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A94272 A treatise of the schism of England. Wherein particularly Mr. Hales and Mr. Hobbs are modestly accosted. / By Philip Scot. Permissu superiorum. Scot, Philip. 1650 (1650) Wing S942; Thomason E1395_1; ESTC R2593 51,556 285

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rather of Luther the whole Catholick Church consisting of divers Kingdoms in which England is comprised did obey divers Princes were governed by divers civil Lawes and Statutes yet they worshiped God but in one faith and in one sacrifice were sanctified with the same Sacraments did acknowledge the same spiritual Rector the Bishop of Rome Then arose Luther Henry the eighth Queen Elizabeth c. Who brake Communion with the whole world to take away the sacrifice of the whole Church and the greater part of the Sacraments and the holy rites to revolt from the Bishop of Rome all the Church besides persevering in the same unity worship and obedience which before it did profess Who therefore doth not see that they have revolted from the Church and erected altar against altar if they have any and have been the sole Authors of the divided unity of the Church I add that Schism is alwayes a dividing of an united body or a separation of a part from the whole preexistent or fore being now the Catholick Church was an united body existent before Luther from which the Protestants might go out and divide themselves but the Protesants seeing they were no where could make no body from whence the Catholicks could recede therefore the Protestants could onely first make the division and blow up the Rebellion The other often heard phantastick refuge wherewith when these are branded with novelty like men in a desperate naufrage they catch at any broken reed namely that they always were of us and amongst us and so continued till they were cast out of us To the first part I answer That till Henry the eighth they were indeed amongst us that is all their progenitors were Catholicks this every man in the testaments and records of each family can witness for the world till then knew no other all publick profession of Religion was that To fly to interiours that is to say that they were in their hearts Protestants were to recur to divination which were more then childish in things of this nature when all exteriour acts contradict any such dreams and yet to this clear non-sense they are put being compelled to assert their Church for above a Thousand yeers to have been invisible as it is understood under the notion of a body separated from the Roman you will see it in Whittaker in his 2. and 3. Controversie p. 479. Field seeing how destructive this Tenent would be in his 10. C. Accounts it foolish to say that a Church should not have always known professors and White in his defence of the way c. 4. p. 790. Saith positively that Religion is false if it cannot shew a continual descent yet p. 520. he is not ashamed to say that their Church hath had indeed always succession but not visible so that being pressed to shew the real svccession he is constrained to recur to this ridiculous divination of mens interiour Protestancie though they professed otherwise Which contradictory shist of their's were enough to destroy their pretended Church Prideaux in his ninth Lesson of the invisibility of the Church after many braggs comes to this poor refuge and beats about like a man desperate to save his case upon a broken reed or distracted sentence in any obsolute or forlorn Author But sa I noted They will say that they divided not the Church neither did they recede from it but were cast out of it by excommunication of the Pope and therefore not they but the Pope was the Author of this division but this helpeth them nothing For to omit that excommunication is a punishment which is inflicted upon such as go out of the Church not so much casting them out of the Church as depriving them of the participation of common benefits thereof to omit this it is notoriously known to all that Henry the eighth Luther and Queen Elizabeth went out of the Church before they were excommunicated as being condemned by their own proper judgments and so they separated themselves and before any excommunication made the Schism in punishment whereof they were excommunicated touching Henry the eighth it is manifest that he was excommunicated for his disobedience and contumacy in grievous crimes and Queen Elizabeth by and by when she had gotten the Crown upon her she seeing the Pope difficult in declaring her lawful title unto it not for her religion for then she had not changed it but for illegitemacy even according to Acts of our Parliaments under her Father broke off all Communion with the Church of God So Camden in Elizabeth The English also compiled a book of Canons wherein they also confess they went out of the Church of Rome therefore it is a frivolous thing that they pretend they went not out but were driven out of the Church They may perchance reply that they were as amongst us so of us before this division and so are yet because it is sufficient to incorporate any body into the true Church of Christ if he beleeveth the Creed of the Apostles as here Protestants do To this I answer First that in some cases this may be enough yes even to beleeve Jesus Christ to be the Son of God is sufficient as in the case of the Eunuch and such like that is an implicite faith may suffice till other necessary truths are sufficiently propounded For the Gospel had and hath a time of growth in every new Christian In these and such like cases it is sufficient not to mis beleeve formerly other truths to constitute a man a member of Chirst's Church I answer Secondly That the same God who trusted his Church with this hath as well entrusted her with all other necessary truths The Holy Ghost hath taught her omnem veritatem all and every necessary truth as our blessed Saviour promised which she pro re nata as heresies pullulate declares to her children that they may be able to avoid the danger of swallowing stones insteed of bread These truths thus by supreme power propounded to the faithful they are obliged to receive by obeying their Prelats who have a charge over their souls according to that of the Apostle obedite praepesitis vestris c. Hence the Nicene Fathers declared as a most fundamental truth Christ Jesus to be Deum de Deo et consubstantialem Patri c. to be God of God consubstantial to the Father c. which is not in the Apostles Creed neither is it there that the Holy Ghost is God nor the Fathers of Nice did declare that great truth because yet heresies touched not that point as St. Basile and St. Gregory Nariane teach yet I beleeve that every true Christian will esteem it necessary to beleeve these truths it is easie to descend to many more particulars which all Christians admit to be necessary though not expressed in the Apostles Creed as concerning the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist c. The Church hath therefore always from the beginning to this day beleeved and practised
remaining obedient to the civil Magistrate can be guilty of Schism because they do so far subject Ecclesiastical persons and causes to civil magistracy that they do scarcely acknowledge any Ecclesiastical power at all contradistinct from the Temporal in a Christian Common-wealth except in things internal as Mr. Hobbs holds Chap. 17. n. 21 22. c. though afterwards he gives some smal nothings to them he will have the Prince supreme even in spirituals c. 18. n. 13. and therefore they must depend on the Prince in the use of all and at last in his last chapter and number he repeales all he had granted The truth is he is so zealous in his structure of a civil Common-wealth wherein he hath some excellent things that he either neglects or reduceth the spiritual common-weath or Church almost to a Platonical inexistent Idea Reason tells us that as natural so moral powers and offices are known to be specifically different and not onely numerically distinct by their several operations the difference of operations is known by their several objects or sometime by the very several tending to the same specifical object as Philosophers know Now the offices of ecclesiastical and civil magistracy are obviously known to have these ways to declare their real and specifical differences St. Paul in his fifth chapt to the Hebrews even from the very beginning sufficiently declares it from their operations and objects and tells us that the Priest is taken to his office from amongst men by men is understood the temperal power from whence this other power is severed by St. Paul I wish the ingenuous Reader to peruse it all and compare Mr. Hobbs his grounds to St. Paul and what I annex in the ensuing discourse I am sure besides scriptures the judgement o● ancient Christians was fa● otherwise There were bounds for ecclesiastical and temporal magistracy alwayes acknowledged great Athanasius in his Epistle to these who observe Solitary life to this purpose reciteth and applaudeth an● epistle of Hosius of Cordub● to Constantius the Arriar● Emperor Cease I beseech thee and remember that th●● art mortal fear the day of judgment intermeddle not with ecclesiastical matters neither do thou command us in this kinde but rather learn them of us to thee God hath committed the Empire to us he hath committed the things that belong to the Church and as he who with malicious eyes carpeth thine Empire gainsayeth the ordinance of God so do thou also beware least in drawing to thee Ecclesiastical matters thou be made guilty of a horrible crime It is written give ye the things that are Caesars to Caesar and the things that are Gods to God Therefore neither is it lawful for us in earth to hold the Empire neither hast thou O Emperor power over incense and sacred things This extent is far beyond internals or Mr. Hobb's limits St. Ambrose also to Valentinian in his fifth book of Epistles in his oration of delivering up of Churches Valentinian by ill advise of his mother Justina an Arrian required to have one Church deputed in Milan for the Arrians saith thus We pay that which is Caesars to Caesar and that which is Gods to God Tribute is Caesars it is not denied The Church is Gods it may not verily be yeelded to Caesar because the Temple of God cannot be Caesars right Which no man can deny but it is spoken with the honour of the Empire for what is more honorable then that the Emperor be said to be the Son of the Church for 〈◊〉 good Emperor is within the Church not above the Church He is diametpically opposite to Mr. Hobbs Out of these and infinite other texts or monuments of antiquity it is most clear that all Christians grounded upon Scriptures as they conceived did beleeve that the Church taken rigidly and strictly was understood to consist onely of spiritual men and a city or a common-wealth did and doth import a body of Christians considered as not consecrated to divine service and functions but as members of the civil or temporal body and that therefore though as civil persons they were subject onely to this or that city or country namely in civil or temporal things yet in Ecclesiastical they might be subject to Ecclesiastical power though sometimes seated in forrain countries Spiritual things are not circumscribed by place and consequently my own temporal Prince according to St. Ambrose might be a fellow subject with me in this which depends not at all upon the temporal power but is wholy of another and a higher nature though Mr. Hobbs denies it which I wonder at reason me-thinks will necessarily carry us to prefer spiritual before temporal and therefore St. Peter in his first Epistle Chap. 2. calls temporal magistracy a human creature that is in a peculiar way derived from man But St. Paul Acts 20. speaking of Ecclesiastical magistracy saith the Holy Ghost hath placed you to rule the Church of God and St. Ignatius contemporary to the Apostles gives us his own and the sense of Christians in those days when he exhorts the people of Smyrna in his Epistle to them first to honour God next the Bishop and then the King They are not therefore in the sense of Christians the same thing a Bishop and Christian King nor their office the same the one tending immediately to things which belong to God in order to souls The other immediatly to things of this world namely to the external peace of Subjects though secondarily with reference to God also but the Ecclesiastical by supernatural mediums the other properly by natural which is more remote and indirect and therefore St. Paul to the Hebrews cap. 5. saith this power is conversant circa ea quae ad Deum sunt which is no where simply asserted of the other and in the law those are called Sors Domini in a peculiar strain And to speak truth Mr. Hobbs had done very well if he had taken St. Paul along with him in framing his new model of a Christian City who distinguisheth each members office very often All authority is not in the Princes but Hebrews 13. lay people are commanded to obey their Provosts and to be subject to them c. where he sufficiently distinguisheth the Tribunals No Christian can be ignorant of the authority which the Holy Ghost giveth to Praelates regere Ecclesiam Dei to govern the Church of God so that this spiritual government is of God and it is a government and therefore not onely declarative or instructive as Mr. Hobbs saith even of Christ himself c. 17. n. 13. but it is a regitive power els S. Peter had most heavily transgressed his commission in adjudging Ananias and after his wife Saphira to present death for a spiritual crime St. Paul in his excommunicating the fornicator St. John and the rest had abused their power also which I touch in the seventh Chapter who went beyond pure declaration of their guilt expected not the cities sentence in it Mr.