Authority but denied it as he saith Henry the 8 th did in all the principall parts and branches of it which are in controversie between them and us Nay they have not only denied to the Pope that which he cals Papall Authority to Convocate Synods to confirm Synods to make Ecclesiasticall Laws to dispose of Ecclesiasticall preferments to receive the last Appeals in Ecclesiasticall causes but they have exercised it themselves They have disposed of the Papacy they have deposed the Popes they have shut out his Legates they have Appealed from his sentences they have not suffered their Subjects to goe upon his Summons they have caused his Decrees to be torn in pieces most disgracefully and made Edicts and Statutes and pragmaticall sanctions against his usurpations they have regulated the Clergy and reformed the Churches within their Dominions And when they thought fit during their pleasures they have stopped all entercouse with Rome The Kings of Spain suffer no more Appeals from Sicily to the Court of Rome then our Princes from England and exercise all manner of Ecclesiastical Jurisdction by Delegates which certainly neither they nor other Princes would doe if they did at all believe that the Papacy was an universall Spirituall Monarchy instituted by Christ. But it seemeth that he delighteth more in the use of his sword then of his buckler and in stead of repelling my arguments he busieth himself in making new knots for me to untie He knows well that this is no logicall proceeding And I might justly serve him with the same sauce But I seek only the clear discovery of truth and will pursue his steppes throughout his oppositions The first thing that he objecteth to me is the oath of Supremacy made by King Henry and his Church in which oath saith he are sworn five things First that the King of England is not only Governor but only and supreme Governor Secondly not only in some but in all ecclesiasticall things and causes Thirdly as well in all ecclesiasticall causes as temporall Fourthly that no forrein Prelate hath any spirituall Iurisdiction in England Fifthly all forrein Iurisdiction is renounced This he is pleased to call the first new Creed of the English Protestant Church by which it is become both hereticall and schismaticall Before I give a distinct answer to this objection it will be needfull in the first place to put him in minde of some things which I have formerly demonstrated to him touching this particular which he hath been pleased to pass by in silence First who it was that first presented this Title to King Henry Archbishop Warrham whom Sanders calleth an excellent man and a Popish Convocation Secondly who confirmed this Title unto him Four and twenty Bishops and nine and twenty Abbats in Parliament none dissenting There was not one Protestant among them all Thirdly who were the flatterers of King Henry that preached up his Supremacy and printed books in defence of this Supremacy and set forth Catachismâ—s to instruct the Subjects and teach them what the Supremacy was who contrived and penned this very Oath and were the first that took it themselves and incited all others to take it even Bishop Gardiner Tonstall Heath Bonner Stokesley Thurelby c. all R. C. his Friends the greatest Opposers of the reformation and the roughest Persecuters of Protestants Lastly consider what I cited out of Cardinall Poole That God the Father hath assigned this Office to Christian Emperors that they should act the part of Christ the Son of God And again the Pope as a Priestly Head doth execute the Office of Christ the true Head but we may also truly say that the Emperour doth execute the Office of Christ as a Kingly Head These things being premised to dull the edge of his argument now I proceed to a direct answer and first I charge him with chopping and changing the words of the Oath The words of the Oath are these That the Kings Highness is the only supreme Governor in this Realm But in paraphrasing upon them and pressing them he renders them thus not only Governor but only and supreme Governor There is a vast difference between these two to say the King is the only
supreme Governor of the Realm of England which signifies no more but this that there is no other supreme Governor of the Realm but he which is most true and to say that he is the only and supreme Governor which implies that there is no other Governor but he which is most false There are both spirituall and civill Governors in England besides him To say the Pope is the only supreme Bishop in his own Patriarchate is most true but to say that he is the only and supreme Bishop in his Patriarchate is most false this were to degrade all his Suffragans and allow no Bishop in his Province but himself Secondly I answer that there is no Supremacy ascribed to the King in this Oath but meerly politicall which is essentially annexed to the Imperiall Crown of every sovereign Prince The Oath saith that the Kings Highness is the only supreme Governor of his Highness Realms and Dominions What doth Saint Peter himself say less to his own Successors as well as others Submit your selves to every Ordinance of man for the Lords sake whether it be to the King as supreme How often doth Saint Gregory acknowledge the Emperor to be his supreme Governor or sovereign Lord and profess obedience and Subjection unto him and execute his commands in ecclesiasticall things That Common-wealth is miserable and subject to the clashing of Jurisdictions where there are two Supremes like a Serpent with two heads at either end one The Oath addeth in all spirituall or ecclesiasticall things or causes This is true with some limitations as first either by himself or by fit Substitutes who are ecclesiasticall Persons For our Kings cannot excommunicate or absolve in their own persons Secondly it is to be understood of those causes which are handled in foro contentioso in the exterior Court not in the inner Court of Conscience Thirdly either in the first or in the second instance by receiving the appeales and redressing the wrongs of his injured Subjects Some things are so purely spirituall that Kings have nothing to doe in them in their own persons as the preaching of the Word the administration of the Sacraments and the binding and loosing of Sinners Yet the persons to whom the discharge of these Duties doth belong and the persons towards whom these Duties ought to be discharged being their Subjects they have a Power paramount to see that each of them doe their duties in their severall stations The causes indeed are ecclesiasticall but the power of governing is politicall This is the true sense of the Oath neither more nor less as appeareth plainly by our thirty seventh Article Where we attribute to our Princes the chief government by which Titles we understand the mindes of some slanderous Folkes to be offended we give not to our Princes the ministring either of Gods Word or of the Sacraments but that only prerogative which we see to have been given alwaies to all godly Princes in holy Scriptures by God himself this is that they should rule all Estates and Degrees committed to their charge by God whether they be ecclesiasticall or temporall and restrein with the civill Sword the stubborn or evill doers Here is no power asserted no punishment to be inflicted by the King in his own person but only politicall I confess persons deputed and delegated by the King doe often excommunicate and absolve and act by the power of the Keyes but this is by the vertue of their own habit of Jurisdiction All which the King contributes by his Commission is a liberty and power to act in this particular case an application of the matter which a Lay Patron or a Master of a Family or a subordinate Magistrate may doe much more a sovereign Prince This power many Roman Catholick Doctors doe justifie The King of Spain cites above twenty of them Let the Princes of this World know that they owe an account to God of the Church which they have received from him into their protection for whether peace and right ecclesiasticall Discipline be increased or decayed by Christian Princes God will require an account from them who hath trusted his Church unto their Power All this Power the King of Spain exerciseth in Sicily in all ecclesiasticall causes over all ecclesiasticall persons as well in the first instance as the second This Power a Lay-Chanceller exerciseth in the Court Christian This Power a very Abbess exerciseth in the Roman Church over her Nuns Whilest all the Mariners are busied in their severall employments the sovereign Magistrate sits at the Stern to command all and order all for the promotion of the great Architectonicall end that is the safty and welfare of the Common-wealth It followes in the Oâ—th as well as temporall that is as truly and as justly but not as fully nor as absolutely And that no forrein Prelate hath or ought to have any Iurisdiction or Authority Ecclesiasticall or Spirituall within this Realm That is to say neither the Pope nor his Court. For a generall Councel which is no standing Court but an aggregate body composed partly of our selves is neither included here nor intended If this be the new Creed of the English Protestant Church as he calls it in scorn it was the old Creed of the Britannick Church as I have proved evidently in the vindication If this profession of Royall Supremacy in our sense doe make men Hereticks and Schismaticks we shall sweep away the most part of the Roman Doctors along with us And for Sovereign Princes we shall leave them few except some necessitous person who could not subsist otherwise then by the favourable influence of the Roman Court Very many Doctors doe hold that for the common good of the Republick Princes have Iurisdiction in many causes otherwise Subject to the Ecclesiasticall Court not only by the positive Law of God but by the Law of Nature And many more give them a power indirectly in causes Ecclesiasticall over Ecclesiasticall persons so far as is necessary for the preservation of the Peace and Tranquility of the Commonwealth nec putem ullum Doctorem Catholicum refragari saith the same Author in the place cited Neither doe I think that any Catholick Doctor will be against it Now I have said my minde concerning the Oath of Allegiance who they were that first contrived it and in what sense we doe maintain it I hope agreably to the sense of the Christian World except such as are prepossessed with prejudice for the Court of Rome As our Kings out of Reverence to Christ did freely lay by the title of Supreme heads of the English Church so though it bee not meet for me to prevent their maturer determinations I should not be displeased if out of a tender consideration of the consciences of Subjects who may erre out of invincible ignorance they would be pleased to lay by the oath also God looks upon his Creatures with all their prejudices why should not man doe the
prescribed to the Bishops those things which did pertain to the profit of the Churches He referred the cause of Caecilianus an Ecclesiasticall cause to Miltiades Bishop of Rome and Marcus and Rhetecius and Maternus and Marinus as his Delegates or Commissioners visum est mihi it hath seemed good to me c. He accepted Appeals from the judgment of the Bishops He commanded Caecilianus to repair to Anilinus the Proconsul and Patritius Vicar of the Prefects as deputed and authorised by him as Judges to doe justice upon Ecclesiasticall Delinquents He sent for the Bishops assembled by his commandement at a Councell first at Tyrus then at Hierusalem that they should repaire with speed to Constantinople evestigio ad castra nostra maturetis to give an account to him of their actions and to shew how sincerely they had behaved themselves in their judgments In a word he medled so much in Ecclesiasticall affaires that he made himself as a common Bishop constituted by God I will conclude with his own profession in an Epistle to the Nicomedians If we have chaste and orthodox Bishops and endowed with humanitie we rejoyce but if any one shall audaciously and unadvisedly be vehemently affected to the memory and praise of those pests Eusebius and other Bishops he shall straight be repressed by my execution as the Minister of God And accordingly they were spoyled of their dignities and cast out of the Cities His second witness is Valentinian in an Epistle to Theodosius but which Valentinian which Theodosius where this Epistle is to be found he is silent and leaveth us if it were worth the labour to seek for a needle in a bottle of hay But the truth is there is nothing in it which concerneth this question nothing which we deny The words as they be alleged by him are these All antiquity hath given the Principality of Priesthood over all to the Bishop of the City of Rome Our question is concerning the Politicall Principality of Kings and Emperours and his answer is concerning the Principality of Priesthood Let them retain their Principality of Priesthood so they leave to Sovereign Princes their just Principality of Power We are ready to give them a principality of Priesthood if that would content them And neither all antiquity nor any antiquity did ever give them a principality of Power Or at least such a Supremacy of single sovereign monarchichall Power as they require about which our controversie now is A Lord chief Justice hath a principality of Order among his brother Judges of the same Coyfe and Bench and in some circumstantiall respects a kinde of eminency or principality of Power but no single supremacy so as to be able to crosse their votes with a non obstante Such a supremacy of sovereing single universall power of Priesthood the Church of God did never know either at Rome or elsewhere The Bishops of Rome were so farre from having power over generall Councells that they had no single power over their fellow Patriarchs So farre from having power over Emperours that they have been delegated by Emperours as their Commissioners in Ecclesiasticall causes have been convened before Emperors and deposed by Emperors Primitive Bishops use to stile Popes their brethren their collegues their fellows but never Ecclesiasticall Princes If he mean the second Valentinian his authority weighs nothing he was a young Novice mis-led by his Arrian Mother a wilfull ill-advised woman If he mean another Valentinian I shall shew him that he exercised this politicall Supremacy in Ecclesiasticall affaies it may be to the questioning of his Prince of Priests His third witness is Theodosius the younger in his Epistle to the Synod of Ephesus his words are these It is not lawfull for him that is not a Bishop to meddle with Ecclesiasticall matters Yet he did meddle with Ecclesticall matters This is that Theodosius that argued with the Bishops upon the holy Scriptures as if himself had been a Bishop This is that Theodosius which made this following Law We decree that who follow the ungodly faith of Nestorius or obey his wicked Doctrine if they be Bishops be cast out of the holy Churches but if Lay men anathematized This is that Theodosius that convocated the generall Councell of Ephesus by his Authority Royall and sent Candidianus thither to be his Deputy among other things set diligenter inspiceret c. to look diligently to the behaviours of the Bishops so see that no dissensions did arise among them to disturbe the consultations of Synods and to represse them likewise otherwise he might as well have staid at home Among the instructions of Theodosius given to Candidianus are the words alleged Candidianum ad banc sacram Synodum abire jussimus sed eae lege c. We command Candidianus to goe to this holy Synod but upon this condition that he should have nothing to doe with questions and controversies which concern Doctrines of faith for it is unlawfull for one not registred in the catalogue of Bishops to thrust himself into ecclesiasticall affairs and consultations This is as much as to say that Candidianus was not sent by the Emperour to dispute in the Councell about Theologicall questions which it is probable he did not understanding nor to overawe the Bishops or controlle their votes We are of the same minde with Theodosius and say as much as he that it is not fit for every man promiscuously to dispute of Theologicall questions And though we give the severeign Regiment of the Church in some sense to Princes within their own Dominions yet we would not have them to govern it upon their own heads but upon mature advise of free Synods of Ecclesiasticall persons who are their proper Counsellors in Church affairs All men know that Candidianus could have no decisive voice in a generall Councell So we would not have Princes meddle with the Keyes of the Church either the Key of Knowledge or the Key of Order We confesse that some causes in the first instance belong properly to Bishops yet the last Appeal may be to the King We say there are many things which Kings cannot doe in their own persons and yet may be done by fit Delegates by their Royall authority His fourth witness is Valentinian the elder It is not lawfull for me who am of the People to search curiously such matters let Priests who have care of these things meet where they please The case was this Valentinian had associated his Brother Valens with him in the Empire Valens was an Arrian Valentinian an orthodox Christian yet so as he troubled not those who were of a contrary Opinion He being at this time in his voyage through Thracia towards Rome the orthodox Bishops about the Hellespont and in Bythinia sent their Depuities unto him to request him to give them leave to assemble together in Councell for the establishment of the right Faith wherein they acknowledged him
the politicall Head of the Church It was concerning the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father in so sublime a question concerning the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father in this exigence of affairs being in his voyage in the presence of his Brother and fellow Emperor who was an Arrian and a great persecutor of all those who held the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father whose Subjects these Bishops were as they found to their cost presently after his return from accompanying of his Brother some part of his way what more prudent or more plausible answer could so moderate a Prince have given then that he did give Though we give to Sovereign Princes within their own Dominions a Legislative power in Ecclesiasticall causes yet not without good advise especially in such high points of Faith as that was and who are more fit Counselors for Princes in such cases then Synods and Bishops The same method is observed by us at this day The Synod contrives fit Articles and Canons and the King confirms them and makes them Lawes But did Valentinian nothing himself in such cases but leave all to Priests No. He himself confirmed the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father quam etiam nostra celsitudo passim praedicari mandavit Which our Highnesse hath commanded to be Preached every where This very Valentinian was one of the Authors of that famous Law to represse the covetousnesse of the Clergy which Saint Ambrose and Saint Hierome doe so much complain of not against the Emperors who made the Law but against the Clergy who deserved it In the Code we finde Ecclesiasticall Lawes made by this very Valentinian as that to Florianus That a Bishop rebaptizing one who had been formerly Baptized out of ignorance of the Law should be deprived of his Bishoprick It was this very Valentinian of whom Theodorit speaketh that in Occidentem profectus c. Going into the West he furnished that Region with excellent Lawes and did begin with the Preaching of true Piety He convocated the Bishops and commanded them in the place of Auxentius an Arrian to chuse an Orthodox Bishop for the See of Millaine and after some debates they did chuse Saint Ambrose Some may say if it was his right why did he not chuse him himself I answer that the Synod of Bishops did desire him to chuse one as knowing his right and when Saint Ambrose was chosen and refused for a time jubet Ambrosium extemplo initiari mysteriis Episcopum ordinari The Emperor commanded him forthwith to be initiated in the holy Mysteries and to be ordeined Bishop Neither was this the case of Constantine or Theodosius or Valentinian alone Socrates writes more generally That from Constantines time when the Emperors became Christians Ecclesiasticall affaires seemed to depend upon their beck His fifth witnesse is Basilius Basilius Emperor in the seventh Synod speaketh thus to the Laity He is mistaken Basilius was no Emperor in the time of the seventh Synod but Constantine and Irene but it is true that in the time of the 8 th Synod Basilius was Emperor and made a Speech to the Laity The case is this one Bardas a Patrician and Michael the former Emperor by their unseasonable and preposterous intermedling in Ecclesiastieall businesses had brought the Orientall Church into great dangers whereupon Basilius then Emperor useth these words Nullo modo nobis licet c. It is no way lawfull for us Laymen to move Speech of Ecclesiasticall causes nor at all to resist the whole Church and oppose an universall Synod For the searching and inquisition into these things belongs to Patriarchs Bishops and Priests Basilius was in the right It is not lawfull for Laymen to treat of Ecclesiasticall causes in generall Councels as Bâ—shops doe that is to say to have decisive Voices or to meddle above their capacities much lesse ought they frowardly to oppose general Councels or to vie reason for reason with them The Bishops form of subscription was this Ego B. definiens subscripsâ— I B. have subscribed to this as my definition The Laymans form was this Ego L. consentiens subscripsâ— I L. have subscribed to this as giving my consent to it There is a great difference between defining and consenting But as Kings are never minors because they are presumed to hâ—ve a wise Councel so they are never to be considered as ignorant Lay-men who have a learned Councel of Ecclesiasticall persons to direct them All this while he troubles himself to no purpose about the deliberative part but medleth not at all with the authoritative part which only is in question between us Sovereign Princes by their Royall Authority have power to incorporate the Decrees of Councels into the Lawes of the Land and to subject the violaters of them to civill punishments His sixth witnesse is Charles the great Charles the great in Crantzius professeth that he gave the Church of Breme to Saint Wilihaâ—e by command of the high Bishop and universall Pope Adrian c. by which words we see by whose Authority he meddled in Spirituall matters It is a great degree of confidence to dare to cite Charles the great to prove that it is not lawfull for Sovereign Princes to meddle in Ecclesiasticall affaires To cite him who convocated Councels yeerly by his own Authority and reformed the Church Who sate himself in Synods not only as a hearer but as a Judg that is with the advise of his Ecclesiasticall Councel Auditor Arbiter adfui and made Ecclesiasticall Decrees in his own name discernimus Deo donante decrevimus Who made himself Judg of the Popes themselves who disposed by his own Authority not only of the Bishoprick of Breme which was then a place but newly conquered by himself and newly converted but of all the Bishopricks throughout the Empire not excepting the Bishoprick of Rome it self To whom this very Pope Adrian whom he citeth with the Clergy and People of Rome did solemnly resigne release and acquit for ever all their claim right and interest in the election of succeeding Popes The case cited was this Saint Willehade was an Englishman sent by the English King and Bishops to convert those Countries to the Christian Faith Charles the great who had newly conquered those parts and desired much their conversion finding the great merits of this Wilehade remunerare se digno constiâ—uit Episcopatu He resolved to bestow a good Bishoprick upon him And therefore he called him forth and commanded him to be consecrated Bishop of Breme The case is as cleer in the history as the noon day Charles the great founded and erected Bishopricks at his pleasure Episcopalem constituimus Cathedram and gave them such priviledges as he thought fit extat privilegium eidem Ecclesiae a memorato Rege Collatum He endowed the Churches and commanded the inhabitants to pay their Tythes and other duties to them hoc nostro Majestaâ—is
other Churches and not Rome St. Peter might have continued Bishop of Antioch untill his death and then Antioch had still been the Mistriss and foundation of all other Churches He might have been neither Bishop of Antioch nor Rome and then the other Churches had wanted such an hereditary Mistriss All this is confessed by Bellarmine Doth Paul the ninth make us new Articles of Faith of so great contingency that were not of perpetuall necessity How can the Church of Rome be the foundation of all Christians in all places when there have been so many Christian Churches ever since the dayes of the Apostles who never had any thing to doe with Rome nor scarcely ever heard of the name of Rome If the Pope be the Master of all Christians he is but a young Master for we finde no such expression in all the primitive times Why were the ancient Bishops so grosly over-seen to stile him their Brother their Collegue their Fellow who was their Master It might be modesty in the Pope to use such familiar expressions as a Generall calls all his Army fellow Souldiers but it was never heard that a private Colonell or Captain did call his Generall fellow Souldier or a Servant call his Master fellow Servant or an ordinary Clerk call his Bâ—shop his Brother St. Peter writ himself a fellow elder not a Master If St. Paul had known that the Roman Church had been the Mistriss and foundation of all other Churches he would have given them their due title and the whole Scripture had not been so silent in so necessarie a point But he saith the Popes Supremacy is neither against the two Creeds nor the fiâ—st four generall Councells intimating thereby that it excludes none from salvation and consequently is no sufficient cause of separation I answer first that it is against the four first generall Councels if this were a proper place for the discussion of it I answer secondly that though it were not opposite to the Creed or the first four generall Councells yet if it be not virtually included in the Creed being as it is by them obtruded upon all Christians as an Article of faith or a necessarie part of saving truth extra quam non est salus without which there is no salvation it becomes a just and sufficient cause of separation to all those upon whom it is so obtruded Of this more in the next argument My second argument may be thus reduced That Court which obtruded newly coyned Articles of faith such as the Doctrin of the seven Sacraments Transubstantiation Purgatory Invocation of Saints worshipping of Images Indulgences and especially the Popes Supremacy upon the Christian world as absolutely necessary to salvation and necessarie conditions of Catholick communion and excommunicateth and anathematizeth above three parts of the Christian world for not admitting them is fearfully schismaticall But the Court of Rome doth all this That these are no old Articles appeareth by all the ancient Creeds of the Church wherein they are neither explicitely nor virtually comprehended That they are made new Articles by the Court of Rome appeareth by the Bull of Pius the fourth wherein they are added to the old Creed ut unius ejusdem fidei professio uniformiter ab omnibus exhibeatur that the profession of one and the same faith may be declared uniformly by all and one certain form thereof be made known to all And lastly That the Court of Rome hath solemnly excommunicated with the greater excommunication and anathematized and excluded so farre as lieth in their power from the communion of Christ all the Grecian Russian Armenian Abyssen and reformed Churches being three times more in number then themselves for not receiving these new Articles or some of them and especially for not acknowledging the Sovereign Power and Jurisdiction of the Roman Bishop and his Court appeareth undeniably by the famous Bull of Pius the fifth called Bulla caenae because it is read in die caenae Domini or upon Thursday before Easter In way of answer to this he asketh how this was any cause of King Henry's revolt I reply first that though Henry the eighth had not thought of this so it had not been causa procreans a productive cause of the separation yet to us it is a most just cause to condemn them of Schism Secondly the revolt or more truly the separation of the Church of England from the Church of Rome was not made by Henry the eight or the English Church but by the Pope and Court of Rome who excommunicated him and his Kingdome for not enduring their encroachments and usurpations He and his Kingdome were passive in it only the Court of Rome was doubly active first in revolting from the right Discipline of their Predecessors and secondly in excluding the party wronged from their communion But in the separation of England from the oppessions of the Court of Rome I confesse that Henry the eighth and the Kingdom were active And this very ground to avoid the tyranny and ambition and avarice of the Roman Court was the chief impulsive cause both to the English and Eastern Christians For though the Sovereignty of the Roman Bishop was not obtruded upon them in form of a Creed yet it was obtruded upon them as a necessarie point of Faith If Henry the eight had any other private sinistre grounds known only to himself they doe not render the Reformation one jod the worse in it self but only prove that he proceeded not uprightly which concerneth him not us Secondly he answereth that though they profess that it is necessary to salvation to be under the Pope as Vicar of Christ yet they say not that it is necessary necessitate medii so as none can be saved who doe not actually beleeve it If all this were true yet it were too much to oblige the whole Christian world to submit to the Pope as the Vicar of Christ by virtue of the commandement of God But I fear that Pope Pius by his Bull and all they by their swearing in obedience thereunto doe make it to be necessary necessitate medii so as none can be saved who doe not actually beleeve it And then there was little hope of salvation throughout the whole Christian World in the times of the Councells of Constance and Basile out of the Popes own Court which was then the only Noahs Arke The words of their Oath are these Hanc veram catholicam fidem extra quam nemo salvus esse potest c. This true catholick faith without which no man can be saved which I profess freely and hold truly in present I doe promise vow and swear by the help of God to retein and confess perfect and inviolated most constantly to my last gasp and will take care so farre as in me lyeth to cause it to be taught and preached to all that shall be committed to my charge If it were not necessary necessitate medii some
the Pope Doth any man think that our Ancestors were so simple as to question whether the Body be above the Head or to hope that the Pope would concurre willingly to his own deposition This we know for certain that the Councell of Constance without the presence or concurrence of the Pope did Decree themselves to be a lawfull complete generall Councell superior to the Pope and that he was subject to their censures And deposed three Popes at a time And their acts were confirmed in the Councell of Basile To this Decree of the Councell of Constance he giveth two answers First That it is probable that the Councell meant only of doubtfull Popes But I did take away this answer in the vindication two waies First because it is contrary to the text The words of the Councell are these the Pope that is a Pope truely elected and lawfully admitted It is uncertain whether a doubtfull Pope be Pope or no is subject to a generall Councel that is a generall Councel without the presence or concurrence of the Pope such as the Councel of Constance was As well in matter of faith as of manners This is more then doubtfull titles so as he may not only be corrected but if he be incorrigible be deposed So a Councell may correct the Pope and if they please continue him or if they finde him incorrigible depose him Men are not corrected for weak and litigious titles but for faults in faith or manners Neither can they be said to be deposed who are only declared to have been usurpers Secondly I confuted this answer by the execution of the Decree The Councell did not only declare who was the right Pope which is a judiciary act and may be done by an Inferior towards his Superior but they turned out three Popes together whereof one without controversie was the right Pope And so made right to be no right for the publick good of the Church which is a badge of sovereign and legislative Authority His second answer is That this Decree was not conciliarly made and consequently not confirmed by Martine the fifth This answer was likewise taken away in the vindication First because the Popes confirmation is but a novelty never practised in the ancient Church and signifieth nothing The Pope and his Legates did subscribe in the same manner and form that other Bishops and their Legates did And that was all Secondly because Pope Martines title to the Papacy did depend meerly upon the Authority of the Decree If this Decree were not a lawfull Decree of a lawfull generall Councell and such a Councell as had power to depose the former Pope then Pope Martine was no Pope but an usurper and then his confirmation signified nothing also in that respect Last I shewed that it was conciliarly made And what the word conciliarly there signifieth out of the Acts of the Councell And that passage was not intended for a confirmation but an occasionall Speech after the end of the Councell after the Fathers were dismissed in answer to an unseasonable proposition made to the Pope by the Ambassadors of Polonia and Lituania about a seditious Book which they alleging to have been condemned by the Deputies of the Nations but not being able to affirm that it was condemned in the publick Acts of the Session the Pope answered that he approved what had been conciliarly done To all this he answereth nothing but that the word conciliariter or conciliarly signifieth rather the manner of a Councel then of a Councell Let it be so Is not the decreeing of any thing publickly in the Session the manner of the Councels Acting The Duputies of the Nations were like a Committee of Parliament who have no power to Decree though they be a Committe of the whole House but only to prepare things for the House Now suppose the King at the close of the Parliament being requested to confirm some Acts of a Committe should use the very same expression which Martine the fifth did That he would hold and observe inviolably all things determined and concluded by that Parliament Parliamentariter or Parliamentarily Doth not this evidently confirm all the Acts and conclusions of the Parliament Or what can this in reason exclude but only the Acts of the Committees To say as R. C. saith That he confirmeth only those Acts which were done with due liberation is as much as to say that he confirmeth just nothing at all How shall it be known or who shall be Judg what was done with due deliberation and what was not Neither doth it weigh any thing at all to say as he doth that the word concilium doth exclude the Deputies of the Nations without adding conciliariter for first it is a rule in Law that abundans non vitiat A word or two too much doe no hurt Secondly the Deputies of the Nations did sit and Act by the Authority of the Councell and consequently their Acts were mediatly and in some sort the Acts of the Councel Lastly whether the Decree of the Councel were confirmed or not to me seemeth all one The end of Convocating so many Bishops is to represent the consent of all those respective Churches from which they are sent and to witnesse the received belief We see by their Votes what was the received opinion of the Occidentall Church And we see otherwise suffiâ—ently what was the received opinion of the Eastern Southern and Northern Churches So as the Roman Court will not be able to finde one nationall Church of that age throughout the World to maintain their exorbitant claimes To my fourth argument drawn from the Popes challenge of all Episcopall Jurisdiction and consequently the breaking of all the lines of Apostolicall Succession except his own and to my two additionall arguments concerning the infallibility of the Popes judgment and his power over Princes he answereth nothing but that they are not defined by the Roman Church and therefore cannot be a cause of departing from her communion Neither have I indevoured to charge the crime of Schism upon the Roman Church in generall but upon the Roman Court and the violent propugners thereof whose Tenets these are I wish the Roman Church restored to its ancient splendor of an Apostolicall Church and the principall Protropatriarchate and its beginning of unity Notwithstanding the weaknesse of his answers yet he laies down this for a conclusion That whatsoever I now pretend our separation was schismatically begun And thence inferres upon a ground brought by me Quod ab initio fuit invalidum tract is temporis non convalescit That it is schismaticall still First I denie his ground the separation was not made by us but by them what we did was not schismaticall but just and necessary Secondly his inference is grossely mistaken and the rule which I brought altogether misapplyed That which was invalid from the beginning cannot become valid prescription or tract of time but it may become valid by subsequent Acts of Parties
interessed And that which was uncharitably begun and schismatically may be charitably piously and necessarily continued as by many reasons and instances may be made appear but that it is besides our question CHAP. 9. A defence of our Answers to the objections of the Romanists IN the first place he observeth a difference between Protestants and Roman Catholicks That Protestants doe not charge Roman Catholicks with formall Schism but only with causall Schism whereas Roman Catholicks doe charge Protestants with formall Schism To which I give three answers First if Protestants doe not charge them with formall Schism their charity is the greater and the Roman Catholicks are the more obliged to them Certainly we have better grounds to charge them with formall Schism then they have to charge us But indeed Protestants doe charge the Roman Court and all Roman Catholicks who maintain it and adhere unto it out of ambitious avaritious or other sinister ends and not out of simplicity of heart and invincible or at least probable ignorance with formall Schism Secondly causall Schism may be and in this case of the Romanists is as well formall nay sometimes more formall then actuall Schism or to speak more properly then actuall separation Whosoever give just cause of separation to others contrary to the light of their knowledge out of uncharitable or other sinister ends are causall and formall Schismaticks Whereas they who seperate actually and locally upon just cause are no criminous Schismaticks at all and they who separate actually without just cause may doe it out of invincible ignorance and consequently they are not formall but only materiall Schismaticks Thirdly when the case comes to be exactly weighed it is here just as it is in the case of possibility of Salvation that is to say the very same Protestants doe not charge all Roman Catholicks with formall Schism but only such as break the bond of unity sinfully whether it be by separating themselves or others unduely from the Catholick Communion or giving just cause of separation to others Nor doth R. C. himself charge all Protestants with formall Schism For he confesseth that all those Protestants who erre invincibly doe want neither Church nor Salvation Formall Schismaticks whilest they continue formall Schismaticks want both Church and Salvation therefore whosoever want neither Church nor Salvation are no formall Schismaticks The reason of his former assertion is this because Protestants can name no Church out of whose communion the present Church of Rome departed His reason shewes that he confounds materiall and formall Schism with causall and actuall Schism Whereas actuall Schism may sometimes be only materiall and causall Schism may also sometimes be formall To his reason I give two clear answers First Protestants can name a particular Church out of whose Communion the present Roman Church departed even the pure and uncorrupted Church of Rome which was before it by introducing errors abuses and corruptions into it There is a morall departure out of a Church as well as a locall and acknowledged by themselves to be culpable and criminous Schism Secondly That Church which departs out of the Communion of the Catholick or universall Church is more schismaticall then that which departs only out of the Communion of a particular Church both because our Obligation is greater to the Catholick Church then to any particular Church and because the Catholick or universall Church doth comprehend all particular Churches of one denomination in it When the Court of Rome by their censures did separate three or four parts of the Christian World who were as Catholick or more Catholick then themselves then they departed out of the Communion of the Catholick Church as the Donatists did of old There is but this difference between the Donatists and them that the Donatists did it only by their uncharitable opinions and verball censures but the Court of Rome did it moreover by a solemn Juridicall Decree which is much the greater degree of Schism He telleth us That it is vain to liken them to the Donatists because the Donatists said that the Catholick Church of that time was but a part of the Church as Protestants say now of the Roman for which Saint Austine laughed at them The truth is the Donatists said that they being but a small part of the catholick Church if any part were the true catholick Church and that the true catholick Church was no catholick Church nor any part of it which is expresly contrary to what he saith here Just as the Romanists say now that they themselves being with all their dependents not a fourth part of the Christian World are the catholick Church and that the Patriarchate of Constaentinople which is as large as theirs and the Patriarchate of Alexandria which including the seventeen Kingdomes of Prester Iohn all Christians and dependents upon that Patriarchate is likewise as large and the Patriarchates of Antioch and Hierusalem and all the lesser Patriarchates in the East and the whole Empire of Russia and all the Protestants in Europe are no parts of the catholick Church Is not this to make the part to be the whole and the whole to be nothing beyond that part as the Donatists did Ovum ovo non similius And therefore Saint Austine might well laugh at them or rather pitty them as indeed he did for speaking such evident absurdities Si mihi diceres quod Ego sim Petilianus non invenirem quomodo te refellerem nisi aut jocantem riderem aut insanientem dolerem Sed quia jocari te non Credo vides quid restet If thou shouldest tell me that I am Petilian or any such thing that is evidently fals I should not know how to confute thee unlesse I should either laugh at thy folly or pity thy frenzie But because I believe not that thou jeastest thou seest what remaineth When they tell us in such earnest that the Roman Church is the catholick Church they might even as well tell us that Petilian was Saint Austine Their first objection is that we have separated our selves from the Communion of the Catholick Church to which I gave this answer that we had not separated our selves from the Communion of the Catholick Church for we are ready to beleeve and practise whatsoever the Catholick Church doth unanimously beleeve and practise No nor yet from the Roman Church in the essentialls of Christian Religion or any of them but only in their errors and innovations and that it was the Court of Rome that made the separtion To this answer he takes great exception but as it seemeth to me in a most confused manner For method sake I will reduce all which he saith to four heads First that the Church of Rome is the true Catholick Church Secondly That we have separated our selves from it in essentialls Thirdly That all the other Patriarchates except the Roman are no parts of the Catholick Church Fourthly That we hold no Communion with
to be acknowledged for obligatory and nothing in them to be changed For Governement her principle was that Christ had made S. Peter first or chiefe or Prince of his Apostles who was to be the first mover under him in the Churth after his departure out of this world and that the Bishops of Rome as successeours of S. Peter inherited from him this priviledge c. A little after he acknowledgeth that â—he first principle includeth the truth of the second And that there is this manifest evidence for it that still the latter age could not be ignorant of what the former believed and that as long as it adhered to that method nothing could be altered in it Before we come to his applicarion of this to the Church of England or his inference from hence in favour of the Church of Rome it will not be amisse to examine his two principles and shew what truth there is in them and how falshood is hidden under the vizard of truth In the first place I desire the Reader to observe with what subtlety this case is proposed that the Church of England agreed with the Church of Rome all the rest of her Communion And again that the Bishop of Rome exercised this power in all those Countries which kept communion with the Church of Rome So seeking to obtrude upon us the Church of Rome with its dependents for the Catholick Church We owe respect to the Church of Rome as an Apostolical Church but we owe not that conformity subjection to it which we owe to the Catholick Church of Christ. Before this pretened seperation the Court of Rome by their temerarious censures had excluded two third parts of the Catholick Church from their Communion and thereby had made themselves Schismaticall The world is greater then the City all these Christian Churches which are excommunicated by the Court of Rome onely because they would never no more then their Ancestours acknowledge themselves subjects to the Bishop of Rome did inherit the Doctrine of saving Faith from their forefathers as the Legacy of Christ and his Apostles and have been as faithfull depositaries of it as they And their testimony what this Legacy was is as much to be regarded as the Testimony of the Church of Rome and so much more by how much they are a greater part of the Catholick Church Secondly I observe how he makes two principles the one in doctrine the other in discipline though he confess that the truth of the latter is included in the former and borroweth its evidence from it onely that he might gaine themoreopportunity to shuffle the latter usurpations of the Popes into the ancient discipline of the Church and make these upstart novelties to be a part of that ancient Legacy Frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora It is in vaine to make two rules where oue will serve the turne I do readily admit both his first and his second rule reduced into one in this subsequent forme That those doctrines and that discipline which we inherited from our forefathers as the Legacy of Christ and his Apostles ought solely to be acknowledged for obligatory and nothing in them to be changed that is substantiall or essential So the Church of England maintaines this rule now as well as they The question onely is who have changed that Doctrine or this Discipline we or they we by substraction or they by addition The case is clear the Apostles contracted this Doctrine into a Summary that is the Creed the primitive Fathers expounded it where it did stand in need of clearer explication The Generall Councell of Ephesus did forbid all men to exact any more of a Christian at his baptismal profession Into this Faith were we baptized unto this Faith do we adhere whereas they have changed enlarged their Creed by the addition of new Articles as is to be seen in the new Creed or Confession of Faith made by Pius the fourth so for Doctrine Then for discipline we professe and avow that discipline which the whole Christian world practised for the first six hundred years all the Eastern Sowthern and Northern Churches untill this day They have changed the beginning of unity into an universality of Jurisdiction and Soveraignty of power above General Councels which the Christian world for the first six hundred years did never know nor the greatest part of it ever acknowledge until this day Let S. Peter be the first or chiefe or in a right sense the Prince of the Apostles or the first mover in the Church all this extends but to a primacy of order the Soveraignty of Ecclesiasticall power was in the Apostolicall Colledge to which a generall Councell now succeedeth It is evident enough whether they or we doe hold our selves better to the legacy of Christ and his Apostles Thirdly whereas he addeth that The Bishops of Rome as successours of S. Peter inherited his priviledges and actually excercised this power in all those countries which kept Communion with the Church of Rome that very year wherein this unhappy separation began as it commeth much short of the truth in one respect for the Popes exercised much more power in those Countries which gave them leave then ever S. Peter pretended unto so it is much more short of that Universall Monarchy which the Pope did then and doth still claime For as I have already said two third parts of the Christian world were not at that time of his Communion but excommunicated by him onely because they would not submit their necks to his yoke And those other Countries which yielded more obedience to him or were not so well able to contest against him yet when they were overmuch pinched and his oppresons and usurpations did grow intolerable did oppose him and make themselves the last judges of their own liberties and grievancies and of the limits of Papall authority and set bounds unto it as I have demonstrated in the â—indication So whereas this refuter doth undertake to state the case clearly he commeth not neer the true question at all which is not whether the Bishop of Rome had any authority in the Catholick Church he had authority in his Diocesse as a Bishop in his Province as a Metropolitan in his Patriarchate as the chief of the five Protopatriarchs and all over as the Bishop of an Apostolicall Church or successour of S. Peter But the true question is what are the right limits and bounds of his authority whether he have a legiâ—lative power over all Christians whether the patronage aud disposition of all Churches doth belong unto him whether he may convocate Synods and exercise Jurisdiction and sell palles pardons and indulgences and send Legates and set up Legantine Courts and impose pensions at his pleasure in all kingdomes without consent of Soveraigne Princes and call all Ecclesiasticall causes to Rome and interdict whole nations and infringe their liberties and customes and excommunicate Printes and
Beatissimus et Apostolicus vir Papa hoc nobis praecipit Nec additur Leo aut Romanus aut nobis Romae aut aliquid aliud When the word Pope is put alone the Bishop of Rome onely is to be understood as appeareth out of the Councel of Chalcedon The most blessed and Apostolical man the Pope doth command us this Neither is there added Pope Leo or the Pope of Rome or the Pope of the City of Rome or any other thing His second exception hath no more weight then the former That there was no such Bishoprick as Caerleon in those dayes the See being translated 50. years before that to St. Davids Where is the contradiction The name of the old Diocess is Caerleon The new See or Throne was the new Abby Church erected aâ— Menevia which place posterity called St. Davids But St. Davids could not be called St. Davids whilst he himself lived nor afterward until custome and tract of time had confirmed such an appellation Some would make us believe that St. David and St. Gregâ—ry dyed upon the same day and then he was still living when Dinoth gave this answer But let that be as it will for it is not much material St. David after the Translation of his See dyed Archbishop of Caerleon Tunc obiâ—t sanctissimus urbis Legionum Archiepiscopus David in Meneviae Civitate c. Then dyed the most holy Archbishop of Caerleon St. David in the City of Menevia And long after his death it still reteined the name of Caerleon even after it was commonly called St. Davids So much Sr. Henry Spilman might have put him in mind of Discesserat ante haec dignitas a Caerlegione ad Landâ—viam sub Dubrâ—tio et mox â— Landavia ad Meneviam cum sancto Davide c. Sed retento pariter Caerlegionis titulo And least he should account Sr. Henry Spilman partial Let him hear Giraldus Cambrensis Habuimus apud Meneviam Vrbis legionum Archiepiscopos successive viginti quinque quorum primus fuit sanctus David c. We had at Menevia five and twenty Archbishops of Caerleon whereof St. David was the first What can be more plain should a man condemn every Author forcounterfeit wherein St. Albans is called Verolam presently after St. Albans death It is an ordinary thing for the same City to have two names and much more the same Bishoprick one from the old See another from the new or one from the Diocess another from the See as the Bishop of Ossory or Kilkenny indifferently His third exception is so slight that I cannot find the edge of it because Sr. Henry Spilman found no other antiquity in it worth the mention which shrewdly implyes that the Book was made for this alone And how doth he know that Sr. Henry Spilman found no other antiquities in it There might be many other British Antiquities in it And yet not proper for a collection of Ecclesiastical Councels Or if there had been no other Antiquity in it Would he condemn his Creed for a counterfeit because it is not hudled together confusedly with some other Treatises in one volume But to demonstrate evidently to him how vain all his trifling is against the testimony of Dionothus Why doth he not answer the coroberatory proof which I brought out of venerable Bede and others of two Brittish Synods held at the same time wherein all the Brittish Clergy did renounce all obedience to the Bishop of Rome of which all our hystoriographers do bear witness Why doth he not answer this but pass by it in so great silence He might as well accuse this of forgery as the other since it is so well attested that Dionothus was a great actor and disputer in that business Sect. 5. In my sixth Chapter I proved three things First that the King and Church of England had sufficient authority to withdraw their obedience from the Roman Patriarch Secondly that they had just grounds to do it And thirdly that they did it with due moderation Concerning the first point he chargeth me the second time for insisting upon a wrong Plea that is their Patriarchal Authority which he confesseth to be humane and mutable I have formerly intimated why they are so loath to entertaine any discourse concerning the Popes Patriarchate because they know not how to reconcile a Monarchy of divine institution with an Aristocracy of humane Institution When I first undertook this subject I conceived that the great strength of the Roman Sampson did lye in his Patriarchate But since this Refuter quitteth it as the Pope himself hath done not for six hundred years onely he speaks too sparingly but for a thousand years ever since Phocas made Boniface universal Bishop I am well contented to give over that subject upon these two conditions First that he do not presume that the Pope is a spiritual Monarch without proving it Secondly that he do not attempt to make Patriarchal Priviledges to be Royal Prerogatives Yet he will not leave this humane Right before we have resolved him three questions First saith he suppose the Christian world had chosen to themselves one head for the preservation of unity in Religion What wrongs must that head do to be sufficient grounds both for the deposition of the person and abolition of the Government Nay put the case right Suppose the Christian World should chuse one for order sake to be their President or Prolocuter in their General Assembly and he should endeavour to make himself their Prince upon some fained Title Did not he deserve to be turned out of his employment if they found it expedient to have another chosen in his place Secondly He supposeth that this alteration should be made by some one party of the Christian Commonwealth which must separate it self from the communion of the rest of Christianity Ought not far weightier causes then these to be expected One mistake begets another as one circle in the water doth produce anotherâ— We have made no such separation from any just Authority instituted by the Catholick Church We nourish a more Catholick Communion then themselves But if our Steward will forsake us because we will not give him leave to become our Master who can help it Thirdly He supposeth that by setting aside this Supreme Head eternal dissentions will inevitably follow in the whole Church of Christ and then demandeth Whether the refusal to comply with the humours of a lustful Prince be ground enough to renounce so necessary an Authority How should the refusal to comply be any such ground Certainly he means the compliance with the humors of a lustful Prince I pass by the extravagancy of the expression Whatsoever they have said or can say concerning Henry the eighth so far as it may reflect upon the Church of England is cleared in my reply to R.C. First He begs the question Christ never instituted the Apostles never constituted the Catholicke Church never acknowledged any such Supreme Head of Power and
Jurisdiction Secondly The Church and Kingdom of England had more lawful just and noble grounds for their separation from the Court of Rome then any base parasitical compliance with the humours of any Prince whatsoever as he cannot chuse but see in this very Chapter But who is so blind as he that will not see Thirdly We do confess that the Primitive Papacy that is an Exordium unitatis a beginning of unity was an excellent meanes of Concord We do not envy the Bishop of Rome or any Honour which the Catholick Church did allow him But moderne Papacy which they seek to obtrude upon us is rather as Nilus saith the cause of all dissentions and Controversies of the Christian World Lastly To his demand concerning the English Court and Church Whether I would condescend to the rejection of Monarchy and to the extirpation of Episcopacy for the misgovernment of Princes or abuses of Prelats I answer No But this will not advantage his cause at all for three Reasons First never were any such abuses as these objected either to Princes or Prelates in England Secondly we seek not the extirpation of the Papacy but the reduction of it to the primitive constitution Thirdly Monarchy and Episcopacie are of divine institution so is not a papall Sovereignty of Jurisdiction His parliamentary Prelacie hath more sound then weight We need not be beholden to Parliament for the Justification of our Prelacie as he will finde that undertakes it Sect. 6. We are now come to the grounds of our separation from the Court of Rome Reader observe and wonder All this while they have been calling to us for our grounds they have declaimed that there can be no just grounds of such a separation They have declared in the Hypothesis that we had no grounds but to comply with the Humours of a lustful Prince Now we present our grounds being reduced to five Heads First The most intolerable extortions of the Roman Court committed from age to age without hope of Remedy Secondly Their most unjust usurpations of all Rights Civil Ecclesiastical sacred and prophane of all orders of men Kings Nobles Bishops c. Thirdly the malignant influence and effects of this forreign jurisdiction destructive to the right ends of Ecclesiastical Discipline producing dis-union in the Realm factions animosities between the Crown and the Mitre intestine discord between the King and his Barons bad intelligence with neighbour Princes and forreign wars Fourthly a list of other inconveniences or rather mischiefs that did flow from thence as to be daily subject to have new Articles of faith obtruded upon them exposed to manifest perill of Idolatry to forsake the Communion of three parts of Christendome to approve the Popes rebellion against general Councels and to have their Bishops take an Oath contrary to their oath of Allegeance to maintaine the Pope in his rebellious usurpations Lastly The weakness of the Popes pretences and the exemption of the Brittannique Church from forreign jurisdiction by the Decree of the General Councel of Ephesus Certainly he ought to have shewed either that these grounds conjoyned were not sufficient or that they were not true or that there were other remedies But he is well contented to pass by them all in silence which is as mueh as yeeld the Cause Thus he It is then of little concernment to examine whether his complaints be true or false since he does not shew there was no other remedy but division What is it of little concernment to examine whether the grounds be sufficient or no It belongs not to me to shew that there was no other remedy that is to prove a negative but if he will answer my grounds it belongs to him to shew that there was other remedy yet so far as a negative is capable of proof I have shewed even in this Chapter that there was no other remedy I shewed that the Pope and his Court were not under the Jurisdiction of the King or Church of England so as to call them to a personal account I shewed that the English Nation had made their addresses to the Pope in Councel out of Councel for ease from their oppressions in diversages and never found any but what they carved out to themselves at home after this manner He adds And much more since it is known if the authority be of Christs institution no just cause can possibly be given for its abolishment This is a very euthumematical kinde of arguing If the sky fall we shall have larks He knows right well that it is his assumption which is latent that we deny that we have abolished any thing which either Christ or his Church did institute He proceedeth But most because all other Catholick Countries might have made the same exception which England pretends yet they remaine still in communion with the Church of Rome and after we have broke the Ice do not hold it reasonable to follow our example Few or no Catholick Countries have sustained so great oppression from the Court of Rome as England hath which the Pope himself called his Garden of delight a Well that could not be drawn dry All other Countries have not right to the Cyprian Priviledge to be exempt from forreign jurisdiction as Brittaine hath Yet all other Catholick Countries do maintaine their owne Priviledges inviolated and make themselves the last Judge of their grievances from the Court of Rome Some other Catholick Countries know how to make better use of the Papacy then England doth yet England is not alone in the separation so long as all the Easterne Southerne Northern and so great a part of the Westerne Churches have separated themselves from the Court of Rome and are separated by them from the Church of Rome as well as we yet if it were otherwise we must live by precepts not by examples Nay saith he The former ages of our Countrey had the same cause to cast the Popes Supremacy out of the Land yet rather preferred to continue in the peace of the Church then attempt so destructive an innovation Mistake not us so much we desire to live in the peaceable communion of the Catholick Church as well as our Ancestors at far as the Roman Court will give us leave neither were our Ancestors so stupid to see themselves so fleeced and trampled upon and abused by the Court of Rome and to sit still in the mean time and blow their noses They did by their lawes exclude the Popes supremacy out of England so farre as they judged it necessary for the tranquility of the Kingdome that is his patronage of Churches his Legates and Legantine Courts his buls and sentences and excommunications his legislative power his power to receive appeals except onely in cases where the Kingdome did give consent They threatned him further to make a wall of separation between him and them We have more experience then our Ancestours had that their remedies were not Soveraigne or sufficient enough that if we
give him leave to thrust in his head he will never rest untill he have drawne in all his body after whilest there are no bonds to hold him but nationall lawes Lastly he pleads that the pretences on which the English Schism was originally made were farre different from those which I now take up to defend it What inward motives or impulsives our Reformers had to separate from the Court of Rome God knoweth not I that concerneth themselves not me But that there were sufficient grounds of separation I demonstrate that concerneth the cause that concerneth me Their inanimadvertence might make the separation lesse Justifiable to them but no lesse lawfull in it self or to us These causes are as just grounds to us now to continue the separation as they could have bin to them then if they had been observed to make the separation and most certainly they were then observed or the greatest part of them as the liberty of the English Church the weakness of the Popes pretences the extortions of the Court of Rome their gross usurpation of all mens rights and the inconsistency of such a forreigne discipline with the right ends of Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction These things he ought to have answered in particular if he would have said any thing at all but it seemeth he chose rather to follow the counsell of Alcibiades to his Uncle when he found him busie about his accounts that he should study rather how to give no account Sect. 7. The next thing which I set forth was the due moderation of the Church of England in their reformation This he calleth a very pleasant Topick Quâ—cquid recipitur recipitur ad modum recipientis The saddest Subjects were very pleasant Topicks to Democritus The first part of our moderation was this we deny not to other Churches the true being of Churches nor possibility of Salvation nor separate from the Churches but from their accidentall errours and this I shewed to have been S. Cyprians moderation whereby he purged himselfe and his party from Schisme neminem judicantis c. judging no man removing no man from our Communion for difference in opinion This is saith he to declare men Idolaters and wicked and neverthelesse to communicate with them reconciling thus light to darkenesse and making Christ and Antichrist to be of the same Society I spake of our forbearing to censure other Churches and he answers of communicating with them That is one aberration from the purpose But I may give him more advantage then that in this case It is one thing to communicate with materiall Idolaters Hereticks or Schismaticks in their Idolatry Heresy or Schisme which is altogether unlawfull and it is another thing to communicate with them in pious offices and religious duties which may in some cases be very lawfull The orthodox Christians did sometimes communicate with the Hereticall Arreans And the primitive Catholicks with the Schismaticall novations in the same publick divine offices as I have formerly shewed in this treatise But they communicated with them in nothing that did favour the Heresie of the one or the Schisme of the other The Catholicks called the Donatists their brethren and professed that they were obliged to call them brethren as we read in Optatus But the Donatists would not vouchsafe to acknowledge the Catholicks for their brethren upon this refuters principles that a man cannot say his owne Religion is true but he must say the opposite is false nor hold his owne certain without censuring another mans Yet it was not the Catholicks but the Donatists that did mingle light and darkness together These following princlples are so evident and so undeniable that no man can question the truth of them without questioning his owne judgement That particular Churches may fall into errours 2. That all errors are not essentials or fundamentals 3. That those errours which are not in essentials do not destroy the true being of a Church 4. That neverthelesse every one is bound according to the just extent of his power to free himself from them To dote so upon the body as to cherish the Ulcers and out of hatred to the Ulcers to destroy the being of the body are both extreams That is so to dote upon the name of the Church as to cherish the errours of it or to hate the errours so much as to deny the being of the Church Preposterous zeal which is like Hell hot without light maketh errours to be essentials and different opinious different Religions because it will not distinguish between the good foundation which is Christ and the hay and stubble that is builded thereupon The second proofe of our moderation is our inward Charity we leave them unwillingly as a man would leave his fathers or his brothers house infected with the Plague desirous to returne so soone as it is cleansed His answer is that if we did manifest it by our externall works they might have occasion to believe it I did prove it by our externall works namely our daily prayers for them in our Letany and especially our solemn aniversary prayer for their conversion every good Friday though we are not ignorant how they do as solemnly anathematise us the day before The third proof of our moderation was this that we do not challenge a new Church a new Religion or new holy orders we obtrude no innovation upon others nor desire to have any obtruded upon our selves we pluck up the weeds but retaine all the plants of saving truth To this he objects two things First to take away goodnesse is the greatest evill and nothing is more mischievous then to abrogate good lawes and good practises This is not to fight with us but with his owne shadow I speake of taking away errours and he speaketh against taking away goodnesse I speak of plucking up weeds and he speaks against abrogating good lawes and practises yea of taking away the new Testament Where is the contradiction between us These are no weeds but good plants We retain whatsoever the primitive Fathers judged to be necessary or the Catholick Church of this present age doth unanimously retaine which is sufficient We retaine other opinions also and practises but not as necessary Articles or Essentials Let him not tell us of the Scots reformation who have no better an opinion of it then it deservs His second Ojection is that he who positively denies over addes the contrary to what he takes away he that makes it an article that there is no Purgatory no Masse no prayer to Saints has as many Articles as he who holds the contrary Therefore this kind of moderation is a pure folly It may be he thinketh so in earnest but we know the contrary We do not hold our negatives to be Articles of Faith How should a negative that is a non em be a fundamentall This is a true proposition ether there is a purgatory or there is not a purgatory But this other is a fals proposition either it is an Article
a single head of Power Jurisdiction for to me he seemeth to hover between two as if he would gladly say more for the Pope if he could Thirdly it followeth and consequently to his Successors I like the general proposition well enough and consequently to his Successours For the reason of the first institution being of perpetual necessity seemeth to imply strongly that such an headship of order ought to continue in the Church or at least may lawfully be continued in the Church But I like not his application to the Bishops of Rome or his Successors in the See of Rome That consequence is but like a Rope of sand There is no necessity at all that he who succeedeth a man in a particular Bishoprick should succeed him in a higher office which is not annexed to that Bishoprick As if a man should argue thus Such a Bishop of such a See dyed Lord Chancellour of England therefore all succeeding Bishops of the same See must succeed him likewise in the Chancellor ship of England If the Catholick Church do nominate the Biâ—hop of Rome for the time that is another matter but that is no perpetuity to the Bishops of that See for ever whether the Church will or not Certainly Christ did leave the chief Mesuagery of his family to his Spouse that is the Church and not to any single servant further then as subservient to his spâ—use But to make Rome to be the Mâ—stris of the Church as this Resuter doth and the Bishop oâ— Rome the Master of the Church is sâ—ch an indignity and affront as no husband would tolerate much less Christ who is proposed to all husbands as the perfect pattern of coâ—jugal love Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church His argument drawn from the vicissitude of humane affaires cuâ—s the throat of his cause for what priviledge hath Rome from this vicissitude more then other places It may be demolished and destroyed by enemies it may be swallowed by an earthquake as some great Cities have been it may become heretical or Mahumetan And in all these cases must it still continue Mistris of the Church That were an hard condition Nemâ— sapiens Ligat sibimanus The Church nâ—ver disposeth so of her offices that she may not be able to move the rudder according to the change of wind and weather and to change the mesuagery of Ecclesiastical affaires according to the vicissitide of humane things Let not the Refuter trifle between a primacy of order and a Supremacy of power a Tyranny and an Anarchy are the two extreams The Church may shake off tyranny and yet not vanish into a pure Anarchy nor the frame thereof be utterly dissolved these are but made Dragons Between a tyranny and an Anarchy there is an Aristocracy which was the ancient Regiment of the Christian Church they know no Monarch but Christ their spiritual King A primacy of order is as sufficient nay more sufficient in this case to prevent all these dangers which he seemeth to fear and to procure all those advantages which he mentioneth than a Supremacy of power And I hold it a reasonable proposition that whosoever is admitted to the one should disclaime the other In the next passage he forgetteth himself over much when he maketh the Popes principality to be the bridle which our Saviour hath put into the mouth of his Church So he makes the Church to be the Beast and the Popes office to be to ride upon the Church No he quite mistaketh the matter Our Saviour hath put the bridle into the hand of his Church Dâ—c Ecclesiae tell it to the Church not into the mouth of his Church and the Pope at the best is but one of the Churches Escuriers Next he proclaimeth the advantages of the Papacy He doth well to cry up his cause No man proclaimeth in the market that he hath rotten wares to sell. But it is but with an if If this authority were duly preserved and governed no dissention in faith or discipline nay not any war among Christian Princes could annoy the world What Christian Prince can chuse but be glad to have an arbitrator so prudent so pâ—ous so disinterressed as a good Pope should be He brings to my mind our old distinction between Plato and Aristotle Plato script sit somnians Aristoteles vigilans Plato writ dreaming and Aristotle waking the one looked upon men as they ought to be and the other as they were which was much more proper for one that was to write politicks If all things were as they should be we should have a brave world buâ— if we look upon the case without an if or as he should be we shall finde the Papacy as it is settled or would have been so far from deserving these â—ulogiums which he gives it that it hath been the cause either procreating or conserving or both of all the Schisms and all the greater Ecclesiastical dissentions in Christendom and rather an incentive to waâ— for its own interest and advantage then a means of peace and reconciliation among Christian Princes But now Reader look to thy self that thou receive no hurt for he hath undertaken to let us see all the arrowes which I have shot against them falling down upon mine own head Yes at the Greek Calends when an oblique and a perpendicular motion are the sâ—me But let us see how he attempts to prove it Because the Papacy stands firme and strong in all these Countries which have resisted the Pope when they conceived that he encroached on their liberties c. whereas as the Reformation has made England an headless Synagogue without brotherhood or order Neither â—o nor so the Eastern Southerne and Northerne Churches admit no Papacy nor any thing higher then the chiefâ—st Patriarch A great part of the Westerne Churches have shaken off the Roman yoke and the rest who do still acknowledge the Papacy do it with such cautions and reservations and restrictions especially France and Sicilly that I think the Cardinal Legate in the Councel of Trent had reason to say that he would rather perswade the Pope to give up his Keys to St. Peter then hold them upon such tearms I believe not one of them all doth admit such a Papacy as the Roman Court endeavoured to have obtruded upâ—n them Whereas he stileth England an headless Synagogue without brotherhood or order he seeth or may see that for order we are as much for it as himself for Christian Brotherhood we maintaine it three times larger then himself and for his headless Synagogue they want no head who have Christ for a spiritual head a General Councel for an Ecclesiastical head and a gracious Christian Prince for a political head That Title would better have become themselves about two or three moneths since who sometimes have two or three heads sometimes a broken head sometimes never an head The Protestants do not attempt to make themselves a distinct body from the rest of the
agree that she hath introduced errors and abuses into Christian Religion They agree that she obtrudes sinfull Innovations as necessary conditions of her Communion They agree that the separation is only from these errors and abuses and are ready to return to a Communion when these errors and abuses are removed So in effect they say the very same thing neither more nor less But because these errors and abuses are inherent in their Confessions Liturgy and forms of administration of holy Sacraments therefore some say that they are separated from the externall communion of the Roman Church And because these errors and abuses are but adventicious accidently inherent and may be and ought to be removed therefore others say that their separation is not from the Communion of the Roman Church as it was and may be and ought to be but only from the errors and abuses The one speaks simply and absolutely from the errors and abuses The others speak respectively and secundum quid from the externall communion of the Roman Church that is so far as it is corrupted by these errors and abuses and not further and so in sense they say the very same thing And therefore it is meer sophistry and a groundlesse cavill to argue from their separation from errours to their separation from truths and from their separation in abuses to their separation in the Sacraments themselves Suppose one who is appointed to minister diet to another will give him nothing but poisonous meats And he knowing it will not receive it tell me who is the refuser he that will not eate poison or he that will not give him healthfull food The Roman Catholicks doe professe themselves to be as loyall to their Soveraign as any of his best Subjects And that they are as ready as any others to give assurance of it by oath Yet they say there are some clauses inserted in the form prescribed which they may not they dare not take If any man should accuse them hereupon to have deserted the communion of the English Monarchy in point of loyalty they would be angry and they had good reason for it Upon the same equity let them forbeare to accuse us of leaving the communion of their Church in Sacraments when we only left their abuses Distinguish between old institutions and new errours and the case is cleer Likewise supposing but not granting that we were not chased away by the censures of the Court of Rome but had out of conscience separated our selves from their errours in such manner as I have declared yet the crime or guilt of the Schism sticks close to them A conscientious Christian is as much chased away by imposing upon him the performance of sinfull duties as by the thunderbolt of excommunication Schism is a voluntary separation but our separation was no more voluntary on our parts then the three children were willing to be cast into the fiery furnace that is they did chuse rather to die Innocents then to live Nocents to suffer burning rather then to commit Idolatry To be separated might be our consequent will because we could not help it But it was farr enough from our antecedent will or that we did desire it If we should see one pushed and thrust out of an house with Swords and Whips and Clubs would any man in his right wits call this man a Fugitive and a Runaway or accuse him to have forsaken the House Sin is a more dangerous Edge-tool then a Sword and the wrath of God heavier then the weight of Clubs and the secret lashes of a guilty Conscience sharper then Whips If they did impose upon us a necessity of doing sinfull duties and offending God and wounding our own Consciences whilest we staied among them then we did not leave them but they did drive us from them Ioseph came into his Masters house to doe his duty his Mistrisse tempts him to Sinne. Ioseph flies away What From his duty No. But from the offence of God and she that thought to hold him was the person that did drive him away He urgeth that nothing but necessity of Salvation can justify such a separation as he hath fancied to himself from the crime of Schism Let it be soâ—â— He might have spared his Authours in the margent to prove it His defect lies on the other side Doth not he think it necessary to Salvation for every man so farre as he can to escheu deadly sinne Or thinks he that a man may live securely in known errours contrary to the dictate of his Conscience without any prejudice to Salvation This was our condition But yet there was Salvation to be had in the Church of Rome So it was not necessary to Salvation to make such a separation A strange consequence just like this other God hath mercy in store for sinners therefore it is not necessary to Salvation to forsake sinne Gods extraordinary mercy is one thing our duty another Because his compassion is great towards his poor Creatures that offend out of invincible ignorance is it therefore not necessary to Salvation for those who are convinced of their errours to follow the commandement of God and the light of their own Conscience This is so evident that it admits no doubt He adds That we separated our selves not only from the Roman Church but from all Christian Churches in the World as if there had been no Christian Church in the World in whose communion we could finde Salvation whence it will follow that at that time in their conceits there was no true Church upon Earth This he inculcates over and over in severall places according to his manner And in his ninth Chapter and fifth Section he triumpheth in it where he endeavours to prove out of Calvine and Chillingworth and Doctor Potter that Protestants separated themselves from the whole World That is as he expresseth himself in other places from all Christian Churches And particularly from the Roman Grecian Armenian and Aethiopian Church and all other ancient Churches whatsoever If it be so then he may truely call us Penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos Of the Roman Church in particular and how that possibility of Salvation in any Church is not in true reason impeditive of its just reformation we have already spoken sufficiently It remaineth to give an answer concerning our separation from these Eastern Churches Our particular reformation cannot be said to be any separation from them For they doe neither pretend to be the Catholick or universall Church as the Roman doth nor challenge any jurisdiction over the Britannick Churches as the Court of Rome doth neither doe we deny them the right of Christian Churches or the right hand of fellowship In coordinate Churches whereof one is not subordinate to another some Churches reforming themselves and not censuring or condemning others which are unreformed whilest they preserve their duty entire to the Oecumenicall Church and its representative a generall Councell doe not