examples of such like sophisms Whatsoever Nation is the true Kingdom of Spain is proud and cruel against Protestants But there is no protection there due to any that are not of that Kingdom therefore there is no protection due to any that are not proud and cruel Or whatsoever Nation is the true Kingdom of France acknowledgeth the Pope but no protection is due from the Governours to any that are not of that Kingdom therefore no protection is due to any that acknowledge not the Pope Or what ever Nation is the Kingdom of Ireland in the daies of Queen Elizabeth was for the Earl of Tyrone but there was no right of Inheritance for any that were not of that Nation therefore there was no right of Inheritance for any that was not for the Earl of Tyrone Or suppose that you could have proved it of all the Church If you had lived four hundred years after Christ you might as well have argued thus Whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ is against kneeling in Adoration on the Lords daies But there is no Salvation to be had out of that Congregation of Christians which is now the true Church of Christ therefore there is no Salvation to be had out of that Congregation which is against kneeling on the Lords day c. But yet 1. There was Salvation to be had in that Congregation without being of that opinion 2. And there is now Salvation to be had in a Congregation that is not of that opinion as you will confess Or whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ doth hold the Canticles and the Epistle to Philemon to be Canonical Scripture and so have done c. But there is no Salvation to be had out of the true Church therefore there is no Salvation to be had out of that Congregation which holdeth the Canticles and Epistle to Philemon to be Canonical Scripture But yet 1. Salvation is to be had in that Church without holding it 2. and its possible hereafter a Church may deny those two books and yet you will think Salvation not thereby overthrown This is but to shew your fallacy from a corrupt accident and indeed but of a part of the Church and a small part Now to your proof of the Major Resp. ad Major The present matter of the Church was not visible in the last Generation for we were not then born but the same form of the Church was then existent in a visible Matter and their Profession was visible or audible though their faith it self was invisible I will do more then you shall do in maintaining the constant visibility of the Chruch Ad minorem 1. If you mean that no Congregation hath been alwaies visible but that Universal Church whose lesser corrupt part acknowledges the Popes Soveraignty I grant it For besides the whole containing all Christians as the parts there can be no other If you mean save that part which acknowledgeth you contradict your self because a part implyeth other parts If you mean save that Universal Church all whose members or the most acknowledge it there is no such subject existent 2. I distinguish of Visibility It s one thing to be a visible Church that is visible in its essentials and another thing to be visible quoad hoc as to some separable accident The Universal Church was ever visible because their Profession of Christianity was so and the persons professing But the acknowledgement of the Vice-christ was not alwaies visible no not in any part much less in the whole And if it had it was but a separable accident if your disease be not incurable that was visible and therefore 1. It was not necessary to Salvation nor a proper mark of the Church 2. Nor can it be so for the time to come I need to say no more to your conclusion Your Argument is no better then this whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ hath been alwaies visible since the time of Christ But no Congregation of Christians hath been so visible save only that which condemneth the Greeks which hath a Colledge of Cardinals to choose the Popes which denieth the cup to the laity which forbiddeth the reading of Scripture in a known tongue without license c. Therefore whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ hath all these 1. In a corrupt part it hath 2. But it had not alwaies 3. And may be cured hereafter To your proof of the Major 1. I grant your Major 2. Ad minorem 1. Either you mean Universal Pastors each one or someone having charge and Government of the whole Church or you mean unfixed Pastors having an indefinite charge of Preaching and Guiding when they come and have particular calls and opportunities or you mean the fixed Pastors of particular Churches In the first sense your Minor is false the Catholike Church was never so united to any Universal Head but Christ no one of the Apostles governed the rest the whole Church much less any since their time In the second sense I grant that the Church hath ever had Pastors since the Ascension In the third sense I grant that some parts or other of the Catholike Church have ever had fixed Pastors of Congregations since the first settling of such Pastors But any one particular Congregation may cease to have such Pastors and may cease it self and Rome hath been long without any true Pastors and therefore was then no such visible Church 2. If by Congregation you mean not the Universal Church but a part or if you mean it of all the parts of the Universal Church I deny your Minor Communities of Christians and particular persons have been and may be without any Pastors to whom they are united or subject The Indians that died in the faith while Frumentius and Edesius were there preaching before they had any Pastor were yet Christians and saved If a Lay-man Convert one or a thousand and you will say that he may baptize them and they die before they can have a Pastor or ever hear of any to whom they owe subjection they are nevertheless saved as members of the Church And if all the Pastors in a Nation were murdered or banished the people would not cease to be Christians and members of the Church Much less if the Pope were dead or deposed or a vacancy befell his seat would all the Catholike Church be annihilated or cease To your Confirmation of the Major that a visible Church is nothing but a Visible Pastor and people united I answer 1. It s true of the universal Church as united in Christ the great Pastor but not as united in a Vice-Christ or humane head 2. It is true of a particular Political or organized Church as united to their proper Pastors 3. But it is not true of every Community of Christians who are a part of the Universal Church A company converted to Christ
are members of the Universal Church though they never heard of a Pope at Rome before they are United to Pastors of their own The Proof of the Minor from Eph. 4. I grant as aforesaid The text proveth that Pastors the Church shall have I disclaim the vain objection of Conditionality in the promise which you mention But it proves not 1. That the Church shall have an Universal Monarch or Vice-Christ under Christ. 2. Nor that every member of the Universal Church shall certainly be a member of a particular Church or ever see the face of a Pastor or be subject to him You say next There remains only to prove the Minor of the second Syllogism viz. that no Congregation of Christians hath been alwaies visible but that which acknowledges c. This is the great point which all lyeth on The rest hath been all nothing but a cunning shooing horn to this Prove this and prove all Prove not this and you have lost your time You say The Minor I prove by obliging the answerers to nominate any Congregation of Christians which alwaies till this present time since Christ hath been visible save that only which acknowledges c. And have I waited all this while for this You prove it by obliging me to prove the contrary Ridiculous sed quo jure 1. Your undertaken form of arguing obligeth you to prove your Minor You cannot cast your Respondent upon proving and so arguing and doing the Opponents part 2. And in your Postscript you presently forbid it me You require me to hold to a Concedo Nego Distingno Omitto Transeat threatning that else you will take it for an Effugium And I pray you tell me in your next to which of these doth the nomination or proof of such a Church as you describe belong Plainly you first slip away when you should prove your Minor and then oblige me to prove the Contrary and then tell me if I attempt it you 'l take it for an Effugium A good cause needs not such dealing as this which me thinks you should be loth a learned man should hear of 3. Your interest also in the Matter as well as your office as Opponent doth oblige you to the proof For though you make a Negative of it you may put it in other terms at your pleasure It is your main work to prove that All the members of the Universal Church have in all ages held the Popes Soveraignty or Universal Head-ship Or the whole Visible Church hath held it Prove this and I will be a Papist you have my promise You affirm and you must prove Prove a Catholike Church at least that in the Major part was of that mind though that would be nothing to prove the condemnation of the rest If you are an impartial enquirer after truth fly not when you come to the setting too I give you this further evident reason why you cannot oblige me to what you here impose 1. Because you require me to prove the Visibility of a Church which held not your point of Papacy and so put an unreasonable task upon me about a Negative or else I must prove that they held the contrary before your opinion was started And it is the Catholike Church that we are disputing about so that I must prove this Negative of the Catholike Church 2. It is you that lay the great stress of Necessity on your Affirmative more then we do on the Negative you say that no man can be saved without your Affirmative that the Pope is the universal Head and Governor But we say not that no man can be saved that holdeth not our Negative that he is not the Vice-Christ For one that hath the plague or leprosie may live Therefore it is you that must prove that all the Catholike Church was still of your mind 3. And it is an Accident and but an Accident of a smallâ—r corrupted part of the Catholike Church that you would oblige me to prove the Negation of and therefore it is utterly needless to my proof of a Visible Catholike Church For I will without it prove to you a successive Visibility of the Catholike Church from the Visibility of its Essential or Constitutive parts of which your Pope is none I will prove a successive visible Church that hath still professed faith in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and been united to the Universal Head and had particular Pastors some fixed some unfixed and held all essential to a Christian. And proving this I have proved the Church of which I am a member To prove that England hath been so long a Kingdom requireth no more but to prove the two Essential parts King and Subjects to have so long continued united It requireth not that I prove that if ever either hâ—â—d or opposed a Vice-King This is our plain case If a man have a botch on one of his hands it is not needful in order to my proving him a man heretofore that I prove he was born and bred without it so be it I prove that he was born a man it sufficeth Nor is it needfull that I prove the other hand alwaies to have been free in order to prove it a member of the body It sufficeth that I prove it to have been still a hand I do therefore desire you to perform your work and prove that no Congregation hath been still visible but such as yours or that the whole Catholike Church hath ever since the ascention held a Humane Universal Governour under Christ or else I shall take it as a giving up your cause as indefensible And observe if you shall prove only that a part of the Catholike Church still held this which you can never do then 1. You will make the Contrary opinion as Consistent with salvation as yours For the rest of the Catholike Church is savable 2. And then you will allow me to turn your Argument against your self as much as it is against us and so cast it away e. g. what ever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ hath been alwaies Visible But no Congregation of Christians hath been alwaies Visible but that which quoad partem denyeth the Popes universal Headship therefore whatever Congregation of Christians is the true Church denyeth the Popes universal Headship Well! but for all this supposing you will do your part I will fail you in nothing that 's reasonable which I can perform A Catholike Church in all ages that was against the Pope in every member of it I hope I cannot shew you because I hope that you are members though corrupt But you shall have more then a particular Congregation or a hundred 1. At this present two or three parts of the Catholike Church is known to be against your Universal Monarchy The Greeks Armenians Ethiopians c. besides the Protestants 2. In the last age there were as many or more 3. In the former ages till An. D. 1000. there were neer as
proposition Whatsoever Congregation is the true Church of Christ acknowledges the Eucharist ever to have been by Christs Institution a proper Sacrament of the new Law and another should distinguish as you do my proposition This may be meant either of an Essential or Accidental thing to Christs true Church Seeing whatsoever is acknowledged to have been alwaies in Christs Church and instituted by Christ cannot be acknowledged but as necessary and essential to his Church If therefore my Major as the terms lie expressed in it be true it should have been granted if false it should have been denyed But no Logick allows that it should be distinguished into such different members whereof one is expresly excluded in the very terms of the proposition These distinctions therefore though learned and substantial in themselves yet were they here unseasonable and too illogical to ground an answer in forme as you ground yours still insisting upon them in your address almost to every proposition Hence appears first that I used no faâ—lacy at all ex Accidente seeing my proposition could not be verified of an Accident Secondly that all your instances of Spain France c. which include Accidents are not apposite because your propositions as they lie have no term which excludes Accidental Adjuncts as mine hath To the Proof of my Major You seem to grant the Major of my second Syllogism not excepting any thing material against it To my Minor You fall again into the former distinctions now disproved and excluded of the meaning of Congregation c. in my proposition and would have me to understand determinately either the whole Catholike Church or some part of it and so make four terms in my Syllogism whereas in my Minor Congregation of Christians is taken generically and abstracts as an universal from all particulars I say no Congregation which is an universal negative and when I say none Saye that Congregation which acknowledges Saint Peter c. the term Congregation supposes for the same whole Catholike Church mentioned in my former Syllogism but expresses it under a general term of Congregation in confuso as I express Homo when I say he is Animal a man when I say he is a living creature but only generically or in confuso Now should I have intended determinately either the whole Catholike Church or any part of it I should have made an inept Syllogism which would have run thus Whatsoever true Church of Christ is now the true Church of Christ hath been always visible c. But no true Church of Christ hath been alwaies visible save the true Church of Christ which acknowledges Saint Peter c. Ergo whatsoever true Churh of Christ is now the true Church acknowledges Saint Peter c. which would have been idem per idem for every one knows that the true Church of Christ is now the true Church of Christ. But speaking as I do in abstractive and generical terms I avoid this absurdity and frame a true Syllogism Now my meaning in this Minor could be no other then this which my words express That the Congregation that is the whole Congregation acknowledges Saint Peter c. and is visible c. and not any part great or small of it For when I say the Parliament of these Nations doth or hath enacted a Statute who would demand of me whether I meant the whole Parliament or some determinate part of it You should therefore have denyed not thus distinguished my Minor quite against the express words of it What you say again of Essentials and Accidents is already refuted and by that also your Syllogism brought by way of instance For your proposition doth not say that the Church of Rome acknowledges those things were alwaies done and that by Christs Institution as my proposition says she acknowledges Saint Peter and his successors To my third Syllogism Granting my Major you distinguish the term Pastors in my Minor into particular and universal fixed and unfixed c. I answer that the term Pastours as before Congregation signifies determinately no one of these but generically and in confuse all and so abstracts from each of them in particular as the word Animal abstracts from homo and brutum Neither can I mean some parts of the Church only had Pastors for I say whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ hath alwaies had visible Pastors and People united Now the Church is not a part but the whole Church that is both the whole body of the Church and all particular Churches the parts of it And hence is solved your argument of the Indians of people converted by lay-men when particular Pastors are dead c. For those were subjects of the chief Bishop alone till some inferiour Pastors were sent to them For when they were taught the Christian Doctrine in the explication of that Article I believe the Holy Catholike Church they were also taught that they being people of Christs Church must subject themselves to their lawful Pastors this being a part of the Christian doctrine Heb. 13. who though absent in body may yet be present in spirit with them as Saint Paul saith of himself 1 Cor. 5.3 Your Answer to the confirmation of my Major seems strange For I speak of visible Pastors and you say t is true of an Invisible Pastor that is Christ our Saviour who is now in heaven invisible to men on earth The rest is a repetition of what is immediately before answered Ephes. 4. proves not only that some particular Churches or parts of the whole Church must alwaies have Pastors but that the whole Church it self must have Pastors and every particular Church in it for it speaks of that Church which is the Body of Christ which can be no less then the whole Church For no particular Church alone is his mystical Body but only a part of it Ephes. 4. is not directly alledged to prove an universal Monarch as you say but to prove an uninterrupted continuance of visible Pastors that being only affirmed in the proposition which I prove by it 2. This is already Answered I stand to the judgement of any true Logitian nay or expert Lawyer or rational person whether a Negative proposition be to be proved otherwise then by obliging him who denies it to give an instance to infringe it Should you say no man hath right to my Benefice and Function in my parish save my self and another should deny what you said would not you or any rational man in your case answer him that by denying your proposition he affirmed that some other had right to them and to make good that affirmation was obliged to produce who that was which till he did you still remained the sole just possessour of your Benefice as before and every one will judge that he had no reason to deny your assertion when he brought no proof against it This is our case The Contradiction which you would draw from this against
followeth Queries of R. B. on these definitions with Mr. Iohnsons Answer and my Reply Mr. J. The Catholick Church of Christ. THE Catholick Church of Christ is all those visible Assemblies Congregations or Communities of Christians who live in unity of true faith and external communion one with another and in dependance of their lawful Pastors R. B. Of the Church Qu. 1. Whether you exclude not all those converted among Infidels that never had external Communion with nor were members of any particular visible Church of which you mâ—ke the Catholick to be constituted Mr. J. Answ. It is sufficient that such be subject to the supream Pastor and in voto quantum in se est resolved to be of that particular Church actually which shall or may be assigned for them by that Pastor to be included in my definition R. B. Reply Q 1. Repl. ad 1 m 1. You see then that your Definitions signifie nothing no man can know your meaning by them First you make the Catholick Church to consist only of visible Assemblies and after you allow such to be members of the Church that are of no visible Assemblies 2. You now mention subjection to the supream Pastor as sufficient which in your description or definition you did not 3. If to be only in voto resolved to be of a particular Church will serve then inexistence is not necessary To be only in voto of the Catholick Church proves no man a member of the Catholick Church but proves the contrary because it is Terminus diminuens Seeing then by your own confession inexistence in a particular Church is not of necessity to inexistence in the Catholike Church why do you not only mention it in your definition but confine the Church to such will you say you meant in voto who then can understand you when you say they must be of visible Assemblies and mean they need not be of any but only to wish desire or purpose it 4. But yet you say nothing to my case in its latitude Many a one may be converted to Christ by a solitary Preacher or by two or three that neâ—er tell him that there is any supream Pastor in the world How then can he be subject to that supposed Pastor that never heard of him The English and Dutch convert many Indians to the faith of Christ that never hear of a supream Pastor 5. If it be necessary that a particular Church must be assigned for such members by the supream Pastor then they are yet little the better that never have any such assignation from him as few have R. B. Qu. 2. What is that faith in unity whereof all members of the Catholike Church do live is it the belief of all that God hath revealed to be believed or of part and what part Mr. J. Answ. Of all either explicitly or implicitly R. B. Reply Reply Ad 2m. Your second answer further proves that your definitions signifie just nothing They must live in unity of the faith that is either with faith or without it with a belief of what Goâ— hath revealed to be believed or without it For to believe any point implicitly in your ordinary sense is not to believe it but only to believe one of the Premises whence the conclusion must be inferred But why do you not tell me what you mean by an Implicite faith Faith is called Implicite in several senses 1. When several truths are actually understood and believed in confuso or in gross in some one proposition which containeth the substance of them all but not with accurate distinct conceptions nor such as are ripe for any fit expression This indistinct immature imperfect kind of apprehension may be called Implicite and the distinct and more digested conceptions Explicite 2. When a general proposition is believed as the matter of our faith but the particulars are not understood or not believed As to believe that omne animal vivit not knowing whether you are Animal or Cadaver Or to believe that all that is in the Scripture is the Word of God and true but not to know what is in the Scripture 3. When it is only the formal object of faith that is believed without understanding the material object The first sort of these I confess is Actual Belief though indistinct But I suppose you mean not this 1. Because it is not the ordinary sense of your party 2. Because else you damn either all the world or most of your own professed-party at least as no members of the Church for few or none have an Actual understanding and belief of all that ever God revealed to them because all men or most at least have been sinfully negligent in searching after and receiving truth and so are sinfully ignorant No man knoweth all that God hath revealed or that he ought to know 3. Because by this rule it is impossible for you or any man to know who is indeed a member of your Church for you cannot know mens confused knowledge or know that it extendeth to all revealed For if you speak of all revealed in general or in Scripture you still damn all or most in your own sense for none as I said understand it all to a word But if you speak of all which that particular man hath had sufficient means to know it is then impossible for you to make a judgement of any mans faith by this For you can never discern all the means internal or external that ever he had much less can you discern whether his faith be commensurate to the truth so far revealed So that by this course you make your Church invisible I pray tell me how you can avoid it 2. The second sort of Implicite Belief is no Belief of the particulars at all An Animal may live and yet it followeth not that you are alive or an animal If this were your meaning then either you mean that it is enough if all be believed Implicitly besides that general proposition or you mean that some must be believed explicitly that is actually and some Implicitly that is not at all If the former be your sense then Infidels or Heathens may be of your Church For a man may believe in general that the Bible is the Word of God and true and yet not know a word that 's in it and so not know that Christ is the Messias or that ever there was such a person But if somewhat must be explicitely that is Actually believed the Question that you should have answered was What is it For till that be known no man can know a Member of your Church by your description 3. If you take Implicite in the third sense then Implicite faith is either Divine or Humane Divine when the Divine Veracity is the formal Object Humane when mans Veracity is the formal Object Which may be Conjunct where the Testimonies are so conjunct as that we are sure it is God that speaks by man who is therefore credible because God infallibly
then the first great General Council and others following were none it being certain that they were not called by him And as certain that he hath never proved any such authority to call them or confirm them R. B. Qu 2. Must it not represent all the Catholike Church Doth not your Definition agree to a Provincial or the smallest Council Mr. J. Answ. Yes my Definition speaks specifically of Bishops and chief Prelates as contradistinct from inferiour Pastors and Clergy and thereby comprises all the Individuums contained in the Species and consequently makes a distinction from National or particular Councils where some Bishops only are convened not all that being only some part and not the whole Species or specifical Notion applied to Bishops of every age And yet I said not all Bishops but Bishops and chief Prelates because though all are to be called yet it is not necessary that all should come Whence appears what I am to answer to the next two Questions R. B. Reply Qu. 2. Repl. 1. Then you have had no General Councils much less can have any more For you have none to represent the greatest part of the Church unless by a mock representation 2. If all must be called your Councils have not been General that call'd not a great part of the Church 3. If most are necessarily detained as by distance the prohibition of Princes c. the call made it not their duty to be there and so makes it not a General Council which is so called from the generality of the meeting and representation and not of the invitation no more then a Call would make it a true Council if none came R. B. Qu. 3. How many Bishops and from what parts must ad esse make such a Council Mr. J. Answ. The number is morally to be considered more or fewer according to the difficulties of times distances of place and other circumstances as is also the parts from whence they are to come R. B. Reply Qu. 3. Repl. This is a put-off for want of an Answer Is it a Council if difficulties keep away all If not it can be no General Council when difficulties keep away the most Much less when such a petty confederacy as met at Trent shall pretend to represent the Christian world You thus leave us uncertain when a Council is General and when not How can the people tell when you cannot tell your self when the Bishops are so many as make a Council General R. B. Qu. 4. May none but Bishops and chief Prelates be members as you intimate Mr. J. Answ. No others unless such inferiours as are sent to supply the places and as Deputies of those Bishops or Prelates are such members of the Council as have Decisive votes in framing Decrees and Definitions R. B. Reply Qu. 4. Repl. This is but your private opinion No Council hath defined it unless they are contradictory For I suppose you know that Basil and many Councils before it had Presbyters in them Mr. J. Schism I understand by Schism a willfull separation or division of ones self from the whole visible Church of Christ. R. B. Of Schism Qu. 1. Is it no Schism to separate from a particular Church unless from the whole Mr. J. Answ. No it is no Schism as Schism is taken in the Holy Fathers for that great and capital crime so severely censured by them in which sense only I take it here R. B. Reply Of Schism Qu. 1. Repl. Though I take Schism more comprehensively and I think aptly my self yet hence I observe your justification of the Protestants from the charge of Schism seeing they separate not from the Catholike or whole Church For they separate not from the Armenian Ethiopian Greek c. nor from you as Christians but as scandalous offenders whom we are commanded to avoid We separate not from any but as they separate from Christ. R. B. Qu. 2. Or is it no Schism unless willfull Mr. J. Answ. No it is not Schism unless the separation be willfull on his part who makes it R. B. Reply Qu. 2. Repl. Again you further justifie us from Schism If it be willfull it must be against knowledge But we are so far from separating willfully or knowingly from the whole Church that we abhor the thought of such a thing as impious and damnable R. B. Qu. 3. Is it none if you make a Division in the Church and not from the Church Mr. J. Answ. Not as we here understand Schism and as the Fathers treat it For the Church of Christ being perfectly one cannot admit of any proper Schism within it self for that would divide it into two which it cannot be R. B. Reply Qu. 3. Repl. Though I am sure Paul calls it Schism when men make divisions in the Church though not from it not making it two Churches but dislocating some members and abating charity and causing contentions where there should be peace yet I accept your continued justification of us who if we should be tempted to be dividers in the Church should yet hate to be dividers from it as believing that he that is separated from the whole body is also separated from the Head Mr. J. Sir The want of a Scribe hath forced me to fail a little in point of time but I hope you will excuse him who desires to serve you W. J. Iune 22. 1660. R. B. Sir Vrgent unavoidable business constrained me to delay my return to your solutions or explications of your definitions till this June 29. 1660. When you desire me to answer any such Questions or explain any doubtful passages of mine I shall willingly do it In the mean time you may see while your terms are still unexplained and your Explications or Definitions so insignificant how unfit we are to proceed any further in dispute till we better understand each other as to our terms and subject which when you have done your part to I shall gladly if God enable me go on with you till we come if it may be to our desired issue But still I crave your performance of the double task you are engaged in Richard Baxter Appendix THe most that I here said against the successive Visibility of our Church is reduced by them to the point of Ordination They say We can have no Church without Pastors no Pastors without Ordination and no Ordination but from the Church of Rome therefore when we broak off from the Church of Rome we interrupted our succession which cannot be repaired but by a return to them This is the sum of most of their discourses in what shape soever they appear To which I answer 1. As a Church is taken for a Community of Christians which are really members of the Church universal so it may ad esse be without Pastors But the Catholike Church can never be without them nor yet any true Political organized particular Church 2. It is contrary to the Papists own opinion that Ordination of their particular Pastors is
Church how described by Augustine 227 Optatus 231 Tertullian 232 The third Argument 238 The fourth Argument 241 242 Arguments proving the Visibility of a Church without the Papacy since Christ. Argument first from the Council of Calcedon 242 Argument 2. From the silence of the Ancients in cases where the allegation of the Papal power would have been most pertinent and necessary 244 Argument 3. From the Tradition and Testimony of the greatest part of the Church 248 Argument 4. From the Churches without the verge of the Empire not subject to the Pope 249 Argument 5. From the Eastern Churches within the Empire not subjects of the Pope 251 Argument 6. From the full Testimony of Greâ—ory the first p. 252 c. defended against Bellarmine Argument 7. From the Confession of â—â—ieâ— Papists 〈◊〉 Sylvius Melchioâ— Câ—nus Reynerius 267 Argument 8. From Historical Testimony about the Original of Vniversal Hâ—â—dship 269 Argument 9. The generality of Christians in the first ages and most in the latter free from owning the Papacy 271 Argument 10. Most Christians in all ages ignorant of Popery 275 Object The Armenians Greeks c. differ from Protestants Answered 280 Misceâ—â—any considerable Testimonies 288 Mr. Johnsons exception 292 My Answer to his exception shewing in what sense Hereticks are or are not in the Church applyed to the Eastern and Southern Churches 293 c. Mr. Johnsons Explication of the most used terms with my Quere's thereupon and his Answer and my Reply 1. Of the Church 311 2. Of Heresie 324 c. 3. Of the Pope 330 c. 4. Of Bishops 337 5. Of Tradition 342 Of General Councils 345 6. Of Schism 350 An Appendix about successive Ordination 355 Letters between me and T. S. a Papist with a Narrative of the success written by his friend 363 ERRATA PAge 176. l. 24. for it r. that p. 179. l. 14. r. Freheri p. 217. l. 26. r. necessitate p. 271. l. 6. r. Ecclesia Romana p. 355. l. 2. for here r. hear Mr. Iohnsons first PAPER THe Church of Christ wherein only Salvation is to be had never was nor is any other then those Assemblies of Christians who were united in communion and obedience to S. Peter in the beginning since the Ascension of Christ. And ever since to his lawful successors the Bishops of Rome as to their chief Pastor Proof Whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ acknowledges S. Peter and his lawful successors the Bishops of Rome ever since the Ascension of Christ to have been and now to be by the Institution of Christ their chief Head and Governour on earth in matters belonging to the soul next under Christ. But there is no salvation to be had out of that Congregation of Christians which is now the true Church of Christ. Ergo there is no salvation to be had out of that Congregation of Christians which acknowledges S. Peter and his lawful successors the Bishops of Rome ever to have been since the Ascension of Christ and now to be by the Institution of Christ their chief Head and Governour on earth in matters belonging to the soul next under Christ. The Minor is clear For all Christians agree in this that to be saved it is necessary to be in the true Church of Christ that only being his mystical Body Spouse and Mother of the faithful to which must belong all those who ever have been are or shall be saved The Major I prove thus Whatsoever Congregation of Christians as now the true Church of Christ hath been alwaies visible since the time of Christ either under persecution or in peace and flourishing But no Congregation of Christians hath been alwaies visible since the time of Christ either under persecution or in peace and flourishing save that only which acknowledges S. Peter and his lawful successors the Bishops of Rome ever to have been since the Ascension of Christ and now to be by Christs Institution their chief Head and Governour on earth in matters belonging to the soul next under Christ. Ergo whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ acknowledges St. Peter and his lawful successors the Bishops of Rome ever to have been since the Ascension of Christ and now to be by Christs Institution their chief Head and Governour on earth in matters belonging to the soul next under Christ. The Major is proved thus Whatsoever Congregation of Christians hath alwaies had visible Pastors and People united hath alwaies been visible either under persecution or in peace and flourishing But whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ hath alwaies had visible Pastors and People united Ergo whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ hath alwaies been visible either under persecution or in peace and flourishing The Major of this last Sylogism is evident for seeing a visible Church is nothing but a visible Pastor and people united where there have alwaies been visible Pastors and people united there hath alwaies been a visible Church The Minor I prove from Ephesians cap. 4. ver 10 11 12 13 14 c. Where S. Paul saies that Christ had Instituted that there should be Pastors and Teachers in the Church for the work of the Ministry and preserving the people under their respective charges from being carried away with every wind of doctrine c. which evidently shews those Pastors must be visible seeing the work of the Ministry which Preaching and Administration of Sacraments and Governing their flocks are all external and visible actions And this shews likewise that those Pastors and People must be alwaies visible because they are to continue from Christs Ascension untill we all meet together in the unity of faith c. which cannot be before the day of judgement Neither can it be said as some say that this promise of Christ is only conditional since to put it to be so without evident Reason giveth scope to every one at his pleasure to make every other promise of Christ to be conditional And so we shall be certain of nothing that Christ hath promised neither that shall alwaies be a visible or invisible Church nor any Church at all no nor of Judgement nor of Eternal life or of the Resurrection of the dead c. for one may say with as much ground as this is said that some conditions were included in all those promises which being not fulfilled hinders the execution of them There remains only to prove the Minor of the second Sylogism viz. That no Congregation of Christians hath been alwaies visible c. save that which acknowledges S. Peter and his lawful successors c. to be their chief Head and Governour c. next under Christ. This Minor I prove by obliging the answerers to nominate any Congregation of Christians which alwaies till this present time since Christ hath been visible either under persecution or in peace and flourishing save that only which acknowledges S.
Peter c. ut supra Sir To comply with your desires of brevity and of confining my self to half a sheet of paper I send you at present only one Argument which being fully discussed shall be followed by others God willing To this as to all the rest of my Arguments which may hereafter be urged I require a Categorical and strict Sylogistical Answer in Form by Concedo Nego Distinguo Omitto Transeat And the particular Propositions specified to which the Respondents apply any of them and no more then precisely thus neither adding Amplifications Reasons Proofs c. of their own out of form and that this may be done with all convenient speed To the place of Scripture Ephes. 4. c. is also required a Categorical answer to what is precisely pressed in it without directing the discourse to other things And what is answered otherwise I shall not esteem an answer but an Effugium or declining of the difficulty By this method exactly observed Truth will easily and speedily be made manifest and your desires of Brevity will be punctually complied with I also desire that the Respondent or Respondents will as I do to this subscribe his or their name or names to their answers so often as any are by him or them returned with the day of the month when returned William Johnson Decem. 9. 1658 The Answer to the first PAPER I received yours and writ this Answer Ian. 4. 1658. Sir WHoever you are a serious debate with so sober a Disputant is to me an exceeding acceptable employment I shall not I hope give you any cause to say that I decline any difficulties or halk your strength or transgress the part of a Respondent But because 1. You have not as you ought to have done explained the terms of your Thesis 2. And have made your Propositions so long 3. And have so cunningly lapped up your fallacies your Respondent is necessitated to be the larger in distinction and explication And seeing you are so instant with me for strictness you thereby oblige your self if you will be ingenuous to make only the learned and not any ignorant men the Iudges of our dispute because you know that to the unlearned a bare Nego signifieth nothing but when such have read your Arguments at length they will expect as plain and large a confutation or judge you to be in the right for speaking most TO your Argument 1. Your conclusion containeth not your Thesis or Question And so you give up your cause the first step and make a new one It should have contained your Question in terms and it doth not so much as contain it in the plain sense so much difference is there between Assemblies of Christians united c. and Congregation of Christians and between Salvation or the Church never was in any other then those Assemblies and no Salvation out of that Congregation as I shall shew you besides other differences which you may see Ad Majorem Resp. 1. By Congregation you mean either the whole Catholike Church united in Christ or some particular Congregation which is but part of that whole In the latter sense your Subject hath a false supposition viz. that a part is the whole and your Minor will be false And your whatsoever Congregation of Christians seems to distinguish that from some other excluded Congregation of Christians that is not part of the Catholike Church which is a supposing the chief part of the Question granted you which we deny We know no universal Congregation of Christians but one which containeth all particular Congregations and Christians the univocally deserve that name 2. Either you mean that this whole Congregation or true Church acknowledgeth the Popes Soveraignty or else that some part of it doth acknowledge it The former I deny and challenge any man living to prove If it be part only that you mean then either the greater part or the lesser that it is the greater I as confidently almost deny for it is against the common knowledge of men acquainted with the world c. If you mean the lesser part you shall see anon that it destroys your cause 3. Either you speak de Ecclesia quae talis or de Ecclesia qua talis and mean that this acknowledgement is essential to it or at least an inseparable property or else that it is separable accident The latter will do you no good the former I deny In summ I grant that a small corrupt part of the Catholike Church doth now acknowledge the Pope to be Christs Vicar or the Vice-christ but I deny 1. That the whole doth so which is your great cause 2. Or the major part 3. Or any Congregation through all ages though if they had it would do you no good 4. Or that it is done by any upon just ground but is their corruption Ad minorem Resp. 1. If you mean any part of the Universal Church by that Congregation which is now the true Church I deny your Minor If the who le I grant it 2. You say all Christians agree in it c. Resp. I think all Protestants or near all do but Franciscus à sancta Clara hath copiously told us in Artic. Anglic. that most of your own Doctors are for the salvation of Infidels and then either you take Infidels for your Church members or your Doctors for no Christians or you play not fair play to tell us so gross an untruth that all Christians are agreed in it To your conclusion Resp. 1. Either you mean that there is no Salvation to be had out of that Universal Church whose part a minor corrupt part acknowledgeth the Popes Soveraignty or else that there is no Salvation to be had out of that Universal Church which wholly acknowledgeth it or else that there is no Salvation to be had out of that part of the Universal Church which acknowledgeth it In the first sense I grant your conclusion if really you are part of the Church There is no Salvation to be had out of Christs Universal Church of which you are small corrupted part In the second sense I told you we deny the supposition in the subject In the third sense I deny the sequel non sequitur because your Major Proposition being false de Ecclesia universali the conclusion must be false de parte ista as excluding the rest But to the unskilful or unwary reader your conclusion seemeth to import that the being in such a Church which acknowledgeth the Popes Soveraignty as it is such a Church is necessary to Salvation and so that the persons acknowledgement is necessary But it is a fallacia accidentis cunningly lapt up that is the life of your imported cause That part of the Universal Church doth hold to the Popes Soveraignty is per accidens and could you prove that the whole Church doth so which you are unlike to do I would say the like And that your fallacy may the better appear I give you some
only to conclude absolutely as you here do that all have been against us for many hundred years In your Num. 5. You name Ethiopia and India as having been without the limits of the Roman Empire whom you deny to have acknowledged any supremacy of power and authority above all other Bishops You might have done well to have cited at least one antient Author for this Assertion Were those primitive Christians of another kind of Church-order and Government then were those under the Roman Empire When the Roman Emperors were yet Heathens had not the Bishop of Rome the Supremacy over all other Bishops through the whole Church and did those Heathen Emperors give it him How came St. Cyprian in time of the Heathen Empire to request Stephen the Pope to punish and depose the Bishop of Arles as we shall see hereafter Had he that authority think you from an Heathen Emperour See now how little your Allegations are to the purpose where you nominate any determinate Congregations to satisfie my demand I had no reason to demand of you different congregations of all sorts and Sects opposing the Supremacy to have been shewn visible in all ages I was not so ignorant as not to know that the Nicolaitans Valentinians Gnosticks Manichees Montanists Arians Donatists Nestorians Eutychians Pelagians Iconoclasts Berengarians Waldensians Albigenses Wicleffists Hussits Lutherans Calvinists c. each following others had some kind of visibility divided and distracted each to his own respective age from our time to the Apostles in joyning their heads and hands together against the Popes Supremacy But because these could not be called one successive Congregation of Christians being all together by the ears amongst themselves I should not have thought it a demand beseeming a Scholar to have required such a visibility as this Seeing therefore all you determinately nominate are as much different as these pardon me if I take it not for any satisfaction at all to my demand or acquittance of your obligation Bring me a visible succession of any one Congregation of Christians of the same belief profession and communion for the designed time opposing that Supremacy and you will have satisfied but till that be done I leave it to any equal judgement whether my demand be satisfied or no. You answer to this That all those who are nominated by you are parts of the Catholike Church and so one Congregation But Sir give me leave to tell you that in your principles you put both the Church of Rome and your selves to be parts of the Catholike Church and yet sure you account them not one Congregation of Christians seeing by separation one from another they are made two or if you account them one why did you separate your selves and still remain separate from communion with the Roman Church why possessed you your selves of the Bishopricks and Cures of your own Prelates and Pastors they yet living in Queen Elizabeths time and drew both your selves and their other subjects from all subjection to them and communion with them Is this disunion think you fit to make one and the same Congregation of you and them is not charity subordination and obedience to the same state and government required as well to make one Congregation of Christians as it is required to make one Congregation of Common-wealths men Though therefore you do account them all parts of the Catholike Church yet you cannot make them in your principles one Congregation of Christians Secondly your position is not true the particulars named by you neither are nor can be parts of the Catholike Church unless you make Arians and Pelagians and Donatists parts of the Catholike Church which were either to deny them to be Hereticks and Schismaticks or to affirm that Hereticks and Schismaticks separating themselves from the communion of the Catholike Church notwithstanding that separation do continue parts of the Catholike Church For who knows not that the Ethiopians to this day are Eutychian Hereticks And a great part of those Greeks and Armenians who deny the Popes Supremacy are infected with the Heresie of Nestorius and all of them profess generally all those points of faith with us against you wherein you differ from us and deny to communicate with you or to esteem you other then Hereticks and Schismaticks unless you both agree with them in those differences of faith and subject your selves to the obedience of the Patriarch of Constantinople as to the chief Head and Governour of all Christian Churches next under Christ and consequently as much a vice-Christ in your account as the Pope can be conceived to be See if you please Hieremias Patriarch of Constantinople his Answer to the Lutherans especially in the beginning and end of the book Acta Theologorum Wittebergensium c. and Sir Edwyn Sands of this subject in his Survey p. 232 233 242 c. Either therefore you must make the Eutychians and Nestorians no Hereticks and so contradict the Oecumenical Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon which condemned them as such and the consent of all Orthodox Christians who ever since esteemed them no others or you must make condemned Hereticks parts of the Catholick Church against all antiquity and Christianity And for those Greeks neer Constantinople who are not infected with Nestorianism and Eutychianism yet in the Procession of the Holy Ghost against both us and you they must be thought to maintain manifest Heresie it being a point in a fundamental matter of faith the Trinity and the difference betwixt those Greeks and the Western Church now for many hundred of years and in many General Councils esteemed and defined to be real and great yea so great that the Greeks left the Communion of the Roman Church upon that difference alone and ever esteemed the Bishop of Rome and his party to have fallen from the true faith and lost his ancient authority by that sole pretended error and the Latins alwaies esteemed the Greeks to be in a damnable error in maintaining the contrary to the doctrine of the Western or Roman Church in that particular And yet sure they understood what they held and how far they differed one from another much better then some Novel writers of yours who prest by force of Argument have no other way left them to maintain a perpetual visibility then by extenuating that difference of Procession betwixt the Greek and Latin Church which so many ages before Protestancy sprung up was esteemed a main fundamental error by both parts caused the Greeks to abandon all subjection and Communion to the Bishops of Rome made them so divided the one from the other that they held each other Hereticks Schismaticks and desertors of the true faith as they continue still to do to this day and yet you will have them both to be parts of the Catholike Church But when you have made the best you can of these Greeks Armenians Ethiopians Protestants whom you first name you neither have deduced nor can deduce
Protestants are chief Members is clearly proved And the Papists exceptions against it confuted LONDON Printed in the year 1660. Qu. Whether the Church of which the Protestants are Members have been Visible ever since the dayes of Christ on earth Aff. THe terms explained 1. The Church sometime signifieth a particular Congregation actually met or associated for such personal meeting for Communion in Gods worship 2. Sometime it signifieth an Association of Churches and that either of sewer or of more as they have opportunity of Communion or correspondency by their Pastors and also the Assemblies of the Pastors of the particular Churches so associated Scripture useth it in the first sense and Later custome whether Scripture also I omit in the later 3. Both Scripture and Custome have used the word to signifie the Church Universal of which all particular Churches are Members This is the Church that we speak of in the Question Defin. The Universal Church of which the Protestants profess themselves Members is The Kingdome of Iesus Christ or The whole company of Believers or true Christians upon earth subjected to Iesus Christ their Head The constitutive parts or the Relate and Correlate are as in every Politick Body the Pars Imperans and Pars subdita which is Christ and Christians The form consisteth in the mutuall Relation The End is the common good of the Church and the glory of the Head and the accomplishment of the will of God 2. The Protestants Defin. Protestants are Christians protesting against or disowning Popery The word Protestant expresseth not the essence of our Religion And therefore it must not denominate the Universal Church of which we are Members we are not to call it A Protestant Universal Church Nor doth it signifie an inseparable proper accident For when the Catholick Church had no Popery there was none to protest against and therefore there could be no Protestants And Ethiopia India and other Nations that never had Popery or those Nations that never heard of it have no occasion to protest against it Nor doth it signifie any Positive part directly of our Religion but only the Negation or Rejection of Popery Even as when a man is called Homo purgatus sanatus liberatus à leprâ peste tabe c. a man purged healed freed from the leprosie plague consumption c. it is no positive part nor inseparable proper accident much less any essential part of the man that is signified by the word Healed Purged c. Nor is it necessary in order to the proving him a man or a healthfull man to prove that he was ever a purged or healed man We undertake not therefore to prove that there have been alwayes Protestants that is men Protesting against Popery Nor have we any need in order to the proof of our Thesis to prove that the Catholick Church hath all been free from Popery in all ages or in any age since the Apostles no more then that it hath been free from Pride Ambition or Contention But yet we shall do it ex abundanti The Religion then of a Protestant is Christianity and he knoweth and owneth no other Which is called the Protestant Religion as cleansed from Popery Members that is true integral parts Of which are By Profession We profess our selves to be of no other Church And before men a man is to be taken to be of that Religion and Church of which he professeth himself to be till he be proved false in that Profession If a Papist affirm himself a member of the Roman Church in disputing with him we will take it for granted that he is so every man being best acquainted with his own mind and fittest to describe the Religion which he owns So that two things I here include 1. It is only such a Catholick Church that hath been still visible that Protestants own 2. And only such that really they are of their Profession being valid Note also that it is not directly the inexistency by internal invisible faith that is in question among us or that I mean but the inexistency by external Visible Profession Bellarmine thinks the bare Professors that are wicked are best termed Dead members and the true Professors Living members we will not stick needlesly on words We take the Living members only to be in strict propriety members but Sincerity and Hypocrisie being known only to God and the possessors we speak of Professors as Professors abstractively from their Sincerity or Hypocrisie Hath been Visible 1. Not visible to man in its Internal faith but in its external Profession 2. Not Visible at once to any one man for no man can see all the Christian world at once But Visible in its parts both in Congregations and individual persons 3. Not Visible in the soundness of its professed faith unto Infidels and Hereticks For they cannot see that faith to be sound which they take to be fabulous and false But Visible in the soundness of its professed faith to themselves that know the soundness of faith 4. Not Visible in the excellent degree of soundness in the better parts unto the corrupter or infirmer parts For though de facto they may know what Doctrine the better part do hold as Infidels know what Doctrine the Church holdeth yet they know it not to be true and sound in the points wherein they differ And note again that it is not the Visibility of every accident of the Church nor of every Truth or duty that is but of the Integrity of Religion and necessary only ad melius esse Ecclesiae to the Better being of the Church but it is the Visibility of the Church that we speak of Lastly it is the Body and not the Head whose Visibility is in Question by us Though the Head also is truly Visible in Heaven and Visus or seen to the most excellent Triumphant part of his Body who are fittest to be his Courtiers and in his presence and as much seen on earth as the Pope is to most of the Church which is not at all Ever since the dayes of Christ on earth 1. But not still in one and the same place on earth It might be in one age much of it in Iudea at Ephesus Sardis Laodicaea Colosse Philippi and other parts of Asia and in other ages removed thence either wholly or for the most part It might be in one age in Tenduâ— Nâ—bia and other great Kingdoms where it shall afâ—er cease to be But in some part or other of the earth it hath been still 2. Not equally visible in all Times and Places of the earth In some Times as in the Arrians prevalency it was so oppressed and obscured that the world groaned to find it self turn'd Arrian and the Arrians in General Councils and number of Bishops to whom the true Christians were very few did seem to carry away the Name and glory of the Catholick Church so that in their eyes and in the eyes of slanders by that were of neither
long to read yea were it but of the Pastors 5. God hath nowhere commanded the Church to keep such Catalogues or Histories nor promised when they are written that Papists shall not purposely corrupt and destroy them not Turks as at Buda take the Christian Libraries and burn them 6. Papists cannot prove the successive extent and habitations of the Catholike Church any more then we and we can do it as well as they for we have the same means If they can tell us where it hath been in every age they need not ask us If they cannot they have as much need to learn as we and much more They think it not necessary to their Laity to the proving of their faith to be able to prove the habitations or names of the Members of the Catholike Church in all ages and why is it more necessary to us then them 7. But yet to men acquainted with history what can be more easie then to tell you where great multitudes of Christians in all ages have inhabited and where many parts of the Church have been though no man can give you a Catalogue of the Church any more then of the world Would you know then where our Church that is the Catholike Church hath been in all ages why it hath been in Asia Africa and Europe Is that too general It hath been in Syria in Mesopotamia Parthia Media Armenia India Persia in Egypt Habassia Georgia Cilicia Circassia Mengrelia Natolia Isauria Thrace and more other Countries then I have any need to name to you to say nothing of Europe and Brittain by name as a thing most known But no man well in his wits will deny a succession of the Christian Church which I have defined from the first plantation of it until now If Christianity had ever ceased in the world how came it to be new planted and revived That this before described is the only Catholike Church that hath been owned by the ancient Doctors appeareth by their constant witnesses To cite a few and yet enough August in Psal. 21. Vbicunque timetur Deus laudatur ibi est Ecclesia Id. Epist. 50. In Sanctis Libris ubi manifestatur Dominus Christus ibi ejus Ecclesia declaratur and therefore there it must be sought Isti autem mirabili caecitate cum ipsum Christum praeter Scripturas nesciant ejus tamen Ecclesiam non divinarum authoritate cognoscunt sed humanarum calumniarum vanitate confingunt Christ is to be known in the Scripture and therefore so is the Church Ibid. In causa Caeciliani se ab Ecclesia Catholica hoc est ab unitate omnium gentium diviserunt It s not the Catholick Church because Roman but because extended to all Nations Sed tamen Ecclesiam quae non litigiosis opinionibus fingitur sed Divinis attestationibus comprobatur propter quemlibet hominem relinquere non debemus Id. In Psal. 56. Corpus ejus est Ecclesia non autem ista aut illa sed toto Orbe diffusa Nec ea quae nunc est in hominibus qui praesentem vitam agunt sed ad eam pertinentibus etiam his qui fuerunt ante nos his qui futuri sunt post nos usque in finem seculi Tota enim Ecclesia constans ex omnibus fidelibus quia fideles omnes membra sunt Christi habet illud Caput positum in coelestibus quod gubernat corpus suum etsi separatum est à visione sed annectitur charitate Id. Enchirid. ad Laurent c. 56. Ecclesia tanquam habitatori domus sua Deo templum suum conditori civitas sua quae tota hic accipienda est non solum ex parte quae peregrinatur in terris à solis ortu usque ad occasum laudans nomen domini Id. contr Petilian cap. 2. Purposely opening the true nature of the Catholick Church for the stating of the Case saith Quaestio certè inter nos versatur ubi sit Ecclesia utrum apud nos an apud illos Quae utique Vna est quam majores nostri Catholicam nominarunt ut ex ipso nomine ostenderent quia per totum est Haec autem Ecclesia Corpus Christi est sicut Apostolus dicit pro corpore ejus quae est Ecclesia Vnde utique manifestum est eum qui non est in membris Christi Christianam salutem habere non posse Membra vero Christi per unitatis charitatem sibi copulantur per eandem capiti suo adhaerent quod est Christus Iesus Quaestio est ubi sit hoc corpus i. e. ubi sit Ecclesia Quid ergo facturi sumus in Verbis nostris eam quaesituri an in Verbis capitis sui Domini nostri Iesu Christi Puto quod in illius potius verbis eam quaerere debemus qui verit as est optime novit corpus suum After he calls the Church over and over Vniversum Orbem Christianum cap. 3. Quia nolo humanis documentis sed divinis oraculis sanctam Ecclesiam demonstrari Si sanctae Scriptura in Africa solâ c. Si autem Christi Ecclesia Canonicarum Scripturarum Divinis certissimis testimoniis in omnibus gentibus designata est quicquid attulerint N. B. undicunque recitaverint qui dicunt Ecce hic Christus ecce illic audiamus potius si â—ves ejus sumus vocem pastoris nostri dicentis Nolite credere Cap. 4. Totus Christus Caput Corpus est Caput unigenitus Dei filius Corpus ejus Ecclesia sponsus sponsa duo in carne una Quicunque de ipso capite ab Scripturis sanctis dissentiunt etiamsi in omnibus locis inveniantur in quibus Ecclesia designata est non sunt in Ecclesia â—ursus quicunque de ipso capite Scripturis Sanctis consentiunt Vnitati Ecclesiae non communicant or as after ab ejus corpore quod est Ecclesia ita dissentiunt ut eorum communio non sit cum toto quacunque diffunditur sed in aliqua parte separata inveniatur manif stum est eos non esse in Catholica Ecclesia A sad conclusion to the Papists It would be tedious to recite half that Austin there hath to this purpose Through all his exquisite disputes with the Donatists he still describeth the Church 1. As being the Body of Christ its Head 2. As dispersed through the world and containing all the Members of Christ. 3. And that which begun at Ierusalem 4. And is to be known by the word of God Never mentioning the Headship of the Pope nor the Mistris-ship of Rome of which more anon So Optatus lib. 2. advers Parmen Vbi ergo erit propriet as Catholici nominis cum inde dicta sit Catholica quod sit rationabilis ubique diffusa c. And before p. 46. Ergo Ecclesia una est cujus sanctitas de sacramentis colligitur non de superbia personarum ponderatur He glorieth indeed in the chair of Peter and the
be of your Church because it is so little Catholike I am of the one universal Church which containeth all the true Christians in the world And you are of a Party which hath separated it self from most of the Christians in the world I am of that one body that is centred in Christ the Head you are of a piece of this body that hath centred in a man and oft a confessed heretical wicked man whom you take while he lives to be the infallible Judge and foundation of all your faith and hope and when he is dead perhaps pronounce him to be in hell as Bellarmine did Pope Sixtus and others commonly I know as every Sect hath a kind of unity among themselves however divided from all the rest of the Church so also hath yours but nothing will satisfie me but a Catholike Unity Church and Faith So much being premised I answer your Questions Quest. 1. Whether the Church of Rome was a true Church in the Apostles dayes Answ. The word Church signifies more things then one 1. Sometime it is used to signifie the whole mystical body of Christ containing all and only those that are justified whom Bellarmine calleth living members And in this sense the Church of Rome in the Apostles dayes was not the Church but the justified members were part of the Church 2. Sometime it is used to signifie all that profess true Christianity in the world And thus the Church of Rome was not the Church but part of it 3. It is oft used by your writers to signifie one Church that by Prerogative is the Head or Mistris of all Christians in the world to which they must all be subject and from which they must receive their name as the Kingdom of Mexico of Tripolis of Fez c. are so called from the chief Cities of the same name and from which they receive their Faith and Laws as the body hath life and motion from the head or heart In this sense the Church of Rome was no Church in the Apostles dayes 4. Sometime it is used to signifie one particular Church associated for personal Communion in Worship And thus the Church of Rome was a true Church in the Apostles dayes 5. Sometime it is used to signifie a Collection or Conjunction of many particular Churches though not all under the Bishop of one Church as their Patriarch or Metropolitan And thus the Church of Rome was no Church in the Apostles dayes but about two hundred years after Christ it was It is only the Church in the third of these senses that is in controversie between the Roman and Reformed Churches Now to your next Question Quest. 2. When was it that the Church of Rome ceased to be a true Church Answ. In the first second and third sences it never ceased to be a true Church for it never was one In the first and second sence it never was one either in title or claim I hope In the third it was never one in Title nor yet in claim for many hundred years after Christ but now it is Therefore the Question between us should not be when it ceased but when it begun to be such a Capital Ruling Church Essential to the whole In the fifth sence it never ceased otherwise then as it is swallowed up in a higher Title It begun to be a Patriarchal Church about two or three hundred years after Christ and it ceased to be meerly Patriarchal when it arrogated the Title of Vniversal or Mistris of all In the fourth sence the Question is not so easie and I shall thus answer it 1. By speaking to the use of the Question 2. By a direct answer to it 1. It is of small concernment to my salvation or yours to know whether the Church of Rome be a true particular Church or not no more then to know whether the Church of Thessalonica or Ephesus or Antioch be now a true Church In charity to them I am bound to regard it as I am bound to regard the life of my neighbour But what doth it concern my own life to know whether the Mayor and Aldermen of Worcester or Glocester be dead or alive So what doth it concern my Salvation to know whether the Church of Rome be now a true particular Church If I lived at the Antipodes or in Aethiopia and had never heard that there is such a place as Rome in the world as many a thousand Christians doubtless never heard of it this would not hinder my salvation as long as I believed in the blessed Trinity and were sanctified by the Spirit of Grace So that as I am none of their Judge so I know not that it much concerneth me to know whether they be a true particular Church save for charity or communion 2. Yet I answer it more directly 1. If they do not by their errors so far overthrow the Christian faith which they profess as that it cannot practically be believed by them then are they a true particular Church or part of the universal Church 2. And I am apt to hope at least of most that they do not so hold their errors but that they retain with them so much of the essentials of Religion as may denominate them a true professing Church More plainly Rome is considered first as Christian secondly as Papal As Christian it is a true Church As Papal it is no true Church For Popery is not the Church according to Christs Institution but a dangerous corruption in the Church As a Leprosie is not the man but the disease of the man Yet he that is a Leper may be a mâ—â— And he that is a Papist may be a Christian But 1. Not as he is a Papist 2. And he is but a leprous or diseased Christian. So much to your Questions By this much you may see that it no way concerneth me to prove when Rome ceased to be a true Church For if you mean such a Church as Corinth Philippi Ephesus c. was that is but a part of the Catholike Church so I stick not much saving in point of Charity whether it be true or false But if you mean as your party doth a Mistris Church to Rule the whole and denominate the Catholike Church Roman so I say its Vsurpation is not ceased that 's the misery and its just title never did begin and its claim was not of many hundred years after Christ so that your Question requireth no further Answer But what if you had put the Question At what time it was that your Church began to claim this universal Dominion I should give you these two answers 1. When I understand that it is of any great moment to the decision of our controversie I shall tell you my opinion of the man that first laid the claim and the year when 2. But it is sufficient for me to prove that from the beginning it was not so Little did the Bishops of Rome before Constantines dayes dream of governing all
expoundeth them 5. They plead for an appeal to Councils and though we easily prove that none of them were universal yet such as they were they call them all Reprobate which were not approved by their Pope let the number of Bishops there be never so great And those that were approved if they speak against them they reject also either with lying shifts denying the approbation or saying the acts are not de fide or not conciliariter facta or the sense must be given by their present Church or one such contemptible shift or other 6. At least one would think they should stand to the judgement of the Pope which yet they will not for shame forbids them to own the Doctrine of those Popes that were Hereticks or Infidels and by Councils so judged And others they are forced to disown because they contradict their Predecessors And at Rome the Cardinals are the Pope while he that hath the name is oft made light of And how infallible he is judged by the French and the Venetians how Sixtus the fifth was valued by the Spaniards and by Bellarmine is commonly known 7. But all this is nothing to their renunciation of humanity even of the common senses and reason of the world When the matter is brought to the Decision of their eyes and taste and feeling whether Bread be Bread and Wine be Wine and yet all Italy Spain Austria Bravaria c. cannot resolve it yea generally unless some latent Protestant do pass their judgement against their senses the senses of all sound men in the World that not in a matter beyond the reach of sense as whether Christ be there spiritually but in a matter belonging to sense if any thing belong to it as whether Bread be Bread c. Kings and Nobles Prelates and Priests do all give their judgement that all their senses are deceived And is it possible for these men then to know any thing or any controversie between us and them to be decided If we say that the Sun is light or that the Pope is a man and Scripture legible or that there are the Writings of Councils and Fathers extant in the World they may as well concur in a denyal of all this or any thing else that sense should judge of If they tell us that Scripture requireth them to contradict all their senses in this point I answer 1. Not that Scripture before mentioned that calleth it Bread after the Consecration thrice in the three next Verses 2. And how know they that there is such a Scripture if all their senses be so fallible If the certainty of sense be not supposed a little learning or wit might satisfie them that Faith can have no certainty But is it not a most dreadful judgement of God that Princes and Nations Learned men and some that in their way are conscientious should be given over to so much inhumanity and to make a Religion of this brutishness and worse and to persecute those with Fire and Sword that are not so far forsaken by God and by their reason and that they should so solicitously labour the perversion of States and Kingdoms for the promoting of stupidity or stark madness 8. And if we go from their Principles to their Ends or Wayes we shall soon see that they are also against the Unity of the Church while they pretend this as their chiefest Argugument to draw men to their way They set up a corrupted Faction and condemn the far greater part of the Church and will have no unity with any but those of their own Faction and Subjection and fix this as an essential part of their Religion creating thereby an impossibility of universal concord 9. They also contradict the Experience of many thousand Saints asserting that they are all void of the Love of God and saving Grace till they become subject to the Pope of Rome when as the Souls of these Believers have Experience of the Love of God within them and feel that Grace that proveth their Iustification I wonder what kind of thing it is that is called Love or Holiness in a Papist which Protestants and other Christians have not and what is the difference 10. They are most notorious Enemies to Charity condemning most of the Christian world to Hell for being out of their subjection 11. They are notorious Enemies to Knowledge under pretence of Obedience and Unity and avoiding Heresie They celebrate their Worship in a Language not understood by the vulgar Worshippers They hinder the People from Reading the holy Scriptures which the ancient Fathers exhorted men and women to as an ordinary thing The quality of their Priests and People testifies this 12. They oppose the Purity of divine Worship setting up a multitude of humane Inventions instead thereof and idolatrously for no less can be said of it adoring a piece of conserated Bread as their God 13. They are Opposers of Holiness both by the foresaid enmity to Knowledge Charity and purity of Worship and by many unholy Doctrines and by deluding Souls with an outside histrionicall way of Religion never required by the Lord consisting in a multitude of Ceremonies and worshipping of Angels and the Souls of Saints and Images and Crosses c. Let experience speak how much the Life of Holiness is promoted by them 14. They are Enemies to common Honesty teaching the Doctrines of Equivocations and Mental Reservations and making many hainous sins venial and many of the most odious sins to be Duties as killing Kings that are excommunicated by the Pope taking Oaths with the foresaid Reservations and breaking them c. For the Jesuits Doctrine Montaltus the Jansenist and many of the French Clergy have pretty well opened it And the Pope himself hath lately been fain to publish a condemnation of their Apology And yet the power and interest of the Jesuites and their followers among them is not altogether unknown to the World 15. They are Enemies to Civil Peace and Government if there be any such in the World as their Doctrine and Practice of killing and deposing excommunicate Princes breaking Oaths c. shews Bellarmine that will go a middle way gives the Pope power in ordine ad spiritualia and indirectly to dispose of Kingdoms and tells us that it is unlawfull to tolerate Heretical Kings that propagate their Heresie that is the ancient Faith How well Doctor Heylin hath vindicated their Council of Laterane in this whose Decrees stand as a Monument of the horrid treasonable Doctrine of the Papists I shall if God will hereafter manifest In the mean time let any man read the words of the Council and Iudge And now whether a Religion that is at such open enmity with 1. Scripture 2. The Church 3. Tradition 4. Fathers 5. Councils 6. Some Popes 7. The common senses and Reason of all the World even their own 8. Vnity of Christians 9. Knowledge 10. Experience of Believers 11. Charity 12. Purity of Worship 13. Holiness 14. Common Honesty
many or rather many more For more be saln off the Tenduè Nubia and other parts then the Protestants that came in 4. About the year 600. there were many more incomparably and I think then but at least of 400. years after Christ I never yet saw valid proof of one Papist in all the world that is one that was for the Popes Universal Monarchy or Vice-Christ-ship So that most of the Catholike Church about three parts to one hath been against you to this day and all against you for many hundred years Could I name but a Nation against you I should think I had done nothing much less if I cited a few men in an age 5. And all those of Ethiopia India c. that are without the verge and awe of the Ancient Roman Empire never so much as gave the Pope that Primacy of dignity which those within the Empire gave him when he was chief as the Earl of Arundel is of the Earls of England that governeth none of them and as the Lord Chancellor may be the chief judge that hath no power in alieno foro or as the Eldest Justice is chief in the County and on the bâ—nch that ruleth not the rest Mistake not this Primacy for Monarchy nor the Romane Empire for the world and you can say nothing At present ad hominem I give you sufficient proof of this succession As you use to say that the present Church best knew the Judgement of the former age and so on to the heâ—d and so Tradition beareth you out I turn this unresistibly against you The far greatest part of Christians in the world that now are in possession of the doctrine contrary to your Monarchy tell us that they had it from their Fathers and so on And as in Councils so with the Church Real the Major part three to one is more to be credited then the Minor part especially when it is a visible self-advancement that the Minor part insisteth on 6. And were not this enough I might add that your western Church it self in its Representative Body at Constance and Basil hath determined that not the Pope but a General Council is the chief Governor under Christ and that this haâ—h been still the judgement of the Church and that its Heresie in whoever that hold the Contrary 7. And no man can prove that one half or tenth part of your people caâ—â—ed Papists are of your opinion For they are not called to profess it by words and their obedience is partly forced and partly upon other principles some obeying the Pope as their western Patriarch of chief dignity and some and most doing all for their own peace and safety Their outward acts will prove no more And now Sir I have told you what Church of which we are members hath been visible yea and what part of it hath opposed the Vice-Christ of Rome This I delayed not an hour after I received yours because you desired speed Accordingly I crave your speedy return and intreat you to advise with the most learned men whether Jesuites or others of your party in London that think it worth their thoughts and time not that I have any thoughts of being their Equal in learning but partly because the case seemeth to me so exceeding palpable that I think it will suffice me to supply all my defects against the ablest men on earth or all of them together of your way and principally because I would see your strength and know the most that can be said that I may be rectified if Jerr which I suspect not or confirmed the more if you cannot evince it and so may be true to Gods Truth and my own soul. Rich. Baxter Mr. Iohnsons second PAPER Sir IT was my happiness to have this Argument transmitted into your learned and quiet hands which gratefully returns as fair a measure as it received from you that Animosities on both sides seposed Truth may appear in its full splendour and seat it self in the Center of both our hearts To your first Exception My Thesis was sufficiently made cleer to my friend who was concerned in it and needed no explication in its address to the learned To your second Exception My Propositions were long that my Argument as was required might be very short and not exceed the quantity of half a sheet which enforced me to penetrate many Syllogisms into one and by that means in the first not to be so precise in form as otherwise I should have been To your third Exception Seeing I required nothing but Logicall form in Answering I conceive that regard was more to be had amongst the learned to that then to the errours of the vulgar that whilest ignorance attends to most words learning might attend to most reason To your fourth Exception My Argument contains not precisely the terms of my Thesis because when I was called upon to hasten my Arguâ—ent I had not then at hand my Thesis Had I put more in my Thesis then I prove in my Argument I had been faulty but proving more then my Thesis contained as I cleerly do no body hath reason to find fault with me save my self The reall difference betwixt Assemblies of Christians and Congregation of Christians and betwixt Salvation is only to be had in those Assemblies and Salvation is not to be had out of that Congregation I understand not seeing all particular assemblies of true Christians must make one Congregation To your Answer to my first Syllogism He who distinguishes Logically the terms of any proposition must not apply his distinction to some one part of the term only but to the whole term as it stands in the proposition distinguished Now in my proposition I affirm that the Congregation of Christians I speak of there is such a Congregation that it is the true Church of Christ that is as all know the whole Catholike Church and you distinguish thus That I either mean by Congregation the whole Catholike Church or only some part of it as if one should say Whatsoever Congregation of men is the Common-wealth of England and another in answer to it should distinguish either by Congregation of men you mean the whole Common-wealth or some part of it when all men know that by the Common-wealth of England must be meant the whole Common-wealth for no part of it is the Common-wealth of England Again you distinguish that some things are Essentials or Necessaries and others Accidents which are acknowledged or practised in the Church Now to apply this distinction to my Proposition you must distinguish that which I say is acknowledged to have been ever in the Church by the Institution of Christ either to be meant of an Essential or an Accident when all the world knows that whatsoever is acknowledged to have have been ever in the Church by Christs Institution cannot be meant of any Accidental thing but of a necessary unchangeable and Essential thing in Christs true Church If one should advance this
Bishop of Rome which the Council of Chalcedon before mentioned plainly owned when writing to Pope Leo they say Thou Governest us as the head doth the members contributing thy good will by those which hold thy place Behold a Primacy not only of Precedency but of Government and Authority which Lerinensis confirms contr Haeres cap. 9. where speaking of Stephen Pope he saies Dignum ut opinor existimans si reliquos omnes tantum fidei devotione quantum locī authoritate superabat esteeming it as I think a thing worthy of himself if he overcame all others as much in the devotion of faith as he did in the Authority of his place And to confirm what this universal Authority was he affirms that he sent a Law Decree or Command into Africa Sanxit That in matter of rebaptization or Hereticks nothing should be innovated which was a manifest argument of his Spiritual Authority over those of Africa and à paritate rationis over all others I will shut up all with that which was publickly pronounced and no way contradicted and consequently assented to in the Council of Ephesus one of the four first general Councils in this matter Tom. 2. Concil pag. 327. Act. 1. where Philip Priest and Legate of Pope Celestine sayes thus Gratias agimus sanctae venerandaeque synodo quod literis sancti beatique Papae nostri vobis recitatis sanctas chartas sanctis vestris vocibus sancto capiti vestro sanctis vestris exclamationibus exhibueritis Non enim ignorat vestra beatitudo totius fidei vel etiam Apostolorum caput esse beatum Apostolum Petrum And the same Philip Act. 3. p. 330. proceeds in this manner Nulli dubium imo saeculis omnibus notum est quod sanctus beatissimusque Petrus Apostolorum Princeps caput Fideique columna Ecclesiae Catholicae Fundamentum à Domino nostro Jesu Christo Salvatore generis humani ac redemptore nostro claves regni accepit solvendique ac ligandi peccata potestas ipsi data est qui ad hoc usque tempus ac semper in suis successoribus vivit judicium exercet Hujus itaque secundum ordinem successor locum-tenens sanctus beatissimusque Papa noster Celestinus nos ipsius praesentiam supplentes huc misit And Arcadius another of the Popes Legats enveighing against the Heretick Nestorius accuses him though he was Patriarch of Constantinople which this Council requires to be next in dignity after Rome as of a great crime that he contemned the command of the Apostolick See that is of Pope Celestine Now had Pope Celestine had no power to command him and by the like reason to command all other Bishops he had committed no fault in transgressing and contemning his command By these testimonies it will appear that what you are pleased to say That the most part of the Catholike Church hath been against us to this day and all for many hundred of years is far from truth seeing in the time of the holy Oecumenical Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon the universal consent of the whole Catholike Church was for us in this point As to what you say of Congregation of Christians in the beginning I answer I took the word Christians in a large sense comprehending in it all those as it is vulgarly taken who are Baptized and profess to believe in Christ and are distinguished from Jews Mahumetans and Heathens under the denomination of Christians What you often say of an universal Monarch c. if you take Monarch for an Imperious sole Commander as temporal Kings are we acknowledge no such Monarch in the Church if only for one who hath received power from Christ in meekness charity and humility to govern all the rest for their own eternal good as brethren or children we grant it What also you often repeat of a Vice-Christ we much dislike that title as proud and insolent and utterly disclaim from it neither was it ever given by any sufficient Authority to our Popes or did they ever accept of it As to the Council of Constance they never questioned the Supremacy of the Pope as ordinary chief Governour of all Bishops and people in the whole Church nay they expresly give it to Martinus Quintus when he was chosen But in extraordinary cases especially when it is doubtful who is true Pope as it was in the beginning of this Council till Martinus Quintus was chosen Whether any extraordinary power be in a general Council above that ordinary power of the Pope which is a question disputed by some amongst our selves but touches not the matter in hand which proceeds only of the ordinary and constant Supream Pastor of all Christians abstracting from extraordinary tribunals and powers which are seldom found in the Church and collected only occasionally and upon extraordinary accidents Thus honoured Sir I have as much as my occasions would permit me hastened a reply to your answer and if more be requisite it shall not be denyed Only please to give me leave to tell you that I cannot conceive my Argument yet answered by all you have said to it William Iohnson Feb. 3. 1658. Sir It was the 21. of January before your Answer came to my hands and though my Reply was made ready by me the third instant yet I have found so great difficulties to get it transcribed that it was not possible to transmit it to you before now But I hope hereafter I shall find Scribes more at leasure I must desire you to excuse what errors you find in the Copy which I send As also that being unwilling to make a farther delay I am enforced to send a Copy which hath in it more interlineations then would otherwise become me to send to a person of your worth Yet I cannot doubt but your Candor will pass by all things of this nature I am Sir Your very humble servant William Iohnson Feb. 15. 1658. Worthy Sir I have now expected neer three moneths for your rejoynder to the Reply which I made to that answer which you were pleased to send and return to my Argument concerning the Church of Christ but as yet nothing hath appeared I must confess I have wondered at it considering the earnestness which appeared in you at the first to proceed with speed in a business of this nature what the impediment hath been I am only left to guess but certainly truth is strong and it will not be found an easie thing to oppose her while we keep close to form I am now necessitated to go out of London so that if your Papers come in my absence I shall hope you will have the patience to expect untill they can be sent from London to me and my Answers returned by the way of London but I do engage not to make a delay longer then the circumstances of the place and times shall enforce Sir I do highly honour and esteem your parts and person and shall be very glad to bring that business to an handsome
issue which hath been so calmly and soberly prosecuted I am an enemy to passion and as I have hitherto found you sweet and gentle in your proceedings towards me so shall you alwaies find me Worthy Sir Your friend to serve you William Johnson May 2. 1659. Sir Be pleased to return your Answer Papers or Letters which you intend for me to the same place to which you directed your former by which means I shall be secure to receive them at my house which is fourscore miles from London To Mr. T. L. who called me to this work Sir THough I am a stranger to you I thought meet to take notice of the Letters which you sent your friend here T. H. It seems you urge hard for a Reply and intimate somewhat of triumph in my delay you speak as an incompetent Judge God is the Master of my time and work and him I must serve and not neglect his greater work for such trivial objections as your friend hath sent me which are answered over and over by many so long ago Had you read Blondel Molineus de novitate Papismi Whitaker Sibrandus Lubbertus Chamier Abbots Crakenthorp Spalatensis or one of many that have confuted them you would sure call for no more Or if in English you had read Dr. Field Dr. White yea or but Sir Humphery Lind to pass by multitudes you might have seen their vanity Yea plainly read impartially my two books against Popery and be a Papist if you can But it seems you take it for a poor answer to be referred to books Do not fear it But yet let me tell you that my hand is not more legible then my printed books and if I had sent you this in print would that have made it a poor answer Or rather is not this a poor exception and shews that it is not truth that is look after for truth may be printed as well as written If you be deceived by the men of the Papal way let me yet intreat you but to read over those two books The safe Religion and the Key for Catholikes If your soul be not worth so much labour take your course I did my duty But I must say that it is doleful case that professors are so ungrounded that such vanities should carry them away from Catholike verity and unity to a faction that usurps the name of Catholikes To be free with you I think it is that pride and levity that brings them first to separation from our Churches into Sects and the guilt which they there incur that prepareth professors to be so far forsaken of God as to be given up to believe a lie and to turn Papists O dreadful case that one Bishop cannot swell in pride but men must make a Religion of his pride yea and make a Catholike Church of it yea and plead for it and make the sin their own yea condemn all Christians that list not themselves under this Prince of pride He is culpably if not wilfully blind that hath read Scripture and Church history and knoweth not that the Pope for three hundred years after Christ was not the creature that now he is nor had for most of that time any more Government over other Bishops then I have over neighbour Pastors and after that time he was no more an universal Head or Governour or Vicar of Christ then the Archbishop of Canterbury was having indeed a far larger Diocess then he but never was more then the swelled Primate of one National Imperial Church When Synods began to be gathered out of a Principality the Emperours desiring that means of unity within their Empire the pride of the Prelates set them presently a striving for superiority who should sit highest and write his name first and have the largest Diocess c And now men make a Religion of the fruits of this abominable pride What are all their disputings for and all this stir that they make in the world but to set up one man over all the earth and that to do a spirituall work which consisteth not with force but is managed on conscience One wretched man must govern the Antipodes on the other side of the earth that is indeed uncapable of truly and justly Governing the City of Rome it self Popes that their own Councils have condemned for ravishing maids and wives at their doors for Murders Simony Drunkenness Heresie denying the Resurrection and the life to come that is being no Christians these forsooth must be the universal Governours or we are all undone and we are damned if we believe it not O how dreadfull are the effects of sin and how great a judgement is a blinded mind This comes of falling into Sects and parties which leads men into the gulf of the most odious Schism even Popery in the world But if you are engaged in this party it s two to one but you are presently made partial and will not so much as read what is against them or will believe them if they do but tell you that we write lies when they are things done in the open sun and which they cannot confute nor dare attempt leâ—t they manifest their shame Take from them their Clergies vast Dominions Principalities Lands and Lordships Riches and worldly Honours with which they so much abound and then try how many will plead for the Pope then they 'l say If Baâ—l be a God let him plead for himself But I confess I have little hopes of turning any of them though I could shew it them written by an Angel from heaven that Popery is a deceit for the Scripture that 's above Angelical authority declareth it and by making it a nose of wax they take it as if it were not sense nor intelligible without the Popes interpretation which in difficult cases he dare not give They cry up the Church and when we would have them stand to the Church they shamefully turn their backs and when two or three parts of the Churches through the world are against the Papal Soveraignty they refuse them as Hereticks or Schismaticks They cry up Tradition and when we offer them in the main point to be tried by it they disclaim the Tradition of two or three parts of the universal Church as being all Hereticks And may not any Sect do so too as honestly as they yea among the ignorant that know not Chaffe from Corn â—hey have some of them the faces to perswade them that their Church is the greater half of the Christian world when they know they speak notoriously falsly or else they are unworthy to speak of such things that they understand not But to what purpose should any words be used with men that have taught so great a part of the world not to believe their eyes and other senses Can any writing make any matter plainer to you then that Bread is Bread and Wine is Wine when you see them and tast and eat and drink them And yet their general Councils approved by the
Pope have made it an Article of their faith that the whole substance of the Bread and Wine is turned into the Body and Blood of Christ so that there is left no Bread or Wine but only that colour quantity and tast that before belonged to it And if you know not Bread when you eat it or Wine when you drink it and when the senses of all the sound men in the world concur with yours is it not vain for me or any man to dispute with you Can you have any thing brought to a surer judgement then to all your senses And yet no doubt but your seducers can say something to prove that Bread is not Bread when you see and eat it No wonder then if they can confute me But do they indeed believe themselves how is it possible there is no exercise of reason and belief that supposeth not the certainty of sense If I cannot know Bread and Wine when I see touch â—ast them then cannot I know the Pope the Councils the Scripture the Priest or any thing else If you think to let go this point of Popery and hold the rest you know not what Popery is for a Pope and Council having determined it you are damned by them for denying the faith and if you depart from the infallibility of their Rule and judge in points of faith or at least from the obligation of it in one thing they will confess to you that you may as well do it in more False in this and certain in nothing is their own conclusion Sir I have not been unwilling to know the truth having a soul to save or lose as well as you and having as much reason to be loth to perish If you have so far forfeited the Grace of God as meerly to follow the pride of a pretended Vice-Christ that hath turned doctrine into error worship into superstition and dead formality light into darkness discipline into confusion mixt with tyranny if meerly to set up one Tyrant over the consciences and bodies too of all believers in the world you can fall into a Sect deny Scripture Reason the Judgement and Tradition of most of the Church and your own and all mens eye-sight tast and other senses the Lord have mercy on you if you be not past it I have done with you yet remaining An unfeigned desirer of your welfare and lamenter of the Apostacies and giddiness of these times Richard Baxter May. 18. 1659. Did you know what it is by loose and false allegations to be put to read so many Volumes in great part in folio to try whether the alledger say true or false you would not expect that I should return an answer and read so much of so many folios in any less then ten or eleven daies which I think hath been all that I have had to write and read so much The Reader must take notice that I wrote the former Letter to the person that sent Mr. Johnsons Letters with a charitable jealousie that if he were himself in doubt he might be resolved But in his return he fully disclaimed Popery and assured me that it is for the sake of some friends that he desired my labour and not for his own R. B. The Reply to Mr. Johnsons second PAPER Sir THE multitude and urgency of my employments gave me not leave till this day May 2. so much as to read over all your Papers But I shall be as loth to break off our Disputation as you can be though perhaps necessity may sometime cause some weeks delay And again I profess my indignation against the Hypocrital Jugling of this age doth provoke me to welcome so ingenuous and candid a disputant as your self with great content But I must confess also that I was the less hasty in sending you this Reply because I desired you might have leisure to peruse a Book which I published since your last A Key for Catholikes seeing that I have there answered you already and that more largely then I am like to do in this Reply For the sharpness of that I must crave your patience the persons and cause I thought required it Ad 1m. What explications were made to your Friend of your Thesis I could not take notice of who had nothing but your writing to Answer 2. If you will not be precise in Arguing you had little reason to expect much less so strictly to exact a precise Answer which cannot be made as you prescribed to an Argument not precise 3. I therefore expect accordingly that the unlearned be not made the Judges of a dispute which they are not fit to judge of seeing you desire us to avoid their road 4. Again I say if you will not be precise in arguing I can hardly be so in answering And by a Congregation of Christians you may mean Christians politically related to one Head whether Christ or the Pope But the word Assemblies expresseth their actuall Assembling together and so excludeth all Christians that are or were Members of no particular assemblies from having Relation as Members of Christ our Head or the Pope your Head and so from being of the Congregation as you Call The Church universall 5. I had great reason to avoid the snare of an equivocation or ambiguity of which you gave me cause of jealousie by your whatsoever as I told you as seeming to intimate a false supposition To your Like I answer it is unlike and still more intimates the false supposition Whatsoever Congregation of men is the Common-wealth of England is a phrase that importeth that There is a Congregation of men which is not the Common-wealth of England Which is true there being more men in the world So whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church doth seem to import that you suppose there is a Congregation of Christians univocally so called that are not the true Church which you would distinguish from the other Which I only let you know at the entrance that I deny that you may not think it granted Yet I must tell you that nothing is more ordinary then for the Body to be said to do that which a part of it only doth As that the Church administreth Sacraments Discipline Teatheth c. the Church is assembled in such a Council c. when yet it is but a small part of the Church that doth these things And when Bellarmine Gretser c. say the Church is the infallible judge of Controversies of faith they mean not the whole Church which containeth every Christian when they tell you that It is the Pope they mean and therefore I had reason to enquire into your sense unless I would willfully be over-reacht You now satisfie me that you mean it universally viz. â—ll that Congregation or Church of Christians which is now the true Church of Christ doth acknowledge c. which I told you I deny 6. To my following distinction you say that all the world knows that whatsoever is acknowledged
to have been ever in the Church by Christs instiution cannot be meant of any accidental thing but of a necessary unchangeable and essentiall thing in Christs true Church To which I Reply Either you see the gross fallacy of this defence or you do not If you do not then never more call for an exact Disputant nor look to be delivered from your errors by argumentation though never so convincing If you do then you are not faithfull to the truth In your Major proposition the words being many as you say you penetrated divers arguments together ambiguities were the easier hidden in the heap That which I told you is Accidental to the Church and that but to a corrupted part was the Acknowledging of the Papacy as of Christs Institution and therefore if it were granted that a thing of Christs Institution could not be Accidental yet the Acknowledgment that is the Opinion or asserting of it may If the Church by mistake should think that to be Essential to it which is not though it will not thence follow that its Essence is but an Accident yet it will follow that both the false opinion and the thing it self so falsly conceited to be essential are but accidents or not essential You say It cannot be meant of any Accidental thing But 1. That Meaning it self of theirs may be an Accident 2. And the question is not what they Mean that is Imagine or affirm it to be But what it is in deed and truth That may be an Accident which they think to be none 2. But that which you say all the world knows is a thing that all the world of Christians except your selves that ever I heard of do know or acknowledge to be false What! doth all the world know that Christ hath instituted in his Church nothing but what is essential to it I should hope that few in the Christian world would be so ignorant as ever to have such a thought if they had the means of knowledge that Protestants would have them have There is no natural body but hath natural Accidents as well as Essence Nor is there any other society under heaven Community or Policy that hath not its Accidents as well as Essence And yet hath Christ instituted a Church that hath nothing but Essence without Accidents Do you build upon such foundations What! upon the denyal of common principles and sence But if you did you should not have feigned all the world to do so too Were your asseriton true then every soul were cut off from the Church and so from salvation that wanted any thing of Christs Institution yea for a moment And then what would become of you You give me an instance in the Eucharist But 1. Will it follow that if the Eucharist be not Accidental or integral but Essential that therefore every thing Instituted by Christ is Essentiall surely no 2. The Question being not whether the Being of the Eucharist in the Church be Essential to the Universal Church But whether the Belief or Acknowledgment of it by All and every one of the members be Essential to the Members I would crave your answer but to this Question though it be nothing to my cause Was not a Baptized person in the primitive and ancient Churches a true Church-member presently upon Baptism And then tell me also Did not the ancient Fathers and Churches unanimously hide from their Catechumens even purposely hide the mysterie of the Eucharist as proper to the Church of understand and never opened it to the auditors till they were Baptized This is most undenyable in the concurrent vote of the ancients I think therefore that it follows that in the Judgement of the ancient Churches the Eucharist was but of the Integrity and not the Essence of a member of the Church and the acknowledgement of it by all the members a thing that never was existent Where you say your Major should have been granted or denyed without these distinctions I Reply 1. If you mean fairly and not to abuse the truth by Confusion such distinctions as you your self call Learned and substantial can do you no wrong They do but secure our true understanding of one another And a few lines in the beginning by way of distinction are not vain that may prevent much vain altercation afterwards When I once understand you I have done And I beseech you take it not for an injury to be understood As to your conclusion that you used no fallacy ex Accidente and that my instances are not apposite I Reply that 's the very life of the Controversie between us And our main Question is not so to be begged On the grounds I have shewed you I still averr that the holding of the Papacy is as Accidental to the universal Church as a Cancer in the breast is to a woman And though you say It is Essential and of Christs Institution that maketh it neither Essential nor of Christs Institution nor doth it make all his institutions to be essentialls Now of your second Syllogism 1. I shall never question the successive Visibility of the Church Whereas I told you out of your Fransc. Ã S. Clara that many or most of your own Schoolmen agree not to that which you say All Christians agree to you make no reply to it As to your Minor I have given you the Reasons of the necessity and harmlesness of my distinctions we need say no more to that a Congregation of Christians and a Church are Synonima But the word true was not added to your first term by you or me and therefore your instance here is delusory But to say whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church is all one as to say whatsoever Church of Christians is now the true Church When I know your meaning I have my end Though my syllogism say not that the Church of Rome acknowledgeth those things alwaies done and that by Christs institution it nevertheless explicateth the weakness of yours as to the fallacy accidentis For 1. The holding it alwaies done and that of Christs Institution may be either an Accident or but of the Integrity and ad bene esse yea possibly an errour 2. And I might as easily have given you Instances of that kind To your 3. Syllogism I Reply 1. When you say the Church had Pastors as you must speak of what existed and Universalls exist not of themselves so it is necessary that I tell you How far I grant your Minor and how far I deny it My argument from the Indians and others is not solved by you For 1. You can never prove that the Pope was preached to the Iberians by the Captive maid nor to the Indians by Frumentius 2. Thousands were made Christians and baptized by the Apostles without any preaching or profession of a papacy Act. 2. passim 3. The Indians now Converted in America by the English and Dutch hear nothing of the Pope nor thousands in Ethiopia 4. Your own do
or may baptize many without their owning the Pope who yet would be Christians And a Pastor not known or believed or owned is actually no Pastor to them To your confirmation I Reply You misread my words I talk not of Invisible I say it is true that the Universal Church is united to Christ as their universall Head and is Visible 1. In the members 2. In the Profession 3. Christ himself is visible in the Heavens and as much seen of most of the Church as the Pope is that is not at all As the Pope is not Invisible though one of a million see him not no more is Christ who is seen by most of the Church and by the best part even by the glorified You know my meaning Whether you will Call Christ visible or not I leave to you I think he is visible But that which I affirm is that the universal Church hath no other visible universal Head or Pastor But particular Churches have their particular Pastors all under Christ. Of Eph. 4. I easily grant that the whole Church may be said to have Pastors in that all the particular Churches have Pastors But I deny that the whole have any one universal Pastor but Christ. Of that which is the point in controversie you bring no proof If you mean no more then I grant that the whole Church hath Pastors both in that each particular Church hath Pastors and in that unfixed Pastors are to preach to all as they have opportunity then your Minor hath no denyall from me Instead of prosecuting your Argument when you had cast the work of an Opponent upon me you here appeal to any true Logician or expert Lawyer Content I admit of your Appeal But why then did you at all put on the face of an Opponent could you not without this lost labour at first have called me to prove the successive visibility of our Church But to your Appeal Ho all you true Logicians this Learned man and I refer it to your tribunal whether it be the part of an Opponent to contrive his Argument so as that the Negative shall be â—is and then change places and become Respondent and make his adversary Opponent at his Pleasure We leave this cause at your bar and expect your sentence But before we come to the Lawyers bar I must have leave more plainly to state our case We are all agreed that Christianity is the true Religion and Christ the Churches Universal Head and the holy Scriptures the Word of God Papists tell us of another Head and Rule the Pope and Tradition and judgement of the Church Protestants deny these Additionals and hold to Christianity and Scripture only Our Religion being nothing but Christianity we have no Controversie about Their Papall Religion superadded is that which is Controverted They affirm 1. the Right 2. the Antiquity of it We deny both The Right we disprove from Scripture though it belongs to them to prove it The Antiquity is it that is now to be referred Protestancy being the Denyall of Popery it is we that Really have the Negative and the Papists that have the Affirmative The Essence of our Church which is Christian is confessed to have been successively visible But we deny that theirs as Papal hath been so and now they tell us that it is Essential to ours to deny the succession of theirs and therefore require us to prove a succession of ours as one that still hath denyed theirs Now we leave our case to the Lawyers seeing to them you make your appeal 1. Whether the substance of all our cause lie not in this Question Whether the Papacy or universal Government by the Pope be of heaven or of men and so whether it hath been from the beginning which we deny and therefore are called Protestants and they affirm and are therefore called Papists 2. If they cannot first prove a successive visibility of their Papacy and Papal Church then what Law can bind us to prove that it was denied before it did arise in the world or ever any pleaded for it 3. And as to the point of Possession I know not what can be pretended on your side 1. The Possession of this or that particular Parish Church or Tythes is not the thing in question but the universal Headship is the thing But if it were yet it is I that am yet here in Possession and Protestants before me for many ages successively And when possessed you the Headship of the Ethiopian Indian and other extra-imperial Churches never to this day No nor of the Eastern Churches though you had communion with them 2. If the Question be who hath Possession of the universal Church we pretend not to it but only to be a part and the soundest safest part 3. The case of Possession therefore is whether we have not been longer in Possession of our Religion which is bare Christianity then you of your superadded Popery Our Possession is not denied of Christianity Yours of Popery we deny and our denyal makes us called Protestants Let therefore the reason of Logicians Lawyers or any rational sober man determine the case whether it do not first and principally belong to you to prove the visible succession of a Vice-Christ over the universal Church As to your contradictory impositions I Reply 1. Your exception was not exprest and your imposition was peremptory 2. I told you I would be a Papist if you prove that the whole visible Church in all ages hath held the Popes universal headship you say that you have proved it by this argument that either he hath that supremacy or some other Church denying that he hath alwaies had it hath been alwaies visible and that Church you require should be named I Reply 1. Had not you despaired of making good your cause you should have gone on by Argumentation till you had forced me to contradict some common principle 2. If you should shew these Papers to the world and tell them that you have no better proof of the succession of your Papacy then that we prove not that it hath alwaies been denied by the visible Church you would sure turn thousands from Popery if there be so many rational considering impartial men that would peruse them and believe you For any man may know that it could not be expected that the Churches should deny a Vice-Christ before he was sprung up Why did not all the precedent Roman Bishops disclaim the title of universal Bishop or Patriarch till Pelagius and Gregory but because there was none in the world that gave occasion for it How should any Heresie be opposed or condemned before it doth arise But you fairly yield me somewhat here and say that you oblige me not to prove a continued visible Church formally and expresly denying it but that it was of such a constitution as was inconsistent with any such supremacy or could and did subsist without it Reply I confess your first part is very ingenuous and
fair Remember it hereafter that you have discharged me from proving a Church that denied the Papacy formally expresly But as to what you yet demand 1. I have here given it you because you shall not say â—'le sail you I have answered your desire But 2. It is not as a thing necessary but ex abundanti as an overplus For you may now see plainly that to prove that the Church was without an universal Pastor which you require is to prove the Negative viz. that then there was none such whereas its you that must prove that there was such I prove our Religion do you prove yours though I say to pleasure you I 'le disprove it and have done it in two books already My reason from the stress of necessity which you lay on your Affirmative and Additions was but subservient to the foregoing Reasons not first to prove you bound but to prove you the more bound to the proof of your Affirmative And therefore your instance of Mahumetans is impertinent He that saith you shall be damned if you believe not this or that is more obliged to prove it then he that affirmeth a point as of no such moment To what I say of an accident and a corrupt part you say you have answered and do but say so having said nothing to it that is considerable Me thinks you that make Christ to be corporally present in every Church in the Eucharist should not say that the King of the Church is absent But when you have proved 1. That Christ is so absent from his Church that there 's need of a Deputy to essentiate his Kingdom and 2. That the Pope is so Deputed you will have done more then is yet done for your cause And yet let me tell you that in the absence of a King it is only the King and Subjects that are essential to the Kingdom The Deputy is but an officer and not essential Your naked assertion that whatsoever Government Christ instituteth of his Church must be essential to his Church is no proof nor like the task of an Opponent The Government of inferiour officers is not essential to the universal Church no more then Judges and Justices to a Kingdom And yet we must wait long before you will prove that Peter and the Pope of Rome are in Christs place as Governours of the universal Church Sir I desire open dealing as between men that believe these matters are of eternal consequence I watch not for any advantage against you Though it be your part to prove the Affirmative which our Negative supposeth yet I have begun the proof of our Negative but it was on supposition that you will equally now prove your Affirmative better then you have here done I have proved a visible Church successively that hâ—ld not the Popes universal Government do you now prove that the universal Church in all ages did hold the Popes universal Government which is your part or I must say again I shall think you do but run away and give up your cause as unable to defend it I have not failed you do not you fail me You complain of a deficiency in quality though you confess that I abound in number But where is the defect you say I must assert both that these were one Congregation and ever visible since Christs time Reply If by one Congregation you meant one assembly met for personal Communion which is the first sense of the word Congregation it were ridiculous to feign the universal Church to be such If you mean One as united in one visible humane Head that 's it that we deny and therefore may not be required to prove But that these Churches are One as united in Christ the Head we easily prove In that from him the whole family is named the body is Christs body 1 Cor. 12.12 13. and one in him Eph. 4.4 5 6 c. All that are true Christians are one Kingdom or Church of Christ but these of whom I speak are true Christians therefore they are one Kingdom or Church of Christ. And that they have been visible since Christs time till now all history even your own affirms As in Iudaea from the Apostles times in Ethiopia Egypt and other parts Rome was no Church in the time of Christs being on earth And to what purpose talk you of determinate Congregations Do you mean individual assemblies those cease when the persons die or do you mean assemblies meeting in the same place so they have not done still at Rome I told you and tell you still that we hold not that God hath secured the perpetual visibility of his Church in any one City or Country but if it cease in one place it is still in others It may cease at Ephesus at Philippi Colosse c. in Tenduc Nubia c. and yet remain in other parts I never said that the Church must needs be visible still in one Town or Country And yet it hath been so de facto as in Asia Ethiopia c. But you say I nominate none Are you serious must I nominate Christians of these Nations to prove that there were such you require not this of the Church Historians It sufficeth that they tell you that Ethiopia Egypt Armenia Syria c. had Christians without naming them When all history tells you that these Countries were Christians or had Churches I must tell you what and who they were must you have their names sirnames and Genealogies I cannot name you one of a thousand in this small Nation in the age I live in How then should I name you the people of Armenia Abassia c. so long ago You can name but few of the Roman Church in each age And had they wanted learning and records as much as the Abassins and Indians and others you might have been as much to seek for names as they You ask were they different Congregations Answ. As united in Christ they were one Church but as assembling at one time or in one place or under the same guide so they were not one but divers Congregations That there were any Papists of 400. years after Christ do you prove if you are able My conclusion that all have been against you for many hundred years must stand good till you prove that some were for you yet I have herewith proved that there were none at least that could deserve the name of the Church Do you think to satisfie any reasonable man by calling for positive proof from Authors of such Negatives yet proof you shall not want such as the nature of the point requireth viz. That the said Churches of Ethiopia India the outer Armenia and other extra-imperial Nations were not under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome 1. You find all these Churches or most of them at this day that remain from under your jurisdiction and you cannot tell us when or how they turned from you If you could it had been done 2. These Nations
rest of the world Sir If you have impartially read the ancient Church history and yet can believe that all these Churches were then under the Pope despair not of bringing your self to believe any thing imaginable that you would have to be true 3. Your next question is When the Roman Emperours were yet Heathens had not the Bishops of Rome the supremacy over all other Bishops through the whole Church Answ. No they had not nor in the Empire neither Prove it I beseech you better then by questioning If you askt Whether men rule not Angels your Question proves not the Affirmative 4. But you ask again Did those Heathen Emperours give it him Answ. 1. Power over all Churches none ever gave him till titularly his own Parasites of late 2. Primacy of meer degree in the Empire for the dignity and many advantages of the Emperial seat the Bishops of the Empire gave him by consent Blondel de primatu gives you the proof and reason at large yet so as that small regard was had to the Church of Rome before the Nicene Council as saith your Aeneas Sylvius Pope Pius the second 5. Whether the Bishop of Rome had power over the Bishop of Arles by Heathen Emperours is a frivolous question Arles was in the Roman Patriarchate and not out of the Empire The Churches in the Empire might by consent dispose themselves into the Patriarchal orders without the Emperours and yet not meddle out of the Empire Yet indeed Cyprians words intimate no power Rome had over Arles more then Arles had over Rome that is to reject communion with each other upon dissent Nay it more confuteth you that even under Heathen Emperours when Church associations were by voluntary consent of Pastors only and so if they had thought it necessary they might have extended them to other Principalities yet de facto they did not do it as all history of the Church declareth mentioning their Councils and associations without these taken in See now how little your objections are worth and how groundlesly you bid me See now how little my allegations are to the purpose As for the rabble of Hereticks which you reckon up as you esteem them some of them are no Christians univocally so called and those cannot be of the Christian Church Others of them were better Christians then the Romanists and so were of the same Church with us And it is not many reproachfull names put on them by malice that makes them no Christians or of many Churches or Religions If an arrogant usurper will put nick-names on all that will not bow to him as the Vice-Christ and call them Iconoclasts Berengarians Waldensians Albigenses Wicklefifts Hussites Lutherans Calvinists you may as well give them a thousand more names this makes them not of various Religions nor blots out their names from the book of life I have in my most retired thoughts perused the History of those mens lives and of the lives of many of your Popes together with their severall doctrines and with death and judgement in my eyes as before the great God of Heaven I humbly beg of him that I may rather have my everlasting portion with those holy men whom you burned as Waldenses Albigenses Hussites c. then with the Popes that burned them or those that follow them in that cruelty unless reconciling grace have given them repentance unto life The Religion of all these men was one and they were all of one universall Church Where you again call for One Congregation I tell you again that we know no Vnity essentiall from whence the Church can be called one but either Christ or the Vice-Christ the former only is asserted by us and the latter also by you which we deny And therefore we cannot call the universall Church One in any other formal respects but as it is Christian and so One in Christ. Yet have I herewith satisfied your demand but shewed you the unreasonableness of it beyond all reasonable contradiction You next enquire whether we account Rome and us One Congregation of Christians I answer the Roman Church hath two Heads and ours but one and that 's the difference They are Christians and so One Church as united in Christ with us and all other true Christians If any so hold their Papacy and other errours as effectively and practically to destroy their Christianity those are not Christians and so not of the same Church as we But those that do not so but are so Papists as yet to be truly and practically Christians are and shall be of the same Church with us whether they will or not And your modest stile makes me hope that you and I are of one Church though you never so much renounce it As Papall we are not of your Church that 's a new Church form But as Christian we are and will be of it even when you are condemning torturing and burning us if such persecution can stand with your Christianity But you aske Why did you then separate your selves and remain still separate from the Communion of the Roman Church Answ. 1. We never separated from you as you are Christians We still remain of that Church as Christian and we know or will know no other form because that Scripture and primitive Churches knew no other Either you have by Popery separated from the Church as Christian or not If you have it s you that are the damnable Separatists If you have not then we are not separated from you in respect of the form of the Christian Church And for your other form the Papacy 1. Neither I nor my Grand-father or great grand-father did separate from it because they never entertained it 2. Those that did so did but Repent of their sin and that 's no sin We still remain separated from you as Papists even as we are separate from such as we are commanded to avoid for impenitency in some corrupting doctrine or scandalous sin Whether such mens sins or their professed Christianity be most predominant at the heart we know not but till they shew Repentance we must avoid them yet admonishing them as brethren and not taking them as men of another Church but as finding them unfit for our Communion But O sir what manner of dealing have we from you must we be imprisoned rackt hang'd or burn'd if we will not believe that bread wine are not bread and wine contrary to our own and all mens senses and if we will not worship them with Divine worship and will not obey the Pope of Rome in all such matters contrary to our Consciences and then must we be chidden for separating from you if we 〈◊〉 a while escape the strappado and the 〈◊〉 What! will you blame us for not believing that all mens senses are deceived and the greater part of Christians and their Traditions against you are false when we read and study and suspect our selves and pray for light and are willing to hear any of your reasons but
vicarius Christi Are not these the most common titles that Papists give them and that they take unto themselves Nay look back into your own papers here pag. 6. whether you say not that they are Instituted Governours in Christs place of his whole Visible Church 2. Doth not Bellarmine as I have cited elsewhere labour to prove that it is not as an Apostle that the Pope succeeds Peter but as a Head of the Church in Christs stead Doth not Boverius cited in my Key labour to prove him the Vicar of Christ and to be Vice Christi And what fitter English have we for the Kings deputy in a distant Kingdom who is Vice Regis then the Vice-King Or a Chancelors deputy then the Vicechancellor Vice Christi is your own common word and Vicarius Christi none more common scarce then the latter And what English is there fitter for this then the Vice-Christ or Vicar of Christ It is indeed the very term that expresseth properly as man can speak the true point and life of the Controversie between us And how could you suffer your pen to set down that the Popes did never accept of this when it is their own common phrase Vice Christi Vicarius Christi But here again remember and let it be a witness against you that you dislike and utterly disclaim the very name that signifieth the Papal Power as Proud and Insolent And if you abhor Popery while you tice men to it let my soul abhor it and let all that regard their souls abhor it Blessed be that Light that hath brought it to be numbred with the works of darkness Were it not more tedious then necessary I would cite you the words Vice Christi Vicarius Christi out of Popes and multitudes of your Writers But alas that 's not the highest The Vice-God is a Title that they have not thought insolent or words of the same signification Would you have my proof Pardon it then for proving your pen so false and deceitfull that 's not my fault Pope Iulius the second in his General Council at the Laterane saith Cont. Pragmat sanct monitor Binnius Vol. 4. pag. 560. Though the institutions of sacred Canons holy fathers and Popes of Rome and their Decrees be judged immutable as made by Divine inspiration yet the Pope of Rome who though of unequal Merits holdeth the place of the eternall King and the Maker of all things and all Laws on earth may abrogate these decrees when they are abused Here from your Judge of faith it self you hear that the Pope holds the place of the eternal King the Maker of all things and Laws Pope Sixtus Quartus in passagio sive Bulla contra Turcos sent to Philip Palatine Elector 1481. in Breheri Tom. 2. pag. 162. Vol. 2. saith Vniversos Christianos Principes ac omnes Christi fidâ—les requirere eisque mandare Vice Dei cujus locâ—m quamviâ— immeriti tenemus in terris that is we are constrained to require all Christian Princes and all believers of Christ and to command them in the stead of God whose place on earth we hold though undeserving Here is a Vice-God holding his place on earth and commanding all Princes and Christians to a War against the Turks in Gods stead I know to a particular people Gods Embassadours are said to speak in his name and stead as if God did beseech men by us 2 Cor. 5.19 But this is only as to a narrow and limited Embassage not that they hold Gods place on earth as Rulers over the Universal Church c. The same Pope Sixtus 4 saith ibid. pag. 163. Sola superest Romana sedes sedes utique immaculati agni sedes Viventis in secula seculorum Haec quippe praedictas Patriarchales genuit Ecclesias quae quasi filiae in ejus gremio residebant in circuitu tanquam famulae in ipsius adsistebant obsequio that is Only the Roman seat remaineth even the seat of the Immaculate Lambe the seat of him that liveth for ever my flesh trembleth to write these things This did beget the foresaid Patriarchal Churches notorious falshood which rested as daughters in her bosome and as servants stood about in her obedience Here you see from the Pope himself that the other Patriarchs are his servants and so to obey him and that Rome begot them all that were before it except Constantinople and neither made Christians nor Patriarchs by it and that Rome is now become the seat of the Immaculate Lambe and of him that liveth for ever Truly the reading of your own Historians and the Popes Bulls c. hath more perswaded me that the Pope is Antichrist then the Apocalyps hath done because I distrusted my understanding of it Benedictus de Benedictis wrote a Book against Dr. Whittaker to prove that it s as false that the Pope is Antichrist as that Christ is Antichrist and dedicated it to Pope Paul 5. with this inscription Paul 5. Vice Deo To Paul 5. the Vice-God printed at Bononia 1608. Caraffa's Theses printed at Naples 1609. had the same inscription Paulo 5. Vice Deo to Paul 5. the Vice-God Alcazar in Apocal. in carmine ad Johannem Apostolum saith of the same Pope Paul 5. Qâ—em numinis instar Vera colit pietas whom as a God true piety adores Christopher Marcellus in his Oration before Pope Iulius 2. in the approved Council at Laterane Sess. 4. and you take not contradicting to be consenting and verily to such blasphemy in a Council so it is saith thus Quum tantae reipublicae unicus atque supremus Princeps fueris institutus beatissime pontifex cui summa data potestas ad divinum injunctum imperium c. ante sub tuo imperio Vnus princeps qui summam in terris habeat potestatem But these are small things Teque omnis aevi omnium seculorum omnium gentium Principem Caput appellant But yet the Prince and Head of all ages and Nations is too low Cura Pater beatissime ut sponsae tuae forma decórque redeat But yet to make the Church his spouse is nothing Cura denique ut salutem quam dedisti nobis vitam spiritum non amittamus Tu enim Pastor tu medicus tu gubernator tu cultor tu denique alter Deus in terris That is See that we lâ—se not the health that thou hast given us and the life and spirit For thou art the Pâ—stor the Physician to conclude thou art another God on earth If you say that the Pope accepteth not this I answer it was in an oration spoken in a Generall Council in his presence without contradiction yea by his own command as the Oratour professeth Iussisti tu Pater sancte parui you commanded me Holy Father and I obeyed Binnius pag. 562 563 564. you may find all this In Glâ—ss extrav g. Ioan. 22. de Verb. signific câ—p Cum inter in Glâ—ssa Credere Dominum nâ—strum Dâ—um Papam conditorem dictae decretalis
party the most Visible Catholick Church was theirs who yet had no part in it because they were not Christians as denying that which is essentiall to Christ the object of the Christian faith and therefore none of the Church and therefore though most visible and numerous yet not the visible Church And the Church which to others was as wheat hidden in this chaffe or rather a few ears among so many rares was yet Visible to it self in its Truth of faith and visible to its Enemies in its Profession and assemblies though in number far below them So also in some places it may be Latent through persecution the paucity of believers when in other places it is more Patent And its Degrees of soundness being various are accordingly variously visible One part may be really and visibly more strong and another more weak in the faith One part much more corrupt then others and other parts retain their purity And the same Countries increase or decrease in that purity as is apparent in the case of the Churches of Galatia Corinth the seven Asian Churches Rev. 2. and 3. c. Lastly note that it is only that part of the Church which is on earth whose visibility we assert though that in Heaven be also a true part of the Body of Christ. Nor is it in the same Individuals that the Church continueth Visible but in successive Matter So much for explication of the terms Thes. The Church of which the Protestants are Members hath been Visible ever since the dayes of Christ on earth Arg. 1. The Body of Christians on earth subjected to Christ their Head hath been in its parts Visible ever since the dayes of Christ on earth But the Body of Christians on earth subjected to Christ their Head is the Church of which the Protestants are Members Therefore the Church of which the Protestants are Members hath been visible ever since the dayes of Christ on earth I have not sagacity enough to conjecture what any Papist can say against the Major proposition The Minor is proved by our own Professions As the profession of Popery proveth a man a Papist so the profession of Christianity as much proveth us to be Christians α Those that profess the true Christian Religion in all its essentials are Members of that Church which is the Body of Christians on earth subjected to Christ the Head But the Protestants profess the true Christian Religion in all its essentialls therefore the Protestants are Members of that Church which is the Body of Christians on earth subjected to Christ the Head The Major is undeniable The Minor is thus proved 1. Those that profess so much as God hath promised salvation upon in the Covenant of Grace do profess the Christian Religion in all its Essentials For God promiseth salvation in that Covenant to none but Christians But the Protestants profess so much as God hath promised salvation upon in the Covenant of Grace Therefore the Protestants do profess the Christian Religion in all its essentials The Minor is thus proved All that profess faith in God the Father Son and holy Ghost our Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier and love to him and absolute obedience to all his Laws of Nature and holy Scripture with willingness and diligence to know the true meaning of all these Laws as far as they are able and with Repentance for all known sin do profess so much as God hath promised salvation upon Ioh. 3.16 17. Mark 16.16 Heb. 5.9 Rom. 8.28 1. Act 26.18 But so do the Protestants Therefore the Protestants profess so much as God hath promised salvation on 2. Those that profess as much and much more of the Christian faith and Religion as the Catechumens were ordinarily taught in the ancient Churches and the Competentes at Baptism did profess do profess the true Christian Religion in all its essentials But so do the Protestants Therefore c. 3. Those that explicitely profess the Belief of all that was contained in the Churches Symbols or Creeds for six hundred years after Christ and much more holy truth and implicitly to believe all that is contained in the holy Scriptures and to be willing and diligent for the explicite knowledge of all the rest with a Resolution to obey all the will of God which they know do profess the true Christian Religion in all its Essentials But so do the Protestants Therefore c. Ad hominem I confirm the Major and most that went before from the Testimonies of some most eminent Papists Bellarmine saith de Verbo Dei lib. 4. c. 11. In the Christian doctrine both of faith and manners some things are simply necessary to salvation to all as the knowledge of the Articles of the Apostles Creed of the ten Commandments and of some Sacraments The rest are not so necessary that a man cannot be saved without the explicite knowledge belief and profession of them These things that are simply necessary and are profitable to all the Apostles preached to all All things are written by the Apostles which are Necessary to all and which they openly preacht to all Costerus Enchirid. c. 1. p. 49. We deny not that those chief heads of Belief which are necessary to all Christians to be known to salvation are perspicuously enough comprehended in the writings of the Apostles But all this the Protestants profess to believe ◠If sincere Protestants are Members of the true Church as intrinsecally informed or as Bellarmine speaks Living Members then professed Protestants are Members of the true Church as extrinsecally denominated or as it is Visible consisting of Professors But the Antecedent is true Therefore so is the Consequent The Reason of the Consequence is because it is the same thing that is professed by all Professors and existent in all true Believers and that as to Profession is necessary to Visibility of Membership and as to sincere inexistence is necessary to salvation The Antecedent or Minor I thus prove All that by saith in Christ are brought to the unfeigned Love of God above all and speciall Love to his servants and unfeigned willingness to obey him are Members of the true Church as intrinsecally informed But such are all sincere Protestants Therefore all sincere Protestants are Members of the true Church as intrinsecally informed The Major is granted by the Papists who affirm charity to be the form of Grace and all that have it to be justified And the promises of Scripture prove it to our Comfort The Minor 1. Is proved to others by our Professions If this be in our Profession then the sincere are such indeed But this is in our Profession Therefore c. 2. It s certainly known to our selves by the inward knowledge and sense of our souls I know that I Love God and his servants and am willing to obey him Therefore all the Papists Sophisms shall never make me not know what I do know and not feel what I do feel They reason in vain with me when
all men judge that then only is any thing proved Theologically when they prove it from the words of the holy Scripture This is more then the former say For to extend the sufficiency and necessity of Scripture to all that 's Theologicall is more then to extend it to matter of faith No Protestant goeth higher then this that I know of And note that he makes this the very common conception and judgement of all men See then where our Religion and Church was before Luther even among all Christians Yet more fully he proceeds ibid. Hence it further appeareth that Principles of Theology thus taken that is which is acquired by Theologicall discourse are the very Truths themselves of the holy Canon because the ultimate Resolution of all Theologicall discourse doth stand or belong to them and all Theologicall conclusions are deduced first from them But distinguishing the Conclusions Theologicall from the Principles I say that all truths are not in themselves formally contained in the holy Scripture but of necessity following from those that are contained in them and this whether they are Articles of faith or not N B and whether they are knowable or known by another science or not and whether they are determined by the Church or not But of other Truths to wit not following from the words of the holy Scripture I say there is no Theologicall conclusion This is proved c. When I read over the Schoolmen and Divines of all sorts that wrote before the Reformers fell so closely upon the Pope and find how generally even the Papists themselves maintained the sufficiency of the holy Scripture just as the Protestants now do I am convinced 1. of the succession of the Protestants Religion in the Universal Visible Church and 2. that it was the Reformers Arguments from Scripture that forced the Papists to oppose this holy Rule as to its sufficiency and to invent the new doctrine of supplementall Tradition for conservative Ministeriall Tradition of the holy Scriptures we are for as much at least as they The words of Guil. Parisieâ—sis too large to be recited in extolling the fulness and perfection of the Scripture even for all sorts of men you may read de Legibus cap. 16. pag. 46. Bellarmine de Verbo Dei lib. 3. cap. 10. ad Arg. 15. saith We must know that a Proposition of faith is concluded in such a syllogism Whatsoever God hath revealed in Scripture is true But this God hath revealed in Scripture Therefore it is true Though he require another word of God by the Pope or Council to prove that this is revealed in Scripture But if so then Scripture containeth all that 's true in points of faith 2. And that all things that are revealed and which we ought to believe are not Essentiall to the Christian faith and therefore that all are of the Church that hold these Essentialls and that such a distinction must be maintained the Papists have still confessed till lately that disputing hath encreased their novelties and errours Bellarmines and Costerus confession I recited even now Guliel Parisiensis in Operum pag. 9 10 11 12. de fide industriously proveth the necessity of distinguishing the fundamentalls or essentialls from the rest of the points of faith and it is they that constitute the Catholick faith which he saith is therefore called Catholick or Universal because it is the common faith or the common foundation of Religion And he proves that hence it is that the Catholick faith is but One and found in all Catholicks these fundamentalls being found in all By many arguments he proveth this And that there are some points even these common Articles necessary to be known of all necessitati medii the Schoolmen commonly grant as Aquin. 22. q. 2. a. 5. c. Bannes in 22. q. 2. a. 8. c. Of these saith Espencaeus in 2. Ti. c. 3. dig 17. which are the objects of faith per se and not the secondary objects the adult must have an explicite faith and the Colliers faith at this time decantate by the Catholicks will not serve the turn And we have both the Scripture sufficiency to all points of faith even the lowest and also the foresaid distinction given us together by Tho. Aquinas 22. q. art 5. c. We must say that the object of faith per se is that by which man is made blessed But by accident and secondarily all things are the object of faith which are contained in the holy Scripture See the judgement of Occham Canus Tolet and many more cited by Dr. Potter and yet more for the sufficiency of the Symbole or Creed as the test of Christianity pag. 89 90 91 92 93. Where you have the sense of the Ancients upon the point and p. 102 103. I conclude therefore with the Jesuite Azorius par 1. lib. 8. c. 6. The substance of the Article in which we believe One holy Catholick Church is that no man can be saved out of the Congregation of men professing the reception of the faith and Religion of Christ and that salvation may be obtained within this same Congregation of godly and faithfull men And as to the Essence of the Christian faith and Church we say with Tertullian of the Symbole Fides in Regula posita est habes legem salutem ex observatione legis exercitatio autem in curiositate consistit habens gloriam solam ex peritiae studio Cedat curiositas fidei Cedat gloria saluti Corte aut non obstrepant aut quiescant adversus regulam Nihil ultra scire est omnia scire That is Faith lieth in the Rule Here you have the Law and salvation in the observation of that Law but it is exercise that consisteth in curiosity having only a name or glory by the study of skill Let curiosity give place to faith Let glory give place to salvation Let them not prate or let them be quiet against the Rule To know nothing further is to know all things De Praescript cap. 13 14. So cap. 8. Nobis curiositate opus non est post Christum Iesum nec inquisitione post Evangelium Cum credimus nihil desideramus ultra credere hoc enim prius credimus non esse quod ultra credere debeamus That is As for us we need not curiosity after Jesus Christ nor inquisition after the Gospel When we believe we need to believe no further For we first believe this that there is nothing further that we ought to believe And here on the by for the right understanding of Tertullians Book de Praescript note 1. That the Rule of Essentialls extracted from the whole Scripture is the Churches ancient Creed 2. That the compleat Rule of all points of faith is the whole Scripture And that Tertullian had to do with Hereticks that denied the Essentials and desired the whole Scripture to dispute their case from both because they had questioned or rejected much of it and because it was a larger field to exercise their
wits in and whence they might gather more matter of dispute to puzzle the weak And therefore Tertullian adviseth the ordinary Christians of his time instead of long puzzling disputes with them out of Scripture to hold them to the Churches prescription of the simple doctrine of the Creed But now come in the Papists and 3. will neither be content with Creed nor Scripture but must have a Church or faith partly made up of supplemental Traditions of more then is in all the Scripture and so run further from Tertullian and the ancient simplicity then these Hereticks and yet are not ashamed to glory in this Book of Tertullian as for them Of the Fathers judgement of the Scripture sufficiency see the third part of my safe Religion where I have produced Testimonies enough to prove the Antiquity of the Protestants Religion and the Novelty of Popery But nothing can be so plain and full which pre-engaged men dare not deny Let me instance but in one or two passages of Augustine so plain as might put an end to the whole Controversie Aug. de Doctr. Christian. lib. 2. c. 9. In his omnibus libris timentes Deum pietate mansueti quaerunt voluntatem Dei. Cujus operis laboris prima observatio est ut diximus nosse istos libros si nondum ad intellectum legendo tamen vel mandare memoriae He was not against the Vulgars reading Scripture vel omnino incognitos non habere Deinde illa quae in eis aperte pofita sunt vel praecepta vivendi vel regulae credendi solertiùs diligentiúsque investiganda sunt Quae tanto quisque plura invenit quanto est intelligentia capacior In iis enim quae apertè in Scriptura posita sunt inveniuntur illa omnia quae continent fidem moresque vivendi N. B. spem scilicet atque charitatem de quibus libro superiore tractavimus Tum vero facta quadam familiaritate cum ipsa lingua divinarum scripturarum in ea quae obscura sunt aperienda discutienda pergendum est ut ad obscuriores locutiones illustrandas de manifestationibus sumantur exempla quaedam certarum sententiarum testimonia dubitationem de incertis auferant You see here that the Scripture as sufficient to faith and manners to be read by all that fear God and can read and the harder places to be expounded by the plainer was the ancient Rule of faith and Religion And this is the Religion of Protestants Aug. lib. 3. c. 6. contra lit Petiliani pag. 127. Proinde sive de Christo sive de ejus Ecclesia sive de quacunque alia re quae pertinet ad fidem vitamque nostram non dicam Nos nequaquam comparandi â—i qui dixit Licet si nos sed omnino quod secutus adjecit si Angelus de coelo vobis annunciaverit praeterquam quod in Scripturis Evangelicis accepistis Anathema sit I must needs English this short passage to the utter confusion of Popery And therefore whether it be of Christ or whether it be of the Church or whether it be of any other matter that pertaineth to our Faith or Life I will not say if we as being not worthy to be compared with him that said Though we but I will say plainly what he added following If an Angel from heaven shall declare to you any thing besides that which you have received in the Legall and Evangelicall Scriptures let him be Anathema or accursed Was not the Church then purely Protestant in their Religion The Minor needs no proof but our own Profession My profession is the best evidence of my own Religion to another And I profess this to be my Religion which is contained in the holy Scripture as the Test or Law or Rule And let no man contradict me that knoweth not my Religion better then I do The Articles of the Church of England profess this also to be the Religion of the Composers And the Protestants commonly uno ore do profess it It is the great difference between us and the Papists The whole Universal Law of God that we know of and own is contained in Nature and Scripture conjunct But the Papists take somewhat else to be another part We allow by-Laws about mutable undetermined things as aforesaid to Governours But we know no Universal Law of faith and holiness but Nature and Scripture This is our Religion And this Religion contained in Nature and Scriptures hath been still received Obj. We confess Scripture is sufficient to them that have no further light All that is necessary to the salvation of all is in that perspicuously as Costerus Bellarmine and others say but more is necessary to salvation to some Ans. 1. Then at least it containeth all the Essentialls of Christianity which sufficeth to our present end 2. And what maketh more Necessary to me or others here in England if it be not necessary to all Is it because that more is Revealed to us But how and by whom and with what Evidence We are willing to see it and can see no such thing But if this be it if I may speak so plainly without offence it seems it concerneth us to keep out Friars and Jesuites from the Land as much if we knew how as to keep out the Devil For they tell us 1. That we must believe the Popes Soveraignty against the Tradition and judgement of most of the Catholick Church 2. And we must believe our selves to be void of Charity because no Papists contrary to our internall sense and knowledge 3. And we must believe that bread is not bread and wine is not wine contrary to the common senses of all sound men and if we will not thus renounce the Churches Vote Tradition our Certain knowledge Reason and all our Senses we must be damned where as before this doctrine was brought us we might have been saved as having in the Scriptures all things necessary to the salvation of all But the Papists must needs have us shew them where our Church was and name the persons Answ. 1. It were not the Catholike Church if it were confined to any place that is but a part of the Christian territories 2. Nor were it the Catholike Church if we could name half or a considerable part of the members As Augustin oft tells the Donatists it is the Church which begun at Ierusalem and thence is spread throughout the world Part of it may be in one Nation one year which may forfeit and lose it before the next God hath not tyed it to any place 3. To tell you where the Catholike Church hath been in every age and who were the Members or the Leaders requireth much knowledge in History and Cosmography which God hath not made necessary to salvation 4. There are no known Histories that deliver us the Catalogues of the Christians in every age of the world Had any been so foolish as to write them they would have been too chargeable to keep and too
Apostles and this is but to know their doctrine delivered in that first age which we appeal to And after he expresly saith Ad hanc it aque formam provocabantur ab illis Ecclesiis quae licet nullum ex Apostolis vel Apostâ—licus auctorem suum proferant ut multo posteriores quae denique quotidie institutum tamen in eadem fidem conspirantes non minus Apostolicae deputantur pro consanguinitate doctrinae The Apostles doctrine will prove an Apostolical Church when ever planted And c. 38. he draws them from disputing from the Scripture because they owned not the true Scripture but corrupted it and charged the Catholikes with corruption Sicut illis non potuit succedere corruptela doctrinae sine corruptela instrumentorum ejus Ita nobis integritaes doctrina non competisset sine integritate eorum not by real tradition alone per quae doctrina tractatur Etenim quid contrarium nobis in nostris quid de proprio intulimus ut aliquid contrarium ei in Scripturis deprehensum detractione vel adjectione vel transumtatione remediaremus Quod sumus hoc sunt Ab initio suo ex illis sumus antequam nihil aliter fuit quam sumus And cap. 36. He sends them by name to the particular Apostolical Churches and begins with Corinth then to Philippi Thessalonica Ephesus and then to Rome of whose Soveraignty he never speaks a syllable So more plainly l. 4. contr Marcion c. 5. because Marcion denied the true Scriptures he sends them to the Apostolike Churches for the true Scriptures first to the Corinthians then to the Galatians then to the Philippians Thessalonians Ephesians and last of all to Rome But it would be tedious to cite the rest of the Ancients that commonly describe the Church as we and such as we all own as members of it Arg. 3. If the Roman Church as Christian though not as Papal hath been visible ever since the daies of the Apostles then the Church of which the Protestants are members hath been visible ever since the daies of the Apostles But the Antecedent is their own therefore they may not deny the consequent The consequence also is past denyal 1. Because the Roman as Christian is part of the universal Christian Church 2. Because they profess to believe the same holy Scriptures and Creed as we do So that though they add more and so make a new form to their Church yet do they not deny our Church which is the Christian Church as such nor our Test and Rule of faith nor any Article that we account Essential to our Religion So that themselves are our sufficient witnesses Well! but this will not satisfie the Papists unless we shew a succession of our Church as Protestant 1. This we need not any more then a sound man lately cured of the Plague doth need to prove that he hath ever been not only sanus but sanatus a cured man before he was sick How could there be a Church protesting against an universal Vicar of Christ before any claimed that Vicarship 2. And when the Vicarship was usurped those millions abroad and even within the Roman territories that let the pretended Vicar talk and followed their own business and never consented to his usurpation were of the very same Religion with those that openly protested against him And so were those that never heard of his usurpation Object But at least say they you must prove a Church that hath been without the universal Vicar negatively though not against him positively Answ. 1. In all reason he that affirmeth must prove It is not incumbent on us to prove the negative that the Church had not such a Roman head but they must prove that it had Object But they have possession and therefore you that would dispossess them must disprove their title Ans. 1. This is nothing to most of the Catholike Church where they have no possession therefore with them they confess themselves obliged to the proof 2. This is a meer fallacious diversion for we are not now upon the question of their Title but the matter of fact and history we make good the negative that they have no Title from the Laws of Christ himself and so will not dispossess them without disproving their pretended Title But when the question is de facto whether they have ever had that possession from the Apostles daies they that affirm must prove when we have disabled their title from the Law 2. But what must we prove that all the Church hath been guiltless of the Papal usurpation or only some in every age of all its no more necessary to us then to prove that there have been no Heresies since the Apostles If a piece of the Church may turn Hereticks or but Schismaticks as the Novatians and African Donatists why may not another piece turn Papists 3. What will you say to a man that knoweth not a Protestant nor a Papist or believeth only Christianity it self and meddleth not with the Pope any further then to say I believe not in him Jesus I know and the Apostles and Scripture and Christianity I know but the Pope I know not and suppose he never subscribed to the Augustane English or any such confession but only to the Scripture and the Apostles and Nicene and other ancient Creeds By what shew of Justice can you require this man to prove that there hath been no Pope in every age 4. The foundation of all our controversie is doctrinal whether the Papal Soveraignty be Essential to the Church or necessary to our membership we deny it you affirm it If it be not Essential it is enough to us to prove that which is Essential to have been successive we be not bound in order to the proof of our Church it self to prove the succession of every thing that maketh but to its better being Yet professing that we do it not as necessary to our main cause we shall ex abundanti prove the negative that the Catholike Church hath not alwaies owned the Papal Soveraignty and so that there have been men that were not only Christians but as we Christians without Popery and against it and so shall both prove our Thesis and overthrow theirs Arg. 4. If there have been since the daies of Christ a Christian Church that was not subject to the Roman Pope as the Vicar of Christ and universal Head and Governour of the Church then the Church of which the Protestants are members hath been visible both in its being and its freedom from Popery But the Antecedent is true therefore so is the consequent I shall prove the Antecedent and therein the visibility of our Church and the non-existence in those times of the Papacy Arg. 1. My first Argument shall be from the general Council of Chalcedon If the priviledges of the Roman Sea were given to it by the Bishops consequently because of the Empire of that City and therefore equal priviledges after given to Constantinople on the same
account then had not Rome those priviledges from the Apostles and consequently the whole Catholike Church was without them But the Antecedent is affirmed by that fourth great approved Council In Act. 16. Bin. p. 134. We everywhere following the definitions of the holy Fathers and the Canon and the things that have been now read of the hundred and fifty Bishops most beloved to God that were congregate under the Emperour Theodosius the great of pious memory in the Royal City of Constantinople new Rome we also knowing them have defined the same things concerning the priviledges of the same most holy Church of Constantinople new Rome For to the seat of old Rome because of the Empire of that City the Fathers consequently gave the priviledges And the hundred and fifty Bishops most beloved of God being moved with the same intention have given equal priviledges to the most holy seat of new Rome reasonably judging that the City adorned with the Empire and Senate shall enjoy equal priviledges with old Regal Rome Here we have the Testimony of one of the greatest general Councils of the humane original of Romes priviledges Bellarmine hath nothing to say but that they spoke falsly and that this clause was not confirmed by the Pope which are fully answered by me elsewhere But this is nothing to our present business It is a matter of fact that I use their Testimony for And if all the Bishops in two of the most approved general Councils called the Representative Catholike Church were not competent witnesses in such a case to tell us what was done and what was not done in those times then we have none The Papists can pretend to no higher testimony on their part The Church it self therefore hath here decided the controversie And yet note that even these priviledges of Rome were none of his pretended universal Government It s in vain to talk of the Testimonies of particular Doctors if the most renowned general Councils cannot be believed Yet I will add an Argument from them as conjunct Arg. 2. Had the Roman universal Soveraignty as essential to the Catholike Church been known in the daies of Tertullian Cyprian Athanasius Nazianzen Nyssen Basil Optatus Augustine and the other Doctors that confounded the Heresies or Schisms of those times e. g. the Novatians Donatists Arrians c. the said Doctors would have plainly and frequently insisted on it for the conviction of those Hereticks and Schismaticks But this they do not therefore it was not known in those times The consequence of the Major is evident hence The Doctors of the Church were men at least of common wit and prudence in the matters which they did debate therefore they would have insisted on this argument if then it had been known The reason of the consequence is because it had been most obvious easie and potent to dispatch their controversies 1. When the Arrians and many other Hereticks denied Christs eternal Godhead had it not been the shortest expeditious course to have cited them to the barr of the Judge of controversies the infallible Soveraign Head of the Church and convinced them that they were to stand to his judgement 2. Had not this Argument been at hand to have confounded all Heresies at once That which agreeth not with the Belief of the Roman Pope and Church is false But such is your opinion therefore 2. So for the Donatists when they disputed for so many years against the Catholikes which was the true Church had it not been Augustins shortest surest way to have argued thus That only is the true Church that is subject to the Pope of Rome and adhereth to him But so do not you therefore Either the Arrians Donatists and such others did believe the Papal Soveraignty and Vicarship or not If they did 1. How is it possible they should actually reject both the Doctrine and Communion of the Pope and Roman Church 2. And why did not the Fathers rebuke them for sinning against conscience and their own profession herein But if they did not believe the Papal Soveraignty then 2. How came it to pass that the Fathers did labour no more to convince them of that now supposed fundamentall Errour when 1. It is supposed as hainous a sin as many of the rest 2. And was the maintainer of the rest Had they but first demonstrated to them that the Pope was their Governour and Judge and that his Headship being essentiall to the Church it must needs be of his faith all Heresies might have been confuted the people satisfied and the controversies dispatched in a few words 3. Either Arrians Donatists Novatians and such like were before their defection acquainted with the Roman Soveraignty or not If they were not then it is a sign it was not commonly then received in the Church and that there were multitudes of Christians that were no Papists If they were then why did not the Fathers 1. Urge them with this as a granted truth till they had renounced it 2. And then why did they not charge this defection from the Pope upon them among their hainous crimes why did they not tell them that they were subjected to him as soon as they were made Christians and therefore they should not perfidiously revolt from him How is it that we find not this point disputed by them on both sides yea and as copiously as the rest when it would have ended all And for the Minor that the Fathers have not thus dealt with Hereticks the whole Books of Tertullian Nazianzen Nyssen Basil Optatus Hierom Augustine and others are open certain witnesses They use no such Argument but fill their Books with others most imprudently and vainly if they had known of this and had believed it Otherwise the Papists would never have been put to gather up a few impertinent scraps to make a shew with We see by experience here among us that this point is Voluminously debated and if we differ in other matters the Papists call us to the Roman bar and bring in this as the principall difference And why would it not have been so then between the Fathers and the Donatists Arrians and such like if the Fathers had believed this It s clear hence that the Papall Vicarship was then unknown to the Church of Christ. Arg. 3. The Tradition witnessed by the greater part of the Universal Church saith that the Papal Vicarship or Soveraignty is an innovation and usurpation and that the Catholick Church was many hundred years without it Therefore there was then no such Papal Church This is not a single testimony nor of ten thousand or ten millions but of the Major Vote of the whole Church and in Councils the Major Vote stands for the whole If this witness therefore be refused we cannot expect that the words of a few Doctors should be credited Nor may they expect that we credit any witness of theirs that is not more credible And that the Antecedent is true is known to the world as
not at this day abhor the reading of the Office So that here is all invented new by Gregory which was hardly received in Spain and yet that changed since Arg. 9. If the Generality of Christians in the first ages and many if not most in the later ages have been free from the Essentials of the Papists faith â—hen their faith hath had no successive Visible Church professing it in all ages but the Christians that are against it have been Visible But the Antecedent is true as I prove in some instances 1. It is an Article of their faith determined in a General Council at Laterane and Florence that the Pope is above a Council But that this hath not been successively received the Council of Basil and Constance witness making it a new Heresie 2. It is an Article of their faith that a Generall Council is above the Pope for it is so determined at Basil and Constance But that this hath had no successive duration the Council of Laterane and Florence witness 3. It is an Article of their faith that the Pope may depose Princes for denying Transubstantiation and such like Heresies and also such as will not exterminate such Hereticks from their dominions and may give their dominions to others and discharge their Subjects from their oaths and fidelity For it is determined so in a Council at Laterane But this hath not been so from the beginning Not when the 13. Chapter to the Romans was written Not till the dayes of Constantine Not till the dayes of Gregory that spake in contrary language to Princes And Goldastus his three Volumes of Antiquities shew you that there hath been many Churches still against it 4. It is an Article of their faith that the Body and Blood together with the Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ is truly really and substantially in the Eucharist and that there is a Change made of the whole substance of Bread into the body and of the whole substance of Wine into the blood which they call Transubstantiation So the Council of Trent But the Catholick Church hath been of a contrary judgement from age to age as among many others Edm. Albertinus de Eucharist hath plainly evinced though a quarreller hath denyed it and little more And it s proved in that successively they judged sense and Reason by it a competent discerner of Bread and Wine 5. It is now de fide that the true Sacrament is rightly taken under one kind without the cup as the Councils of Constance and Trent shew But the Catholick Church hath practised and the Apostles and the Church taught otherwise as the Council of Constance and their Writers ordinarily confess 6. It is an Article of their faith as appears in the Trent Oath that we must never take and interpret Scripture but according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers But the Catholick Church before these Fathers could not be of that mind and the Fathers themselves are of a contrary mind and so are many learned Papists 7. It is an Article of their faith that there is a Purgatory and that the souls there detained are holpen by the suffrages of the faithful But the latter was strange to all the old Catholick Church as Bishop Vsher and others have proved and the very being of Purgatory was but a new doubtfull indifferent opinion of some very few men about Augustines time 8. It is now an Article of their faith that the holy Catholick Church of Rome is the mother and mistris of all Churches But I have shewed here and elsewhere that the Catholick Church judged otherwise and so doth for the most part to this day 9. It is now an Article of their faith that their Traditions are to be received with equall pious affection and reverence as the holy Scripture But the Catholick Church did never so believe 10. The Council of Basil made it de fide that the Virgin Mary was conceived without Originall sin But the Catholick Church never judged so 11. It s determined by a Council now that the people may not read the Scripture in a known tongue without the Popes License But the Catholick Church never so thought as I have proved Disp. 3. of the safe Religion 12. The Books of Maccabees and others are now taken into the Canon of faith which the Catholick Church received not as such as Dr. Cosin and Dr. Reignolds have fully proved To this I might add the Novelty of their Worship and Discipline but it would be too tedious and I have said enough of these in other writings See Dr. Challoner pag. 88 89. In 16. points Dr. Challoner proveth your Novelty from your Confessions Indeed his Book de Eccles. Cath. though small is a full answer to your main Question Arg. 10. If Multitudes yea the far greatest part of Christians in all ages have been ignorant of Popery but not of Christianity then hath there been a succession of Visible Professors of Christianity that were no Papists but the antecedent is true therefore so is the consequent In this age it is an apparent thing that the far greatest part are ignorant of formal Popery 1. They confess themselves that the common people and most of the nobility of Habassia Armenia Greece Russia and most other Eastern Churches that are not Papists are ignorant of the Controversie 2. They use to tell us here among Protestants that there is not one of many that know what a Papist is 3. We know that of those that go under the name of Papists there is not one of a multitude knoweth We hear it from the mouths of those we speak with I have not met with one of ten of the poorer sort of them even here among us that knoweth what a Papist or Popery is but they are taught to follow their Priests and to say that theirs is the true Church and old Religion and to use their Ceremonious worship and to forbear coming to our Churches c. and this is their Religion And in Ireland they are yet far more ignorant And it s well known to be so in other parts Their Priests they know and the Pope they hear of as some person of eminent Power in the Church But whether he be the Universal Vicar of Christ and be over all others as well as them whether this be of Gods institution or by the grant of Emperours or Councils c. they know not And no wonder when the Papists think that the Council of Chalcedon spoke falsly of the humane Originall of the Primacy in the Imperiall territories And when the Councils of Basil and Constance knew not whether Pope or Council was the Head And that the people were as ignorant and much more in former ages they testifie themselves And before Gregories dayes they must needs be ignorant of that which was not then risen in the world Yea Dr. Field hath largely proved Append lib. 3. that even the many particular points in which the Papists now differ
like of the Ordinary Glosses of the Bible which yet seem of greater authority then Aquinas The sixth example is of some not Canonized Saints as Anselm Cantuar. Hugo de Sancto Victore and others as authentick as S. Thomas And say they his Canonization hindereth not which some pretend as of great colour To say that S. Tho. in some part of his doctrine erred in faith derogates not from his Canonization nor from the approbation of his Theologicall doctrine even as to say this of other Saints and chief Doctors derogateth not from their Canonization or approbation For as the Church by Canonizing one a Saint doth not thereby approve all his Deeds so in approving his doctrine it doth not hereby approve all his sayings or writings but only that which is not retracted by himself or corrected by another or deservedly to be corrected as contrary to truth And now when Fathers even the chief and your Saints and highest Doctors have this Testimony from the famous University of Paris to have somewhat hereticall or erroneous in the faith and so who among you is free I leave it to modesty to judge whether the Greeks Armenians c. and we are not of one Faith Religion and Catholick Church for all our differences in some points Have you had all these Nations man by man before your bar and convinced them of pertinaciousness in heresie If not call them not Hereticks till you are willing to be called such your selves and that by your selves And thus I have evinced 1. That the Church of which the Protestants are Members hath been Visible since the dayes of Christ on earth 2. And ex abundanti that the Papal Church as Papal hath not been visible and that Christian Churches without Papal Soveraignty have been Visible since Gregories dayes and the whole Catholick Church was such before And you see both in the Essentialls and in the freedom from the Romish Vice-Christ where our Church hath been before Luther even since Christ. Sir I have performed this task on this supposed condition that you will now do the like as to your own Church and send me in solid Arguments your proof of this Thesis The Church of which the Subjects of the Pope are Members hath been Visible ever since the dayes of Christ on earth Where note that it is not the Visibility of your Church as Christian United in Christ the Head that is in Question We grant as Christians all of you are of the true Christian Church that destroy not your Christianity But it is your new Church form as Papal that we question and renounce Protestants are of no Church but the Christian united in Christ The name Protestant signifieth not any essentiall of their Church but their Rejection of your Church as Headed by the Pope You are therefore to prove that your Catholick Church as Headed by the Pope hath been visible in all ages And here I must in Justice expect that you give us such a Definition as you will stand to through the dispute 1. Of the Church 2. Of the Pope and 3. Of the Subjects of the Pope or Papists The term Roman Catholicks would but divert and elude For it is not as Romane that we oppose you that is as inhabitants of Rome or as subject to him as a Bishop of Rome Nor is it as Catholicks that is as of the Universal Christian Church but as Papists that is subjects of the Pope as universal Soveraign or Bishop To dispute of terms not agreed on is lost labour Define first or you do nothing I find of your Writers some by the Church mean the Pope as Gretser Defens cap. 10. lib. 3. de Verbo Dei pag. 1450 1451. By the Church saith he we mean the Pope of Rome and per Ecclesiam Papam interpretantur Non abnuo Some by the Church mean a Council and what they mean by a Council I know not well And some mean the Roman Clergy i. e. of that Diocess And some mean all the Clergy under the Pope And some mean all the people that are his subjects I have given you the Reason of my doubting of your meaning in these terms in a Book come out of the Press since your last to me where I have answered most of yours 2. Let me desire of you such proofs as in your own judgement are cogent I suppose as I have there told you Key pag. 41. cap. 12. that none of you will take either Sense Reason Scripture the Tradition or judgement of most of the Church for a sufficient proof but yet we will accept of them when you argue but ad hominem for we renounce them not I think what ever you say that is not the Determination of the Pope or a Council by him approved which is all one you will give us leave to judge that you are uncertain your selves whether you say true in it if de fide Saith Skul Revius Apol. pro Bellâ—rm c. 6. p. 255. The Popes Power is as the hinge the foundation and that I may comprehend all in a word the summ of the Christian faith Greg. Valent. Anal. fid l. 8. c. 7. The Authority that resideth in the Pope alone is called the Authority of the Church and Councils Bellâ—r de Rom. Pont. l. 4. c. 3. It is apparent that the whole firmness or strength of Councils is from the Pope not partly of the Pope and partly of the Council Binnius Vol. 2. p. 515. saith Every Council hath just so much strength and authority as the Apostolike seat bestoweth on it But I leave you to give us your own judgement Your Testimonies from Fathers can seem of no great weight to us while you so slight them your selves as commonly you do with what lies or Errors or other incompetency you charge Iustin Mart. Irenaeus Tertullian Origen Victorinus Cyprian Eusebius Epiphanius Prudentius Hierom Lactantius Augustine Procopius Theodoret Isidore Euthymius Sozomen Oecumenius Bernard and all the Fathers see Dr. Iames Corrupt of Fath. Part. 4. p. 2 3. Tell us therefore how far you credit them Sir if you refuse thus first to explain your terms and then prove the Visibility of your Church as Papal successively as I have proved the Visibility of the Church that I am of I shall be forced to conclude that you love not the light but at once give up your cause and the reputation of your impartial Love of truth Addenda Miscellanea COncil Ephes. 1. in Epistola ad Nestor Tom. 1 fol. 315. ed. Pet. Crab. Petrus Iohannes aequalis sunt ad alterutrum dignitatis Comment in epist Synodal Basil. p. 31. p. 40. Impress Colon. 1613. saith that The Provinces subject to the four great Patriarchs from the beginning of the Christian Church did know no other supream but their own Patriarcks And if the Pope be a Patriarck it is by the Church If he be Head of all Churches it is by the Church And whereas we have said that it is expressed in the
Council of Nice that many Princes were subjected to the Church of Rome by Ecclesiastical custom and no other right the Synod should do the greatest injury to the Bishop of Rome if it should attribute those things to him only from custom which were his due by Divine Right This Citation I take from Bishop Bromhall having not seen the Book my self The Popish Bishop of Calcedâ—n Survey cap. 5. To us it sufficeth that the Bishop of Rome is Saint Peters successour and this all the Fathers testifie and all the Catholick Church believeth but whether it be jure divino or humano is no point of Faith An ingenuous Confession destroying Popery See Aubert Miraeus notitia Episcopat where in the antient Notit and Leunclavius record of Leo Philos. Impera There are none of the Abassine or other extramperial Nations under the old Patriarcks Cassander Epist. 37. D. Ximenio operum p. 1132. saith of that learned pious Bishop of Valentia Monlucius so highly commended by Thuanus and other learned men that he said Si sibi permittatur in his tribus capitibus viz. forma publicarum precum de ritibus Baptismi de formâ Eucharistiae sive Missae Christianam formam ad normam priscae Ecclesiae Institutam legi conâ—idere se quod ex quinquaginta mill quos habet in suâ Dioecesi à praesenti disciplina Ecclesiae diversos quaùraginta millia ad Ecclesiasticam uniâ—nâ—m sit reducturus That is If he had but leave in these three heads the form of publick Prayers of the rites of Baptism and the form of the Eucharist or the Mass to follow the Christian form Instituted according to the rule of the Antient Church he was confident that of fifty thousand that he had in his Diocess that differed from the present discipline of the Church he should reduce forty thousand to Ecclesiastical union By this testimony it is plain that the Church of Rome hath forsaken the antient Discipline and Worship of the Church by Innovation and that the Protestants desire the restitution of it and would be satisfied therewith but cannot obtain it at the Papists hands So Cassâ—nder himself Epist. 42 p. 1138. I would not despair of moderation if they that hold the Church possessions would remove some intolerable abuses and would restore at tolerable form of the Church according to the prescript of the Word of God and of the antient Church especially that which flourished for some ages after Constantine when liberty was restored which if they will not do and that betime there is danger they may in many places be cast out of their possessions Still you see Rome is the Innovator and it is Restitution of the antient Church-form that would have quieted the Protestans which could never be obtained So again more plainly Epist. 45. p. 1141. Whether Hereticks are in the Church When I came to London I enquired after Mr. Iohnson to know whether I might at all expect any Answer to the foregoing Papers or not And at last instead of an Answer I received only these ensuing lines PAg. 5. part 1. You say I reply first had not you despaired of making good your cause you should have gone by argumentation till you had forced me to contradict some common principle Now I have by Argumentation forced you to this if you will maintain what after you seem to assert in divers passages viz. That Hereticks are true parts of Christs Catholick Church for thus you write p. 11. Some are called Hereticks for denying points essential to Christianity those are no Christians and so not in the Church but many also are called Hereticks by you and by the Fathers for lesser Errours consistent with Christianity And these may be in the Church And p. 12. you answer thus to your adversary Whereas you say it is against all antiquity and Christianity to admit condemned Hereticks into the Church I reply first I hate their condemnation rather then reverence it where you saying nothing against their admittance into the Church seem to grant it I therefore humbly entreate you to declare your opinion more fully in this question Whether any professed Hereticks properly so called are true parts of the universal visible Church of Christ so that they compose one universal Church with the other visible parts of it Iunii 6 to William Johnson The Answer ANsw. My words are plain and distinctly answer your question so that I know not what more is needful for the explication of my sense Unless you would call us back from the Thing to the meer Name by your properly so called you are answered already But I would speak as plainly as I can and if it be possible for me to be understood by you I shall do my part 1. It is supposed that you and I are not agreed What the Vniversal visible Church it self is while you take the Pope or any meer humane Head to be an essential part which is an assertion that with much abhorrence I deny You think each member of that Church must necessarily ad esse be a subject of the Pope and I think it enough that he be a subject of Christ and to his orderly and well-being that he hold local Communion with the parts within the reach of his capacity and be subject to the Pastors that are set over him maintaining due association with and charity to the rest of the more distinct members as he is capable of communion with them at that distance So that when I have proved a person to be a member of the Catholick Church it is not your Catholick Church that I mean No â—ound Christian is a member of yours it is Hereticks in the softer sense that are its matter It s necessary therefore that we first agree of the Definition of the Catholick Church before we dispute who is in it 2. Your word Properly so called is ambiguous referring either to the Etymologie or to some definition in an authentick Canon or to custom and common speech Of the first we have no reason now to enter controversie For the second I know no such stablisht Definition that we are agreed on For the third custom is so variable here not agreeing with it self that what is to be denominated Proper or Improper from it is not to be well conjectured However all this is but de nomine and What is the proper and What the improper use of the word Heretick is no Article of Faith nor necessary for our debate Therefore again you must accept of my distinguishing and give me leave to fly confusion 1. The word Heretick is either spoken of one that corrupteth the Doctrine of Faith as such or of one that upon some difference of Opinion or some personal quarrels withdraweth from the Communion of those particular Churches that before he held communion with and gathereth a separated party such are most usually called Schismaticks but of oâ—d the name Hereticks was oft applyed unto such 2. The word Heretick in the
â—irst sense is either spoken of one that professing the rest denyeth some one or more essential Articles of the Faith or parts of Christianity or one that only denyeth not what is necessary to the Being but to the Integrality or sober and better-being of a Christian. 3. Hereticks are either convict and condemned or such as never were tryed and judged 4. Hereticks condemned are either condemned by their proper Pastors or by others 5. If by others either by Usurpers or by meer equal neighbour consociate Pastors 6. They are condemned either jâ—stly clâ—ve non errante or unjustly clave errante 7. They are either judged to be materially as to the quality of their errour Hereticks or also formally as obstinate impenitent and habitually stated Hereticks Upon these necessary distinctions I answer your Question in these Propositions Prop. 1. As the word Hereticks signifieth Schismaticks as such so Hereticks with drawing from some parts of the universal Church only may yet be parts of the whoâ—e even with those parts from which they separate If they say You are no parts and therefore we disown you and will have no Communion with you this maketh neither cease to be parts and while both own the Head and the Body as such they have an union in tertio and so a communion in the principal respects while they peevishly disclaim it in other respects Besides that the local or particular Communion is it that is proper to members of a particular Church and therefore the renouncing it only separates him from that Church But it is the general Communion that belongs to us as members of the Church Universal which may be still continued But should any renounce the Body of Christ as such and separate not from this or that Church but from the whole or from the Church Universal as such this man would be no member of the Church Prop. 2. As the word Heretick is taken for one that denyeth any thing essential to Christianity so an Heretick if latent is out of the Church Deo judice as to the invisible part or soul of the Church as Bellarmine calls it as a latent Infidel is but he may be if latent in the outward communion or as Bellarmine calls him a dead member that properly is none as the straw and chaffe are in the corn-field Prop. 3. Such an Heretick convict and judged by the Pastors of that particular Church of which he is a subject-member is accordingly to be avoided and in foro illius Ecclesiae is so far cast out of that Church as the sentence importeth Prop. 4. Such an Heretick if he be a Pastor of one Church and be convict and condemned by the consociate co-equal Pastors of the neighbour Churches is accordingly cast out from communion of all the Churches of which they are Pastors Prop. 5. So far as any Christians through the world have sufficient proof or cognisance of the said conviction and condemnation they are all bound accordingly to esteem the condemned Heretick and avoid him Prop 6. If Heresie be taken for the obstinate impenitent resisting or rejecting of any point of Faith that is of Divine Revelation which is made so plain to the person that nothing but a wicked will could cause such resistance or rejection such persons being justly convicted and condemned as aforesaid are to be taken as persons condemned for obstinacy and impenitency in any other sin and are out of the Church as far as a man condemned for impenitency in drunkenness or fornication is Prop. 7. Heresie taken in this softer sense for the denyal of a truth of Divine revelation not essential to the Christian Religion or necessary to the Being of a Christian excludeth no man from the Church of it self unless they are legally convict of wicked Impenitency and obstinacy in defending it Prop. 8. A sentence passed in alieno foro by an Usurper that hath no true Authority thereto proveth no man an Heretick Prop. 9. A sentence passed by an Authorized Pastor or by many if it be notoriously unjust clave errante proveth no man an Heretick or out of the Universal Church Prop. 10. A sentence passed by one Church or many consociate binds none to take the condemned person to be an Heretick and out of the Universal Church but those that have sufficient notice of the Authority of the Judges and validity of the Evidence or a ground of violent presumption as it s called that the sentence is just Prop. 11. He that is sentenced an Heretick or Impenitent by the Pastors of some Churches and acquit by the equally-authorized Pastors of other Churches is not eo nomine to be condemned or acquit by a third Church but used as the evidence requireth Prop. 12. There is an actual excommunication pro medelâ and pro tempore due for an actual willful defence of error or for other willful sin which statedly puts not a man out of the Church as there is an excommunication à statu Relatione which is due for stated habitual or obstinate impenitency in that or other great or known sin Having thus distinctly told you my judgement how far Hereticks are or are not in or out of the universal Church I add in order to the application 1. That this whole debate is nothing to the great difference between you and us it being not de fide in your own account but a dogma theologicum which you differ about among your selves Bellarmine tells you Alphonsus a Castro maintaineth that Hereticks are in the Church de Eccles. l. 3. c. 4. And he himself saith that haeretici pertinent ad Ecclesiam ut oves ad ovile unde confugerunt ibid. c. 4. so that they are oves still and if it be but ovile particulare veluti Romanum that they fly from and not the Vniversal that proves them not out of the Vniversal Church And Bellarmine saith of the Catechumen Excommunicatis that they are de anima et si non de corpore Ecclesiae ib. c. 2. and may be saved cap. 6. And the anima Ecclesiae is not incorporated in the world without All that have that soul are of that Church which Christ that animateth his members is the head of Which made Melchior Canus fatente Bellarmino de Eccl. l. 3. c. 3. confess the being of that which indeed is the true Catholike Church saying of the Vnbaptized Believers that sunt de Ecclesia quae comprehendit omnes fideles ab Abel usque ad consummationem mundi 2. Many Popes have been condemned for Hereticks even by General Councils as not only Henorius by two or three but Eugenius by the Council of Basil when yet he kept his place and the rest come in as his successors And your writers frequently confess that a Pope may be an Heretick as Pope Adrian himself affirmeth Now if these are not of the Church then they are not Heads of the Church and then being essential parts of your Church it followeth that your Church is heretical
and unchurched with them But if these Popes may be in the Church and Heads of yours while Hereticks then so may others 3. It s commonly said by others of yours as well as Bellarmine that the Councils were misinformed about Honorius and the Popes that consented to those Councils and so that he was not a Heretick nor out of the Church Also that a Pope may erre in matter of fact and unjustly excommunicate If so a Pope and Council may erre about another as well as about Honorius or other Popes and therefore their sentence be no proof that such are out of the Church no more then that he and Eugenius were out 4. As the Pope and his Synods condemn the Greeke so the Greeks condemn and excommunicate you as formerly the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Pope have excommunicated each other I am therefore no more bound to take them for excommunicate persons than you they having as much authority over you as you over them and their witness being to us as credible as yours 5. The Abassines Armenians Greeks c. are not proved to deny any essential point of the Christian Religion or which is necessary to the Being of a Christian or Church 6. Nor are they proved to be willful obstinate and impenitent in defending any errors with a wicked mind and so to be formally Hereticks in your own sense 7. They are large Nations and millions of souls and their Pastours numerous so that its impossible they should be all legally by you convicted They never spake for themselves nor were witnesses heard against them Noxa caput sequitur Guilt of Heresie is to be proved of each individual whom you condemn If a few Bishops were Hereticks or a Prince were such that proves not that the rest and all the Pastors or people even to many millâ—ons are such Or if half had been such in former ages that proves not that half or any are such now Christ never appointed the excommunicating of millions for the sakes of a few of their Rulers nor of whole Nations unheard but of single persons upon a just and equal tryal If therefore your Pope or any of his Councils which you falsly call General do excommunicate or condemn Habassia Armenia Georgia Syria and other Naâ—ions as Hereticks it is so far from unchurching them or proving them such as that it is one of the greatest sins that can be committed by the sons of men with inhumane injustice cruelty pride and arrogancy presuming to pass a damning sentence on so many millions of souls whose faces you never saw nor were ever called to a legal tryal 8. Your own writers ordinarily acquit the Greeks from Heresie and those of them that have travelled to other Countries as Syria c. acquit most of them as I have proved in former writings out of their own words not needful therefore here to be recited when you may see any writings 9. Your Pope and Bishops is none of their authorized Pastor and therefore hath no power as such to judge them And as neighbour Churches they have as much to do to judge you as you to judge them Therefore they are never the more out of the Church for your judgement any more than you for theirs 10. There are as many and as great errors proved by them to be in your Church as is by you to be in theirs so that in sum your cause being much worse and your censure of them proving you guilty of such inhumane cruelty injustice arrogancy usurpation c. by condemning them you go much nearer to prove your selves no Christians and no Church than them 11. And yet I think the far greatest part of them many thousands to one are not actually excommunicated or condemned by any pretended sentence of your own whatever your writers may say of them and whatever one Council might say of some few in some one age 12. Lastly It can be no matter of certainty to you your self or any of you that these Nations or Churches are Hereticks both because it is a thing that none of your approved Councils have determined of as to any person now living nor to any considerable number comparatively in other ages and also because you confess your Pope and Councils fallible in these cases of fact and personal application You cannot therefore build upon such acknowledged uncertainties BUt Sir having thus answered your demand I must ask you what 's all this to the Answer of my last Papers which I have now near a year expected from you I suspected some such â—ergiversation when I took the boldness to urge you so hard to the tasks that you were reasonably engaged to perform viz. 1. To prove by close Argumentation the nullity of our Churches as you begun in your first Argument 2. To answer my proofs of our successive visibility 3. To prove your own successive visibility in all ages since Christ as I have proved ours I do therefore once more urge you speedily to do this assuring you that else I must take it for an open deserting of your Cause But yet I must add that if you will please to dispute the main cause in difference between us upon equal terms we have yet other Questions in which we differ that are lower then these and nearer the foundation Besides the forementioned work therefore I desire that you will dispute the main Cause in two distinct disputations in one of which be you the Opponent and bring your strongest Arguments against the Reformed Churches and Religion and in the other I will be Opponent and argue against Popery in the beginning agreeing upon the sense of those terms that we are like to have greatest use of through our disputation If you will but let us meet and state our sense of such terms before I return into the Country that we may the better manage it after at a distance it will be worth our labour And for verbal dispute I shall at any fit time and place most cheerfully entertain it if so many doubting persons may be present as that it may be worth our labour In the mean time I pray pardon it if the roughness of any passages discover the frailty of Your Servant R. Baxter Iune 7. 1660. Mr. Iohnsons EXPLICATION OF Some of the most used TERMS WITH QUERIES Thereupon And his ANSWER And my REPLY LONDON Printed 1660. AFter the writing of the foregoing Paper I again urged Mr. Johnson to the speedy answering my Papers Of which when he gave me no hope I committed them to the Press But afterward he seemed more inclinable both to that and to a Verbal conference And in order to both if we had opportunity I desired him first that we might agree on the sense of those terms that are like to be most used in the substance of our Controversie promising him that I will give him my sense of any term when he shall desire it and accordingly he explained his sense of many of them as
guideth or inspireth him This is at once to believe a Humane and Divine Veracity If any of this be your meaning the last questions remain still to be resolved by you A man may believe that God is true and that his Prophets or inspired messengers are true and yet not understand a word of the message so that still if this will serve a man may be of your Church that knoweth not that ever there was such a person as Jesus Christ or that ever he died for our sins or rose again or that we shall rise And are Infidels of your Church while you are arguing us out But if there be some truths besides the Veracity of God and his Messengers that must be believed you must shew what it is or your Church-members cannot be known Tell me therefore without tergiversation what are the revealed truths that must actually be believed or what is the faith materially in unity whereof all members of the Catholike Church do live I pray fly not but plainly tell me And if again you fly to uncertain points because of the diversity of means of information and say It must be so much to every man as he had means to know I again answer you 1. If a man had no means to know that there is a Christ it seems then he is one of your Church 2. You still damn all your own there being not a man that knoweth all that he had means to know because all have culpably neglected means And so you have no Church 3. Still you make your Church invisible if you had any For no man can tell as I said who knoweth in full proportion to his helps and means Do you not see now whither your Implicite faith hath brought you R. B. Qu. 3. Is it any lawful Pastors or All that must necessarily be depended on by every member and who are these Pastors Mr. J. Answ. Of all respectively to each subject that is that the authority of none of them mediate or immediate be rejected or contemned by him that is a true member of the Church R. B. Reply Ad Qu. 3. R. Reply 1. Here still you tell me that your descriptions signified nothing You told me that the members must live in dependance on their lawful Pastors And now you tell me that their authority must not be rejected or contemned And indeed is dependance and non-rejection all one The millions of heathens that never heard of the Pope or any of your Pastors reject them not nor contemn them Are they therefore fit matter for your Church 2. If you say that you mean it of such only as have a sufficient Revelation of the Authority of these Pastors I further reply 1. It seems then it is not only the Pope but every Priest respectively that is an essential member of your Church or to whom each member must be subject necessarily ad esse If so then every man that by falling out or prejudice doth culpably reject the authority of any one Pastor or Priest among a swarm is damned or none of the Church though he believe in the Pope and in twenty thousand Priests besides 2. And then have we not cause to pray God to bless us from the company of your Priests or at least that we may not have too many when among a multitude we may be in danger of rejecting some one and then we are cast out of the Church What if a Gentleman should find some such as Watson or Montaltus describe in bed with his wife or a Prince find a Garnet a Campion or a Parsons in a Treason and by such a temptation should be so weak as to contemn or reject the authority of that single Priest while he honoureth all the rest Is it certain that such a man is none of the Catholike Church for that How hard is it in France and Italy then to be a Catholike where Priests are so numerous that its ten to one but among the crowd the authority of some one may be rejected 3. But is it all the Priests that we never knew or knew not to be Priests that we must depend on or is it only those whose authority is manifested to us by sufficient evidence Doubtless you will confine our dependance to these only or else no man could be a Christian And if so you know we are never the nearer a resolution for your answer till you yet tell us how we must know our Pastors to have authority indeed What if they shew me the Bishops orders and I know that many have had forged Orders am I bound to believe in his authority what if I be utterly ignorant whether he that ordained him were himself ordained or had intentionem ordinandi how shall I then be sure of his authority that is ordained And how can the people be acquainted with the passages in Election and Ordination that are necessary to the knowledge of their authority especially of the Popes and prelates And what if you tell me your own opinion of the sufficient means by which I must be convinced of the Popes and Priests authority how shall I know that you are not deceived and that these are the sufficient means indeed unless a General Council have defined them to be sufficient And if they have if it were not as an Article of faith you 'l say I am not bound of necessity to believe their definition And what if I have sufficient means to know the authority of a thousand Priests but am culpably ignorant of it in some few through my neglect Doth it follow that therefore I am out of the Church Is my obedience to each Priest as necessary as my belief of every Article of my faith If so I know not whether your multiplying Articles or multiplying Priests doth fill hell faster if men must be judged by your laws But it is our Allegiance to our Soveraign that is the character of a Subject in the Common-wealth and not our Allegiance or duty to every inferiour Magistrate the rejection of one of them may stand with subjection though not with innocency It is not treason to reject a Constable why then should more be necessary to our Church-membership and salvation But still you make your Church invisible For as no man can know that liveth in the remote parts of the world whether your Popes themselves are truly Popes as being duly qualified and elected nor which is the true Pope when you have oft had more then one at once so you can never know concerning your members whether their dependance on their Pastors be extensively proportionate to the means that discovered their authority and whether their disobedience unchurch them or no I earnestly crave your answer to the thirty uncertainties which I have mentioned in my Safe Religion p. 93 to 104. And tell us how all our Pastours may be known And whether every particular sin unchurch men and if not why the contempt or rejection of a drunken Priest doth it while
judgement is in order to Ecclesiastical Communion or Excommunication And so it belongs to those with whom the person is in Communion in their several capacities The members of a particular Church are to be judged Authoritatively by the Pastors of that Church and by the people by a Private judgement of Discerning Pastors should associate for Communion of Churches and so in order to that Communion of Association it belongs to the several Associations to judge of the Members of the Society which yet is not by a publike Governing judgement For in Councils or Associations the Major Vote are not properly the Governors of the lesser part But those that are out of capacity of Communion have nothing to do to judge of the Aptitude of Pastors or Churches in order to Communion or non-Communion And for the Pope he hath nothing to do with us at such a distance whose persons and cases are wholly unknown to him he being neither our Governour nor our Associate But if we and our case were known to him he may judge of us so far as we may judge of him And other judgement what ever men may say to deceive there is none to decide our controversies but the final judgement of the Vniversal Iudge who is at the door A LETTER Written to Thomas Smith A Papist Concerning the Church of Rome LONDON Printed 1660. Reverend Sir THe noted sanctity admirable integrity and extraordinary charity so eminently appearing in your pious actions and as I have some cause to think the indelible characters of your sacred function hath animated me to make choice of your self rather then any of your coat to this present address hoping your candour and tenderness will bear with what may be by others less sensible of the value of immortal souls slighted interpreted according to the candid and true sense of your supplicant by you It hath pleased the great and terrible Iudge of heaven and earth to put me upon some thoughts more seriously then ordinary of my eternal estate and to be somewhat doubtful in the midst of external perturbations of those internal grounds which I have formerly relyed upon And truely Sir with all cordialness my desire is clearly to know the mind of my God which were I truely satisfied in I should soon wave all other interests to entertain and assuring my self according to what I have seen and read the Church of Rome to which I have long cleaved and adhered to be the pillar and ground of truth and that Catholike Church which the ancient Creed testifies we are to believe in My desire is to be as soon satisfied as may be of your thoughts whether it ever were a true Church which I suppose you will not deny when you consider the first verse of the Epistle to the Romans and if so when it made its defection The reason of my urging this is because I think all other questions to be but going about the bush and the true Church being proved all arguments else easily are answered I have heard Protestants aver the ancient maxime viz. Extra Ecclesiam non est salus Therefore I suppose it the only thing pertinent to my purpose and necessary to salvation to enquire after My occasions will suddenly draw me from these parts unless I hear from you speedily and doubt not Sir but I am one who freely will resign my self to hear truth impartially Therefore I beseech you to send something to me by way of satisfaction the next Saturday after which you shall be more particularly sensible who the person is that applies himself to you and in the interim subscribes himself Sir A thirsty troubled soul and yours to his power Tho. Smith Feb. 11. 1656. Direct your Letter to me if you please to Mr. John Smiths house next door to the sign of the Crown in the broad street Worcester Good Sir be private for the present otherwise it may be prejudicial to some temporal affairs agitating at this time Sir THat you can have such charitable thoughts of one that is not of the Roman subjection and of my function being not received from the Pope is so extraordinary yea and contrary to the judgement of your writers that I must needs entertain it with the more gratitude and some admiration And that you are so impartially willing to entertain the truth as you profess though it be no more then the truth deserves of you and your own wellfare doth require yet is the more aimiable in you by how much the more rare in those of your Profession so far as my acquaintance can inform me for most of them that I have met with understand not well their own Religion nor think themselves much concerned to understand it but refer me to others for a Reason of their hope For my part I do the more gladly entertain the occasion of this entercourse with you though unknown that I may learn what I know not and may be true to my own conscience in the use of all means that may conduce to my better information And therefore I shall plainly answer your Questions according to the measure of my understanding most solemnly professing to you that I will say nothing which comes not from my heart in plain simplicity and that I will with exceeding gladness and a thousand thanks come over to your way if I can finde by any thing that you shall make known to me that it is the mind of God that I should so do And therefore I am desirous that if what I write to you shall seem unsound you would not only afford me your own advice for the correction of it but also the advice of the most learned of your mind to whom you shall your self think meet to communicate it But on these conditions 1. That it be a person of a tender conscience that dare speak nothing but what he verily believes 2. That he will argue closly and not fly abroad or dilate Rhetorically And for any divulging of it to your danger or hurt you need not fear it For these two grounds of my following answers I shall here promise 1. That I am so far from persecuting bloody desires against those of your way that their own bloody principles and practices where they have power in Italy Spain c. hath done much to confirm me that the cause is not of God that must be so upheld and carried on 2. And I am so far from cruel uncharitable censures of any that unfeignedly love the Lord Jesus and his truth that it is the greatest motive to me of all other to dislike your Profession because it is so notoriously against Christian charity restraining the Catholike Church to your selves and outing and condemning the far greatest part of Christians in the world and that because they believe not in the Pope though they believe in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and all that the Primitive Church believed I am so Catholike that according to my present judgement I cannot
the Christians in the world But when the Emperours became Christians their great favour and large endowments of the Church and the greatness and advantage of the Imperial City did give opportunity to the Bishop of Rome as having both riches and the Emperours and Commanders ears to do so many and great favours for most other Churches in preserving and vindicating them that it was very easie for the Bishop hereby to become the chief Patriarch which he was more beholden to the Emperour for then to any Title that he had from Christ or Peter And then the quarrel with Iohn of Constantinople occasioned the thoughts of an universal Headship which Gregory did disclaim and abominate but Boniface after him by the grant of a murdering trayterous Emperour did obtain But so as the See swelled before into a preparatory magnitude And if we could not tell you the time within two hundred years and more it were no great matter as long as we can prove that it was not so before For who knows not that even some Kings in Europe have come from being limited Monarchs to be absolute and that by such degrees that none can tell the certain time Nay I may give you a stranger instance The Parliaments of England have part in the legislative power And yet I do not think that any Lawyer in England is able to prove the just time yea or the age or within many ages when they first obtained it which yet in so narrow a spot of ground may be easilier done then the time of the Popes usurpation over all the world For it could not be all at once for one Country yeilded to his late claim in one age and another in another age and many a bloody battle was fought before he could bring the Germane Emperours and Christian Princes to submit to him fully 3. But let me tell you one thing more Though as to an arrogant claim the Pope is Head and Governour of all the Catholike Church and Rome their Mistris as the Pope makes Patriarchs of Antioch Alexandria and Hierusalem that never come near the place or people yet as to any possession or acknowledgement on the Churches part he was never universal Head nor Rome the Mistris to this day For the greater half of the Christians did never subject themselves to him at all nor come under his power So that the Pope even now in his greatest height is only the head of the universal Church by his own claim and naming himself so without any Title given by God or acknowledged by men and without having ever been possessed of what he claims The King of France doth scarce believe that the King of England was King of France for all that he put it into his title nor do the Swedes take the Pole for their King because he so calls himself I am sure if the Turkish Emperour call himself the Emperour of the world that doth not prove that he is so Rainerius the Popes Inquisitor in catal post lib. cont Waldens saith plainly That the Churches that were planted by the Apostles themselves such as the Abassines 〈◊〉 are not subject to the Pope Once he 〈◊〉 the Government of no Church in the world but Rome it self After that he grew to have the government of the Patriarchate of the West since that he hath got some more and claimed all but never got neer half the Churches into his hands to this day Do I need then to say any more to disprove his universal Headship and that Rome is not the Catholike Ruling Church But having gone thus far in opening my thoughts to you I shall forbear the adjoyning the proof of my Assertions till I hear again from you If I understand it The Question between you and me to be debated must be this Whether the Roman Church was in the Apostles dayes the Mistris or Ruling Church which all other Churches were bound to obey and from it were to be called the Roman Catholike Church This I deny and you must maintain or else you must be no Papist The motion that I make is that by the next you will send me your Arguments to prove it for it belongs to you to prove it if you affirm it To which I will return you if they change not my judgement both my Answers and my Arguments for the Negative And if you do indeed make good but this one Assertion I do 〈◊〉 promise you that I will joyfully and resolvedly turn Papist and if you cannot make it good I may expect that you should no longer adhere to Rome as the Ruling or Catholike Church and the Pillar and Ground of Truth though charity should allow it to be a Catholike Church that is a member of the Catholike Church which is indeed the Pillar and Ground of Truth wherein Rome may have a part as it is part of the Church But I would it were not a most dangerously diseased part I crave your reply with what speed you can and remain An unfeigned lover of Truth and the friends of Truth Rich. Baxter Feb. 12. 1656 7. The two following Letters with the Narrative are annexed only to shew the effect of the former Sir THough the business in agitation betwixt your self and me be the one thing necessary and so to be preferred to all obligations and businesses of what concernment soever yet a resolution formerly taken up hath diverted me somewhat from the present earnest prosecution thereof as it deserves Temporal credit though it should give way to things of eternal moment yet it often sways the minds even of good men to neglect very important opportunities which though I cannot excuse my self of yet I desire it may be candidly interpreted and that this may be accepted as a pledge to an answer of what you have inserted And I desire your next may be directed to me to London to one Mr. T. S. who is a kinsman of mine and no small admirer of your self My thanks in the interim I return for the pains you have taken which I hope through the mercy of God will not prove successeless for the future one way or other the truth is I have not divulged my self or intentions as yet to any of my own way which I know will be very troublesome and I know I shall be beset with enemies from the ignorant that way affected as I doubt not of help from the learned Yet as I told you in my former without any carnal interest respecting or outward troubles regarding or inbred enemies combating I resolve by the grace and assistance of God to be guided by truth impartially where I shall find it lye clearest and shalt make it my work to implore the throne of mercy that my understanding may be so enlightned as to discern truth from heresie I desire Sir if it may be no prejudice to your more earnest occasions that I may have two or three lines from you by way of advice to meet me at London at the place
them successively in all ages till Christ as a different Congregation of Christians from that which holds the Popes Supremacy which was my proposition For in the year 1500. those who became the first Protestants were not a Congregation different from those who held that supremacy nor in the year 500. were the Greeks a visible Congregation different from it nor in the year 300. were the Nestorians nor in the year 200. the Eutychians a different Congregation from those who held the said Supremacy But in those respective years those who first begun those Heresies were involved within that Congregation which held it as a part of it and assenting therein with it who after in their several ages and beginnings fell off from it as dead branches from the tree that still remaining what it ever was and only continuing in a perpetuall visibility of succession Though therefore you profess never to have seen convincing proof of this in the first 400 years labour to infringe it in the next ages yet I will make an essay to give you a taste of those innumerable proofs of this visible Consent in the Bishop of Rome's Supremacy not of Order only but of Power Authority Iurisdiction over all other Bishops in the ensuing instances which happened within the first 400 or 500 or 600 years Iohn Bishop of Antioch makes an Appeal to Pope Simplicius And Flavianus Bishop of Constantinople being deposed in the false Councill of Ephesus immediately appeals to the Pope as to his judge Theodoret was by Pope Leo restored and that by an appeal unto a just judgement Saint Cyprian desirâ—â— Pope Stephen to depose Marcian Bishop of Arles that another might be substituted in his place And to evince the supream Authority of the Bishops of Rome it is determined in the Council of Sardis That no Bishop deposed by other neighbouring Bishops pretending to be heard again was to have any successour appointed until the case were defined by the Pope Eustathius Bishop of Sebast in Armenia was restored by Pope Liberius his Letters read and received in the Council of Tyana and Saint Chrysostome expresly desires Pope Innocent not to punish his Adversaries if they do repent Which evinces that Saint Chrysostome thought that the Pope had power to punish them And the like is written to the Pope by the Council of Ephesus in the case of Iohn Bishop of Antioch The Bishops of the Greek or Eastern Church who sided with Arius before they declared themselves to be Arians sent their Legates to Iulius Bishop of Rome to have their cause heard before him against Saint Athanasius the same did Saint Athanasius to defend himself against them which Arian Bishops having understood from Iulius that their Accusations against Saint Athanasius upon due examination of both parties were found groundless and false required rather fraudulently then seriously to have a fuller Tryal before a General Council at Rome which to take away all shew of excuse from them Pope Iulius assembled Saint Athanasius was summoned by the Pope to appear before him and the Councill in Judgement which he presently did and many other Eastern Bishops unjustly accused by the Arians aforesaid had recourse to Rome with him and expected there a year and a half All which time his Accusers though also summoned appeared not fearing they should be condemned by the Pope and his Councill Yet they pretended not as Protestants have done in these last ages of the Kings of England That Constantius the Arian Emperour of the East was Head or chief Governour over their Church in all Causes Ecclesiasticalâ— and consequently that the Pope had nothing to do with them but only pretended certain frivolous excuses to delay their appearance from one time to another Where it is worth the noting that Iulius reprehending the said Arian Bishops before they published their Heresie and so taking them to be Catholikes for condemning Saint Athanasius in an Eastern Councill gathered by them before they had acquainted the Bishop of Rome with so important a cause useth these words An ignari â—stis hanc consuetudinâ—m esse ut primum nobis scribatur ut â—inc quod justum est à â—finiri possit c. Are you ignorant saith he that this is the custome to write to us first That hence that which is just may be defined c. where most cleerly it appears that it belonged particularly to the Bishop of Rome to pass a definitive sentence even against the Bishops of the Eastern or Greek Church which yet is more confirmed by the proceedings of Pope Innocent the first about 12. hundred years since in the Case of Saint Chrysostome Where first Saint Chrysostome appears to Innocentius from the Councill assembled at Constantinople wherein he was condemned Secondly Innocentius annulls this condemnation and declares him innocent Thridly he Excommunicates Atticus Bishop of Constantinople and Theophilus Bishop of Alexandria for persecuting Saint Chrysostome Fourthly after Saint Chrysostome was dead in Banishment Pope Innocentius Excommunicates Arcadius the Emperour of the East and Eudoxia his wife Fifthly the Emperour and Empress humble themselves crave pardon of him and were obsolved by him The same is evident in those matters which passed about the year 450. where Theodosius the Emperour of the East having too much favoured the Eutychian Hereticks by the instigation of Chrysaphius the Eunuch and Pulcheria his Empress and so intermedled too far in Ecclesiasticall causes yet he ever bore that respect to the See of Rome which doubtless in those circumstances he would not have done had he not believed it an Obligation that he would not permit the Eutychian Council at Ephesus to be assembled without the knowledge and Authority of the Roman Bishop Leo the first and so wrote to him to have his presence in it who sent his Legats unto them And though both Leo's letters were dissembled and his Legats affronted and himself excommunicated by wicked Dioscorus Patriarch of Alexandria and president of that Coventicle who also was the chief upholder of the Eutychians yet Theodosius repented before his death banished his wife Pulcheria and Chrysaphius the Eunuch the chief favourers of the Eutychians and reconciled himself to the Chruch with great evidences of Sorrow and Pennance Presently after Anno. 451. follows the Fourth General Council of Chalcedon concerning which these particulars occur to our present purpose First Martianus the Eastern Emperour wrote to Pope Leo That by the Popes Authority a General Council might be gathered in what City of the Eastern Church he should please to chuse Secondly both Anatolius Patriarch of Constantinople and the rest of the Eastern Bishops sent to the legats of Pope Leo by his order the profession of their Faith Thirdly the Popes Legats sate in the first place of the Council before all the Patriarchs Fourthly they prohibited by his order given them That Dioscorus Patriarch of Alexandria and chief upholder of