they make use of the Visibility of the Church to prove its Infallibility The True Church of Jesus Christ says one ought always to be Visible always plainly to be discerned whence it follows that she cannot err for if it were possible for her to do so she could be no longer acknowledged as a True Church and there would be no more means proposed to all men for their Salvation None can be saved out of the Communion of the True Church since it is impossible for any to be saved without Faith and that according to the Apostle none can have Faith without that Preaching which ought to be made by the Ministers of the Church The True Church ought then to be always Visible to the end that all men should set themselves under its Ministry to obtain Salvation or that at least they should be inexcusable if they did not so place themselves and by Consequence it is necessary that she should be Infallible To this Reason which alone makes a long Controversie and about which they make very long Chapters they add some passages of Scripture from whence they conclude that the Church is always Visible and some others that contain in their Opinion not only the promises of a perpetual Visibility but of a Visibility shining with such a brightness and such splendour that the True Church may be known to Strangers and Infidels to be so To Answer this Argument of theirs in the first place I say That the True Church may be so far from being always discernable by all men as they pretend it to be as that one cannot say so much as that all men have always been able to know that there has been a Society of Christians in the World for not to alledge that the Christian Church in its Original then when the Apostles were as yet in Jerusalem or thereabouts was very little known to the rest of the world not to say that the knowledge of that new Society did not so soon spread it self over the Roman Empire nor in the bordering Countries that the most of the people were ignorant for some time of what it was to be Christians it cannot be denyed that many Ages had slipt away before that the most considerable part of the Earth as all America could have any knowledge that there were any Christians in the World How then can any one say the True Church is always Visible and always discernable to all men Is it because those Americans before these last Ages were not men or is it because they were not bound to work out their own Salvation They ought then in good earnest to acknowledge that God is most free in the dispensing of the means of Salvation which he proposes to whom he will and refuses to whom he will Till the external Communion with the True Church shall be the only means of and absolutely necessary to Salvation none can conclude that she ought to be perpetually visible and discernable by all men For it frequently happens that God for most just reasons but which we ought not to search out with too great Curiosity may withdraw from men the external means of their Salvation and yet notwithstanding he does not fail to convince by other ways which render them inexcusable worthy of Condemnation Men are bound to place themselves in the true Church then when it is discernable to them to be so but when it is not so as it is not at this day to the Southern Nations we ought not to believe that God will damn them for not having put themselves into it they have other crimes enough to be punished for without making God to violate his Justice in that respect See here what I say for the defending of Gods Justice and to let you see the rashness of those Arguments which suppose that God is bound to make those Gentlemen Infallible to the end that he may condemn men with some reason But further I do not deny that one cannot in some sence say that God has always preserved some True Church Visible upon Earth but that one ought not to play with those ambiguous Terms it is necessary to make a distinction and to shew clearly in what sence it may and in what sence it may not be found to be True For beside that that I have said in the first place That the True Church is not Visible nor to be generally known by all we ought not to imagine that the True Church must be always Visible in one certain place that is to say that one only People one Society one body which has been for time a True Church may not in the end lose that quality after whatsoever manner that comes to pass whether it be by an entire forsaking of Christianity or whether it be by an extreme and general Corruption of that Religion God has sometimees taken away his Candlestick from the midst of a people according to that threatning which he made to the Church of Ephesus I will come quickly unto thee and take away thy Candlestick out of its place except thou repent The greatest part of the African Churches which heretofore were so flourishing are now no longer so and there is not any place upon the Earth neither Paris nor Constantinople nor Jerusalem nor Antioch nor Rome nor Avignon neither the Latin Church nor the Greek nor the Armenian nor the Aethiopian neither the Chair of Saint Peter nor that of Saint James nor that of Saint John nor that of Saint Denis that can promise it self that it shall never perish There are no such promises in the Scripture and it is a speech very criminal in the Mouth of any Church whatsoever it be if she says I sit a Queen and am no widow and shall see no sorrow When therefore they shall say that God keeps up always a True Church in the World let them remember that it is in a way Independant on any Places and Sees or if that restriction will not please them let them produce those clear and solid and peculiar priviledges to us which may set the Latin Church above all its Fellows For as to that that some set before us that saying of Jesus Christ to S. Peter I have prayed for thee that thy Faith fail not it is clear from a plain view of that passage that it only regards the person of Saint Peter with relation to that violent Temptation wherewith he was hurried in the House of the High Priest and under which there wanted but a little of his Faith having wholly perished and that it does not in the least concern his pretended Successours whereof there is not so much as one word in all the Scripture I say the same to that Commandment that Jesus Christ gave him to Feed his sheep which respects only his re-establishment in the Office of an Apostle after his fall nor is there any promise adjoyned for his Successors nor for their See whereof there is not a
word mentioned either there or any where else And as to that passage Thou art Peter and upon this Rock will I build my Church c. Whether they understand it of that Confession which Saint Peter had made or whether they refer it to his person I say that no one can understand it of his Successors since there is not any mention made of them either directly or indirectly For when the See of Rome was not when it had never yet been The Church did not fail of being built upon that Confession of Saint Peter comprehended Jesus Christ upon whom the Church is every way built but also because that Confession of Saint Peter or Saint Peter Confessing was as one of the Chief Stones in that mystical Building which is not left alone for Jesus Christ who is not only the Foundation but the Soveraign Architect has added many others in all Ages and will always joyn others to them till the Building be intirely finished that is to say till God fulfilled the Decree of his Election But to go on with our Discourse of the Visibility of the True Church I affirm in the third place that we ought to know very well what a True Church Visible is For we ought not to imagine that all those persons who compose that Visible Society should be that True Church None but those True Believers I would say those who joyn to their external Profession of Christianty a true and sincere Piety are really the Church of Jesus Christ and as for the others that is to say the worldly Prophane and Hypocritical they are but the Church in appearance only and not indeed For having no inward Calling which consists in Faith and Love they do not belong to the Mystical Body of our Saviour nor are they of his Communion Notwithstanding they do not fail to be mixt with the Faithful by reason of that external profession as if they really were in the same Religious Society with them What then is the Visibility of the True Church as to us It is not that we can distinctly and with any certainty affirm Behold these be the Truly faithful of Jesus Christ None but but God alone can know them after that distinct manner and and without a possibility of being deceived But this we may say of that Visible Society that Vnder that Ministry and in that Communion God preserves and raises the truly Faithful Whence we may from this Judgment with Solidity and Truth and I may say also without a possibility of being deceived that there is a True Visible Church In that sence I declare that there has always been some way or other a True Church Visible upon Earth not but that God can make it wholly disappear to the Eyes of men whensoever it shall please him to do so without doing men any wrong or any breach of his promises since he has without doubt extraordinary ways to beget Faith in the hearts of his Children and to keep them on in that course and to lead them in the end unto Salvation without making use either of the publick Assemblies or Ministry but only because we ought not to believe that there ever hapned since the first rise of Christianity an Eclipse so full and intire that one could not some way say There is a Society in which God does keep the truly Faithful I say after some way For as that Judgment depends on two things the one to be able to know a Society and a Ministry and the other to know that under that Ministry and in that Society a Man may work out his own Salvation in respect of the first it is necessary to distinguish between two seasons the one of Liberty and Prosperity where the Church has its Assemblies and exercises its Ministry openly in the face of all the World For then she is much more visible then she would be otherwise that is to say it is far more easy to be known what Society and what Ministry that is Such was the State of the Church under Constantine and other Christian Emperours and it is in such times as those that the promises of Its outward splendour if there are any such in Scripture are accomplished The other season is that of its Afflictions and Persecution such was that of the first Century of the Church under the Pagan Emperours and the Enemies of Christianity For none can deny that then the Church was less discernable by its Assemblies not only because they were more private and less exposed to the publick view but also yet further because the name of Christian had been defamed by a thousand calumnies and charged with a thousand false imputations which made the knowledge of the Church to be far more difficult And it will be to no purpose to say That then the Church was visible and illustrious by the blood of its Martyrs For the blood of its Martyrs did not in the least hinder the accusing of the Christians of most odious crimes that which hindred its being liable to be easily known Those Accusations were as a Cloud before the eyes of the Common people which was necessarily to be discipated before they could come to know what Christianity was So that the True Church is more or less Visible according to the difference of its Seasons As to the second thing which is to know that one may be saved in that Society and under that Ministry it is necessary that we distinguish of the two States or Conditions wherein that Society may be found The one is a more pure State then when the word of God is preached without mixtures of the Doctrines of men when the publick Worship is perform'd without superstitions and the Sacraments plainly administred according to their Primitive Institution and when generally Religion is established taught and observed after the same manner wherein Jesus Christ and his Apostles left it to the World In that Condition it is certain that the True Church in very visible and very discernable for it is easy to behold all the Characters of its Truth which only consist in its Conformity to that lively primitive and natural Image of Christianity which God has left us in his Holy Scriptures But it is not less certain that a Church may fall into a quite contrary Condition that is to say into a State of Corruption then when it adds to divine Truths strange and adulterate Doctrines when it mingles superstitions with the true Worship of God and when in stead of a just Government it exercises an insolent and absolute Dominion over Mens Consciences in one word then when all things appear so confused and in that disorder that one can scarce any more see any traces of that beautiful and glorious Image of Christianity which I have before spoke of to shine forth In that Condition I affirm that True Church is very hard to be known for howsoever it were most Visible in quality of a Church because its Assemblies might be
Assemblies most lawful For as to that which is said in the Scripture I will smite the Shepheard and the Sheep shall be scattered abroad it would be manifestly to abuse that passage if they would conclude from it an absolute necessity of the Pastors for the subsistence of that Society For that is a Prophecy which notes not that which the Faithful ought to do when they have no Pastors but that which should befal the Disciples of Jesus Christ in the Time of his Passion when the fury of the Jews and the sad Condition wherein they should behold their Divine Master should force them to be scattered which has nothing common to the Question we are now Treating of In the Third place I say that to understand well the true use and the Necessity of the Actions of the Ministry the Church must be considered in two Seasons in her first formation and in her subsistence For in her first formation it is certain that the Actions of the Ministry were necessary for the calling of men to the light of the Gospel whereof as yet they had no knowledge and by Consequence they were necessary to the Establishment of the Christian Communion or Society amongst them which could not be without that knowledge To this end Jesus Christ employed his Apostles and Evangelists Go says he and Teach all Nations baptizing them in the name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Ghost and it is that to which Saint Paul has a chief regard when he says That Christ has given some Apostles and some Prophets and some Exangelists and some Pastors and Teachers for the gathering together of the Saints for the work of the Ministry for the edifying of the Body of Christ Those glorious Heralds by the efficacy of their word accompanied with the power of Jesus Christ called together the Church if we must so say as the Holy Assembly of God they Established the Christian Religion in the World and so united men among themselves in an External Society by the profession of one and the same Faith of one and the same Hope and Charity which inspired them so that the Acts of their Ministry were absolutely necessary for that first Establishment because their Preaching was the only means that God would make use of to draw men from the Pagan Idolatry or the Jewish Obstinacy and to give them that Faith without which they could never have had a Christian Society In this respect there is Reason to urge the force of the word Church which signifies not a rash and tumultuary Assembly made by chance or Sedition but an Assembly lawfully called for it was God himself who called it by the voice of his Apostle according to the Prophecy of David The mighty Lord the Eternal God hath spoken and called to all the Earth from the rising up of the Son to the going down of the same He has called the Heavens from on high and the Earth to Judge his People saying Gather ye my Saints together In this first Establishment the Apostles and Evangelists did three things On one hand they spread abroad the Faith every where and by this means bound men in an External Communion or Society on the other hand they set together the Christian Truths which are the Objects of Faith in the Cannon of the Scriptures and in fine they established Ordinary Pastors for the upholding and Government of the Church By the first of those things in Establishing the Faith in mens hearts they assembled called them together and put them into a Society by the second they laid as I may so speak the Fountain or the External and perpetual Magazine of the Evangelical Doctrine By the Third they provided for the Ordinary Dispensation of that Fountain setling of Ministers to distribute it by their Preaching the Sacraments and the Exercise of Discipline Of these three things there is none but the first only to which we ought to refer the Convocation of the Church and Establishment of the Christian Society But we must say that all Three serve for its preservation and increase for they are so many ways and means which the Apostles left for the preservation of the Faith and strengthning of it in those who had before received it and to propagate it to their Children and in those who had not as yet received it in which the preservation of a Society consists The first contributes much for as Lights or Torches lighted all together preserve and mutually strengthen their fire and are capable of lighting others So many faithful Christians united together confirm one another in the Faith and Piety and are fit to Communicate that Faith and Piety to those who have not yet received it The Second does not contribute less for the Faithful preserve and increase their light their Faith Piety Sanctity by the immediate Reading of the Holy Scriptures Infidels themselves may be converted this way and those that go astray be brought back to the purity of the Gospel The Third is also of exceeding great Use for the Pastors by their Preaching their Direction and their Writings by their Examples by the Sacraments they Administer and in a word by all the Actions of their Ministry confirm the Faith where it is and propagate it where it is not The Divine Wisdom has so prepared its divers means for the preservation of that Society and the Propagation of his Church That if the Actions of the Ministry do not produce that effect for which they are appointed the other means shall and supply that defect In Effect when the publick Preaching and presence of the Pastors fail the Reading of the Scripture private Exhortation of the simple Christians the writings of their Pastors either dead or absent may come to succour and make the Faith and Charity and Piety subsist and by consequence the External Society of the Church and its Assemblies How then are the Actions of the Ministry necessary They are so first By Necessity of Precept as they speak I mean as it is a means that Jesus Christ has ordained the Use whereof we cannot neglect without sin Those who contemn it resist the Order that God himself has established and make themselves unworthy of his Grace and to this those passages in the Scripture refer which recommend the Pastors to the Faithful He that heareth you heareth me and he that rejecteth you rejecteth me Obey them that have the Rule over you and submit your selves for they watch for your Souls 2. The Actions of the Ministry are necessary to the Churches well being though not absolutely necessary to its being It is not absolutely impossible for a Church to subsist without having actually any Pastors not only because sometimes Faith and Piety may subsist without their heavenly food which is the Word and Sacraments as a Body may subsist sometimes without its nourishments but also because one part of that food may come to us otherwise then from the mouth of the
submission and hindring them from entring upon any Examination of the Matters of Religion But blessed be God that notwithstanding all the endeavours they have hither to made on a subject that has exhausted all the subtilties of the Schools the Justice of our Cause which is the same with that of our Fathers has not receiv'd the least prejudice and we can even assure our selves that there has been nothing said the weakness and impertinency of which may not easily be display'd to the bare light of common sence For either those things which our Fathers rejected and which we reject with them are in deed Errors Superstitions and Inventions of men as we believe them to be or they are not If they are not we will be the first that shall Condemn the Reformation and when they shall let us see that on the contrary they are the Truths and right worship that belong to the Christian Religion we shall be very ready to receive them But if in deed they are Errors and Corruptions as we are perswaded they are with what Reason can any man demand by what right we rejected them since it is all one as to demand what right we have to be good men and to take care of our own Salvation We may see then from thence that all those Evasions are nothing else but vain wranglings and that we ought always to examine those Tenets that are Controverted for the Justice or Injustice of the Reformation intirely depends on their Truth or Falshood If we have right at the Foundation they ought not to raise a contention about the Form for to be willing to believe in God according to the purity of his word and to be ready to serve him sincerely are the things to which we are all obliged and which cannot be condemned in whomsoever they are found as on the contrary side to harden one's self in Errors to practise a false Worship and to expose one's self to the danger of Damnation under pretence of observing some Formalities is such a guidance of one's course as can never be Justified It will here be to no purpose that they say that in this Controversy concerning the Justice of the Reformation they do not suppose that we have any reason in the Foundation of it but that on the contrary they have a mind to let us see that we have no right at all in the Foundation since we have none at all in the Form and that they would only say that those things which we call Errors and a false Worship are not so indeed as we imagine them to be since they are the Institutions of a Church that can't Err and to whose Authority we ought absolutely to submit our selves This is in my judgment the course that not long since an Author has took in a Book Intitled Just Prejudices against the Calvinists For he pretends to conclude that our Religion is faulty in the very Foundation because there are Errors in the manner of our Reformation and that those things which we reject as Errors are the Truths that we ought to believe because we ought to acquiesce in the Authority of the Church of Rome But that can never hinder us from coming to a discussion of the Foundation it self separated from all Forms and from all prejudices for when these Gentlemen have reasoned against us after this manner You are faulty in the very Foundation because you have not had right in the Form we oppose to that this other Reasoning whose consequence is not less Valid as to the subject about which it is concerned We have not done wrong in the manner because we have right in the Foundation And when they tell us That which you call our Errors Transubstantiation Adoration of the Host Purgatory c. they are not Errors since we cannot Err we Answer them You can Err because the Transubstantiation the Adoration of the Host the Pargatory c. that you teach are Errors And when they reply You ought to believe that which we teach you because you ought to acquiesce and rest in our Authority we rejoyn again We ought not to acquiesce in your Authority because you teach us those things which we ought not to believe In these two ways of Reasoning it is certain that ours is the more equal the more just and more natural For it is by far the more just and natural that the Judgment of those Formalities should depend on the highest Interest that can be in the World which is that of the glory of God and ourown Salvation then on the contrary to make the glory of God and our own Salvation to depend upon some Formalities It is far more reasonable to judge of the Infallibility that the Church of Rome pretends to by the things that she teaches then to judge of the chings that she Teaches by a pretence of her Infallibility But although these two ways were equally Natural and equally Reasonable they can not deny that that which at first drew nearer to the Examen of the Foundation were not more sure and that all good men who ought to neglect nothing conducing to their Salvation were not bound to enter into it in Order to the avoiding of Errors They Propose on one side for a Principle the Authority of the Church of Rome against which there are a thousand things to be said on the other side we Propose the Authority of God himself speaking in those Scriptures which all Christians receive and which the very Enemies of Christianity respect who will dare to deny that in this Opposition it were not more sure to side with that part which rules all by the Authority of God You may deceive your selves say they in taking that for the word of God which is not so And are not you answer we more liable to deceive your selves in taking that for the Church of God which is not so and in taking those for Infallible who are no ways so There is far greater Reason to hope that God will then assist you with the illumination of his Spirit when with humility you search out the sence of the Scriptures which you are so often commanded to do then when you search them through humane prejudices to submit your Consciences to a certain Orde of Men whom God has never told you that they ought to be the Masters of your Faith After all if they will make use of the Authority of the Church of Rome and the pretended faults of our Reformation as an Argument sufficient to let us see that those things which we call Errors are not really so they can demand nothing more of us then to set down this proof in its order with the rest and maturely to consider it in its turn before we determine our selves But to pretend that that ought to hinder us from considering also the proofs on the contrary side by which we may see that those things that we call Errors are really so this were an injust
pretence and bordering on the greatest rashness For the Authority of the Church of Rome and the pretended faults of the Reformation whatsoever they be are not Principles so demonstrative and so evident among Christians that after them they ought to hear nothing more We ought then to yield to this proof its place in our discussion but without any prejudice as to those that may be drawn for or against the very Tenets that are contested which ought to be first examined as the more natural and most decisive That being so I hold that that which they have set before us will be to no purpose at all For if from the Examination that we shall make of those matters in themselves it results that those things are not Errors which we have rejected as such but Christian Truths we have no further need either of the Authority of the Church of Rome or of the prejudices against the Reformation The Reformation is sufficiently overthrown And if on the contrary it results that those are Errors all the Authority of the Church of Rome and all the prejudices in the World shall not be able to perswade men of good understandings that they are Truths and by consequence that the Reformation is not just for it is always just to extirpate Errors It seems to me to appear already that that debate which they have raised against us about the Justice of our Reformation and our separation from the Church of Rome is rather a field wherein they would busy themselves in subtilties and declamations to amuse the People then a just Controversy whence one might justly expect any profit Yet as those subtilties and declamations how vain and false soever they are fail not of finding applause in the World and always making some impressions on the minds of men we acknowledge the too great effect that they have produced which is that the greatest part of those of the Church of Rome look upon us as Schismaticks and think that we have disturbed the peace of the Family of God and violated the right of that Religious Society which had united us with them The Idea which they form of our Religion appears not half so odious to them After what manner they have disguised us the most equitable among them discern and fail not sometimes freely to confess the same that we have all Doctrines that are necessary to mens Salvation that our Worship as plain as it is has nothing which does not tend to nourish in their hearts a true Piety and a solid Vertue and that as to the Form of our Government it has nothing so remote either from prudence or from equity or from the Charity that Jesus Christ has recommended to us But it is a far different Idea which they Form within themselves of our Separation for it becomes insupportable to them when they compare it with the Specious name of a Church that ought to command the Veneration of all Holy men So that this is most ordinarily the matter of their reproaches which they the more exaggerate as a thing about which they imagine we have not the least shew wherewith to defend our selves I dare affirm that as to the far greater part that is the chiefest and almost the only matter that makes them appear so much Exasperated against us It is necessary then that we justify our selves and that we clear to their minds that honour which we have not only to live among them in the same civil Society but also to depend on their lawful Authority in respect of those humane affairs wherein we are engaged Our own Innocence commands it of us not to say that the inheritance which we have received from our Fathers is of a value sufficiently great to merit a defence after what manner soever they attack it We ought then to indeavour to let them see that that which they are made to believe concerning us is nothing but a false imputation that we have an infinitly greater respect for the Church then any of those who oppose themselves to hinder its Reformation that their Maxims tend to the Ruin of the Church where ours tend only to preserve it that our Separation from Rome is nothing else but an effect of that Love and Jealousy that we have for the Church and that it will be most unjust if they shall hate us upon an account that ought on the contrary to draw from them all their esteem and Love toward us It is then about this that we intreat that they would calmly hear us and judge us without passion and without interest in the fear of that God whom we all acknowledge for our Soveraign Judge Those who always act against us with a pride that hurries them away and who have resolved to condemn us and to the uttermost of their power to destroy us what ever we say will not possibly take our request to be just and in that Case we shall content our selves as to them with the Testimony of our Consciences which perswades us not only that God will not condemn us for having been Reformed but also that he certainly will if we do not in that follow the sence of our hearts But there are yet enough persons in the Church of Rome of too much equity to follow the Examples of such a sort of People these equitable persons are those of whom we demand that hearing and that same equity and moderation of which they make such profession and which the importance of the subject treated on challenges them to yield us We shall tell them nothing which shall not be founded either on matters of fact known to all or upon the inviolable principles of Religion or upon the light of Common sence To set down this matter in some order I propose to my self to make evident these four Propositions 1. That our Fathers had both right and obligation to examine the State of Religion and the Latin Church such as it was in their days 2. That the Reformation which they made was just and lawful 3. That in Reforming themselves they had right and were bound to separate themselves from the Church of Rome 4. That in Reforming and Separating themselves they had right and obligation to maintain among themselves a Christian Society by publick Assemblies and the exercise of the Ministry I do not pretend that in Treating of these four Propositions I have exhausted all my subject but yet I hope that there will be few Questions that have some Relation to it which I do not sufficiently touch upon and few Objections which I do not answer I will particularly answer to all those that are contained in that Book of Prejudices as the order of the matters that I Treat of shall present them to me none of which will begin to oppose themselves till the seventh Chapter because that Author having passed by in silence a great many things that belong to the Foundation of this Controversy it will be necessary to touch upon
of such a Miracle or what promise can we find of it in the Scripture Not to insist here that it very ill agrees with the Doctrine of those among them who make the will of man so much Lord of all his Actions that whatsoever Grace God shall manifest towards it it remains always indifferent and free to follow that Grace or to reject it It is then very certain that hitherto our Fathers could not be very much edified in the point of the Sacraments in general but they were yet far less in the matter of the Sacrament of the Eucharist in particular For if we look only on one side they were plung'd into that perplexity about the intention where they taught one another that the Transubstantiation of the Bread into the Body of Jesus Christ was the effect of that Consecration and that they were bound to Worship the Host after the words of Consecration as being Jesus Christ himself What assurance could they have of so important a change Since it also depended upon so impenetrable a secret as that of the intention of the Priest which could only be known by God alone what assurance could they have that they were not deceived What ground had they to give a supream Worship to an Object of which none could have any certainty of Faith what likelihood they should believe it to be that which it was pretended to be and that it ought to be reckoned an adorable Object What likelihood that God would have given to his Church so doubtful an object to be the object of perpetual adoration Which on one side is so visible and so determinate that one may always say Behold it but of which notwithstanding no one can be assur'd that it is that indeed Is it any ways agreeable to his goodness and his wisdom to leave the Church to be perpetually held in suspence in that inexplicable doubt and exposed to the danger of taking the Bread for the true Son of God and the Wine for his real Blood and reduc'd to the necessity of putting that adoration daily to a hazard upon the credit of one man CHAP. IV. That such a Corruption of the Latin Church as our Fathers had conceived was no ways an impossible thing THese things were well nigh the chief Objects that stroke the minds of our Fathers and cain'd them to a more strict examination of the matters of that Religion Whether those motives were weak or strong just or unjust I leave to the judgment of every rational man to determine But some may say what did your Fathers never call to mind that so ordinary Maxim and so generally receiv'd in their days That the Church could not err at least in matters relating to Faith and the general Rules of manners and if they had so call'd it to mind could they not by that very thing easily have repell'd all those importunate prejudices of corruption which you have set before us It cannot be doubted but our Fathers did often think of it but it cannot likewise be imagined that they would not have endeavoured to search a little more narrowly upon what that Maxim was founded what construction they ought to make of it if in a word that Corruption whereof they saw such great signs had been a thing absolutely impossible 1. I say then in the first place that one of the thoughts that most naturally fell into their minds upon this matter was this That the same thing which has happened almost in all human affairs might very well befall the Christian Religion in the space of about five hundred Years wherein it had been in the hands of the Romans Every one might observe it to be chang'd by the succeeding Age to be rendred so as it could not be known and to become quite another thing than it was at first according as they degenerated from their Original That inclination that men had to alter the first institutions of things to add to them or diminish from them to give to them new Forms and new Customs Reigned at least as much in our Western Parts as among other Nations It Reigned also so universally that there was nothing reserved from its Dominion either in their Languages or their Discipline or their Professions or in the Governments of the People or in their Laws or in the Distribution of Justice or in one word in any of those things that depend in any manner whatsoever on the management of men It had been then a kind of Miracle if Religion had been spared and its Truth its Worship and Customs regarded and kept with so great care that nothing should be altered in that either by additions or diminutions And we cannot say that Religion being so Heavenly and Divine a thing is also above all those accidents For it is most true that it is Divine in it self and consequently inviolable de jure and of right but there is none that sees it not in effect too often violated through the rashness of men and our Fathers were not ignorant that as perfectly holy as it was yet it was found to be as much or more exposed to the passions and disorders of the Soul of man in all other things 2. But besides that general Inclination which never fails to change things from their natural state our Fathers could not but know also that all men did very much lean towards superstitions and errours in the matters of Religion They saw the proofs of this in those Chimaera's wherewith the false Religions had filled the World Chimaera's that were yet so much the more strange as those people who believed and authorised them as the Greeks and Romans did appear as to every thing else to have minds exceedingly inlightened and refin'd which made our Fathers clearly see that blinde love that men always had for errours in the matters of Religion And without doubt that very thing carri'd them out to suspect that that pretention to Infallibility was null and vain and that there might very well be Corruptions in the State of the Church of those times for what likelihood was there that that ill inclination should have had no place among those of the Latin Church that it was wholly extinguish't beyond a possibility of returning or that the Enemy of our Salvation would not make use of it for our destruction or that having made use of it it should remain so long without any effect during the course of so many Ages 3. The example of the Church of Israel whereof the Bible teacheth us the History confirm'd our Fathers in those thoughts That was the very Church of God as well as that of the Christians That Church was purchased by the Blood of Jesus Christ as well as ours altho' that Blood had not yet been shed God not only kept his Chosen and his truly Faithful under that Ministration but he had not any other Church nor any other Ministry in all the World for the Salvation of his Children Whence it
Reason that Saint Paul had caution'd the Faithful to take heed that no one seduc'd them through Philosophy and vain deceitful reasonings after the Traditions of men after the rudiments of the Wisdom of the World and not after Jesus Christ 9. They will say without doubt that all these considerations how strong soever they appear do yet make no more then conjectures and likelihoods which ought to have been immediatly stifled by the only name of the Church which improves so profound a respect for it self in the Souls of all true Beleivers But that very thing serv'd but to increase the just suspitions of our Fathers They understood what respect they ow'd to the Church but they were not also ignorant how easie it was to be deceiv'd by so specious a Name That visible society of men who profess Christianity which we call the Church is not wholly composed of true Believers it takes into its Bosome a great number of false Christians of wicked Worldly and Hypocritical men who are mingled with the good as chaff amongst the Wheat or as the mud of the Stream is with the Water of the Fountain And as on the one side the false Christians are not all so after the same manner for some are full of light and knowledge others of ignorance some are prophane others superstitious one sort are full of contrivances and intrigues in the affairs of Religion others take little care of its interests some are ambitious others covetous others fierce and inflexible others full of impostures and deceits according as we see those different humours ordinarily reign among the men of the world so on the other side the true Beleivers who are in the same visible Society have not all of them the same Degree either of knowledge or sanctification that they have more or less of natural light more or less of supernatural grace more or less of zeal of courage or of vigour according to the measure of the Spirit that is communicated to them it is now almost scarce conceivable that that Medley should not corrupt Religion in a long Train of Ages and that it should not cause to enter in Maxims Doctrines Services and Customs far more conformable to the Spirit of the World then to that of Jesus Christ There needs but a little leven saith Saint Paul to corrupt the whole Mass From thence that two Parties whereof the one is good the other is evil are joyned together experience always instructs us that the ill does far more easily deprave the good then the good better the bad And we cannot say that God is bound to hinder that Corruption and that otherwise his Church would Perish from the Earth For besides that it no way belongs to us to order so boldly what God is bound to do or not to do for the execution of his designs it is certain that he has not hindred it as we have but just before seen in the Church of the Jews nor in the Eastern Christian Churches nor in the the whole Body of the Church in the time of the Arians He has other ways to preserve his Elect and his sincerely Faithful ones who only are to speak properly his Church he can preserve them in the midst of a corrupted Ministry and when that is become impossible he knows how to separate them from the wicked and to draw them away from their Communion But we will speak to that more largely at the end of this Treatise 10. To go on with our Remarks That which I have said supplies us with another which is not less considerable than the rest It is in consequence of that mixture of the good and the wicked in the same visible Church that it might fall out and it has very frequently hapened that the far greatest Number the external Splendour Force and Authority is found among the Party of the wicked and that they are cheifly those who fill up the highest places in the Church For as those highest places yeild them honour and the goods of the World in a very great measure so it is very natural that they should be more hunted after and obtain'd by the men of the World then by the truly Faithful who ordinarily are not so violently carried out to those things After that manner one may very often see the Government of the visible Church to fall into exceedingly wicked hands and then there needs but a capricious Humour but a Passion but an Interest but a Whimsey but some neglect or some other thing of the like nature which it is not hard to conceive to be in such Persons as we suppose to bring into the Church false Doctrines and false Worship to which those of the best minds shall no sooner oppose themselves but they shall be immediatly quell'd which often forces them to keep silence and to give way for a season till it shall please God to deliver them from that oppression 11. Could it not in the least happen that those errours and superstitions that were but little taken notice of at first sprung up in the Schools or among some other sort of men should be by little and little and insensibly spread over the Body of the Church by the means of ignorance and negligence of the Pastours And might not the same thing fall out according to the pleasure and interest that the Pastors might take to see them establish't that in the end being found to be rooted in mens minds and as I may so say incorporated into Religion they might be lookt upon as Traditions or as Customs that for the future ought to be observ'd as Laws No one can deny that a multitude of things had crept after that manner into the Latin Church as the keeping back the Cup which the Concil of Constance had taken up in express terms as a Custome that had been says it rationally introduc'd and which ought to be kept as a Law It was after the same manner that the Celibacy of Priests the Worshipping of Images the Distinction of Meats and many other things which how particular and private soever they were at first came after to be made publick and in the end to be changed into Articles of Religion 12. All these Reflexions might serve to let our Fathers understand that it was no ways impossible for the state of the Latin Church to be corrupted but besides that Reason those examples and that experience which convinc't them of it they yet farther saw the plain proofs of it in the Declarations of the Holy Scripture For after whatsoever manner they expounded that Mystery of Iniquity of which Saint Paul speaks to the Thessalonians which in his days had began to work and that Captivity of God's People whom God commanded to go out of Babylon lest in partaking of its sins it partook also of its plagues no one could avoid acknowledging from those two places but that a great Corruption must needs fall out in the visible Church The
Prejudices is Will they say to defend themselves that their is a very great difference between the Jewish Visible Church and the Christian that this has its Rights Priviledges and Promises which the other had not For she has a Soveraign Authority over the Faith of her Children a priviledge that she can never err and promises of a perpetual visibility But to come to that they ought first to renounce all those general proofs upon which they found that Absolute Obedience to the Latin Church They need say no more as the Author of the Prejudices has done that the darkness of our minds our personal Prejudices the uncertainty wherein we are of being deceived in our Judgments the being overwhelmed with a thousand cares and a thousand Temporal necessities which almost wholly take us up and which will not allow us to give more then a very little Time to the Examining the Truths of Religion the want of necessary helps the ignorance narrow and limited understandings of the greatest part of mankind constrain us to refer our selves to the Church All that would be to no purpose if they restrain it to a priviledge of the Christian Church For these very same general reasons had place in the time of the Jewish Church men saw not then more clearly then they do in these days they were not more assured in their Judgments they were not less cumbred with worldly affairs they were not less unprovided of necessary helps for the Examination of the Truths of Religion they were not then less ignorant and their minds less narrow then men are now in these days and yet notwithstanding all that did not make it their duty blindly to follow their Pastors or Ordinary Guides These are then nothing but shadows and frivolous pretences which having been of no force then cannot have any weight now We need not further say as the Author of Prejudices has done That it is certain that God can save men and even the most ignorant and simple That yet he does not offer them any other way to Salvation then that of the True Religion That it is therefore necessary that that should be not only possible but easy to be known that yet notwithstanding it is clear that there is no way more difficult more dangerous and less fitted to all capacities then that of examining all its Tenets One may equally apply all those propositions to the Times of the Old Testament as well as to those of the New God could save men there He made no other way to Salvation then that of the True Religion That ought then to have been easily known and that way of Examination was not less dangerous nor more fitted to all sorts of capacities then it is now Notwithstanding all that had not any force to hinder the Faithful from Examining it They cannot then in these days draw any consequence from what they so propose I affirm the same thing of all those other inconveniences which they invent to take away from every one that right of Examining the State of Religion by the Scripture and not wholly to believe their Pastors as that it would be to introduce a Principle of Schism and Division that every one might make himself a Judge of the Church that every one might make a Religion according to his Fancy that it is a great rashness for private Persons to imagine that they have more Understanding and more Wisdom than the whole Church and other such like things They may see that all those arguings are brought in vainly and to no purpose for if they were good and solid being so general as they are they would serve for all Times and all Places and would have their Force in favour of the Jewish Church as well as they would have them conclude in Favour of the Latin In the second place those Rights Priviledges and Promises which they would ascribe to the Christian Visible Church in exclusion of the Jewish are evidently null if they would make them depend precisely on Christianity For as I have before noted the Greek Church the Armenian the Nestorian and Aethiopian might pretend to them as justly as the Latin and yet the Latin applies them to her self in particular to the prejudice of all the others They ought then either to shew us what reason she has to appropriate those Rights Priviledges and general Promises and to make that that regards the Body of the Universal Church become particular to her or it is necessary they shew us that indeed they are not those Rights Priviledges and Promises that are common to all Christian Societies and that they are peculiar to the Latin Church But they know not how to do either the one or the other For neither Nature nor Grace have given any of those Priviledges or Rights to the Latins in exclusion from all other Christians They are neither more Lords of our Consciences nor more Infallible than others Christianity is Uniform throughout The Scripture also does not contain any one particular promise for them On the contrary Saint Paul says That in Jesus Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek nor Barbarian nor Scythian nor Bond nor Free but Christ is all and in all So that the Latin Church has no reason to draw that to her self which is a common Right nor to pretend any peculiar Priviledges But in the summ of all we have made it appear in the foregoing Chapters that those pretended Priviledges of Infallibility which they ascribe to the Christian Church Visible and those promises of perpetual Visibility in that Sence of Visibility wherein they understand it are Chimaeras which have not any Foundation either in Scripture or Reason And as to that right of Soveraign-Authority it cannot here be alledged but to very ill purpose For it is that which is yet in Dispute and whereof we have shewn the falsity from the example of the Jewish Church But they may draw from that example a consequence against the Latin one because that if that pretence would have been heretofore pernicious and destructive to Religion and the true Church as they may see it would have been it follows that it will be so yet in these days If then they cannot set before us any other difference between those two Terms and those two Churches which hinders my Conclusion the Argument will hold intire for it will not be enough to overthrow it meerly to say that the Christian Church has that Authority and that the Jewish had it not but they ought to give us a reason for it 3. But to proceed with our Reflexions If that Maxim whereof we treat were true that is to say if men were bound to give to their ordinary Pastors a blind obedience in the matters of Religion to see with their Eyes to tread in their Steps and to devest themselves of their own conduct to rest upon theirs the Jews who rejected Jesus Christ and his Doctrine during the time of his Preaching
things In fine that there was no way more dangerous more difficult and less fitted to all sorts of Capacities then that of a particular examination of its Tenets That the cutting off of that way led of it self to that of the Authority of the Church since every man is bound to know the truth of something and he that could not learn by himself must necessarily learn it of another They will then have no reason to doubt whether they shall take the Catholick Church for their Guide and borrow its Eyes to discern the Truths of the Faith and they will believe themselves a thousand times more assured in following that than if they were left to the weak ef-forts of their own Reason Tell me I pray whether that discourse would have been very proper for the Conversion of that Jew and whether he might not justly have answered That he was also uncertain whether he should not deceive himself and take the wrong side from the very same Reasons that he had alledged from whence he might as well conclude that he was bound to yeild himself to the Authority of the Jewish Church which had been the most eminent one that was ever in the World because that although it had Sects among it who disputed the Truth of its Tenets yet it had nothing that could make that high Authority which arose from external signs to be opposed with any colourable pretence To speak in the same Language that the Author of Prejudices uses That he sought then to take her for his Guide and to believe himself a thousand times more assured in following her than if he had been left to the weak ef-forts of his own Reason Furthermore he might think it very strange that the Apostles of Jesus Christ should go about to violate in respect of the Jewish Church a Principle which in the end they had a design to establish for the preservation of their own that they should then plead for that Maxim that every one ought to examine the Tenets of the Faith and search out the true Religion by himself without absolutely trusting to his ordinary Pastors since that they would have them to hear them notwithstanding the condemnation that their Church had pronounced against them But that afterwards they should quickly change that Maxim towards those whom they should have converted and have bound them to have depended blindly on their Guides That Inequality would not have appeared fair Tell me I pray yet once more whether the Jew had not had some Reason of his side and whether that Maxim of the Authour of Prejudices is not far more destructive of the Interests of Christianity than can be easily conceived It opens a Gate to the Jews to defend their Unbelief to justify all their bold attempts and to calumniate Jesus Christ himself and his blessed Apostles 6. What might not those unbelievers have said against those who were Converted They might have treated them as rash presumptuous as Rebels and Schismaticks as disturbers of Order as a sort of men of a private spirit who would make themselves Judges of the Church and despoil it of its lawful Authority to invest themselves in it But that which is most scandalous is that as that Principle which we oppose opens the mouths of the Enemies of the Gospel so it shuts up those of the new Christians and deprives them of the means of justifying themselves For what could they have said to which those others might not immediately have repli'd by the meer application of that Principle Could they have said that they had known out of the Scripture out of Moses and the Prophets that Jesus was the true Messiah But they might have answered them that it belonged to the Church and not to them to judge of the true meaning of the Scripture Could they have said that Jesus Christ and his Apostles had an extraordinary Call But they might have told them also That it was not for private men to judge whether those who said they were extraordinarily sent were so indeed that that would be to give way to impostors that the Church ought to make that discernment and that she had loudly declared that they were no other then such Could they have alleadged the Miracles of Jesus and his Apostles But they might have given them the very same for an answer that seeing there were true and false miracles it was not for the common people who ow'd an absolute obedience to their Guides to undertake to discern between them but for the Church which had then explained them when she said that Jesus cast out Devils by the Prince of Devils Could they have complained of the Disorders and Corruptions that then reigned in the Jewish Church But they might have told them That they were ingrateful and unnatural Children who lifted themselves up against their Mother and thought of nothing else but dishonouring her and that whatsoever they might say they ought to borrow her eyes for the discerning the Truths of the Faith and to rest assured in following of her In fine that Principle seems to do nothing else but to give a compleat Victory to Judaism over Christianity 7. But there is more in it yet for the Heathens might so have prevailed against the first Preachers of the Gospel and have stopt its Progress I confess that the Heathens did not call their Religious Society by the name of the Church But what does the Name signify Were they not all united in one Religious Society Had they not all their Guides their Priests those that offered up their Sacrifices and their high Priests Put into their hands then that Maxim of the Author of Prejudices with the grounds upon which it is established the obscurity of mens understandings that doubt of being deceived the cumbrance of worldly affairs the want of necessary helps and all those other pretences which they propose to us to make us blindly follow their conduct and it will work the same effect as it did in the hands of the Jews The Heathens would not have failed to have made use of it for the hindring their hearkning to those Preachers to justify that obstinacy with which they resisted the Gospel to elude those Miracles to condemn the Apostles themselves and those who had been converted by hearing them as a sort of men who had broken that Order which they themselves acknowledg'd so necessary to be kept They might very well have told them You have not the True Religion you are not that Church to which we ought to give an absolute submission we have a Heavenly and an extraordinary Call and we prove it by Miracles The Heathens might have answered them out of the Instructions of the Author of these Prejudices All those things are in question between our Guides and yours we cannot of our selves decide them the darkness of our understandings the little assurance we can have that we are not deceiv'd the just fear that that doubt must infer
if you would give to the simpler sort to those Babes for Example whereof Jesus Christ speaks that his Mysteries have been revealed unto them if you give them I say that right and liberty to judge of that important and fundamental Question to wit Whether the Call of a man be Extraordinary and Divine or whether it be not so whether his Miracles are those of a true Minister of God or of a false Prophet whether it be a true Angel of Light or a disguised Angel of darkness and to judge of all those things after the Church and against the Church I see no Reason why they should refuse them the right and liberty of judging also of its Doctrine and the points of Religion whereof the true knowledge is by nothing near so difficult God had forewarned his People that they should not give themselves over to be deceiv'd by the first appearances of Miracles and he had appointed that they should judge of them by the Doctrine they accompanied Whence it follows that the discerning of Miracles and judging of that Doctrine are two inseparable things and that their right belongs to the same persons If there arise saith God among you a Prophet or a dreamer of dreams and giveth thee a sign or a wonder And the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee saying Let us go after other Gods which thou hast not known and let us serve them Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that Prophet or that dreamer of dreams For the Lord your God proveth you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart It appears from thence that the way for men to judge well of Miracles is to examine the Doctrine of him that works them So that if they will a gree to give the people a right to discern Miracles they cannot take away from them that of discerning that Doctrine they uphold Jesus Christ supposes the same thing when he says that there shall arise false Christs and false Prophets and that they shall work great signs and wonders to seduce if it were possible the very Elect. For how could they otherwise discern those Miracles of the false Prophets but by examining their words So a famous man of the Roman Communion has not scrupled to write that we are bound to reject Miracles and those men who make use of them then when they are joyned with a Doctrine which the Church has condemned his words are considerable and very well deserve to be transcrib'd The Application says he and direction of a miracle to prove the Truth of a Doctrine is an enterprise so rash and so scandalous that it deserves to be punished There is not any Catholic in the World who knows his Creed and understands it that can be capable of such a persuasion What if the appearance of a Miracle is contrary to the definitions of the Church can any one hesitate or doubt whether it would be better to adhere to the Church supported by the truth of a Miracle or to deny the truth of a Miracle founded upon the Authority of the Church Saint Peter has taught us a great while since what we are to do on that occasion He had been an eye Witness of the Transfiguration of our Saviour and of that glory that lay hid under the Vail of a Suffering and Mortal state and yet nevertheless he trusts more in the obscurity of Prophets than to the clear and manifest experience of his Eyes we have a more sure word of Prophesie The Authority of the Church which is in nothing less than that of the Prophets breaks in pieces all those reasons that oppose it and we ought to take to our selves in regard of the Church that which Saint Peter says with respect to the Prophets To which we do well that we take heed gathering together all our attention to know the true sence of the Church and turning aside from all the Miracles and all those Reasons the men propound to us to make us call into question that which we know the Church to have determined We may see clearly by that passage how far one may carry that Principle of the Authority of the Church in the thoughts of those that admit of it that is to say even to make Miracles themselves submit to it He says that we ought to Collect all our attention to know the true Sentiments of the Church and to turn aside from all those Miracles which would make us call into question that which the Church has determined He says that to go about to make use of Miracles for the proving of a Doctrine that is condemned by the Church is a rash and scandalous enterprise and such as deserves to be punished In effect if they suppose that Maxim that we ought to give to the Church an absolute obedience to see with her Eyes and to rest upon her Conduct those Miracles could not make them be heard whom the Church should have condemned and by which they should have been looked on as false Miracles the Consequence is good and just But because that very thing applied to the times of the first rise of Christianity justifies the Unbeleivers condemns the proceedings of Jesus Christ and his Appostles accuses those of rashness who have believed on their preaching destroys the Gospel and overthrows the Christian Church it is a manifest proof that that Maxim it self is false and rash since those Consequences that arise from it are so detestable that they leave neither to Jesus Christ nor to the Apostles any way to make their Gospel to be heard by men with a good Conscience and the care of their Salvation 8. They must give me leave to speak a little earnestly for the interest of our Lord Jesus Christ The more I consider these inevitable Consequences of that Maxim the more I am astonished If those first Christians who had been Jews could not hear the Doctrine of the Son of God nor receive his Miracles without violating of their Duty toward the Church that had condemned them what scruples might not all that cast into all the Christians that are at this day in the World For in fine we are the Successors of that people our Fathers were not Converted but by their Ministry If then we cannot see clearly that they themselves had a right to be Converted if they laid down on the contrary a Principle which of right ought to have hindered their Conversion where then are all we as many as we are The Reasons that the Author of those Prejudices produces to make us devest our selves of our own guidance in favour of the Church that we should see with her Eyes and tread in her steps had as much place with the Jews as they have with us they could not doubt but that their Church was the Church of God none can dispute with them that eminent Authority which had so many external marks To her belonged the Adoption the
Glory and the Covenants and the giving of the Law and the service of God and the Promises of whom were the Fathers and who had the Oracles of God committed unto them and in whose bosom Christ according to the flesh was born If that Maxim of the Author of Prejudices were good it must necessarily have been good for that Church which had condemned Jesus Christ his Person his Call his Miracles his Doctrine and what right then had his Disciples to hear and follow him We have seen them from Reason and from the Testimony of a very considerable person of our Age and to whom one of the greatest Kings has given the honour of committing the concerns of his Conscience to him that if that Maxim had place that we ought entirely to refer our selves to the Authority of the Church we could not any more regard those Miracles when they were opposite to that Authority Let them tell us then what right the Disciples had to follow Jesus Christ by what right did the first Converts and those who were afterwards Converted by others embrace the Gospel And if they did it without any right and against their duty into what Labyrinths we cast you What would become of the Christian Church what would become of you your selves You form prejudices against us drawn from the faults that have say you appeared in the persons of our first Reformers You tell us of a pretended precipitancy by which the Magistrates of Zurich Reformed themselves you conclude from thence without entring upon the points in dispute that we ought to renounce the Reformation of our Fathers Answer then your selves to the Prejudices that according to your Maxim the Jews may form against the first Disciples of Jesus Christ and to the Consequence that they may draw from thence that without entring any further into a Discussing of the Points of that Religion without examining either the Miracles or the Antient Prophecies or the success of the Preaching of the Gospel or all the other things that we could alledge in our favour we ought to renounce our Christianity You your selves Authorise their Principle by one that is altogether like it which you lay down and which you know not how to make use of against them without overthrowing your selves in a word you draw the same Consequence from it with them shew us then by what secret Art both you and we may get out of that Abyss whereinto you have plunged us If your Fathers say you have Reformed themselves with an ill design you ought without farther examination to renounce their Reformation If the chief Authors of your Religion a Jew will say have adhered to Jesus with an ill design against the obligation which they had to cleave to the Church you ought to renounce their Christianity Answer if you can to those Arguments and set our Consciences in quiet As for us indeed we are not in pain for we know that that Principle which you urge to those unbelievers is false There is not any person who has not right to examine the points of that Religion and to discern by himself the true from the false the good from the bad that which is from God from that which which from men The Authority of the Church never goes so far as to hinder us with any justice from it and so there is nothing to reproach the first Christians 9. But we ought not to give over these reflections without making one upon the state of the Church in the times of the Councils of Sirmium of Milan and of Ariminum whereof I have spoken before There is no person who knows not that the Arrians were then Masters of the Ecclesiastical Ministry which they called the Catholick Church treating the Orthodox as Hereticks and Disturbers of its Peace deposing them and sending them into banishment The Poyson of the Arrians says Vincentius Lirinensis had not only infected one part but almost all the world and almost all the Latin Bishops some by force others by simplicity giving themselves over to be deceived found themselves engaged in the darkness of Error We are in that condition said Phaebadius that if we would be called Catholicks it is necessary that we embrace Heresie and yet nevertheless if we do not reject Heresie we cannot be truly Catholicks God did yet keep to himself notwithstanding some Bishops few in number but great in Courage and that small remnant in the end serv'd for a spark to rekindle the Fire of the Faith in the Church Apply then to them that Maxim which we have before opposed and weigh those Consequences that may be drawn from it against those and against the Faithful who Heard them and Read their Writings The least is that they were Schismaticks and Corruptors of the people who after having themselves broken off that obedience which they owed to the Church sollicited others to do the like They might have very well urged that they had the Scriptures on their side that they had the Council of Nice for them but they would have answered them That it was no longer time to dispute that they ought to submit themselves to and acquiesce in the definitions of the Church Since it was the duty of the Faithful to strip themselves of their own Conduct to rest upon that of the Church Nevertheless they did not fail generously to maintain the Truth to dispute and write for it to address themselves not only to the Bishops but to the people and to defend it against that specious name of a Church which they set before them and the words of Saint Hilary upon this subject are worthy of a particular consideration The Church says he terrified men by Banishments and by Prisons and constrained them to believe what she tells them she that her self had never been believed but by the Exile and Prisons which she suffered She which had been only Consecrated by the Persecution of men Bene a dignatione Communicantium She drives away the Priests forgetting that by the Banishment of her Priests she increased She boasts that she is beloved by the world but she could not belong to Jesus Christ unless the world hated her Haec de comparatione traditae nobis olim Ecclesiae nunc quam de perditae res ipsa que in oculis omnium est at que ore clamavit Can any one be rash enough to maintain that he was bound then to refer himself to the Authority of that Church to see with its Eyes to tread in its Steps and to rest himself upon its Conduct Will any say that that handful of good men who have since re-established Christianity was nothing else but a company of Rebels and of presumptuous minds Will they charge their Writing and their Letters to the people with Forgeries and Subornations Will they justifie their being Deposed their Banishments the Persecutions which they so constantly suffered Will they say that the Faithful that heard them were rash and
difficulty to get thither and yet that belonging of right to the examination of all men the darkness of the understanding the easiness wherewith men may deceive themselves the want of necessary helps the ignorance and simplicity of the greatest part of men would not hinder it Those are then no other than frivolous Reasons which cannot take away from men that right that God and Nature have given them They ought therefore to enjoy it at least in some respect to wit for the deciding of the question whether they ought to lose it or no. 13. But it is certain they can never so enjoy it in that regard nor decide that Question without entring upon an examination of all their Doctrines which lets us see yet more and more the absurdity of our Adversaries Principle For there is not any Principle more absurd than that which destroys it self which cannot be established but by making use of a contrary Principle and which precisely can have no place but there where it cannot be of any use But all that may be said of that Principle of those Gentlemen since it is most true that to establish it one must necessarily proceed to examine their Doctrines and that they can never know whether they ought to refer themselves to the Latin Church or examine that Doctrine by themselves till they have made that examination that is to say till there shall be no farther occasion to refer themselves to that Authority of the Latin Church which makes pleasant sport enough This is that which is evidently manifest if one consider it that before one can acknowledge the Authority of the Latin Church it must be supposed that one is assured that among all the Religious Societies that are in the World the Christian is the only one in which one ought to place himself and that can never be known but by one way only which is that of examining its Doctrine and its Worship In effect there is not any one of those external marks that can make that difference The Jews had their Miracles Antiquity Succession an uninterrupted Duration the Holiness of their Patriarchs the Light of their Prophecies the Majesty of their Ceremonies we do not dispute these marks with them and as to Temporal Prosperity they had it heretofore and we are not assured that we have always had that whereof we make such boasting which nevertheless is not very great The Mahometans glory that they have the same things with the consent of the People and the admirable success of their Arms and as for Antiquity which they fail in they say that as Jesus Christ did but succeed Moses so Mahomet also has succeeded Jesus Christ As for the Heathens they had as I have said their Miracles their Saints their Prophets their Ceremonies their Succession their uninterrupted Duration their Temporal Prosperities and if we strive with them about Antiquity and Multitude the advantage will not lye on our side There is then nothing more deceitful than those external appearances separated from their Doctrines they are as proper to make a Jew remain a Jew a Heathen a Heathen and a Mahometan to remain a Mahometan as to make a Christian to remain a Christian whence it follows that to form well that difference and to be assured that the Christian Communion is the only good one one ought to examine its Worship and its Doctrines Moreover before they could acknowledge the Authority of the Latin Church they must suppose that a man is sure that among all the Christian Sects the Latin only is the true Church and that cannot be known but by the examination of its Doctrines Those external marks can be no ways proper for it The Greeks the Abyssines the Nestorians ascribe to themselves Antiquity Succession Miracles an uninterrupted Duration as well as the Latins They have their Saints their Prophets their Ceremonies and their Multitude which is not less considerable and as to worldly Prosperity the Abyssines may boast of it and the Muscovites also who make a part of the Greek Church and who knows whether that of the Latin Church shall never change It is then manifest that they can conclude nothing from those marks separated from their Doctrine they are so ambiguous and uncertain that they cannot fix any setled Judgment upon them concerning the truth of the Latin Church But supposing that they could by those external marks or by any other ways which they would take be assured that the Latin Church was the true Church I say it must necessarily be understood in this Sence to wit that in that visible Communion God brings up and preserves his truly Faithful ones For it is in those only that that name of the visible Church is verified and not in the prophane the wicked and the worldly who are mingled with them and who are none of that Body that is the Spouse of Jesus Christ They must then be assured before they can know whether they ought to refer themselves absolutely to that Body of Pastors that governs the Latin Church that the prophane and the worldly do not prevail in that Body and that they never have prevailed for if they do prevail or if they ever have prevailed they may introduce errours into the publick Ministry and false Worship or suffer them to come in through their negligence or otherwise or scatter abroad the ill Doctrines of the Schools amongst the People favour ill customs and in a word corrupt that Communion as it appears that that did come to pass in the Jewish Church and sometimes in the Christian But how can any be fully assured that it may not be so at present otherwise then by the examining of her Doctrine They ought then to give up that point of external marks our Fathers have gained their cause without going any farther by the Prejudices of Corruption which I have set down in the second and third Chapters But if you take them only as meer conjectures and if you will reckon them to be nothing it is certain that to be assured that there is nothing corrupted in a Communion where God brings up and preserves his true Faithful people that the publick Ministry is pure in all its Doctrines and in its Worship one must of necessity take that way of examination and that examination must be very exact So that before we can enter only upon that Question whether we ought to give to the Latin Church a Soveraign Authority over our Faith and Consciences the discussing of which they know not how to avoid all must be examined from whence it follows that that Principle which I have opposed is absur'd because it destroys it self and none can ever practise it till it cannot be any more of any use and more absur'd yet in that when it would hinder us from examining it constrains us to make an examination as exact as can be thought of CHAP. IX An Examen of those Reasons they alleadge to Establish that Soveraign Authority
of the Prelats in the Latin Church TO defend in some manner a Principle that Scripture Reason the Interest of the Antient Jewish Church and the Christians do so loudly condemn they propound some Inconveniences which arise they pretend from that of the Contrary Principle But it is certain that if it were enough to alleadge those Inconveniences to overthrow those Rights which are found to be so solidly established there is nothing in the world sure since there is nothing so just so reasonable or so necessary which the weakness or the malice of men may not abuse It is necessary to yield to men the right of eating and drinking of Cloathing and Marrying themselves of selling and buying of holding Commerce between themselves of building Houses and Towns and to distinguish themselves by their several Arts and Professions And yet how many Inconveniences are there that arise from all those things It is the same in the usage of the most holy and inviolable things as of Religion it self of which a Libertine says in General because of the Abuses that were made of it Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum If all must be abolisht that is subject to Inconveniences one must abolish every thing Gold and Iron Night and Day Fire and Water would be criminal and the very Air it self which makes us live causes sometimes our death They cannot then take a worse way then that of those Inconveniences to cry down a Right founded upon Nature and upon Grace and Authorized by Jesus Christ by the Prophets and Apostles Let us see nevertheless of what nature those Inconveniencies are One of the most Considerable is That if they allow those who are subject to the Church to Examine the matters of Religion there will be no more any way to keep men in the Unity of the Faith that every one will have a Religion by himself and that by this means they should open a way for Extravagancies and Heresies and by consequence for the intire ruin of the Church since the minds of men are so different and confused that that which pleases one will not please another To Answer to that Objection I would demand of those Gentlemen whether they propose to themselves to find out any humane and efficacious way which shall go so far as actually and effectually to hinder those Extravagances and Heresies or whether they would only establish a Maxim which in supposing that it should be followed and that all men would receive it should contain all in the Unity of the Faith Let them take which of those two sides they please they cannot rationally say any thing The first contains a rash and absurd pretence for to go about to seek a humane means that shall actually hinder all Errors and Heresies is to seek for that which they can never be able to find To retain men in the Unity of the Faith and of True Piety two things are necessary the one That they teach all the pure Truths of God and the other That they give them all a right understanding to the end they should follow it Their Pastors might very well do the first but the second which does not depend on them none but God alone can do And that also he does in regard of all his Elect and truly Faithful for whose sake only there is a Church and Pastors in the World For he bestows on all those his Holy Spirit in that measure that shall suffice to unite them in the same Faith and to hinder them from falling into Errours wholly inconsistent with their Salvation As for the others as he has not ordained their Salvation so he would not actually hinder them from casting themselves into Heresies or into Errors On the contrary he has resolved to permit those strayings the better to distinguish them from his True Children There must be also saith St. Paul Heresies among you that they which are approved may be made manifest among you And elsewhere he says That God should send strong delusions to them that perish that they should believe a lye So that God who alone is Lord of the hearts and minds of men not having propounded that end to himself in establishing his Visible Church to hinder any Heresies from being in the World nor that they should not arise within that very Church it self but only that his Elect and truly Faithful ones should not be infected with them it is a great rashness for those men who cannot dispose hearts as he does to extend not only their desires but their pretensions also farther and to search out a way by which there should not be in effect any Heresie I confess that we ought to desire the destruction of all Heresies that we ought to labour for their Extirpation and that as the Elect and true Children of God are not distinctly known the cares that we should take for them ought to be extended indifferently to all But I say that we cannot make use of any thing for so great a work but those external means which are the pure Preaching of the Truth and Confuting the contrary Errors When their Pastors shall acquit themselves well in that duty they may rest assured that God will bless their conduct and their word not to all men but to the persons of his true Children If their Pastors would urge their pretensions from thence and would find a human expedient that might absolutely hinder those Heresies from touching them and from actually and effectually springing up as well among the good as the wicked I affirm that they would be wiser then God that they would encroach upon his rights that they would hunt for a Chimaera and that by that very means they would change the Ministry into a Tyranny for under that pretence of rooting out those Heresies they would come to be Soveraign Lords over mens Souls and Consciences which cannot nor ought to be suffered and which is so far from being a means to avoid them that it would fill the Church with Heresies If they say they intend only to establish a Maxim which supposing that it would be followed and that all men would receive it would contain all in the Unity of the Faith and that Maxim is That they ought to refer themselves absolutely to their Pastors I say in the first place That that Maxim is as proper to contain men in the Unity of Heresie and of Schism as in the Unity of Faith For the Hereticks and Schismaticks have their Church and their Pastors to whom they should absolutely refer themselves So that they could never discern whether they are in Unity of the Faith or in that of Error and wandring from the Truth if they were not before all things assured that they were in the true Church But who shall warrant us that when they would be so assured of the true Church that men would not divide themselves by different sentiments and that that which pleases one should not displease another What
principle of Unity would they give us to settle all in the same thoughts in that search which they should make of the true Church The Jews would say We are the true Church of God the Mother Church from which the Christians have separated themselves The Pagans will say We are that Mother Communion for as well the Jews as the Christians came out of the midst of us The Mahometans will say That as Christianity was the perfection of the Law so their Religion is the perfection of the Gospel The Greeks would come foorth and maintain That they are the true Catholick Church and not the Latins the Copticks the Abyssines the Jacobites and Armenians maintain That as well the Latins as the Greeks departed from the Church when their Council of Chalcedon had made void the Council of Ephesus The Arians will say That if one latter Council could abrogate what had been done by a former as it appears from the Example of the Council of Chalcedon then that of Ariminum might very well correct and repair the Errors of that of Nice In fine every one would alledge his Reasons and concern himself to know which of all those Communions was the true and good one and which had the true Faith Tell us what means of Unity would you have beyond that to hinder men from dividing themselves For if it be true that in yielding men a right to examine the matters of Religion they open a Gate to let in Divisions and Heresies by reason of the Confusion of mens minds it is not less true that in leaving them a liberty to examine those Churches and Religious Societies to come to know which is the True you open the same Gate to Errors and Apostacies If you would further take from them that Liberty of searching out the true Church and if you say that they ought to suppose the Latin to be it without other reason besides that that is very absurd you introduce a Maxim that under a pretence of shutting the Door to all Divisions shuts it also to all Conversions For why should not every Society have right to say the same thing So the Jew without any other Reason would presume for the Jewish Communion the Heathen for the Heathen the Greek for the Greek and every one for that wherein he finds himself set That then would not be so much a Principle of Unity in the true Faith as a Principle of Confusion and Obstinacy a Principle that would be not so proper to keep men in the Unity of the true Faith as in that of any Religion whatsoever it might be without coming to know whether it were good or bad In the second place I say That with all that they do not yet make any thing of that which they would lay down if they would avoid those Heresies and those Divisions which may arise from the inequality of humane understandings when men are left to be Masters of their own Sentiments For to obtain that effect they must suppose that that Maxim of referring ones self absolutely to the Pastors of the true Church when they shall be so assured will be received and followed by all men But who can tell them that men will not divide upon that very Principle and that when they endeavour to make them receive it they can make them agree If they apprehend so much those Divisions and Errors in the matters of Religion what assurance can they have that there shall not be any upon that point of the Authority of the Church Is it because mens minds will less differ about that subject then about others or that that same Authority proves it self as the First Principles do Who has told them that those who shall once have received this Maxim will not be un-blinded in the end and that they will not be weary in fine of remaining slaves to men in respect of their Consciences which is the most considerable part of themselves and that which should give them the greatest Jealousie So that that pretended Remedy of Schisms and Divisions is null for you must always run upon that Rock you would avoid to wit of the humane understanding and wipe off its differences its inequalities its humors at the same time that you would have them give away that liberty of judging the points of the Faith Let us suppose since our Adversaries would have us that that Principle of absolute obedience to the Guides of the Church had had place from the birth of Christianity would it have hindred the Heresies of the Valentinians of the Gnostics of the Marcionites of the Montanists and the Manichees Would it have hindred the Arrians the Samosatences the Eutychians the Nestorians and so many others that in the first Ages of Christianity troubled the State of Religion To say that those men were presumptuous and rash is but to say what we would have which is that there can be no humane means that can stop that rashness and presumptuousness of men and that it is a folly to go about to do it They may by the force of Torments and Prisons by their Threats or their Promises hinder the external effects but that is not to contain men in the Unity of the Faith but it is to contain them in that of Hypocrisy and of Treachery A second Inconvenience is That they cannot give to the Church that is to say to the Body of the Pastors that respect which is due to them for where they should be set up to be Judges of Controversies private men would rise up against them and those private men would on the contrary become their Judges But that Inconvenience is not so great as that it should make us hazard our own Salvation How many Judges have in we our Civil Society to whom we yet give that respect that is due to them though still we are not bound to believe that all that they have judged is well judged The respect which men owe to their Pastors is not unlimited it has its bounds and its measures while they act as true Pastors in Teaching the pure Truth and acquitting themselves of their Duty they are worthy to be heard to be followed to be respected But when they come to be Deceivers if that in stead of Teaching the Truth they oppose it if they mix with Gold and Silver Wood Hay and Stubble to make use of the words of the Apostle they deserve in that regard neither the Hearing nor Respect For they are neither Pastors nor the Church but only as they Teach the Truth and follow Righteousness and when they withdraw themselves from it give us their own Fancies or when they follow their Passions then they are but private men who belye their Character and they can owe them nothing for those kinds of things but repulses and contempt or at the most but Indulgence if the Evil be yet tolerable that is to say if their word and their conduct do not destroy the Gospel or hinder a saving
wrote to Leo with all the respect imaginable and let him see that the Questors and those who had till that time upheld them had dishonoured his See and his Church that as to himself he found himself very unhappy to see that their Calumnies should have prevailed over his Innocence and he further offered to give over that matter of Indulgences and wholly to be silent in it provided that his Adversaries should do the like But whether it was that all that Negotiation of Miltit was but feigned on his part or that in effect his counsel was not approved by those of his Party as Luther himself insinautes it is certain that from the time that that Letter had been drawn from him George Duke of Saxony a Prince that stuck very close to the Interests of the Pope desired that he would make a publick Disputation at Leipsic upon the matters in controversy the dispute was managed the beginning between Eccius and Carolostad concerning Free-will and Grace but they drew in Luther himself upon the subject of Indulgences of Purgatory and the Power of the Pope And they procured almost at the same time from the Universities of Cologn and Lovain a condemnation of divers Articles drawn out of his Books He defended himself against these new Adversaries and made the World see by his publick writings the truth of his Doctrine and the injustice of those Condemnations But within a little after Pope Leo being unwilling to try any thing further published his terrible Bull of Excommunication against him which they call the Bull Exurge There after having earnestly importuned Jesus Christ Saint Peter and Saint Paul with all the Saints in Paradise to come to the succour of the Church of Rome he sets down in particular one and forty Articles of Luthers Doctrine which he declared to be respectively pestilent destructive scandalous false heretical offending pious Ears seducing Souls and contrary to the Catholick Truth and to the Charity to the respect and obedience that was owing to the Church of Rome which is the Mother of all the Faithful and the Mistriss of the Faith and as such severally he condemned them disproved them rejected them and declared that they ought to be rejected by Christians of both Sexes He forbad all Bishops Patriarchs Metropolitans and generally all Church-men and Kings the Emperour the Electors Princes Dukes Marquesses Earls Barons Captains c. and in a word all sorts of men to hold those Articles or to favour them in any manner what soever under the penalty of Excommunication and being deprived of their Lands and of their Goods and treated as infamous Hereticks favourers of Hereticks and guilty of High Treason And as to Luther he complained of him that he would not come to Rome where he would have let him have seen that he had not done so much evil as he believed and he agravated it as a great rashness in him to have appealed to a Council against the Constitutions of Pius the Second and of Julius the Second who would have those punished as Hereticks that made such appeals That therefore he condemned as Hereticks him and all his Adherents if in the space of fifty days they did not renounce all their Errours he forbad all Christians to have any Commerce or Conversation with them or to yeild them any necessary things and gave his Orders to the Emperour to Kings and Princes c. to seize their Persons and to send them to Rome promising great rewards to those who should do so good a work Luther some time after wrote against that Bull and appealed afresh to a Council lawfully called notwithstanding he justified himself with great solidity about all those condemned Articles And it is pertinent to note that among those Articles that the Pope Anathematized as Heretical or Rash or Scandalous and contrary to the Catholick Truth these following Propositions might be found That that Proverb was most true that said That the best Pennance is a good Life that it would be very well if the Church in a Council should ordain that the Laity should receive the Communion in both kinds That the Treasure of the Church from whence the Pope drew his Indulgences is not the Merits of Jesus Christ and the Saints That the Bishop of Rome the Successour of Saint Peter is not the Vicar of Jesus Christ over all the Churches of the world nor that there was any one established by Jesus Christ himself in the Person of Saint Peter That it is not in the power of the Church or of the Pope to make Articles of Faith nor to establish new Laws for Manners or for good Works That tho' the Pope should hold with a great part of the Church an opinion which should not it self be erronious yet it would not be a sin or an heresy to hold a contrary opinion especially in things not necessary to Salvation until a General Council should have disproved the one and approved of the other that the Ecclesiastical Prelats and Secular Princes did not do ill when they abolished the Order of begging Friers That Purgatory could not be proved by the Holy Canonical Scripture These Propositions are declared to be either pestilent or pernicious or scandalous or heretical without specifying any one in particular for the Pope speaks of them only in the whole that they are such So it was that Leo and all his Court managed those matters To affirm that a true amendment of Life a holy and sincere return from Vice to Vertue is the best of all Pennances appeared to be a detestable crime to them To wish that a General Council might establish the Communion of the Eucharist according to the Institution of Jesus Christ and the Custom of the Primitive Church was such an abomination with them as was thought sufficient to deserve the Flames Not to beleive that the Merits of Jesus Christ and of the Saints made up a certain Treasure which neither Faith nor Holiness nor Repentance could give the Faithful any part of but which were to be dispenced only by the way of Indulgences for money pass'd in their Judgments for a Hellish Heresie To hold that our Faith has nothing else but the Word of God for its object and not that of men also and that God alone can impose moral Laws on the Conscience was in their opinion an astonishing wickedness To believe that one may without Herefy hold an opinion contrary to that of the Pope in matters not necessary to Salvation and not determined by any Council was a pestilent errour To give the least blow to the interests of Monks or the Fire of Purgatory was an horrible sacriledge for which there was not any remission After that condemnation the Pope wrote to John Frederick Elector of Saxony earnestly entreating him not to give any more protection to Luther and he sent Hierome Aleander his Nuntio into Germany to cause that condemnation to be executed But Aleander not being able to obtain of
Frederick what the Pope desired obliged the Emperour Charles who had been Elected in the Room of Maximilian and the Princes assembled at Wormes to cite Luther to appear before them The Emperour gave him to that effect his Letters of safe Conduct and Luther having compared and constantly maintained his Doctrine without any ways regarding either the threats or the sollicitations of the Partisans of the Court of Rome they were upon the point to imprison him notwithstanding the safe conduct of the Emperour and to treat him as they had heretofore done John Huss and Jerome of Prague in the Council of Constance But the Elector Palatine vehemently opposing himself to that breach of the publick Faith they were contented with proscribing him by a publick Edict In that Edict they treat him as a Lunatick as one possest by the Devil and as a Devil incarnate they banish him all the Territories of the Empire they forbid him Fire and Water Meat and Drink they order that his Books should be publickly burnt and threaten to all that contradict the most rigorous punishments in the world After all that who can say that our Fathers could yet with any shadow of Reason hope for a Reformation on the part of the Popes and the Prelats We may see in their Conduct not only a repugnance to a Reformation but a setled design and an unshaken resolution to defend their Errours Superstitions and Abuses of what nature soever they were and to hazard all rather then once to consent that the Church should be purged We may see that they made use of all that the most exact and refined policy could make them contrive of all the Authority that the splendour of their Dignities and the places which they held could give them amongst men and of all that force and violence that the Favour of Princes and the credulity of the people could afford them They went so far as loudly to declare themselves Lords of mens Faith They exclaimed they wrote they disputed they accused they condemned they terrified they excommunicated they had recourse to the secular power and could our Fathers without being blind look any further for a Reformation from such persons as those CHAP. III. That our Fathers not being able any more to hope for a Reformation on the part of the Pope or his Prelats were indispensably bound to provide for their own Salvation and to Reform themselves VVE come now to inquire what our Fathers were bound to do in so great a Confusion They were perswaded not only that it was possible for the Latin Church to have within it a great many Corruptions and Abuses but that it really had a very great Company of them that false worship Errors and Superstitions had broke in as an Inundation upon the Christian Religion and that those abuses growing more gross and growing every day more strong put Christianity into a manifest danger of Ruin Moreover there was not any hope of Remedy either on the part of the Pope or on the part of the Prelats For the Court of Rome with all its Associates had loudly declared against a Reformation maintaining that the Church of Rome could not Err that she was the Mistress of Mens Faith and not to believe as she believed was a Heresie worthy of the Flames and as to the Prelats they had all servile obedience to the wills of the Popes besides that Ignorance that Negligence that Love of the things of the World and those other Vices in which they were plunged How be it the business was not about matters of small Importance nor about the Questions of the School most commonly unknown to the People nor about some speculative notions which could not be of any Consequence to the Actions of true Holiness The Controversy was about divers things essential to Religion which not only fell within the knowledge of the People but which likewise consisted in matters of practice and which by Consequence being wicked as our Fathers could make no doubt that they were could not but be very contrary to the right Worship of God and mens Salvation For the debate was about a Religious Worship which they were to give not to God alone but to Creatures also to Angels to Saints to Images and to Relicks about certain and infallible Springs from whence they ought to draw their Salvation in building their confidence upon them for besides the mercy of God through the Merit and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ they joyned to that the merit of our good-works our own Satisfactions the over and above Satisfactions of the Saints and the Authority of the Bishop of Rome in dispencing of Indulgences They Treated of other works which they held that we ought to do through the Obligation of our Consciences and with assurance that they were good and those they made a part of our Sanctification for they added to those that God had commanded us those that the Popes and their Prelats commanded out of their meer Authority They Treated of ill actions from which we ought to abstain out of the motions of our Consciences and which one could not commit without sin for besides those that God had forbidden us they likewise placed in this Rank those which it should please the Church to forbid us They Treated about a certain and infallible Rule of Faith upon which the Minds and Consciences of Christians might stay and rest for they would have that principle consist in the Interpretations in the Traditions and Decisions of the Church of Rome or its Prelats The Controversy was about Jesus Christ himself for they said that the Sacrament of the Eucharist was the very Person of the Son of God and they adored it under that Quality the Question was about divers Customs introduced into the publick Ministry or generally establisht by the Customs of the People that our Fathers thought very contrary to the Spirit of the Gospel and true Piety In fine in all those and other such like things they Treated about the peace and just rights of the Conscience the glory of God the hope of Salvation and the Preservation of the Church of Jesus Christ upon Earth Let them tell us then precisely what our Fathers ought to have done Was there any thing in the World of greater concernment then those things which I have set down Or to speak better was there nothing that could any ways stagger them or hold the minds of all honest men in suspence for so much as one moment Were they bound to renounce their Conscience their God and their Salvation under a pretence that the Flatterers of the Church of Rome speak of her what the Holy Scripture says of the Godhead That if she pulls down there is no person that can build up if she shuts there is none can open if she retains the Waters all is dried up if she lots them out they shall overflow the Earth Do they believe that they ought to have precipitated themselves
God lose nothing either of its Truth or its Authority 3. It is a very strange thing that the Author of the Prejudices has not taken any heed in laying down a very bad Argument against us of furnishing us with a very good one against the Church of Rome in that Estate wherein it was in the days of our Fathers For if we ought to Judge of the Doctrine by the Qualities or the Actions of those who Teach it I pray consider what Judgment could our Fathers make of that Religion that the Court of Rome and its Prelats taught and whether they had not all the grounds in the World to reform themselves If there be no likelyhood that God committed the Care of Reforming his Church to persons who were guilty of Scandalous Actions there is far less that God has given Infallibility and a Soveraign Authority over mens Consciences to such persons as the Popes and Prelats in the days of our Fathers were according to the Description which the unsuspected Authors that we have quoted give us of them and divers others that we might here add to them if we so pleased And that which makes these two Arguments differ is that his concludes upon a Principle which we maintain to be false and ill where ours concludes upon a Principle which he himself admits and acknowledges to be good so that in his own Judgment we have a sufficient Fundation whereon to Establish the Justice of our Reformation Let us see nevertheless of what Nature those Actions are wherewith he reproaches our first Reformers I will not says he stay to examine the Accusations wherewith they have been charged by divers Authors I do not pretend to detain my self in any but those publick things that are so manifest and so exposed to the Eyes of all the World I confess he has Reason not to stay upon all that which his Passion has invented against them for who knows not that Calumny has no bounds especially when interest and passion stir it up Our Reformers are not the only persons who have been attacked after that manner The Jews said of John the Baptist that he had a Devil and of Jesus Christ that he was a Blasphemer a Samaritan a glutton and a Wine-bibber a friend of Publicans and sinners If then they have called the Father of the Family Beelzebub what will they not say of his Servants But what then are those things that are so Publick so manifest and so exposed to the Eyes of the whole World which the Author of the Prejudices has found fit to be insisted upon That new Gospel says he was Preached only out of the mouths of those Monks who had quitted their habit and their profession ouly to contract Scandalous Marriages or from the mouths of those Priests who had violated that Vow of Virginity which the Calvinists themselves confess to have been imposed on all Priests and on all Monks in the West by divers Councils and on all the Monks and all the Bishops in the East and the first fruit of this Doctrine was the setting open the Cloisters the taking off the Vails of the Nuns the abolishing of all Austerities and overthrowing of all manner of discipline in the Church This is that that forces him to say That the Reformers struck mens Eyes with a Spectacle that could not but create horrour according to the common Idea's of Piety and Vertue whech the Fathers give us The Author of the Prejudices will not take it ill that in order to our Answering him we must put him in mind what he himself exhorts us to To Transport our selves into another Time then that wherein we are at present and to represent to our selves our Separation in its first rise and during the first years wherein it was made amidst the Switzers and in France Upon his thus placing us in that State which he desires we will declare to him that The general Depravation which reign'd amidst the Monks and the Priests is to our Eyes a Spectacle worthy of horror according to the common Ideas of Piety and Vertue which the holy Scriptures and right Reason give us We will tell him that that which Scandalizes us is to see that for a respect of a purely humane Order they endured for so long a time a disorder that dishonoured the Latin Church that drew upon it God's Judgments and that laid open the Ministry of the Church to an everlasting reproach It is in the detesting of those Infamies and those Impurities that the true zeal of Christians ought to consist and it is to the searching out of a solid remedy for them that one ought to apply the Discipline of the Church and not to keep them up under a pretence of observing rash Vows and a Caelibasy that God never commanded If the Author of the Prejudices is more Scandalized to see Priests and Monks Married then to see them plunged into all the filthyness of Debauchery I cannot hinder my self from telling him that he makes Christianity a Law of Hypocrisy and it may be yet somewhat worse for Hypocrisy does not content it self with meer Names she would have fair appearances without of those things which she really rejects Whereas for him he rejects not only the things but their appearances also suffering patiently the loss of any more seeing either the things or their appearances provided we do not meddle with those empty names of Caelibacy and Virginity But true Moral Christianity inspires other Sentiments she would have us honour that Caelibacy and Virginity as gifts that come from God but she would also have a Contempt and horrour for those specious names when they shall be applyed to those beastlinesses and excesses which both God and Men condemn She would have us in that Case instead of being Scandalized to see a false Caelibacy made void and a vain shadow of Virginity abolished that we should on the contrary be edified to see them got out from those snares of sin and to have recourse to a lawful Marriage that God has allowed unto all and that he has even commanded unto those who have not received the gift of Continency It was in the View of this that our Fathers lookt upon the Marriage of those Priests and Monks as the Abolishing of an unjust Law contrary to the express words of Saint Paul if they cannot contain let them Marry and which moreover had produced such mischeivous effects as it was no longer possible for them to indure But says the Author of Prejudices we do not intend to speak of the Interests of Families of Marriage nor of base and fleshly passions in the lives of those Great Bishops and all those great men of old whom God opposed to the Heresies that rose up against his Church as Saint Cyprian Saint Athanasius Saint Basil Saint Gregory Nazianzen Saint Jerome Saint Epiphanius Saint Chrysostome and Saint Augustine They were all of them eminent in Sanctity in a disingagement
from Interests and continency was always joyned to their Ministry We may say of that Author without doing him an injury that he does not write ill what he thinks but that he scarce thinks well that which he writes and that which I shall here come to shew is an Example of it for he here lays down a great Trifle under the shew of one of the fairest things in the World Saint Cyprian Saint Athanasius and those other Bishops were not Marryed I see it but who told him That they did it by vertue of a general Law that forbad Bishops to be Married Who told him that divers other Bishops who were not less great then those for their Sanctity their disengagement from the interests of the World never lived in Marriage as Saint Spiridion Saint Gregory the Father of Gregory Nazianzen Saint Gregory Nysscne Saint Prosper Saint Hilary Sydonius Apollinaris Synesius Saint Eupsychus of Cesarea and divers others Who told him that Priests were not generally Married in the Primitive Church whether it were in the East or in the West as may be justified by a Thousand Proofs And in fine that they do not vainly wrangle in saying that those Bishops or those Priests were really Married before their Ordination but that they were not during their Prelateship or Priesthood whether it were that their Wives were dead and whether they were put away it is good to Note what the History of Saint Eupsychus of Cesaria in Cappadocia relates whom Saint Athanasius formally called a Bishop suffered Martyrdom within a little after his Marriage being as yet as it seemed in the days of his Nuptials and what Saint Cyprian relates of Novatus a Priest who was accused to have kicked his Wife who was great with Child and to have caused an Abortion which evidently concludes the use of Marriage during the Prelateship and Priesthood What then can the Author of the Prejudices conclude from the Example of Saint Athanasius and Saint Chrysostome and those others unmarried unless this that each one was in that regard in his full liberty and that as there were some that did marry so there were also some that did not Did he need for so little a matter to declaim Rhetorically and to set down these great words with an Emphasis That our Reformers struck mens Eyes with a Spectacle that could not but Create horrour according to the general Idea's of Piety and Vertue that the Fatheri give us I shall not say that the Idea's of Piety and Virtue do not depend on the Fathers but on the Gospel and right Reason and that it is by them that we ought to judge the Fathers and not those by the Fathers I will not say that the Fathers of the purer Antiquity are so far from giving us an horrour at the Marriage of Ecclesiasticks that Chrysostom assures us on the contrary that what Saint Paul wrote to Titus concerning a Bishops being the Husband of one Wife he has wrote wholly to stop the months of those Hereticks who condemned Marriage and to shew that Marriage is not only an Innocent thing but that it is so Honourable also that according to him it may be elèvated as high as the Episcopal Throne But I will only say and I will say it with an assurance of its being approved by all honest and upright men that the Marriage of Church-men which of it self is an honest and Holy State practised under the Old Law practised in the primitive Church and Authorised by the Scripture cannot be considered but with the greatest Edification when it shall be set in opposition to the disorders and filthinesses that Caelibacy has produced which is but a purely humane Institution without any lawful Foundation It belongs therefore to those of the Church of Rome to tell us whether they are much edified by the lives that their Priests led in the Age of the Reformation and by that permission which they gave them for a Sum of Money publickly to keep their Concubines They are to tell us whether they have no horrour for those strange assertions of their Doctors That a Priest Sins less who through the infirmity of the flesh falls into the Sin of Fornication then if he should marry and that it is a less evil for Priests to burn then to Marry As for us we have that general precept of Saint Paul which has its use as well in respect of Church-men as others if they cannot contain let them Marry and the Doctrine of the same Apostle Marriage is Honourable in all or in all things but the Whoremongers and Adulterers God will judge But the Author of the Prejudices says That the Law of Celibacy whether it were just or unjust or whether it did not begin if they will have it so till Pope Siricius's time they cannot at least deny That the spirit of God did not carry out all the Famous Bishops of Old and those who have been eminent for Sanctity to imitate Saint Paul and to follow that Counsel which he gives to renounce Marriage to set themselves wholly to please God and that the same spirit did not from the very first Ages of the Church inspire a very great number of Christians of both Sexes to remain Virgins all their Lives as Saint Justin witnesses and Origen against Celsus Whence then comes it to pass that there should have nothing appeared of that instinct or of those motions of Gods spirit in the pretended Reformers nor in the Societies which they have established any more than all those other Graces which shone so Illustriously in the Saints of Antiquity Here is yet further another example of that which I said just before that that Author does not take too much care of that which he writes For can there be a rasher thing in the World than to offer to thrust ones self into the Counsels of God and magisterially to decide what qualities the Reformers ought to have had Continency and Virginity are the Cifts that God distributes to men as he pleases but it is what he has given only to some Persons it no ways follows either that their Persons were not acceptable to him nor that he could not make use of them in the greatest works of his Providence Abraham the Father of the Faithful as the Scripture calls him was not he Married Isaac Jacob and the twelve Patriarchs who founded the Church of Israel were not they Moses the deliverer of the Antient People by whom God gave his Law and by whom he had wrought so many Miracles was not he Aaron and all the High-Preists who succeeded him were not they All those Calls and divers others whereof the Scripture speaks were methinks most weighty and for the greatest part extraordinary and nevertheless we do not see that God in giving them has made any Reflection upon the Advice of the Authour of the Prejudices Who ever gave him a right to lay down Rules with such Authority of what God ought
is Sin methinks it is not ill grounded to say either that the Church of Rome Sins when she invocates those Canonized Saints without any certainty of Faith or that she holds it as a matter of Divine Faith that the Pope cannot be deceived The Author of the Prejudices shall chuse which side he pleases if he takes the last he contradicts himself if he takes the former Saint Paul condemns him for he condemns all those who throw away the Acts of their Religion after that manner at all Adventure If the Efficacy of Agnus Dei's has not been established by the Councils that belief may be found at least heretofore so strongly and universally established in the Church of Rome that it may be very well ascribed to her without any fear of mistaking They tell us that Pope Vrban V. sent to John Palcologus the Emperour of the Greeks an Agnus folded up in fine Paper wherein there was written Fine Verses which explained all its properties Those Verses carry with them That the Agnus was made of Balmsanus and Wax with Crisom and that being Consecrated by Mystical words it drove away Thunder and scattered Storms that it gave Women an easy Birth that it prevented one from perishing on the Seas that it took away Sin that it kept back the Devil that it made a man to grow Rich that it secured one against Fire that it hindred one from dying a sudden death that it gave a man Victory over his Enemies and that in Fine a small piece of the Agnus had as much Vertue as the whole As for that which regards the Infallibility of the Popes their Temporal power over Kings and their Pre-eminence over the Councils we do not say that those were Articles of the Faith received throughout the whole Church of Rome There is not one of us that knows not that those pretensions were always opposed by the Sounder part of the French But they cannot deny that they were not at least the Pretences of Rome and that its Popes did not Determine That it was necessary to the Salvation of every Creature to be subject to them They cannot deny that Pope Gregory VII did not decide in a Council That the Church of Rome did never Err and that it would never Err according to the Testimony of the Scripture nor that the opinion of those who believe that the Pope is Infallible in his decisions of Faith is not the more common and general one in the Church of Rome and that those who hold it speak of the other only as an opinion that the Church Tolerates for the present and that they look upon it as an Errour and such a one as approaches even to Heresie for those are the express words of Bellarmine They cannot deny that they generally hold in the Church of Rome that the Pope is by Divine right the Soveraign Monarch of the Church whom all Christians are bound to obey the Soveraign and Universal Vicar of Jesus Christ his Soveraign Pastor to whom Jesus Christ has given a fulness of power which goes not far from ascribing Infalliblity to him They cannot deny that the Popes did not often define that the Church of Rome is the Mother and Mistress of all other Churches and that the Council of Trent has not also declared it in divers places They cannot deny that the Popes did not pretend to be above the Councils that Sixtus IV. did not condemn a certain man called Peter de Osma for having taught that the Pope could not dispence with the Ordinances of the Universal Church nor that Leo X. did not declare in the Council of Lateran with the approbation of the Council That it was evident as well from the Testimony of Scripture as that of the Fathers and of other Bishops of Rome who had gone before and by the Holy Cannons and by the very Confession of the Councils themselves that the Pope alone had a right and power to call Councils together to transfer and dissolve them as having Authority over all Councils They cannot deny that the same Leo did not condemn Luther for having appealed from him the Pope to a Council against the Constitutions says he of Pius II. of Julius II. who ordained that those who made such Appeals should be punished with the same Penalties that were decided against Hereticks nor that the Council of Trent did not submit it self to its Confirmation of the Pope as it may appear by the last Act of that Council And as to the pretences of the Popes over the Temporalties of Kings they cannot deny that Clement V. has not declared in one of his Clemintines as they are called That it ought not not to be Questioned but that he had a Superiority over the Empire and that the Empire being void he sucbeeded in the power of the Emperour nor that Alexander VI. did not give out of his pure Liberality says he of his certain knowledge and fullness of power to the Kings of Castile and Leon all the Lands newly discovered in the Indies as if they had belonged to him nor that Gregory VII did not decide in his Council of Rome That the Pope could depose Emperours and dispence-with the Oaths of Allegiance to their Subjects nor that Innocent III. did not ordain in the Council of Lateran That if any Temporal Prince neglected to purge his Territories of all Heresie the Bishops should Excommunicate him and that if within a Year he gave no Satisfaction they should make it known to the Soveraign Bishop to the end that he should declare his Subjects absolved from their Duty of Fealty and that he should expose his Land to be taken by Catholicks They cannot also deny as to Practice that there are not divers Examples to be found of Popes who undertook effectually to depose Emperours and Kings and to give away their Kingdomes to others In fine as to that which regards their Jurisdiction over Souls in Purgatory no Body is ignorant that the Popes pretended to have Power to draw Souls out of Purgatory at least through the dispensation of the Treasure of the Church which is that which they say is made up of the Super-abundant Satisfactions of Jesus Christ and the Saints It is upon that also that their Indulgences in respect of the Dead are Founded and Leo in his Bull of Excommunication against Luther had wrote That Indulgences were neither necessary nor useful to the Dead Furthermore I cannot forbear taking notice here of the Fallacy that the Author of the Prejudices gives us and which is common to him with a great many other persons He would have us Judge of that Doctrine of the Roman Church but only by that which she has decided in her Councils or by that which is contained in an Act of the Profesion of the Faith which she makes those make who embraue her Communion This I say is a perfect Fallacy 1. Because we ought also to Judge of
matter of this importance we should take the greatest care to avoid dazling our sight with words that would have more of shew then Solidity it will be good to inform our selves more exactly whether this way is so easy as they represent it whether there do not occur some Obstacles that hinder our passing further and whether it be not of so excessive a length that we ought not rationally to hope to come to the end of it whatsoever diligence we use whether it be fitted to all the World and whether there be not any person who may not going on faithfully in it arrive to the end whether it leads Behold here another Conclusion against our way inwraped under a so to wit that it is of a length so excessive as we ought not rationally to hope ever to get to the end whatsoever diligence we use and that at least it is not fitted to all the World In what follows he fills his Chapter with the Objections and difficulties that tend to turn away men from the Scripture and to make them conceive that in effect it is that infinite way which has no issue at all of which he had spoke and that way of so excessive a length that we could never come to the end of whatsoever Diligence we should use But the meaning of that is that according to him the way to be assured of the Articles of the Faith by the Scripture is absolutely unprofitable to all men of what order soever they be and for what Truth soever it be For an infinite way which has no issue and the length of which is so excessive that we could never with all the diligence we should use come to the end of it is equally unprofitable to all as well to the Learned as the Ignorant And moreover the greatest part of the difficulties that render it infinite according to him being not to be found in some private passages but in the Scripture in general it follows that we can never be assured by that means of any Truth So that behold here according to the Author of the Prejudices the Scripture absolutely unprofitable and that for all sorts of men and all sorts of Truths In one word as the Tilte of his Chapter bears it is a ridiculous way and impossible to instruct men in the Truth Whatsoever Prejudice there has been in the Church of Rome against the Reformation I cannot believe that it would not be shaken at so scandalons and un-Christian a Proposition For to treat the holy Scripture which is the Oracle of Christians and the word of God as a ridiculous way and to reject it as absolutely unprofitable and improper to instruct men in the Truth without distinction without Limitation as much for one sort as for another as much for one truth as for another is methinks a new Gospell which we have not yet heard spoken of for there was never any thing spoke so high till this or to say better none were ever yet carried out to such Excesses We have read in Pamelius and some others with Indignation and Horrour That the Scripture is a nose of wax which may he turned which way we please and that it is far more easy to wrest it to Profane and Impious things then it is to make use of half the verses of Virgil to Compose Epithalamiums We have seen in Pighius and elsewhere that the Scripture is a dumb Rule a dumb Witness a dead and lifeless thing a Sword that cuts with both edges and such other Expressions injurious to the Scripture But no body that I know of ever went so far yet as to make it a ridiculous way for the Instructing of men in the Truth There are enough in the world who know that these Gentlemen of whose number the Author of the Prejudices is write nothing but for one and the same Intrest and with the same Spirit I may therefore methinks with very good reason make use for this occasion of what the Author of the Translation of the New Testament of Mons has wrote in his Preface to oppose it to the Author of the Prejudices to shew him that the Spirit that animates them is an unequal Spirit that blows both cold and hot For behold what that Preface carries in it We hope that not only the Souls of the more learned but even of the Simpler sort may find here that is to say in the Translation that which shall be necessary for their instructtion provided that they read at with an intire Simplicity of heart and Address themselves humbly to the Son of God in saying to him with Peter Lord to whom should we go It is thou who hast the words of Eternal Life and it is thou alone who canst make us learn They must goe to him as those in the Gospel of when it is said that they came to hear him and to be healed of their Diseases And a little lower The Holy Scripture is like to a great River saith Saint Gregore which has always slid 〈◊〉 and which will do so 〈◊〉 the end of the world The great and the small The mighty and the feeble may find there that living water which rises up even unto Heaven it â—ffers it self to all and is fitted to all it has a simplicity that descends even to the Souls of the most simple and a height that excercises and elevates the most raised all may draw there indiffirently but it will be farr from being able to be drawn dry by filling us we may always lose our selves in the bottomless depths of learning and wisdom that we may adore without being able to comprehend But that which ought to comfort us in that Obscurity is that according to Saint Augustine the holy Scripture sets before us in an Easy and Intelligible manner all that which is necessary to us for the Conduct of our Lives which she explains and makes clear her self in telling us clearly in some Places that which she said obscurely in others This Language is very different from that which they hold in the Book of the Prejudices The one says That we shall find in the Scripture all that which is necessary for our Instruction and the other assures us that the way of the Scripture is Ridiculous and Impossible to instruct men in the Truth The one declares that the Scripture propounds to us after an Easy and Intelligible manner all that is necessary for the Conduct of our lives which it explains and makes clear her self and the other says that it is a way of so excessive a length that we ought not rationally to hope ever to come to the end whatsoever dilligence we should use The one makes it a means of Instruction proper not only for Inlightned Souls but even for the Simpler sort for great and small for strong and weak and the other in making it an Infinite way which has no Issue makes it improper not only for the simple but even for the most
visible and Transfigured into an Angel of light and in the shape of a Preacher in the Chair of Truth and what else would he perswade the Faithful too but that the Faithful ought to take very great heed not to read the Holy Scripture and not to meditate day and night upon the words of life that the Spirit of God has dictated to the Prophets and which God the Father has given to his Son for the Instruction of his Church and to draw it from the Corruption of the world to render it Holy and without Spot to his Father who gave it to him Jesus Christ was the Word uf God and liv'd by that Word and to make his Church live he gave it his word in an Intelligible Tongue out of his own mouth and by his Disciples Search says he and examine carefully the Scriptures for they are they which Testify of me Thus it is that they speak of it sometimes Jesus Christ gave his Scripture to the Faithful with a Commandment to read it to examine it carefully and to hear it It was the Judge of the beleif of the Church and the Difficulties and Questions that arose in the Doctrine of the Faith and Manners The Parishioners made use of them against their Bishops They encountred even their Ordinances by passages out of that Scripture they maintain'd that the use of them belonged to all Christians by a natural right and that to go about to deprive them of them was to do an action of the Devil But now a days they speak no more after that manner for they tell us on the contrary that it is a Ridiculous and Impossible way to Instruct men in the Truth an Infinite way which has no Issue and which is of so excessive a length that whatsoever dilligence we should use we can never arrive to the end and they labour to heap difficulties upon difficulties to drive them back and to make a Labyrinth full of Circles and confus'd ways that so out of a fear of those Confusions the world should take heed of entring into it For my own part I freely acknowledg That I can comprehend nothing in all that For if before one can assure ones self of one only Passage of Scripture whatsoever it be we must needs go through a thousand tedious ways and overcome a thousand Obstacles that arise from the Question about the Canonical Books about the Conformity of the Translations with the Originals about the different manner of reading the Passages and about the difference of Interpretations as the Author of the Prejudices would have it according to his ordinary Exaggeration to what purpose is it to give the publick a Translation which after the manner that it was given and receiv'd in cannot but be subject to the greatest part of those difficulties and yet notwithstanding they put it into all mens hands as well the Ignorant as the Learned as well of the simple as the more Inlightned as well to women as to men The Church of Rome has not declared it Authentick Two Bishops and a Doctor have approved it but two Arch-bishops and a Cardinal have forbidden it and yet one has not failed notwithstanding those Prohibitions to maintain that all the world ought to read them and that that forbidding them is a Violence a Novelty an unexampled Enterprise a bold Attempt upon the Liberty that God has given to the Church ransomed at the price of the Blood of his own Son that it is an usurpation and the Introducing of a Tyrannical Authority that was never excercised in the Church until this day and that every one is bound not only not to obey that Ordinance but even to have an Horror for it and to resist it as much as he can What will then become of those Difficulties and those unconquerable Confufions which hinder them according to the Author of the Prejudices so that they cannot assure themselves of one only Passage of the Scripture through the uncertaitty wherein a man is of the unfaithfulness of the Translations through the Ignorance wherein we are of the different manner of reading those Passages and through the necessity of consulting Interpreters Is it because they would expresly engage the People in an Infinite way and which can come to no Issue and in a ridiculous way and which is Impossible for the Instructing of any in the Truth or is it rather because they did not propound to themselves in that Translation to Instruct men in the Truths of the Faith but only to satisfy their Curiosity and to make them read good French The Author of the Prejudices may acknowledge therefore if he pleases that the heat of Disputation has carried him beyond the bounds of Right and Reason and the respect which he ought to have for the word of God and that in endeavouring to have troubled us he has done it for himself and his Freinds for if that which he has propounded were true they would give us a ground to accuse those who have publish'd the Translation of Mons of Rashness and Imprudence And it will be nothing to the purpose to say that they Publish'd it for those persons who were already Instructed in the Truths which the Church believes that therein they might receive a Confirmation and increase of the Faith by the Conformity which they should find the Doctrines of the Church have with it and that it was necessary for that that they should go through all the difficulties which the Author of the Prejudices has worked since the Sole Conformity of it with the Doctrines of the Church would be sufficient to assure them that it was truly the word of God I say that answer will not satisfy For besides that it is an Injury to the word of God to make the Efficacy that it has in our Souls to depend upon the Conformity which it has with the Doctrine of the Church whereas on the contrary the Efficacy of the Doctrine of the Church ought to depend on its Conformity with the word of God besides that the Author of the Preface says expresly That the Souls of the simpler sort may find that in his Translation which is necessary for their Instruction He says not those who shall be already Instructed in that which the Church teaches but he says the Simpler sort he does not say that they would be Confirmed in the Instruction which they had already but that they would find that which should be necessary for their Instruction And elsewhere he says That the word of God that is to say in his Translation for it is about the Subject of that Translation that he speaks is the Light of the Blind and the Life of the Dead Which signifies that it gives by it self the first Impressions of the Spiritual Life So that it was not in the view of the knowledge that the simple might have of the Doctrine of the Roman Church that he publish'd that Translation if we believe the
all that it is necessary that every one should mistrust his own Eyes and the defects of his memory and that he should be always recollecting his first thoughts to keep himself from passing a wrong Judgment In fine we will also demand of the Author of the Prejudices whether he would not give the Scripture this Honour to reckon it for one part of Tradition since it contains the first Sermons of the Apostles from whence we may draw a great deal of light for the deciding of the Question upon which we are which is that of the Authority and Infallibility of the Church of Rome For how can any man rationally determine himself upon a point of that weight without consulting the first and the most Antient piece of Tradition But that being so we see here how we are fallen back into the difficulties and perplexities which the Author of the Prejudices pretends to be unconquerable And as those Gentlemen are liable enough to be beaten with their own Weapons we will only turn against him the conclusions that he pretends to draw against us from his Principles and demand of him Whether he believes this way very proper for those who are Obliged to spend the greatest part of their time in other Employments Whether he believes it proper for Judges Magistrats Tradesmen Labourers Souldiers Women Children for those who do not understand any of the Languages into which the Fathers are Translated for the Blind who cannot Read and for those who have no quickness of understanding If I only propounded to my self to refute this Author I might content my self with what I have said and wait with patience for what he should have to propose to disintangle his Catechumeni from the Difficulties and lengths whereinto he himself has plunged them But because I desire also to satisfy mens Con Consciences I think my self bound to Answer directly to his Objections Let us therefore see those four Maxims which he says our Principle includes and without which he is certain it cannot subsist As to the first we shall tell him that it does not belong to us to lay down the proofs of this Proposition That the Church of Rome for this is that we are about is not infallible in her decisions concerning the Faith she is naturally subject to be deceived if she pretends to have a priviledge that exempts her from a weakness common to all men it belongs to her to shew it and to convince the world of it but till then we shall always have a ground to presume that she is subject to that general Law and that is sufficient without any other proof to hinder us from acknowledging her for the Rule of Faith As to the Second which is That Traditions do not make up any part of the Rule of Faith we shall tell him That it is not necessarily incumbent on us to bring a passage of Scripture to exclude Traditions that Common sence is enough for that because it dictates to all men even to the most simple if they would take heed that after sixteen hundred years or thereabouts which are gone since the Apostles days Tradition cannot but be a very confused and uncertain thing and that being so vagous as it is after its having passed through the hands of an infinite number of men naturally unsetled and changeable it is not imaginable that they should not have altered increased lessened it since that happens through a long tract of Time to all other things and by consequence that it could not at present but be out of a condition to serve for a Rule of Faith Thus far the most simple are within the limits of nature and general Experience If they pretend that Tradition ought to be exempted it does not belong to us to shew that it is not it is their part who make that pretension to produce their Reasons and yet for all that it must be presumed on the side of Nature and general Experience It appears therefore already that the Two First Propositions which our Hypothesis includes according to the Author of the Prejudices to wit That the Church of Rome is not Infallible in its decisions concerning the Faith and that Traditions do not make up any part of the Rule of Faith do not give us the least difficulty but they give an infinite one to our adversaries For they ought solidly to prove the contrary Propositions not only to the Learnned and knowing persons but to the most simple also to Tradesmen to Labourers to Souldiers to Women and generally to all or otherwise they abuse their credulity retaining them without Reason and without Justice in their Communion in which they cannot remain with a good Conscience unless they are assured of the Truth of these two Articles That the Church of Rome is Infallible in her decisions of Faith and that Traditions make up a part of the Rule of Faith But how can those people have that certainty As for what respects the Third Proposition to wit That the Scripture contains all the points of the Faith generally it has no more need then the others to be proved by passages of Scripture It is sufficient to establish it to see that we cannot be assured of the Faith either by the decisions of the Church or Tradition For that thing it self necessarily leads all Christians to the Scripture alone there being nothing besides the decisions of the Church and Tradition that can Dispute a part with it There remains therefore only the Fourth Proposition which is That the Scriptures generally contain all the points of Faith after a manner fitted to the understandings of all the World But this proposition so framed is not ours neither is it included in our Hypothesis We only say that that which the Scripture contains in a manner fitted to the understanding of all the World concerning the Faith and Manners is sufficient for Salvation provided that moreover they have not Errors that hinder that effect But there is no need of proving this proposition by Texts of Scripture It sufficiently proves it self as well by the very nature of the things that the Scripture clearly Teaches as by the light of common sence and the first notions of the Conscience For those first notions dictate to all Christians that although God be free in the dispensation of his Call he is notwithstanding in good earnest towards all those to whom his Call is addressed and that there being among those the weak as well as the strong the simple as well as the Learned it must necessarily be concluded that he would render his Salvation inaccessible or impossible to the simpler sort provided that they seriously applyed themselves to it according to their Call The Author of the Prejudices himself acknowledges this Principle and he calls it a principle of common sence He draws ill consequences from it but the True Consequence that must be drawn is Those things which the Scripture clearly Teaches and after a manner
in that of other Bishops Since the Popes were raised to that high Dignity wherein we behold them at this day each Nation has thought that it ought in some manner to participate in their Nomination because the business was about one common interest they would have the Protectors of their Interests in the Colledge of Cardinals and Princes themselves have interpos'd but they can see nothing like that in the Primitive Church Rome alone made her Bishops without the participation of other Churches 2. Victor Bishop of Rome having excommunicated the Churches of Asia who celebrated the Feast of Easter after the manner of the Jews S. Irenaeus with the Bishops of France opposed themselves to that Excommunication and wrote as well to Victor as to the other Bishops and in effect those Churches of Asia did not cease to remain in the Communion of the Catholick Church notwithstanding that action of Victor as it appears from the Testimony of Socrates who formally sayes that those who contended about the business of Easter did not nevertheless refuse communion with one another So that their Bishops were called and received in the Council of Nice without any difficulty for Eusebius notes expresly among those who were called by Constantine the Syrians the Cilicians and the Mesopotamians who were Quartodecumani he sayes that Constantine would conferr pleasantly and familiarly with the Bishops about matters that were in question and that he would bring them all by that means to the same opinion even about the matter of Easter and S. Athanasius testifies that it was to accord that difference that all the World was assembled at the Council of Nice and that the Syrians came to the same opinion with the rest and that they earnestly contended against the Heresie of Arius which shews us that they assisted at the Council without any notice being taken of Victor's Excommunication From whence it is no very hard matter to conclude what Aeneas Sylvius Cardinal of Sienna and afterwards Pope has acknowledged in one of his Letters That before the Council of Nice every one lived according to his own wayes and that men had but a very small regard to the Church of Rome 3. In the sixth Century a great trouble being raised in the Church upon the occasion of three Writings the one of Theodoret Bishop of Cyrus the other of Ibas Bishop of Edessa and the third of Theodoret of Mopsuesta which had been read and approved in the Council of Chalcedon but whom the most judged to be Heretical Pope Vigilius openly took up the desence of those three Writings and vigorously oppos'd himself to the condemnation that the Emperour Justinian and the Eastern Patriarchs had made of them But in the end being drawn to Constantinople he changed his opinion and consented to that condemnation whither he was carried out to it by the complaisance which he had for the Emperour who had a great affection for that business or whether out of some other principle Howsoever it were that action appear'd so criminal in the eyes of a great number of Orthodox Bishops that they separated themselves and their Churches from the Communion of Vigilius and his Party and even the Church of Africa assembled in Council as Victor of Tunis an African Bishop witnesses who lived in those times Synodically excommunicated that Pope leaving him notwithstanding means to re-establish himself by repentance These Actions prove in my judgement very sufficiently that the faithful then did not look upon the Church of Rome as the Mistress of all others nor on the communion or dependance on its See as a thing absolutely necessary to the salvation of Christians There can nothing be said in effect more opposite to the Spirit of the Christian Religion than that Imagination God had heretofore fixed his Communion with that of the Israelites and established in Jerusalem and in its High Priests the center of Ecclesiastical Unity But when Jesus Christ brought his Gospel into the world he changed that order not by transporting the rights of Jerusalem to Rome nor those of the High Priests to the Popes but by abolishing wholly that necessity of Communion to a certain place and that particular dependance on a certain See This is what S. Paul clearly enough teaches in his third Chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians In the new man sayes he there is neither Greek nor Jew neither Circumcision nor Vncircumcision neither Barbarian or Scythian bond or free but Jesus Christ is all and in all He had had no reason to express himself after that manner if that new man whereof he spoke had necessarily been a Roman and depending on the Communion of the Bishop of Rome So also the same Apostle setting that Evangelical Church that Jesus Christ had assembled in opposition to the ancient and earthly Jerusalem makes not that opposition to consist in this that the one is Jerusalem and the other Rome the one the head City of Judaea and the other that of the Empire but he makes it to consist in this that one is earthly and the other heavenly the one below and the other on high the one ty'd to a certain place from whence it cannot go and the other independent on all manner of particular places in the world and having no necessary dependence on any but Heaven For it is to this purpose that he calls the Jerusalem that is above the heavenly Jerusalem the City of the living God the Church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven It is in the view of that that Jesus Christ said to the Samaritan Woman believe me the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father But the hour cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth The Samaritans would establish the center of Religion on the Mountain where Jacob and the twelve Patriarchs had built an Altar to God the Jews on the contrary established it in the City of Jerusalem To all that Jesus Christ opposes not the Capital City as the new Mountain which he had chosen nor Rome as another Jerusalem but the Spirit and the Truth that is to say Faith and Piety alone abstracted from all those relations to particular places and independent on all Cities and Mountains The same thing is justified by the censure that S. Paul passed on the Corinthians in that one said I am of Paul another I am of Apollos and another I am of Cephas that is to say of Peter For we ought not to imagine that those men meant that they were so of Paul or of Apollos or of Peter as to be no more of Jesus Christ or that they would take Paul or Apollos or Cephas for heads equal to Jesus Christ They were Christians and they were not ignorant of the difference they were to make between Jesus Christ and his Apostles No without doubt they were not ignorant
and which the Donatists acknowledg'd to be Orthodox was then actually and in effect spread over the whole Earth that is to say that it had a great extent among the Nations of it whereas that of the Donatists was shut up within one small part of Africk It was upon this that they abused a passage of the Canticles which they read after this manner Tell me O thou whom my soul loveth where thou feedest where thou makest thy flocks to rest in the South explaining this in the South as if he would have noted the place and said in Africa whereas it should be read at noon-day meerly to note the hour of the day when the Shepherd led his flock under some shade for their rest This is that which makes S. Augustine also speak to them sometimes of the Apostolical Churches and those to whom S. John wrote his Apocalypse with whom they had no communion and to reproach them so often for being separated from all the World The third Observation is That that Society which the Donatists acknowledged to be Orthodox and which was in effect spread over many Nations had not cut off the Donatists from its communion nor had separated the former from it if they had not excommunicated them nor pronounced Anathema's against those who should not hold Cecilianus to be innocent or the Traditors to have been good men When any one of them return'd to the Church they did not seek to make them renounce any other thing than their Schism nor to embrace any thing besides peace And even in the judgement of the Synod of Rome Milciades and his brethren offered to hold communion with the Bishops that Majorinus had ordained and in the Conference at Carthage they offered to the Donatist Bishops to own them for Bishops and to preserve their Sees to them without requiring any other condition of them than that of brotherly Unity It was therefore the Donatists who separated themselves wilfully out of a meer spirit of division and the Church was in respect of them in a passive Separation Lastly The fourth Observation is That although the Donatists should have had any just occasion to separate yet they had urged their Separation notwithstanding as far as it could go for they had carried it so far as even to break that general bond which yet in some manner united all those who make an external profession of Christianity good and bad Orthodox and Hereticks which yet in some manner make but one body in opposition to Pagans and other people absolutely Infidels Their Principle was That all the Christians in the World except the party of Donatus being sullied with the contagion of the Traditor Cecilianus all that they had also done became sullied by the uncleanness of their persons and upon this Principle they condemned the Christianity of the Universal Church they rejected her Baptism and her Sacraments although at the bottom they had the same with hers and they look'd upon that Society to be no otherwise than an Assembly of Pagans and Infidels with whom they would have nothing common This is what St. Augustine reproaches them with in divers places in his Writings They say sayes he that they are Christians but they say also that they only are so They make no scruple to say that they know that out of their Sect there are no Christians You hold sayes he to them elsewhere that all Christian Holiness has been abolish'd among the Nations where the Apostles had establish'd it because they have communicated with those whom your Fathers condemned in their Council of Carthage Therefore it was that they thought themselves grievously affronted when the Catholicks called them their Brethren they fled from their Communion they would not so much as sit together with them and they re-baptiz'd all those who had been baptiz'd in the Church when they came over to their Communion neither more or less than if they had come out of Paganism because they maintained that in effect the Church was absolutely perish'd throughout all the Earth except in their Party These are the matters of fact that I have thought my self bound to explain We must now return to the Objection of the Author of the Prejudices and examine it in the meaning of S. Augustine and the African Fathers the proposition of which it is composed The first is That there is a Church from which it is never allow'd any man to separate himself under what pretence soever and from which all those who do so separate themselves are Schismaticks This first Proposition is ambiguous and so confused that we can very hardly comprehend in what sense the Author of the Prejudices has meant it Every one knows that there is in the World a Body of people or of Nations who profess themselves to be Christians and to whom one may yet in some manner give the name of the Church because that all such Christians are yet in some respect within the General Call of the Gospel It is therefore this Church of which he means to speak But what likelihood is there that to accuse us of Schism he should have form'd so vagous an Idea of the Church since he knows very well that we are no more separated from this body than the other communions that compose it are or than the Church of Rome her self in particular is Every one knows that this body of Christians is divided into divers communions or particular Societies that bear the name of Churches as the Greek the Roman the Protestant the Coptick the Jacobite the Nestorian the Armenian Does he mean any one of these Churches But if that be so why does he not distinctly and without any hesitation tell us which it is and if he would that it should be that of Rome what ground is there to believe that he would have it so why did he not explain himself why did he make an end even to say That it should be in our choice whether that Church should be the Greek or the Nestorian or the Jacobites and that he did not pretend to determine it To what purpose are all these goings about Every one knows yet that God alwayes preserves in the world his truly faithful and his Children who are the true Church which he has predestinated to eternal Salvation But the Author of the Prejudices has formerly declared himself against this notion of the Church and he is so very earnest to reject it that we cannot impute it to him without doing him wrong We cannot even believe that he means That we ought not to separate our selves from a Communion when it is Orthodox and when those who separate themselves from it are Schismaticks For he has also declar'd himself against this Notion of the Church because sayes he in taking this way the examination of Schism would be remitted to that of the Opinions and that we must alwayes know whether the Communion that they forsake is Orthodox
which is that which he would avoid What therefore is this Church It is sayes he the Catholick Church wheresoever it be We are now as wise as we were before for it alwayes remains to be enquir'd into What is that Catholick Church I freely confess that it seems to me that he would point it out to us by a certain mark which is the visible extension throughout all Nations but in effect he does it not for he sayes in the end that this is but a Negative mark that is to say that every Society which has not that mark is not the Church So that according to him this is a mark only proper to shew what it is not and not to shew what it is Whence therefore shall we know what this Church is Moreover his Proposition is not only ambiguous through the word Church but it is further so through that of Separation for there is more than one sort of Separation There are such as are unjust and criminal in their own nature and there are others which are only so in causes and circumstances there are also such as are permitted and those that deserve to be condemned there are necessary ones and such as are rash so that one cannot make any general proposition upon this matter which would not be captious and proper to make a Fallacy It is necessary therefore in order to his acting with sincerity that the Author of the Prejudices should openly explain his meaning which he labours to establish by the Authority of S. Augustine and the other Fathers and after having so cleared and establish'd it he should propound his conclusion that he would pretend to draw from it for then we should see whether we ought to yield or deny it But to begin a convincing argument by a principle so vagous and so confused as this that we have seen and even to affect that confusion without being willing to explain himself is in my judgement a procedure very fit to be suspected and which may justly make us doubt that instead of a convincing argument he gives us nothing but a Fallacy To clear this doubt it will be here necessary to give a clear and distinct Idea of the Doctrine of S. Augustine upon this subject about which we are disputing First Then we must know that this Father acknowledg'd that the truly Faithful only and the truly Just in opposition to the Wicked the Wordly Infidels and Hereticks were the true Church properly so called and this is what may be proved by an infinite number of passages It must not be imagin'd sayes he in his answer to Petilianus that the wicked belong to the Body of Jesus Christ which is the Church under a pretence that they corporally partake of the Sacraments The Sacraments are holy even in such persons but they serve only to increase their condemnation because they give and receive them unworthily And as for them they are not in that assembly of the Church of Jesus Christ which consisting in his members increases by being compacted and fitly joyned with the increase of God For this Church is built upon a Rock according to what our Saviour said Vpon this Rock I will build my Church and the others are only built upon the sand as the same Lord said I will liken him who heareth my words and doth not what they teach to a foolish man who built his house upon the sand And elsewhere Both the good and the wicked may baptize but there is but one only God alwayes good who can wash the conscience The wicked are therefore at present condemned by Jesus Christ because they have a wicked and defiled conscience and at present they are not of his Body which is the Church although the Church her self is ignorant that they are not for Jesus Christ cannot have any of his members condemned So that they baptize being themselves out of the Church For God is not pleased that all these Monsters should be reckon'd among the members of that only Dove nor that they should enter into his enclosed Garden the keeper whereof can never be deceiv'd And elsewhere Whether they seem to be in the Church or whether they be openly discover'd to be out of it that which is flesh is alwayes flesh That the chaff as it is unfruitful flyes in the air whether it be blown thither by the occasion of some temptation as by the wind or no it is alwayes chaff Those who being hardned by carnality are mingled in the Assembly of the Saints cease not to be separated from the Vnity of that Church which is without spot or wrinkle It is therefore certain that S. Augustine acknowledg'd none to be properly the Church but the truly Faithful and truly Righteous But because that these faithful and these righteous are mix'd with the wicked the worldly and Hereticks in the circle of the same External Call as the chaff is with the good seed in the same Floor or as the Tares are mingled with the good Wheat in the same Field We must note in the second place that S. Augustine gives another notion of the Church which he calls the mixed Church and it is to explain this notion that he sets before us all the comparisons that the Scripture makes use of to represent the mixture of the good with the bad in the same Call that of the field where the Son of Man cast his seed and where the Enemy arose in the night and sowed his Tares also so that the Wheat and the Tares must grow there together till the time of harvest that of the Net that the Fisherman cast into the Sea and which inclosed equally the good and bad Fish that of the Floor where the good Grain is mixed with the Chaff and that of the House in which there are Vessels of Gold and Silver and others of Wood and Earth It is for the same thing that he makes use of the distinction of the true body of Jesus Christ and the mixed body of Jesus Christ meaning by true the truly faithful and righteous only and by mixed the faithful and righteous joyned with those who are not so and that both together by reason of their mixture in one and the same external call make in a manner but one and the same body He makes use for the same purpose of the distinction of being of the Church and being in the Church and he would that none but the truly faithful and righteous are of the Church but that the others are in the Church and by this means he forms two Idea's of the Church the one distinct and the other confused the distinct restrains the Church precisely to those in whom she properly consists and who are her true members and these are the truly righteous and faithful but the confused includes all those who externally profess themselves to be Christians the good Wheat and the Tares the Chaff and the good Seed the good and
Observation on their Story This Distinction that I have of these two sorts of separation is clearly to be found in the Doctrine of S. Augustine He notes both the one and the other in his third Book against Parmenio where he treats of this matter very largely When any brother sayes he that is to say any Christian among those who are in the Society of the Church falls into so great sins that they judge worthy of an Anathema I would have them proceed to his Excommunication if that may be done without any danger of Schism but yet it ought to be done with that charity that S. Paul recommends to us to wit that we should not treat him as an Enemy but as a Brother for you are not called to pluck up but to correct If he does not acknowledge nor correct his fault by repentance he wilfully goes out of himself from the Church and it will be his own will that separates him from the Christian Vnity Our Lord himself said to his servants when they would pluck up the Tares mixed with the Wheat leave them to grow up together until harvest and he gives the reason to wit lest sayes he that in plucking up the Tares you pluck up the Wheat also See here precisely these two separations whereof I speak the one that deprives one of the communion of the Sacraments and the other which breaks of Christian Unity one which is but to correct and the other which goes as far as to pluck up This Father alledges for the same thing the Example of S. Paul who in the Excommunication of the Incestuous person in Corinth did indeed deliver that miserable person to Satan but only for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus that is to say that he depriv'd him of the communion of the Sacraments but that he did not wholly pluck him up out of the field of the Church He alledges yet further what the same Apostle wrote to the Thessalonians If any man obey not our word by this Epistle note that man and have no company with him that he may be ashamed yet count him not as an enemy but admonish him as a brother He alledges lastly that which S. Paul wrote to the Corinthians touching the same incestuous penitent that they ought to pardon him Lest Satan should get an advantage over us for we are not ignorant of his devices What means the Apostle sayes he by these words lest Satan should get an advantage over us for we are not ignorant of his devices It is that under the appearance of a just severity he sometimes perswades to a violent cruelty desiring nothing more than to break the bond of peace and charity well knowing that while that bond shall be preserved among Christians he cannot hurt them and that his devices and designs would vanish There cannot be a more perfect example of that first separation given than that of the Donatists in respect of the Church for as I have said already they so absolutely separated themselves from it that they did not own it to be any longer Christian in any manner and therefore it was that they re-baptiz'd all those who came over to their party But we cannot also give a better example of the second than that of the Church it self in regard of the Donatists for although they would separate themselves from the Church yet the Church did not fail to look upon them as Christians and in some manner as Brethren The Donatists sayes S. Augustine are impious in going about to re-baptize all the world but as for us who have better sentiments we dare not even disapprove of the Sacraments of God in a Schismatical Communion In respect of the things about which we agree they are yet with us and in respect of the things about which we differ they are separated from us This approach to us and this separation are not ordered by the motions of the body but by those of the mind and as the union of bodies is made by the continuity of the places they fill up so the union of spirits also is made by the consent of wills If those who have forsaken the Vnity of the Church do other things than those that are done in the Church they are in that regard separated from her but if they do that which is done in the Church they remain as yet in that regard in a common union The Donatists are therefore with us in some things and they are separated from us in some others I cannot here avoid taking notice of the Error into which the Author of the Prejudices seems to have fallen about the meaning of these words of S. Augustine in the second Book against Parmenianus praecidendae unitatis nulla est justa necessitas There is no just necessity to break off Vnion For it seems that he thought that this Maxim regarded all manner of separation not considering that it only respects that of the Donatists which consisted in the breaking the general bond of Christianity and not that which consists in refusing our communion to those who corrupt Religion by their pernicious Superstitions and Errors If he had taken the pains to have read ten or twelve lines higher he had found that S. Augustine had strongly establish'd the necessity of separating our selves from Hereticks S. Paul sayes that Father writing to the Galatians manifestly forbids them to hear those who did not preach Iesus Christ but a falshood and a lye If any one should preach another Gospel to you than what you have received let him be Anathema He would that we should pronounce an Anathema against those who preach to us any thing beyond what we have received He would elsewhere that there can be no just necessity of breaking of unity Who sees not that he must make a distinction and that according to him there is a separation that is good just and necessary and another unjust unlawful and schismatical Although this Distinction is unquestionable yet I shall not fail to produce here a Canon that establishes it out of the very Doctrine of S. Augustine as clearly as we can desire it It is in the Decree of Gratian under the name of Pope Vrban in these terms Some men say that when we excommunicate persons who have deserv'd to be excommunicated we go against the Parable of the Gospel where our Lord forbids us to pluck up the tares out of his field They say also that this contrary to S. Augustine who assures us that we ought not to divide its unity and that we must tolerate the wicked and not reject them But first of all we answer that if we ought not to excommunicate the Hereticks and the wicked S. Augustine would have done ill to have joyn'd himself to the Legates of the Holy Church of Rome and to the other Holy Bishops to excommunicate Pelagius and Celestinus and to separate
not God his Prophets and his Altars yet among them Lord said Elias they have killed thy Prophets and thrown down thy Altars And the hundred Prophets of God that Obadiah hid in two Caves to withdraw them from the persecution of the Idolatress Jezabel the Altar of God that Elias repaired in Carmel to sacrifice there by the miraculous fire that fell down from Heaven to consume the victim the calling of Elisha and Micaiah and in a word the whole History of those schismatical Ten Tribes does it not evidently note that God looked on them as his true Church in which there was yet a means to be saved We must not therefore abuse that which the Fathers have wrote against Schismaticks in intending to aggravate their crime and to draw them from it nor must we take their expressions in the whole rigour of the letter Their meaning is not that all those generally who are found engaged in a Schismatical Communion even down to Tradesmen and Labourers who remain there with an upright heart and through the prejudice of their consciences are out of the Church and eternally damned but that the Authors and Defenders of Schism who run into it through their personal interests or out of a spirit of fierceness pride and an hatred incompatible with the Spirit of Jesus Christ commit a horrible crime and that while they are in that state they remain deprived of all hopes of salvation That if the Fathers have said any thing more generally and which cannot be thus restrained it is just to understand it in a comparative sense that is to say that setting that Schismatical party of the Church in opposition to that which is not so the hope of salvation appears evidently in this which it does not in the other where it is obscured by that Schism The End of the Third Part. An HISTORICAL DEFENCE OF THE Reformation Against a Book Intituled Just Prejudices against the CALVINISTS THE FOURTH PART Of the Right that our Fathers had to hold a Christian Society among themselves by Publick Assemblies and the Exercise of the Ministry CHAP. I. That our Fathers had a Right to have their Church-Assemblies separate from those of the Church of Rome on the supposition that they were right in the Foundation THE Order of the Matters of this Treatise requires that we now go on to that Separation which the Author of the Prejudices calls Positive and that after having confirmed the Right that our Fathers had to Examine the State of Religion and the Church in their days after our having shewed the indispensable necessity that lay upon them to forsake the Assemblies of the Church of Rome and to live apart from her Communion that we also establish the Right that they had to set up a Christian Society among themselves notwithstanding their going off from the other Party who were not for a Reformation and to make up alone and apart a Body of the Church or an External and visible Communion This is that which I pretend to establish in this Fourth and last Part and to that end I shall here Treat of two things The first shall respect the Right of those Publick Assemblies and the Second shall be concerning that of the Gospel Ministry wherein our Function lies Howsoever these two things have a dependance one upon another it will yet be well to Treat of them with some distinction To make the First clear I shall first lay it down as an indisputable Truth That the Right of Religious Assemblies naturally follows that of Societies I mean That as far as a Religious Society is Just and Lawful so far the Assemblies that are therein made are Just and Lawful and that on the contrary as far as a Society is unjust and wicked so far its Assemblies are so too This Principle is evident to common sence and it is for that Reason that we condemn the Assemblies of the Heathens Jews and Mahometans as Unlawful and Criminal because their Societies are impious and wicked and that having no right to be united to believe and practice those Errors which they believe and practice they have also no right to Assemble themselves together in order to make a Publick Profession It is for the same Reason that we hold on the contrary the Christian Assemblies to be not only Just and Allowable but to be necessary and commanded by Divine Right because the Christian Society that is to say the Church is it self also of Divine Right It is then True that the Right of Assemblies follows that of Societies But we must further suppose as another evident and certain Truth That our Fathers before the Reformation were Latin Christians living in the Communion of the Latin Church in which they made as considerable a party as the rest of the Latins and that from Father to Son throughout a long succession Time out of mind they enjoyed with the others the rights of that Society That they were equally in possession of it with the other common Assemblies of that Religion having a part in the Ministry in the Churches in the Sacraments in the publick Prayers in the Reading and Preaching of the Word and that as far as the communion of the Latin Church was lawful so far the part that our Fathers had in it was lawful also That it was not a company of Strangers or unknown persons come from the utmost parts of America or the Southern Lands nor a sort of People dropt down from the Clouds who were newly joyned together with them in the same Society but Persons and whole Families setled a long time ago who were joyned together with them in the Profession of the Christian Religion many Ages before and who by consequence were in possession of the Rights of that Society Although had they been Strangers Americans and Barbarians on whom God should have suddenly bestowed the Favour of Calling them to the True Faith and the True Holiness of Christanity yet we could believe that by that thing alone they would have been invested in all the Rights of that Society as much as if they had had it by a long possession time out of mind But howsoever it be they were Christians from Father to Son and neither their blood nor their birth did distinguish them from the others We are now concerned only to search out whether that which hapned to our Fathers that is to say their Reformation their Condemnation by the Popes and by their Council of Trent and their Separation from the Church of Rome can be able to spoil them of all their Rights For if it be True that they were fallen off either by their own ill Carriage or by the meer Authority of the Church of Rome we must yield that our Assemblies are Unlawful and Criminal but if on the contrary they were not so fallen off if that which hapned to them did nothing else but confirm their Right and render it more pure more just and more indisputable they ought also
any Relation to that Religion was not of the Essence of the Church but its State the mixture of Errors and Abuses with the sound Doctrine the Corruptions of Worship the Vices of the Ministry the Superstitious Ceremonies the form of Government the Religious as they speak that is to say the divers Orders of Monks the different degrees of the Hierarchy Feasts Processions Fasts and in a Word all that which has been noted in the Objection and in which that Church was then different from the Protestant All that I say belonged to the condition of the Church then and could by consequence be changed without making either the one or the other a new Church That the Faithful found themselves insensibly overpowred by almost an infinite number of the Worldly who mingled themselves with them as Tares with the Wheat That those worldly made themselves Masters of the Pulpits the Ministry the Councils that they brought in Errors Superstitions and Abuses that they changed the form of the Government of the Church and that of the Publick Worship all that does not respect the Essence of the Church which consists only in the True Faith but its Condition so that when our Fathers Reformed those things we may well say they Changed the State of the Church in their days but not that they changed the Church nor that they made a new one and their Church will not cease notwithstanding that Change to be joyned by a true Succession of Times and Persons to that which was before A Town full of Strangers who make themselves more powerful there left desolate by those popular diseases which those Strangers brought thither and filled with those disorders which they caused does not cease to be the same Town by a True Succession of Times and Persons when those Strangers should quit it and its good Citizens be established in their Just and Lawful State as heretofore Rome sackt by the Goths did not cease to be the same Rome when it was freed from them and a River swelling with the Waters of the neighbouring Brooks that make it overflow the Fields and break over its Banks is yet the same River when those Waters go back and retire into their Ordinary Channel CHAP. III. That the Ministry Exercised in the Communion of the Protestants is Lawful and that the Call of their Ministers is so also WE come now to Justify the Right that we have to the Gospel-Ministry and to defend our Call not only against the Ordinary Objections of those of the Church of Rome but also against the Accusations of the Author of the Prejudices in Particular For that Author who thinks it meritorious to go beyond others especially in his Passions is not contented meerly to say that we are Pastors without Mission and Ministers without a Call but by a heat of Zeal obstinately adhering to him he call us Thieves and Robbers Tyrants Rebells false Pastors and Sacrilegious Vsurpers of the Authority of Jesus Christ Nevertheless as those injuries are nothing else but the Effect of his ill humour it will be no hard matter to shew him that all the Conditions that we can rationally require to make a Ministry Just and Lawful are to be found in that of the Protestant Ministers and that Thanks be to God they can reproach them with nothing on that occasion This is that which I design to shew in this Chapter and to this Effect I shall first propound some Observations which I Judge necessary for the unfolding of that Question I say then in the First place That we do not here dispute about the Call that our Fathers had for a Reformation but only of that which they had and which we have after them for the Ordinary Ministry of the Gospel For we ought to take great heed least we confound as the Author of the Prejudices has done those two sorts of Calls that we acknowledge our Fathers to have had and which the Church of Rome disputes with them For That which they had to Reform themselves that is to say to reject that which we call their Errors and Superstitions that were brought into the Latin Church and that which regards the Ordinary Preaching of the word of the Gospel the Administration of the Sacraments and the Exercise of Discipline These two Calls are wholly different The one which is that of the Reformation is of Right common to all Christians there being no one who is not Lawfully called by his Baptism to destroy Errors contrary to the Nature or Purity of the true Faith and to exhort his Neighbours to do the same thing for the Interest of his own Salvation and that of the Glory of God as I have already shewn in my Second part From whence it follows That in that Respect they can have nothing to say against our Fathers and much less against those whom they call the first Reformers since being as they were in publick Offices they had more of a Call for that then was necessary The other which is that which respects the Ordinary Preaching of the Word of the Gospel the Administration of the Sacraments and the exercise of Discipline is not common to every private man On the contrary no one ought on his own head to thrust himself in without being otherwise Lawfully called The Reason of this Difference is that the Reformation consisted in the meer Acts of Faith and Charity which are those Particular Acts that none can dispence with because no one can say that it does not belong to him to be of the true Faith or to be Charitable but the Preaching of the Word the Administration of the Sacraments and the exercise of Discipline are those Acts of Authority that no one can do in his own name but in the name of another that is to say in the Name of God or in the Name of the whole Church so that he ought to be Lawfully Authoriz'd to do them It is then this latter Call that we are concerned about in this Question 2. In the Second place we must note that we do not here any more dispute about that Extraordinary Ministry which Jesus Christ himself immediately Communicated to his Apostles to give men the first Call to the Christian Faith and to Assemble them in a Society For our Fathers did not make any new Convocation nor any new Society nor any new Church as I have shewn in the Two Foregoing Chapters They did not preach a new Testament or a new Covenant differing from that which the Apostles preached They were not qualified either as new Apostles or new Prophets or new Evangelists they did not bring with them any new Revelation to the World but they Purged and Reformed the Corrupted State of Religion and the Church by the same Scriptures that the Apostles left us they laboured to Reduce things into their Antient and Natural State and for the rest they Preached the same Gopel and Administred the same Sacraments that the Apostles left and
from that humane Intervention that the bad State of the Ministry proceeds If God would alwayes send them immediately as he did his Apostles and Evangelists there would be some ground to believe that it would never be remote from its first Institution but since they are men that send them no one can deny that it cannot be Corrupted through that Channel for God has never promised any thing to the contrary in that matter God has not promised that he would accompany those Elections and Humane Calls with an Infallible Spirit that should give them all a happy Success and besides that the experience of all the Ages past Contradicts it Jesus Christ himself seems purposely to have forbidden such a rash Imagination for although he knew the Heart and the thoughts of it yet nevertheless he would have a Judas added to the Number of his first Disciples and he permitted that a Nicholas who was afterwards the Head of the Sect of the Nicolaitans should have a part in the Election that the Church made of her first Deacons to give us to understand that it was not his intention actually to hinder the Ministry from ever falling into very bad hands 6. We must note in the sixth place That although the Church and the Ordinary Ministry which we speak of are two things naturally joyned together yet it is not the Church that depend s upon the Ministry but it is the Ministry on the contrary that depends upon the Church For the Ordinary Pastors were not Established but when the Church was first formed and when care was taken for its Preservation and Propagation so that naturally it preceded Pastors The Church was produc'd at first by the Extraordinary Ministry of the Apostles the first thing which they propounded was not to make Ordinary Pastors but true Beleivers They called men to the Knowledge of Jesus Christ they assembled them together they united them in a Society before they provided for the upholding of that Society in setting up an Ordinary Ministry in the midst of it They first took care for the birth of the New Creature and after they procured it Breasts to nourish it Therefore it is that the Ordinary Ministers were called Pastors in reference to Shepheards who fed and led their Flocks They were called Presbyters or Elders with reference to the Senators among the Jews they were called Bishops that is Overseers or Super-Intendants by an Allusion to the Super-Intendants of Victuals among the Greeks who were called Bishops also But the Shepheards suppose their Flocks the Chosen Senators among the people suppose the people the Super-Intendants or Overseers suppose those over whom they gave a right of Super-Intendance and Inspection The Ordinary Ministers therefore suppose the Church and not the Church the Ministers she is not because they are but they on the contrary because she is she does not own her being to them but they theirs to her This Truth will yet appear more clearly if we set before their eyes what I have already said in the first Chapter of this Fourth Part That the Ordinary Ministry is not absolutely necessary to the being of a Church but that it is only necessary to its well being and to hinder it from falling into Ruine For when the Faithful should have no Pastors they would yet be joyned together in a Society since it is Grace and Faith that unite s them and not the Ministry And as in the Civil Society it is the Nature and not the Magistrate that unites men and that after men are united in a Society the Magistrate is made by reason of Order and by the necessity of the preservation of that Society so that it is the Society that makes the Magistrate and not the Magistrate the Society So here it is the same The Faith and Grace Assemble men into a Religous Society they are those things that make the Church and afterward the Ministry arises by reason of Order and to help the preservation of the Church and so naturally it is the Church that produces the Ordinary Ministry and not the Ordinary Ministry that produces the Church The Church was the Fruit of the Extraordinary Ministry of the Apostles and Evangelists that Ministry produc'd it at first and not only produc'd it but it has always since made use of that means or that source for its subsistence and we may truly say that it yet produces it and that it will produce it unto the end of the World for it is the Faith that makes and alwayes will make the Church and it is the Ministry of the Apostles which makes and will always make the Faith It is their voice that calls Christians together at this day it is their word that Assembles them and their Teaching that unites them It is certain that the Ministry of the Apostles was singular that is to say only tyed to their persons without succession without Communication without Propagation but it ought not to be thought that it was also as Transitory a Ministry as that of other men for it is perpetual in the Church Death has not shut their Mouths as it has the others they speak they instruct they incessantly spread abroad the Faith Piety and Holiness among the Souls of Christians and there is not another Fountain from whence those Vertues can descend but from them If any demand of us what is that perpetual Voice that we ascribe to them We answer That it is the Doctrine of the New Testament where they have set down all the Efficacy of their Ministry and the whole vertue of that Word which gave a Being to the Church There it is that their True Chair and their Apostolick See is there is the Center of the Christian Unity there it is that they incessantly call men and join them into a Society every other Voice besides theirs is false and supposititious it is from theirs alone that the Church proceeds and because to Assemble with those is to Assemble with Jesus Christ we may very well say that not to Assemble with them is to disperse instead of Assembling But as to the Ordinary Ministry of the Pastors we cannot say the same thing it is not their Voice as it is distinct from that of the Apostles that begets the Faith that Assembles Christians into a Society or that produces the Church they are no more but meer dispensers of the Word of the Apostles or if you will External Instruments to make us the better understand their Voice They are not not only the Ordinary Pastors who gave a Being to the Church at first but yet further at this day to speak properly it is not their word that produces the Faith in those who had it not before for that which confirms it in those who have it and that which produces it in those who have it not is the word of the Apostles themselves to whom we must go for conduct if we would have good success They are then to speak properly no
we see the Conditions that are necessary to a Lawful Call as Examination Information of manners and the like so ill observed in the Church of Rome that Christian Prudence will not suffer us to Trust to her and her Elections which for the most part would be Null if they were Examin'd according to their own Canons Calvin has wrote that God set up Apostles in his time or at least Evangelists to draw men from the Party of Antichrist I answer that Calvin only called the Reformers Apostles and Evangelists by some kind of resemblance which they had with the first Evangelists in some respect not that they brought a new Revelation with them into the World as the Apostles and Evangelists did but because God made use of them to make the light of his Gospel which was much darkened strike upon the eyes of Men with splendor and they honour those to this day with the Title of Apostles who now employ themselves in making Christianity known to the Nations that are Strangers to it although they are not immediately sent from God and though they have not any new Revelation He alleadges in the end the Dispute that was between a Protetestant named Adrian Saravias and Beza where Beza seems to admit of only an Extraordinary Call in the Reformers I answer That as well Saravias as Beza are particular Authors who may have had both the one and the other thoughts a little excessive about this matter and it may be may have even disputed the one against the other without well understanding one another This is that which falls out every day between persons otherwise very learned Beza rejected the Ordinations of the Church of Rome not that he thought the Ministry was absolutely extinct there nor that they had not there any Right to a Call but because the Calls of persons there were made after a very confused and corrupted manner without Examination either of Doctrine or manners by reason of which they were most frequently given to unworthy persons and that instead of ordaining them to Preach the Gospel they ordain them only to Sacrifice That concludes that the Ordinary Call which the first Reformers received was not purer than that of others if God had not given them the Grace to rectify it as they did by a just and lawful use of it but that does not conclude that such as it was it did not put them into a Right and Obligation to cleanse it from that ill which it had by that good which remained in it The Author of the Prejudices opposes further an Article of a National Synod held at Gap Anno 1603. which he sets down in these words Vpon the 31 Article of the Confession of Faith it having been put to the question whether when they came to Treat of the Call of our Pastors they should found the Authority which they had to Reform the Church and to Teach upon the Call which they had received from the Roman Church The Assembly determined that they ought meerly to referr it to the Article of the Extraordinary Call by which God extraordinarily and inwardly stirr'd them up to their Ministry and not in the least to any thing that remained of that Ordinary Corrupted Call But since he would give himself the trouble to look into our National Synods he ought not to stop there he ought to go on even to that of Rochel which was held immediately after that of Gap in the year 1607 and there he would have found that that Article having been set down differently in several Copies and having been altered by the negligence of the Copiers it was re-established in that Synod which was drawn into an Act in these words In the 31 Article of the Confession of Faith of the Synod of Gap wherein mention is made of the first Pastors of the Reformed Churches these words and to Teach which are found in some Copies should be raised out and in the place of meerly there should be put chiefly and that last Clause And not in the least to any thing that remained of that Ordinary Corrupted Call should be also mended Rather than to that little which remained of their Ordinary Call To have made use of that Article seriously he ought to have done it not in the State wherein the ignorance of the Copiers had put it but in that wherein a whole Synod had re-established it At the bottom it will appear that they there treated only about a Call for the Reformation and not for the exercise of the Ordinary Ministry and the Synod does not but in some respects only deny that that Call for a Reformation was not founded upon that that the first Reformers had received from the Church of Rome howsoever corrupted it was but it would that it should be chiefly referred to a particular Providence of God which by Extraordinary Gifts and Talents had raised men up for so great a work In effect although we should acknowledge that in the Church the rejecting or Reformation of Errours should be the common Right of all Christians and that that Right would yet more especially belong to the Ordinary Pastors then to others by the Obligation of their Charge joyned to that of their Baptism yet we do not fail to acknowledge also that there was something extraordinary in the persons of the Reformers to wit the Gifts or the admirable Talents which made them fit for that work and capable of reducing their Right into Act without which their Right would have been to no purpose as it did remain in divers others unprofitable who had not the same Gifts But that very thing might gain them the greatest Authority and this is that which the Synod would say and which we say also with it For we distinguish three things in the Reformers from whence there results as full and intire a Call to Reform the Church as they can desire the one is The general and common Right that all Christians have to Combat Errours since they are all called to defend the Truth the other is a more peculiar Right which they had for the same thing in quality of Pastors for how impure soever their Call was it would alwayes bind them to have a Care of their Flocks and to procure Gods Glory and the third is the Extraordinary Graces and Light that God had communicated to them and rendred them thereby fit for that work But it is this last that reduc'd the two others into Act and therefore they look'd on it there principally when they treated of the Reformation because if they had never met with this the two others would have been useless Rights and ineffectual Obligations After that it is easy to comprehend how the Author of the Prejudices was mistaken when under a pretence of that Extraordinary Call that we Attribute to the first Reformers in respect of their Gifts or Talents he imagines that he can lay it to our charge that we believe that the