them do not understand otherwis they would not cull out of it so many various texts against the Christian doctrin of good works and their merit so absolutely impertinent to that purpose that I cannot but be ashamed to see grave men to defend the caus so frivolously the works whose merit S. Paul disables there were apparently such as were don before conversion of which the abettours would have those works to be the caus works acted in Judaisme and Paganisme without Christ without the assistance of his grace without his command without his promis of reward for them end consequently without any acceptablenes they might have upon those grounds But what is all this to the disabling of Christian good works don in Christ by his speciall grace out of obedience to his command with a promis of everlasting reward and intrinsick acceptability thence accrewing Look if Gospel do not make out Christian merit in this point see if do no clearly speak forth both Christs word commanding his grace assisting his love accepting and the riches of his goodnes crowning all such good works don in him for his love with eternal reward Come ye blessed for I was hungry c. But this only by the way The occasion then of that sacred epistle being manifestly to make peace between two stickling barrettours as it required a great judgment and spirit in the author to write it well so could it admit but little of method in its progres And a man may easily discern that the Apostle turns himself now against the Jew then sodainly against the Gentile then to the Jew again still disabling all the utmost they could either of them do or pretend to do before their conversion as any way of ability and power to merit either it or the grace and life they had by it And it is to be noted too that wheras the Jew had three times more of plausibility on his side than the Gentile had St. Paul speaks least against him that was the weakest side and most oppressed but where he checks the Gentile once he rebukes the Jew three times and never lins till he had laid his insulting in the dust So proper it is to an ingenuous nature to withold the strong domineering party that the weaker and oppressed may gather a little heart and discern himself at least in as good a postur as his antagonist Now my purpos sith it is very like that of the good Apostles I shall not I hope be blamed for imitating so great a Doctour in his method And although to every one of my five chapters I do adjoin som generall contents as I have said yet are they not to be looked upon as confined to that place but that other matters will in each chapter and its severall paragraffs occurr and also those very contents be elsewhere hinted at for I do intermingle my topicks according as they seemed at any time conducing to the right understanding I aim at which I have don on purpos to keep up the appetite and refresh it with variety So in tasts an olla hath that good rellish which all the things contained in it without that generall mixture and seasoning would never have apart My Reader will see also that somthings are but slightly touched which he would think ought to have been more seriously prosecuted som again he will imagin too prolix others too often to appear and too sodainly to vanish like Virgills ghost Omnibus vmbra locis adero and all so interwoven that in one paragraff it can hardly be guessed what is to be handled in the next These and other such things which many may dislike I have a reason for and I hope my reader whose profit and pleasur I only wait upon will give me leav to use it A seasonable gentle air invites men abroad whom a strong wind would have kept within doors and I hope this my familiar discours may move many of my countrimen who would not have looked upon solid and studied controversies to read and perhaps recover that good disposition of mind I wish them even with their own pleasur and good liking Our land this last twenty years hath been in a chaos of confusion a Tohu and Bohu without either form or order and we all find our selves in a mist in a wood in a darknes almost invincible by our severall divisions and subdivisions of parties in the way of Faith But I hope that by the help of this Discours which is intended as a generall light unto all Books Sermons or Controversies wherby people are drawn into so many severall distracting opinions we shall find the way out at least know where we are My order and phrase be suited to the present times but the matter and purpos concealed in it of a lasting concernment Qui legit intelligat This is all I have to prefate and I wish no more but truth and peace to all and to the whole Israel of God FIAT LVX First Chapter There is no colour of reason or just title may move us to quarrell and judg one another with so much heat about Religion §. 1. Diversity of feuds THe applaus and honour of this world is a thing desired and pleasing to all persons from the Prince in the court to the Peasant in the cottage even as wealth and place by which it is atchieved Nor is there one of a thousand that follows not the inclination to the end be may attain it in that degree his condition is capable and they get it som by chance of birth and education som by industry and worth som by subtilty and wit Hence proceed those many high attempts we so much wonder at in this world for arts and trades began at first through a necessity of food and the conveniency we found in mutuall society such attempts I mean as were apt to lead the vulgar into a fit of admiration as be the two great excellencies of power and knowledg and their great atchievements that for defence of laws and kingdoms this for the adornment of nations and purer pleasurs of more refined intellects And both of these have many branches and kinds and each hath a diversity of graduall perfections He that cannot sway a Province will tirannise in his Parish and if he cannot appear abroad will domineere in his own hous so likewise on the other side what glory the emulous Plebeian sees given to higher spirits for sciences they cannot reach or for a supervisorship of Religion they may not hope for this by the contempt of the one and reformation of the other do they go about to compas in the world first by words and pen if they can write then if they multiply and grow strong enough by rude force and violence and still the pretens for all is cleanly and fair washed over that applaus and glory may both accompany strengthen and crown the design What strang things have been attempted by emperours and great captains and commanders upon earth all
in it nor do we move the plants to their growth and ripenes nor do we know our selves how these or any other things in nature are wrought Thus destitute are we of any rules of providence whereby this world is either set or kept in order that we neither prescribe them nor see them observed or do our selves understand them we are neither called to advise for the ordering of the being of things under us or is our help required for their conserving or our suffrage demanded for the putting a period to their existences And are not we in the mean time goodly rulers and disposers of the world that have neither hand in the making or guiding of it I knew once an innocent that took a fansy in his brain that he was master and disposer of all the burdens that came up in barges and lighters by a river that ran through the town and would constantly be upon the bridg at the hour they were to unload where standing very serious and attentive as soon as he saw the porters to carry forth out of any barge a burden of coal or corn or other provision he still bad them aloud and with autority to take it and carry it that way which he saw them inclined to go and all the day long he was never disobeyed Such masters and governours are we of this world with power to bid a bird to fly or ant to creep or wolf to run or heavens to move even as we see they do and so we are obeyed and no otherwayes nor no otherwayes do we know either what they will or ought to do We do indeed feed upon som creatures we either ensnare or which stand tame to our hands and tirannize over som others subjugating them either by subtilty or force will they nill they to our yoke but this is no more than the beast fish and birds do to one another And as for the ebbing and flowing of those several events and accidents that be proper only unto man as peace and war wealth and poverty arts policy religion and the like what a labyrinth is he in that enters into consideratition of their varieties and causes the ends and motives of them If religion be a thing so necessary to our salvation how is it that our good God left the gentiles for so many hundred years all over the face of the earth to walk after the errours of their mind in the blindnes and darknes of their understanding what had they done before they were born to deserv it and if they be so dealt withal without desert how does Gods justice appear And again if a particular religion be not necessary for example the Christian why did Christ our Lord put those poor harmles men his apostles to so many labours necessities and dangers of death to plant it in the world And how comes it that even this religion now revealed and preacht in the world makes so small progres and brings forth so little fruit among us Why should the Turk and his alcoran cast forth the only true religion out of all his Territories where it did once so gloriously triumph and fructifie Syria Egypt Africa Greece and heresies and schisms out of other places The assurance of our own souls immortality would conduce not a little to the exciting of our dull and drowsy spirits unto a more quick and lively care of our future bliss and so dull we are and doubtfull of all things that it were almost necessary we had it and yet we are God wot so far from that that we even doubt our selves whether we our selves have any thing immortal in us nor is there left an argument in reason to convince us of it Is it not a strang thing that man the most excellent of creatures upon earth should be so left to his own disposition to turn and swarve as he pleases either to right hand or left and by that means to fill the earth with injurious disorders and enormities of sin which might as well have ever remained innocent and peaceable and all other creatures both above and below us go on orderly in their cours prescribed by their maker without any irregularity or deviation Does not every good maister of a hous keep his whole family in order if he can and know how to do it And God wants neither wisdom power or goodnes that he should be either not desirous or ignorant or not able to make all actually good What chain of causes known to man may unriddle these things Are not all things in daily change both to Kingdoms in general and each mans particular person both in matter of fame wealth power and other accidents But how do all these things happen as they do what is the immediate caus efficient what the final where doth the justice appear Histories tell us of little else but warres battles desolations deluges translation of empires the rise and downfall of kingdoms in their power renown and civility alteration of states and lawes succession of deepest barbarisme to most high civility and again of most exquisite civility unto horridest barbarisme mutation of languages pestilences oppression and liberties of people c. By what lawes of the almighty are all these things ordered and what justice infers such heaps of misery upon feeble mankind especially since we see even with our eyes that all invasion which sets afoot the greatest and most oecumenick changes is generally unjust If we do but only consider the horrid turmoils that have been at times in our own countrey by the Romans and Brittons Brittons and Saxes Saxes and Normans Scotch and English the two houses of York and Lancaster nay but the meer troubles of these last twenty years from 1640. to 1660. whereof we have been spectators and sufferers nor will there any pen be able to set down the miseries we have undergone wherein rebellion prevailed over loialty dissimulation over truth tenant over Lord subject over King even to the murdering of that sacred person by a pretended form of justice in the face of the world without any caus exhibited against him but only his own defence against their rebellion and the depriving his loiall subjects of their estates liberties and lives souldiers all the land over hovering daily over our heads like ravens over sick and dying bodies c. What justice what providence appears to us in all these things Are we not as blind as beetles to discern it The iniquity of man we understand well enough but Gods justice in so ordering or permitting it who can discern and yet there is doubtles a reason in heaven for all What distinction appears in this world betwixt the just man and unjust save that uprightnes and honesty for the most part goes to the worst Is it not a mystery that so many innocent souls persons of most exact vertue and good conscience both towards God and man should walk up and down many of them hungry and half starved traduced and
restore the antient disciplin much abated by wars and factions recovered the exclesiastick investitures out of the hands of emperour Henricus who had invaded them and moved Christian princes to a war in the holy land for the caus of Jesus Christ there blasphemed where he should principally be honoured and the assistance of distressed Christianity against the Turk good works all and which none but he would have heeded to effect 10. Pape Innocent the second when Peter de Lions his antipope had filled Christendom with wars and factions and Peter de Bruis had no less corrupted their judgments with heresies against baptism temples almes deeds and offerings rose up and manfully fought them both for the recovery of truth and peace of Christianity in his tenth oecumenical councel at Lateran an 1139. 11. Some while after in the time of pape Alexander the third the Christian world was no less rent asunder both by the faction of a competitour of his called Victor the second and the heresies of the Waldenses or Albigenses against both which the said Pape called his eleventh Councel at Lateran an 1179 and made provision there most carefully against any the like disturbance upon such occasion 13. Pape Innocent the third did the world no les good service in his twelfth general councel at Lateran an 1215 where he judged and condemned the heresies of those times which infected and troubled the world censured abbot Joachim his book against Magister sententiarum and wicked Almaricus who denied the real presence and resurrection c. and exhorted all Christian princes to the recovery of the holy land which had been regained by the joint endeavours of the Christian world in Pape Vrban the seconds time Godfrey of Bullen being there made king of Jerusalem but after 90 years was lost again in the daies of pape Vrban the third whose successour Gregory the eight and his followers till this Innocent the third did much lament and labour to help the loss but Innocent had more hopes by reason that Baldwin earl of Flanders was then made emperour of Constantinople 13. Pape Innocent the fourth found a great deal of trouble in the world and to heal the malady he called a general synod at Lions an 1245 which was the thirteenth oecumenical councel against the cruelties of emperour Frederick who filled Christendom with wars and bloodshed whence arose the faction of the Gwelfs and Gibellines against the tirrany of the saracens the perfidiousnes of the greeks who plotted at Constantinople the destruction of all the Latines and against the irruption of the Tartarians who ruined Poland and Hungary 14. A little afterwards when now Michael Paleologus had got the empire of greece by the expulsion of Baldwin and the greeks began to fall back to som of their former errours denying the Holy Ghosts procession sacrifice in unleavened bread and some fasts so that much combustion happened upon this occasion in the oriental Church Pape Gregory the tenth called the fourteenth councel at Lions an 1274 for the healing these disorders recovery of the holy land and union of the Greeks 15. In the year 1311 when the knights Templers began to give some offence in the Christian world or at least the king of France and other princes pretended so and the Bogards and Beguines a kind of religious people in Germany sowed some errours up and down to the great scandal of people Pape Clement the fift called a councel at Vienna to rectify both as also for recovery of the holy land and reformation of discipline then much decayed in the Church 16. But still there was much division in the oriental part of the Church among the greeks who denied many of them the procession of the Holy Ghost from the second person of the Trinity the felicity of the blessed and purgatory in the Churches antient sens and the primacy of the Roman See which although they held in the primitive times for many ages together yet they sank into that dangerous errour by degrees for after that they had got an emperour in Constantinople absolute and independent they motioned in councels kept in those times for the most part in the oriental parts first that the byshop of that Sea for the honour of the empire might be made a Patriarch then afterwards that he might have place before other antient patriarchs who had the right of precedency before him and then at last they would have him independent as the emperour himself was in temporals thus by degrees running themselvs into schisms To prevent these errours and factions Pape Eugenius the fourth called the sixteenth general councel at Florence an 1439 where by means of Josephus patriarch of Constantinople and other grave grecian prelates there assembled the union betwixt the greeks and latins was made up 17. In the year 1512 was kept the seaventeenth councel at Lateran under Pape Julius the second and Leo the tenth to mitigate a great schisme raised by means of an episcopal conversion at Pisa called together by cardinal Caravaial and Sanseverin without the Papes autority both which came in here and submitted as also to bring Christian princes to mutual concord to stop the frequent argumentations that were too vehemently urged in schools out of Aristotle against the souls immortality and to hasten an expedition against the Turk 18. And lastly three Popes one after another Paulus Julius and Pius fought successively with equal resolution against Luther and Calvin and several others of their apostate priests for internal justification the possibility and merit of doing well the truth and efficacy of the seaven sacraments prayers for the dead intercession of saints and indulgences in the great oecumenical councel of Trent There have been in the Church besides these greater councels six hundred other national provincial diocesan synods over and above those which S. Peter kept with the apostles in Jerusalem which being called together upon several occurrencies were all licensed guided and directed by the Papes of those times who kept continual correspondence with the prelates while they sate in councel and if any synod either opposed him or swarved from his directions it was looked upon by the rest of Christendom as reprobate on that account I should be too tedious if I should declare the indefatigable industry high wisdom and piety of Popes in steering the Ship of the Church both in the calms of peace that she might not then lye hulling and idle but make good progress towards bliss and also in the strang storms and tempests that the malignity of this world hath raised against her which have been so great and various that one would have thought by the many leaks that sprang in her at times the excessive beatings of decuman billows upon her sides the dangerous hidden rocks on which she has dasht unawares and the greater apparent ones she has been carried upon by the violence of wind and weather not humanly to be avoided that she could never have lasted to this
Antichrist frog caterpillar serpent c. Besides the absence of the person we calumniate flout and expose to derision is a circumstance that does not a little aggravate the fact and renders it no less foolish and irrational than 't is unjust and rude It is a wonder that our Protestant byshops should countenance these disorders A wise woman will not hear her child call her neighbor Whore without the application of a just rebuke knowing that such like impudence being countenanced may imbolden him at last to call Her so too Indeed the judgment is already com home to our doors for now our byshops of England are as contumeliously treated in the pulpits by their own ministers as the byshop of Rome was by their connivance and applaus abused aforetime in the same place by the self-same persons Nor have ther been any in this land more furiously bent these last twenty years against our good King than they who to flatter our former princes most passionately reviled the Pope and the seed of those men who in the dayes of Edward the sixth Queen Elisabeth and King James plotted so vehemently against the Catholick Church and nobility even to their utter disgrace and ruin under a pretens of establishing our State were now the onely great fighting sticklers against our State and Monarchy I give only this note by the way to reach all men to do to another as they would others do to them and no othewaies for God is just and punishes all iniquity of men oftentimes with those very rods and scorpions which themselves used before to plague their innocent neghbours who when they knew the justice of God yet would they not understand that they which do such things are worthy of death and not only they who do them but they also who consent and yield compliance to the doers But that I may a little lay open to my countreymen the unreasonablenes of our proceedings in hating and reviling a Person whom Catholicks on the contrary do so much esteem and love to what I have already said let thus much be added That the Pope is one whose whole life and study is to defend innocence promote concord and maintain unity of Faith in the world nor is ther any man but he alone that looks to the general safety of all Christianity and in all times like a faithful pastour he hath so don it as if it were not so much his office to do it as his nature And this we might easily see if we would look over antient stories and not suffer our selves to be misled by the reports of those who think themselves undon if he that would curb their extravagancies should com to be thought of according to his true deserts I might make it good in many particulars but I will content my self onely to run over briefly the eighteen general councels that have been in several ages in the Christian world and their results and motives wherby men may be perswaded to think that the Pope is so far from what we in England are made to conceiv of him that he is the only man that hath fought in all times for the unity of faith for concord and the good of all Christendom when other byshops and believers under him began many of them to revolt and disturb our welfar Nor had we had any thing left us at this day either of truth or unity humanly speaking had not he been set over us and watched to make and keep us happy even against som of our wills 1. Arrius a priest in Alexandria had seduced many priests deacons nuns byshops and princes to beleev amiss against the divinity of Jesus Christ our Lord when Pape Sylvester rose up against him and fought stoutly for the honour of our Messias in his general councel at Nice in the year 325. and so did other Popes his successours after him for som hundred years together 2. Pape Damasus in the second general councel at Constantinople with the like spirit of fortitude maintained as valiantly the divinity of the Holy Ghost against Macedonius priest and byshop of Constantinople and Eunomius that insolent Cappadocian and all their retinue as he did likewise that of Christ an 381. 3. When Nestorius a byshop with his priest Anastasius gave great scandals in Constantinople by denying the virgin Mary to be mother of God for that in Christ they said were two persons and one of them was the son of the virgin the other son of God Pape Celestin stood up and quelled them and all their adherents in his councel at Ephesus in the year 430. 4. Pape Leo in a fourth generall councell at Chalcedon an 450. stopped the mouthes of Eutyches an Abbot in Constantinople and Dioscorus deacon in Alexandria who by their great dislike of Nestorius opinion ran into the other extream and affirmed Christ our Lord to have not only one person but one nature too which was as scandalous and as much against the faith of beleevers as was the former 5. In the fifth general councel at Constantinople an 553. when all the oriental part of the Church was in a combustion about the three heads or contents of Theodore byshop of Mopsuesten an epistle of Ibas and Theodoret byshop of Cyrus his writings against S. Cyril who had been all three honourably mentioned in the councel of Chalcedon and yet their writings were then found very scandalous and faulty Pape Vigilius though very sick and weak yet by his writings from his chamber he laboured abundantly and to good effect to asswage the feud 6. Pape Agatho in the sixth general synod at Constantinople an 680. when Cyrus Sergius Macarius and many other learned unquiet priests and byshops monothelites had spread the Eutichian heresy under other notions and taught that Christ had but one will and operation with much offence to the people he rose up and manfully resisted and subdued them 7. Pape Adrian combated no less for the use of images and crucifix against Gregorius Neocaesariensis Paul patriarch of Constantinople and several other Iconoclasts who tore and preached them down contrary to the judgment and practis both of the Christians then living and all their predecessors in the seventh general councel at Nice an 787. And in one and the same place was maintained by the whole catholick world both the images and divinity of the crucified Messias 8. Not long after in the eight general councel at Constantinople an 869 Pape Adrian the second defended the innocence of the great patriarch Ignatius whom suttle Photius by the help of some potentates in Constantinople had expelled his byshoprick and put himself in his place miserably harassing and vexing both the good prelate Ignace and all his adherents to the great disturbance of the East who were all in a hot feud about it 9. In the ninth general councel at Lateran an 1122 when after infinity of troubles the Church had recovered her peace pape Callixtus the second like a good vigilant pastour laboured to