Church i. e. who consent not in all things with the See Apostolick But lest these words being thus inserted by the Pope himself should be interpreted to the disadvantage of other Churches and particularly that of Constantinople The Patriarch makes a Preface to that Subscription by way of Protestation wherein after declaring the reception of the Popes letters and congratulating the hopes of Vnion he manifests his own desire of peace and his willingness to refuse the communion of all Hereticks For saith he I look on those most holy Churches of your elder and our new Rome as both making but one Church And after declaring his assent to the decrees of the four General Councils he adds That those who opposed them he judged fallen off à Sanct â Dei generali Apostolicâ Ecclesiâ from the holy Catholick and Apostolick Church Now when the Patriarch was thus careful to explain himself so as to assert that the Church of Rome and that of Constantinople made but one Church when he adds what he means by the Catholick Church viz. the truely General and Apostolical Church inferr as much from Hormisda's words as you will I am sure you can do little to your purpose from the Patriarchs taking them in the sense he explains himself in by this Protestation So that the meaning of them is only this that as he judged the Church of Rome a member of the Catholick Church whose Vnity required that those who were out of communion in one Church should be so with the rest so he consented to acknowledge them justly excommunicated whom the Church of Rome would have to be so So that hence nothing ariseth to your purpose more then will equally advance the authority of any other particular Church whose excommunications did oblige the whole Church as we have seen already in the case of Sinope and Ptolemais You proceed to another Testimony of St. Austin addressing himself to the Donatists telling them That the succession of the Roman Bishops is the rock which the proud gates of Hell overcome not thereby insinuating that the very succession of those Bishops is in some true sense the Catholick Church But from whence doth it appear that the succession of the Roman Bishops is the Rock here spoken of For St. Austin was there arguing against the Donatists and shewing them the danger of being separated from the unity of the Catholick Church that if they were cut off from the vine they would wither and be in danger to be cast into the fire and therefore exhorts them to come and be planted into the vine it being a grief to them to see them cut off Now in order to this he brings in the former words to acquaint them with the way whereby they might better understand the Catholick Church which could not in reason be confined to their own age but must be derived from the Apostles So that his counsel is of the same nature with that of Tertullian and Irenaeus who put men upon a diligent search into the successions of the Apostolical Churches But now when by this search they have found out the Catholick Church he tells them That is the Rock which the proud gates of hell cannot overcome For so elsewhere St. Austin calls the Catholick Church a Rock as he calls it likewise a House and a City in several places of these disputations against the Donatists As here before he calls it the Vine from whence all who are cut off wither and dye But what is all this to the particular Church of Rome which none of the Disputes with the Donatists at all concerned As is fully manifest from the whole management of that Controversie in which though he was so much put upon shewing what and where the Catholick Church was yet he never once expressed any such thing as that the Church was called Catholick from any relation to the Church of Rome but still mentions it as a particular Church which with other Churches made up one Catholick Church So in his Commentaries on the 44. Psalm Behold Rome saith he behold Carthage behold several other Cities these are Kings daughters and have delighted the King in his honour but they all make up but one Queen How incongruous had this expression been had St. Austin believed the Roman Church to be so much above all others that the ground why any others were called Catholick was from their union with her and therefore he must according to your principles have saluted the Church of Rome as the Queen of all the rest and made other particular Churches but as her daughters and hand-maids But St. Austin knew of no such difference but looked on all particular Churches whether at Rome Carthage or elsewhere as making up but one Catholick Church And to the same purpose he frequently speaks when he sayes That the Church is call'd One in regard of her Vnity and Many in regard from the several Societies of Christians abroad in the world When he calls the several Churches members of that one Church which is spread all over the world without setting any note of discrimination upon one above all the rest When he reckons the Roman Corinthian Galatian Ephesian Churches together and that all these and the Churches propagated from them do conspire in one Vniversal Church But the places are so many to this purpose in him that it would look too much like ostentation to offer to prove a matter so evident to all that read any thing in him And is it possible then for you to think That St. Austin made the succession of Bishops at Rome in any sense the Catholick Church You might as well say that he made the Church spread all over the world a particular Church as that he made any particular Church whether at Rome or elsewhere for he makes no difference to be in any sense the Vniversal Church But that which you seem to lay the greatest force on is the testimony of Optatus Milevitanus Who say you after he had said that St. Peter was head of all the Apostles and that he would have been a Schismatick who should have erected another chair against that singular one of St. Peter as also that in that chair of St. Peter being but one Vnity was to be kept by all he adds that with Syricius then Pope he himself was united in communion with whom the whole world saith he meaning the whole Catholick Church agrees by communicatory letters in one Society of communion See here say you how clearly he makes the union with the Bishop of Rome the measure of the Catholick Church which the Bishop calls a Jesuitism and further proves himself to be in the Catholick Church because he was in communion with the See of St. Peter For our better understanding the meaning of these words of Optatus we must consider the state of the Controversie between Optatus and Parmenianus by which it will appear how
her Sons for Peace sake not to oppose them And in another place more fully We do not suffer any man to reject the thirty nine Articles of the Church of England at his pleasure yet neither do we look upon them as Essentials of Saving Faith or Legacies of Christ and his Apostles but in a mean as pious Opinions fitted for the preservation of Vnity neither do we oblige any man to believe them but only not to contradict them By which we see what a vast difference there is between those things which are required by the Church of England in order to Peace and those which are imposed by the Church of Rome as part of that Faith extra quam non est salus without belief of which there is no Salvation In which she hath as much violated the Vnity of the Catholick Church as the Church of England by her Prudence and Moderation hath studied to preserve it 2. Nothing ought to be imposed as a necessary Article of Faith to be believed by all but what may be evidently propounded to all persons as a thing which God did require the explicit belief of It being impossible to make any thing appear a necessary Article of Faith but what may not only be evidently proved to be revealed by God but that God doth oblige all men to the belief of it in order to Salvation And therefore none of those things whose obligation doth depend on variety of Circumstances ought in reason be made the Bonds of that Communion which cannot take notice of that variety as to mens conditions and capacities There are many things in Christian Religion which whosoever believes the truth of it cannot but easily discern to be necessary in order to the profession and practice of it in most of which the common sense and reason of mankind is agreed Not only the Existence of a Deity the clear discovery of the Wisdom Goodness and Power of God with his Providence over the world and the Immortality of Souls being therein most evidently revealed but the way and manner of the restitution of mens souls by Faith in Jesus Christ as our only Saviour and Obedience to his Commands is so fully laid down in the clearest terms that no rational man who considers the nature of Christian Religion but must assert the profession of all these things to be necessary to all such who own Christian Religion to be true But there are many other things in Christian Religion which are neither so clearly revealed in the Scriptures nor unanimously assented to in any age of the Christian Church and why any such things should be made the conditions of that Communion in the Catholick Church whose very being depends only on necessary things would puzzle a Philosopher to understand As if none should be accounted Mathematicians but such as could square circles and none Naturalists but such as could demonstrate whether quantity were infinitely divisible or no much so it is if none should be accounted members of the Catholick Church but such as own the truth and necessity of some at least as disputable Points as any in Religion Let therefore any Romanist tell me whether the Pope's Supremacy be as clear in Scripture as that Christ is Saviour of the world whether Purgatory be as plain as Eternal Life Transubstantiation as evident as that the Eucharist ought to be administred whether Invocation of Saints be as manifest as the Adoration of God the Doctrine of Indulgences as Repentance from dead works and if there be so great a clearness in the Revelation of the one and so far from it as to the other let them give any just account why the belief of the one is made as necessary to Salvation as the other is Certainly such who take in things at least so disputable as all these are and enforce the belief of them in order to their Communion cannot otherwise be thought but to have a design to exclude a great part of the Christian world from their Communion and to do so and then cry out of them as Schismaticks is the most unreasonable proceedings in the world 3. Nothing ought to be required as a necessary Article of Faith but what hath been believed and received for such by the Catholick Church of all Ages For since necessary Articles of Faith are supposed to be so antecedently to the Being of the Catholick Church since the Catholick Church doth suppose the continual acknowledgement of such things as are necessary to be believed it is but just and reasonable to admit nothing as necessary but what appears to have been so universally received Thence it is that Antiquity Vniversality and Consent are so much insisted on by Vincentius Lerinensis in order to the proving any thing to be a necessary Article of Faith But the great difficulty of this lyes in finding out what was received for a necessary Article of Faith and what was not by the Catholick Church which being a subject as necessary as seldom spoken to I shall not leave it untouched although I must premise that Rule to be much more useful in discovering what was not looked on as a necessary Article of Faith than what was and therefore I begin with that first 1. It is sufficient evidence that was not looked on as a necessary Article of Faith which was not admitted into the Ancient Creeds Whether all those Declarations which were inserted in the enlargements of the Apostolical Creed by the Councils of Nice and Constantinople and in that Creed which goes under the name of Athanasius were really judged by the Catholick Church of all Ages to be necessary to Salvation is not here my business to enquire but there seems to be a great deal of reason for the Negative that what was not inserted in the Ancient Creeds was not by them judged necessary to be believed by all Christians I know it is said by some of your party That the Apostolical Creed did only contain those Articles which were necessary to be believed in opposition to the present Heresies which were then in the Church As though the necessity of believing in Christians came only by an Antiperistasis of the opposition of Hereticks And if there had been no Hereticks to have denyed God's being the Creatour and Christ's being the Saviour it had not been necessary to have believed either of them so explicitly as now we do But when we speak of all things necessary to be believed by all I mean not that all circumstances of things contained in those Creeds are necessary to be believed in order to Salvation but that all those things which were judged as necessary to be believed by all were therein inserted will appear to any one who either considers the expressions of the Ancients concerning the Creeds then in Use or the primary reason why such Summaries of Faith were ever made in the Christian Church The testimonies of the Fathers to this purpose are so well known in this subject
that it were a needless task to repeat them who so unanimously assert the sufficiency unalterableness and perfection of that Faith which is contained in the Creed making it the summe of all necessary Doctrines the Foundation of the Catholick Faith and of the Church the first and sole Confession of Evangelical Doctrine Of all which and many more expressions to the same purpose produced not only by our Writers but by yours too no tolerable sense can be made without asserting that whatever was judged necessary to be believed by all by the Catholick Church of that Age they lived in or before them was therein contained Besides what account can be given why any such Summaries of Faith should at all be made either by Apostles or Apostolical persons but only for that end that necessary Articles of Faith might be reduced into such a compass as might become portable to the weakest capacities If the rise of Creeds were as most probable it was from the things propounded to the Catechumens to be believed in order to Baptism can we reasonably think that any thing judged necessary to be believed should be left out If the Apostolical Creed be a summary comprehension of that Form of sound Doctrine which the Apostles delivered to all Christians at their first conversion as it is generally supposed either we must think the Apostles unfaithful in their work or the Creed an unfaithful account of their Doctrine or that such things which were supposed universally necessary to be believed are therein comprehended Which is sufficient for my purpose that nothing ought to be looked on as a necessary Article of Faith or was so esteemed by the Catholick Church which is not contained in the Ancient Creeds 2. Nothing ought to be judged a necessary Article of Faith but what was universally believed by the Catholick Church to be delivered as such by Christ or his Apostles So that it is not the judgement but the testimony of the Catholick Church which must be relyed on and that testimony only when universal as delivering what was once infallibly delivered by Christ or his Apostles From whence it follows that any one who will undertake to make out any thing as a necessary Article of Faith by Catholick Tradition meerly must do these things 1. He must make it appear to be universally embraced at all times and in all places by such who were members of the Catholick Church 2. That none ever opposed it but he was presently disowned as no member of the Catholick Church because opposing something necessary to Salvation 3. That it be delivered by all those Writers of the Church who give an account of the Faith of Christians or what was delivered by Christ and his Apostles to the Church 4. That it was not barely looked on as necessary to be believed by such as might be convinced it was of Divine Revelation but that it was deliver'd with a necessity of its being explicitly believed by all 5. That what is deliver'd by the consent of the Writers of the Catholick Church was undoubtedly the Consent of the Church of those ages 6. That all those Writers agree not only in the Belief of the thing it self but of the Necessity of it to all Christians 7. That no Writers or Fathers of succeeding Ages can be supposed to alter in the belief either of the matters believed before or the necessity of them 8. That no oppositions of Hereticks or heats of Contention could make them judge any Article so opposed to be more necessary than it was judged before that Contention or they themselves would have judged it had it not been so opposed 9. That when they affirm many Traditions to be Apostolical which yet varied in several Churches they could not affirm any Doctrine to be Apostolical which they were not universally agreed in 10. That when they so plainly assert the sufficiency of the Scriptures as a Rule of Faith they did yet believe something necessary to Salvation which was not contained therein When you or any one else will undertake to make good these conditions I shall then begin to believe that something may be made appear to be a necessary Article of Faith which is not clearly revealed in Scripture but not before but till then this Negative will suffice that nothing ought to be embraced as the judgement of the Church concerning a necessary Article of Faith but what appears to be clearly revealed in Scriture and universally embraced by the Catholick Church of all Ages 3. Nothing ought to be looked on as a necessary Article of Faith by the judgement of the Catholick Church the denyal of which was not universally opposed and condemned as Heresie For otherwise the Catholick Church was very little sensible of the honour of Christian Faith if it suffered dissenters in necessary things without putting a mark of dishonour upon them Therefore we may conclude that whatever was patiently born with in such as dissented from the generality of Christians especially if considerable persons in the Church were the authors or fomenters of such opinions however true the contrary Doctrine was supposed to be yet it was not supposed necessary because then the opposers would have been condemned of Heresie by some open act of the Catholick Church But if beyond these Negatives we would enquire what was positively believed as necessary to Salvation by the Catholick Church we shall hardly find any better way than by the Articles of the Ancient Creeds and the universal opposition of any new Doctrine on its firsts appearance and the condemning the broachers of it for Heresie in Oecumenical Councils with the continual disapprobation of those Doctrines by the Christian Churches of all Ages As is clear in the cases of Arrius and Pelagius For it seems very reasonable to judge that since the necessary Articles of Faith were all delivered by the Apostles to the Catholick Church since the foundation of that Church lyes in the belief of those things which are necessary that nothing should be delivered contrary to any necessary Article of Faith but the Church by some evident act must declare its dislike of it and its resolution thereby to adhere to that necessary Doctrine which was once delivered to the Saints And withall it seems reasonable that because Art and Subtilty may be used by such who seek to pervert the Catholick Doctrine and to wrest the plain places of Scripture which deliver it so far from their proper meaning that very few ordinary capacities may be able to clear themselves of such mists as are cast before their eyes the sense of the Catholick Church in succeeding ages may be a very useful way for us to embrace the true sense of Scripture especially in the great Articles of the Christian Faith As for instance in the Doctrine of the Deity of Christ or the Trinity though the subtilty of such Modern Hereticks who oppose either of these may so far prevail on persons either not of sufficient
judgement or not sufficiently versed in the Scriptures as at present to make them acknowledge the places are not so clear as they imagined them to be yet they being alwaies otherwise interpreted by the Catholick Church or the Christian Societies of all ages layes this potent prejudice against all such attempts as not to believe such interpretations true till they give a just account why if the belief of these Doctrines were not necessary the Christians of all ages from the Apostles times did so unanimously agree in them that when any began first to oppose them they were declared and condemned for Hereticks for their pains So that the Church of England doth very piously declare her consent with the Ancient Catholick Church in not admitting any thing to be delivered as the sense of Scripture which is contrary to the consent of the Catholick Church in the four first ages Not as though the sense of the Catholick Church were pretended to be any infallible Rule of interpreting Scripture in all things which concern the Rule of Faith but that it is a sufficient Prescription against any thing which can be alledged out of Scripture that if it appear contrary to the sense of the Catholick Church from the beginning it ought not to be looked on as the true meaning of the Scripture All this security is built upon this strong presumption that nothing contrary to the necessary Articles of Faith should he held by the Catholick Church whose very being depends upon the belief of those things which are necessary to Salvation As long therefore as the Church might appear to be truly Catholick by those correspondencies which were maintained between the several parts of it that what was refused by one was so by all so long this unanimous and uncontradicted sense of the Catholick Church ought to have a great sway upon the minds of such who yet profess themselves members of the Catholick Church From whence it follows that such Doctrines may well be judged destructive to the Rule of Faith which were so unanimously condemned by the Catholick Church within that time And thus much may suffice for the first Inquiry viz. What things are to be esteemed necessary either in order to Salvation or in order to Ecclesiastical Communion 2. Whether any thing which was not necessary to Salvation may by any means whatsoever afterwards become necessary so that the not believing it becomes damnable and unrepented destroyes Salvation We suppose the Question to proceed on such things as could not antecedently to such an act whereby they now become necessary be esteemed to be so either from the matter or from any express command For you in terms assert a necessity of believing distinct from the matter and absolute command and hath the Churches Definition for its formal object which makes the necessity of our Faith continually to depend upon the Churches Definition but this strange kind of Ambulatory Faith I shall now shew to be repugnant to the design of Christ and his Apostles in making known Christian Religion and to all evidence of Reason and directly contrary to the plain and uncontradicted sense of the Primitive and Catholick Church 1. It is contrary to the design of Christ and his Apostles in making known the Christian Religion to the world For if the design of Christ was to declare whatever was necessary to the Salvation of mankind if the Apostles were sent abroad for this very end then either they were very unfaithful in discharge of their trust or else they taught all things necessary for their Salvation and if they did so how can any thing become necessary which they did never teach Was it not the great Promise concerning the Messias that at his coming the Earth should be full of the Knowledge of the Lord as the Waters cover the Sea that then they shall all be taught of God Was not this the just expectation of the people concerning him That when he came he would tell them all things Doth not he tell his Disciples That all things I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you And for all this is there something still remaining necessary to Salvation which neither he nor his Disciples did ever make known to the world Doth not he promise Life and Salvation to all such as believe and obey his Doctrine And can any thing be necessary for eternal life which he never declared or did he only promise it to the men of that Age and Generation and leave others to the mercy of the Churches Definitions If this be so we have sad cause to lament our condition upon whom these heavy loyns of the Church are fallen how happy had we been if we had lived in Christs or the Apostles times for then we might have been saved though we had never believed the Pope's Supremacy or Transubstantiation or Invocation of Saints or Worshipping Images but now the case is altered these Milstones are now hung about our necks and how we shall swim to Heaven with them who knows How strangely mistaken was our Saviour when he said Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed For much more blessed certainly were they who did see him and believe in him for then he would undertake for their Salvation but now it seems we are out of his reach and turned over to the Merciless Infallibility of the present Church When Christ told his Disciples His yoke was easie and burden light he little thought what Power he had left in the Church to lay on so much load as might cripple mens belief were it not for a good reserve in a corner call'd Implicit Faith When he sent the Apostles to teach all that he commanded them he must be understood so that the Church hath power to teach more if she pleases and though the Apostles poor men were bound up by this commission and S. Peter himself too yet his Infallible Successors have a Paramount Priviledge beyond them all Though the Spirit was promised to the Apostles to lead them into all Truth yet there must be no incongruity in saying They understood not some necessary Truths for how should they when never revealed as Transubstantiation Supremacy c. Because though they never dreamt of such things yet the Infallible Church hath done it since for them and to say truth though the Apostles names were put into the promise yet they were but Feoffees in trust for the Church and the benefit comes to the Church by them For they were only Tutors to the Church in its minority teaching it some poor Rudiments of Christ and Heaven of Faith and Obedience c. But the great and Divine Mysteries of the seven Sacraments Indulgences Worship of Images Sacrifice of the Mass c. were not fit to be made known till the Church were at age her self and knew how to declare her own mind When S. Paul speaks so much of the great Mysteries hidden from Ages and Generations but
their own Infallibility certainly they thought the one afforded not a good foundation for Faith though the other after believing it might highly advance it And therefore I suggest not these things in the least to question the Infallibility of the Apostles but to let us see that even at that time when there was a certainly infallible Testimony yet that is not urged as the only Foundation for Faith but Rational Evidence produced even by those persons who were thus infallible If we descend lower in the Christian Church or walk abroad to view the several Plantations of the Churches at that time Where do we read or meet with the least intimation of an infallible Testimony of the Catholick Church so call'd from its Communion with that of Rome What infallible Testimony of that Church had the poor Brittains to believe on or those Barbarians mentioned in Irenaeus who yet believed without a written word What mention do we meet with in all the ancient Apologeticks of Christians wherein they give so large an account of the grounds of Christian Faith of the modern method for resolving Faith Nay what one ancient Father or Council give the least countenance to this pretended Infallibility much less make it the only sure Foundation of Faith as you do Nay how very few are there among your selves who believe it and yet think themselves never the worse Christians for it If then your Doctrine be true what becomes of the Faith of all these persons mentioned Upon your principles their Faith could not be a true and Divine Faith that is Let them all think they believed the Doctrine of Christ never so heartily and obeyed it never so conscientiously yet because they did not believe it on the Infallibility of your Church their Faith was but a kind of guilded and splendid Infidelity and none of them Christians because not Jesuits And doth not this principle then fairly advance Christianity in the world when the belief of it comes to be setled on Foundations never heard of in the best and purest times of it nay such Foundations as for want of their believing them their Faith must be all in vain and Christ dyed in vain for them 2. You assert such things upon the pretence of Infallibility which destroy all the rational evidence of Christian Religion And what greater disservice could you possibly do to it than by taking away all the proper grounds of certainty of it And instead of building it super hanc Petram upon the Rock of Infallibility you do it only upon a Quick-sand which swallows up the Edifice and sucks in the Foundations of it You would have men to believe the Infallibility of your Church that their Faith might stand upon sure grounds and yet if men believe this Infallibility of your Church you require such things to be believed upon it which destroy all kind of certainty in Religion And that I prove by some of those principles which are received among you upon the account of the Churches Infallibility 1. That the judgement of Sense is not to be relyed on in matters of Faith This is the great Principle upon which the Doctrine of Transubstantiation stands in your Church and this is all the most considerative men among you have to say when all those Contradictions are offered to them which that Doctrine is so big of both to the judgement of sense and reason viz. That though it seem so contradictory yet because the Church which is infallible delivers it they are bound not to question it If this Principle then be true That the judgement of sense is not to be relyed on in matters which sense is capable of judging of it will be impossible for any one to give any satisfactory account of the grand Foundations of Christian Faith For if we carefully examine the grounds of Certainty in Christian Religion we find the great appeal made to the judgement of Sense That which we have seen and heard and handled If then the judgement of Sense must not be taken in a proper object at due distance and in such a thing wherein all mens Senses are equally Judges I pray tell me what assurance the Apostles could have or any from them of any miracles which Christ wrought of any Doctrine which he preached especially because in his miracles there was something above nature in which case men are more apt to suspect Impostures than in things which are the continual Objects of Sense as in the case of Transubstantiation Wherein if men are not bound to rely on the judgement of Sense you must say that our Faculties are so made that they may be imposed upon in the proper Objects of them and if so farewell all Certainty not only in Religion but in all things else in the world For what assurance can I have of the knowledge of any thing if I find that my Faculties not only may be but I am bound to believe that they actually are deceived in a thing that is as proper an Object of sense as any in the world And if a thing which the judgement of all mankind those excepted who have given away their sense and reason in this present case doth unanimously concurr in may be false What evidence can we have when any thing is true For if a thing so plain and evident to our Senses may be false viz. That what I and all other men see is bread what ground of certainty can we have but that which my Senses and all other mens judge to be false may be true For by this means you take away the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 both of Sense and Reason in things and consequently all things are equally true and false to us and thence it follows That Truth and Falshood are but Fancies that our Faculties have no means to difference the one from the other that in things we all agree in as proper objects of Sense we not only may be but are deceived and then farewell Sense Reason and Religion together For I pray Tell me what Assurance could the Apostles have of the Resurrection of Christ's Individual Body from the grave but the Judgement of Sense What waies did he use to convince them that he was not a Spectre or Apparition but by an appeal to their Senses by what means did he reclaim Thomas from his Infidelity but by bidding him make use of his Senses If Thomas had believed Transubstantiation he would easily have answered our Saviours Argument and told him If there were not a productive yet there might be an Adductive Transmutation of some other person into him And the Disciples might all have said It was true there were the accidents of Christ's Body the external shape and figure of it but for all they could discern there might be some Invisible Spirit under those external accidents of shape and therefore they must desire to be excused from believing it to be his Body for Hoc est corpus meum had told them already
That the external accidents might remain where the substance was changed Now therefore when the Assurance of Christian Religion came from the judgement of the Senses of those who were Eye-witnesses of the Miracles and the Resurrection of Christ if the Senses of men may be so grosly deceived in the proper Objects of them in the case of Transubstantiation what assurance could they themselves have who were Eye-witnesses of them and how much less assurance can we have who have all our Evidence from the certainty of their report So that it appears upon the whole that take away the certainty of the judgement of Sense you destroy all Certainty in Religion for Tradition only conveys to us now what was originally grounded upon the judgement of Sense and delivers to us in an undoubted manner that which the Apostles saw and heard And do not you then give a very good account of Religion by the Infallibility of your Church when if I believe your Church to be infallible I must by vertue of that Infallibility believe something to be true which if it be true there can be no certainty at all of the Truth of Christian Religion 2. Another principle is That we can have no certainty of any of the grounds of Faith but from the Infallibility of your present Church Whereby you do these two things 1. Destroy the obligation to Faith which ariseth from the rational evidence of Christian Religion 2. Put the whole stress of the truth of Christianity upon the proofs of your Churches Infallibility by which things any one may easily see what tendency your doctrine of resolving Faith hath and how much it designs the overthrow of Christianity 1. You destroy the obligation to Faith from the rational evidence of Christian Religion by telling men as you do expresly in the very Title of your next Chapter That there can be no unquestionable assurance of Apostolical Tradition but for the infallible authority of the present Church If so then men cannot have any unquestionable assurance that there was such a Person as Christ in the world that he wrought such great miracles for confirmation of his Doctrine that he dyed and rose again it seems we can have no assurance of these things if the present Church be not Infallible And if we can have no assurance of them what obligation can lye upon us to believe them for assurance of the matters of fact which are the foundations of Faith is necessary in order to the obligation to believe I mean such an assurance as matters of fact are capable of for no higher can be required then the nature of things will bear And what a strange assertion then is this that matters of fact cannot be conveyed to us in an unquestionable manner unless the present Church stamp her Infallibility upon them Cannot we have an unquestionable assurance that there were such persons as Caesar and Pompey and that they did such and such things without some infallible testimony if we may in such things why not in other matters of fact which infinitely more concern the world to know then whatever Caesar or Pompey did But this will be more at large examined afterwards I only now take notice of the consequence of this principle and how fairly it destroyes all rational evidence of the truth of our Religion which whosoever takes away will be by force of reason a Sceptick in the first place and an Infidel in the second Neither is the danger meerly in destroying the rational evidence of Religion but 2. In putting the whole weight of Religion upon the proofs of the present Churches infallibility which whosoever considers how silly and weak they are cannot sufficiently wonder at the design of those men who put the most excellent Religion in the world and which is built upon the highest and truest reason to such a strange kind of Ordeal tryal that if she pass not through this St. Winifreds needle her innocency must be suspected and her truth condemned So that whosoever questions the truth of this kind of Purgation will have a greater suspition of a juggle and imposture if she be acquitted then if she had never submitted to such a tryal And when we come to examine the proofs brought for this Infallibility it will then further appear what uncertainty in Religion men are betrayed to under this confident pretext of Infallibility Thus we see what Scepticism in Religion the principles owned upon the account of Infallibility do bring men to 3. When you have brought men to this that the only sure ground of Faith is the Infallibility of your Church you are not able to give them any satisfactory account at all concerning it but plunge them into greater uncertainties then ever they were in before For you can neither satisfie them what that Church is which you suppose Infallible what in that Church is the proper subject of this Infallibility what kind of Infallibility this is nor how we should know when the Church doth decide Infallibly and when not and yet every one of these questions is no less then absolutely necessary to be resolved in order to the satisfaction of mens minds as to the foundation of their Faith 1. You cannot satisfie men What that Church is which you suppose to be Infallible Certainly if you had a design to give men a certain foundation for their Faith you would not be so shy of discovering what it is you understand by that Church which you would have Infallible if you had meant honestly the first thing you should have done was to have prevented all mistakes concerning the meaning of the Church when you know what various significations it hath not only in Scripture but among your selves Whether you mean the Church essential representative or vertual for every one of these upon occasion you make use of and it was never more necessary to have explained them then in this place and yet you with wonderful care and industry avoid any intimation of what you mean by that Church which you would prove Infallible When you plead so earnestly for the Churches Infallibility I pray tell us what you mean by the Church do you intend the truly Catholick and Vniversal Church which comprehends in it all such as own and profess the Doctrine of Christ in which sense it was well said by Abulensis Ecclesia universalis nunquam errat quia nunquam tota errat The universal Church never erres because the whole Church is never deceived Or do you mean by your Catholick Church some particular part of it to which you apply the name of Catholick not for Vniversality of extent but soundness of Doctrine then it will be necessary yet further to shew what part of the Church that is by what right and title that hath engrossed the name of Catholick so as to exclude other Societies of Christians from it and whether you must not first prove the absolute integrity and soundness of her Doctrine before
which supposing it never so great is not shewed to the Councils but to your Church For the reason of that Reverence cannot be resolved into the Councils but into that Church for whose sake you reverence them And thus it evidently appears That the cunning of this device is wholly your own and notwithstanding these miserable shifts you do finally resolve all Authorities of the Fathers Councils and Scriptures into the Authority of the present Roman-Church which was the thing to be proved The first Absurdity consequent from hence which the Arch-Bishop chargeth your party with is That by this means they ascribe as great Authority if not greater to a part of the Catholick Church as to the whole which we believe in our Creed and which is the Societie of all Christians And this is full of Absurdity in nature in reason in all things that any part should be of equal worth power credit or authority with the whole Here you deny the Consequence which you say depends upon his Lordships wilfully mistaken Notion of the Catholick Church which he saith Is the Church we believe in our Creed and is the Society of all Christians which you call a most desperate extension of the Church because thereby forsooth it will appear that a part is not so great as the whole viz. that the Roman-Church in her full latitude is but a piece or parcel of the Catholick Church believed in our Creed Is this all the desperate Absurdity which follows from his Lordships Answer I pray shew it to have any thing tending to an Absurdity in it And though you confidently tell us That the roman-Roman-Church taken as comprizing all Christians that are in her Communion is the sole and whole Catholick Church yet I will contentedly put the whole issue of the cause upon the proof of this one Proposition that the Roman-Church in its largest sense is the sole and whole Catholick Church or that the present Roman-Church is a sound member of the Catholick Church Your evidence from Ecclesiastical History is such as I fear not to follow you in but I beseech you have a care of treading too near the Apostles heels That any were accounted Catholicks meerly for their Communion with the Roman-Church or that any were condemned for Heresie or Schism purely for their dissent from it prove it when you please I shall be ready God willing to attend your Motions But it is alwaies your faculty when a thing needs proving most to tell us what you could have done This you say You would have proved at large if his Lordship had any more than supposed the contrary But your Readers will think that his Supposition being grounded on such a Maxim of Reason as that mentioned by him it had been your present business to have proved it but I commend your prudence in adjourning it and I suppose you will do it as the Court of Areopagus used to do hard causes in diem longissimum It is apparent the Bishop speaks not of a part of the Church by representation of the whole which is an objection no body but your self would here have fancied and therefore your Instance of a Parliament is nothing to the purpose unless you will suppose that Councils in the Church do represent in such a manner as Parliaments in England do and that their decision is obligatory in the same way as Acts of Parliament are if you believe this to be good Doctrine I will be content to take the Objecters place and make the Application The next Absurdity laid to your charge is as you summe it up That in your Doctrine concerning the Infallibility of your Church your proceeding is most unreasonable in regard you will not have recourse to Texts of Scripture exposition of Fathers propriety of Language Conference of Places Antecedents and Consequents c. but argue that the Doctrine of the present Church of Rome is true and Catholick because she professeth it to be such which saith he is to prove idem per idem To this you answer That as to all those helps you use them with much more candour than Protestants do And why so Because of their manifold wrestings of Scriptures and Fathers Let the handling the Controversies of this Book be the evidence between us in this case and any indifferent Reader be the Judge You tell us You use all these helps but to what purpose do you use them Do you by them prove the Infallibility of your Church If not the same Absurdity lyes at your door still of proving idem per idem No that you do not you say But how doth it appear Thanks to these mute persons the good Motives of Credibility which come in again at a dead lift but do no more service than before I pray cure the wounds they have received already before you rally them again or else I assure you what strength they have left they will employ it against your selves You suppose no doubt your Coleworts good you give them us so often over but I neither like proving nor eating idem per idem But yet we have two Auxiliaries more in the field call'd Instances The design of your first Instance is to shew That if your Church be guilty of proving idem per idem the Apostolical Church was so too For you tell us That a Sectary might in the Apostles times have argued against the Apostolical Church by the very same method his Lordship here uses against the present Catholick Church For if you ask the Christians then Why they believe the whole Doctrine of the Apostles to be the sole true Catholick Faith their Answer is Because it is agreeable to the Doctrine of Christ. If you ask them How they know it to be so they will produce the words sentences and works of Christ who taught it But if you ask a third time By what means they are assured that those Testimonies do indeed make for them or their cause or are really the Testimonies and Doctrine of Christ they will not then have recourse to those Testimonies or Doctrine but their Answer is They know it to be so because the present Apostolick Church doth witness it And so by consequence prove idem per idem Thus the Sectary I know not whether your faculty be better at framing Questions or Answers to them I am sure it is extraordinary at both Is it not enough to be in a Circle your selves but you must needs bring the Apostles into it too at least if you may have the management of their Doctrine you would do it The short Answer to all this is That the ground why the Christians did assent to the Apostles Doctrine as true was because God gave sufficient evidence that their Testimony was infallible in such things where such Infallibility was requisite For you had told us before That the Apostles did confirm their words with signs that followed by which signs all their hearers were bound to submit themselves unto
part of the world should be so grosly deceived in a matter of such moment especially supposing a Divine Providence then I freely and heartily assert We have such a kind of rational Infallibility or rather the highest degree of actual Certainty concerning the Truth of the Canon of Scripture and that the Catholick Church hath not de facto erred in defining it Thus I have followed your discoursing Christian through all his doubts and perplexities and upon the result can find no ground at all either of doubting concerning the Scripture or of believing the Testimony of your Church or any to be an infallible ground of Faith Your next passage is to tell us how his Lordships Dedalian windings as you finely call them are disintricated A happy man you are at squaring Circles and getting out of Labyrinths And thus it appears in the present case For when his Lordship had said That the Tradition of the Church is too weak because that is not absolutely Divine you repeat over your already exploded Proposition that there may be an infallible Testimony which is not absolutely Divine which when I have your faculty of writing things which neither you nor any one else can understand I may admit of but till then I must humbly beg your pardon as not being able to assent to any thing which I cannot understand and have no reason to believe And withall contrary to your second Answer it appears That if the Testimony of the Primitive were absolutely Divine because infallible the Testimony of the present Church must be absolutely Divine if it be infallible The rest of this Chapter is spent in the examining some by-citations of men of your own side chiefly and therefore it is very little material as to the truth or falshood of the present Controversie yet because you seem to triumph so much assoon as you are off the main business I shall briefly return an Answer to the substance of what you say His Lordship having asserted the Tradition of the Primitive Apostolical Church to be Divine and that the Church of England doth embrace that as much as any Church whatsoever withall adds That when S. Augustine said I would not believe the Gospel unless the Authority of the Catholick Church moved me some of your own will not endure should be understood save of the Church in the time of the Apostles only and some of the Church in general not excluding after Ages but sure to include Christ and his Apostles In your Answer to this you insult strangely over his Lordship in two things First That he should say Some and mention but one in his Margent 2. That that One doth not say what he cites out of him To the first I answer you might easily observe the use his Lordship makes of his Margent is not so much to bring clear and distinct proofs of what he writes in his Book but what hath some reference to what he there saies and therefore it was no absurdity for him to say in his Book indefinitely some and yet in his Margent only to mention Occham For when his Lordship writ that no doubt his mind was upon others who asserted the same thing though he did not load his Margent with them And that you may see I have reason for what I say I hope you will not suppose his Lordship unacquainted with the Testimonies of those of your side who do in terms assert this That I may therefore free you from all kind of suspicion What think you of Gerson when speaking of the greater Authority of the Primitive Church than of the present he adds And by this means we come to understand what S. Augustine said I would not believe the Gospel c. For there saith he he takes the Church for the Primitive Congregation of Believers who saw and heard Christ and were witnesses of what he did Is not this Testimony plain enough for you But besides this we have another as evident in whom are those very words which his Lordship by a lapse of memory attributes to Occham For Durandus plainly sayes That for what concerns the approbation of Scripture by the Church it is understood only of the Church which was in the Apostles times who were filled with the Holy Spirit and withall saw the Miracles of Christ and heard his Doctrine and on that account were convenient witnesses of all which Christ did or taught that by their Testimony the Scripture containing the actions and speeches of Christ might receive approbation Do you yet desire a Testimony more express and full than this is of one who doth understand the Church exclusively of all successive to the Apostles when he had just before produced that known Testimony of S. Augustine You see then the Bishop had some reason to say Some of your Church asserted this to be S. Augustine 's meaning and therefore your Instances of some where but one is meant are both impertinent and scurrilous For where it is evidently known there was but one it were a Soloecism to say some as to say that some of the Apostles betrayed Christ when it is known that none but Judas did it But if I should say that some Jesuits had writ for the killing of Kings and in the Margent should cite Mariana no person conversant in their writings would think it a Soloecism for though I produce him for a remarkable Instance yet that doth not imply that I have none else to produce but only that the mentioning of one might shew I was not without proof of what I said For your impudent oblique slander on the memory of that excellent Prelate Arch-Bishop Cranmer when you say If a Catholick to disgrace the Protestant Primacy of Canterbury should say Some of them carried a holy Sister lockt up in a Chest about with them and name Cranmer only in the Margent His memory is infinitely above your slyest detractions and withall when you are about such a piece of Criticism I pray tell me what doth some of them relate to Is Primacy the name of some men Just as if one should disgrace the See of Rome and say Some of them have been Atheists Magicians debauched c. Though I confess it were a great injury in this case to cite but one in the Margent unless in pity to the Reader yet you may sooner vindicate some of them from a Soloecism in Language when the See of Rome went before than any of them from those Soloecisms in manners which your own Authours have complained of But say you What if this singular-plural say no such thing as the words alledged by the Bishop signifie I have already granted it to have been a very venial mistake of memory in his Lordship of Occham for Durandus in whom those very words are which are in the Margent of his Lordships Book as appears in the Testimony already produced I acknowledge therefore that Occham in that place of his Dialogues doth speak
is so great integrity and incorruption in those Copies we have that we cannot but therein take notice of a peculiar hand of Divine Providence in preserving these authentick records of our Religion so safe to our dayes But it is time now to return to you You would therefore perswade us That we have no ground of certainty as to the Copies of Scripture but comparing them with the Apostles Autographa but I hope our former discourse hath given you a sufficient account of our certainty without seeing the Apostles own hands But I pray what certainty then had the Jews after the Captivity of their Copies of the Law yet I cannot think you will deny them any ground of certainty in the time of Christ that they had the true Copies both of the Law and the Prophets and I hope you will not make the Sanhedrin which condemned our Saviour to death to have given them their only Infallible certainty concerning it If therefore the Jews might be certain without Infallibility why may not we for if the Oracles of God were committed to the Jews then they are to the Christians now You yet further urge That there can be no certainty concerning the Autographa's of the Apostles but by tradition And may not every universal tradition be carried up as clearly at least to the Apostles times as the Scriptures by most credible Authours who wrote in their respective succeeding ages I answer We grant there can be no certainty as to the Copies of Scripture but from tradition and if you can name any of those great things in Controversie between us which you will undertake to prove to be as universal a tradition as that of the Scriptures you and I shall not differ as to the belief of it But think not to fob us off with the tradition of the present Church instead of the Church of all ages with the tradition of your Church instead of the Catholick with the ambiguous testimonies of two or three of the Fathers instead of the universal consent of the Church since the Apostles times If I should once see you prove the Infallibility of your Church the Popes Supremacy Invocation of Saints Veneration of Images the necessity of Coelibate in the Clergy a punitive Purgatory the lawfulness of communicating in one kind the expediency of the Scriptures and Prayers being in an unknown tongue the sacrifice of the Mass Transubstantiation to name no moâ—e by as unquestionable and universal a tradition as that whereby we receive the Scriptures I shall extoll you for the only person that ever did any thing considerable on your side and I shall willingly yield my self up as a Trophey to your brave attempts Either then for ever forbear to mention any such things as Vniversal Tradition among you as to any things besides Scriptures which carry a necessity with them of being believed or practised or once for all undertake this task and manifest it as to the things in Controversie between us Your next Paragraph besides what hath been already discussed in this Chapter concerning Apostolical tradition of Scripture empties it self into the old mare mortuum of the formal object and Infallible application of Faith which I cannot think my self so much at leasure to follow you into so often as you fall into it When once you bring any thing that hath but the least resemblance of reason more than before I shall afresh consider it but not till then What next follows concerning resolving Faith into prime Apostolical Tradition infallibly without the Infallibility of the present Church hath been already prevented by telling you that his Lordship doth not say That the infallible Resolution of Faith is into that Apostolical Tradition but into the Doctrine which is conveyed in the Books of Scripture from the Apostles times down to us by an unquestionable Tradition Your stale Objection That then we should want Divine Certainty hath been over and over answered and so hath your next Paragraph That if the Church be not infallible we cannot be infallibly certain that Scripture is Gods Word and so the remainder concerning Canonical Books It is an easie matter to write great Books after that rate to swell up your discourses with needless repetitions but it is the misery that attends a bad cause and a bad stomach to have unconcocted things brought up so often till we nauseate them Your next offer is at the Vindication of the noted place of S. Austin I would not believe the Gospel c. which you say cannot rationally be understood of Novices Weaklings and Doubters in the Faith This being then the place at every turn objected by you and having before reserved the discussion of it to this place I shall here particularly and throughly consider the meaning of it In order to which three things must be enquired into 1. What the Controversie was which St. Austin was there discussing of 2. What that Church was which St. Austin was moved by the Authority of 3. In what way and manner that Churches Authority did perswade him 1. Nothing seems more necessary for understanding the meaning of this place than a true state of the Controversie which S. Austin was disputing of and yet nothing less spoke to on either side than this hath been We are therefore to consider that when Manes or Manichaeus began to appear in the world to broach that strange and absurd Doctrine of his in the Christian world which he had received from Terebinthus or Buddas as he from Scythianus who if we belieue Epiphanius went to Jerusalem in the Apostles times to enquire into the Doctrine of Christianity and dispute with the Christians about his Opinions but easily foreseeing what little entertainment so strange a complexion of absurdities would find in the Christian world as long as the writings of the Apostles and Evangelists were received every where with that esteem and veneration Two waies he or his more cunning Disciples bethought themselves of whereby to lessen the authority of those writings and so make way for the Doctrine of Manichaeus One was to disparage the Credulity of Christians because the Catholick Church insisted so much on the necessity of Faith whereas they pretended they would desire men to believe nothing but what they gave them sufficient reason for But all this while since the Christians thought they had evident reason for believing the Scriptures and consequently none to believe the Doctrine which did oppose them therefore they found it necessary to go further and to charge those Copies of Scripture with falsifications and corruptions which were generally received among Christians But these are fully delivered by S. Austin in his Book de utilitate credendi as will appear to any one who looks into it but the latter is that which I aim at this he therefore taxeth them for That with a great deal of impudence or to speak mildly with much weakness they charged the Scriptures to be corrupted and yet
mistake to suppose a Church cannot continue without a vital inherent Principle of Infallibility in her self which must be discovered by Infallible Directions from the Head of it whereas we grant the necessity of an Infallible Foundation of Faith but cannot discern either from Scripture Reason or Antiquity that there must be a living and standing Infallible Judge which must deliver and interpret those Infallible Records to us We grant then Infallibility in the Foundation of Faith we assert the highest Certainty of the Infallibility of that Foundation we declare that the owning of that Infallible Foundation is that which makes men Christians the body of whom we call a Church we further grant that Christ hath left in his Church sufficient means for the preservation of it in Truth and Unity but we deny that ever he promised such an Infallibility to be constantly resident in that Church as was in the Prophets and Apostles and that neither any intention of Christ or any reason in the thing can be manifested why such an Infallibility should be so necessary for the Churches preservation that without it the Wisdom of Christ must be questioned and the Church built on a sandy Foundation Your citation of Vincentius Lyrinensis proves nothing but the Churches constancy in adhering to that Doctrine of Faith which was delivered from the beginning but how that should prove a Constant Infallibility I cannot understand unless it is impossible that there should be any Truth where there is no inherent Infallibility Thus we see what very little success you have in the attempt of proving the Churches continual Infallibility from Scripture From hence you proceed to the consideration of the way How Scripture and Tradition do mutually confirm each other His Lordship grants That they do mutually but not equally confirm the authority either of other For Scripture doth infallibly confirm the authority of Church-Traditions truly so called but Tradition doth but morally and probably confirm the authority of the Scripture This you say is apparently false but endeavour not to make it evident that it is so Only you say A. C. refused already to grant it Et quid tum postea Must every thing be false which A. C. refuses to grant But let us see whether his Similitude makes it out For saith he 't is as a Kings Embassadours word of mouth and his Kings Letters bear mutual witness to each other Just so indeed saith his Lordship For his Kings Letters of Credence under hand and Seal confirm the Embassadours authority infallibly to all that know his Seal and hand But the Embassadours word of mouth confirms his Kings Letters but only probably For else Why are they callâ—d Letters of Credence if they give not him more credit than he gives them To which you make a large Reply 1. That the Kings hand and Seal cannot confirm infallibly to a Forein King who neither knows hand nor Seal the Embassadours authority and therefore this reacheth not the business How we should know infallibly that the Scripture is Gods Word 2. That the primary reason Why the Embassadour is admitted is his own credit to which correspond the motives of Credibility of the Church by which the Letters of Credence are admitted 3. That none can give authority to the Letters of Credence or be infallibly certain of them but such as infallibly know that hand and Seal 4. That none can infallibly know that hand and Seal but such as are certain of the Embassadours sincerity But Doth all this disprove what his Lordship saith That though there be a mutual Testimony yet it is not equal for although the Letters of Credence might be the sooner read and admitted of on the Embassadours Reputation and Sincerity yet still those Letters themselves upon the delivery of them may further and in a higher degree confirm the Prince he is sent to of his authority to act as Embassadour Supposing then that there be a sufficient Testimony that these Letters were sealed by the Secretary of State who did manifest his Sincerity in the highest manner in the sealing of them though a Forein Prince might not know the hand and Seal yet upon such a creditable Testimony he may be assured that they were sealed by the Prince himself But then withall if the Embassadour to assure the Prince offers his own life to attest the truth of his Credentials and the Prince by reading the Letters find something in them which could not be written by any other than that Prince he then hath the highest certainty he can desire This is the case between Tradition and Scripture General Tradition at first makes way for the first admission of Scripture as the general repute of an Embassadours coming doth for his access to the Prince the particular Tradition of the Church is like the Embassadours affirming to the Prince that he hath Letters of Credence with him but then when he enquires into the Certainty of those Letters those Motives of Credibility not which relate to the person of the Embassadour but which evidently prove the sealing of those Letters as the constant Testimony of such who were present at it the Secretaries and Embassadours venturing their lives upon it must confirm him in that and lastly his own reading the Credentials give him the highest Confirmation i. e. The testimony of those who saw the miracles of Christ and his Apostles and confirmed the Truth of their Testimony by their dying for it are the highest inducement to our believing that the Scriptures were sealed by God himself in the miracles wrought and written by his own hand his Spirit infallibly assisting the Apostle but still after all this when in these very Scriptures we read such things as we cannot reasonably suppose could come from any but God himself this doth in the highest degree settle and confirm our Faith Therefore as to the main scope for which this Similitude was used by his Lordship it holds still but your mistake lyes in supposing that the Embassadours reception depended wholly on his own single Testimony and that was enough to make any Prince infallibly certain that his Letters of Credence are true which cannot be unless he knows before-hand that Embassadour to be infallibly true which is impossible to be supposed at his first reception Yet this is plainly your case that the Scriptures are to be infallibly believed on the single Testimony of the present Church which is to make the Embassadour himself give authority to his Letters of Credence and set hand and seal to them Whereas the contrary is most evident to be true But then supposing these Credentials admitted the Prince transacts with the Embassadour according to that power which is conveyed to him therein And thus it is in the present case Not as though a Prince treated every Envoy with equal respect to an Embassadour no more ought any Pastors of the Church be received but according to that power and authority which their Credentials viz. the
breaches so farr from closing that supposing the same grounds to continue a reconciliation seems to humane reason impossible An evidence of which is that those persons who either out of a generous desire of seeing the wounds of the Christian world healed or out of some private interest or design have made it their business to propound terms of reconciliation between the divided parties have been equally rejected by those parties they have professed themselves the members of For whether any of the Roman Communion have ingenuously confessed the great corruptions crept into that Church and desired a reformation of them or any of the Protestant Communion have endeavoured to excuse palliate or plead for the corruptions of the Roman Church we find how little incouragement they have had for such undertakings from that Church whose Communion they have professed to retain The distance then being so great as it is it is a very necessary enquiry what the cause of it is and where the main fault lies and it being acknowledged that there is a possibility that corruptions may get into a Christian Church and it being impossible to prove that Christianity obligeth men to communicate with a Church in all those corruptions its Communion may be tainted with it seems evident to reason that the cause of the breach must lye there where the corruptions are owned and imposed as conditions of Communion For can any one imagine it should be a fault in any to keep off from Communion where they are so far from being obliged to it that they have an obligation to the contrary from the prinples of their common Christianity and where men are bound not to communicate it is impossible to prove their not communicating to be Schism For there can be no Schism but where there is an obligation to communion Schism being nothing else but a willful violation of the bonds of Christian Communion and therefore when ever you would prove the Protestants guilty of Schism you must do it by proving they were bound to communicate with your Church in those things which they are Protestants for disowning of Or that there is so absolute and unlimited an obligation to continue in the Society of your Church that no conditions can be so hard but we are bound rather to submit to them than not joyn in Communion with you But we who look on the nature of a Christian Society in general the Foundations of its constitution the ends and designs of it cannot think our selves obliged to Communion in those things which undermine those Foundations and contradict those ends This being a matter of so vast consequence in order to the settling mens minds in the present disputes of the Christian world before I come to particulars I shall lay down those general principles which may manifest how free Protestants are from all imputation of Schism Schism then importing a violation of that Communion which we are obliged to the most natural way for understanding what Schism is is to enquire what the Foundations are of Christian Communion and how far the bonds of it do extend Now the Foundations of Christian Communion in general depend upon the acknowledgement of the truth of Christian Religion For that Religion which Christ came to deliver to the world being supposed true is the reason why any look on themselves as obliged to profess it which obligation extending to all persons who have the same grounds to believe the truth of it thence ariseth the ground of Society in this profession which is a common obligation on several persons joyning together in some acts of common concernment to them The truth then of Christian Religion being acknowledged by several persons they find in this Religion some actions which are to be performed by several persons in Society with each other From whence ariseth that more immediate obligation to Christian Society in all those who profess themselves Christians and the whole number of these who own the truth of Christian Religion and are thereby obliged to joyn in Society with each other is that which we call the Catholick Church But although there be such a relation to each other in all Christians as to make them one common Society yet for the performance of particular acts of communion there must be lesser Societies wherein persons may joyn together in the actions belonging to them But still the obligation to communion in these lesser is the same with that which constitutes the great body of Christians which is the owning Christianity as the only true Religion and way to eternal Happiness And therefore those lesser Societies cannot in justice make the necessary conditions of communion narrower than those which belong to the Catholick Church i. e. those things which declare men Christians ought to capacitate them for communion with Christians But here we are to consider that as to be a Christian supposeth mens owning the Christian Religion to be true so the conveyance of that Religion being to us now in those Books we call the Scriptures there must be an acknowledgement of them as the indispensable rule of Faith and manners which is That these Books are the great Charter of the Christian Society according to which it must be governed These things being premised as the foundation in general of Christian Society we shall the better understand how far the obligation to communion in it doth extend For which it must be considered that the grounds of continuance in Communion must be suitable and proportionable to the first reason of entering into it No man being obliged by vertue of his being in a Society to agree in any thing which tends to the apparent ruine of that Society but he is obliged to the contrary from the general grounds of his first admission into it His primary obligation being to preserve the honour and interest of it and to joyn in acts of it so far as they tend to it Now the main end of the Christian Society being the promotion of Gods honour and the salvation of mens souls the primary obligation of men entering into it is the advancement of these ends to joyn in all acts of it so far as they tend to these ends but if any thing come to be required directly repugnant to these ends those men of whom such things are required are bound not to communicate in those lesser Societies where such things are imposed but to preserve their communion with the Catholick Society of Christians But these general discourses seeming more obscure it will be necessary for the better subserviency of them to our design to deduce them into particulars Setting then aside the Catholick Society of Christians we come to enquire how far men are bound to communicate with any lesser Society how extensive so ever it may pretend its communion to be 1. There is no Society of Christians of any one Communion but may impose some things to be believed or practised which may be repugnant to the
proceeded so high in the letters of excommunication against Andronicus that he forbids all the Churches upon earth to receive him into their communion And withall adds That if any should contemn his Church because it was of a little City and should receive those who were condemned by it as though it were not necessary to obey so poor a Church he lets them know that they make a Schism in that Church which Christ would have to be one We see here on what equal terms the communion of the Catholick Church then stood when so small a Church as that of Ptolemais could so farr oblige by her act the Catholick Church that they should be guilty of Schism who admitted them to communion whom she had cast out of it If Synesius had believed the Church of Rome to have been the center of Ecclesiastical communion had it not been good manners nay duty in him to have asked first the pleasure of the Church of Rome in this case before he had passed so full and definitive a sentence as this was But the wise and great men of those ages were utterly strangers to these rare distinctions of a causal formal and participative Catholick Church It is true indeed they did then speak honourably of the Church of Rome in their age as a principal member of the Catholick Church and having advantages above other Churches by its being fixed in the seat of the Empire on which account her communion was much desired by other persons But still we find the persons most apt to extoll her Authority were such as were most obnoxious who not being able to hold any reputation in their own Churches where their crimes and scandals were sufficiently known ran presently to Rome which was ready still to take their part thereby to inhance her power as is most evident in the many disputes which arise upon such accounts between the Roman and African Bishops But these things we shall have occasion to discuss more particularly afterwards At the present it may be sufficient by these few of very many examples which might be produced to have made it appear that it was farr from being a known and received truth in the ancient Church that the Church of Rome was the center of Ecclesiastical communion or that the Church was call'd Catholick from the union with her and dependence upon her But we must now consider what strenuous proofs you produce for so confident an affirmation your instances therefore being the most pregnant to your purpose which you could find in Antiquity must be particularly examined your first is of St. Ambrose relating that his brother Satyrus going on shore in a certain City of Sardinia where he desired to be Baptized demanded of the Bishop of that City whether he consented with the Catholick Bishops that is saith he with the Roman Church These words I grant to be in St. Ambrose but whosoever throughly considers them will find how little they make for your purpose For which it will be sufficient to look on the following words which tell us that at that time there was a Schism in the Church and Sardinia was the chief seat of it For Lucifer Caralitanus had newly separated himself from the Church and had left Societies there which joyned in his Schism For Caralis was the Metropolis of Sardinia and it appears by St. Hierome that the Luciferians confined the Church only to Sardinia which is the cause of that expression of his That Christ did not come meerly for the sake of the Sardinians So that those Luciferians were much like the Donatists confining the Church only to their own number Now there being such a Schism at that time in Sardinia what did Satyrus any more then enquire whether the Bishop of the place he resorted to was guilty of this Schism or no But say you he made that the tryal whether he was a Catholick or no by asking whether he agreed with the Church of Rome To which I answer that there was very great reason for his particular instancing in the Church of Rome 1. Because Satyrus was originally of the Church of Rome himself for Paulinus in the life of S. Ambrose Satyrus his brother speaking of him after his consecration to be Bishop say's Ad urbem Romam hoc est ad natale solum perrexit He went to Rome i. e. to the place of his birth now Satyrus being originally a Roman what wonder is it that he should particularly enquire of the Roman Church As suppose one of the Gallican Church of Arles or Vienna should have been cast upon shore in another Island belonging to France at the same time and understanding there was a Schism in the place should particularly enquire whether they agreed with the Catholick Bishops i. e. with the Church of Arles or Vienna Could you hence inferr that either of these were the center of Ecclesiastical communion and if not from hence how can you from the other Or suppose in the time of the Donatists Schism in Africk a stranger coming accidentally thither and desiring communion with the Christians of that City he was in should enquire of the Bishop of the City whether he communicated with the Catholick Bishops i. e. with the Church of Hippo or Carthage Could you hence inferr that Hippo was causally the Catholick Church and if not with what reason can you do it from so parallel a case 2. Because Sardinia did belong to the Metropolitan Province of the Church of Rome it being one of the Suburbicarian Provinces under the jurisdiction of the Roman Lieutenant and consequently one of the Suburbicarian Churches appertaining to the Metropolitan power of the Bishop of Rome and therefore it was but reason to ask whether the Churches in Sardinia did agree with their Mother Church or no. But all this is very farr from implying that the Vnity of the Catholick Church comes from the particular Church of Rome on this account because at that time when the Vnity of the Catholick Church was preserved by that continual correspondence between the parts of it by the formed letters and otherwise who ever was known to have communion with any one particular Church which communicated with the rest had thereby communion with the Catholick Church So that on that account the question might as well have been asked of the Churches of Milan Agobio or any other in Italy as of the Church of Rome For whosoever communicated with any of them did communicate with the Catholick Church as well as those who did communicate with the Church of Rome So that your first instance will prove no more the Church of Rome to be the fountain and center of Ecclesiastical communion then any other particular Church Your second is from St. Hieromes saying That the Church of Alexandria made it her glory to participate of the Roman Faith But doth it hence follow that the Church of Alexandria was therefore Catholick because she participated of
made good but since you are so cautious as not to think your self obliged to do it I commend your discretion in it and proceed I cannot see that his Lordship is guilty of a false quotation of Bellarmin for that saying Et Papas quosdam graves errores seminâsse in Ecclesiâ Christi luce clarius est for he doth not seem at all to Cite Bellarmin for it but having Cited the place just before where he endeavours to vindicate the Popes from all errours he adds this expression as directly contrary to his design that though he had endeavoured so much to clear them from errours yet that they had sown some grievous errours in the Church was as clear as the day and as it immediately follows is proved by Jac. Almain c. And therefore it was only your own oscitancy which made you set it in the Contents of your Chapter that Cardinal Bellarmin was most falsly quoted by him But that falseness which with so much confidence you charge his Lordship with rebounds with greater force on your self when you say That Almain speaks not of errours in Faith at all but only of errours or rather abuses in point of manners whereas he not only asserts but largely proves That the Pope may err not only personally but judicially and in the same Chapter brings that remarkable Instance of the evident contradiction between the definitions of Pope Nicolaus 3. and John 22. And Platina tells us that John 22. declared them to be Hereticks who held according to the former definition And Is this only concerning some abuses abuses in point of manners and not concerning errours in Faith that Almain speaks You might as well say so of Lyra who said That many Popes have Apostatized from the Faith of Cusanus who saith That both in a direct and collateral line several Popes have fallen into Heresie of Alphonsus à Castro who saith That the best friends of the Popes believe they may err in Faith of Carranza who sayes No one questions but the Pope may be an Heretick of Canus who sayes It is not to be denyed but that the chief Bishop may be an Heretick and that there are examples of it You might as well I say affirm that all these spake only of abuses in Manners and not errours in Faith as you do of Almain Neither will your other subterfuge serve your turn That they taught errours in Doctrine as private men for Alphonsus à Castro expresly affirms in the case of Pope Coelestine about the dissolution of Marriage in case of Heresie That it cannot be said that he erred through negligence and as a private person and not as Pope For saith he this definition is extant in the decretals and he had seen it himself Although the contrary to this were afterwards defined not only by Pope Innocent 3. but by the Council of Trent And hence it appears whatever you pretend to the contrary That there may be tares sown in the Church of Rome not only by private persons but by the publick hands of the Popes too if they themselves may be believed who else do most Infallibly contradict each other But whether these errours came in at first through negligence or publick definitions is not so material to our purpose for which it is sufficient to prove that the Church of Rome may be tainted and corrupted which may be done one way as well as the other As Corn-fields may be over-run with tares though no one went purposely to sow them there And so much is acknowledged by Cassander when he speaks of the superstitious practises used in your Church That those who should have redressed those abuses were if not the Authours yet the incouragers of them for their own advantage by which means errours and corruptions may soon grow to a great height in a Church though they were never sown by publick definitions And when you disparage Cassanders Testimony by telling us how little his credit is among Catholicks you thereby let us see how much your Church is over-run with corruptions when none among you can speak against them but they presently forfeit their reputation The case of the Schism at Rome between Cornelius and Novatianus and the imployment of Caldonius and Fortunatus from St. Cyprian thither doth belong to the former Chapter where it hath been fully discoursed of already and must not be repeated here Only thence we see that Rome is as capable of a Schism within her own bowels as any other Church is which is abundantly attested by the multitudes of Schisms which happened afterwards between the Bishops of that See But this being insisted on by his Lordship in the former Controversie of the Catholick Church doth not refer to this Chapter wherein the causes of our separation should be enquired into Which at last you come to and passing by the verbal dispute between A.C. and his Lordship about what was spoken at the Conference you tell us It more concerns you to see what could or can be said in this point You draw up therefore a large and formal charge of Schism against us in your following words Our assertion say you is but good Sir it is not what you assert but what you prove It were an easie matter for us to draw up a far larger Bill against your Church and tell you our assertion is that you are the greatest Schismaticks in the world Would you look on it as sufficiently proved because we asserted it I pray think the same of us for we are not apt to think our selves guilty of Schism at all the more because you tell us what your assertion is if this be your way of dealing with us your first assertion had need be That you are Infallible but still that had need be more then asserted for unless it be Infallibly proved we should not believe it But however we must see what your assertion is that we may at least understand from you the state of the present Controversie Your assertion therefore is that Protestants made this rent or Schism by their obstinate and pertinacious maintaining erroneous Doctrines contrary to the Faith of the Roman or Catholick Church by their rejecting the Authority of their lawful Ecclesiastical Superiours both immediate and mediate by aggregating themselves into a separate body or company of pretended Christians independent of any Pastours at all that were in lawful and quiet possession of jurisdiction over them by making themselves Pastours and Teachers of others and administring Sacraments without Authority given them by any that were lawfully impowerâ—d to give it by instituting new rites and ceremonies of their own in matter of Religion contrary to those anciently received throughout all Christendome by violently excluding and dispossessing other Prelates and Pastours of and from their respective See's Cures and Benefices and intruding themselves into their places in every Nation where they could get footing the said Prelates and Pastours for the
formal guilt of Schism it being impossible any person should have just cause to disown the Churches Communion for any thing whose belief is necessary to salvation And whosoever doth so thereby makes himself no member of the Church because the Church subsists on the belief of Fundamental truths But in all such cases wherein a division may be made and yet the several persons divided retain the essentials of a Christian Church the separation which may be among any such must be determined according to the causes of it For it being possible of one side that men may out of capricious humours and fancies renounce the Communion of a Church which requires nothing but what is just and reasonable and it being possible on the other side that a Church calling her self Catholick may so far degenerate in Faith and practise as not only to be guilty of great errours and corruptions but to impose them as conditions of Communion with her it is necessary where there is a manifest separation to enquire into the reasons and grounds of it and to determine the nature of it according to the justice of the cause which is pleaded for it And this I hope may help you a little better to understand what is meant by such who say There can be no just cause of Schism and how little this makes for your purpose But you go on and I must follow And to his calling for truth c. I Answer What Hereticks ever yet forsook the Church of God but pretended truth and complain'd they were thrust out and hardly dealt with meerly because they call'd for truth and redress of abuses And I pray what Church was ever so guilty of errours and corruptions but would call those Hereticks and Schismaticks who found fault with her Doctrine or separated from her Communion It is true Hereticks pretend truth and Schismaticks abuses but is it possible there should be errours and corruptions in a Churches Communion or is it not if not prove but that of your Church and the cause is at an end if it be we are to examine whether the charge be true or no. For although Hereticks may pretend truth and others be deceived in judging of it yet doubtless there is a real difference between truth and errour If you would never have men quarrel with any Doctrine of your Church because Hereticks have pretended truth would not the same reason hold why men should never enquire after Truth Reason or Religion because men have pretended to them all which have not had them It is therefore a most senseless cavil to say we have no reason to call for truth because Hereticks have done so and on the same grounds you must not be call'd Catholicks because Hereticks have been call'd so But those who have been Hereticks were first proved to be so by making it appear that was a certain truth which they denyed do you the same by us prove those which we call errours in your Church to be part of the Catholick and Apostolick Faith prove those we account corruptions to be parts of Divine worship and we will give you leave to call us Hereticks and Schismaticks but not before But say you He should have reflected that the Church of God is stiled a City of Truth by the Prophet and so it may be and yet your Church be a fortress of Errour And a pillar and foundation of Truth by the Apostle but what is this to the Church of Romes being so And by the Fathers a rich depository or Treasury of all Divine and Heavenly Doctrines so it was in the sense the Fathers took the Church in for the truly Catholick Christian Church And we may use the same expressions still of the Church as the Prophets Apostles and Fathers did and nevertheless charge your Church justly with the want of truth and opposition to the preaching of it and on that ground justly forsake her Communion which is so far from being inexcusable impiety and presumption that it was only the performance of a necessary Christian duty And therefore that Woe of scandal his Lordship mentioned still returns upon your party who gave such just cause of offence to the Christian world and making it necessary for all such as aimed at the purity of the Christian Church to leave your Communion when it could not be enjoyed without making shipwrack both of Faith and a good Conscience And this is so clear and undeniable to follow you still in your own language that we dare appeal for a tryal of our cause to any Assembly of learned Divines or what Judge and Jury you please provided they be not some of the parties accused and because you are so willing to have Learned Divines I hope you will believe the last Pope Innocent so far as not to mention the Pope and Cardinals What follows in Vindication of A. C. from enterfeiring and shuffling in his words because timorous and tender consciences think they can never speak with caution enough for fear of telling a lye will have the force of a demonstration being spoken of and by a Jesuite among all those who know what mortal haters they are of any thing that looks like a lye or aequivocation And what reason there is that of all persons in the world they should be judged men of timorous and tender consciences But whatever the words were which passed you justifie A. C. in saying That the Protestants did depart from the Church of Rome and got the Name of Protestants by protesting against her For this say you is so apparent that the whole world acknowledgeth it If you mean that the Communion of Protestants is distinct from yours Whoever made scruple of confessing it But because in those terms of departing leaving forsaking your Communion you would seem to imply that it was a voluntary act and done without any necessary cause enforcing it therefore his Lordship denyes that Protestants did depart for saith he departure is voluntary so was not theirs But because it is so hard a matter to explain the nature of that separation between your Church and Ours especially in the beginning of it without using those terms or some like them as when his Lordship saith that Luther made a breach from it It is sufficient that we declare that by none of these expressions we mean any causeless separation but only such acts as were necessarily consequential to the imposing your errours and corruptions as conditions of Communion with your Church To the latter part his Lordship answers That the Protestants did not get that name by Protesting against the Church of Rome but by Protesting and that when nothing else would serve against her errours and superstitions Do you but remove them from the Church of Rome our Protestation is ended and our Separation too This you think will be answered with our old put off That it is the common pretext of all Hereticks when they sever themselves from the Roman Catholick
Church If your Church indeed were what she is not the Catholick Church we might be what we are not Hereticks but think it not enough to prove us Hereticks that you call us so unless you will likewise take it for granted that the Pope is Antichrist and your Church the Whore of Babylon because they are as often and as confidently call'd so And if your Church be truly so as she is shrewdly suspected to be Do you think she and all her followers would not as confidently call such as dissented from her Hereticks and the using those expressions of her virulent execrations against her as you do now supposing her not to be so What therefore would belong to your Church supposing her as bad as any Protestants imagine her to be cannot certainly help to perswade us that she is not so bad as she is When you say still That Protestants did really depart from the Roman Church and in so doing remained separate from the whole Church you very fairly beg the thing in dispute and think us uncivil for denying it You know not what that passage means That the Protestants did not voluntarily depart taking their whole body and cause together since there is no obscurity in the expression but a defect elsewhere I can only say That his Lordship was not bound to find you an Vnderstanding as oft as you want it But it were an easie matter to help you for it is plain that he speaks those words to distinguish the common cause of Protestants from the heats and irregularities of some particular persons whom he did not intend to justifie such as he saith Were either peevish or ignorantly zealous And if you distinguish the sense of your Church from the judgements of particular persons I hope it may be as lawful for us to distinguish the body and cause of Protestants from the inconsiderate actings of any particular men All that which follows about the name of Protestants which his Lordship saith Took its rise not from protesting simply against the Roman Church but against the Edict at Worms which was for the restoring all things to their former state without any reformation is so plain and evident that nothing but a mind to cavil and to give us the same things over and over could have made you stay longer upon it For what else means your talk of Innovation in matters of Religion which we say was caused by you and protesting against the Roman Church and consequently against all particular Visible Churches in the world and that which none but Hereticks and Schismaticks used to do Do you think these passages are so hard that we cannot know what they mean unless we have them so often over But they are not so hard to be understood as to be believed and that the rather because we see you had rather say them often than prove them once If the Popes professed Reformation necessary as to many abuses I hope they are not all Schismaticks who call for the redress of abuses in your Church But if all the Reformation we are to expect of them be that which you say was effectually ordained by the Council of Trent if there had not been an Edict at Worms there were the Decrees of that Council which would have made a Protestation necessary Although we think your Church needs Reformation in Manners and Discipline as much as any in the world yet those are not the abuses mainly insisted on by the Protestants as the grounds of their Separation and therefore his Lordship ought to be understood of a Reformation as to the errours and corruptions of the Roman Church and doubtless that Edict of Worms which was for the restoring all things to their former state did cut off all hopes of any such Reformation as was necessary for the Protestants to return to the Roman Communion And whatever you say till you have proved the contrary better than as yet it is done it will appear that they are the Protestants who stand for the ancient and undefiled Doctrine of the Catholick Church against the novel and corrupt Tenets of the Roman Church And such kind of Protestation no true Christian who measures his being Catholick by better grounds than communion with the Church of Rome will ever have cause to be ashamed of But A. C. saith his Lordship goes on and will needs have it that the Protestants were the cause of the Schism For saith he though the Church of Rome did thrust them from her by excommunication yet they had first divided themselves by obstinate holding and teaching Opinions contrary to the Roman Faith and practice of the Church which to do S. Bernard thinks is pride S. Austin madness At this his Lordship takes many and just exceptions 1. That holding and teaching was not the prime cause neither but the corruptions and superstitions of Rome which forced many men to hold and teach the contrary So the prime cause was theirs still Now to this your Answer is very considerable That the Bishop of Rome being S. Peter 's successor in the Government of the Church and Infallible at least with a General Council it is impossible that Protestants or other Sectaries should ever find such errours or corruptions difinitively taught by him or received by the Church as should either warrant them to preach against her Doctrine or lawfully to forsake her communion We say Your Church hath erred you say It is impossible she should we offer you evident proofs of her errours you say She is Infallible we say It is impossible that Church should be Infallible which we can make appear hath been deceived you tell us again It is impossible she should be deceived for let Hereticks say what they will she is Infallible And if this be not a satisfactory way of answering let the world judge But having already pulled down that Babel of Infallibility this Answer falls to the ground with it and to use your phrase The truth is all that you have in effect to say for your Church is that she is Infallible and the Catholick Church and by this means you think to cast the Schism upon us and these things are great enough indeed if you could but make any shew of proof for them but not being able to do that you do in effect as much as if a man in a high feaver should go about to demonstrate it was impossible for him to be sick which the more he takes pains to do the more evident his distemper is to all who hear him And it is shrewdly to be suspected if your errours had not been great and palpable you would have contented your selves with some thing short of Infallibility But as the case is with your Church I must confess it is your greatest wisdom to talk most of Infallibility for if you can but meet with any weak enough to swallow that all other things go down without dispute but if men are left at liberty to
examine particulars they would as soon believe it was impossible for that man to fall whom they see upon the ground as your Church to be infallible which they find overspread with errour and corruptions Much such another Answer you return to his Lordship's second Exception which is at his calling the Christian Faith the Roman Faith For you say It is no incongruity so to call it for the Bishop of Rome being Head of the whole Christian or Catholick Church the Faith approved and taught by him as Head thereof though it be de facto the general Faith and Profession of all Christians may yet very well be called the Roman Faith Why because the root origine and chief Foundation under Christ of its being practised and believed by Christians is at Rome But if the Bishop of Rome be no such thing as Head of the Christian Church and they must have a very wide Faith which must swallow that Vniversal Headship with all the appurtenances upon your bare affirmation if it belongs no more to him to approve and teach the Faith then to any other Catholick Bishop if the coming from Rome affords no credibility at all to the Christian Faith then still there remains as great an incongruity as may be in calling the Christian Faith the Roman Faith And as to all these my denial is as good as your affirmation when you undertake to prove I shall to answer If A. C. adds the practice of the Church to the Roman Faith I see no advantage is gotten by it for the first must limit the latter and the Faith being Roman the Church must be so too and therefore all your cavils on that subject come to nothing The third Exception is against the place out of S. Bernard and S. Austin which his Lordship saith are mis-applied for neither of them saith he spake of the Roman and S. Bernard perhaps neither of the Catholick nor the Roman but of a particular Church or Congregation His words are What greater pride than that one man should prefer his judgement before the whole Congregation Which A. C. conveniently to his purpose rendred before the whole Congregation of all the Christian Churches in the world Whereas no such thing is in him as all the Christian Churches in the world And his Lordship saith He thinks it is plain that he speaks both of and to the particular Congregation to which he was then preaching This you deny not but say The argument holds â minori ad majus to shew the more exorbitant pride of those who prefer their private fanatick Opinions before the judgement of the whole Catholick Church The Roman Church you should have said for you own no Catholick Church but what is Roman and therein the argument you mention will hold yet further against those who prefer the Novel Opinions of the Roman Church before the ancient Apostolical Faith of the truly Catholick Church His Lordship adds That it is one thing to prefer a mans private judgement before the whole Congregation and another for an intelligent man in something unsatisfied modestly to propose his doubts even to the Catholick Church And much more may a whole National Church nay the whole body of Protestants do it Now you very wisely leave out this last clause that you might take an opportunity to declaim against Luther Zuinglius Calvin c. for want of modesty But what pretext could there have been for such virulency had they been guilty of what you charge them if you would but have given us all that his Lordship said And may not I now therefore more justly return you your own language in the same page upon a far less occasion That here 's a manifest robbery of part of his Lordships words for which you are bound to restitution For his Lordship as it were foreseeing this cavil warily adds that concerning a whole National Church and the whole body of Protestants which you for reasons best known to your self craftily leave out But we must excuse our adversary for this slip though it be an unhandsome one For the truth is he had no other way to hide the guiltiness of his own pen c. These are your own words only applied and that much more justly to your self for a more palpable fault in the very same page wherein you had accused his Lordship for one of that kind But you go on further and supposing the doubts had been modestly proposed yet this could not at all help the Protestant cause in regard their doubts were in points of Faith already determined for such by authority of the Catholick Church to question any of which with what seeming modesty soever is sinful heretical and damnable Were it our present business it were easie to make it appear that the far greatest part of the matters in Controversie were never determined as points of Faith before the Council of Trent and I hope you will not say that was before the Reformation or any proposal of doubts But if they had been defined by your Church for matters of Faith and our great doubt be How your Church comes to have this power of determining points of Faith to whom should this doubt be propounded to your Church no doubt then we should hear from her as now we do from you That to question it with what seeming modesty soever is sinful heretical ond damnable And Is it not then likely that your Church should ever yield to the proposal of doubts and you do well to tell us so for it will save Protestants a great deal of labour when they see your Church so incurable that she makes it sinful heretical and damnable to question any thing she hath determined Although we do with much more reason assert it to be sinful heretical and damnable in your Church to offer to obtrude erroneous Doctrines on the Faith of the Christian world as points necessary to be believed and to urge superstitious practices as the conditions of communion with her To the place of S. Austin wherein he saith That it is a part of most insolent madness for any man to dispute Whether that be to be done which is usually done in and through the whole Catholick Church of Christ. His Lordship answer 1. Here 's not a word of the Roman Church but of that which is all over the world Catholick which Rome never yet was and for all your boast of having often shewn That the Roman and the Catholick are all one I dare leave it to the indifferent Reader Whether you have not miserably failed in your attempts that way 2. He answers That A. C. applies this to the Roman Faith whereas S. Austin speaks expresly of the rites and ceremonies of the Church and particularly about the manner of offering upon Maundy-Thursday whether it be in the morning or after supper or both 3. T is manifest by the words themselves that S. Austin speaks of no matter of Faith
less de fide because it is contradicted by some since it is founded on the promises of Christ concerning the Church Since therefore the Pope himself is but Filius Ecclesiae and the Church is Sponsa Christi they say It is unreasonable that the Son of the Church should not be subject to the Spouse of Christ. If therefore these promises concerning the Church inferr an Infallibility in it and that Infallibility be in a General Council as representing the Church it follows thence that Councils must be in themselves Infallible whether confirmed by the Pope or no. And we may see how little this Opinion of Infallibility of General Councils is like to stand between them by the Answers which are given by those of the other party who makâ—â—he Popes Confirmation necessary to the Infallibility of the Council For Canus expresly saith That the Council is said to be Infallible in no other sense than the Church is i. e. in those things wherein all agreed and not the major part Bellarmin likes not this For saith he if the major part of the Council erre the Council must of necessity erre for that which properly belongs to the Council is Passing judgement in matter of Faith or making Decrees now if that were not the lawful Decree of the Council which is made by the major part there never could be a lawful Decree for none passes without some dissenting and therefore he denies that the Council doth fully represent the Church without the Pope So that on both sides we see how pregnant these proofs are for the Councils Infallibility when one saith That if they be understood of the Church the Councils Infallibility doth not want the Popes Confirmation the other to make the Popes Confirmation necessary denies such an absolute representation of the Church in the Council If then the Council doth represent the Church it is Infallible although not confirmed by the Pope if it doth not then the promises made to the Church cannot belong to the General Council Thus I have shewed you how far these places concerning as you say the Infallibility of the Church are from proving the Infallibility of General Councils But though these general places concerning the Church may not so clearly prove the Infallibility of General Councils yet you say There are some particular places to this purpose Which are Mat. 18.20 and Act. 15.28 Which not having been handled already I must follow you more closely in the examination of them The first place is Mat. 18.20 Where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them The substance of the argument from this place his Lordship thus repeats from Bellarmin The strength of the argument is not taken from these words alone but as they are continued with the former and that the argument is drawn à minori ad majus from the less to the greater thus If two or three gathered in my name do alwaies obtain that which they ask at Gods hands viz. wisdom and knowledge of those things which are necessary for them How much more shall all the Bishops gathered together in Council alwaies obtain wisdom and knowledge to judge those things which belong to the direction of the whole Church To which his Lordship answers That there is very little strength in these words either considered alone being generally interpreted by the Fathers of consent in prayer or with the argument à minori ad majus 1. Because though that argument hold in natural or necessary things yet not in voluntary or promised things or things which depend upon their institution 2. Because it follows not but where and so far as the thing upon which the argument is founded agrees to the less Now this Infallibility doth not belong to the lesser Congregation and therefore cannot be inferred as to the greater 3. Because it depends upon conditions here supposed of being gathered together in the name of Christ and therefore supposing Infallibility promised these conditions here implied must be known before such a Congregation can be known to be Infallible 4. Because Christs promise of presence in the midst of them is only to grant what he shall find to be fit for them not infallibly whatsoever they shall think fit to ask for themselves 5. Because Gregory de Valentiâ and Stapleton confess that this place doth not properly belong to prove an Infallible certainty of any sentence in which more agree in the name of Christ but to the efficacy of consent for obtaining that which more shall pray for in the name of Christ if at least that be for their souls health For else it would hence follow that not only the definition of a General Council but even of a Provincial nay of two or three Bishops gathered together is valid and that without the Popes consent The utmost I can make of your reply to these Answers lyes in this That you grant that primarily and directly our Saviour doth not intend that particular Infallibility and this is that which Gregory and Stapleton assert but only that he signified in general that he would be present with his Church and all faithful people gathered together in his name so often and so far as their necessities required his presence they duly imploring it But yet the argument holds for the Infallibility of General Councils and not National or Provincial because the necessities of the Church require one and not the other and that it will follow à minori ad majus in things promised as well as natural where the motive is increased and neither goodness nor power wanting in the promiser But all this depends on a false supposition viz. that there is a necessity of Infallibility to continue in the Church and that all persons are bound to believe the Decrees of the Councils to be the Infallible Oracles of truth but we say neither of these are necessary in the Church and therefore you have no ground to extend this promise of Christs presence to the Infallibility of Councils For you are not to extend the power and goodness of Christ as far as you shall judge fitting but as far only as he hath promised to extend it For otherwise it would be far more for the peace and unity of the Church if every particular Congregation had this Infallibility than if only General Councils had it Because by that means many disputes about the authority calling and proceedings of General Councils would be prevented Nay it might be extended much further for by this argument from the goodness and power of Christ you might for all that I can see inferr with more force that every true Christian should be Infallible and so there be no need of any Councils at all For whatever argument you can produce why Christ's goodness should extend to make Councils Infallible it will much more hold as to the other for the peace and unity of the Church would be far better secured
cannot erre in his judicial determinations concerning Faith is not to be found either in letter or sense in any Scripture in any Council or in any Father of the Church for the full space of a thousand years and more after Christ To this you answer 1. That in the sense wherein Catholicks maintain the Popes Infallibility to be a matter of necessary belief to all Christians it is found for sense both in Scripture Councils and Fathers as you say you have proved in proving the Infallibility of General Councils of which he is the most principal and necessary member So then when we enquire for the Infallibility of General Councils we are sent to the Pope for his Confirmation to make them so but when we enquire for the Popes Infallibility we are sent back again to the Councils for the proof of it And they are hugely to blame if they give not an ample testimony to the Pope since he can do them as good a turn But between them both we see the greatest reason to believe neither the one nor the other to be Infallible But 2. You would offer at something too for his personal Infallibility in which I highly commend your prudence that you say You will omit Scripture and you might as well have omitted all that follows since you say only That the testimonies you have produced seem to do it in effect and at last say That it is an Assertion you have wholly declined the maintaining of and judge it expedient to do so still And you may very well do so if there be no better proofs for it than those you have produced but however we must examine them Doth not the Council of Chalcedon seem to say in effect that the Pope is Infallible when upon the reading of his Epistle to them in condemnation of the Eutychian Heresie the whole Assembly of Prelates cry out with acclamation and profess that S. Peter who was Infallible spake by the mouth of Leo and that the Pope was interpreter of the Apostles voice You do well to use those cautious expressions of seeming to say in effect for it would be a very hard matter to imagine any such thing as the Popes Infallibility in the highest expressions used by the Council of Chalcedon For after the reading of Leo's Epistle against Eutyches and many testimonies of the Fathers to the same purpose the Council begins their acclamations with these words This is the Faith of the Fathers this is the Faith of the Apostles all who are orthodox hold thus And after it follows Peter by Leo hath thus spoken the Apostles have taught thus Which are all the words there extant to that purpose And Is not this a stout argument for the Popes personal Infallibility For What else do they mean but only that Leo who succeeded in the Apostolical See of S. Peter at Rome did concurr in Faith with S. Peter and the rest of the Apostles But Do they say that it was impossible that Leo should erre or that his judgement was Infallible or only that he owned that Doctrine which was Divine and Apostolical And the Council of Ephesus your next testimony hath much less than this even nothing at all For the Council speaks not concerning S. Peter or the Pope in the place by you cited only one of the Popes officious Legats Philip begins very formally with S. Peter's being Prince and Head of the Apostles c. and that he to this day 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lives in his successours and passeth judgement Is it not a very good Inference from hence that the Council acknowledged the Popes personal Infallibility because one of the Popes Legats did assert in the Council that S. Peter lived and judged by the Pope And yet Might not this be done without his personal Infallibility in regard of his succession in that See which was founded by S. Peter But you are very hard driven when you are fain to take up with the Sentence of a Roman Priest instead of a General Council and any judgement in matters of Faith instead of Infallibility Your other testimonies of S. Hierom S. Augustine and S. Cyprian have been largely examined already and for the remaining testimonies of four Popes you justly fear it would be answered that they were Popes and spake partially in their own cause And you give us no antidote against these fears but conclude very warily That you had hitherto declined the defence of that Assertion and professed that it would be sufficient for Protestants to acknowledge the Pope Infallible in and with General Councils only But as we see no reason to believe General Councils at all Infallible whether with or without the Pope so neither can we see but if the Infallibility of the Council depends on the Popes Confirmation you are bound to defend the Popes personal Infallibility as the main Bulwark of your Church CHAP. III. Of the errours of pretended General Councils The erroneous Doctrine of the Church of Rome in making the Priests intention necessary to the essence of Sacraments That principle destructive to all certainty of Faith upon our Authours grounds The absurdity of asserting that Councils define themselves to be Infallible Sacramental actions sufficiently distinguished from others without the Priests Intention Of the moral assurance of the Priests Intention and the insufficiency of a meer virtual Intention The Popes confirmation of Councils supposeth personal Infallibility Transubstantiation an errour decreed by Pope and Council The repugnancy of it to the grounds of Faith The Testimonies brought for it out of Antiquity examin'd at large and shewed to be far from proving Transubstantiation Communion in one kind a violation of Christs Institution The Decree of the Council of Constance implyes a non obstante to it The unalterable nature of Christs Institution cleared The several evasions considered and answered No publick Communion in one kind for a thousand years after Christ. The indispensableness of Christs Institution owned by the Primitive Church Of Invocation of Saints and the Rhetorical expressions of the Fathers which gave occâ—sion to it No footsteps of the Invocation of Saints in the three first Centuries nor precept or example in Scripture as our Adversaries confess Evidences against Invocation of Saints from the Christians Answers to the Heathens The worship of Spirits and Heroes among the Heathens justifiable on the same grounds that Invocation of Saints is in the Church of Rome Commemoration of the Saints without Invocation in S. Augustins time Invocation of Saints as practised in the Church of Rome a derogation to the merits of Christ. Of the worship of Images and the near approach to Pagan Idolatry therein No Vse or Veneration of Images in the Primitive Church The Church of Rome justly chargeable with the abuses committed in the worship of Images ALthough nothing can be more unreasonable then to pretend that Church Person or Council to be Infallible which we can prove to have actually
this you call The Doctrine of Catholicks The Doctrine rather of a proud tyrannical and uncharitable faction of men who that they might gain Proselytes to themselves shew how little they are themselves the Proselytes of Christ. But you offer us a reason for it Because all Catholicks hold that neither Faith nor Hope nor any Repentance can save us but that only which is joyned with a perfect Love of God without the Sacrament of Pennance actually and duely received and because Protestants reject this they cannot be saved But you are not at all the less excusable because you assert such Doctrines from whence such uncharitableness follows but the dreadful consequence of such Doctrines ought rather to make you question the truth of them For can any one who knows and understands Christianity ever believe that although he had a most hearty repentance for sin and a most sincere love to God he should eternally perish because he did not confess his sins to a Priest and receive absolution from him I can hardly perswade my self that you can believe such things but that only such Doctrines are necessary to be taught to maintain the Priests authority and to fright men into that pick-lock of conscience the useful practise of Auricular Confession To what purpose are all the promises of grace and mercy through Christ upon the sincerity of our turning to him if after all this the effect depends upon that Sacrament of Pennance of which no precept is given us by Christ much less any necessity of it asserted in order to eternal Salvation If this then be all your ground of condemning Protestants they may rejoyce in this That your reasons are as weak as your malice strong But it would be more fit for you to enquire Whether such who live and dye in such a height of uncharitableness whether with or without the Sacrament of Pennance can be in any capacity of eternal Salvation For that is a plain violation of the Laws of Christ this other even among your selves a disputable Institution of Christ and by many said not to be at all of that necessity which you suppose it to be For neither Medina nor Maldonate even since the Council of Trent dare affirm the denyal of your Sacrament of Pennance to be Heresie and must then the souls of all Protestants be sent to hell for want of that which it is questionable whether it were Instituted by Christ or no. But if this Sacrament of Pennance be so necessary to Salvation that they cannot be saved who want it What becomes then of all the Primitive Church which was utterly a stranger to your Sacrament of Pennance as shall be manifested when you desire it what becomes of the Greek Church which as peremptorily denies the necessity of it as Protestants do Both which you may find confessed and proved by Father Barns and many testimonies of your own Authours are brought by him against the Divine Institution and necessity of it Who very ingenuously confesses That by the Law of Christ such a one by the sentence of very many Catholicks may be pronounced absolved before God who manifests the truth of his Faith and Charity although he discovers not a word of the number or weight of his sins What unreasonable as well as uncharitable men are you then to assert That no Protestants can escape damnation for want of that which so many among your selves make unnecessary for the pardon of sin But it is just with God that those who are so ready to condemn others should be condemned by themselves and if your Consciences do not condemn you here your Sentence may be the greater in another world Your second Argument against Protestants is Because they want certainty of Faith by denying the Infallibility of Church and Councils but this hath been so throughly sifted already that I suppose none who have read the preceding discourses will have the least cause to stick at this and therefore we proceed to the Vindication of your censures from being guilty of the want of Charity For you are the men who would have us thank God when you condemn us to hell that we escape so and are angry with us that we do not believe that you most entirely love us when you judge us to eternal flames For you say that your denyal of Salvation to us is grounded even upon Charity If it be so you are the most charitable people in the world for you deny Salvation to all but your selves and some Heathens But say you If Salvation may be had in your Church as Protestants confess and there be no true Church or Faith but one it follows that out of your Church there is no Salvation to be had To which his Lordship had fully answered by saying T is true there is but one true Faith and but one true Church but that one both Faith and Church is the Catholick Christian not the particular Roman So that this passage is a meer begging the question and then threatning upon it without all reason or charity And all your declamations about the way of knowing the Doctrine of the Catholick Church have been spoiled by what hath been said already upon that subject We come therefore to that which is the proper business of this Chapter which is to examine the strength of that Inference which is drawn from the Protestants concession of the possibility of Salvation in your Church viz. That thence it follows that the Roman Church and Religion is the safer way to Salvation Two things his Lordship observes the force of this Argument lyes in the one directly expressed viz. The consent of both parties of the possibility of Salvation in the Roman Church the other upon the By viz. That we cannot be saved because we are out of the Church And of these two he speaks in order First he begins with the confession as to which his Answer lyes in three things 1. That this was the way of the Donatists of old and would hold as well for them as the Church of Rome 2. That if the principle on which this Argument proceeds be true it will be more for the advantage of Protestants then of your Church 3. That the principle it self is a contingent Proposition and may justifie the greatest Heresies in the world By this methodizing his Lordships discourse we shall the better discern the strength of your Answers to the several particulars of it In the first place he shews How parallel this is with the proceedings of the Donatists for both parts granted that baptism was true among the Donatists but the Donatists denyed it to be true baptism among the Catholick Christians and therefore on this principle the Donatists side is the surer side if that principle be true That it is the safest taking that way which the differing parties agree on To this you Answer nothing but what will still return upon your selves and discover the
understood till we have gone through the Account of the Grounds of Faith If S. Augustine make some no Catholick Christians for holding obstinately some things of no great moment in his Book of Heresies it was because by Catholick Christians he understood all such and only such as were the members of the sound and Orthodox Church in opposition to all kind of unnecessary separation from it upon matters of small moment and not because he believed the Churches Infallibility in defining all matters of Faith and that all such things were so defined which men are call'd Hereticks for denying of unless you will suppose it was ever infallibly defined that there were no Antipodes for some were accounted Hereticks for believing them and that by such whom you account greater than S. Austin But for S. Austin how far it was from his meaning to have all those accounted Fundamental Errours which he recounts in his Book of Heresies appears not only from the multitude of particulars mentioned in it which no one in his senses can acknowledge Fundamental or declared by the Church as necessary to be believed by all but from his declared scope and design in the preface to that Book wherein it appears he was desired not only to write the greater errours concerning Faith the Trinity Baptism Repentance Christ the Resurrection the Old and New Testament Sed omnia omnino quibus à veritate dissentiunt i. e. all kind of errours whatsoever and do you think that there could then be no errour but it must be against some thing then defined by the Church as necessary to Salvation If not then all truths were then defined by the Church and consequently there could be no new Definitions ever since if there might then those errours mentioned by S. Austin were not about matters necessary to be believed and so S. Austin's Book of Heresies makes nothing for you but very much against you considering that in all that black list of Hereticks there are none brought in for denying those grand Fundamentals of your Church the Pope's Supremacy your Churches Infallibility nor any of that new brood of necessary Articles which were so prudently hatcht by the Council of Trent But if S. Austin do you no good you hope S. Gregory Nazianzen may because he saith That nothing can be more perillous than those Hereticks who with a drop of poison do infect our Lord 's sincere Faith Therefore all things defined by the Church are Fundamental What an excellent Art this Logick is that can fetch out of things that which was never in them What a rare consequence is this If Heresie be dangerous then whatever is defined by the Church is Fundamental but it may be the strength lyes in the drop of poison as though S. Gregory thought a drop of poison as dangerous as a whole dose of it But were I your Physitian instead of the least drop of poison I should prescribe you good store of Hellebore and should hope to see the effect of it in making better consequences than these are But to see yet further the strange effects that Logick hath upon some men for say you in the prosecution of your proof that all things defined by the Church are Fundamental Hence it is that Christ our Saviour saith Matth. 8.17 If he will not hear the Church let him be to thee as a Heathen and a Publican The Argument in form runs thus Whosoever deserves excommunication is guilty of a Fundamental Errour but he that will not hear the Church deserves Excommunication ergo Or else there may be more in it than so For no doubt the Heathens and Publicans as such were guilty of Fundamental Errours therefore they who will not hear the Church are guilty of as Fundamental Errours as Heathens and Publicans But before you urge us any more with this dreadful Argument I pray tell us What that Church is which our Saviour speaks of what the cases are wherein the Church is to be heard what the full importance is of being as a Heathen and Publican and you must prove this Church to be understood in your sense of the Catholick Church and that this Church hath hereby power to define matters of Faith and that none can possibly in any other sense be accounted as Heathens and Publicans but as guilty of as Fundamental Errours as they were Your next Objection concerning giving God and the Church the lye and preferring and opposing a man's private judgement and will before and against the Judgement and Will of God and the Church if men deny or doubt of any thing made known by the Church to be a truth revealed by God signifies nothing at all unless it be antecedently proved that the Church can never erre in declaring any thing to be a truth revealed by God which none who know what you mean by the Church will easily assent to till you have attempted a further proof of it than yet we find And although the questioning Divine Veracity be destructive to that which you call Supernatural Faith yet I hope it is possible to believe God to be true and yet that all men are lyars or that there is no such inseparable Connexion between God's Veracity and the present Declarations of any Church but that one may heartily assent to the former and yet question the truth of the latter If you think otherwise shew your pity to the weakness of our understandings by something that may look like a proof of it which we are still much to seek for But your greatest strength like Sampson's seems to lye there where one would least suspect it viz. in Athanasius his Creed For thus you go on Wherefore it is said in S. Athanasius his Creed which is approved in the thirty nine Articles of the pretended English Church that Whosoever will be saved it is necessary that he hold the Catholick Faith which unless every one hold whole and inviolate without doubt he shall perish for ever Neither can the Bishop reply That all Points expressed therein are Fundamental in his sense for to omit the Article of our Saviours descent into Hell he mentions expresly the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son which his Lordship hath denyed to be a Fundamental Point as we saw in the former Chapter But the better to comprehend the force of this Argument we must first consider what it is you intend to prove by it and then in what way and manner you prove it from this Creed The matter which you are to prove is that all things defined by the Church are Fundamental i. e. in your sense necessary to Salvation and that the ground why such things whose matter is not necessary do become necessary is because the Church declares them to be revealed by God now in order to this you insist on the Creed commonly call'd Athanasius his wherein some things acknowledged not to be Fundamental in the matter are yet said to be necessary
are for he speaks of those things which all Christians who have a care of their Salvation are to avoid of such things as are contrary to all Antiquity and such kind of Dogmata I freely grant the Definitions of your Church to be Your second citation is as happy as the first cap. 28. Crescat saith he speaking of the Church sed in suo duntaxat genere in eodem scilicet Dogmate eodem sensu eâdemque sententiâ An excellent place no doubt to prove it in the Churches power to define new Articles of Faith because the Church must alwaies remain in the same Belief sense and opinion When his words but little foregoing are Profectus sit ille fidei non permutatio which without the help of English Lexicons you would willingly render by leaving out that troublesome Particle non that the best progress in Faith is by adding new Articles though it be as contrary to reason as it is to the sense of Vincentius Lerinensis If Vincentius saith that the Pelagians erred in Dogmate fidei which words neither appear cap. 24. nor 34. he gives this reason for it because they contradict the Vniversal sense of Antiquity and the Catholick Church cap. 34. So that still Vincentius where-ever he speaks of this Dogma fidei speaks in direct opposition to your sense of it for new definitions of the Church in matters of Faith There being scarce any book extant which doth more designedly overthrow this opinion of yours then that of Vincentius doth To shew therefore how much you have wronged his Lordship and what little advantage comes to your cause by your insisting on Vincentius his testimony I shall give a brief account both of his Design and Book The design of it is to shew what wayes one should use to prevent being deceived by such who pretend to discover new matters of Faith and those he assigns to be these two setling ones faith on the Authority of Scripture and the tradition of the Catholick Church But since men would enquire The Canon of Scripture being perfect and abundantly sufficient for all things what need can there be of Ecclesiastical tradition He answers For finding out the true sense of Scripture which is diversly interpreted by Novatianus Photinus Sabellius Donatus Arrius Eunomius Macedonius Apollinaris c. In the following Chapter he tells us what he means by this Ecclesiastical tradition Quod ubique quod semper ab omnibus creditum est that which hath Antiquity Vniversality and Consent joyning in the belief of it And can any new Definitions of the Church pretend to all or any of these He after enquires what is to be done in case a particular Church separates it self from the communion of the Catholick He answers We ought to prefer the health of the whole body before any pestiferous or corrupted member But in case any Novel Contagion should spread over not a part only but endanger the whole Church then saith he a man must adhere to Antiquity which cannot be deceived with a pretence of Novelty But if in Antiquity we find out the errour of two or three particular Persons or City or Province what is then to be done then saith he the Decrees of General Councils are to be preferred But in case there be none then he adds The general consent of the most approved writers of the Church is to be enquired after and what they all with one consent openly frequently constantly held writ and taught that let every man look on himself as bound to believe without hesitation Now then prove but any one of the new Articles of Faith in the Tridentine Confession by these rules of Vincentius and it will appear that you have produced his Testimony to some purpose else nothing will be more strong and forcible against all your pretences than this discourse of Vincentius is which he inlarges by the examples of the Donatists Arrians and others in the following Chapters in which still his scope is to assert Antiquity and condemn all Novelties in matters of Faith under any pretext whatsoever For this ch 12 14. he cites a multitude of Texts of Scripture forbidding our following any other Doctrine but what was delivered by Christ and his Apostles and Anathematizing all such as such as should Preach any other Gospel and concludes that with this remarkable speech It never was never is never will be lawful to propose any thing as matter of Faith to Christian Catholicks besides what they have received And it was is and will be becoming Christians to Anathematize all such who declare any thing but what they have received Do you think this man was not of your minde in the Doctrine of Fundamentals could he do otherwise then believe it in the Churches power to define things necessary to Salvation who would have all those Anathematized who pretend to declare any thing as matter of Faith but what they received as such from their Ancestours And after he hath at large exemplified this in the Photinian Nestorian Apollinarian Heresies and shewed how little the Authority of private Doctors how excellent soever is to be relyed on in matters of faith he concludes again with this Whatsoever the Catholick Church held universally that and that alone is to be held by particular persons And after admires at the madness blindness perverseness of those who are not contented with the once delivered and ancient rule of Faith but are still seeking new things and alwaies are itching to add alter take away some thing of Religion or matter of Faith As though that were not a Heavenly Doctrine which may suffice to be once revealed but an earthly institution which cannot be perfect but by continual correction and amendment Is not this man now a fit person to explain the sense of your Churches new Definitions and Declarations in matters of Faith And have not you hit very right on this sense of Dogma when here he understands by it that Doctrine of Faith which is not capable of any addition or alteration And thus we understand sufficiently what he means by the present controverted place that if men reject any part of the Catholick Doctrine they may as well refuse another and another till at last they reject all By the Catholick Doctrine or Catholicum dogma there he means the same with the Coeleste dogma before and by both of them understands that Doctrine of Faith which was once revealed by God and which is capable of no addition at all having Antiquity Vniversality and Consent going along with it and when you can prove that this Catholicum dogma doth extend beyond those things which his Lordship calls Catholick Maxims or properly Fundamental Truths you will have done something to the purpose which as yet you have failed in And thus we say Vincentius his rule is good though we do not say that he was infallible in the application of it but that he might mention some such things to
cannot be owned as an Apostolical Tradition 2. That what you call an unwritten Word must be something doctrinal so you call them your self doctrinal Traditions i. e. such as contain in them somewhat dogmatical or necessary to be believed by us and thence it was this Controversie rose from the Dispute concerning the sufficiency of the Scriptures as a Rule of Faith Whether that contained all God's Word or all matters to be believed or no or Whether there were not some Objects of Faith which were never written but conveyed by Tradition 3. That what is thus doctrinal must be declared by the Church to be an Apostolical Tradition which you in terms assert According then to these Rules we come to examine the Evidences by you produced for such an unwritten Word For which you first produce several Instances out of S. Austin of such things which were in his time judged to be such i. e. doctrinal Traditions derived from the Apostles and have ever since been conserved and esteemed such in the whole Church of Christ. The first you instance in is that we now treat That Scripture is the Word of God for which you propose the known place wherein he affirms he should not believe the Gospel but for the Authority of the Church moving him thereto But this proves nothing to your purpose unless you make it appear that the Authority of the Church could not move him to believe the Gospel unless that Authority be supposed to be an unwritten Word For I will suppose that S. Austin or any other rational man might be sufficiently induced to believe the Gospel on the account of the Churches Authority not as delivering any doctrinal Tradition in the nature of an unwritten Word but as attesting that Vniversal Tradition which had been among all Christians concerning it Which Universal Tradition is nothing else but a conveying down to us the judgement of sense and reason in the present case For the Primitive Christians being best able to judge as to what Authentick Writings came from the Apostles not by any unwritten Word but by the use of all moral means it cannot reasonably be supposed that the successive Christians should imbezzle these Authentick Records and substitute others in the place of them When therefore Manichaeus pretended the Authenticalness of some other writings besides those then owned by the Church S. Austin did no more than any reasonable man would do in the like case viz. appeal to the Vniversal Tradition of the Catholick Church upon the account of which he saies He was induced to believe the Gospel it self i. e. not so much the Doctrine as the Books containing it But of this more largely elsewhere I can hardly excuse you from a falsification of S. Austin's meaning in the ensuing words which you thus render If any clear Testimony were brought out of Scripture against the Church he would neither believe the Scripture nor the Church whereas it appears by the words cited in your own Margin his meaning is only this If you can find saith he something very plain in the Gospel concerning the Apostleship of Manichaeus you will thereby weaken the Authority of those Catholicks who bid me that I should not believe you whose Authority being weakned neither can I believe the Gospel because through them I believed it Is here any like what you said or at least would seem to have apprehended to be his meaning which is plainly this If against the consent of all those Copies which the Catholick Christians received those Copies should be found truer which have in them something of the Apostleship of Manichaeus this must needs weaken much the Authority of the Catholick Church in its Tradition whom he adhered to against the Manichees and their Authority being thus weakned his Faith as to the Scriptures delivered by them must needs be much weakned too To give you an Instance of a like nature The Mahumetans pretend that in the Scripture there was anciently express mention of their Prophet Mahomet but that the Christians out of hatred of their Religion have erased all those places which spake of him Suppose now a Christian should say If he should find in the Gospel express mention of Mahomet's being a Prophet it would much weaken the Authority of the whole Christian Church which being so weakned it must of necessity weaken the Faith of all those who have believed our present Copies Authentick upon the account of the Christian Churches Authority Is not this plainly the case S. Austin speaks of and Is it any more than any man's reason will tell him Not that the Churches Authority is to be relyed on as judicially or infallibly but as rationally delivering such an Universal Tradition to us And might not S. Austin on the same reason as well believe the Acts of the Apostles as the Gospel when they were both equally delivered by the same Universal Tradition What you have gained then to your purpose from these three citations out of S. Austin in your first Instance I cannot easily imagine Your second Tradition is That the Father is not begotten of any other person S. Austin's words are Sicut Patrem in illis libris nusquam Ingenitum legimus tamen dicendum esse defenditur We never read in the Scriptures that the Father is unbegotten and yet it is defended that we must say so And had they not good reason with them to say so who believed that he was the Father by way of exclusion of such a kind of Generation as the Eternal Son of God is supposed to have But Must this be an Instance of a doctrinal Tradition containing some Object of Faith distinct from Scripture Could any one whoever believed the Doctrine of the Trinity as revealed in Scripture believe or imagine any other that though it be not in express terms set down in Scripture yet no one that hath any conceptions of the Father but this is implied in them If it be therefore a Tradition because it is not expresly in Scripture Why may not Trinity Hypostasis Person Consubstantiality be all unwritten Traditions as well as this You will say Because though the words be not there yet the sense is and I pray take the same Answer for this of the Father's being unbegotten Your third is Of the perpetual Virginity of the Virgin Mary This indeed S. Austin saith is to be believed fide integra but he saith not divinâ but Do you therefore make this a doctrinal Tradition and an unwritten Word If you make it a doctrinal Tradition you must shew us what Article of Faith is contained in it that it was not looked on as an unwritten Word will appear by the disputations of those Fathers who writ most eagerly about it who make it their design to prove it out of Scripture Those who did most zealously appear against the Opinion of Helvidius were S. Hierom and S. Ambrose of the Latin Church S. Austin only mentions it in
of all his goods And when he speaks of the Doctrine it self of Christianity he saies It is suitable to whatever was rational among the Platonists or other Philosophers but far more agreeable to it self and containing much more excellent things than ever they could attain to the knowledge of In his second Apology for the Christians to the Emperour Antoninus Pius he insists much on the excellency of the Doâ—trine of Christianity from the Precepts of it chastity love of enemies liberality submission to authority worship of God c. Afterwards he proves the truth and certainty of all we believe concerning Christ from the exact accomplishment of the Prophecies made concerning him in the Old Testament which discourse he ends with this saying So many and so great things being seen are sufficient to perswade men to believe the truth of them who are lovers of truth and not seekers of applause and under the command of passions Thus we see in all his discourses where he had the most occasion administred to him to discover the most certain grounds of Christian Faith he resolves all into the rational evidence of the truth excellency and divinity of the Doctrine which was contained in the Scriptures For in his second Oration to the Greeks after he had spoken highly in commendation of the Scripture calling it The best expeller of all turbulent passions and the surest extinguisher of those preternatural heats in the souls of men which saith he makes men not Poets nor Philosophers nor Orators but it makes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dying men immortal and mortals become gods and transferrs them from the earth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to such places whose confines are far above Olympus therefore O ye Greeks come and be instructed be ye as I am for I was as you are And these were the things which prevailed with me the divine power and efficacy of the Doctrine What was it then I pray that Justin Martyr of a Philosopher becoming a Christian resolved his Faith into If we may believe himself it was into the evidence of the Doctrine of Christianity and not into the Infallibility of any Church The Testimony of this person I have the more largely insisted on both because he was so great a Philosopher as well as Christian and lived so near the Apostolical times Next him we produce Athenagoras as a Philosopher too as well as Christian who flourished under Antoninus and Commodus to whom he made his Apology in behalf of the Christians in which he first undertakes to manifest the reasonableness of the Doctrine which they owned the Foundation of it being the same with that which the best Philosophers acknowledged the existence and unity of the Deity But saith he if we had nothing but such reasons as he had produced our perswasion could only be humane but the words of the Prophets are they which establish our minds who being carried beyond themselves by the impulse of the Divine Spirit spake that which they were moved to when the Spirit used them as Instruments through which he spake Is not here a plain resolution of Faith into that Divine Authority by which the Prophets spake and that not as testified by any Infallible Church but as it was discernable by those persons he spake to for he appeals to the Emperours themselves concerning it which had been a fond and absurd thing for him to do if the knowledge of that Divine Inspiration did depend meerly on the testimony of Christians as such and were not to be discovered by some common Principles to them and others Much to the same purpose Tatianus speaks in that eloquent Oration of his against the Greeks who was Justin Martyrs Scholar and we shall see how agreeably he speaks to him in the account he gives how he became a Christian. After saith he he had abundantly discovered the vanity of the Theology and Superstitions of the Greeks he fell to the reading some strange Books much elder and more Divine than the Writings of the Greek Philosophers And to these saith he I yielded up my Faith for the great simplicity and plainness of the style and the freedom from affectation which was in the writers and that evidence and perspicuity which was in all they writ and because they foretold things to come made excellent promises and manifestly declared the Monarchy of the World What Protestant could speak higher of the Scripture and of those internal arguments which are the grounds of Faith than Tatianus in these words doth Yet we see these were the arguments which made him relinquish the Greek learning of which he was a Professor at Rome and betake himself to the profession of Christianity though he was sure to undergo not only contempt from the world but to be in continual hazard of his life by it That innate simplicity of the writings of the Scripture joyned with the perspicuity of it if at least those words be rightly translated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by sermo nusquam obscurus and it doth not rather relate to the account of the worlds creation which I conjecture it may do but however the certainty of the predictions the excellency of the promises and the reasonableness of the Doctrine were the things which by the reading of the Books he was perswaded to believe them by But all this while we hear no news of any Churches Infallibility in order to Faith We come therefore to Irenaeus who was omnium doctrinarum curioâ—â—ssimus explorator as Tertullian speaks of him a great searcher into all kind of learning and therefore surely not to seek as to the true account of his Faith Whose judgement herein although we have had occasion to enquire into before yet we have testimonies enough beside to manifest his consent with them And although Irenaeus of all the ancient Fathers be looked on as the most favourable to Tradition and is most cited to that purpose in these disputes yet I doubt not but to make it appear that where he speaks most concerning Tradition he makes the resolution of Faith to be wholly and entirely into the Scripture and they who apprehend otherwise do either take the citations out of him upon trust or else only search him for the words of those citations and never take the pains to enquire into the scope and design of his discourse For clearing which we must consider what the subject was which he writ of what the plea's of the adverse party were what way Irenaeus takes to confute them and to establish the Faith of Christians as to the matter which was in Controversie The matter in dispute was this Valentinus and his Scholars not being contented with the simplicity of the Doctrine of the Gospel and in probability the better to suit their opinions to the Heathen Mythology had invented a strange Pedigree of Gods the better as they pretended to give an account of the production of things and the various dispensations
and fully in these words T is too true indeed that there is a miserable rent in the Church and I make no question but the best men do most bemoan it nor is he a Christian that would not have Vnity might he have it with Truth But I never said nor thought that the Protestants made this rent The cause of the Schism is yours for you thrust us from you because we call'd for truth and redress of abuses For a Schism must needs be theirs whose the cause of it is The woe runs full out of the mouth of Christ ever against him that gives the offence not against him that takes it ever And in the Margent shewing that a separation may sometimes be necessary he instanceth in the orthodox departing from the communion of the Arrians upon which he sayes It cannot be that a man should do well in making a Schism There may be therefore a necessary separation which yet incurrs not the guilt of Schism and that is when Doctrines are taught contrary to the Catholick Faith And after saith The Protestants did not depart for departure is voluntary so was not theirs I say not theirs taking their whole body and cause together For that some among them were peevish and some ignorantly zealous is neither to be doubted nor is there danger in confessing it Your body is not so perfect I wot well but that many amongst you are as pettish and as ignorantly zealous as any of ours You must not suffer for these nor we for those nor should the Church of Christ for either And when A. C. saith That though the Church of Rome did thrust the Protestants from her by excommunication yet they had first divided themselves by obstinate holding and teaching Opinions contrary to the Roman Faith His Lordship answers So then in his Opinion Excommunication on their part was not the prime cause of this division but the holding and teaching of contrary Opinions Why but then in my opinion saith he that holding and teaching was not the prime cause neither but the corruptions and superstitions of Rome which forced many men to hold and teach the contrary So the prime cause was theirs still And A. C. telling him That he said that it was ill done of those who first made the separation He answers That though he remembred not that he said those words yet withall adds If I did not say it then I do say it now and most true it is That it was ill done of those whoere they were who first made the separation But then A. C. must not understand me of Actual only but of Causal separation For as I said before the Schism is theirs whose the cause of it is and he makes the separation that gives the first just cause of it not he that makes an actual separation upon a just cause preceding And this is so evident a Truth that A. C. cannot deny it for he sayes it is most true These passages I have laid together that the Reader may clearly understand the full state of this great Controversie concerning Schism the upshot of which is that it is agreed between both parties that all separation from communion with a Church doth not involve in it the guilt of Schism but only such a separation as hath no sufficient cause or ground for it So that the Question comes to this Whether your Church were not guilty of such errours and corruptions as gave sufficient cause for such a separation The Question being thus stated we now come to consider how you make good your part in it Your first pretence is if reduced into argument for you seem to have a particular pique against a close way of disputing That your Church is a right and orthodox Church and therefore could never give any just cause of separation from it For the Lady asked as A. C. would have it Whether the Roman Church was not the right Church not be not but was not that is relating to the times before the breach was made Now his Lordship tells him That as to the terms he might take his choice For the Church of Rome neither is nor was the right Church as the Lady desired to hear A particular Church it is and was and in some times right and in some times wrong but the right Church or the Holy Catholick Church it never was nor ever can be And therefore was not such before Luther and others left it or were thrust from it A particular Church it was but then A. C. is not distinct enough here neither For the Church of Rome both was and was not a right or orthodox Church before Luther made a breach from it For the word ante before may look upon Rome and that Church a great way off or long before and then in the prime times of it it was a most right and orthodox Church But it may look also nearer home and upon the immediate times before Luther or some ages before that and then in those times Rome was a corrupt and tainted Church far from being Right And yet both these times before Luther made his breach And so he concludes that Section with this clause That the Roman Church which was once right is now become wrong by embracing superstition and errour And what say you now to all this Two things you have to return in answer to it or at least to these two all that you say may be reduced 1. That if the Roman Church was right once it is so still 2. That if the Roman Church were wrong before Luther the Catholick Church was so too These two containing all that is said in this case must be more particularly discussed 1. That if the Roman was the right Church it still is so seeing no change can be shewn in her Doctrine If there have been a change let it appear when and in what the change was made Thus you say but you know his Lordship never granted that the Roman Church ever was the right Church in the sense you take those words for the true Catholick Church that it was once a right particular Church he acknowledged and as such was afterwards tainted with errours and corruptions If so you desire to know what these were and when they came in to the former I shall reserve an Answer till I come to the third part of my task where you shall have an account of them to the latter the time when these came in because this is so much insisted on by your party I shall return you an Answer in this place And that I shall do in these following Propositions 1. Nothing can be more unreasonable than to deny that errours and corruptions have come into a Church meerly because the punctual time of their coming in cannot be assigned For Will any one question the birth of an Infant because he cannot know the time of his conception Will any one deny there are tares in the field because
there Roman nor Catholick for he speaks of things done and to be done and not for things believed or to be believed 4. A right sober man may without the least touch of insolency or madness dispute a business of Religion with the Roman either Church or Prelate as all men know Irenaeus did with Victor Now to all this you reply That the argument still holds à minori ad majus and reaches to every person that in any matter whatsoever obstinately opposes himself against the Church of God And is not this an excellent way of arguing from the less to the greater to argue from a rite or ceremony observed by the Universal Church to a matter of Faith determined by the Roman Church This is à minori ad majus with a witness But your Reason is as good as your Answer which is because there was alwaies some point or matter of Faith involved in every Vniversally practised rite or ceremony of the Church I pray Sir then Tell us what the matter of Faith was which lay in the offering on Maundy-Thursday in morning or after supper and by whom this point of Faith was determined and and how far it is obligatory and whether it be not sinful heretical and damnable so much as modestly to doubt of it For all this you told us belongs to all matters of Faith determined by the Catholick Church What remains of this Chapter need not hold us long for C's illation from the Catholick Churches not erring that therefore it cannot be lawful to separate from the Roman Church is absurd and illogical and depends on that gross mistake that the Roman and Catholick Church are all one which we have abundantly disproved in the precedent Chapter What follows concerning the Catholick Churches not erring and how far that extends concerning the Catalogue of Fundamentals and any errours admitted in the Church being destructive to its Being because derogatory to Gods Veracity have been so amply discussed in their proper places that I find no temptation from any new arguments here suggested to resume the debate of them There being then nothing material which hath not been handled already I here conclude this Chapter CHAP. III. Of keeping Faith with Hereticks The occasion of this Dispute The reason why this Doctrine is not commonly defended Yet all own such Principles from whence it necessarily follows The matter of fact as to the Council of Constance and John Hus opened Of the nature of the safe-conduct granted him by the Emperour that it was not a general one salvâ justitiâ but particular jure speciali which is largely proved The particulars concerning Hierom of Prague Of the safe-conduct granted by the Council of Trent Of the distinction of Secular and Ecclesiastical Power and that from thence it follows that Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks Simancha and several others fully assert this Doctrine Of the Invitation to the Council of Trent and the good Instructions there and of Publick Disputation A. C's Endeavour not only to charge Protestants with the guilt of Schism but to justifie and clear the proceedings of the Church of Rome towards them hath led us into a new dispute how far she is to be trusted in the greatest promises which are made to such whom she accounts Hereticks Which is occasioned by these words of his That after this breach was made the Church of Rome was so kind and careful to seek the Protestants that she invited them publickly with safe conduct to Rome to a General Council freely to speak what they could for themselves Or if we take his words as you give them us the sense is the same to our purpose and therefore you impertinently cavil with his Lordship for not keeping Faith with A.C. Which did at first seek to recall them from their Novel Opinions and after their breach did permit yea invite them publickly to Rome to a General Council c. Upon which his Lordship sayes Indeed I think the Church of Rome did carefully seek the Protestants but I doubt it was to bring them within their net And she invited them to Rome A very safe place if you mark it for them to come to just as the Lion in the Apologue invited the Fox to his own Den. Yea but there was safe-conduct offered too Yes conduct perhaps but not safe or safe perhaps for going thither but none for coming thence Vestigia nulla retrorsum Yea but it should have been to a General Council Perhaps so But was the conduct safe that was given to a Council which they call General to some others before them No sure John Hus and Jerom of Prague burnt for all their safe conduct And so long as the Jesuits write and maintain That Faith given is not to be kept with Hereticks And the Church of Rome leaves this lewd Doctrine uncensured as it hath hitherto done and no exception put in of force and violence A. C. shall pardon us that we come not to Rome nor within the reach of Roman Power what freedom of speech soever he promised us For to what end freedom of speech on their part since they are resolved to alter nothing And to what end freedom of speech on our part if after speech hath been free life shall not This you call a Theme which for the most part our Adversaries love to dwell upon as thinking they have some great advantage against us therein And Can you blame them for insisting much on that which their lives are concerned in and it will appear in the prosecution of this subject that we have this great advantage against you that we are come to understand your arts so well as not so easily to be catched by your perfidious subtilties And as we understand your practices better than to rely on your promises of this nature so we are not so ignorant of the intrigues of your proceedings as to suppose that commonly and openly you should defend this Position That Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks For thereby you would lose the intent and design of it for none would be so silly as to venture themselves into the hands of such who openly profess They are not bound to keep Faith with them For Do you think that Father Fulgentio would ever have gone to Rome on the safe-conduct most solemnly given by Paul 5. if he had understood beforehand with what perfidiousness he should have been dealt with there and all under this pretext That safe-conduct was given for his coming hither but not for his going thence Is this the Faith of the Apostolical See Is this the Catholick and Roman Faith If so the Roman Faith before ever it was Christian was much more infallible than this that never was acquainted with such a perfidious Infallibility Well then might his Lordship say The conduct might be safe for going thither but not for coming thence Vestigia nulla retrorsum And so Fulgentio to his sorrow found it
to over-see the lesser parts of it and all joyn to promote the Peace and Unity of it which they may with the more ease do if no one challenge to be Supreme Head to whom belongs the chief care of the Church For by this means they cannot with that power and authority redress abuses and preserve the Churches Purity and Peace which otherwise they might have done So that considering barely the nature of things nothing seems more repugnant to the end for which Christ instituted a Catholick Church than such a Monarchy as you imagine and nothing more suitable than an Aristocracy considering that Christian Churches may be much dispersed abroad and that where they are they are incorporated into that Civil Society in which they live according to the known saying of Optatus Ecclesia est in republicâ c. and therefore such a Monarchy would be unsuitable to the civil Governments in which those Churches may be For it were easie to demonstrate that such a Monarchy as you challenge in the Church is the most inconvenient Government for it take the Church in what way or sense you please Whether as to its own peace and order or to its spreading into other Churches or to the respect it must have to the civil Government it lives under And if we would more largely enquire into these things we might easily find that those which you look on as the great ends wherefore Christ should institute such a Monarchical Government in his Church are things unsuitable to the nature of a Christian Church and which Christ as far as we can judge did never intend to take care that they should never be which are freedom from all kind of Controversies and absolute submission of Judgement to the decrees of an Infallible Judge We no where find such a state of a Christian Church described or promised where men shall all be of one mind only that peace and brotherly love be continued is that all Christians are bound to much less certainly that this Vnity should be by a submission of our understandings to an Infallible Judge of whom we read nothing in that Book which perswades us to be Christians and without which freedom of our understandings which this pretended Infallibility would deprive us of we could never have been judicious and rational Christians But granting that wise men have thought Monarchy the best Government in it self What is this to the proving what Government Christ hath appointed in his Church For that is the best Government for the Church not which Philosophers and Politicians have thought best but which our Saviour hath appointed in his Word For he certainly knew best what would suit with the conveniencies of his Church And these are bold and insolent disputes wherein those of your side argue That Christ must have instituted a Monarchy in his Church because all Philosophers have judged That the most perfect Government I need not tell you what these speeches imply Christ to be if he doth not follow the Philosophers judgement Will you give him leave to judge what is fittest for his Church himself or do you think he hath not wisdom enough to do it unless the Philosophers instruct him Let us therefore appeal to his Laws to see what Government he hath there appointed And now I shall deal more closely with you You tell me therein Christ hath appointed this Monarchical Government But I may be nearer your mind when you will Answer me these following Questions When and where did any wise Legislator appoint a matter of so vast concernment to the good of the Society as the Supreme Government of it and express no more of it in his Laws than Christ hath done of this Monarchical Government of the Church Is there not particular care taken in all Laws about that to express the rights of Soveraignty to hinder Vsurpations to bind all to obedience to determine the way of Succession by descent or election And hath Christ instituted a Monarchy in his Church and said nothing of all these things When the utmost you can pretend to are some ambiguous places which you must have the power of Interpreting your selves or they signifie nothing to your purpose So that none of the Fathers or the Primitive Church for several Centuries could find out such mysteries in super hanc Petram dabo tibi Claves and pasce oves as you have done If such a Monarchy had been appointed in the Church what should we have had more frequent mention of in the Records of the Church than of this Where do we meet with any Histories that write the affairs of Kingdoms for some hundred of years and never mention any Royal Acts of the Kings of them If St. Peters being at Rome had setled the Monarchy of the Church there what more famous act could have been mentioned in all Antiquity then that What notice would have been taken by other Churches of him whom he had left his Successour What addresses would have been made to him by the Bishops of other Churches What testimonies of obedience and submission what appeals and resort thither And it is wonderful strange that the Histories of the Church should be silent in these grand Affairs when they report many minute things even during the hottest times of persecution Did the Christians conspire together in those times not to let their posterity know Who had the Supream Government of the Church then Or were they afraid the Heathen Emperours should be jealous of the Popes if they had understood their great Authority But then methinks they should have carried it however among themselves with all reverence and submission to the Pope and not openly oppose him assoon as ever he began to exercise any Authority as in the case of Victor and the Asian Bishops But of all things it seems most strange and unaccountable to me that Christ should have instituted such a Monarchy in his Church and none of the Apostles mention any thing of it in any of the Epistles which they writ in which are several things concerning the Peace and Government of the Church nay when there were Schisms and divisions in the Church and that on the account of their Teachers among whom Cephas was one by that very name on which Christ said he would build his Church and yet no mention of respect more to him then to any other no intimation of what power St. Peter had for the Government of the Church as the Head and Monarch of it no references at all made to him by any of the divided parties of the Church at that time no mention at all of any such power given him in the Epistles written by him but he writes just as any other Apostle did with great expressions of humility and as if he foresaw what Vsurpations would be in the Church he forbids any Lording it over Gods heritage and calls Christ the chief Pastour of the Church And this he doth in an Epistle not writ