not onely overthrown ours but all Religion not onely acquitted your self of Schism but also quite taken away all possibility of being a Schismatick since no Authority can with any face or conscience oblige to a belief of which her self is not certain But I doubt not you make your self sure of the conquest not apprehending any but Saints and Angels in Heaven and God himself to be infallible To which you adde of your own invention impeccable as your custom is never to speak of our Tenet without the disgraceful addition of some forged calumny or other imposed upon us But that none else should be infallible except those you mention I much wonder I thought the Apostles had been also infallibly assisted when they pen'd the sacred Writ and peach'd the Gospel I thought also our Saviour when he sent them to teach and promised them his assistance had said He would remain with them always even till the end of the world that is with the succeeding Church I thought there had been some means to be infallibly-certain that such and such Books were Gods Word and genuine Scripture without an Angel Saint or Christs coming from Heaven or the Doctors private-spirited opinion which he will call God Neither do I doubt but the Doctor himself will grant it impossible That all the Protestants in England should be fallible or mistake in witnessing whether twenty years ago there were Protestant Bishops or no and that such was the Tenet and Government of their Church at that time Yet a thousand timeâ— greater evidence have we of the indefectibility of the Churches Faith and her infallibility As you may to your amazement see if you will but open your eyes in that incomparable Treatise of Rushworth's Dialogues vindicated from all possible confute by that excellent Apology for it writ by the learned Pen of Mr. Thomâ—â— White in his Friends behalf whose Dialogues he set forth enlarged and defended against your acute Friends Faulkland and Digby Persons who did not use to treat Controversies iâ— such a dreaming shallow way as it hath been your misfortune to do here nor stand Preaching to their adversary when they should Dispute To these Dialogues and their Apology I refer you that you may know what to do if you confute them solidly and demonstrate plainly That our Church is liable to Error you will eternally silence us and clear your selves But take heed you bring not whimpering probable may-be's and onely-self-granted suppositions for proofs These might serve your turn in your first Book which might hope for the good fortune to scape without answering but in your second and after you are told of it it will fall short of satisfactory Remember Mr. Hammond that you granted â— cheerful obedience and submission of your judgments and practices to your Superiors under penalty oâ— not being deemed true Disciples of Christ. If this be real as I wish it were then what easier condescension and deference to the judgment of Superiors can be imagined then to submit oneâ— private judgment when he has onely probability to the contrary Evidence therefore demonstrable evidence you must give in of the Churches erring ere your pretence that you were obliged by her to subscribe to Errors can take place and so excuse you from Schism But as your profession of the obligation you have to submit your judgment to the Church renders your probable Reasons insufficient to fall to judge her so God be praised your own self acknowledged fallibility will secure us from the least fear of your Demonstrations Yet unless you do this you undo your cause for if the Church could not erre she could need no reforming So that your Preaching of Reformation is vain your Faith vain and by consequence your selves Schismaticks and an Ace more SECT 4. Concerning the ground of Unity groundlesness of Schism and of Dr. Hammonds manner of arguing to clear himself of the later ALl that is material in the Doctors second Chapter is sum'd up in these two heads that the Church does ill in obliging men to subscribe against their present perswasion and That the Church which they left was erroneous and so obliged them to the subscription of Errors Upon these two notes as on a base-ground he runs division all along this Chapter repeating them so often in each Paragraph that I was forced to omit my intended method at present not making a Countet-sermon to each in order but bringing together his dispersed Doctrine into Heads and then confuting them not doubting but the Leaves and Branches which counterfeit some small flourish of devotion will quickly fade into Hypocrisie when the sapless roots are pluckt up from their rotten ground The former of them hath been discovered in the former Section to be worse then weak his manner of arguing from the second shall be laid open in this But because I perceive Mr. Hammond very much unacquainted with our grounds why our Church obliges her sons to rest in her belief and continue in her Communion thinking her doubtless very discourteous that will not leâ— her subjects in civility as the modest and moderate Church of England does hold and do what they list I will at present undeceive him somewhat in that point having a better occasion to do it more largely hereafter First The Doctor stumbles much and as Ignorance iâ— ever the Mother of admiration thinks Master Knot 's Inference very strange that the Church iâ— infallible otherwise men might forsake her Communion Whereas on the contrary I not onely think it strange to infer otherwise but as great an absuâ—dity as can be imagined for why may not meâ— forsake the Communion of the Church if they may forsake her Doctrine since it is impossible to preserve the former if he renounce the latter and why may they not forsake her Doctrine if she have no Power nor Authority â—o tie them to the belief of it and how can she have any Authority to binde them to the belief of it if she her self knows not certainly whether it be true oâ— no that is be not infallible Or what man living who hath so much wit as to raise or understand the difficulty can possibly so degenerate from Reason which is his nature as to submit it in believing things above his Reason and which concern his eternal Salvation upon such an Authority as may perhaps lie and so damn him for believing her since Without true Faith it is impossible to please God Hence follows by an inevitable consequence that since the Church pretends and hath ever pretended to have a Promise from Christ of a perpetual assistance from Error if Christ have made good that promise that is if she be infallible then her obliging her sons to rest in her Faith is most plainly evidenced to be charitable just and necessary because in that case it were both mens obligation and also their greatest good to believe so qualified a Mistress Whereas on the other side any other Congregation
or at least that year was pure again For it cannot be imagin'd the doctrine of that Council was pure but the beleefe of the Faithful in that Age taught by those Pastors which there resided must be pure also Far more consonant then to their grounds is the doctrine of the Puritans denying promiscuously all Antiquity than to pick and cull out at pleasure what serves their turn as doe the Protestants and to like and reject allow and disallow what makes for or against them without giving any evident reason why they put such a difference In vain therefore does the Doctor like a very Saint pretend in behalfe of their Church an unaffected ignorance though they should mistake being conscious to himselfe what pitiful shifts he makes use of in stead of grounds In vain does he hope that this ruliness as he calls it and obedience of theirs will render them approvable to God unless they can render God an approved reason why they will at pleasure hold his sacred Spouse the Church holy in one Age and adulterate in another and shape and fashion Christs seamless coat according to the mode of their ever-changing fancy Lastly most vainly doe they hope this ruliness in holding to the first 300. yeares will lead them into all truth unless they could shew that all the points of Truth between them and us were professedly treated and decided in those times and the decision on their side He ends in a preaching manner with extolling the humble and docible temper of his Church Truly Mr. Doctor it is a wonderful commendation to your Church that she is yet to bee taught Pray when will she be at age to leave going to School when will she be out of her prentice-like tutorage and set up for her selfe to professe truth as a Church should do I thought a Church should have been Columna firmamentum veritatis the Pillar and firm foundation of Truth but yours is like the hinge of a door or a weather-cock docibly turning with every wind of doctrine How doe you think the Puritans or any other Sect should in reason yeeld any Authority to your Church since she professes her selfe yet learning her Faith that is as yet knowes it not If it be such a commendation in your Church to be docible I suppose it is so in others and consequently in the whole Church and then I pâ—ay who must teach her or what greater Professor is there on Earth of the knowledge of Christs Faith to whom the Universal Church may submit her selfe as dociâ—le Perhaps you will say that one particular Church must sisterly and charitably assist and teach another that is though each be ignorant it selfe yet like the blind leading the blind they must all be supposed mutual Mistreâ—ses and consequently all learned But let us examine a little further this docible and humble temper of your youngling Church Is it dâ—ciblenesse or humility think you to forsake a Mistress who had all the qualities which could give â—er Authority and fall to teach your selves new reformed doctrines without any Authority at all Such is the humble dâ—ciblenesse of your Church Is it docibleness to cast off the Authority of 14. General Councils and the consent of Christendome for twelve hundred yeares and rely upon your own judgments to interpret the rest as you list This is the so much brag d on docibleness and humble temper of your Church Parallel to the former or rather far ouâ—vying them though of a contrary strain is that most heroick Act of your docible humility to be willing to hold things concerning your eternal salvation upon the Authority of the four General Councils or the Doctors and Church of the first 300. yeares which Drs. and Councils notwithstanding it is an Article of your Faith that they are fallible And as for the Church of those times that it was fallible your selfe grants for you confesse that the same Church erred in the fourth Age. Now to hold Articles or points of Faith upon that Authority which it is an Article of Faith may deceive me is such a magnanimous piece of docible humility as I dare be bold to say in the Doctors behalfe neither the Apostles nor any Saint in the succeeding Church durst ever own Neither can the present Catholikes whom some who neither understand their own nor Catholike grounds laugh at as blindly humble and obedient to the Church lay claim to such an incomparable degree of humility proper and peculiar to the Protestants onely For we pretend not Faith certain but upon a deemed INFALLIBILITY in the Authority assuring it so as though they may be supposed blameable by you for failing in their grounds that is in believing the Church infallible yet they cannot be condemned for proceeding inconsequently upon those groundâ— for an infallible Authority deserves a firm assent But to stand to the acceptation of matters of Faith which you pretend most certain upon an Authority confessed by your selves uncertain is such a condiscension of humility such a prostrating your proper knowledge as is not onely a blindly-capâ—ivating your Judgment but even an utter renouncing all judgment prudence and common sence not a submitting the reason by a voluntary winking at objections but a quite extinguishing and perfect putting out of the very Eye of reason it selfe and is all one as if a man should say For any thing I know such a one may lye in what he tells mee yet neverthelesse I will strongly perswade my selfe that all hee sayes is most certainely true Yet this humility the Doctor calls here a special mark of the Church of Englands Reformation And surely you have reformed well since you have not only reform'd the Unity you before enjoy'd into distractions the Faith you formerly profest into new-fangled misbeleefes but your former reason and judgment into present folly and fancy What is said of your accepting the four Councils c. may also bee apply'd to your private interpretitions of Scripture which found your Faith which Faith you will have to be certain and firm though the persons Interpretation it is built on be fallible and obnoxious to errour The pious words in your own behalfe with which you close up your Chapter spoken in an Elegiack tone are very moanfully moving words out of a pulpit rhetorical enough for women not rational enough to satisfie any prudent man You professe you would preserve the Unity of the Apostolical Faith and primitive practises as entire as Christs body or garments Good Mr. Hammond leave mocking your Readers and tell us why the Primitive times must needs just end then when the Church began to flourish and the Fathers to write against your doctrine And as for Christs body or garments I see no such great respect in you or your Churches doctrine allow'd towards holy Reliques that I should be willing to trust those sacred pledges to your unhallowed hands from whose rude usage his mystical Body his Church Faith its Rule
that professes her self fallible that is uncertain of the truth of her Doctrine cannot without accusing her self of the greatest injustice and tyranny in the World binde others to the belief of the said Doctrine For it carries the prejudice of the highest unreasonableness with it for a man to tell me I will force you â—o believe that which yet I my self know not whether it is to be believed or no. Let not Dr. Hammond then blame our Church for obliging men to subscribe to her Doctrine unless he can evidence first That she hath not that which she hath ever from the beginning of the Church pretended to to wit a security from fallibility by the perpetual assistance of her Spouse and Saviour But rather let him invent if he can any rational excuse for his own Church which professing her self fallible and so wanting all power to oblige to belief would notwithstanding have others believe her accounting the Puritans Anabaptists Presbyterians and Independants Schismaticks if they do not and dares enstyle her self a Church that is a Commonwealth which hath power and means to oblige to Unity in belief whereas her own professed fallibility or uncertainty evidences that she wants all the Nerves which should connect the Members of such a Body These grounds laid it were not amiss to insert here what the Author of that Epistle which was writ from Bruxels in answer to Dr. Hammond saith upon this place By this saith he you may perceive much of his discourse to be not onely superfluous and unnecessary but contrary to himself for he laboreth to perswade That the Protestant may be certain of some truth against which the Roman Catholick Church bindeth to profession of Error which is as much as to say That he who pretends to have no infallible Rule whereby to govern his Doctrine shall be supposed to be infallible and that he who pretends to have an infallible Rule shall be supposed to be fallible at most because fallible Objections are brought against him Now then consider what a meek and humble son of the Church as this Dr. would he thought ought to do when on the one side is the Authority of Antiquity and Possession such Antiquity and Possession without dispute or contradiction from the Adversary as no King can shew for his Crown and much less any other person for any other thing together with the perswasion of Infallibility and all the pledges Christ hath left to his Church for motives of Union On the other side uncertain Reasons of a few men pretending to Learning every day contradicted by incomparable numbers of men wise and learned and those few men confessing those Reasons and themselves uncertain fallible and subject to Error Certainly without a byass of interest or prejudice it is impossible to leave the Church if he be in it or not return if he be out of it For if infallibility be the ground of the Churches power to command belief as she pretends no other no time no separation within memory of History can justifie a continuance out of the Church Thus far that Letter which had it not been strangled in the birth and miscarried in the Printer's hand might have saved me the labor of this larger conâ—ute and being exactly short might justly be styled Dr. Hammonds Iliads in a Nut-shell since the force of it was so united the Reason in it so firmly connected as might have cost the Doctor a full ten years siege ere he could make a breach into it with his Brown-Paper Bullets But now it is high time to reflect upon the Doctors manner of arguing who tells us here That he needs give no more answer to our objection of a Schismatical departure then this That they who acknowledge not the Church of Rome to be Infallible may be allowed to make a supposition which is founded in the possibility of her inserting Errors in her Confessions c. And so goes on with three or four Suppositions all built upon that first general Supposition That the Roman Catholick Church hath erred or is not infallible I commend the Doctor for his wit The whole question is reduced to this one point Whether the Church erred or no as is most manifest For if she evidently errâ—d he and his Ancestors may possibly be excused for not believing her and rejecting her Government by Schism which she told you was sacred but if she was infallible no plea nor evasion can possibly serve your turn neither is it your or their supposing it which can make her fallible and so be a fit ground to build your excuse on Now comes this Gentleman who in the first page of his Book is entitled Doctor of Divinity to handle this Question and onely desires in courtesie that the main matter in controversie out of which it was easie to infer what he pleased should first be supposed or granted and that upon that ground he would evince his cause Just like that young smatâ—eâ—er in Logick who undertook to prove his fellow a Goose but first he would needs have him suppose that whatsoever had two Legs was one of those tame Fowl which his wary fellow notwithstanding his importunity refusing to grant he was left quite blank and his wise Argument at an end Such is the on-seâ— such must be the event of the Doctors Logick You and your first Reformers are Schismaticks says the Catholick in rejecting the Government of the Church and her chief Pastor which she told you was both lawful and sacred Your Church erred saith the Doctor and so we could not be obliged to believe her I but answers the Catholick you must first prove evidently that she is fallible and subject to Error O replies the Doctor we suppose that to be most certainly true and without all dispute Risum teneatis amici Yet Mr. Hammond hath involved another Error in the same passage more unpardonable if possible then the former so fruitful is his Logick of inconsequent absurdities For what man ever arrived to that heigth of mistake as to endeavor to manifest his innocency by the voluntary confession of a crime which implies the objected fault and much more to boot or to alledge for his plea against the accusation of his adversary that which more deeply condemns and is objected to him as a far more hainous crime by the same adversary Yet such is this Doctors acuteness He is accused by us of Schism and lays for the ground of his excuse That he acknowledges not our Churches infallibility which is charged upon him not onely to be both Schism and Heresie but as the very sink of all Infidelity For what man of Reason but stands in an hovering disposition of minde to embrace any Religion or rather Irreligion nay even Turcism it self as your best Champion the Lord Faulkland professes he would when a stronger blast of a more probable Reason shall turn the sail of his Wind-Mill Judgment knowing and acknowledging as he must and does That neither
Communion of the Faithful This Rule therefore broken or rejected dissolves all positive Communion amongst Christians both in Faith and Sacraments For what tie could they possibly have to communicate in any thing consequent to Faith as Sacraments Government or any good work unless they first communicate in faith the rule and ground of those Sacraments Government and good works and how can they communicate in faith if there be no Infallibility to binde them to an Unity in it The denying therefore of this Infallibility is the reason of all Schism and even of Heresie too nay it selfe is the Heresie of Heresies opening a liberty for every man to embrace his owne new-fangled opinions and introducing principles of incertitude and at best probability in Religion whose natural course is to wander at last into a Civil kind of Atheism Nor can there be any rational pretence to oblige mens consciences to a Religion whose conâ—est uncertainty must needs infer an absolute abolishment of all Church discipline and content it selfe with a meer voluntary obedience that is legitimaâ—e all Schism by taking away the very possibility of Schismatizing Another reason may be given why the denying this infallibility perverts quite overthrows all unity in Church-government For the preservation of the Churches unity in government being essential to Religion that is to the Art of breeding up mankind to know and love God it cannot possibly be conceived to be of humane but divâ—ne institution and therefore being taught and instituted by Christ belongs to Faith and so requires to be recommended by the same never-eâ—ring Rule which teaches us the rest of his Doctrine He therefore that denies this Infallibility hath no sufficient reason to beleeve the Article of the Churches Government and consequently will easily finde evasion to excuse his obedience to her commands The Unity of the Church being thus clearly delivered there needs no new task to shew what Schism is it being nothing else but the unknitting and dissolving these several manners of this Unity and Communion and in breaking aâ—under that tye and obligation by which these Unions of the several members with one another and of all with the Head are firm'd and made inviolable What remaines to be done is onely to shew that this Anatomy of Schism is the perfect picture nay the very Sceleton of the carkasse-Church of England and that they have infring'd the lawes of Unity in all the aforesaid manners And as for the first which is the Unity of all the Members under one Head or Chief Bishop and Pastour of the Church in whom at the time of the breach all the Hierarchical Order was summed up as in the highest top of that Heaven-reaching Climax you confesse here Sect. 5. that you cast it out of this Island The Authority I say of the chief Pastourship of the Bishop of Rome to which you and the whole Church you were then in were subject acknowledged by you not Patriarchal onely but a large step higher to wit universally extended over all Patriarchs and the whole Church was that which you cast out and subtracted your selfe from its obdiencee If then you will hold to your former grounds so largely to your disadvantage laid in your third Chapter that it is Schism in a Deacon or Priest to disobey a Bishop in a Bishop to refuse subjection to his Aroh-Bishop c. How will you excuse your selves from Schism in rejecting the Authority of the Head of the Church unless you can evidence that Authority null that is that Doctrine false to which you had been subject ever since your first Conversion as to a more superiour Governour than either Bishop Arch-Bishop Primate or Patriarch In vaine then was your long frivolous digression that Kings may erect and translate Patriarchates since a greater Authority than a Patriarch was rejected by you and cast out of this Island which no King ever pretended to erect and remove at pleasure In vain do you think to shelter your Schism under the wings of the Regal power since your King being at that time actually under the Pope as far as concerned Ecclesiastical matters and acknowledging his supreme Pastourship lies himself as deeply obnoxious to the charge of Schism as you his subjects and followers or rather much more as being the Ringleader of the breach So as no plea is so unwarrantable as to bring him for your excuse who is the person accounted most guilty and who needs a plea himself for his own far more inexcusable Schism and disobedience But what excuse you bring or not bring concerns us not at present onely this remains certain and acknowledg'd that you cast out of the Island that Supreme Authority in which at that time the Faithful of the Church you were in communicated and in which chiefly consisted the Unity of the Hierarchical Government arising orderly and knit np peaceably in acknowledgment of and subjection to that One Head Whether you did this justly or no belongs to the formal part of Schism and shall be discussed in the following Section Next for what concerns the Unity of one Member-Church with another it is no lesse evident you have broke asunder all positive Communion not in Government onely as hath been shewn but in Faith and Sacraments with all Churches which communicated with the See of Rome whom before your Schism you 〈◊〉 the onely and sole true Members of Christs mystical Body That you broke from their Communion in Government hath been already manifested from your rejecting her Supreme Governour in the subjection to whom they all communicated Nor is it less evident that you have broke from their Faith as appeares from the irreconcileable diversity of the points of Faith between us and the large difference between your 39. Articles and our Council of Trent Nor has the Unity you and those Churches had in Sacraments escaped better Five of them being par'd away as unnecessary the sixth transelementated from the sacred price of our Redemption into the egena elementa of bread and wine and the seventh onely that is Baptism with much adoe remaining inviolate lest you should forfeit the name of Christians also together with the reality If the denial of these and your styling the best act of our Religion to wit the the oblation of the Unbloudy Sacrifice in your 31. Article a blasphemous fiction and pernicious imposture and lastly if your persecuting us to death be signes of a positive communion with us then killing may be called kindness and railing votes against us may perhaps be styled Communicatory letters with us All Communication then both positive and negative with the Church you were in formerly was by you renounced yet at least some pretence of excuse had been producible if departing out of that Church you had either kept or renew'd Communion with some other which was acknowledged by all the World or at least by your selves before the breach to have been a true one But you can pretend no such thing as
it cannot deceive us Now you see the Doctor is got as farre as the Church-door But when he heares them within the Church talk that a company of men can be Infallible he leaps you back at one jump as far as the Sceptick Schooles of the Heathen Academicks But how could Mr. Hammond imagine this pretence sufficient to acquit him from Scism in renouncing the way to preserue Unity of Faith or to prove that he and his fellowes still fully acknowledged it The way to preserve Unity of Faith held by all the Christian world before their breach was the beleefe of the Churches Infallibility and we think mans wit cannot invent a better for that End Either then this must be the way to preserve Unity in Faith or some other if this you manifestly broke and rejected it as hath been shewn and as the 19th Article of Queen Elizabeths new Creed professedly declares if some other whatever it is it must needs include a fallibility and uncertainty in the Church of the doctrine she teaches Wherefore either evidence to us that a professed and beleeved fallibility can be a better way to preserve Unity in Faith than a beleefe of Infallibility or else grant that renouncing the latter you renounced the best and most efficacious way to conserve such an Unity The second way to preserve Unity in Faith here mentioned by the Doctor as fully and zealously acknowledged by him his fellows is the establishment by our Saviour and his Apostles of an excellent subordination of all inferiour Officers of the Church to the Bishop in every City of the Bishops in every province to their Metropolitans of the Metropolitans in every region or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to Patriarchs or Primates allowing also amongst them such a primacy of Order or Dignity a◠might be proportionable to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c Thus the Doctor In answer to which w◠will examine a while whether this way thu◠laid out be indeed the way to preserve Unity i◠Faith For if notwithstanding this subordination no Priest is bound to beleeve his Bishop nor Bishop his Metropolitan nor Metropolitan his Patriarch how can this conduce to the Unity of Faith But peradventure he will say this subordination in obedience is a great help to keep out errours and then if this be so we must take into consideration how this point relates to Unity of Government as it is a means to conserve Truth the breaking of which Unity is called Schism So the question in that case is reduced to the examine how his subordination provides against Schism Let us admit then that all the world were made up of Churches governed in this Order as the Doctor hath put them I would ask if in the time of the Arian Heresie a Priest had dissented from his Bishop an Arian but yet consented with his Metropolitan had it been schism in so doing The Doctor must answer No for the Metropolitan being of higher Authority than the Bishop the adherence to him would more secure the Priest from schism than the relinquishing the Bishop could endanger him Next if a Bishop dissent from an heretical Metropolitan but consents with a Catholick Patriarch is it yet Schism Surely no since the same reason clears him that cleared the Priest before Again if the Metropolitan dissent from his own Primate or Patriarch but agree with all the rest is it yet schism Certainly no for the collection of all the rest being of greater Authority than any one in particular can by consequence more excuse him than the other can condemn him Hitherto then we have found none of the Doctors Amulets against Shism Let us proceed If a Patriarch dissent from the first from the Doctors 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but yet concedes to all the rest is it yet schism The Doctor answers no For in regard he owed the other onely something more of a civil respect as a younger brother does an Elder without any inferiority to him in Command or Jurisdiction it cannot be a Schism Forwards still Suppose some Nation or some Patriarch dissent from a General Council is it yet Schism still the Dr. answers No for in his third Chapter which branch't Schism into all its Species he put no such schism as that against a General Council How then hath Mr. Hammond by this new way provided against Schism if according to this Subordination all the Church may fall together by the eares and all may find lawful excuses to secure them from being Scismaticks since the oeconomy of that distracted Family is so order'd that neither any one in particular nor any in common have any tie to hold them to the rest without which ty of consent in matters of faith this imagin'd subordination can no way be a meanes to preserve Unity of Faith and conquently the Drs. Church government without some stronger obligation to knit up all this Order in an Unity is not an Act of Providence either worthy our Saviour or his Apostles But what is become of the King or Emperour all this while is he no body now who before was the Chief It seemes the Apostles made no reckoning of him in all their Providence It is wonderful Mr. Hammond should so forget himself and proceed so inconsonantly to his own grounds that whereas before the King was Chief Governour Head of the Church Supreme in Ecclesiastical matters over and above both Metropolitans and Patriarchs c. Now in treating the Government of the Church instituted to preserve the Unity of Faith he thinks the Head of the Church whom he had formerly exalted above all that is called HOLY not worth the mentioning Does he think the Unity of such a Head conduces nothing to the preservation of Unity in Faith which yet he grants to a far more inferiour Bishop or accounts he it a small sin for a Patriarch to dissent from so Sacred a Head of his Church and his lawful Superiour nay Supreme in Ecclestastical matters and to whom the rightful power as the Doctor told us in those things legally pertaines Yet Mr. Hammond had good reason to omit it For though he may talk of and advance that doctrine in common so to escape the Supremacy of the Pope for you must conceive that he had rather have even a Bramble rule over their Church than that all o're spreading Cedar the Bishop of Rome yet he declines it as handsomely as he can when he should apply that doctrine to particulars as is seen in our present case For indeed who would not laugh at him if he had told us as he must had he introduced the King that it was the heighth of Schism to dissent in a point of Faith from a Thing which neither the Catholikes nor yet Protestants as you here see acknowledge but a kind of a Lay-Elder an Office which were it not three dayes older might seem borrowed from their dearly beloved brethren the Presbyterians Yet the Doctor is grown kind and allows
Christs Church Re-acknowledge a certainty in Faith which is now brought by your professed uncertainty to the very brink of Atheism Return to the never-erring Rule of Faith the voice of the Church which held you for eight or nine hundred yeares in the firm and undivided Unity of the same beleef Doe I say this efficaciously and then you shall be freely cordially and with open armes received into Communion by them who would willingly though they lovingly reprehend you to make you reflect on your errours not onely spend empty words but even lay down their lives to procure your Salvation Sixthly the Doctor charges us that the only hindrances which obstruct external Communion are wholly imputable to us which hee proves first because the Pope excommunicated all those Catholikes that went to the Protestant Assemblies in the tenth year of Queen Elizabeth And was it not well done think you This has ever been the constant practice of Gods Church to enjoyn the Faithful to abstain from the Communion of those who maintained a different that is an heretical doctrine The simpler sort of Catholikes were gull'd by you to beleeve you had onely turn'd into English what was in Latine before and therefore out of an unwariness went to your Churches which lately had been theirs and not out of love to your new reformed doctrine Till at length the Father of the Church thought fit to disabusethem from the errour into which your false perswasions had led them and forbid them the same room who were not of the same company And I wonder how it can stand with reason or sence that holding you hereticks we should let the poore people goe to your Assemblies to bee taught false doctrine Nay even Nature it selfe seems to interdict such an unnatural commerce that Catholikes who held the Bishop of Rome's Supremacy of Divine Institution Mass and the rest of our doctrines from which you receded sacred should goe to your Congregations to hear the first rail'd against as Antichristian the second as Idolatrous and a blasphemous fiction the rest as erroneous and pernicious deceits Blame not then Mr. Hammond Nature Reason and the Pope for hindering this confusion which you call external Communion but rather blame your selves for introducing new doctrines whence result such incompossible and inconsistent practices Yet the Doctor tells us that from this prohibition proceeding from the Popes Excommunication it is visibly consequent that they were cast out and cannot be said to separate Sure it must bee a temper of shame above brazen to tell us this now in the tenth year of Queen Elizabeth whereas himself hath laid out knot by knot how the Unity of the Church in which they were formerly was unloosed or rather violently broken in the time of King Henry the eigthth King Edwards Protectour and all the first ten yeares of this Queen To which though enough and more then enough has been said yet I will once more presse it home to the Dr. and then leave him to his wordish shifts and the Reader to be his Judge You and your King also were once members of the Roman Catholike Church and subject to the Authority of the Pope This Authority you confess C. 7. S. 5. you cast out of this Island But a rejection of an Authority is a recession from that Authority therefore you are guilty of a recession from the formerly-acknowledg'd Authority So far for Government Now for Doctrines and Practices You once beleeved and practised as the Roman Catholike Church to wit when you were in her That you reformed you confess and C. 7. S. 14. call your reformations recessions from the doctrines and practises of Rome A recession therefore was made by you both from the former Government as also the former doctrines and practises But a recession is a voluntary departure as plain sence evidences therefore you made a voluntary departure from the formerly-acknowledg'd government doctrines and practises of Rome Now then to tell us so long after and after so large a narrative confession of your own to the contrary that you departed not but were cast out as if nothing had been done by you till the tenth year of Queen Elizabeth is such a piece of forgetfulness as could onely be peculiar to Dr. Hammond But I perceive the Doctor thinks there is no Schism till the Pope have actually excommunicated as if there might not bee a criminal departure from the former Faith its Rule Sacraments and the Churches Government before the Church comes with her spiritual rod of Excommunication to whip the Offender From all these I have already manifested that you had divided and by so doing made your selves uncapable of Communion with the former Faithful Upon this it was necessary to separate the Faithful from you in divine offices and therefore both just and fitting to excommunicate you as well to punish you who were long before schismaticks for your crime as to warn the sounder flock to abstain from your contagious communion Neither can you blame us for excommunicating you whom your own grounds here delivered clear in that point from any imputation of Rigour Your selfe confessing that you rejected Roman Catholikeâ— from your assemblies and censur'd them upon theiâ— avowed contumacy against the orders of your Church Let us know then why our Church might not doe the same and with much more reason to you who were once members of her and whose recession from her orders and contumaciouâ— persisting still your selfe will witness shew us I say why she had not as great Authority â—ver those who were once hers as yourâ— claimes over those who were never yours oâ— if you cannot then grant you were justlâ— excommunicated by her once and remain aâ— justly excommunicated still until you disavoâ— that contumacy which obstructs your Communion His second Reason why wee hindred the external Communion as he calls that confusion is our imposing such conditions on our Communion that they cannot subscribe without sinning or seeming to sin against conscience And what sin or seeming to sin is this think you the beleefe of Doctrines or Approbations of Practises which they neither beleeve nor approve of The question is not Mr. Doctor whether you beleeve or approve of them or no but whether it were your own sinful pride of understanding which made you and your first reformers disbelieve all their teachers and think themselves understood more of Gods mind than all the world before them and yet when they had done acknowledg'd themselves but fallible in their contrary beleefe that is uncertain whether they or their teachers were in the right and is not this a wise ground for any schollar to disbelieve his Master or any child to disobey his father and mother If it were pride which made you think otherwise as truly no man knowing the grounds you build your reformation upon and how the greatest and most learned authority this world could shew opposed you can in reason judge any other then it
Whole by Order and as much depend upon Spiritual Superiours having power to teach and preach Christs Law as the Common-wealth doth on Secular Magistrates to preserve their temporal Lawes and govern according to them without this order the Whole is dissolved the Body is lost the Church is gone Doubtless Mr. Doctor it is not the fault or choice of the present Protestants that they are thus bassled and persecuted which yet you have spent this whole Chapter except onely the first Paragraph to prove so needs no such great and large disproose to manifest that that which is so much against mens wills should bee their Choice and Crime Yet wee may justly impute your Churches ruine to the sandiness of her foundation which being the Authority of the secular Governors must render her liable to change as often as the unconstant wind of temporal circumstances shall alter the former Government or as oft as the former Government yet remaining shall see it necessary for the present peace or conveniences of the Common wealth to introduce or admit the more prevailing sway of a new Religion But I foresee that the Doctor to avoid this objection will cling in with us and call the Antichristian and Idolatrous Romanists their dear Brethren and tell them they acknowledge their Iurisdiction and Mission to come from them desiring them not to reject them now in their greatest necessity but let them seem to have an Authority deriv'd from the Apostles by their meanes proffering that they in courteons recompence will acknowledge Rome to bee a true Church This indeed is ordinary with them but yet as frivolous still as the former For the Authority which our Church could give you was onely to teach and preach Catholike Doctrine and ordain others to doe the same to govern the Catholike flock and to preserve them in the anciently received Unity of Faith The Authority to doe these could come indeed from us and so if any who pretend to have received Iurisdiction from us continue to execute and govern themselves by that Commission so far they are warranted by the former Authorization but if they went beyond their Commission nay more acted quite contrary to their Commission I wonder what Iurisdiction or Mission they can pretend as derived from us Our question then is of such a power as your Bishops pretend to and exercised that is of bearing the Ensign of a Squadron of the Churches Enemies Preaching an opposite Doctrine to the Church which you pretend to have impower'd you and ordaining others to doe the same Evident it is that the Roman Catholike Church which is the only spiritual power you can think to have any Iurisdiction or Mission from never gave you this Authority wherefore it must come to you from the meer secular Power on this Power therfore is built all the Authority you have to act as Protestants or in order to the Protestant Church and consequently the whole building of your Church was erected onely and solely upon this uncertain and sandy foundation This made Mr. Hooker one of the best and perhaps the most prudent Writer of all that profession affirm of their Church that it was not likely to continue more than fourscore years nor could he judge otherwise seeing it bear evidently the Principles of corruption and mutability in its very constitution to wit the materia prima of a secular Basis which continually exposed it to a mortality as the formes of Government should have their ever-limited period and discovering the professors and Governours of it to bee none of those to whom our Saviour promised his perpetual assistance to the end of the world How much happier then would you be if leaving this fleeting and unbodied shadow you would return and unite your selves to the Catholike Church Which enjoying this promise from our Saviour of an indefectible perpetuity not onely experiences the certain faithfulness of that promise in a large continuance of 1600. yeares but also sees with Evidence perhaps more than scientifical that the walls of this Hierusalem are built upon such strong foundations that the Church and the Authority and Jurisdiction of her Governours can never fail or decay since they rely not on the slippery and weak prop of the temporal power for their Authority but on those who received it from the eternal never-altering Fountain of all power with Commission to delegate and transmit it with an uninterrupted succession to the future Governours of the Church till wee all meet in the Unity of Glory Nor is the means of transmitting this Heavenfounded Jurisdiction to Posterity less certain than is the law of grace written in the hearts of the faithful in indelible characters that inviolable Rule of Faith a Rock too adamantine to be undermin'd by human policy Let then her enemies though even Princes rage as much as they please nay even bandy and conspire together to subdue this free-born Kings Daughter to their prophane yoke her Jurisdiction as it ever hath so will it ever remaine secure and inviolate being independent of them and by reason of the state of Eternity her end and aym of a superiour order to their Authority which was instituted only for the rightly dispencing the transitory goods of this world Your parallel of the Jews suffering under the Zelot's fury or the old Roman yoke which you make account is so evident that the Reader will supercede all necessity of making it up I conceive to aym very little or nothing at your purpose For though they intruded unfit men into the Priestly dignity yet they did not actually neither could they possibly take away the Jurisdiction of the High Priest because this Jurisdiction was not given them by those secular powers but by God himself the contrary of all which happens in your case as has been shewn For the Jurisdiction of your Bishops may be taken away by the same Parliamentary power that set it up That it was not their guilt nor yours neither wee willingly grant and I wonder you could imagine us so unwise as to object that to be your voluntary Crime which you cannot but know we hold to bee your involuntary punishment Your wishes and prayers for peace and communion among all who are called Christians are no less ours and this not in words only but in efficacious endeavours and in several Nations with daily labours and extreamest hazards to reduce the straying flock to their safely-guarded fold Nay this Communion is so vehemently desired and thirsted after by us that we are ready to buy it at any rate except the forfeiture of the Certainty of Faith and its Rule the forfeiture of which is the loss of our own Communion also If Mr. Hammond can perswade himself and his friends to return to this Rule of Faith the Churches Infallibility which onely can unite us in the same stedfast belief of Christs Doctrine and to acknowledg the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome in the acknowledgment of which consists the constant
Folio on the Bible 167 15 How Doctor H will have the allowance of a House to dwell in and Meat to eat the erection of a Primacy 172 16 The Doctor constant to his Principles putting the strongest Argument in the Rear 173 17 The Doctor cryes he is out of his way when he comes to a Passage he cannot get over 177 18 How Doctor Hammond blows and sups all at once 187 19 The Doctor as valiant as Sir Iohn Falstaff 211 20 Doctor Hammonds two sorts of Gifts given and not-given 214 21 How the Doctors ill-favored c. dashes out the best 221 22 Dr. H. like the Fellow that thought the Sun set at the next Town 226 23 The Doctors confusion for Methods sake 230 24 Dr. H. neither goes to Church nor stays at home 233 c. 25 The Doctors courteous point of Faith obliging all the Apostles under pain of Damnation to make a leg to St. Peter 241 26 The Doctors wise appointment of time and place for his Duel in a Wilderness and a daâ—k night 246 27 A magnanimous piece of docible humility in Dr. H. and his Church 251 28 How the world must needs look upon Dr. Hammond as another St. Iohn Baptist 254 29 The Doctors Logick proving Protestants no Schismaticks because they have all Noses on their faces 270 30 How Dr Hammonds Church keeps open house for all comers 273 31 The Doctor never meddles with any point but he blunders and destroys all the Reason that ever concerns it 277 32 The Doctors Goliahs sword has no more edg then a Beetle 278 33 Dr. Hammonds artificial incomparable nonsence 286 c. And for digestion a solid Postpast under the slight name of Down-Derry THE Introduction IT bred in me at first some admiration why the Protestant Party who heretofore seem'd still more willing to skirmish in particular Controversies then bid battle to the main Body of the Church or any thing which concern'd her Authority should now Print Books by Pairs in defence of their disunion from her and subducing themselves from her Government Especially at this time when it were more seasonable for the Church of England as they entitle themselves to denounce to those many minute Sects gone out of their Communion the unreasonableness of their Schism then plead the reasonableness of their own and to threaten them with the Spiritual Rod of Excommunication unless they return then cry so loud Not guilty after the lash has been so long upon their Shoulders But the Reason of the latter I mean why their Pens rather decline to endeavor the reducing their own Desertors I conceive is because no colourable pretence can possibly be alleaged by the Protestants why they left us but the very same will hold as firm nay much more for the other Sects why they left them For that we pressed them to believe false Fundamentals Dr. Hammond and his Friends will not say since they acknowledge ours a true Church which is inconsistent with such a lapse They were therefore in their opinion things tolerable which were urged upon them and if not in the same rank yet more deserving the Church should command their observance then Copes or Surplisses or the Book of Common-Prayer the allowance whereof they prest upon their Quondam-Brethren The Reason of the former that is their earnestness at this time to clear themselves from the imputation of Schism I conjecture to be the self-consciousness of feeling at length the smart of their own folly in the present dissipation of their Church proceeding from their leaving that Body in which alone is found the healthful vigor of Peace-maintaining Discipline the want of which causes all their distractions Yet not willing to acknowledge an inveterate Error they seek to cover the deformity of their breach with the veil of innocency that that which evidently causes their misfortune may at least seem not to have been their fault And indeed this is the last game they have to play for after their coy conceit of an Invisible Church was unmasked and found plainly to be nothing but a blinde Chimera and less then a Conventicle After that by consequence a visible Church was found necessary to perpetuate a line of Successive Governors without obedience to which they saw by dear experience all Order would be level'd into Anarchy After the consideration of this had oblig'd them to grant that to raise a Schism or to subtract ones self from Obedience to those Governors was in a high manner destructive to Gods Church and therefore a sin deserving the deepest damnation in the abetters and maintainers of it as also in their voluntary adherents Lastly since it was most manifestly acknowledged on all sides That our Church was that Body of Christianity in whose Bowels their Predecessors the first Reformers were bred with whom onely and no other community in the world before the Rupture was made they communicated and from which Body by little and little they became and now are totally disunited they saw plainly and Dr. Hammond will not stick to grant it That no Sacrifice remained to expiate that hainous sin of Schism in the present Protestants but to wipe off the Aspersion from themselves and lay the occasion of the breach at the doors of the Catholick Church This is the scope as far as I understand of Dr. Hammonds Book at which I aym this Answer Only solicitous that he was so tedious in things acknowledged by both parties or which little or nothing concern'd the main point in question as to make up three parts of his Books of these trifles And of the very hinge of the Controversie which is When and why the Schism began to say so little and so weakly that being the chief knot to be untied in this difficulty But since the Doctor will have it otherwise I must be content in most of the Book to Answer meer words that is to fight with the air at least when any thing occurs which may seem to have some mixture of a solider element I shall allow it such a reflexion as I conceive in Reason it may deserve I am his Friend and will goe along with him hand in hand through his whole Book Not that the solidness of the Treatise it self requires so exact a proceeding but the weakness of less-understanding Readers who suspect frivolous things that bear a bulk and a specious shew of Words to be important unless the Answerer either out-word them or manifest them plainly to be impertinent of which as the former is far from my intent so the later must for the reason alledged be a part of my present Task and consequently I hope a satisfactory Plea for my seeming unnecessary tediousness to the more judicious Reader SCHISM DISARM'D THE FIRST PART Containing an Answer to the four first CHAPTERS SECT 1. Notes upon Dr. Hammonds first Chapter of the Danger and Sin of Schism HIS first Chapter is most of it a good Sermonlike preparative to his ensuing Theme Who
would not think he intended to treat the question in earnest seeing him begin with so serious a Preamble In the first five Paragraphs there is not a word concerning our question to be taken notice of in quality of a difficulty being nothing but a moral Preface indifferent to either side Only I desire by way of Memorandum that we may reflect well upon and bear in mind that vertue of ready and filial obedience of those under authority to their lawfully authorized Superiors mentioned by him and extolled for a vertue of the first magnitude And the indifferent Reader will aâ— once both easily discern hereafter whether the present Catholicks who hear the Church and believe her in her Lawfully authoriz'd Governors or the first Reformers who without any and against all Authority disobeyed and disbelieved her have the better title to that eminent vertue and he will also wonder why the Doctor should face his Book with the Encomiums of that Vertue the bare explication whereof applyed to the carriage of the first Reformers must manifestly condemn them and quite confute and disgrace all Doctor Hammonds laborious endeavours But a pretence to a vertue if confidently carried on seems to the vulgar an argument of a just claim and high commendations of it makes the pretence more credible For who willingly praises but what is either his own or his friends or dispraises but what is his enemies Which makes him in the next three Paragraphs proceed in the same tenor of Rhetorick and from Scriptures and Fathers paint â—ut the horrid vice of Schism in her own ugly shape as that it is carnality self-condemning contrary to charity bereaving one of the benefits of prayers and Sacraments as bad as and the foundation of all heresies that there is scarce any crime the place cited is absolute that there is not any crime though he mince it with scarce so great as Schisme not Sacriledg Idolatry Parracide that it is obnoxious to peculiar marks of Gods indignation Antichristianism worshiping or serving the Devil not expiable by martyrdom it being according to Iraenâ—â—s impossible though the Dr. mitigates the dangerous expression with very hard if not impossible to receive such an injury or provocation from the Governors of the Church as may make a separation excusable And lastly impossible according to St. Austin that there should be any just cause for any to separate from the Catholick Church Instead of which last words the Doctor full of jealousies and fears puts the Church truely Catholick as if there were much danger lest perhaps any should imagin Christs Church of which I conceive St. Austin meant it to be untruly Catholick And now what good honest well-minded Reader not much acquainted with the Doctors manner of Rhetorick would be so unconscionable as to think him guilty of that vice which he so candidly and largely sets forth in its own colours although in those expressions which might too directly prejudice his future work he seems something chary And indeed I wonder for whose sake he hath gathered such a bundle of severe rods out of the sacred Scriptures and the best Fathers to whip Schismaticks Such expressions as I hope will strongly incite the Protestant Reader whom a true care of his eternal good may invite to seek satisfaction in this point seriously to consider that the decision of no one controversie is more nearly concerning his salvation than this as appears by the abominable character of Schisme which the Doctor hath with so much pains deciphered to be an Abridgement of all the most hainons damnable inexcusable unexpiable vices that can be named or imagin'd Of which Augaean stable if Mr. Hammond can purge the Protestant Church he shall ever wear the most deserved title of the Reformers Hercules But I am sorry to foresee that the more he handles his work the more the dirt will remain sticking upon his own fingers He proceeds or rather infers from the former Premises an irrefragable Conclusion as he calâ— it that the examination of the occasion cause or motive of any mans Schism is not worth the producing or heeding in this matter This besides the manifest advantage it gives us of which hereafter is the preâ—tiest fetch to wave the whole question and whatsoever is material in it that I ever met with That you are excommunicated or separated from the Communion of our Church whence as you say the Schisme springs all the world sees and acknowledges What remains then to justifie or condemn you or us but that there was or was not sufficient cause to cast you out and deny you Communion For that our Church had authority to do it if you be found to deserve it being then her subjects or children none doubts If then there were no cause our Church was tyrannical If there were you are truely and properly Schismaticks first in giving just cause of your own ejection next in remaining out of our Church still and not removing those impediments which obstruct your return This is most evidently the very point of the difficulty which being in great haste to shorten your method you would totally decline Make what haste you please so you take the question along with you For assure your self however you would avoid it now you cannot possibly treat it without examining the causes and motives of breaking as de facto you do afterwards Although if you can evidence that there is actually no Schisme made between us then indeed I must confess there can be no need of examining the causes of a thing that is not But it is impossible to make this seem evident without putting out ours your own and the whole worlds eyes But you desire only that the truth of the matter of fact be lookt into whether the charge of Schisme be sufficiently proved c. It is proved Mr. Doctor if you be proved to have so misbehaved your selves within the Church that to conserve he Government inviolate she was forced to our-law you from her Communion These are the motives and causes which you conscious of and very tenderly sensible in those parts would have us leave untouch'd But on this we shall insist more at large when the very handling the question forces you though unwilling to touch the occasions or causes of Schisme at least such as you thought fit and seem'd most plausibly answerable by the notes you had glean'd up and down to that purpose SECT 2 Concerning his Notion of Schisme and the Excommunication of the Church HIs second Chapter begins with the distinction of Heresie and Schisme concerning which what he hath said is true but yet he hath omitted some part of the truth which was necessary to be told Wherefore let him but take along with him that not only Schisme is a dissenting from Authority and Heresie an introducing a false doctrine into the Church but also that all heresie which it concerns his cause to be willing to pretermit must necessarily include
really apprehended by him to whom they are thus proposed to be false it is hard to affirm that that man can lawfully subscribe and therefore rather then do it the Doctor makes account he may remain out of Communion and that lawfully too This is the Doctors assertion which indeed might serve out of a Pulpit to an Auditory that he would claw with giving them that sweet and as they esteem it Christian liberty of holding what they list but to any judicious person that knows what Government is it is in reality the sublimated quintessence of perfect Non-Religion and Anarchy The Position comes to this That none should be condemned or punished by his Governors for not-doing that the contrary whereof he thinks is to be done To give which Position the least shadow of likelihood the Doctor is necessarily obliged to prove first That no Pride Interest or Passion can make one think wrong and consequently culpable in so thinking which if the Doctor do he will work wonders and with a turn of his hand convert this world of miserable sinners into a Heaven of pure and perfect Saints But let us hear an Argument or two upon the Doctors principles An ambitious or proud man blinded by his Passion begins to think and really true that the long established Government of the Commonwealth is tyrannical and upon this thought he proceeds to jumble all the Land into intestine Seditions and to dismount the Governors from the top of Authority and as he tells you conscientiously too that is with a perfect perswasion according to his present Passion Force him not to subscribe to obey his lawful Magistrate saith the Doctor he may not do it lawfully it is against his Conscience A revengeful or malicious man thinks that in all right and reason he may endamage the party that offered the affront and upon the lawfulness of his so doing while his humor possesses him he would lay his Soul Controle him not saith the Doctor he is in an â—rror but yet governs himself at present according to Conscience he may not lawfully subscribe or â—eal a pardon contrary to his present perswasion The Anabaptist thought himself nearly touched in Conscience to cut off the heads of his Mother and Sister for kneeling at the Communion Urgâ—… him not to the contrary saith the Doctor 〈◊〉 cannot lawfully spare them it is against his preseâ—… perswasion The Puritans following the Protestants example refuse obedience to the Church of England seeing in her so many dregâ—… of Popery remaining Unjustly did the Church of England saith the Doctor in obliging them to her obedience and cutting off poor Bastâ—… wicks Burtons and Prynnes Ears who did according to their Conscience or present perswasion Neither will it avail you to Answer that these were told by Gods Law that their actâ—… were unwarrantable and therefore were culpable For it is easie to reply that you were as much and as earnestly commanded by God to hear the Church and obey your lawful Superiors and incurred a far greater sin if you did not to wit the sin of Schism which your selfe unfortunate Pen has out of the Fathers described to be a venomous compound swoln with the mixt poyson of all sorts of Vices The Reader will by this see to what a pass this Doctors Logick would bring the world if his Position should take place That no man should be obliged to or punished for anything against his present perswasion which he terms his Conscience The contrary to which that I may a little more elucidate from its first grounds the Reader may please to consider That this present perswasion which a man is so fixt in may either begin in the Understanding or proceed from the Will If in the Understanding it must be onely a perfect demonstration that can beget in it so firm an adherence and then being rational it is not onely excusable but laudable Otherwise it is an irrational resolvedness sprung from a passionate distorsion of the interessed Will pushing and exciting the Understanding without due deliberation first to pitch upon and afterwards pertinaciously to adhere to a thing more then the light of Reason it self gives Which being in the Will vicious is consequently as all other Vices are culpable liable to correction and by correction reformable So as Licet non possumus opinari quando volumus that is Although we cannot deem or think a thing true but we must have some Motive or other true or false why we think so yet with this it well consists that a perverse affection in the Will may blinde and lead astray the Understanding by proposing false Motives for true ones And therefore when the Will by deserved punishment is whipt out of her viciousness the Native lustre of the Understanding will quickly disenvelop its self from the cloud of mistake in which the Passion exhaled vapors had enwrapt her You see then Doctor which perhaps you never reflected on before A man may be obliged to retract a present perswasion and however he pretends Conscience for his excuse be punished too if he does not since his bad will was the cause of his erroneous judgment as the cases of the fore-mentioned Malefactors your Clients have as I hope by this time better informed you But perhaps you would not have this method used in matters of Religion And why not Unless the violating the ever-sacred Authority of Christs Church and renouncing the main support of all Religion the Rule of Faith things in the conserving of which the eternal salvation of mankinde consists be less deserving punishment in the offenders or less worth taking notice of by the Governors of the Church then the wrong of thirteen-pence half-penny is by the Laws and Governors of the Commonwealth The result then of your discourse comes to this That all your dwindling suppisitions anâ— may bees which you wisely put down foâ— proofs and sometimes for grounds remain still in question or rather unquestionably unsupposable Your tenderness of Conscience not to sin against God in subscribing to the errors forsooth of his Church which he hath commanded you to hear onely Pharasaical arrogancy and singularity in you which makes you think and style at pleasure any thing Error which the whole Church holds if contrary to your private judgment Lastly Our pretended making Communion impossible will be found to be onely a self-opinionated pride in you and of all pride 's the most miserable and filly to adhere so pertinaciously against Evidence of Authority to a few obscure scraps of writers speaking on the by and your own self acknowledged fallibility All these and whatever pretences you here in sinuate will all lie at your doors and loudly call you Schismaticks unless you can evidence with most perfect demonstrations that those things were Errors which the Church obliged you to subscribe to that is that the Churches doctrine was or is erroneous and consequently her self not infallible This if you evidence I shall grant you have
his own private interpretation of Scripture nor the Church he is in is infallible or secured from Error by any promise of Christ. The denying this Infallibility therefore Mr. Doctor is the greatest crime we charge you with but you free of your Suppositions suppose it your chief virtue and put it for the ground of all your excuse In this Infallibility is founded all the power of the Church obliging to belief the inviolableness of her Government the unjustifiableness of any Schism the firm security that Faith is certain and lastly whatever in the Church is sacred The Doctor therefore in clearing himself by denying the Infallibility of the Church does the self-same as if some discontented subject having first out-lawed himself by denying the Laws and rejecting the Government of England and afterwards becoming obnoxious to those Laws by Robbing Murthering c. should endeavot to plead Not guilty by alledging That though indeed the English Subjects who accept the Laws and allow the Government of England are liable to punishment if they offend against them Yet I saith he who suppose this Government Tyrannical and these Laws unjust especially having a present perswasion and thinking in my Conscience they are so cannot be obliged to keep them and therefore must not be accounted a factious man nor be liable to punishment if I break them What will become of this malefactor Master Doctor your Logick clears him But the Reader and I am perswaded wiser judgments will think him more highly deserving the Gallows for refusing subjection to the Laws and Government and you more deeply meriting Excommunication for rejecting the Churches Infallibility the onely ground of her Authority then for all the rest of your particular faults which issue from that false principle But it is pretty to observe how the Doctor never clears himself from Schism upon any other grounds then those which if admitted would prove all the Malefactors in the World innocent and make it lawful nay an obligation in Conscience to dissolve the whole Fabrick of the Worlds Government So true it is That the very position of a Fallibility of Faith first lays and in time hatches the Cockatrice Eggs of both Atheism and Anarchy SECT 5. Containing some Observations upon Mr. Hammonds third Chapter of the Division of Schism WHen I had perused his third Chapter with intent to see what it might contain worth the answering finding scarce any thing which made either against us or for him I thought I had mistaken the Title of his Book but looking back I found it to have indeed this Inscription OF SCHISM A DEFENCE OF THE CHVRCH OF ENGLAND AGAINST THE EXCEPTIONS OF THE ROMANISTS BY H. HAMMOND D. D. So that now I remain'd satisfied what was the Title but much more unsatisfied to find my expectation so totally deluded and that in a large Chapter containing thirty six pages almost a full quarter of the Book not five words were found which touched the question directly nor could in any way be a preparative to it So as we have here 66 pages of 182. well towards half the Book premised by the Doctor to introduce the Question like the Mindian Gate too large an entrance for so narrow a Corporation Frivolous then had been the long Preamble of this Chapter had it been to the purpose and tended to the Question but if it be found nothing at all to the Question but to wave and conceal the main and indeed sole matter which concerns it nay more to have prevaricated from the very scope for which he would seem to intend it then I will leave it to the Reader to imagin what commendations this Chapter and its Author doth deserve Our Question is of Schism In this Chapter he undertakes to shew the several sorts of it which therefore he divides into Schism against Fraternal Charity and Schism against some one particular Governor as in the People against a Priest or Deacon in those against a Bishop in Bishops against their Arch-Bishops in Arch-Bishops against their Primate or Patriarch and there he stops lest if he had ascended a step higher to the Authority of the Pope he should have said more truth then will serve his turn For you must know he has a deep design against Antichrist and is resolved that half a score odd stories or some few words and unwarrantable practices of discontented persons especially being cited in Greek shall utterly overthrow him in despite of manifest practice of Antiquity clouds of testimonies from Fathers and the Doctrine of the Catholick Church of whose fallibility he is far from even pretending to any infallible Evidence But that we may manifest what we laid to his charge that all this long Chapter is but waste-paper the Reader may please to take notice that the Schism we charge the Protestants with is not of the peoples Schism against a Deacon or Presbyter nor of a Deacon or Presbyters Schism against a Bishop nor any link in that chain of Schisms which he there enumerates but we accuse them and their Fore-Fathers the first Reformers First of a Breach or Schism from the whole Catholick Church This is without controversie the Schism of Schisms and which in the first hearing of the word Schism objects it self to our understanding as being simply properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such whereas the other are nothing but particular refractory disoâ—â—diences in comparison of this and may well consist with your obedience to the Universal Church This this I say is the chief and main Schism we impute to his fellow Protestants yet the Doctor in his present Book entituled Their Defence from Schism takes no notice of the chief thing he ought to clear them of will not have it come into play nor allow it a place in his Division as if it were either none at all or else such a slight one as was not worth taking notice of Strange that he could use such prolixity in trifling Schisms impertinent to the present discourse and not afford the least mention to the greatest Schism of all when the scope and aim of his Chapter necessarily required it and the Question forcibly exacted it Strange that he could remember even the peoples Schism against a Deacon or Presbyter and forget that which breaks from the whole body of the Universal Church But the Doctor is more carefull to preserve his own Copy-hold then the Churches Free hold for according to his division and Doctrine in this Chapter his Parishoners would be Schismaticks for disobeying him or a puny Deacon but neither he nor the Deacon Schismaticks at all for disobeying the whole Church And thus the Dr. has established his own Authority to be more inviolable then the Popes and by this one Division has quite conquered and got the upper-hand of Antichrist Secondly What is become of General Councils all this while Have not they as great an Authority as any private Patriarch Primate Arch-Bishop Bishop Dr. Hammond or a Deacon Far grâ—â—ter
sure if I be not mistaken Doubtless then a Schismatical rejecting their Decrees and Authority is more hainous grievous and more worthy to be ranked amongst his fellow-Schisms then any of the others Yet of this in this Chapter where he expresly undertakes and prosesses to enumerate all the several sorts of Schism we hear not a syllable Thirdly What is become of Schism against the Head of the Church Is not the Papal Authority greater then the Authority of any Patriarch Primate Arch-Bishop Bishop Dr. Hammond or a Deacon Surely all imagin so but Dr. Hammond and his fellows why is this over-slipt then as if it were a matter of nothing But Dr. Hammond will answer That the Popes is not indeed an Authority but an Usurpation and therefore there can be no Schism against it To which I reply That I expect not that he should grant it here but since he knows very well and grants that the Papal Authority was in a long possession of this Island held and acknowledged then and still pretended to be sacred and of divine institution nay more since it is confessed by them that they rejected this Authority and that this rejection of it is objected to them by us as a far greater Schism than any of the other he mentious he ought at least have taken notice of it and shown in what degree of Schism the casting off such an Authority was to be reputed as being Chief and instituted by Christ unless he could manifest the pretended Authority of the Hope to be null and an Usurpation Moreover since it is the use of the multitude which makes words signifie and that three parts of four of those who bear the name of Christians if taken in the double extent or space both of time and place have acknowledged and called it a main Schism and greater then any the Doctor here reckons up to reject the Supream Authority of the Bishop of Rome the Doctor could not in reason avoid the mention of this so-commonly-called Schism unless he had first manifested that it was none Again to state the matter indifferently to both sides let us take the word Head of the Church as abstracted from an Ecclesiastical or Secular Governor that is from both Pope and Emperor or King nay if he pleases let us take it only in the later sence which is his I desire to know since the Emperor or King is according to him Supreme in Ecclesiastical affairs Head of the Church or Churches in his Dominions above Patriarchs and Primates c. why is not the denying this Authority a greater Schism even in his own grounds than a Schism against a Patriarch Deacon c. For the Authority of the Head rejected what means possible remain to reconcile and unite the members In omitting this therefore the Doctor hath neither been true to our Question nor his own Grounds In sum So wise a Logician is this Doctor of Divinity That whereas the Members of the division should adequately comprehend all the several sorts of the thing divided he has onely omitted the three principal Schisms against Government and those not onely principal in themselves but also solely importing the present Controversie and onely mentioned those which were not objected and so nothing at all concerning our Question Where I desire the Doctor to remember That all those Testimonies he hath huddled here together out of the Fathers against Petty-Schismaticks will light far heavier upon him and his fellows if they be found to have separated from the incomparably greater Authority of the whole Church and that not onely by a bare Schism but also which you here acknowledge to adde very much to the guilt of the former by an open and most manifest Sedition The rest of your Chapter is taken up is things which tend not at all to the Matter you purposed to handle that is To defend your Church against the Schisms we object which makes you also so ample and large in handling them You show therefore with a great deal of pains the particular dignities of Deacons Priests Bishops Arch-bishops Primates Patriarchs you tell us many things of the Seven Churches of Asia c. I will onely glean what may seem worth Animadversion treating it briefly because you speak it as you say by the way in passing and the question is not much concerned in it and omiting those Testimonies which are slightly objected here and come over and over again afterwards First then you affirm That the Roman Patriarchy extended not it self to all Italy which though a known untruth and which I have heard learned and unpassionate men of your own side acknowledge yet you will needs evince out of the obscure Testimony of one Ruffinus a discontented â—illy and barbarons Writer and if you blame me for excepting against him one of your late most extolled Writers Monsieur Daille shall defend me who characters Ruffinus to be An arrant Wooden statue a pitiful thing one that had scarce any reason in what he said and yet much less dexterity in defending himself yet you account here his Testimony very competent But how small soever the Popes Patriarchy be what is this to his Papal Authority since even we our selves acknowledge him a Private Bishop of Rome which yet prejudices not his Publick Authority as the Churches Universal Governor Your Testimony alleaged out of the Council of Chalcedon shall be answered hereafter when we come to discuss the Question of the Popes Authority as also your other out of the Council of Ephesus in its proper place where it is repeated Your other claw against the Pope is That these was none antiently above the Patriarchs but the Emperor which you think to evince because the Emperor made use of his secular Authority in gathering Councils And who denies but however the intention and ordering that great Affair belonged to the Popes yet the Emperors as being Lords of the world were fittest to command the execution of it But ere you can conclude hence against the Popes Authority over the Church you must first evince That the Emperors and the like may be said of Kings did this without the Popes signifying such their desires to them Next That if they did it sometimes against the Popes will or pretending it their proper power such an action or pretence of theirs was lawful And thirdly had it belonged to the Emperors which yet none grants you yet how will your consequence hold good That therefore the Pope hath no Authority over the Universal Church As if there were no other acts of an Universal Authority but to gather Councils which is all one as to say That the Kings of England could have no Universal Temporal Command or Jurisdiction in England but onely to call a Parliament All your Marginal Testimonies therefore which you here bring signifying no more to us But that the Emperor executed that business are far from making good the Position you alleage them for to wit
ever imagin'd it a matter of Controversie needing to be manifested Whether or no King Henry the Eighth denied the Popes Supremacy The second is yet more ridiculous then the former since not even the most impudent Heretick in the World ever had the face to deny but that if the Popes Universal Authority was constituted by Christ the consequence was inevitable That it was both Schism and Heresie to reject and condem it as he confesses they did Yet is this the second thing saith he which we must manifest ere the Objection will be of any force But to make the jest compleat after telling us That we are to manifest them he out of his courtesie and to expedite the matter is pleased to grant them not requiring the pretenders farther to prove them As if he could have resisted them but had done us a great favor in saving us from a most disgraceful foil we should have sustained in maintaining That a fact was done which himself and all the world acknowledges and in being puzzled with proving that what Christ bid us do was to be done and the Authority instituted by God himself to be obeyed To what purpose was it to bring such unnecessary and frivolous distinctions and afterwards wave them But the Doctor as I have shown before and shall demonstrate more largely hereafter hath a most special gift of his own in dividing his Text and he must upon all or rather no occasion show it Which trick of his though it counterfeit an order and breed an apprehension of a methodical exactness in discourse to ordinary Readers yet when it shall be discovered to tend to no solidity being like the Philosophers dividing of Spatium imaginarium all men will see plainly it is but a meer knack to be-wonder Children and Ignorants SECT 7. Of Doctor Hammonds first Evidence against St. Peters Universal Pastorship BUt now the Question is stated this Chapter is to prove no Donation of any Primacy to St. Peter by Christ the next That no such Authority is devolv'd upon the Pope his Successor in the See of Rome And now the long-expected time of the Doctors Evidences is come I told you he had a horrible design in Lavander against the Pope now truth is come to light This this is the fatal time that the Horns of the Beast in the Apocalypse must be broken and the Walls of that Whorish-Babylon thrown down by the inevitable and unresistable Evidences of Dr. Hammond But to be serious the Doctor and I joyntly request the ingenuous Reader to bestow more attentive and deliberate diligence in examining and weighing well this part of the Controversie then what hath gone before The important weight of the truth in question now hot in pursuit and the very sound of Evidence now mainly pretended do both invite to a more particular attention The Doctor especially granting that the Question must be managed with Evidences and so concluded either on the one side or the other If the Doctors proofs conclude and manifest themselves to be indeed what they are pretended that is Evidences then I will grant the truth on his side and the controversie at an end But if all the Evidence they bring be onely that they are most evidently repugnant and most injurious to Gods Word to all Ancient Histories and to themselves that they are open Forgeries and most absurd Deductions shamefully abusing the Readers judgment and ev'n his very eyes then I hope the Reader will pardon me if I seem to bear less respect to him in telling him plainly of his faulâ—s who manifests himself to have quite cast off all respect to Truth Gods Word Antiquity his Readers and even to his own Conscience But the Doctor begins to argue have at Saint Peter then in this Chapter have at the Pope in the next His first Evidence then as he calls it is from Scripture That St. Peter was the Apostle of the Circumcision or Iews exclusively to the Uncircumcision or Gentiles Whence he insers that St. Peters authority being restrained to the Jews onely could not be Universal to the whole Church So that all his first Evidence is to evince the No-authority that Apostle had over the Gentiles or the Exclusiveness of any Apostleship in respect of them But first Mr. Hammond tells us what he means by an Apostle to wit A Commissioner of Christ endued with authority by him and this Commission given to him as to all the other Apostles indefinitely and unlimitedly not restrained by Christs words to any particular Province but equally extending to the whole World Where since he would go about to define an Apostle he might have done well to show in what he is distinguished from a Disciple However all he there says is true onely we adde That neither by any subsequent act of theirs as the Doctor imagines was this illimited Commission given to each by Christ restrained to particular sorts of men or several large Diocesses or Provinces so as to make them lose thereby their jurisdiction over other persons or places However they might agree for the better propagating the Gospel to disperse themselves into several Nations or by the provident cooperation of Gods Spirit have a more especial gift in converting some sorts of people then others and so applying more their industry where they experienced more fruit of their Preaching got thence by their particular addiction to that sort of people or that Nation the appellation of their Apostle or Doctor No Exclusiveness therefore of their ample Authority and Apostolical Jurisdiction from any Sect or Nation no hedging or fencing in the unbounded vastness of their universally-extended Mission and Commission within the Verge of any particular Province or People Yet Mr. Hammond will needs have all their Authorities limited for fear St. Peters should prove unlimited and therefore layes for his ground to conclude St. Peter Apostle of the Jews onely That they distributed their Universal great Province into several lesser ones This he evidences for you must conceive that all these Chapters are perfectly connected discourses that is manifest and noon-day Evidences out of two places in the Sacred Scripture in explicating which also his chief talent-lies These therefore we must endeavor to clear as far as our abilities will give us leave For the Reader can imagine no less but that these two places being the foundation of the Doctors future discourse must be most unconfutable Evidences and consequently must needs cost as much toil and labor in the answering The first place he alledges to prove That the Apostles had especial and peculiar Provinces exclusively to one another is that of Acts 1. 25. where the Apostles pray God to shew Whether of the two proposed justus and Matthias he had chosen that he might receive the lot of that Ministry and Apostleship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whence â—udas strayed to go to his own place where he will needs have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. to
heard off to infer an exclusive distinction and limitation of Authority from terms plainly promiscuous and from which a confusion of jurisdiction might more properly be deduced So as not a letter of the question is found in the testimony but what Mr. Hammond with a blinde Id est addes of his own Insomuch as it is left a drawn match whether his ID EST or WE KNOW be the better Testimony However this is certain that in the Doctors apprehension they are both of them most absolute EVIDENCES because it is most evident he says them both without either Authority or Reason He labors in the next place to found a distinction of the Iewish and Gentile Church at Antioch which though it be not a jot to his purpose had he demonstrated it yet it is pity to see what shifts he is put to in proving it Necessity makes many a man forfeit his honesty aâ— this Doctor hath also done too plainly here Where he abuses most grosly St. Peter with his Jewish Proselytes and the sacred Scripture too citing Gal. 2. 11. That they withdrew from all communion and society with the Gentile Christians Whereas in the Text there is no such word as ALL in which alone he can found the distinction of the Jewish and Gentile Church Neither as the place alleaged manifests did they any otherwise withdraw from them thaâ— in refusing onely to eat the Gentile diet yet this he calls withdrawing from ALL COMMUNION as if the Doctor made account there were no other Communion but in eating and drinking Moreover since to withdraw from all Communion with another Church is against fraternal Charity and according to his formerlylaid grounds a Schism a sin inexcusable by such light trifles as were then between them it follows most necessarily that while he goes about to prove a perfect distinction of the two Churches at Antioch he hath consequently made the Iewish Church for withdrawing from all Communion with the Gentiles Schismatical and blessed St. Peter himself a Schismatick nay a ring-leader of Schismaticks But God be praised the place is proved to be falsified and so good St. Peter is vindicated His fourth Testimony or EVIDENCE of the mutually-exclusive Jurisdictions of these two Apostles is taken from the writer of the Apostolical Constitutions who as the Doctor saith pag. 75. ACCORDINGLY tells us that Evodius and Ignatius at the same time sate Bishops of Antioch one succeeding St. Peter the other St. Paul one in the Iewish the other in the Gentile Congregation Whereas the place alledged in the Author which I will put down because he slubberingly omits it is onely this Lib. 7. cap. 46. Antiochiae Evodius ordinatus est à me Petro Ignatius à Paulo At Antioch Evodius was ordained by me Peter Ignatius by Paul This is all there being neither before nor after a syllable more concerning that matter Where besides that the Doctor will I am sure acknowledge the Book of no sound Authority you see the Testimony produced expresseth onely their Ordination by the Apostles but saith nothing of their sitting together nor succeeding the Apostles much less talks of the distinction of the Iewish or Gentile Congregation least of all of any mutual Exclusiveness of St. Peter and St. Pauls Jurisdiction there but all these which are indeed all that is to the purpose are either voluntarily added by the Doctor or groundlesly supposed or else must be pretended as deducible thence by Mr. Hammonds all-proving ID EST. However the story goes for it matters not much whether it be true or no it is manifest first that the Doctor hath not brought a syllable of a proof to serve his turn were it granted Next that the Testimonies by himself alleaged here out of Eusebius and Origen calling Ignatius the second and out of St. Ierom calling him the third make much against the sitting of two together Neither will he finde St. Paul was ever accounted a Parcel-Bishop in Antioch with St. Peter that he should have a properly-call'd Successor there However he might perhaps ordain some Bishop to assist there after his departure Lastly ere he sees what he does he blindly sweeps down all his own laborious Cobweb-work with a Testimony out of Theodoret which affirms that Ignatius received the Archisacerdotal honor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from the hand of that great Apostle St. Peter where the Doctor leaves out the word Great Iest St. Peter should have too much Now then The Apostolical Constitutions being a Book which is excepted against by all sides and Theodoret being an Author beyond exception we have far more reason to judg by these Testimonies that Great St. Peter ordained Ignatius also rather then Euodius onely so as the Doctor is far from gaining nay even comes off with no small loss from his own Testimonies notwithstanding the faithful endeavors of his ID EST to the contrary His fifth Testimony is out of St. Irenaeus which affirms that the Apostles founded and built the Church at Rome The sixth which the Doctor praises for more express is of St. Epiphanius who testifies That Peter and Paul were Apostles and Bishops in Rome The seventh from Eusebius who tells us That the Inscriptions on the Apostles Tombs mentions them as Founders of that Church The eighth is from Gaius an ancient writer who calls their Monuments The Monuments of them that founded that Church The ninth is out of Dionysius of Corinth who affirms both of the Church of Rome and Corinth That each of them was the foundation of Peter and Paul The tenth out of St. Prosper who witnesseth That Peter and Paul the Apostles consecrated or constituted a Church in the City of Rome These are six Testimonies of his which I have put down in order as they lay and fully as he cited them not omitting a syllable And now tell me I beseech thee good Reader for it may be thou hast better eyes then I canst thou discern any the least word in any of these six Testimonies which even seems afar off to limit St. Peters authority to the Jews and St. Pauls to the Gentiles which is the point in question Is there any thing spoken here more than in a general and promiscuous sense That they builded founded a Church were Bishops c. Do they â—ound any distinction or exclusiveness of Jurisdiction When thou hast well examin'd thiâ— next please to consider that to evidence by Testimonies cannot be done otherwise than by expressing the thing to be evidenced Which thing in our present case being the restriction limitation exception and exclusion of St. Peters jurisdiction which as given to our Saviour to him and the other Apostles was without controversie Universal this cannot be expressed nor consequently evidenced by Testimonies otherwise then by restrictive limitative exceptive and exclusive terms such as are Onely solely alone to none else c. This once understood and apply'd to the present occasion and the Doctors manner of proceeding whosoever thou art that
readest this Answer whether thou be'st Catholick Protestant Puritan nay even the Doctor himself it is impossible but thou shouldst manifestly see that the Doctor hath not said one syllable to the purpose there being neither in any of the former nor following Testimonies either out of Scriptures Fathers or Histories any the least restrictive or exclusive sentence particle or syllable for him To say nothing that all both Scriptures Fathers and ancient Histories are most expresly against him What a most unfortunate man is this Doctor to vent these for EVIDENCES and how unfortunate they who hazard the eternal loss of their Souls upon such mens writings But to return to our six Testimonies By what means think you does he make them speak to his purpose Not by torturing and screwing the words to confess what they never intended that were impossible in such stubborn allegations and perfectly-silent in what concerns him Nor by intermingling words of his own to prompt them and make them speak out which is the old and often-discover'd trick of his fellows nor by criticizing his former unsuccessful art but by pinning a Paper of his own forging to the Testimony alleaged and gulling the Reader to his face that the Author sayes it So as the device is the same onely the method altered for the said necessary Paper-which he used to pin behinde the Testimony now he pastes before it beginning the ninth Paragraph which introduces the formerly-recited Testimonies thus The same is as EVIDENT at Rome where these two great Apostles met again and each of them erected and managed a Church St. Peter of Iews and St. Paul of Gentiles Hold Doctor the Testimonies should have told us that why do you forestal them And then as in the eight Section after his own bare WE KNOW he used the transition of ACCORDINGLY to bring in his Authors So now after he had straw'd the way with his own evident as he pleased himself he ushers in the modest Testimonies with so many Soe 's So Irenaeus so Epiphanius so the Inscription so Gaius whereas indeed the following Testimonies are no more So or like his Preface to them and to the question they are produced for then as the Proverb says the running of the Wheel-barrow is to the owing of six pence The Doctor shall put the Similitude in form and the Reader shall judge Just as I say saith the Doctor That St. Peter and St. Paul each of them erected and managed a Church one of Iews the other of Gentiles with exclusion of St. Pauls authority over St. Peters and St. Peters over St. Pauls Congregation Even SO St. Irenaeus says That they built the Church there St. Epiphanius That they were Apostles and Bishops there c. The Reader may perceive the fitness of the rest by applying them at his leasure Onely ere I take my leave of these Testimonies I would gladly learn of the Doctor why in his preamble to them he maintains a distinction of Churches belonging to St. Peter and St. Paul and then brings in St. Prosper with a So to witness it whereas himself in the nineteenth Section of this very Chapter makes the same St. Prosper testifie the quite contrary and a promiscuous Jurisdiction over the Gentiles saying expresly That Peter and Paul at Rome Gentium Ecclesiam Sacrârunt consecrated the Church of the Gentiles Were ever such mistakes incident to any other man as are natural to this Doctor But it seems he wants a good memory a necessary qualification for him that says any thing at random without ground authority or reason to maintain a false cause or rather indeed foreseeing the danger he made the Testimony whisper softly in English lest it might be taken notice of translating Ecclesia Gentium The Church of the Nations because the word Gentiles would be too much reflected on being that which throughout this whole Chapter he hath absolutely interdicted St. Peter to have any thing to do with Alas poor man SECT 11 The Examination of Dr. Hammonds Irrefragable Evidence and other silent Testimonies produced by him BUt now we are come to his EVIDENCE of EVIDENCES the Seals of the Popes which the Doctor here calls an IRREFRAGABLE EVIDENCE I know the Reader will expect some most express and unavoidable Testimony out of some ancient Writer beyond all exception and of the first Class witnessing as the Faith of that Age the contradistinction and contralimitation of St. Peter and St. Pauls Jurisdiction The Testimony is out of Matthew Paris which I will transcribe word by word together with the Doctors Comment upon it In the Bull of the Pope stands the Image of St. Paul on the right hand of the Cross which is graven in the midst of the Seal and the Image of St. Peter on the left And this onely account saith the Doctor given for St. Pauls having the nobler place Quia c. because he believed in Christ without seeing him Here on Earth addes the Doctor in a Parenthesis Here is all that belongs to this Testimony transcribed to a word without any more either Explication or Application to the matter before or after than is here put down And now for Gods sake Reader tell me what canst thou discern here of St. Peters being Apostle of the Iews onely and exclusively to the Gentiles which may deserve it should be called an IRREFRAGABLE EVIDENCE My eyes are dazel'd it seems with striving to see a thing at such an unproportionable distance for I can espie nothing at all in it Had the Question between us been Whether St. Paul believed on Christ without seeing him or no it might have served to some purpose but to our case it hath no imaginable relation Yet this Eagle-ey'd Doctor in the bare pictures of St. Peter and St. Paul on a Seal can discern clearly an IRREFRAGABLE EVIDENCE that their Authorities are exclusively-limited St. Peters to the Iews St. Pauls to the Gentiles which none living could see without his colour'd and insincere spectacles to wit blackest hatred and rancor against the Pope While he looks through these any thing appears an IRREFRAGABLE EVIDENCE which may seem possible in his perverse imagination to be detorted to the Popes prejudice and to wound him though through the sides of St. Peter After this Testimony or IRREFRAGABLE EVIDENCE follows immediately in the Doctor And all this very agreeable to Scripture which onely sets down St. Peter to be the Apostle of Circumcision and of his being so at Rome saith he we make no question What means his All this For neither in any Testimony nor yet in the Popes Seal is there any the least expression of St. Peters being onely the Apostle of the Circumcision save in his own words onely yet he says that all this is in that point agreeable to Scripture it is then of his own words he means which how disconformable and totally repugnant they are to Scripture hath already been shewn Nor are they less dissonant in this
Jurisdictions but also to set them together by the ears as if they were jealous that their fellow Apostles like usurping competitors would intrude into their right and therefore give express charge to debar their ambition from putting their Sicklâ— into another mans Harvest Good Mr. Hammond let us have no more of these insincere dealings Let the restrictive and exclusive words which onely make for your purpose be the witnesses not yours at least put them down with that distinction as may easily be discerned and do not after a company of your own expressions mainly prejudicial to the Controversie immediately cite a place of Sacred Writ without producing the words and so gull the Reader to to believe That all which went before is perfect and pure Scripture Whereas indeed scarce so much as a blank Monosyllable is found in the Testimony to countenance your alleaging it But this is your solemn method all over your Book His next Argument is that St. Paul gave Commission to Timothy without St. Peter And who doubts but that each Apostle might by his own single power delegate and constitute whom he pleased and where he pleased in any place of the world I perceive by this whole Chapter that the Doctor understands not the question or at least could not have made a Book without counterfeiting not to understand it We voluntarily yeeld him that each Apostle had an Apostolical Commission over the whole world and yet fear no prejudice should hence arise to St. Peters Primacy amongst the rest of the Apostles Had Master Hammond known this it might have saved him all that pitiful puzzle in making good his first Evidence That St. Peter was over the Iews onely by patching those old garments of ancient Testimonies with the new peeces of his self-woven Additions This Concession of ours and mistake of his shews the next Paragraph which harps upon the same string to wit That St. Paul constituted Titus Primate in Creet to be nothing to the purpose And I observe That the Doctor to give him his due hath very good luck in this That he proves those things pretty plainly which none ever denied After this he tells us That Simeon Metaphrastes affirms St. Peter to have been in Britanny sometime and baptized many into the Faith of Christ and constituted Churches ordaining Bishops Presbyters and Deacons in the twelfth year of Nero. How now Doctor what will become of your excluding St. Peter from any Authority over the Gentiles if this Testimony be true were not all the ancient Britains at that time Heathens or Gentiles Alas no we and all antiquity were mistaken the Doctor tells us That in all reason it must be extended no farther then St. Peters line as he was Apostle of the Circumcision ID EST saith he to the Iews which might at that time â—e dispersed here So as though the story were true yet the Doctor hath ever a help at maw and rather then St. Peter shall touch a Gentile he will fancy strongly that there were I cannot tell how many Diocesses of Iews in England since there must be several Diocesses where there are several Bishops for St. Peter to convert and govern So that Britain must swarm with Jews Which might have been saith this evidencing Doctor dispersed there and this without any authority or likelihood but onely because Master Hammond and his ID ESTS say it In the last place the Doctor concludes out of his former laid grounds that is out of his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Iudas his going to Hell out of his own ID ESTS WE KNOW IT IS MANIFEST WE MAKE NO QUESTION out of his clasping together very unlike and disaccording Testimonies to his own voluntary Assertions with the Hooks and Eyes of SO and ACCORDINGLY but most of all out of the Papers of his own Additions pin'd before and behinde the too-bashful proofs Out of these grounds I say without so much as one word in any Testimony either out of Scripture Fathers or History restraining the Commission of St. Peter to the Iews onely he concludes That that Apostle could not be Universal Pastor of the Church This done he hooks in with another ACCORDINGLY a Testimony of St. Prospers which calls them Hereticks who depart from the Communion of Christ and his Apostles in the plural says the Doctor and then reckons up promiscuously such and such Apostles founding such and such Churches What follows hence against St. Peters authority This Testimony seems also something aenigmatical and requires Lynxe's eyes or the Doctors far-seeing and all-penetrating Optick to look through the thick rinde of it which he willingly lends you in these words Where as the Church had the several Apostles for their Founders and those Independent one from the other so the unity from which Hereticks and Schismaticks are said to depart IS SAID to have been founded EQUALLY in each of them in John James and Andrew as well as in St. Peter The word where and is said would almost perswade the Reader that all that follows is in the Testimony but nothing is there or any where else That the Apostles were independent of each other nor that this unity was founded equally in each of them nor in the rest as well as St. Peter But all these his Doctorship huddles together of his own head All the shadow of proof one can have a glimpse of from this place is That the Apostles are here named promiscuously and without distinction and that therefore all were equal Which as it is onely a Negative and non-concluding Argument to say That no distinction is here mentioned therefore there was none so were the Conclusion admitted as Consequent it makes as much against Christ as against St. Peter For he is also named joyntly with his Apostles as those whose joynt-communion Hereticks leave So as if the mentioning of several persons indifferently together without distinction of superiority argue an equality in their Authorities the Doctors Logick may with the same reason infer That Christ and his Apostles were independent of one another that the unity from which Schismaticks depart is founded EQUALLY in them in John James Andrew AS WELL as Christ c. And this may serve for a sample of the Doctors solidness in reasoning Yet it is some sign of wit if one can do himself no good at least to do himself no hurt but the Doctor by this very Testimony which made nothing at all for him has most expresly undone all his former work even beyond the help of an ID EST that is beyond all hopes of remedy For whereas he had bent all his endeavors to prove that some Apostles had the Iews onely for their Province and had more especially insisted for nine whole Paragraphs together in limiting St. Peters authority to the Iews no body knows where as likewise St. Iames his to the Iews in Iudea Section six and St. Iohns to the Iews of Asia Section fourteen This Testimony by himself here alleaged
Authority Neither do the Testimonies of Bishops in the plural in the least manner touch us there being not one word in them excluding the Pope Nay rather they make for us for the Church being founded on Apostles and Bishops prejudices not St. Peter and his Successors to be the chiefest And if so then the Church is built most chiefly and especially on St. Peter and his Successors which is all we Catholicks say and not on them onely which he first calumniates us with and then dreamingly impugns ending his two and twentieth Paragraph with a Testimony out of St. Basil who calls Episcopacy The Presidency of the Apostles the very same adds the Doctor That Christ bestowed upon all and not onely on one of them as if we held there were but one Apostle or else that those Bishops who succeeded the rest of the Apostles and were constituted by them were not truly and properly Bishops It follows in the next Section By all which that is by your omitting our best proof from Scripture and answering the weakest by supposing a calumny by your mistake of twelve Thrones by St. Peters having no greater a tongue of fire and all the Apostles being full of the Holy Ghost by the Testimonies of Fathers naming Bishops and Apostles in the plural our of which meer plurality he infers an equality of Authority By all this the Doctor says it is evident again That the Power which Christs Commission instated on St. Peter was in like manner entrusted to every other single Apostle as well as to him c. Whereas he hath not produced one syllable expressing any singularity used to any other single Apostle as was to St. Peter nor one equalizing term of as well equally c. but what he addes himself Though these be the onely expressions can serve him and which he pretends to here as already produced and by producing them to have made the matter Evident But the Doctor being by this time pump'd dry of his own Evidences betakes himself to his former method of answering our Arguments or as he calls it to evacuate them And what Argument think you will he chuse to evacuate but that which is drawn from the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and how will he evacuate it but first from Homers Iliads next from the Revelations But indeed he puts our Argument so weakly or rather not at all that is he swallows our proof so glibly and yet evacuates it so groaningly that it were charity in some good body to ease him in this his greatest extremity The sum of his solution of I cannot tell what for he urges no Argument of ours but onely puts down the bare word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seems to be this That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and therefore signifies vulgarly a Stone and in Homers Iliads is applied to denote an huge loggerly Stone like a Mill-stone 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Next this Stone by the Scripture must needs be a foundation Stone and there being Twelve foundation-stones named in the Apocalypse called there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it must follow that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which before was a vulgar-stone is now advanced to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a precious stone Now follows his first inference as well as I can gather it That all the twelve Apostles being in like manner and not St. Peter onely and above the rest styled Foundation-stones it is consequent hence that all were equal Where first the Argument is again onely Negative to wit that no distinction is there put therefore there was none To make which inference good he must first shew that if there were any distinction it must necessarily be exprest upon all occasions Next it is a most pitiful peece of reason to perswade the Reader from onely a plurality and naming twelve Apostles that all were equal As if out of the very naming in the plural twelve Signs Shires Cities or Magistrates it must necessarily follow out of the bare common name of Sign Magistrate c. given to each of them that all were equal Again the Doctor hath quite overthrown his cause by arguing That not onely St. Peter but the rest also were called Foundation-stones and therefore they were all equal Since granting as he does that a Foundation-stone and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being the same and onely St. Peter having the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it follows in the Doctors grounds That he onely and in good reason that he more particularly should be a Rock or Foundation-stone Where note that the Doctor would have all the Apostles call Peter for the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being given St. Peter by our Saviour for no other end but to signifie he was a Rock or as the Doctor will have it a Foundation-stone and every Apostle being according to Master Hammond equally such it follows That they have all as good title to be called Peter as that Apostle who alone till Master Hammond writ had that appellation It follows to strengthen his former weak reason And it being there in vision APPARENT that the wall of the City Id est of the Church being measured exactly and found to be an hundred forty four Id est saith he Twelve times twelve cubits It is evident That that mensuration assigns an equal proportion whether of Power or Province to all and every of the Apostles which is again a prejudice to the Universal Pastorship of any one of them Thus the Doctor intends for an up-shot-Argument to evidence an equality in all the Apostles by the equal division of this Wall But I crave leave to ask the Doctor whether he be certain that none of those precious Stones which equally made up this Wall is richer then the rest For the richness in things of this nature being more considerable and more enhancing their value then the bulk and quantity it follows That the greater preciousness and lustre which manifests it self in one above another may better claim a signification That that Apostle who is represented by it had an authority above the rest then the equal measure of the Wall can infer an equality nay more if there be an equality in the bigness and an inequality in the worth there is no evasion but it must resemble a worthier person In order to which there comes a congruous Argument to my minde such as if it were on the Doctors side and he had the managing of it I know he would make it a MOST IRREFRAGABLE and UNQUESTIONABLE EVIDENCE And though Catholicks who understand the grounds of their Faith â—light such poor supports as a self-fancied Explication of the obscurest part of Scripture in which chiefly consists the Doctors talent in evidencing yet because perhaps he may fancy it stronger then twenty demonstrations and so it may come to do him much good he shall have it very willingly Amongst these twelve pretious Foundation-stones denoting the twelve
Apostles the Doctor will not deny the first to signifie St. Peter to whom he and his fellows are content at least to grant from our Saviours words a priority of Order This first foundation then shadowing to us St. Peter is here Chap. 21. 19. said to be a Iasper the self-same Stone whose lustre shined in our Saviour Apoc. 4. 3. and also in his Church Apoc. 21. 11. Whence follows would the Doctor triumphantly cry out as an IRREFRAGABLE EVIDENCE that St. Peter onely having the same lustre with our Saviour is like him in representation and so onely he resembles him as his Vicegerent or Vicar As also that being the same Stone the Church is made of and the first of all the rest it is unquestionably true would he say that he is the first part of the Church that is her Head Under what luckless Constellation was Mr. Hammond born to meddle with the Foundation-stones in the Apocalypse and not fore see this dangerous rub which makes him so far from evidencing against us thence that the very place objected happens to be an Evidence against himself I mean such a kinde of proof as he would call an Evidence And thus he concludes his fourth Chapter containing the first substantial part of his Book In which as I sincerely profess I have not found one word to the purpose that is not one restrictive word of St. Peters Universal Pastorship nor one express equalizing term of his power of the Keys to the rest of the Apostles so I must confess withal that I have both wearied my own patience in laying open such a gallimaufry of shallow impertinences and I fear my Reader also who may think his time ill-employ'd in perusing the confutation of so weak a Writer The Second Part. Comprehending the Answers of the Fifth Sixth and Seventh Chapters SECT 1. Of the pretended Primogeniture of Antioch and the Doctors mistake of the Council of Chalcedon THis Champion of Schism having as he thought empal'd the Universal Jurisdiction of St. Peter to the dispersed Iews onely proceeds laying first his own mistakes for his grounds in this fifth Chapter to depose the Pope which he entitles thus The Evidences from the Bishop of Romes succeeding Saint Peter examined as he did the fore-going Chapter The pretended Evidences of the Romanists c. Where first he would perswade many good honest Readers that he had urged our Evidences home and afterwards salved them whereas indeed he onely puts down a word or two of our bare tenet and that not even as we explicate it much less as we evidence it Secondly He would seem to intimate again that it belongs to us to evidence Let the Doctor know the Churches Evidence is her long-and-quietly enjoy'd possession of the belief of Infallibility in which she was actually found when his upstart and disobedient Forefathers the first Reformers went out from her-Communion POSSIDEO QUIA POSSIDEO OLIM POSSIDEO PRIOR POSSIDEO is all the Evidence and all the reason she is bound to give to her rebel-sons and out-lawed Subjects So as it is your part to evidence hers to hold and possess her own till you sufficiently that is demonstrably evidence her title to be unjust Thirdly The Doctor is here also as indeed generally every where contrary to himself inscribing the Chapters as answers to our Evidences yet spending almost the whole Chapters in producing pretended Evidences of his own so performing the quite contrary to what he promised But this is nothing with him His first Paragraph sayes onely That St. Peter having no Primacy the Bishop of Rome his Successor could consequently have none But because his Antecedent hath already been dash'd in peeces by my Answer to his former Chapter no Consequence can be built upon it till he have repaired his ground-work by a stronger Reply Yet Mr. Hammond is so self-conceitedly confident of the invincibleness of his former Chapter that he accounts this a work of Supererogation Whereas if to prove his first Evidence he hath produced any one express Testimony That St. Peters Iurisdiction was limited to the Iews onely which onely was the thing in question or if to prove his second EVIDENCE he hath produced any one express place to prove That the Keys though given to all yet were not more particularly given to St. Peter which onely is there the thing in question I will quit the field and yeeld though not my cause yet my own particular conquer'd But if he have not what a vanity is it to brag when he had said nothing at all to the Controversie that he hath said all that is necessary nay even supererogated and said more then needs In this second Paragraph the Doctor would evidence That the Priviledges attending St. Peters succession belong rather to the Bishop of Antioch then of Rome And this he endeavors by asking three Questions to which I shall answer in order First he asks Whether St. Peter did not as truly plant a Church of Iewish believers at Antioch and leave a Successor Bishop there as at Rome he is supposed to have done I answer If you mean he planted a Church there of Iewish believers onely so as he had no power over the Gentiles also I absolutely deny it and in your last Chapter your proper place to prove it in you had not one word to bless your self with but what you added of your own That he left a Successor Bishop there If you mean such an improperly call'd Successor as both himself and St. Paul left in many other places that is made some one a Bishop and left him to overlook and govern that Church I easily grant but if you mean such a Successor as should succeed in the amplitude of Saint Peters authority so as St. Peter should devest himself of his Primacy and give it him not carrying it along with him to Rome I deny he left there any such kinde of Successor neither can there be the least shadow of Reason why he should nor is there any Testimony or Ground that he did Your second Quere is Whether this were not done by him before ever he came to Rome I answer in the manner I have declared doubtless he did Your third Quere is Whether these two Concessions do not devolve all power and jurisdiction on the Bishop of Antioch St. Peters Successor there which by that tenure and claim of Succession from St. Peter can be pretended to by the Bishop of Rome I answer the first is not a Concession unless first distinguished as I shewed before and the distinction given intercepts the passage to his Conclusion To manifest which the better we may distinguish in St. Peter resident at Antioch two diverse qualities of dignity First his particular care of that Church as private Bishop in that See Secondly his publick office of Head of the Church in which consists his Primacy Now when he left that City and went to Rome he devested himself of the private care of
that Church and so it was necessary he should substitute another in the charge of that private Bishoprick but did not devest himself of the dignity of chief of the Apostles and so no pretence can be competent to his substitute in Antioch This dignity annexed to his person by our B. Saviour went along with him whithersoever he went and remained with him living so that onely he who succeeded him dying the Bishop of Rome could claim the inheritance of that sacred Dignity which nothing but his blessed Predecessors death could delegate unto him At Rome he died and was by dying devested where he was devested there was necessary a succession into the dignity which he left and was wanting by his death to the whole Church This was his Primacy This therefore must be the title of his truly called Successor there and no pretence left for his substitute at Antioch made in his life time Most vain then is the Doctors conceit of the primogeniture in Antioch unless he could prove St. Peter died there in vain are his self-affirmed and onely-self-proved positions in his third Section to this purpose In vain his assertion in the beginning of the fourth That if Rome derived any authority from the succession of St. Peter Antioch must for the same reason be preferred before Alexandria since St. Peter onely constituted there a Successor to himself in the dignity which he then stript himself of that is of the private charge of that Church which being onely an ordinary office and no particularity resulting from St. Peters personal authority it had consequently from the force of such a substitute instalment nothing to elevate it beyond the pitch of an ordinary Bishoprick and so it remained liable upon convenient Reasons afterwards ensuing to be ranked after Alexandria This bolt then falling short of the mark he is resolved at length to shoot home and for his better advantages stalks under the patronage of the Council of Chalcedon citing a Canon thereof That the See of Constantinople shall have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 equal priviledges dignities and advantages with Rome upon this account That Constantinople was new Rome and the seat of the Empire at that time which say they was the reason that Rome enjoyed such priviledges and therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Fathers at Constantinople being moved with the same Reasons had rightly judged That now the same priviledges should belong to that Church or City 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And that this being next to old Rome should in all Ecclesiastical affairs have the same dignity or greatness that old Rome had Thus far the Doctor Where first I would ask him how he knows that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies the Primacy are there no kinde of priviledges but of equality in Jurisdiction Next I would know why 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 can exact no other interpretation but AS SHE must needs be interpreted as much as she or have the same dignity or greatness deducing an equality or identity from the particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which onely denotes a similitude or likeness Thirdly I must chide Mr. Doctor and with very good reason too for Englishing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in ALL Ecclesiastick businesses whereas there is no such word as All in the Council and in this word All purposely added by the Doctor consists the most efficacious part of the Testimony For the worâ— ALL may include possibly the authority oâ— Primacy it self which no other word there alleaged can in any way signifie But the Doctors Pen is still very free to let down Ink when any thing of importance is to be added to a Testimony Fourthly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying nothing but certain honorary pompous or ceremonious priviledges which might have accrued to some Church by the residence of the supreme Secular power there I see no necessity why the Popes Legates might not omit to oppose the reason there given for the collation of these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whereas had the word signified Primacy which was then as strongly and expresly pretended to come from Christs donation to St. Peter as is evident in Pope Leo's Epistles whose Legates presided in this Council as it is now by these present Popes then we should have heard another story Fifthly The Doctor grants that this Decree was as derogatory to the dignity of Antioch as Rome but it is evident that Antioch pretended to no Primacy over the whole Church Evident therefore it is from the Doctors own Concession That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 could not signifie Primacy of Jurisdiction neither consequently was that struck at by the tumultuous Constantinopolitans Sixtly The very Council where this was handled calls and acknowledges Rome the first which the Doctor will interpret a precedency of order onely and this he will grant she retain'd notwithstanding these equal priviledges arrogated to Constantinople if then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 equal priviledges may be supposed to be given to another Romes precedency and priority in order remaining untouched why should we think or indeed how can we think that that word meant the Primacy or that this was concerned in the Decree being much higher then the former since this was sacred the other complementary this ever held as not possible to come otherwise then from Christs especial donation whereas that might have probably proceeded from Ecclesiastical Constitution Seventhly The Doctor onely proceeding upon a whimsie born and bred in his own brain tells us pag. 99. that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies a Patriarchate and the pomps attending it and that Canstantinople wanted onely the dignity of a Patriarchate to be equal to Rome Which is a most gross mistake and plainly demonstrating That the Doctor took this Testimony as he found it dropt from the Pen of some petty Writer and never â—etcht it from the Fountains of ancient History it self For it is certain and by all acknowledged That Constantinople was a Patriarchate before but the fourth and now pretended to be the second and so make Alexandria the third and Antioch the fourth Yet the Doctor runs on upon this ground and ignorant of the truth of the history winks and fights most cruelly paying the Primacy of Rome with his own sayings even to utter desolation till he comes to the end of the Paragraph Eighthly It is manifest by the History and Acts of the Council it self That this was no free Act nor ever came off clear The ambition of the Clergy of Constantinople extorting it with a tumultuous importunity it being voted after most of the Fathers were departed and onely those of the party of Constantinople left to determine in their own behalf what they or their instigators pleased whereupon it was contradicted and exclaimed against vehemently the next day by the Western Church in the Popes Legates disavowed and rejected by the Patriarch of Antioch and those under him No Patriarch of Alexandria was there and all the Metropolitans and Bishops under him
Church Where first I would ask the Doctor in which of these words he places most force in Their Consecration by their own Suffragans and by no other What difficulty in this As if the Pope could not be Head of the Church but he must needs consecrate all the Bishops in the World yet more then once the Doctor hath bob'd us with this Or is it in these words Nullâ penitus c. No profession c As little follows hence for the custom of making a profession or exhibiting subjection to the See of Rome when the Bishops were consecrated exprest in those words facere subjectionem was not then in use and though it were not now it would not at all prejudice the amplitude of the Popes Jurisdiction as Head of the Church Besides the words being Alteri Ecclesiae To another Church not specifying Rome in particular it affords nothing express for the Doctors purpose but may well bear the interpretation of the Bishop of St. Davids being independent of any within that Continent or as before was said of Cyprus of any private Patriarch With which as is evident may well consist a subjection to the Pope as the Churches chief and Universal Pastor To what follows in the fifth Section of the Abbot of Bangors answer who flatly denied subjection to the Pope of Rome First we reply It matters not much what the old Abbot said for every one who hath read those Histories knows the ill-will of the Britains was so extreme against the Saxons at St. Austins coming thâ— apprehension of their tyrannous usurping their Country and driving them out of their own being then â—lagrant and fresh in their memories That they refused to joyn with St Austin for the salvation of their Souls And they might probably be afraid lest admitting and coming under Saint Augustins Jurisdiction they might open a gap for the further encroachment of their late cruel persecutors Neither was it hard to imagin seeing the Britains ever since Aetius came to assist them by reason of the turmoils of the Empire and several incursions of barbarous Nations had little or no commerce with Rome A remote Abbot whose office is to look to his own private Monastery should be ignorant of what was due to the chief Pastor of the Church especially other as great errors being crept in among that Nation But what 's all this to us unless the Doctor can prove that whereas the whole Christian world held the then Pope Gregory the Great Head of the Church as appears by his Epistles to all Churches This Abbot did well in denying that Authority which all else granted and submitted to or that this Abbot communicated with them who admitted and acknowledged it For we do not undertake to defend that there could not be at any time two three or more persons who either out of disgust ambition interest or ignorance might speak or act against the Popes Authority but that it was the profession of the then Catholick Church The words therefore of this Abbot can make nothing against us unless the Doctor will undertake to vindicate him from ignorance and interest and that out of settled and imprejudiced Reason he in so saying pronounced the sence of the whole Catholick Church Yet I have not done with this story of the Abbot thus I alleage moreover that it is either absolutely faâ—ulous or else both all ancient Histories and which is more Doctor Hammond himself is mistaken and therefore however it may possibly be true yet can claim no credit if it be once taken in a lie It makes the Abbot in the close of his blunt Speech affirm Nos sumus c. We are under the rule of the Bishop of Caerlegion upon Usk who is to overlook and govern us under God Whereas it is manifest there was no such Bishoprick at that time it being translated in King Arthurs days which was fifty years before this from Caerusk to St. Davids as the Doctor himself grants in the foregoing Paragraph But for a more full and perfect answer to this upstart instance of that ancient Nation if what I have said suffice not I desire the Readers perusal of the ingenuous and solid Appendix to that excellent Manual of Controversies lately composed by the Learned H. T. where I believe he will finde this new piece of Antiquity irrecoverably confuted What follows in the sixth Paragraph is onely a conclusion out of what he hath said That the whole Iland is not Schismatical because St. Augustine converted not the whole Where first he onely proves the Welshmen no Schismaticks but still leaves himself and his Fellow-Englishmen whom he ought to have cleared first in the suds Nay though the Britains were not then Schismaticks upon that account not being converted by St. Augustine yet now being subjected to the English Bishops and incorporated into their Church if this Church be proved Schismatical The Welshmen who are Sons Subjects depending on and a part of her must needs incur the same censure Besides his premises being all invalidated and his grounds wrongly laid his conclusion must needs be weak and ruinous For we do not accuse him of the substance of Schism for refusing obedience to the Pope as his Successor who sent to convert England but as Successor to him who had the Primacy by the Donation of Christs own mouth However the former may render the rupture more enormous seeing that part of Christs Seamless-coat was close knit to the whole by such a near and firm obligation SECT 4. His continuance of the same Fundamental Error and some mistaking Proofs That Kings can erect Patriarchates BY this time the Doctor through Gods assistance and his Readers Christian patience is come to the second part of his Text which is that even this part of the Iland which was converted by St. Austin cannot entitle the Pope to Supremacy over them Where to omit that his whole grounds are erroneous as I have before manifested in supposing that to be our Plea sor the Popes Primacy let us see at least how consequently he handles it To prove his position he tells us The Nations converted by St. Paul were not to be ever subject to that Chair where St. Paul sate Good Mr. Doctor inform us what you intend by the Chair where Saint Paul sate Whether in the Church of Antioch or Rome or the like say you But first it is meerly a fiction that St. Paul ever sate in any Chair or was fixt Bishop in any place but at Rome onely with St. Peter and to demand whether all Countreys converted by him ought to be subject to his Successor there that is to the Pope who succeeded both him and St. Peter is onely in another phrase to ask over again the Question of the whole Book and is the same as if he should ask whether the Pope be Head of the Church Next you tell us That Timothy and Titus were supreme in their Provinces and independent from any
other See This indeed the Doctor says and we must believe him though he brings not a word of proof for it which the second part of his Assertion concerning their independency did necessarily require onely he says the contrary hath no degree of truth in it which he makes account will carry the business without bringing the least degree of probability for it As for the first part I would ask the Doctor whether St. Paul were supreme over them in his life time or no if he were as I suppose both his Epistles to them and the Doctors former large Testimony from the monosyllable COME will manifest then their being supreme in their own Provinces consisting still with the superiority of St. Paul may for any thing deducible from that reason alone admit the Supremacy of the Head of the Church and their subjection to him And the obligation lies yet upon the Doctor to prove positively That Timothy and Titus were totally exempt from St. Peters Jurisdiction for which Negative proofs are insufficient or indeed for any thing else Yet the Doctors Quiver is full of such blunt shafts and it is an evidence with him to argue thus I have not read it or it is not exprest in this Testimony therefore there is no such thing or therefore it is false As hath been often discovered in the process of this Answer That which follows That it is the nature of Primates or Patriarchs to have no Superior to exercise Iurisdiction over them is onely his own saying and so with like facility denied as asfirmed The Ordination of them by others I have already shewn not to prejudice the Universal Authority of the Head of the Church whose duty it is not to descend to otherwise suppliable actions about particular Members of that Body but from the top of his Primacy to govern and overlook the whole and to be conversant about that more Universal sort of actions reserved and proper to his larger power to the managing of which the short-handed Jurisdictions of particular Patriarchs were not able to reach But now comes the most dangerous blow of all The Doctor did but take his aym all this while now he is fetching the fatal stroke and me thinks I see the Ax even now falling upon the neck of Rome He threatens in his ninth Section To put the whole matter out of controversie And how think you he tells us That Kings could ever erect and translate Patriachates in their own Dominions and therefore that the Kings of England may freely remove that power from Rome to Canterbury and subject all this Iland to that independent Archbishop or Primate There is a trick now for the Pope which he never dream'd of Where first you see Mr Hammond supposes as granted That the Popes power is but meerly Patriarchal which is the chief if not onely thing in question between us So as his method to put the whole matter out of Controversie is to beg the supposal of the whole matter in Controversie This supposal laid for a ground he repeats again for his first instance those two late answered Acts of Iustinian erecting Iustiniana Prima and Carthage two Arch-Bishopricks or Primacies Though himself acknowledges That Carthage was not originally dignified but onely restored to its Primacy by the said Emperor after the Wandals were driven our which being onely an Act of preserving the former Canons of the Church inviolate every good Christian Emperor and Prince not onely may but also ought to do it and when he does it it is by the power of the Canons of the Church As for the first instance concerning Iustiniana Prima the Dr. thinks perhaps good man that he doth well but put the proof in form and he will I am confident be ashamed of the consequence Iustinian erected Patriarchates saith the History therefore Kings have power to do such acts of themselves infers the Doctor where the force of the illation is the same as if one should say The late Parliament took away Bishops therefore Parliaments have a power to take them away That a particular matter of fact may conclude a self-and-proper power in him that did it you must first prove that power to be originally his own and not delegated to him by another pretending to it himself who in our case is the Pope Next you must prove That if he did it without that delegation yet his action was lawful These if you first prove your instances will come to something otherwise they are senceless and infer less then nothing wanting both the crutches which may enable them to advance forwards to a conclusion Your next instance is That the Emperor Valentinian did by his Rescript constitute Ravenna a Patriarchal Seat where you quote no Author but Anno Dom. 432. And indeed you did well for the Rescript is accounted spurious and to have been foisted into the Monuments of that Church in the time of their Schism Had you told us how invalid the Authority of it was and how not onely for that but for many other things it lay under just exceptions you had been put to the puzzling task of defending its authentickness The exceptions against it are these First It begins in a different manner from the constant tenor of all other Rescripts Next the decree is singular and consequently to be suspected in this that all the other Rescripts made in the reign of the two Emperors though constituted by one of them onely yet were ever authorized by both their names whereas the name and Authority of the Emperor Theodosius is wanting to this Thirdly the Inscription of Imperator Major is new and unheard of all the rest entitling Valentinian Imperator Maximus Fourthly the Bishops of Rhegium Placentia and Brixillis are in the Rescript named as under the Archbishop of Ravenna which is a plain forgery since not long afte◠Pope Leo commanding Eusebius Archbishop of Millain to gather a Provincial Council of the Bishops subject to him those three Bishops met there and subscribed to that Council as appears by the Synodal Epistle yet extant Fiftly The same Rescript which gives them Archiepiscopatum an Arch-Bishoprick which you make a Patriarchate granted them also the use of the Pall which was never accustomed to be given by the Emperors but by the Popes onely as appears by the Epistles of Gregory the Great to the then Archbishops of Ravenna This last rub so puzzled Hieronymus Rubens to smooth it who out of a preposterous love of his Countrey cited this Rescript for its priviledge that he was forced to explicate that Pall to be Caesarum Paludamentum such an Imperial Robe as the Cesars used to wear whereas besides the unlikeliness of the action it is plainly contrary to the Rescript it self which grants them such a Pall Sicut Caeteri sub nostrâ Christianissimâ potestate saepe degentes fruuntur Metropolitae As the rest of the Metropolitans in his Dominions often wore Which every one who hath but tasted
of the study of ancient History knows to have been another manner of thing then the Emperors Robe We cannot then in reason think other but that either the Rescript is false and because no new Bishop of Ravenna could use the Pall without a new Concession from the Pope as appears in St. Greg. Lib. 5. Epist. 8. forged in the time of the Schism that they might have some pretence to retain still the use of the Pall which they accounted honorable Or at least it cannot be imagined to have been made without the Popes consent since the Pope in the very next year after the making of this presumed Rescript appointed and constituted even those of Ravenna at first being unwilling St. Peter Chrysologus to succeed in that See after the decease of Iohn as the same Monuments affirm Whence the Doctor but from a manifestly corrupted part of them pickt out this Testimony That the after-Bishops of Ravenna were sometimes Schismaticks all the world knows none excusing them much less bringing that action of theirs for a Testimony or example till such as Mr. Hammond arose who were involved in the same crime But that from Valentiâ—â—ans time Ravenna held the Patriarchate till the time of Constantinus Pogonatus without dependence on the Bishop of Rome as the Doctor tells us is an intolerable mistake as any one meanly versed in History knows and as is manifest by Pope Gregories Letters to the Bishops of that place who was made Pope in the year Five hundred and ninety whereas Pogonatus began his reign in the year Six hundred sixty and eight Their sact then Master Doctor can onely stead or excuse you thus far to shew that others have been Schismaticks as well as your selves and therefore you are not the first nor onely men that have faln into a such a lapse And thus far indeed we grant your consequence but it will not serve to shew that you are faultless because they were faulty You should have manifested first the justifiableness of their fact and then proceed by applying it to justifie your own Or rather indeed it infers you are Schismaticks because you cling to none but those whom all the world esteemed to be such But me thinks I hear the Doctor gravely complain That I call all those Schismaticks whom he alleages as Testimonies against me and that this also is A method of security beyond all AMULETS I answer let it neither be as he nor I say but what the whole Christian World both then and ever since held none contradicting but those who were accused of the same fault Let us therefore make plain Reason our Judge in this present Controversie The Popes at the breach of the Ravennates from their subjection made head against them and stood upon their Authority as Universal Pastors of the Church as the Doctor will grant Which therefore in all likelihood would have been looked on by the rest of the Catholick Bishops as a proud usurpation and being against their common interest to let the Pope pretend to an Universal Pastorship ought in all reason to have engaged them in the Ravennates quarrel Is there any news of such an Universal siding Not a word By which one may at least conjecture That they thought the Popes pretence to the Primacy lawful How did the Ravennates behave themselves in the business Did they stick close to and constantly claim their non subjection to the Pope from Canons or Scripture Nothing less They recanted often and acknowledged subjection as the Doctor grants and says they did it sometimes out of fear of other enemies sometimes out of friendship or despite to their own Clergy yet the people adds the Doctor thought themselves injured Well but what said the Governors of the world all this while to whom it appertained to see Justice rightly administred How did the Emperor Iustinian the then Head of the Church as the Doctor will have it decide the Controversie when he came to conclude it He vindicated the Pope and punished most severely the people of Ravenna banished the Bishop and in a judiciary manner put the ringleaders of the Schism to death at Constantinople whither they were carried bound What a pitiful Controvertist then is this Doctor to alleage the bare fact of a turbulent rebellious never-quiet City against the justly-presumed acknowledgment and the unanimous belief both of the then-present and future Christian World Lastly against the decision of those who were their Temporal Lords and lawful Judges and according to the Doctors grounds against the verdict of the Head of the Church to whom the rightful power in those matters legally pertained His fourth Instance is out of Balsamon an enemy to the See of Rome and a writer for the Greeks against it who says That some Arch-Bishopricks had from the Emperors Charter that priviledge not to be subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople Where first if we may trust Balsamon who seems in this very place and Treatise to plead for the Greeks against the Bishop of Rome then Mr. Doctor you know your double task necessary to make good your premises ere you can conclude any thing to wit that the Emperors did it with order from the Church or in case they did not that it was done lawfully Next does the Testimony say That the Emperor priviledged them from subjection to the Pope as Head of the Church if not there is no hurt at all done to our question if it did there had not been much since an enemies saying is no slander His fifth instance is That under Phocas the Patriarchate of Grado in Italy was erected Where first it seems The Testimony says not it was done by him but under him or while he reigned and then for any thing you can conclude from hence The Pope did it in Phocas his reign Secondly since it was not indeed of new erected but translated thither from Aquileia burned not long before by the Longobards it was no sign of a presumed Jurisdiction but rather of a pious generosity whether in Phocas or Charls the Great to bestow a new seat on the destitute Patriarch To omit that in the Council of Grado was read the Epistle of Pope Felagius the second granting to Elias of Gradâ— the place of the Patriarch of Aquileia The Doctor did wisely then to put under Phocas in stead of by Phocas that so he might seem to intimate by ambiguity what he durst not speak out for want of evidence SECT 5. The Doctors Testimonies from Councils and Histories found to be partly against himself partly frivolous and to no purpose AFter his Evidence from a forged Rescript and a tumultuous rable That the right of erecting Patriarchates belongs to the Secular Power and that this in the Western part of Christianity was an ordinary custom he proceeds to shew That this was a frequent usage in the East also citing for it no less authority then that highest one of General Councils Sacred Witnesses Whom to
an indulgence or priviledge granted and given him by the Church in her Canons Which last is our tenet and most evidently visible in the very Testimonies alleaged against us His second Testimony for the two last were onely his over-sights or observations begins after the old strain thus And ACCORDINGLY the same Balsamon on Conc. Carthag Can. 16. doth upon that Canon professedly found the Authority of Princes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to advance an Episcopal See into a Metropolis and a new to constitute Bishops and Metropolitans Thus far the Doctor Where he is over head and ears again in a grievous mistake for neither doth Balsamon found the Authority of Princes to execute such Acts as of their own power on that Canon there being not a word in it to that purpose Neither doth he PROFESSEDLY say any thing as of himself but that you are PROFESSEDLY mistaken And had he said it I conceive it no such strong Argument That a professed Adversary should speak so professedly against one But indeed neither he nor the Canon say any such matter The Canon not so much as names either Episcopal or Metropolical Seâ—s but the main business there treated is That Bishops and Priests should not live upon base occupations nor employ themselves in secular businesses Which Balsamon in his Scholion or Comment more elucidates from like prohibitions of other Patriarchs adding in the end out of other mens opinions and not his own profession these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But some say these Canons or Constitutions take place when any one who hath taken holy Orders shall exercise a secular Ministery without the command of the Emperor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. And they adde saith Balsamon that the King is neither under Laws nor Canons and therefore he may securely make a Bishoprick a Metropolis c. and anew constitute Bishops and Metropolitans Where the Reader may see he introduces this as a deduction of others and that from no other grounds then this A King is neither bound by Canons nor Laws that is his Will is his Law or he may do lawfully what he lists and then indeed these grounds supposed I blame not the inference that he should erect transplant nâ—y pull down not only Bishops and Patriarchs but the whole Hierarchy it self your present lot consequent to these your grounds Thus at length we have found the bottom-stone of the Doctors grounds Why Kings may erect Patriarchates by their proper power not to be Councils as he pretended but their own all-lawful inerrableness to do what they please let Councils Canons Parliaments and Laws say what they will to the contrary A foundation fitting indeed to build the Doctors Assertion upon but in all other respects able to ruine and overthrow both Laws Commonwealths Canons and Church In his fifteenth Section persisting still in his seigned supposal That the Popes power is onely Patriarchal he goes on to prove that the antiquity of translating Patriarchs and Bishops belongs to Kings as well as of erecting Of which he gives some instances in our Countrey of England By which what he means to prove I cannot easily conjecture If he intends that Kings did oft do such things I wonder who denies it but if they did it by their proper right without the order or consent either of the Apostolical See or the Ecclesiastical State of his own Bishops he brings not one word in proof but rather expresly manifests the contrary from the carriage of St. Anselm then Archbishop of Canterbury as learned and pious a Prelate as that age produced who as the Doctor confesses when the King would have cut off as much from the Diocess of Lincoln as would make a new Bishoprick at Ely Anselm wrote to Pope Paschalis desiring his consent to it assuring him he would not give his consent but salvâ authoritate Papae the authority of the Pope being secured Where you see plainly the Archbishops consent was necessary and that without it the Kings desire seemed controleable Next that the Archbishop himself even with the Kings authority to back him would not venture on it till the Pope's consent was asked Here then Mr. Doctor you have a positive Testimony of the gravest Prelate our Countrey hath ever been honored with refusing the sufficiency of the Kings sole authority to conclude such businesses without his and the Popes consent which therefore more justly challenges audience in the Court of Reason then all your dumb Negatives though they were a thousand more To conclude in what your Testimonies were Positive to wit that such things were done de facto so far we yeeld to them in what they are Negative tacitly inferring that because they were done and no mans right named therefore they were done de jure by the proper right of him that did them So far we allow them no credit at all First Because they might have been performed by the secular Authorities either with consent of the Bishops or some indulgent grant of the Church to pious Princes or by order from the Pope or else Concession of some former Council an example of which we had lately in the Council of Chalcedon Next because Histories intending onely to relate matters of fact mention rather those that put things in execution and more visibly appear in the transacting them such as are Secular Magistrates and stand not scanning or debating much by whose right things were done which belongs to Lawyers and would be but a by-discourse hindering the orderly process of their Narrative strain Thirdly because every one who hath the least smack of Logick knows A Negative Argument proves nothing such as are all yours here alleaged For this is the tenor of them Historians say Some Kings translated some Patriarchates and it is not mentioned they did it by the Churches power therefore they did it by their own which will be found in good Logick to fall very far short of concluding Lastly because the Church ever challenged as her own proper right asserted to her by the Canons the jurisdiction and power to intermeddle in businesses purely Ecclesiastical In his seventeenth Paragraph he proposes two other Objections of the same nature with the rest The first in common that the King could exempt from Episcopal Jurisdiction which he says is largely asserted and exemplified in Coudrayes case 5 Report 14. And truly the Doctor is to be commended for his fair and sincere expression For it is indeed meerly asserted and exemplified without the least shadow of proof In the first example there alleaged King Kenulphus is said to have exempted a Monastery Consilio consensis Episcoporum Senatorum Gentis suae which was no instance of power in him unless it was also in the Bishops and Nobles That he could not or would not do it without their agreement The exemption of Reading Abbey by Henry the First argues no authority he being the Founder of it and not bound to give his goods to the Church
but upon the conditions which pleases himself Which answer likewise serves for all Hospitals and such like pious Houses founded by the King The third example of the Abbot of Buries exemption by the King is Recorded without particular circumstances and so must stand for an example of the Kings execution or command to the secular Magistrate to proceed accordingly but proves nothing That the King did it without consent of the Bishop under whom it was These are all the cases of secular exemptions produced by that learned Lawyer which you see are pure examples of the Kings exempting either with the Bishops consent or by title of asking what conditions he thought fit to annex to his own Liberalities as every private person may or at most alleaged so abstractedly that any of these or many other causes may justly be supposed to have intervened But I mistake there is yet one more to which the Doctor thought good to give a particular efficacy by citing the very words of the Charter which are these Hoc regali authoritate Episcoporum ac Baronum attestatione constituo I appoint this by my royal Authority with the attestation of my Bishops and Barons But had the Doctor remembred he had named this King before William the Conqueror he would have understood that Regali Authoritate signified as much as in the first of Kings doth that famous phrase Ius Regis that is the power of the sword the power of taking away any mans goods and giving them to another the power of doing all wrong as is not onely known of the Conquerors other proceedings but even out of this fact taking the goods of a Bishop and the provision ordained for Souls and attributing them to an Abbey And this by the very words of the Charter without any course of Law or consent of any Justice or power in the Commonwealth So that our Doctor has brought us in a very special example for Henry the Eighth the worst of his Successors to imitate and justifie his Spiritual Authority by To that which he affirms of the Chatholick German Emperors the Kings of France and England that they claimed to be founders of all Bishopricks in their Dominions and Patrons of them to bestow them by investiture I answer they did very well to found as many as they pleased that is to enrich and enlarge the Church with Episcopal Revenues by their pious Donations and when they have done to claim deservedly the Advowsons and present whom they please to be invested by the Church whom yet if they be found unworthy the Church rejects notwithstanding the Kings presentation and authority and consequently this is done by the consent of the Church Neither is this annexed to the Kingly dignity onely as a particular badg of his Authority over the Church but even private Subjects when either themselves or their Ancestors have founded some Ecclesiastical Benefice challenge to themselves the Advowsons without any prejudice to the Church who allows it reasonable that the Friends of the Donors should rather enjoy that benefit then others Unless perhaps the persons be found unfit which in that case obliges the Church to use her Authority by interposing her resusal This therefore private persons can do as well as Kings and yet I hope the Doctor will not say That all those are Lords and Heads of the Church Lastly he might as well have made mention of the Pope and Clergies ressistance to Kings that usurped the investitures as of the others claiming of them both being equally notorious in History and the Princes in the end having yeelded that their pretence was unjust Next he tells us the Kings of France and England claimed a just right that no Legate from Rome could use Iurisdiction here without their leave What a terrible business is this Or what follows hence None can imagine but the Dr. himself who certainly had some meaning in it or other They did so indeed and so do Catholick Kings sometimes to this day who yet communicate with the Church and are accounted obedient sons as long as they proceed with due moderation But that they did it in disacknowledgment of the Popes Supremacy or that the Legate brought not his Jurisdiction with him from Rome but was glad to receive it of the King ere he could use it this the Doctor will never be able to make good Nay they were so far from denying the Popes Authority even in this kinde That our Kings of England procured of the Pope that the Archbishop of Canterbury should be Legatus Natus But now the Doctor hath resolved me of my former doubt which was with what art possible he could make these imperfect Testimonies serve his purpose adding here immediately these words All these put together are a foundation for this power of the Princes to erect or translate a Patriarchate As if he should have said Though there be not one word in any single Testimony expresly manifesting That it is principally the Kings power or excluding the Churches yet I have produced many things little to the purpose if considered in their single selves which notwithstanding I would intreat you to believe that ALL THESE PUT TOGETHER ARE A FOUNDATION c. Where note that here again also he observes his former invincible method of reserving his strongest Arguments till the last putting immediately before his Conclusion That the Legates were often not admitted in England so as out of the very non-admission of the Legates the Doctor infers an absolute power in Princes to erect and translate Patriarchates Besides were all this granted what is it to your or our purpose since we accuse you not of Schism for breaking from the Popes subjection as a private Patriarch but as the chief Pastor and Head of the Church But because the Doctor could not handsomly transfer this Primacy from Rome to Canterbury to secure him from the subjection to Antichrist therefore he was pleased to mistake it all along this Chapter for a Patriarchate and then undertakes to shew from some few Testimonies de facto That it was not the Churches but the Kings Authority to erect and translate them Whereas besides the answers in particular already given no prudent man can doubt but in the process of fifteen or sixteen hundred years and in such a vast extent as the Christian world there may be found twenty or thirty matters of Fact if one will take Histories to collect them either out of ambition ignorance rebellion or tyranny against the most inviolable right that can be imagined Besides many things might often be mentioned by Historiographers as done without particularizing the Authority by which they were done Especially in our case where by reason of the connexion between the Soul and Body of the politick world the Ecclesiastical and Secular State they seem to act as one thing The Temporal Authority most commonly putting in execution the intentions of the Church And this also makes them appear more visibly
to proceed from the Temporal part then from the Spiritual as humane actions more apparently spring from the Body then from the Soul But if the Doctor would have proved sincerely That Kings indeed had that pretended power he should not have stood piddling with half a dozen fag ends of History to prove such a thing was sometimes done de facto but recurred to the Apostolical and Ecclesiastical Canons where such things are purposely treated and there he should have found another story But he is wiser then to confine himself within the proper lists of any question he had rather be in the open field where his little fayeryreason may hop and skip from bough to bryar and weary his adversary not to combate but to catch him SECT 6. The Examination of the Testimonies produced by Mr. Hammond to prove his fundamental Position that Kings are supreme in spiritual matters THe endeavours of Mr. Hammond in the foregoing part of this Chapter was first to suppose the Pope onely a private Patriarch next that the King can erect and translate Patriarchates after which though other men of reason use to put their grounds ere they deduce any thing from them he lays the grounds in this 19 Paragraph of his formerly built discourse saying that the Reason of all is the supreme power of Kings even in Ecclesiastical matters Where to omit how he has mangled that one poor Paragraph with ten parenthesisses no more he so intermingles and shuffles together in an equal tenor truths with falshoods things dubious and unprov'd with things acknowledged and that need no proof things to the purpose with things to no purpose that it would loath any well-order'd Reason to see in so little a room so perfect a map of disorderly confusion But ere we come to answer that his marginal testimonies which he huddles together briefly of all sorts would seem neglected if we should not allow them a cursory reflection First what he objects out of Chomatenus though his Author were of any Authority yet it makes nothing at all to his purpose since the very words he cites that the King is as it were the common Director and Ruler of the Church signifies rather he was not so then was so unless he can prove that quasi as it were can bear the sence of revera indeed or in reality And then how handsomely think you would these words hang together that the King is IN REALITY AS IT WERE the Ruler of the Church Nay rather the words alledged plainly signifie the contrary For if there be a common Ruler of the Church and the King be onely as it were that Ruler it is plain there is some other not as it were but truly and properly such The second is yet much more absurd for never was there Testimony nor can be imagined in so little room more expresly witnessing that Kings have nothing to do with Ecclesiastical affairs then this of Constantine which the Doctor brings to prove the contrary I mean if we take the words as the Doctor cites them in Greek without his canâ—ing translation of them The words are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In English thus as neer word by word as it can possibly be render'd You truly speaking to the Bishops are constituted Overseers or Bishops of those affairs which are within the Church but I am constituted under God Overseer of those affairs which are without the Church But the Doctor seems willing to take there the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Church for a material Church of stone and so renders 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those things which are celebrated within it Yet is pittifully puzled notwithstanding rendering 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies things without the Church external things because the right words would have excluded the Emperors power over Ecclesiastical affairs and yet even so it will not serve his turn for unless he can make his own words external things signifie spiritual things to which they will be very unwilling the Testimony is still expresly against him Besides it is pretty sport to observe how sillily insincere the Doctor is telling us that Constantine the Great spake those words in an Assembly of Bishops by which and the Doctors wrong Translation the simple Reader would judge that Constantine had told a General Council of Bishops to their face that he was Head of the Church but when I came to finde out the Author and the place both which the Doctor had prudently omitted I found it was onely spoken when he was at dinner with some Bishops The Author is Eusebius de vita Constantini l. 4 c. 24. The title of the Chapter is this as I finde it in the Translator for I had not the Greek Quod externarum rerum quasi Episcopum se quendam professus est That he professed himself as it were a kinde of a Bishop over external things Then follows the Chapter in these words Ex quo etiam factum est ut cum Episcopos nonnullos convivio excepisset ipse se nobis audientibus Episcopum appellaret his ferè verbis Vos inquit intra Ecclesiam ego extra Ecclesiam à Deo Episcopus constitutus sum Itaque cùm quae loquebatur eadem secum mente cogitaret animum in omnes qui ejus suberant imperio intentum habuit hortatus pro virili utpiam omnes vitam excolerent Whence it came to pass that when he had entertained some Bishops at a feast or Banquet he in our hearing called himself a Bishop in those words You saith he are constituted Bishops within the Church I without the Church Wherefore since his thought went along with his words he apply'd his mind to those who were under his Empire exhorting them to his power that they should all lead a pious life Where besides what I formerly found the Doctor faulty in we see that the Author of this Testimony who was present when the Emperor spake these words and so could best judge of his meaning by the circumstances deduced no more out of them then that he called himself Bishop because it belonged to his Calling to exhort all his subjects to lead a pious life and administer rightly those things of which they were Overseers by God His third Testimony to prove the King Head of Ecclesiastical as well as civil affairs is that irreprehended saying of Leo Isaurus who said to the Pope 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I am a King and a Priest which was indeed a saying worthy an Anti-heretick as Isaurus was being a ring leader of the Iconoclasts A wise man would wonder what the Doctor intended by producing such a saying which himself must acknowledge extravagant since none of the late Kings of England ever assum'd to themselves the title of a Priest as did this infatuated Emperor who gave more credit to Sooth-sayers and fortune-tellers then to God and his Church The third is from Socrates who says the affairs of the Church depended on the Emperors And
who denies it Therefore what Ergo Kings are supreme in Ecclesiastical affairs How follows that since the onely word is wanting to wit supreme which can make good the inference The affairs of the Head depend on the Arms and Shoulders therefore will the Doctor infer they are supreme or highest as though dependence could not be both mutual and unequal It must needs argue a Soul very empty of reason to catch thus at every shadow of any aery word and think to deduce thence a full sentence The fourth is from Optatus noting it as a schismatical piece of language in the Donatists to say Quod Imperatori cum Ecclesiâ What has the Emperor to do with the Church citing for it his second Book But though perhaps I may be mistaken in not seeing so small a Testimony I finde no such thing in that place he quotes Indeed I finde that ancient Father arguing like a present Catholike calling the Doctor Schismatick and quite confuting and contradicting all his book saying Negare non potes scire te in urbe Româ PETRO PRIMO Cathedram Episcopalem esse collatam in quâ sederit omnium APOSTOLORUM CAPUT PETRUS Thou canst not deny that in the City of Rome the Episcopal Chair was given to PETER THE FIRST in which sate PETER THE HEAD OF ALL THE APOSTLES Then he proceeds to reckon up all the Popes of Rome successors of S. Peter till Pope Siricius who lived in his days Cum quo nobis totus orbis in commercio Formatorum in unâ Communionis societate concordat With whom the whole world agrees in one society of Communion by correspondence of communicatory Letters And afterwards probatum est nos esse in Ecclesiâ Sanctâ Catholicâ per Cathedram Petri quae nostra est per ipsam caeteras Dotes apud nos esse etiam Sacerdotium It is proved that we are in the holy Catholike Church by the chair of Peter which is ours what will become of the Doctor who can lay no claim nor hath any right to it nay hath disclaimed its right and who findes here a reason why we may justly be called Roman Catholikes It follows and by the chair of Peter other gifts are also with us even Priesthood Alas poor Doctor Hammond who having lost Communion with that Church hath lost also his Priesthood Mission and power to preach if this holy Father say true What hard fortune it was that Optatus lived not in the primitive times for then the Doctor had believed him and turned Papist but in regard he wrote after the three hundreth year the fatal period of any certain truth in Gods Church as the Doctor afterwards intimates he hath quite lost his labour and his Authority is invalid for writing Truth so late As for the Testimony it self which probably is this Fathers in some other place I see no difficulty at all in it For the Emperor being a nursing Father to the Church whose secular power she invoked to punish and repress such as were the Donatists none but Schismaticks would deny that power so granted to be sufficiently Authoritative to punish their pernicious Apostasie Then follow six Testimonies out of heathen writers all in a cluster that their Kings ought to be Priests and Augurs c. and the Doctor would have the example transfer'd to Christianity Indeed if Iesus Christ had not come from heaven to found a Church and besides what hath been said of St. Peters Primacy left it under the Government of Ecclesiastical persons the Apostles committing all jurisdiction in affairs of that nature to them without dependence of any secular superior then for any thing I know we might have come ere this to have been in statu quo prius that is Heathens again and so the Doctors Argument might have ta'ne place But if Christ founded a Church upon Apostles Ecclesiastical persons without the help of secular supports leaving all power both of Ordination and Iurisdiction to it the Doctor must either prove no disparity between the sacred oeconomy of Christs House and the Babel of heathenism or else grant his parity improper and absurd I never imagin'd there was any such extraordinary holiness in the heathenish Rites but a secular power might serve to perform and overlook them And as the reason why they were used by the Emperors was onely because their mock-Religion was nothing but a policy to delude and bridle the vulgar so if Christian Religion were nothing but a trick of State-policy it would do very well indeed in a secular Princes hands to alter and fashion it to the mold of the peoples humors But our all-wise God hath dealt more prudently with his Church encharging his sacred Mysteries and the Churches-Government to those persons whose very state of life being purely dependent on God and his service secures them from being cross-byass'd by worldly interests and secular pretences Yet the Doctor is so deeply immers'd in Schism that he relishes and fancies better the Pope-destroying example of heathen policy then the ever-sacred and heaven-instituted Government of Christianity His eleventh instance is from David who order'd the courses of the Priests and Solomon who consecrated the Temple but the Doctor may consider that David and Solomon were Prophets as well as Kings and so no wonder if according to the more particular prudence given them by God they did something extraordinary Neither doubt I but if nowadays any King were both a Saint and a Prophet it were very convenient he should assist and instruct the Church in a more particular way and yet not thank his Kingly Dignity for that Authority neither But indeed neither David nor Solomon shewed any strain of a higher Jurisdiction Their greater zeal might invite them and their exacter knowledge make their assistance requisite to order the courses of the Priests And as for Solomons Consecrating the Temple it was performed by offering Sacrifice which he himself offer'd not but the Priests so as his Consecrating it was nothing else but his causing them to Consecrate it A pittiful proof that Kings are over the Church in Ecclesiastical affairs His twelfth Testimony is of Hezekiah and Iosiah who ordered many things belonging to the Temple So wonderfully acute is this Doctor that no King can do a pious deed or even scarce say his Prayers but his honor-dropping-pen streight way entitles him Head of the Church His thirteenth is of St. Paul who saith he appealed from the judgement of the chief Priests to the Tribunal of Caesar. So as now Caesar a Heathen Emperor is become Head of the Church nay of two Churches according to Master Hammond the Heathenish and the Christian. But the good Doctor is most grievously mistaken here as he hath been almost in every place of Scripture he hath yet produc't I observe that though he be pretty good at mistaking all over his Book yet when he omes to alleadge any thing out of Gods Word he errs far more accurately For St. Paul appealed
not from the Tribunal of the Jews much less their Synagogue representing their Church as the Doctor would perswade us but from the Tribunal of Portius Festus a Roman Governor under Caesar to Caesar himself I will onely put down the words as I finde them in their own Translation and so leave the Doctor to the Readers Judgement either to be accused for willfully abusing or ignorantly mistaking them But Festus willing to do the Iews a pleasure answered Paul and said wilt thou go up to Ierusalem and there be judged of these things before me Then said Paul I stand at Caesars judgement-seat where I ought to be judged c. Act. 25. 9 10 c. And now is not this Doctor think you the fittest man among all the sons of the Church of England to have a Pension for writing Annotations in folio on the Bible His last proof is that Iustinians third Book is made up of Constitutions de Episcopis Clericis Laicis Bishops Priests Laymen First we answer and the same may be said of the Theodosian Code that all the Laws found there must not necessarily be Iustinians since the Keepers of the Laws use not onely to put in their Law-books those Constitutions themselves made but also those they are to see observed among which are the Canons and Laws of the Church made before by Councils and other Ecclesiastical Powers Secondly We grant Iustinian may make Constitutions of his own concerning Bishops and Clergymen in what relates to temporal affairs or as they are parts of the civil Commonwealth And lastly If he shall be found to have made any Laws concerning them and without the Authority of the Church entrenching upon Ecclesiastical businesses let the Doctor prove he had power to make such and he will in so doing clear him in that part from that note of Tyranny which is objected against him What you say concerning the Canons of Councils that they have been mostly set out by the Emperors It is very certain you might if you had pleased instead of your Mostly have put Always the causing them to be promulgated belonging to the Office of the supreme secular Powers whose obligation it is to see that the Churches decrees be received and put in execution What you clap in within a Parenthesis as your custom is to intermingle truth with falshood that Canons of Councils received their Authority by the Emperor In the sence you take it is a great error For never was it heard that an Emperor claimed a negative voice in making a Canon of a Council valid which concerned matters purely Spiritual nay nor disaccepted them decreed unanimously by the Fathers but all the world lookt upon him as an unjust and tyrannical incroacher They receive indeed Authority from the Emperor in this sense that his subscription and command to proclaim them makes them have a more powerful reception and secures them from the obstacles of turbulent and rebellious spirits But this will not content you your aym is that they should not have the Authority or validity of a Canon without the last-life-giving-hand of the Emperors vote which is onely a strain of your own liberality to him or rather of your envy towards the Church without any ground of his rightful claim to any such Jurisdiction over Councils SECT 7. Other empty Proofs of this pretended Right confuted THese rubs being removed it will be our next sport to address an answer to his nineteenth Section it self where omitting his ten Parenthesisses which contain nothing but either sayings of his own or Greek out of Strabo's Geography That the Romans kept their assizes at divers places or Testimonies from the Council of Chalcedon already answered omitting these I say I will briefly resume the whole sence of the Paragraph as well as I can gather it out of the some-thing-more Lucid intervals of his mad Parenthesisses And this I take to be the sum of it That Kings should according to emergent conveniences change their Seats of Iudicature and that the same reasons may require a removal of Ecclesiastical Seats wherefore there being nothing to the contrary constituted either by Christ or his Apostles it follows That Kings may when they please erect and consequently remove Primacies and Metropolitans I answer That Secular Courts may be removed upon good occasions is so evident to every Fool that it needs neither Greek nor Strabo to prove it That Ecclesiastical Seats for greater conveniences of the Church be also subject to removal is likewise evident and constituted by the Council of Chalcedon Can. 17. But his inference That it belongs to the right of Kings to erect and transfer them is weaker then water nor has the Doctor infused into it the least grain of Reason to strengthen it Yet first to prove it he says Nothing is found either by Christ or his Apostles ordered to the contrary Which is a most pitiful Negative proof as indeed the greatest part of his Book iâ— and supposes to make it good That neither Christ nor his Apostles said did or ordered any thing but what is exprest in Scripture which is both expresly contrary to Scripture it self and to common reason also Besides this wise proof is both most unjust towards us and silly in him to expect unjust towards us ingaging us to prove out of Scripture That Kings cannot erect Primacies and Patriarchates whereas there is no such word there as either Primate or Patriarchate which he would have us shew thence not subject to Kings Nor is it less silly in him to expect That the Scripture should make mention of the erection or not erection of Primacies and Patriarchates by Secular Powers since the Secular Powers when the Scripture was written being most bloody Tyrants and Persecutors of the Church were more likely to hang up all Primates and Patriarchs then either erect or remove their Seats to a more convenient place Yet if you would see something to the contrary why Kings should not use Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction I can produce you the sence of the Catholick Church the best Testimony that can be alleaged for the meaning of Gods Spirit but because this weighs little with you I shew you next the Testimony of common sence and reason which tells you Faber fabrilia tractet and that those whose education institute of life particular designment to and total dependence on any course of life makes them more strongly addict all their thoughts to perfect themselves knowingly and magisterially in that their proper profession are fitter by far for such an employment then those whose diversly-distracted studies render them half-knowing or half-careful in such performances How much then is it more convenient that Ecclesiastical persons should manage the affairs of the Church then Secular Princes whom partly their necessary Temporal occasions partly voluntary Recreations Court attendances and entertainments so quite take up that they can have but saint and weak reflections either of knowledge or care in comparison of the others upon
in the 23 Section that this is affirmed and intended by Balsamon to all Canons in general as the judgement of learned men in his notes on the sixteenth Canon of the Council of Carthage hath already been answered and shown that it is not Balsamon who affirms it but other men neither doth he call them learned men as the Doctor here imposes on him but onely says that some men say the Emperor can do such and such things And he adds that those persons proceed upon this ground that the Emperor may do lawfully whatever he lists His last Paragraph for which as his former custom was he reserves the best of his strength proves that this right of Kings to be head in Ecclesiastical affairs cannot be alienated by prescription The testimony he introduces is of one Sayr a late Monk who wrote his Book at Rome a man likely to speak much in the Doctors behalf whose opinion in case he should say any thing against us being but of a private Casuist may with the like facility be rejected as alleadg'd But what says honest Sayr he tells us that when prescription is neither of the Law of Nature nor the divine Law nor the Law of Nations but onely the civil and Canon Law there it extends no farther then every supreme Prince in his Realm by his Law is supposed to will that it shall be extended and therefore that no subject can prescribe exemption from making appeal to his King or that his Prince may not punish him when Reason and Iustice requires Let the testimony it self be what it will what was the Doctor dreaming on when he produced it Marry he dreamt two things First that the Pope had heretofore prescribed against the Kings of England in their pretended right of being head in Ecclesiastical matters next this prescription of the Pope hath not its force from any thing but a Canon or Civil Law These two points the Doctor dreamingly supposes to be certain principles and it is discourtesie in us not to grant them gratis for fear we should spoil his learned Conclusion What a shame is this for a Doctor of Divinity whereas every boy that hath been but two years at Cambridge knows he is first to establish his premises firmly ere he can claim any certainty of truth in his Conclusion to suppose his premises true and upon that grant kindly made by himself to himself conclude at pleasure what he lists And what an unconscionable piece of affected ignorance is this to bring a Testimony which could not possibly be applyed to his purpose without proving the two former self-made suppositions and yet to neglect that necessary task and conclude in these vain words It were easie to apply this distinctly to the confirming of all that hath been said but I shall not expatiate It is now become an old excuse with the Doctor to cry he is out of his way when he comes to a passage he cannot get over but all-to-be-labours things frivolous and which his self-laid grounds once supposed would be out of question Thus you see an end of his sixth Chapter which was totally built upon this ground that the Authority of Head of the Church was no more then Patriarchal and consequently needed in rigour of dispute no other reply but onely to deny the supposition and bid him prove it What has been answered to each particular was onely to let the Reader see how inconsequently and weakly he builds even upon his own foundations SECT 8. A Reply to Doctor Hammonds Narrative Confession of his Schism THe Doctor having laid his tottering grounds for the Kings Supremacy in Ecclesiastical affairs by alleadging some Testimonies expresly against himself and his cause and not one expresly for them but what his fellow-schismaticks afforded him Next having supposed upon his own strongly-dreaming imagination without one direct place of any Authentick writer against clouds of most plain Testimonies from Fathers and Councils frequent in our Controvertists and not touched by him in way of answer against the most visible practice and universal belief of the whole Catholick world that the Pope is onely a private Patriarch and hath no right of Jurisdiction over the universal Church And lastly out of a few Testimonies witnessing de facto that Kings did erect and remove Patriarchates without any word excluding the Churches precedent orders having concluded that such a power belonged de jure to Kings and was annext to a Crown These three things most gravely supposed he goes about to clear the Church of England from the imputation of casting off obedience to the Bishop of Rome at the Reformation which is the intent of this Chapter But first he lays down at large the whole history of Schism ommitting onely the main things that might disgrace it and by what degrees or steps this miserable Kingdom and Church came to renounce the obedience to those Ecclesiastical superiors who had by their own confession for eight or nine hundred years steered that-then-secure Barque in a calm unity of Faith and which Authority all the then present world except King Henry's now friend but late Antagonist Luther acknowledged and submitted to First he tells us this was done by the Clergy in a Synod recognizing the King to be supreme Head of the Church of England Secondly By their submitting themselves to the King and thirdly the definition of the Universities and Monasteries after debate that the Pope had nothing to do more in England then any other extern Bishop that is nothing at all And all this in this sort concluded subscribed and confirmed by their corporal oaths which word corporal was well put in for their Souls and Consciences never went along with it was afterwards turn'd into Acts of Parliament in which it was resolved upon the question to defie the Pope and all his works In answer to which though a bare narration how a Schism was made deserve none yet to devoid it of al excuse it may pretend to I object first that it did not originally spring from Conscience no not even an erroneous one but from manifest malice and viciousness Next that the Kingdoms assent to this il originiz'd breach was not free And thirdly that though both these were granted yet this act of theirs so largely laid out by Doctor Hammond is truly and properly a Schism and entitles them schismaticks nay the more the Doctor dilates upon it the more schismatical he makes the breach of which the two latter himself though never so loath must acknowledge unless he will deny his own words To begin with the first all the world knows that till King Henry violenced the breach all England both Clergy and Laity were as equally and as peaceably conjoyned to the Catholike Church under the government of her supreme Pastour the Bishop of Rome as either France or Spain are now neither did they ever express any scrupulosity that they had remained under such a Government ever since the Conversion of their first
as clear as the most palpable matter of Fact can make a thing visible to the eyes of the World that there was indeed at least a material breach or Schism by you made from that Body which communicated with the Church of Rome and of which Body you were formerly as properly and truly a part as a Branch is of a Tree To which adde your proofs out of the Fathers in your first Chapter affirming No just cause can be given for a Schism and it will follow that your own words clearly convince and your own proofs evidently conclude you to be formally Schismaticks I will put the Argument in form to make it more plain onely premising That material Schism as far as it concerns us at present is the extern action of breaking from a community Formal the causlesness or unjustifiableness of that material Fact which must needs be criminal because it admits no just excuse to plead in its behalf Then thus No Separation from the whole Body of Christians can possibly be justified say the Fathers by you alleaged Chap. 1. Sect. 8. But your Separation was from the whole Body of Christians Therefore impossible to be justified Where all the evasion I can imagin in your behalf is to distinguish the Major That the Fathers meant Criminal Separation or the Crime of Schism could have no just cause given for it not the material and external fact of Schism But first this makes the Fathers very shallow to go about to shew That no just cause can be alleaged for the crime of Schism since every one knows there can be no just excuse possible for any crime Next the Fathers there alleaged pretend to particularize some special viciousness in Schism and are to that end produced by the Doctor But there is no speciality in Schism above other sins to say That no just excuse can be given for the crime of it since the like may be said of all sins as well as it The fact of Schism therefore it is which they call unjustifiable the same fact which with a large narration you here set down and acknowledge that they said it voted it swore it taking a great deal of pains to prove those whom you undertook to defend to be voluntary deliberate and sworn Schismaticks Now all the Testimonies alleaged by your self against Schism come in troops bandying against you and your cause as strongly as if they had been expresly gathered to that purpose As that a Schismatick is à semet-ipso damnatus self-condemned which you have here very learnedly performed as I lately shewed That ultrò ex Ecclesia se eâ—icerent they cast themselves voluntarily out of the Church c. Quomodo tâ— Ã tot gregibuâ— scidisti Excidisti enim teipsum How hast thon cut off thy self from so many flocks For thy self hast cut off thy self of which accusation your fifth Paragraph infers the confession Your own voluntary recession from us and our Government by your self here acknowledged is an indelible token and as it were a visible ear-mark that you are a stray sheep and a run-away à toâ— gregibus from the flock This badg of a Voluntary Recession your Church must always necessarily carry about her Nor will you ever be able to wipe it off with all the specious Id Ests or Criticisms your wit can invent SECT 9. The nature of Schism fetch t from it's first grounds and the material part of it fastened upon the Protestants TO lay this charge of Schisme yet more home to the Protestants we will open more clearly the nature of Schism and describe it more exactly that the Reader may see how perfectly the Protestant Church is cast in the mold of it For the better conceiving of which it will be necessary to shew first what it is which makes the Sons of the Catholike Church like brethren live together in Unity and this will lead us into the consideration first of the formal Unity it self and secondly of the Reason and Ground of this Unity The Unity it selfe consists in two things one is the submitting to and communicating in one common Head or Government the Authority of which if it be establish't in an undoubted possession as it was at the beginning of Mr. Drs Reformation is as necessary to the Ecclesiastical Community as the acknowledgement of the Undoubted Supreme Magistrate is necessary for the Unity of any temporal Common-wealth The second is the communication of the member-churches with one another consisting in the acknowledging the same Articles of Faith and using the same Sacraments c. To these was added anciently communicatory letters which afterwards by reason of the perfect colligation of the several members with their Head was neglected as unnecessary And these two Unities may be conceived again either negatively or positively By negative Communion in the same Head I mean a not disacknowledging only of the supreme Pastor or at least such an indifferent acknowledgment as having no tie upon it may be at pleasure refused and the Authority rejected As likewise negative communication between the member-Churches imports either a â—leight not denying of communion or such an acceptance and embracing of it as having no obligation may at pleasure be turned into disacceptance and disavowing On the contrary these two communications are then called positive when there is a positive obligation to acknowledge that Head and communicate with the other Churches And this is that which can only make a Church and found Church-government Or rather indeed there can be no Government imaginable either spiritual or corporal without such positive communion for a company of men without an expresse and positive obligation to obey their Superiors and comport themselves towards their fellows according to the laws may indeed be called a multitude such as is aâ—eâ—vus â—apâ—dum an heap of stones but not an Army City Commonwealth or Church which imply connexion and order Neither is the obligation of only Charity sufficient though in it selâ—e a great Ciment of Unity but it must be a visible one resulting out of the very Nature of Government which is visible and exterior Besides Charity extends universally to all even those out of the Church and therfore cannot be that proper peculiar and sole tie which unites the Faithfull as they are a Common-wealth of Beleevers The second thing is the Reason of this double Union or rather of this double positive obligation of Unity in the Church which to conceive more clearly the Reader may please to consider that a Christian is a Christian by his Faith and so a Congregation of Christians is a Community of the Faithfull Whence it followes that the Unity of the Faithfull as such being in Faith their faith must be one the ground therefore of the Unity of their faith is the ground of the Unity of the faithfull but the infallibity of the Church is the ground of the Unity of faith Therefore the same Infallibility is the reason of the Unity or positive
Communication with any Church either true or even fals For first at your dawning or rather twilight in King Henry's dayes for your progress hath not been to noon-day-light but to midnight you had nothing at all to doe with any other Church in Christendom Since that time though you have indeed a kinde of Communication with some few of your fellow Schismaticks yet if well examin'd it is negative onely Faction against Rome initiates you into so much friendship as to converse with the Calvinists sometimes to call them Brethren somtimes to be merry with your doublejug Companions in the Synod of Dort of whose drunken and beastly behaviour wallowing worse then swine in their own vomits I have heard a Pillar of your own Church scandalously complain having too much spirit of draff forced by them into his queaâ—ier stomach Though I say you may thus communicate with them in eating and drinking in which acts * before you made All Communion consist yet any other positive tie and obligation either with them or any others to conserve you in Communion so as you may be said to make up one Ecclesiastically-politick Body united by some inviolable Order such an obligation I say could never be discover'd between you and any other Church good or bad true or fals The Greek Church holding almost all that we doe and scarce two points with you which are against us as your friend Alexander Rosse hath particularly told you The Lutherans hold much more with us in opposition to you than with you in opposition to us The Calâ—inists are excluded by the most understanding Protestants from their Church since they admit not the Government of Bishops held by the others to be of Divine Right nor the Protestants Fundamental or as the Doctor calls it The Bottome of the Foundation of the Reformation to wit that the King is Head of the Church The 39. Articles which as the Kings Supremacy is the Imprimis so these are all the Items of the Protestants Faith obtain not a total admission from any Church but themselves nor amongst themselves neither their great Champion Mr. Chillingworth rejecting them at his pleasure Nor is there any visible form of Government uniting them all together but they are forced to fly sencelesly to an invisible one either of onely Christ in Heaven or onely Charity pretences to gull the easie vulgar not to satisfie prudent men who know that the Church though it be a spiritual Common-wealth breeding up Soules to a state of a future Eternity yet while it is here on earth it is a Common-wealth of Christians visibly comporting or discomporting themselves in order to Christs laws of which the Church is the Keeper and Conserver and therefore it must have visible Governours without expecting a miraculous recourse to Christ in Heaven to resolve emergent difficulties or to cherish and punish her weldemeaned or misdemeaned subjects But for a more full demonstration that the Church of England has no perfect Communion with the Greek Lutheran Calvinist or any other Church I refer the Reader to the learned Exomologâ—sis or Motives c. of Mr. Cressy a late Protestant Dean but now Religious of the ancient and holy Order of St. Benet where the Doctor may also read among other controversies excellently treated the charge of Schism sufficiently prov'd against his Church Perhaps the Doctor will alledge that their positive Communion with other reformed Churches consists in the acknowledgment of Gods Word and the holding to it But I would ask him whether he means they agree in the Name of Gods Word or in the Thing or Sence of it If in the Name onely then all that have the title of Christians that is all Hereticks and Schismaticks in the World are of one Communion nothing being more rife in their mouths and pens than wrong alledged testimonies out of the Bible the bare name then is not sufficient it must be the Thing that is the sence and meaning of Gods Word in which he must make their positive Communion consist but since they have no one certain known and commonly acknowledged Rule by which to interpret Gods word and fetch out the true inward sence lurking in the imperspicuous bark of the letter it followes they have no positive way or meanes to communicate in the same sence and therefore no positive unity can be grounded on that pretence And it would be as sencelesse to object that they communicate at least in fundamentals found in Gods word since the Scripture not telling them they cannot tell certainly themselves which points are fundamentals which not all being there with equal authority and like tenour delivered and proposed to them And if we should goe to reason to know what are fundamentals surely reason would give it that the rules of Faith and Government are more fundamental than all the rest No positive communion therefore have they with our Church as little with their fellow schismaticks it being the nature of boughs separated not to grow together into one tree after they have once lost connection with the root Where they are cut off there they lie and though for a short time they retain some verdure and some little moystning sap counterfeiting life that is as much Religion as serves them to talk of God and Christ yet after a while they wither roâ— and molder away into an hundred atomes of dust or else if they chance to be gathered up or taken away sooner they serve for nothing but to be thrown into the fire SECT 10. That the reforming Protestants were and are guilty of the formal part of Schism THat you have made then a material breach or schism is as evident as fact and reason can make the most manifest thing to the clearest understanding The formality of schism comes next to be enquired into which consists in its injustifiablenesse or doing it without just causes or motives which consequently unlesse you can shew you must unavoidably be concluded formal schismaticks And though the testimonies of the Fathers which you formerly produced affirming that there can be no just cause given of schism render all further proof unnecessary yet to make this matter stil more manifest I desire Mr. Hammond in the Churches behalfe that he would give me leave to summon him to the Bar of Reason that we may see what he can answer for himselfe and his friends whose defence here he undertakes Cath. Do not you know that the Church in whose bowels your ancestors til K. Henry began the breach were bred had no other form of Government then that which now is of the Bishop of Rome held chiefe Pastour of the universal Church and supreme in Ecclesiastical matters and that til the breach was made you held as sacred and were under that government Dr. I pretend not to deny it for this is the very authority I told you in my 7. c. 5. sect we cast out of this Island Besides Kings can erect and remove Patriarchates at
pleasure Cath. Do not answer Dr. de Cepis when we ask de alliis you might have sav'd your labour in a great part of your Book wher you slipt the question and digrest to Patriarchs Our question is not of Patriarchal but of Papal Authority and so we ask you whether it be not evident that this Papal Authority was in actual possession of this Islands subjection at the time of the breach and so had been for 900 yeers ever since Pope Gregory sent Austin the Monk to convert the Saxons forefathers to us English Dr. I know no Authority he ever had in England more than Patriarchal Cath. Do not you know that the Popes Authority then acknowledged in England was held above Patriarchs and therefore more then Patriarchal and that you grant you cast out of this Island not a Patriarchal Authority only but a Papal one Dr. True but the pretended Authority was usurpt and not according to Gods Ordinance Cath. How know you it was usurpt wil bare probabilities be a sufficient ground to renounce an authority so long establisht in possession held sacred ever before and to which your selves were till then subject wil I say a meer probability that perhaps that authority was not sacred but unjust serve your turn to excuse you from disobedience in renouncing it Dr. No Sir we have evidence it was unjust and that the Church we were brought up in erred in that point of beliefe Cath. This evidence of yours must either be a Demonstration from natural reason or an undeniable testimony either divine or humane Dr. I doe not pretend natural demonstration but we have evident testimonies against it Cath. Can you manifest that those testimonies and the like may be said of Arguments from natural reason have not been answer'd twenty times over by our Writers and in case they have can you shew that you have replied upon all their answers so as they bear now no probable shew of satisfaction if not you cannot call your testimony an evidence Next are you certain that our Authors cannot produce an hundred testimonies for one of yours or at least an equal number and those seeming as expresly or more to make for us as yours doe for you If so your testimonies are at least counterpois'd with the weight of ours and so cannot make an evidence but hang only in the hovering scales of a doubtfull probability Thirdly are your testimonies such that they are of greater weight than the judgment of all the Catholick world holding the Pope Head of the Church as our greatest adversaries the Puritans say for twelve hundred years or as you say two hundred years later are they of that weight to over-ballance so far-extended so numerous and so learned an Authority If not they are so far from evidences that they fall short of being probabilities Dr. I see you will hold to no authority but that of your own Church and this is a method of security beyond all Amulets Cath. And good reason too unless you can shew us a greater Dr. A greater we have id est Gods word out of which we can evidence that your Church we were brought up in was fallible yea en'd in many points and particularly in this of the Popes Supremacy Cath. You cannot with any face pretend an evidence from Scripture against us unless you can evidence a greater faculty and meanes to interpret those Oracles in you or your first Reformers than there was in the Church you left And since these meanes are either supernatural light or natural parts and knowledge you must evidence an advantage above us in one of these And first as for natural knowledg you cannot be ignorant that at the time of the breach the Catholick Church had an hundred Doctors for one of yours what an unproportion'd advantage then must that number swel to if all the learned men in the many foregoing ages without any one of your Sect then unheard of to counterballance them be heaped into one Bulk and those too such as your selves must acknowledge far more eminent in Schoole Divinity study in Scripture and all kinde of Learning both divine and humane than any of King Henry's fellow-reformers were ever deemed or if you stiffely deny an advantage we as stiffely pretend it and so leave it a drawn maâ—ch for what concernes their parts yet you your selves must giant you are incomparably overpower'd in the numerous multitude of them In natural meanes then of interpreting Scripture our extraordinary advantage over your Reformers makes it an impudence in them to pretend their advantage evident It must be then an evidence of a supernatural faculty in interpreting Gods word better than their Superiours and Pastors which can make them pretend to a clear knowledge thence that our Church hath err'd But since no supernatural thing that is latent and invisible in it selfe can be evidenced or acknowledged to be such without some exteriour token exceeding the power and skill of nature as are miracles gift of tongues c. none of which you can lay claim to it followes that neither your reforming forefathers nor your selves can produce evidence of any better meanes either supernatural or natural to interpret Scriptures than the Church you left therefore no evidence that they more truely interpreted it than that Church therfore none thence that the Church err'd therefore none from divine Authority and no humane authority being found comparable to that of the Church it followes they can have as little evidence from thence Evident therefore it is that you neither had nor now have any evidence at all but onely a probable perhaps that the Church erred which being too sleight a Reason to shake off subjection to an authority so long establish't and held as a point of Faith by the present and past world consequently they who upon no better grounds should shake it off are guilty of a most rash and grievous disobedience and Schism But your selfe here confesse Sect. 5. that you cast this Authority out of this Island without power to evidence that that Church erred as hath been shewn What excuse then can you alledge to clear your Father-Reformers and your selfe from a most irrational and selfe-condemning Schism nay more heresie Dr. At least they had such proofes as they thought evident and bred in them a present perswasion that the Church hath erred which they could not in conscience goe against and therefore it was hard dealing to punish them with Excommunication for proceeding conscientiously according to their present perswasion Cath. I doubt not but they might have a present perswasion that the Church hath err'd but I doubt much whether this present perswasion be sufficient to excuse them either from sin or punishment For this perswasion of theirs is either rational or irrational if rational a sufficient reason may be render'd why they deny'd so qualified a Government and reason it selfe telling us that no reason less than evidence is sufficient it would follow that evidence may
be rendred that the Government was injust ' which as you see could not Irrational therefore was that present perswasion of theirs and if so not sprung from reason therefore from unreasonable passion that is from vice therefore sinful and obnoxious to punishment as all other like perswasions are which make men think and act against their duties and obligations Besides all the Logick we have hitherto heard assures us nothing can convince the understanding but evidence and therefore men take so much paines about the moods and figures that the discourse may prove evident wherefore whatsoever assent comes not out of Evidence must come from our will and wilfulnesse and by consequence cannot be free from desert of punishment if it happen to be wrong and wrongfull Neither availes it to pretend invincible ignorance since no man living if free from a proud spirit can be so sottish as not to know that it is his obligation to obey his Superiors so long setled in the possession of their command till most open and undeniable Evidences and not seeming ones onely should discover that Authority null And if the obligation be of belief he must condemn the Churches judgment in not seeing the falsity of her doctrine and prefer his own before millions more learned who liv'd and dy'd in that faith which savours too strong of a self-conceited pride or else imagin so little sincerity left in the Church that all see and wilfully adhere to a known falshood but himselfe which is a plain sign of a rash and Pharisaical presumption And are not those punishable yet the Doctor would stroke such a fellow on the head and give him sugar plums for following his present perswasion and self-conceit which he nicknames conscience Nay he highly applauds his first Reformers whose conscience no doubt was tainted with the same leaven The Material Schism then which was manifestly your fact is made formal by your want of evidence that the doctrine was erroneous and consequently her Government violable Both which joyn'd together give you in plain termes your own name of flat proper and formal Schismaticks and entitle you to all the bed-roll of vices and curses which you hoarded up for your self and your friends in your first Chapter SECT 11. The Doctors argument that the Popes power in England was deriv'd under the Kings Concession refuted BUt it is now high time to returne to overlook the work who after the declaration of the matter of fact confesses no great hold can be taken from the freeness of the Clergy's determination and therefore the whole difficulty devolves to this one enquiry whether the Bishop of Rome were Supreme Head or Governour of the Church of England in the reign of King Henry the eighth That is we are come about again to the beginning of the Book But I am mistaken he tells us he hath largely disproved in his Chap. 4 5 6. all pretensions from St. Peters Supremacy and from Englands Conversion to whose particular answers I refer the Reader for full satisfaction and he has now invented a new ground of the Popes Supremacy in England to wit the voluntary Concession of our Kings What the Doctor meanes I cannot imagine Some particular priviledges and as I may say pious curtesies have out of a special respect been granted by our Kings to that See to whom they owe their first knowledge of Christ and his Law but these are not the thing in debate The right of Supreme Authority is our question now who ever held this to come from the Concession of our Kings Yet this ayr-beating Champion of Schism first fancies this to be our tenet and then beats it all to dirt He is as valiant as Sir Iohn Falstaff let him tell his own story and hee 'l make you beleeve he has kill'd eleven Enemies when but one opposed him We onely found the Popes Primacy upon his Succession to St. Peter This is the onely adversary-point the Doctor is to combate which he hath most weakly opposed with grosse mistakes palpable contradictions to Scripture and pinning all the words that made for his purpose to every testimony as hath been shew'd But to counterfeit a triumph he makes every trivial thing done either by or about the Pope to be the very ground of his Primacy and then falls to work and impugnes them as really as if he thought we held them The Pope cannot doe any good action or convert a Nation but that must be the ground of his Universal Pastorship over us and be impugned accordingly A beggerly penny cannot be given to the Pope by our Kings for pious uses and out of a gratefull obligation but the poore Peter-pence and such like petty grants must presently be the Popes Universal Authority given him by the Concession of our Kings and that as such must be impugned The Kings of England France c. cannot be said by G de Heimburgh to be free from swearing obedience to the Pope at their instalment an obligation peculiar to the Empire of Germany but presently the Doctor concludes hence an absolute power in our Princes I suppose he means in Ecclesiastical matters for in temporal none denies it so as now the very ceremony of swearing obedience to the Pope is become the very granting of the formal universal Pastorship and they that doe it not are concluded to be free from the Popes Jurisdiction though he knows well enough that the King of France who as he confesses performes no such ceremonious courtesie towards him acknowledg'd notwithstanding himselfe subject to him as the Head of Gods Church Lastly which he touches here againe he cannot read in some Authors that Kings de facto executed the erecting and removing of Patriarchates though the testimony doe not exclude the Churches fore ordering it but presently the Popes Universal Power must be supposed to be transdignifi'd into a private Patriarchate and as a Patriarchate impugned Thus nothing can come amiss to the Doctor Every argument he undertakes to manage is equally strong and unresistable A pot gun will serve him to batter downe the walls of Rome He was borne a Controvertist and it is an even wager whether hee be better in the gift of Use and Applicatioon or in the Art of Dispute and Consutation Next comes another Dilemma or forked Argument which though proceeding on the former false supposition needs no answer yet for the Readers recreation we will afford a glance First it is observable that he never brings this bug-bear Argument upon the stage but when he has made a Prologue for it of some forg'd supposition of his own and then the Thing in vertue of that acts and talkes through the vizard of a mistake and yet ere it comes to a Conclusion the Doctors weak reason cracks to make both ends meet The summe of it is this that The Authority of the Pope was either originally in our Kings so as they could lawfully grant it to the Pope or not if not then the grant
was invalid If it were then either the same power remaines still in the King to dispose of it to some other or else it does not remaine in him and then is his power diminish't and so the Act is againe invalid I answer the Authority of the Pope was never held by concession of our Kings in any other sence than this that our Kings as all other Christian Kings did yeelded him what they held as of Faith to be due to him that is Supremacy in Ecclesiastical matters and therefore that they not onely lawfully granted it but could not deny it except most unlawfully Therfore their act of yeelding to it was not invalid but very valid for what it was intended which was to expresse their obligation in deferring to the Head of the Church what was his due Wherefore he cannot dispose of it to any other or remove it since the Papacy which is the thing in question was never imagin'd at any private Kings disposal till Doctor Hammonds time Again his inference that if it were in the Kings Power the same Power remaines still in them to dispose of it is as groundless as the former for we see by experience that Kings often diminish their power by yeelding sometimes Forts sometimes an Island or Country to an over-powering enemy and yet that act of theirs held valid notwithstanding Then to prove this assertion as the fellow that put foure kinds of men that pray some that pray for others and not for themselves othersome for themselves not others some for themselves and others but some neither for themselves nor others or the Preacher upon the Text seek and you shall finde put four kinde of seekers some that seek and finde not others that finde and seek not others that both finde and seek but others that neither seek nor find So the Doctor tells us here that there are two sorts of gifts one that is so given that it is given another that is so given that it is kept with the giver that is not given And then brings for an instance this curious peece of Philosophy Thus the Sun communicates his beames and with them his warmth and influence and yet retaines all which it thus communicates and accordingly withdraweth them againe This Book as the Reader must conceive is the Doctors Enâ—yclopoedia encompassing at once the whole world of Sciences He hath before given us notice of Scriptures Fathers Councils History Law Greek Hebrew Grammar and Criticismes now he gives here a proof of Philosophy and knowledge of Nature and lets thee understand so strange a truth as no man unlesse he were out of his wits could imagine to wit that the very beames sent hither by the Sun are notwithstanding retain'd there still and therefore are in more far-distant places at the same time so granting that the ordinary course of Nature performes more in a creature than he will grant Gods omnipotency can work in the glorify'd body of our Lord Creator in the ever-blessed Sacrament Nay more he assures us that the Sun ACCORDINGLY withdraweth them again What he meanes by ACCORDINGLY in that place I cannot tell lesse can I understand how the Sun withdrawes his beames again I see indeed effects in Nature of warmth witnessing that they remain here incorporated in other bodies but I see no natural causes to bandy the Suns beames back to him much lesse pullyes and long strings in the Sun to withdraw them as the Doctor expresses it accordingly too But the Doctor had fram'd his observation from the accesse and recesse of the beames of a candle in his own eyes when he was drowsie and dreamt it seemes â—â—at night that the eye of Heav'n had the like faculty Your next parity from God Almighty shoots beyond the mark No bargain can be made with him by reason of his Universal Dominion over his creatures by which they may challenge a proprietary right to his gifts therefore none with Kings over their fellow-creatures that is something impious unless you had moderated the harsh-sounding expression Neither are we properly our own for so we might dispose of our own life at pleasure and the Book of your Donne holding selfe-murder lawful might pass as allowable whose wit knew better how to maintain a Paradox and with more plausible grounds then you doe your Faith But the truth is that God never takes away what he gives but is then said to take away any thing when he withholds his bountifull hand from a further bestowing it This supposed he tells us the King retaines yet the power granted to the Pope and so may dispose of it to a Bishop of his own and that the Kings power frees them from that obedience and cleares the whole businesse of Schism Alas what a weak reed you catch at to secure you from falling into the gulfe of Schism Huic ipst partono opus est quem defensorem paras Your Patron the King needs a Patron himselfe You should first evidence that the King might lawfully renounce the so long possessed so universally acknowledg'd authority over himselfe as well as his subjects in Ecclesiastical matters ere you lanch forth into such selfe-said and selfe-authoriz'd Conclusions otherwise to run widly forwards on your own seign'd and false suppositions first that his title of Universal Pastor comes by Concession of our Kings next that our Kings were not found subject to that Authority and thirdly which is yet higher that our Kings are over that Authority and can dispose of it at pleasure such voluntary talking as this I say is better for a Sermon to your good women where all Coine goes currant than for a controversie where no progress is allowable but what is already made good by undeniable testimonies and well-grounded Reasons He shuts up the Paragraph with talking of the Popes willingness to enlarge his Territory True Sir the Church is his Territory which he is dayly both willing and industrious to enlarge by converting barbarous Nations to Christs Faith as he did once ours amongst the rest for which you are so thanklesly disacknowledging This Territory we hope and pray may be enlarged beyond the envy of all maligners till all the Ends of the Earth and plenitudo Gentium the whole company of the Gentiles shall see the salvation of God Among whom the Church that Heaven-planted Tree which beares folia ad saâ—itatem Gentium is even at this day spreading out her sacred branches and the Authority of her Head goes on not intensively but extensively enlarging while your poor broken bough rootless and sapless shrinks dayly into nothing resolved already into its first principles of a few seditious disobedient spirits whom at first common hatred and then fragrant factiousness against the Church held together now that being a far off and such a common interest not so necessary the spirit of Schism kept in a while by humane policy begins at length to work and like a swelling torrent scornes to be held in by a weak bank
of turfe which once forc't its passage through the midst of a Rock and with good reason too for why should an acknowledg'd fallibility bridle them now whom before an acknowledg'd infallibility could not restrain But you would make Queen Mary co partner in your Schism and alledge her retaining for some time the title of Head of the Church and her refusing to admit of a Legate from Rome which things you say will make it lesse strange that this Supreme Power of the Popes should be disclaimed in the time of King Henry the eighth Yet as for the first you know well enough that she never pretended it as her lawful title but onely permitted that the former phrase of the Lawes which nick-named her so might be used till she having setled the turbulent spirits raised by your good doctrine which opposed her renouncing it found an handsom occasion to disclaim that title usurp't by her late Predecessors Your selfe confessing that she urg'd the matter afterwards in a Parliament and with much difficulty obtained it Which plainly cleares her and makes your bringing her Authority upon the stage very frivolous the fact being acknowledgedly against her will But I see not how it can excuse you rather it accuses your Brethren at that time both of schism and impudence in forcing their Princess to retain an unjustly assumed title against both her Will and her Conscience What force he puts in her denying a Legate no man knowes unless he could dive into the mysterious depth of the Doctors thoughts For besides that there was another Legate in England at that time All Catholick Countries when they saw it convenient have done the same and yet arâ— reputed true sons of the Church since they retaine as humble an Obedience to the See of Rome and as firmly acknowledge her authority as those who admit them But I see the Doctâ—â— knowes not in what the absolute Supremacy as he calls it of the Pope consists Every waving of any request or favour is with him a flat denial and rejection of the Authority as if they who denied the former Kings of England subsidies deny'd them to be Monarchs or Heads of the Common-wealth Neither can I see that this as you fancy makes your breach lesse strange but rather much stranger that whereas Rome was so farre from that tyranny falsely by you imputed to her that you might have as Queen Mary and as Catholick Kings now doe deny'd to admit the Popes Legats and all such flowers of pious friendship or as you will call them extravagant encroachments and yet have remained in true charity with the faithful and Communion with that your Superiour yet neither this moderate carriage nor any thing else could satisfie your resolute and desperate disobedience but to reject the very Authority it selfe utterly to extirpate it root and branch and cast it out of this Island This renouncing then of the chiefest Authority of the Church you left you call in a strange expression the Bottome upon which the Foundation of Reformation was laid upon which by the same workmen who pulled downe a good house to build a worse was erected a superstructure in King Henry's dayes the number of the Sacraments translation of the Bible and the use of the Lords prayer in the English Tongue as if the Lords Prayer was never used in the vulgar language till King Henry's holinesse ordained it As for the Kings Vicar-general who presided in his duely-assembled Councel as you call it I can say no more of him but he was a proper fellow Domini similis like his Master Vicegerent to him in that high and mighty title of the Chief of Schismaticks the rotten Head of the corrupted body But Mr. Doctor proceeds in his Schism much farther advanced as he tells us in King Edwards dayes Yet first he is resolved to clear the way and remove a rub which he apprehends very dangerous to wit lest we should think to prove the acts made in his dayes invalid and vilifie them because the King was yet alas but a child assuring us therefore that the Lawes of this Realm ordain that what is done by the Protector is done by the Child and that too as well as if the Child had been a man But I will secure the Doctor of his sâ—are for though the child had been a man and had had as many wives as his Father yet neither he nor they had been a jot further from being plain Schismaticks unless this child or man had been wiser holier and oldeâ— than all Gods Church so to justifie the breach which his Father had made Very pitiful then had been the Doctors reâ—uge had the infant King the Head of theiâ— Church been at yeares of discretion but yeâ— far more pitiful is it the then Protector steering the helm of the Common-wealth whoâ—e traiterous and ambitious designe to intercept Queen Mary's succession being manifestly discover'd whatever he acted against Catholicks or their Religion Q. Mary's supports ought in all reason but the Doctors be rather imputed to interest than piety But nothing can prejudice as he thinks the regularity of his Reformation Schism once admitted as sacred no wonder if tyranny treachery and ambition be not onely lawful but pious and commendable Yet his tyranny in secular matters is become even the Supream Power in Ecclesiastical and so the Reformation goes on in the Doctors Book currantly and merrily especially though some Bishops resisted and were punisht yet as the Doctor sayes Arch-Bishop Cranmer who kept a Wench in King Henries time and the far greater number of Bishops joyning with him all is well and the Reformation valid Then to cry quits with us for their persecuting our Bishops he puts us in mind how their friends in Queen Maries dayes were not onely persecuted with fire but with â—agot too To answer which let the Dr. but clear those malefactors from Schisme and Sedition and we shall acknowledge the cruelty ours and the innocency theirs otherwise let them remember our pretended persecution was onely execution of justice and theirs a most sacrilegious and irreligious tyranny But I smell by the Dr. that he hath been in Iohn Foxes kennel The Reformations he mentions introduced in the Popedom of this head junior of their Church are many changes as the Dr. tells us and recessions from the doctrine and practises of Rome That is now grown reason enough to think all that was done to be lawfully done Besides saith he That of Images the lawfulnesse of the marriage of the Clergy was asserted the Dr. likes that point of faith dearly the English Liturgy formed the people got wine to their bread c. But that ill-favord c. dashes out the best Then then it was the Dr. should have added that those two sweet singers of Israel Hopkins and Sternhold as Cleveland expresses it murdered the Psalmes over and over with Another to the same then did the Later of these in a fit of divine fury
no doubt bid God give his foes a rap Then then it was that that second Solomon Robert Wisedom inspired questionless from Heaven warbled out that melodious and exquisit hymn which with a sweet twang closes up the book of Psalmes Preserve us Lord by thy dear word From Turk and Pope defend us Lord. And the rest of that devout piece able to ravish any Christian heart to hear it These and such other rarities of Reformation were then added as harmonious Epithalamiums to this under-age Bride-Church to celebrate her espousals or marriage with her Infant-Head After this the Dr. treates of the Reformation made under Queen Elizabeth in his 15. Paragraph consisting of five or six lines on either side a long Parenthesis which Parenthesis tells us partly strange news that Queens as well as Kings have according to our Laws Regal Power partly open fictions that this plenitude of power is as well in Sacred as Civil affairs and that they have this by the Constitution of our Monarchy Whereas he cannot but know there had been many a Monarch in England ere their Schismatical Laws were made which first allowed the King a plenitude of power in sacred matters In the next place he touches the ordination of their new created Bishops evidenced as he saith out of the records to have been performed according to the ancient Canons by the imposition of the hands of the Bishops Yet this modest evidencing Record durst never shew its head for about fifty years notwithstanding the outcries made by Catholicks against the pretended ordinations of Protestant Bishops and strong presumptions to the contrary till at length when the memory of that present age was past which might discountenance that pretence and argue it of impudence out steps a new old Record assuring us that they were regularly ordained And this is the firmest Basis the Protestant Ministry or Bishops have to witnesse that they have any more Authority to preach then an Anabaptistical Zelot whose profession is perhaps a Weaver his Calling his own Intrusion his Pulpit a Tub and his Diocesse a Conventicle But suppose you had a material Mission from the hands of Catholick Bishops and that Mr. Mason had vindicated you in this point yet can either Mr. Mason or any else even pretend to manifest that those Catholick Bishops gave you a Mission that is sent and Authorised you to preach Protestant Doctrines or could do it in case they would having no such power from the Church from whom they have all their power Unlesse you evidence this both Mr. Mason and Dr. Hammond may as well say nothing For since they gave you no such authority as you make use of that is to preach against the formerly received Faith nor sent you any such errand as you now declare and preach it follows that whatever you do to prejudice and extinguish that doctrine to propagate which they meant your Mission is done onely upon your own head without any authority but your own selfe-assumed licentiousnesse to talk and say what you list not derived from the consecrated hands of your Catholick Ordainers but from your own unhallowed schismatical hearts But Mr. Dr. is always afraid where no fear is answering at large here a supposed objection of ours against Q. Elizabeth for unchairing some Bishops and installing others But alas I am more courteous to the Queen than the Doctor imagines and think no worse of her but onely that in that fact she did after kind for supposing her once the Head of Schisinaticks and Chief-Bishopesse of their Church I see no reason but she should depose Bishops Catholikely affected and install heretical ones and in a word she and her Bishops voâ—e and act whatever they thought good and I cannot tell what should hinder them since the now rejected Authority of Gods Church could not All the superstructures of the Reformation then which the Doctor so often and so largely in this Chapter hath shown to be done regularly I grant him to have been done as regularly as his own heart could wish or mans wit imagine for the Authority of the Church being schismatically renounced and the infallible rule of Faith which could onely oblige men to an unanimous beleefe being broken and rejected these grounds I say being layed I yeeld that the superstructure not onely of their heresie but even of Lutheranism Zuinglianism Calvinism Arminianism Puritanism Brownism Socinianism Presbyterianism Anabaptism with those of Quakers and Adamites but even of Turcism and Atheism were all very regular orderly rational and connatural superstructures upon the forelaid foundations The ruine of all Faith must needs accompany the renouncing of Certainty Yet I had forgot to let the Reader see how the Doctor excuses the Queen for devesting some Bishops of their dignity and his excuse is because those Bishops refused to take the oath of Supremacy concluding that therefore she dealt justly in devesting those Bishops which thus refused to secure her Government or to approve their fidelity to their lawfull Soveraign By which one may see the Doctor knowes not the difference between the oath of Allegiance and the oath of Supremacy The oath of Allegiance or fidelity was instituted expresly for that purpose what needed she then presse them to take the oath of Supremacy to approvâ— their Fidelity or Allegiance cannot one be a true subject to his King by acknowledging him his Liege Soveraign unless he will take his oath he is Head of the Church As if neither any of the former Kings of England nor any of the Catholike Princes that now are or ever have been had so much as one true subject because none of them takes the Oath of Supremacy What followes is onely a narration how the Schism went on and the rent was made worse At length he shuts up this Chapter by pronouncing an absolute Negative of their guiltiness of Schism from this one evidence that all was done by those to whom and to whom onely the rightful power legally pertained to wit the King and Bishops of this Nation So as the King must be Head of the Church that 's concluded hoagh all the world say and swear the contrary though himselfe have not brought one express word to prove it Nay more he hath EVIDENCE it is no Schism because the King and the Bishops voted it as if whatsoever the King and Bishops vote let it be what schismatical doctrine it will though Socianism and Turcism it must not be schismatical so blind is prejudice that it can neither see without its own spectacles nor beyond its own narrow limits The Doctor discourses all this Chapter long as if he made account all the world were comprised in one poor corner of it England like the home-bred fellow that thought the Sun set at the next town if a King or Queen here with a few Bishops partly out of feare partly out of favour some out of malice and contradicted by others decree any thing it makes the case irrefragable
that the Scripture grants to S. Peter some Primacy of Order or Dignity If so Mr. Hammond then for any thing you know it may be a Primacy of Iurisdiction And it stands onely upon the certainty of your and our interpretation of Scripture whether it signifie such a Primacy or no. Neither indeed could it be any other if any hold may be taken from your words For S. Peter as you grant and as the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Simon the first of the Apostles plainly evidence had some kind of Primacy then given him and if it were then given him he then had it that is he had it in our Saviours life time but you told us before that S. Iohn had the dignity of place which is the same with Primacy of Order before all others in Christs life time even before S. Peter himself The Primacy then which S. Peter had in Christs life time must be some other Primacy and what Primacy could this be but the Primacy of Iurisdiction Again if by this Primacy he allows S. Peter he means such a precedency as hath any effect or efficacity in the Church according to the nature and degree of a Primacy this is all the substance of the Popes Authority and all that is held by us as of Faith but if he means by Primacy there a meerely inefficacious and dry Presidency and Precedency of Order such as is with us the walking on the right hand or sitting first at a Table without any superiority more than a courteous deference of the rest then the Doctor must imagine our Blessed Saviour had no better thing to do when he made S. Peter the first but to take order for feare the good Apostles should fall to complement who should sit go or speak in the first place and consequently this tenet being an Act of our Saviours register'd in Scripture must bee a courteous point of Faith obliging all the Apostles under pain of damnation to be civil and make a leg to S. Peter In the next paragraph the Doctor is full of feares and jealousies and makes a great doubt that the subjection of this Church to the Authority of the Bishop of Rome will never be likely to tend to the Unity of the whole And why think you so Mr. Doctor doe you not find evidently that the Church before Luther and K Henry renounced the said Authority enjoy'd most perfect peace and tranquillity as those who are under that government doe most blessedly now and on the contrary that after that Authority was rejected nothing has succeeded the rejecters but perpetual turmoiles schisms divisions and subdivisions into Sects and daily mutations in Faith and Government as far as the temporal sword did not hinder them Is not this as evident as all History and even our very eyes can witnesse a truth Lastly doe not the present distractions you now groan under awake you to see that the source of all your misery springs from the leaking Cistern of Schism you have digg'd for your selves Did your Ancestours find so little Unity under the Government of the Roman Catholike Church or have you found such a constant Unity since you left it that you can presume the re-admitting that Government is never likely to tend to Unity Yet you cannot think otherwise unlesse all other Churches of Christians paid that subjection too Do you your obligation why should their backwardnes in their duties make you deny yours Besides whom doe you call Christians all that cry Lord Lord that is professe the name of Christ but deny the onely certain Rule to come to the knowledge of his Law such as were the Gnosticks Carpocratians Donatists Socinians and all the heresies that ever arose since the infancy of the Church or doe you mean by the word Christians onely those qui faciunt voluntatem Patris doe the will of our heavenly Father that is all that hear the Church or have a certain and common Rule to know what Christs Law is if so all these acknowledge subjection to the Head-Bishop of Rome never denied by any but those who at the same time they denied it cast themselves out of the Church refusing to hear her You say the Eastern Churches had not acknowledg'd it ere your departure Admit they had not can their pattern warrant you more than it can warrant the Arrians Nestorians Eutychians c. unless you be certain they did well in it They rejected it indeed and for their reward were by all the Christian world till you falling into the same fault began to call them Brothers and by all your Ancestours justly held and called Schismaticks Yet when they were in their right mood they admitted it as much as any Roman-Catholike as appeares in the Acts of the Florentine Council to which they subscribed nay even when they were disgusted and refused Unity they acknowledged the power of the Bishop of Rome as appeares by a testimony of Gerson cited by your friend Bishop Bramhall against himselfe in his just vindication of the Church of England p. 101. which witnesses that the Greeks departed from the then-Pope with these words Wee acknowledge thy power we cannot satisfie your covetousness live by your selves His second doubt is that the Bishop of Rome is not able to administer that vast Province I wonder how he did of old and why he may not do the same again as well as formerly But the Dr. calls it a politick probleme whether hee can or no and would have it judged by those who are by God entrusted with the Flock Id est saith he by the Princes the nursing Fathers in every Church It is indeed a politick probleme that is a question concerning Government but since it concernes Government Ecclesiastical it falls not under the scanning of temporal Politicians The Christian Common-wealth would be brought to a pretty pass if the Government of Gods Church so long acknowledged as left by Christ and continued in the Church 300. yeares by their own confession ere there were any Christian Princes should anew be call'd into question by humane policy But these two words of Scripture Nursing Fathers make it plain to the Doctor satisfy'd with any thing himself fancies that the Government and Jurisdiction over the Church belongs to Kings as if to nurse cherish and foster were to rule order govern and command or as if Ioseph who was Foster-father to our Saviour was as good as or the same with God Almighty who was his true Father And I wonder where this Doctor ever read that our Saviour entrusted the Government of his Church and Ecclesiastical affaires to any but the Apostles Ecclesiastical persons or that any held Nero the Heathen Emperour to have right and title o be Head of the Church Again if our Saviour left that authority with his Apostles I would gladly know by what new Orders from Christ it came to be transfer'd from their Successors into the hands of secular Princes But the Doctor has
by his former words brought the matter at length to a finall decision The question is whether it be sitting the Pope should rule over the whole Church which none denies but a few schismatical Princes he comes to take up the controversie and tels us those very Princes for all Catholike Princes have already determined the contrary must decide the truth of the businesse As if an Umpire being to arbitrate a quarrel about the Authority of the Vice-chancellour of Oxford opposed by the Major his Competitor should take up the businesse by saying it was a politick probleme belonging to the Government of the University and so ought to bee decided by none but the Major SECT 2. Of Dr. Hammonds evasion in recurring to the first 300. yeares and concerning the humble and docible temper of his Church HAving thus cleared the Protestants for renouncing the Rules of Faith which was part of his well-divided Schism against mutual Charity as far as it concernes Faith he is come to treat next of the second part of that first species of mutual Charity which concernes Faith to wit of the particular doctrines in Faith in which he sayes he doubts not but to approve himselfe to any that will judge of the Apostolical Doctrines and Traditions by the Scriptures and consent of the first 300. years or the four General Councils c. which is a very plausible and pithy piece of shuffling expressing a plain tergiversation from approving himselfe willing to do any thing but to wave and shift the Question For first we must judge of Apostolical doctrines and Traditions by Scripture I ask are those doctrines clearer exprest in Scripture than they are in the depositories of the Churches by which he told us before they were brought down to us or no If they be clearer in Scripture what needed we those depositives at all and to what end does that Apostolical Providence serve If not how can we judge of them by Scripture which speakes more obscurely of them Again since we must judge of Apostolical doctrines by Scripture what rules does the Doctor give us to settle our judgement when things are cleare in Scripture and when not for we see many men who govern themselves by fancy think that evident which another judges to have no apparence of truth And for my part I even despair of bringing clearer proofes from Scripture than that S. Paul converted Iewes and S. Peter Gentiles which yet you saw could give the nice Doctor no satisfaction Another tergiversation is his standing onely to the first 300. yeares where the Authors being scarce by reason of the Churches obscure state under persecution and hardly any occasion to speak of the late risen controversies between us he hopes no great matter can be concluded against him thence where scarce any thing is found that concernes our quarrel As if being to fight a Duel with an Adversary he would stand to the appointment of no place and time but onely in a wildernesse and a dark night where they might be sure never to meet or being met never see one another No better is his standing to the four first Councils onely which were all call'd upon other occasions and so touch not any point of debate between us except onely on the by and therefore obscurely the best testimonies out of which have been already objected by him and solved by us But why onely foure since all Councils are of equal Authority there being nothing found to authorize the first foure but was found in the fifth sixth c. So that this challenge of the Drs. is all one as if an Arian Heretick would be judged by no place in Scripture whether Christ were God or no but out of the Proverbs of Solomon where nothing is found concerning that point dilating much upon the praises of Solomon and what a most pure and uncorrupted piece of Scripture that Book is but producing no Evidence in the world why the other Books of Scripture were not as pure and sacred as it But the Doctor escapes not so he has engag'd himselfe by this as he thought secure grant further than he imagines His allowing of foure Councils to examine his Faith by is an acknowledgement that he admits the Authority of Councils as sacred and binding He must either then shew EVIDENCE that the 5th Council erred or that the Church and her Pastors had declined from the faith of the foregoing Age or else he is obliged to accept it and so the rest under the penalty of forfeiting the title of a good Christian for no lesse blot will fall to his share who rejects an Authority held sacred by himselfe without most clear Evidence of a just exception As he who acknowledges the Authority of Parliament by admitting the Acts of some as valid Lawes is bound by the very acknowledgment of some to accept all the rest unless an open Evidence convince their Votes not to have been free or that there was some other known defect in the managing of them Onely in this latter a far lesse Evidence will serve the turn the Authority of Parliament being but humane whereas the other was held and acknowledged to bee sacred But indeed the truth is hee accepts not even of those four because he thinks Councils to be of Authority but because he thinks there is no doctrine in these against his Fancy or Faith or if any he hopes he can make a shift to shuffle it off In the mean time gaining a very great patronage and countenance to his cause in pleading it relies on such highly authoriz'd supports No candider than the former is his evasion of being judged by the purest Ages which in reality signifies onely such times wherein nothing was treated against those heresies which afterwards cling'd together to compound Protestantism This is manifest by his admitting 300. yeares next after Christ no more by which he excludes the fourth and fifth Ages yet at pleasure admits the fourth General Council held about the middle of the fifth Age. So that the whole Church must be imagin'd to be first pure then impure afterwards pure again according as the supposition of it suits best for the Doctors purpose If none of their particular heresies were rife and therefore not condemned in the first obsure 300. years presently the Dr. cries up those Ages for pure But the Church in the next Age having now got rid of persecution became pester'd with home-bred factions and heresies which made the Fathers of the Church take pen in hand vigorously confuting them and some of the Doctors tenets among the rest Hereupon the Doctor presently decries that Age as impure popish corrupted But then in the middle of the fifth age was call'd a Council which chanced to treat nothing professedly of the errours afterwards embraced by the Protestants nay more had a certain passage in it which I have before cleared serving them to blunder in against the Pope Immediately that Council was sacred and that age
Sacraments Government nor any thing though never so sacred left by our Saviour hath found any security SECT 3. An examination of some common notes produced by Dr. Hammond to particularize his Clients to bee no Schismaticks HIs 9th Ch. undertakes to clear his Church from the 2d sort of his Schism against mutual â—â—arity to wit from that Schism which is against extern Peace or Communion Ecclesiastical And first he alledges for his plea that they have retain'd the right form of Government c. So that now Schism against Subordination or Government for they are all one which was the first general Head of Schism and also comprehended under the first species of the second Head as appeares C. 8. S. 2. is by the Doctors accurate method come to be under the second species also of the same second General Head Which is all one as if dividing vivens into Sensitive and Insensitive and then subdividing the Genus of Sensitive into the two Species of Rational and Irrational or Man and Beast he should first treat of Insensitive the first Genus and that done fall in hand with Sensitive the second and then under each Species of that returne to treat professedly of Insensitive again that is to speak of Trees Shrubs and Herbs when he should speak of men and creatures endued with sence Surely Doctor Hammond is more methodical in his Sermons otherwise the World must needs look upon him as another S. Iohn Baptist because hee preaches in a Wilderness But let us follow him through all his Mazes distinguish't by no orderly path but what his own inconstant and desultorious track makes First then he tells us that they retaiâ— the Form of Government in and under which the Apostles â—ounded Ecclesiastical Assemblies or Communion viz. that of the Bishop and his inferioâ— Officers in every Church As if the Arian Hereticks who denied Christ to be God and almost all heresies that ever broke from Gods Church did not retain afterwards the Authority of their own Bishops But what availed it either them or you but to the greater danger of damnation if you adhered to those Bishops who had rejected the Authority of their former Superiours and taught you doctrines contrary to the Order of Gods Church without whose order much lesse against it they had no Authority to teach at all Again you tell us of one piece of your Government that of Bishops constituted indeed by the Apostles but you tell us not of the main hinge of your Churches Government which is of the King being its Head and Supreme in Ecclesiastical matters This is the sum and top of your Churches Government put us not off with an odd end of it This is that for substituting which in stead of the Ecclesiastical Head you rejected wee charge you of Schism and breach of Communion Ecclesiastical for in so doing you cut Gods Church into as many single headed and consequently diverse-bodied and disparate Congregations as there are Kingdoms in Christendome Shew us that this your Novelty in Government was practised by the Apostles in their Assemblies or instituted by them or their Blessed Master and then you will say something to the point Remember your purest times of the first 300. yeares shew us that all that time the Church was ordered by the Emperours Presidency or that this Government was instituted by Christ and his Apostles If you cannot then tell us how comes it to be held now as a chief point of Faith You may not in reason think to uphold your self your by testimonies out of the following ages unles you wil disavow your own grounds for those ages were as you say all impure Lay your hand then on your heart Mr. Hammond and tell us in good sadness if you be not gravell'd in your own doctrine while you maintain this new Lay Ecclesiastical Government His second plea is that as they maintain the Order of Bishops so they submit to the exercise of it acknowledging the Authority of those Governors In answer to which no new thing is to be said this being the very same with the former only First changed into Secondly For the obeying submitting to and acknowledging the due Authority of Governours is the very formal maintaining and accepting the Government which was his first branch So as this is another orderly production of the Drs. methodical Head which vents it selfe in first secondly thirdly c. upon all occasions though both his first second and third bee the selfe-same formal thing His third plea is that they observe the circumstances necessary to the assembling themselves for publick worship First that of place Churches Secondly that of time the Lords day primitive Festivals As if all Schismaticks in the World doe not meet at some set times and in some appointed and set places Thirdly Formes of prayer and praises almost all out of our Mass and Breviary Celebration of Sacraments onely five of them being quite abolish't and three quarters of the sixth Sacramentals Copes and Surplisses which you might by the same principles call rags of Rome Preaching against Christ and his Church such doctrine as none ever sent you or your first Fore-fathers to preach Cathechising infecting and imbuing tender and easie minds with your tainted doctrine Fourthly that of Ceremonies such as the practice of the Primitive Church hath sent down recommended to us Pray by whom did she send them down and recommend them to you Examine wel and you shall find that the same authority recommended to you many more as from her though you only accepted of what you thought convenient Lastly that of discipline to binde all to these performances Doubtlesse all Sects in the world impose some obligation upon their subjects to keep them together else they could not bee a Sect. Yet that your tie either to that or any thing else concerning Government is as slack as may be is manifest out of the slender provision made against Schism according to the Protestant grounds See Part 3. Sect. 1. as I have shewn in my answer to the fore-going Chapter Neither are you beholding to your doctrine for any discipline sufficient to hold you together in Unity a professed fallibility is too weak for that but to the secular Power the threat of whose sword held you in awe for a while but as soon as that Power was dissolv'd your slack-sinew'd Church which no tie either in Reason or Conscience held together bewrayed its composition and like the statue seen by Nabuchadonosor fell all to pieces It were not amiss ere I leave these three pleas already mentioned to take a second survey of them that the Reader may visibly perceive how less than nothing this Doctor hath said either to his or indeed any purpose To make this discovery sincere we must mark his intent and scope in this Chapter which is to free or clear their Church from the breach of Commmunion Ecclesiastical which he makes to consist in such and such things Now
a man that goes about to clear another of an imputed fault should as I conceive propose the objected fault with the presumptions of the defendants guiltiness and then diluere objecta wipe off the stain of the accusations and clear his innocencie What does the Dr he takes no notice of what is objected but in stead of that onely reckons up some few indifferent things which their Church hath not rejected and sure it were a hard case if they had rejected all which their Forefathers taught them and then thinks the deed done In particular he tells us first that they retain the Government of Bishops but why they have innovated a new Church-government making the King Head in Ecclesiastical matters or why they obey those Bishops who can derive their mission of doctrine from no former Church or Authority which only are the things objected to them as schism of these two points hee sayes nothing That they now obey their Bishops he tells us but why they obey'd not him or why they cast out his Authority whom they held before to bee the Chief-Bishop that 's a matter not worth clearing The Pope's Antichrist and ther 's an end Then he clears his side from Schism because they assemble in Churches but he never considers that wee charge them with plain Sacriledge for meeting there and deatining those places anciently ours and built by us out of the true owners hands and applying them to prophane uses All that with him is very laudable and needs no clearing either from injustice or sacriledge He clears their Church of Schism because they observe yet some Festivals and the like may bee said of Sacramentals and Ceremonies but considers not that the schism consists in this that they at their own voluntary pleasure refusing some and admitting others denied consequently obedience to that Authority which recommended both unto them and which disobedience their own grounds condemnes as shall presently bee shewed He cleares his Church of Schism by alledging they observe some form of Prayer but never takes notice that the crime wee object to them is this that they ruin'd Religious houses to build dwelling Halls so they mangled our Holy and ancient Service-books to patch up their reformed piece of the book of Common-prayer leaving out all the most sacred parts of it to wit Canon Missae and what ever concerned the Heaven-propitiating Sacrifice that highest and soul-elevating Act of Religion and onely taking out of it those sleighter things which might satisfie the lowersiz'd devotion of their reformed spirits and was enough to serve them to cry Lord Lord. He brings as a proofe of their innocencie from schism that they have celebration of Sacraments Preaching and Catechizing c. But thinks it not worth clearing that of seven Sacraments they have retain'd onely the substance of one and the shadow of another Nor ever considers whether their doctrine be true or false All is one for that with the Doctor if they doe but preach pray and catechise let it be what it will it is a certain note that they are no schismaticks Lastly hee puts as an argument to cleare them from schism that they have some Discipline to bind to these performances c. that is they use some little wit or meanes to maintain their schism and hold their tribe together but he waves that for which onely we accuse them of Schism to wit that they utterly renounced all the discipline and even all ground of it in that Church of which theirs was once a member and fancied to themselves a new one without any ground of Authority and with direct opposition and contempt of the former discipline Nor hath he onely in this present endeavour to clear his Church of Schism omitted the very mentioning those matters which were to be cleared but even the things he alledges as whose retaining hee makes account frees their Church from schism are such pitifull ordinary businesses so indifferent to all or most schismaticks and hereticks that they can no way particularize them to be none or exempt them from the common crue of their fellowes For what schism ever arose but had some kind of government or discipline had their meetings in some set places at some set times pray'd in their own new way preach't taught and catechiz'd their own doctrine So as the Doctor might with â—ar better Logick have concluded the Protestants no schismaticks because they have all noses on their faces this being common to Catholikes as well as Schismaticks and so might seem partly to excuse them whereas the other of admitting such points and no more which are the Doctors notes of his Church are disclaimed by all Catholikes and common to almost all Schismaticks Nay some schismaticks and hereticks have retained much more of what their Ancestors taught them as Lutherans some almost all points as the Greeks and the old Arians the latter of which excepting their one heresie against Christs divinity had twenty times more markes of a Church in all other things than the Drs could ever pretend to Fourthly hee assures us that the Popes Authority is an usurpation and the use of more ceremonies and Festivals an imposition of the Romanists How so Mr. Doctor if the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome was brought in 900. yeares agoe when Pope Gregory sent to convert our Forefathers to Christs faith as your selfe and your followers grant then how is it an usurpation of the present Romanists Were wee who now live alive 900. yeares agoe or are they who lived 900. years ago alive now But in regard you onely say it and bring no proof I shall not trouble my self in vouchsasing you an answer As for the imposition of more ceremonies which you say the present Romanists used towards you without any authority from the Primitive Church it is so silly so contrary both to our grounds and your own also that you make your selfe ridiculous to any man that understands either one or the other For since the institution of Ceremonies is one of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or things indifferent left to the ordering of Gods Church as both the 20th Article of the new English Creed expressely determines and all moderate Protestants hold I wonder why our Church should not when she saw convenient ordain new Ceremonies and the like may bee said of new Festivals which are things indiferent also and recommend the observation and practice of them to you who were then members of that Church her subjects and children Most lawfully then did our Church even in your own grounds in imposing new Ceremonies on you her then-subjects and if so as unlawfully did you in spurning against her Ordinances Neither consequently can those few you retain upon your own head and not her Authority excuse you from Schism Equally absurd is your zealous profession of conforming your selves in ceremonies to the Primitive times for if the Church hath Authority upon emergent conveniences and difficulties to institute new Ceremonies and
absolutely renounce ere wee can deem you other than Hereticks Either wee must judge the highest Tribunal in the world upon whose living voice wee build all Faith and true sence of the Scriptures to have lyed that is wee must judge our highest Superiours Pastours Teachers and Church to be erroneous in Faith and heretical or else we must judge you our equals at most and till you out-law'd your selves her subjects to be truly criminal and rightly condemned Thirdly Unus Deus una Fides unum Baptisma there is but one Faith as there is but one God That your Faith and ours cannot be one is most evident All our whole Church condemning yours as heretical and yours when the humour takes them as much detesting ours as erroneous Nay the most dreadful sacrifice of our Saviours Body and Bloud our Holy of Holies reviled and abhorred by your Church as a blasphemous fiction and pernicioâ—â— imposture Both our Faiths therefore cannot be one and consequently one of them is none but erreur against Faith which if firmly adhered to as it is must be Heresie either your Faith then or ours under penalty of maintaining a contradiction must necessarily bee held as heresie Now comes this Doctor and accuses us for the most uncharitable men in the world because wee will not judge our own Faith heretical and so free theirs Remember our Saviours words Mr. Dr. He that believes not is judg'd already Joyn this to Una Fides and our contradicting one another in most important points of Faith and you must necessarily conclude that neither of us if hee bee certain he beleeves and has that one Faith can make conscience of judging the other since the other is judged already in receding from or not having the true Faith Nay if he judge him not to be already judged he must judge himself to be in the same state of a self-judg'd unbeleever or rather on the contrary hee must make conscience of not judging him for such but by a colloguing piece of courtesie draw him into eternal perdition and himselfe follow him for his uncharitable connivence Thus you see the Dr. never meddles with any point but he blunders and destroys all the reason that ever concerns it Neither is it Charity but partly fear of most open shame partly ignorance of any grounds or what belongs to a Church or a Government which makes him not judge us to bee both Hereticks and Schismaticks since one of us must be such and he has a good mind to give us these new Titles whom hee very angrily here calls his vaunting enemies But as the former body of our Church out of which their few Reformers receded standing and remaining still one and the same together with that plain and common notion that a tree is not said to be broken from a branch but the branch from the tree-leaves them so much light of apprehension as not to dare to call us schismaticks so the acknowledg'd antiquity of our doctrine ever persisting the self-same and the confessed innovation of theirs frights them though unwillingly from styling us Innovators and Hereticks Fourthly our judging you may indeed seem to bee errour but malice and uncharitablenesse it cannot For since the grounds of our Faith which necessarily oblige us to judge thus of you and all such were held by us as firmly before you were ever dream'd of as at present you cannot object that wee invented new grounds to conclude so hardly of you in our thoughts nor that they were purposely and maliciously aymed at your then-unhatch'd Congregation So as you may if you please pretend that all the grounds on which wee hold our Faith Gods word and its true Interpretation are erroneous and therefore that our so judging of you necessarily springing from those Grounds is an errour yet malice or uncharitablenesse you cannot call it since wee cannot hinder the consequence from following without denying the grounds which infer it that is without denying the certainty and truth of all our Faith And me thinkes the zeal of our Missionaries to reduce others from the ill state wee conceive them in with daily hazarding and often laying down actually their lives for that end both in this Countrey and many others should transfer the charge of Uncharitablenesse to your colder partâ— for sure it can bee no lesse to judge them uncharitable who so readily and willingly lay down their dearest lives to redeem the soules of their very enemies and persecutors from a beleeved danger Yet this is the Doctors Goliah's sword as he calls it wherewith he threatned to give a fatall wound Though in truth I can discern no more edge in it than in a Beetle S. Cyprians testimony of Neminem damnantes neminem a communione nostrâ arcentes Condemning no man nor driving any from his Communion was spoken of himselfe of his own temper towards the rest of Gods Church acknowledged by himselfe to be such and that in the point of Rebaptization of Infants which though held stiffely by himselfe yet his charity so moderated his zeal that hee exprest his indifferency in those alledged words Neither had he reason to deny Communion to other Catholikes for a private opinion onely till the Church had interpos'd her Authority But where did the Doctor read either in S. Cyprian or any other Father that they admitted to their Communion those who had been condemned as Schismaticks and Hereticks by all the Churches in communion with the See of Rome as were the Protestants Unlesse hee can shew this hee abuses most absurdly that holy and learned Father by seeming to make him allow a promiscons admission of all Sects let them be what they please which savours more of Doctor Hammonds spirit who would have all come to his Church thas call themselves Christians than of Blessed S. Cyprians who knew better what belonged to Church-order and discipline But I thought there was one of the Drs mysteries in it when I saw the words of the Father alledged to an end so inâ—onsonant to his Doctrine without quotation of any place Book Chapter or Epistle But Mr. Hammond will have the thing between us to bee onely differences in opinion and indeed if that supposition that the onely ground of all our Faith in which consists our main difference were but an Opinion as on his part it is not I see no reason why either hee or I should trouble our selves to write Books in defence of an Opinionative Faith it were better in that case to eat drink shake hands and be merry nor trouble our selves with thinking whether there bee a Heav'n or no which wee can never come the ground of Faith being but an Opinion to any certain knowledge of In the last place of his first Part of this Schism hee tells us we beg the question in calling them Schismaticks because they deny it and offer to prove the contrary Certainly Mr. Hammond has been so long in the Pulpit that hee has forgot the fashion of
the Universities where there is no disputation but the one affirmes and the other denies and the Defendant holds his Conclusion for true till the Opponent proves the contrary without being judged to incur the fault of begging the question Besides to what dark holes you run for clear proofes we have already shewn and till you can shew us a greater Authority to acquit you than is the Churches Tribunal which condemned you your denying it will but double the fault not clear it especially since the material fact of Schism that is dividing from the persons with whom you formerly communicated cannot bee deny'd however you may pretend the intention or cause of it to be doubtful or obscure Ere I leave this first part of judging otherâ—â— I desire the Reader to fancy in his own minde as perfect a Schismatick as can bee imagin'd and therfore deservedly cast out by the Church which done let him read this Doctors tenth Chapter and hee shall easily perceive that hee has not brought one word for himselfe which the other justly-condemned schismatick may not with as good reason make use of So easily it is discoverable by the manner of weapon the Dr. wears whose side he is on and whose banner he fights under His second charge of Schism against mutual Charity is that we despise and set at nought the Brother Good Brother Doctor tell mee how we despise you We pity you indeed seeing the calamities you are fallen into by your former fault as also to see you persist still obstinately blind in the midst of your punishment But despise you wee doe not Yet you conclude the cause by the effect that is our casting you out of the Church and therefore say the guilt lies on our side EUGE QUANTI EST SAPERE Let us put the demonstration a posteriori in form and you shall see the invincibleness of it They who cast others out of the Church despise them and are guilty of schism against Charity But the Roman Church cast us out of the Church Therefore they despise us and are guilty of schism against Charity By which account no Church can condemn any one of schism but shee must bee a schismatick her selfe whereas wee did not cast them out but upon their avowed contumacy against the orders of our Church which the Doctor himselfe holds as a reason sufficient for the Protestant to excommunicate Catholikes Where you see the first Proposition can onely be sustained by making this shameless assertion good that no man can cast another out of the Church but he must despise him and consequently bee guilty of unchartiableness and schism But the Doctor argues as if a Rebel should confess at large that indeed he rejected the Authority of the Supreme Magistrate and receded from the former Lawes and Customes of the Common-wealth yet notwithstanding they must not punish him and his company or if they doe they are guilty of faction sedition dissention and despising their fellowes What King now could bee so hard-hearted as to punish a Rebel defending himself with such a wise solid and rational plea The Doctor confess'd that they rejected the Authority of the Pope formerly acknowledg'd to bee Supreme that they receded from the doctrines and practises of Rome of which Church they were a little before members and subjects and when he has done tells this Church it must not punish them nor excommunicate them or if she doe she is guilty of schism uncharitableness of despising and setting at nought the Brother But pray Mr. Doctor what schism is it after you had run away from the Church ever since King Henry fell in love to tell you in the tenth year of Queen Elixabeth when she saw you would not mend but grew daily worse and worse that she could no longer forbear to punish your pertinacious disobedience After this the Doctor crouds together a great company of advantages of our Religion with which wee pre-possesse our subjects though the Doctor mistakes in some and which hee sayes are so many reasons why they doe not set us at nought and despise us First the advantage of our education True indeed we are taught to obey our Superiors and hear our Pastors Secondly the prescribed credulity to all that the Church shall propose Good Mr. Dr whom should the Faithful beleeve in telling them the sence of Gods word if not the Church such pitiful guessing Southsayers as you Are not our Saviours words Hear the Church and I am with you ever till the end of the world plaine enough and sufficient to secure their credulity to such a Heav'n-assisted-Mistress And indeed how can you think those who cannot employ sufficient time to study out their Faith should be otherwise instructed than by Credulity Look whether your Proselytes doe not rely even upon your private Authority so natural and necessary is it there should bee an Authority to governe weak people Thirdly the doctrine of infallibility That is wee tell them Faith is certain and hath certain grounds a grievous accusation Fourthly the shutting up the Scriptures in an unknown Languge That is taking order that the unlearned nor unstable pervert them not to their own damnation Fifthly the impossibility that the multitude should search or examine Tradition with their own eyes That is the Doctor is utterly ignorant what Tradition is Is it such an impossible matter for the meanest person that hath age enough to know what doctrine was held by Christians ten yeares agoe or for them that liv'd ten yeares agoe to know what was held 20 years since and so forth Especially Faith not being a meer speculation but shewing it selfe in practise which proclames that heavenly law of Grace so openly that all must see it except such as neither have no eyes or wilfully shut them This Sir is the main mystery of Tradition which you imagin'd wee kept reserved like the Ark of the Testament and Mose's Tables from the sight of the people Sixthly The prosperous estate of the Roman Church and the persecutions and calamities of yours I see wee are in some sence beholding to our good fortune or your misfortune for your chariritablenesse But you complain for nothing what persecution suffer you in England in comparison of the Catholikes What Laws make it Treason to become a Protestant as they do to bee reconciled to the Catholike Religion What Oaths are impos'd on Protestants to renounce their Faith under pain of high Treason and forfeiture of their Estates as in those of Supremacy and Abjuration against Catholikes Read over the large Volume of Penal Statutes made in the dayes of your Dominion and you shall find that Catholikes can neither be married nor baptiz'd nor taught at home nor sent abroad nor maintain'd by their parents while they live nor buried when they dye without incurring the danger of a Premunire or some other severe penalty In all these I am confident your kind of Protestancy never endured the least punishment but a light cross is enough
to overload a weak patience and every small discountenancing makes those that have enjoy'd a long case cry out persecution I see your parchment Church shrinks and â—naâ—kles at the sight of the fire while the Catholike remaines firm and unconsum'd nay growâ— clearer in the midst of it And yet I doe not intend to deny many of you have been very great losers by these late Revolutions but onely to say your sufferings are to bee refer'd to a civil not religious account or at least that nothing even in your own judgment essential to Religion is persecuted or so much as deny'd in England for Bishops and Service-book and Kings Supremacy you must not call essential without contradicting your own both profession and practise since you can so kindly embrace your Sister-Churches and communicate with them who deny those points as zealously as the fiercest Anabaptist Lastly our literal sound of Hoc est Corpus meum which the Doctor calls our principal espoused doctrine of Transubstantiation Indeed wee had rather wed our beleefe to that sence of Gods word which Fathers Councils and the perpetual doctrine and practise of Gods Church hath recommended to us as the Virgin-daughter of him who is the Truth than to a loose Polygamy of 40. several interpretations Minerva's born of your own heads whose mutually-contradicting variety â—hews them to come by the paternal line from him who is the Father of all falshood For these prejudices instill'd into the hearts of Catholikes the Doctor and his Church spare us very charitably and are far from casting us out of the Church For Gods sake Mr. Dr. whither would you have cast us Would you throw the house out of the windowes I mean the Church Gods house out of the window of Schism which you broke in the side of it Again let us but see how artificial nay incomparable nonsence this Dr. speakes I conceive nothing can bee cast out of a thing that was never in it shew us then that there was once a constituted Church of Protestants govern'd by the King as Supreme Head and holding their doctrines and practises in which the Roman Catholike once was but receded from that Doctrine and Government and invented this new Religion which hee holds at present Unlesse the Catholikes were once thus in you how could you cast them out What a weakness is this to think that Robin Hood Little Iohn and a few Outlawes doe King Richard and all England a great deal of favour in not casting them out of their Rebel-commonwealth as no true members of it and denying them the protection of their seditious counter-lawes under which Lawes and in which Common-wealth neither the King nor his good subjects were ever reputed One word more ere I leave this point to let the rational Reader see whether the Protestants or we bee more chargeable of judging and despising others Suppose Mr. Doctor wee who are sons of the Catholike Church had both judged and despised you upon our own private heads it had been but to judge and despise our equals But your Reformation had been impossible unlesse you had first both judged despised and prefer'd your selves above your Supreme Governours the Church and all your Forefathers The chief Government impower'd actually over you in Ecclesiastical Affaires you rejected and cast out of this Island Next many of your wise Brethren since preaching teaching and writing whole Bookes to shew that that Governour is Antcichrist the Beast in the Apocalypse and what not Could these things bee done without judging and despising You made Reformations and recessions from the former Churches doctrine cry'd out she had erred was a Strumpet the Whore of Babylon impious sacrilegious idolatrous Was not this the most rash judging the most venemous railing at and reviling of Gods sacred Spouse formerly your Mistresse and Mother that ever was foam'd out of the mouth of madness it selfe Again the whole world whom you esteemed before good Christians and all your Ancestors in England condemned by their contrary beleefe your new Reformed Doctrine And doe you think your innovators could have broach't their opposite doctrines without both judging and despising all this vast Authority Your Charity then Mr. Doctor in this point can bee onely imagin'd to consist in this that you have not judged and despised your selves for all else that you thought formerly to deserve any Authority you both judged despised rejected revil'd and condemned In a word our judging you is our subscribing in our own thoughts to that Verdict which the Church has past against you whose tribunal was held by all the whole Christian world and your selves also till you became guilty to be the most high and sacred that ever gave sentence since the world's Creation As for despising your persons we deny it as a meer calumny and professe our selves bound to honour every one according to his quality and degree the reasons indeed which you produce to clear your selfe from Schism we despise as worse than ridiculous A Paradox in a matter indifferent if maintain'd ingeniously deserves its commendations but the most manifest absurdities that can bee imagin'd and in which are interessed mens salvations such as is the renouncing an Authority granted to bee the most ancient most sublime most sacred in the world upon fallible incertain and unevident grounds and onely sustain'd by plain contradictions false and self-â—eign'd suppositions ID ESTS of our own adding the best proof not arriving so high as a probability These I say Mr. Doctor have nothing to secure them from our despising unlesse perhaps it bee their falling below ouâ— contempt Of the mixt temper of these is the constitution of your Book which shews that you have been used to row at your own dull pleasure in the shallow and softly-murmuring current of a Sermon but never launch't with a well rigg'd Ship of Reason into the â—oysterous Maine of deeper controversies Thus the Doctor concludes his Treatise of Schism closing up his tenth Chapter with these words I foresee not any objection which may give mee temptation or excuse further to enlarge on this matter No truly I could never yet discern you guilty of that fault that objections gave you any great temptation to answer them since I have not seen you put one Objection or Argument of ours worth a straw from the beginning of the Book to the end On the contrary when you light on a wrong supposition of your own as that the Pope is onely a private Patriarch that the Papal Authority in this Island came to the Pope from the Title of its Conversion or from Concession of our Kings then I observe a very strong temptation in you to enlarge a whole Chapter upon that which no body objects except your own fancy Hee adds that he professes not to know any other branch of Schism or colour of fastning that guilt upon our Church made use of by any which hee hath not prevented Yes Mr. Doctor I told you before how you
have omitted the two chief branches of Schism and most of all made use of by us against you to wit Schism from the whole body of the Church and from its highest Tribunal The General Councils which wee as freshly and more chiefly charge upon you than any of the â—est The Last SECT Our Objection that the pretended Church of England is now invisible maintained and asserted to be just SChism being thus establish't as legitimate and laudable the Patron of it resolvs to prosecute his Project home and therefore strives in this last Chapter to wipe off any prejudice arising from their present distractions and persecutions the proper effects of their Schism The occasion seemes taken from some of our side calling them The late Church of England as if now a FUIT were put to their former being by their present misfortune Our advantage offer'd from thence hee formes and that rightly in to this objection that it is absolutely necessary to communicate with some one visible Church that now the Church of England is not such and consequently the Church of Rome so illustriously visible must be taken up in stead of it Thus far abstracting from the partiality in his manner of expression wee both agree In answer to which the Doctor alledges first That a member of the English Church was not under this guilt of not communicating with some one visible Church twenty yeares agoe and consequently unlesse he have contracted this guilt since by commission or omission of something hee can no more bee charged with the Crime now than formerly All this while the Doctor is in a mistake and runs on very currantly but quite out of his way For we doe not object this present condition to them as a crime or guilt rather that which was twenty yeares and more ago was their crime and this their punishment but as a different state from the former or indeed more truly the want of a State For twenty yeares agoe though they wanted the substance yet they had at least a shadow or Ghost of a Church which might delude the eyes of the simple but now even that has disappear'd and vanish't into Aire Our advantage not taken but offer'd from thence is this that as before they had a shew of a Church so their adherents whose weaker eyes could not distinguish substance from shadow might have then some shadow of motive or excuse for remaining in it and not returning to us but now this fayery apparition being gone not even so much as the least resemblance of a motive is left to lead them through the wayless path of their dark doctrine or hinder them from returning to the common beaten road of their Ancestors The objection of this then is not vain as the Dr. imagins since a new and stronger motive offer'd deserves in reason a new distinct and fresh proposal I grant therefore Mr. Dr. that it is not your choice crime or offence to bee in this misery though it bee your fault that you were brought into iâ— it bring a connatural punishment orderly subsequent to the vice of Schism as shall afterwards be shewn And the present invisibility of your Church is never the lesse true and real though we admit it be your misfortune not your crime since a ship may as well bee cast away in an unavoydable storme as by the negligence of the Pilot Neither doe I take it to be the saddest part of your infelicity as you call it but rather the greatest happiness that Gods sweetly-chastising mercy could have sent you that by weighing your present dissolution and the causes of it you may retrive your wandrings and recollect all your scatter'd and distracted members into the ever-firmly United Body of the holy Catholike Church Thirdly for the Doctor was so eagerly zealous to clear his twenty-years-ago Protestant that hee put first and thirdly but quite forgot secondly he runs on in his errour that wee impute this state of their Church to the Protestant as a guilt from which he goes about to clear him For if he hath contracted this guilt saies the Dr. it must be by some irregularity of actions contrary to the standing Rule Canons of this Church whereas I conceive it very regularly consequent to your new Canons that you should fall into this very condition you now groan under For your Rule and Canons granting the Authority of the Secular Power to be the BASIS of your Reformation Head of the Church-Government Supreme in Ecclesiastical matters and your onely defence and excuse when wee ask you upon what Authority you left us it is natural and imbred in the very primogenial Constitution of your Church that it should be dissolvable at the pleasure of the same power which set it up It is not therefore the standing to the Rule and Canons of your Church which secures you in a firm and immutable perpetuity but those very grounds are they which engage you in a fleeting and perpetual mutability You applaud with your Encomiums the Protestant that hath actually lost his possessions liberty c. rather than depart from his rule which truly I conceive a very irrational action in him and deserving more pity than commendations For the 39. Articles being the most distinct Rule Protestants have one of which defines that General Councils both can Erre and have erred whence follows a fortiori that their own Meeting where these Articles their Rule were made being at most but a Provincial Assembly is much more lyable to errour I see no reason why hee shold lose the certain possession of present goods for maintaining an uncertain opinion especially since hee holds salvation can bee had in other Sects as appeares by Dr. Hammonds admitting all whom hee calls Christians to his Communion And if the Doctor reply it was their conscienciousness to hold what they supposed true I answer their conscience is imprudently govern'd whilst it instigates them to professe with their own so great disadvantage and loss what they had no obligation to hold for none can be oblig'd to the beleef of a point which himself those who propose it are uncertain whether it be true or no. Though if I be not misinform'd the greater part of your suffering-fellow-Protestants have had more wit and most commonly were put out upon other pretences than their Religion Thus far the Doctor hath proceeded clearing himselfe from the want of a visible Church imagining we object it a guilt or crime whereas we only propose it and more urgingly press it to the consideration of the misled Protestants as a decay corruption annihilation of the former visible shadow of a Church and the occasion of a new fault in them that having lost their own they return not to ours out of which they confesse they came and of which they protested theirs to be a member In the next place hee tells us that as yet Blessed bee God the Church of England is not invisible it is preserved
in Bishops and Presbyters rightly ordained and multitudes rightly baptized none of which have fallen off from their profession Where the last words are most certainly true if he means that none of those who yet stand have as yet fallen off which I conceive is his meaning for all these who have not stood have fal'n off which are enow to shew of what mettal their Church was made and whether more have fal'n or stood let the Doctor judge But as for the rest of his selfe-congratulation it is a miserable piece of self flattery and which his own grounds quite discountenance For if a Church be a Congregation of the Faithful and Faith as S. Paul argues comes by hearing hearing from preaching preaching from mission or being sent which mission is an Act of Iurisdiction it follows that if their Bishops and Presbyters have now no Iurisdiction then the Protestants have neither lawful mission preaching hearing faith nor consequently Church Now that they can claim no Iurisdiction followes out of their own grounds for when we urge them upon what Authority they cast off the former Ecclesiastical Superior governing Gods Church in chief they run for their defence to the secular Power to which they attribute supreme Iurisdiction in matters Ecclesiastical within this Island It is acknowledg'd saith the Dr. C. 7. S. 2. that the Papal Power in Ecclesiastical Affaires was both by Acts of Convocation of the Clergy and of Parliament cast out of this Kingdome Thus you see he recurs to a power meerly secular in the Parliament for renouncing and abolishing a spiritual power and Jurisdiction held before greater than ever the Protestant Prelacy was imagin'd Meerly secular I say for the Doctor confesses here that it is easie to believe that nothing but the apprehension of dangers which hung over them could probably have inclined the Clergy to that their first Act And how great influence this apprehension of danger might have over the secular part of the Parliament is easie to be determined since they saw the gravest Patriot in the Kingdome in danger of death for holding against the Kings new pretended Title and many others for the same respect most cruelly persecuted A Parliament therefore meerly of Seculars and those such as can in no wise be presum'd free was held by you of sufficient Authority to renounce a Jurisdiction deemed formerly much higher and known to bee almost ten times longer setled in possession than your Prelacy I see not therefore why a secular power should not bee in your grounds sufficient to abolish a jurisdiction which onely leaned and relied on a secular support But what was done in King Henry's dayes being disannul'd again by both the spiritual and secular power in Queen Maries Reign must necessarily bee held of you invalid if you will goe consequently to your own grounds Let us then examine the resurrection of your Church by a Parliament held in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth In which Parliament to omit the small title the Queen had to the Crown being born of a second bedfellow whilst King Henry's former Wife was yet alive and declared illegitimate both by the whole Parliament and her own Fathers Act were wanting the spiritual Lords the Bishops who were for their Religion kept at that time in prison For which reason when a Quere was raised about the beginning of the late long Parliament whether Acts made without Bishops were valid it is said to have been resolved affirmatively upon this ground because otherwise the Protestant Religion voted by a Parliament in which was no Bishops would be invalid also I see not then what great advantages could be in that Parliament to Vote out the greater Authority of the Pope or give your new-made Bishops ordained God knowes how Iurisdiction but the same may be pretended by a succeeding Parliament to deprive them and set up a new Form of their own Certain it is that you acknowledge the Secular Power for the Source and first Fountain of your Iurisdiction Since then the present Secular Power has put a stop to your father Ordination and disannul'd your former Iurisdiction your own grounds conclude you de facto no Church for if you have no Iurisdiction you can have no influence of power over the Layity and so no spiritual Common wealth made up of Bishop as Head and Pastour and of the Layity as body and flock And as for the present this general suspension should we say no more of your Ecclesiastical power makes you de facto no Church so in time the very inward right it selfe which you pretend may be justly extinguish't For since your Jurisdiction confessedly depends on the secular Authority it followes if this be suspended or abolish't that must needs share in the same fate Now all the world agrees that not onely the possession of a secular power may be interrupted by force but the Right it selfe in time be absolutely lost and the new Government however at first introduc't be at length purged of its original blemishes into a clear and unquestionable Title In which case certainly your Church would be no more visible in England than it is now at Geneva Which sufficiently differences your condition from that of the Primitive Christians or the present English Catholikes they claiming a Jurisdiction underived from the secular power In vain therefore would it be to tell us their Character remains and therfore they are stil Bishops and Presbyters since the character can only entitle them to a name the thing being gone to wit their power of Iurisdiction and consequently their Mission For if they have no Authority to teach and preach more than the Layity they are level'd into an equal pitch with them so as now they cannot bee said to bee a body but a company of mutually distracted parts not an orderly Church or Congregation but a rude and indigested Chaos of Confusion It is not then Mr. Doctor your serving God in private Families which wee object to you for being an invisible Church which you run upon in your 5. Sect. but that which your self confesse here that Now all Order Form Bishops and Liturgy is thrown out of your Church together It is your want of Pastoral and Episcopal Authority which makes us conclude you no Church Yet so good is your Logick that in the next paragraph you think though Bishops be abolish't yet in case this come not through your fault it cannot be charged against you so as though all Prelacy and Superiority be taken away that is though there be none that have power to preach and teach and all be reduc'd into an equally-level'd Anarchy yet as long as it happens not through your fault yen are still a Church As if Doctor Hammond should say though his body were cut into millions of incoherent Atomes yet as long as this happens not through his fault it is still a well-ordered Body ID EST it is still Hammond The parts of Gods Church are compacted into a
examine whether his complaints bee true or false since he does not shew there was no other remedy but division and much more since it is known if the authority be of Christs institution no just cause can possibly be given for its abolishment but most because all other Catholick Countries might have made the same exception which England pretends yet they remain still in communion with the Church of Rome whose Authority you cry out against as intolerable nay the former Ages of our Countrey which your selfe cite had the same cause to cast the Popes supremacy out of the land yet rather preferred to continue in the peace of the Church then attempt so destructive an innovation as Schism draws after it Neither nâ—w after we have broke the ice do our neighbour Nations think it reasonable to follow our example and drown their unity in the waters of Contradiction Lastly the pretences on which the English Schism was originally made were far different from those you now take up to defend it there was then no talk of imposing new Creeds as the conditions of Communion no mention of the abominations of Idolatry and Superstition which now fill your Pulpits nor indeed any other original quarrel but the Popes proceeding according to the known Lawes of the Church which unfortunately happen'd to bee contrary to the tyrannical humour of the King The other point of due moderation is a very pleasant Topick had I a mind to answer at large his Book The first part of moderation is the separating themselves from their Errours not their Churches this signifies to declare them Idolaters superstitious wicked and neverthelesse communicate with them reconciling thus light to darkness and making Christ and Antichrist to be of the same society I confesse this a very good moderation for him that has no Religion in his heart or acknowledges his own the worst there being no danger for him to fear seducing by communication with others But whoever is confident of his own by this very fact implicitely disapproves others I cannot say mine is true but I must say the opposite is false mine is good but the opposite I must say is naught mine necessary but I must judge that which is inconsistent carries to damnation though I am bound both to pity and love the person that disâ—ents Therefore who does not censure a contrary Religion holds not his own certain that is hath none The second part of moderation hee places in their inward charity which if hee had manifested by their external works we might have had occasion to beleeve him Our Saviour telling us the tree is known by the fruit it bears The third part therefore hee is pleased to think may bee found in that they onely take away Points of Religion and adde none Wherein is a double Errour For first to take away goodnesse is the greatest evil that can be done What more mischievous than to abrogate good lawes good practises Let them look on the Scotch Reformation who have taken the memory of Christ from our eyes by pulling down Pictures and Crosses the memory of His principal actions by abolishing Holydayes the esteem of vertue by vilifying his Saints and left him onely in the mouths of babling Preachers that disfigure him to the people as themselves please What if they took away the New Testament too and even solemn Preaching and left all to the will of a frantick Teacher were not this a great moderation because they added nothing The second abuse is that he who positively denies ever adds the contrary to what hee takes away Hee that makes it an Article there is no Purgatory no Mass no prayer to Saints has as many Articles as he who holds the contrary Therefore this kind of moderano is a purefolly The last Point hee deems to be a preparation of mind to beleeve and practise whatever the Universal Church beleeves and practises â— and this is the greatest mock-fool Proposition of all the rest First they will say there is no Universal Church or if any indeterminate that is no man knowes which it is and then with a false and hypocritical heart professe a great readiness to beleeve and obey it Poor Protestants who are led by the nose after such silly Teachers and Doctrines who following the steps of our old mother Eve are flatter'd with the promses of knowledge like the knowledge of God but paid onely with the pure experience of evil In his seventh Chapter hee professes that all Princes and Republicks of the Roman Communion doe in effect the same things which the Protestants doe when they have occasion or at least plead for it What non sense will not an ill cause bring a desperate man to All this while hee would perswade the World that Papists are most injurious to Princes prejudicing their Crowns and subjecting their Dominions to the will of the Pope Hee has scarce done saying so but with a contrary blast drives as far back again confessing all hee said to be false and that the same Papists hold the very doctrine of the Protestants in effect and the difference is onely in words So that this Chapter seems expresly made to justifie the Papists and to shew that though the Popes sometimes personally exceed yet when their passion is over or the present interest ceases then they acknowledge for Catholikes and Orthodox those who before oppos'd them as also that the Catholike Divines who teach the doctrine of resisting the Pope in such occasions are not for that cast out of Communion which is as much as to say it is not our Religion or any publick Tenet in our Church that binds any to those rigorous assertions which the Protestants condemn If this be so what can justifie your bloody Lawes and bloodier Execution for the fourscore years you were in power Why were the poor Priests who had offended no farther than to receive from a Bishops hands the power of consecrating the body of Christ condemned to die a Traitors death Why the Lay-man that harboured any such person made liable to the same forseiture of estate and life Why were Baptisms Churchings Burials Marriages all punished Why were men forced to goe to your Synagogues under great penalties Seldom any lawful conviction exacted but proceeding upon meer surmises A Priest arrested upon the least suspition and hurried before the Magistrate was not permitted to refer his cause to witnesses but compelled to be his own Accuser and without any shadow of proof so much as enquir'd after if he deny'd not himselfe immediatly sent to prison as a Traitor A Priest comming to his Trial before the Judges was never permitted to require proof of his being a Priest It sufficed that having said Mass or heard a Confession he could not prove himselfe a knave What shall I say of the setting up of Pursuivants to hare poor Catholikes in all places and times I have seen when generally they kept their houses close-shut and if any knock't there was a sudden
have no Oaths impos'd on their Consciences Were Catholikes permitted this liberty I am confident you should seldom bee troubled with hearing their complaints of Persecution and yet on all occasions you are still upraiding the liberty given to Papists which is a meer blindness of malice Do you not see all the Catholikes of England such as never engag'd in the war are purely upon the score of Religion at this day sequestred and two thirds of their Estates taken from them Doe you not see our Priests when discover'd proceeded against as Traitors is it not enough to satisfie your uncharitable eys that so many of them have been hang'd drawn and quarter'd for their Religion Are these the men that pretend moderation and all day long cry up brotherly Charity I will offer therâ— this bargain in the name of all the Catholikes of England who I am perswaded will readily subscribe the Contract That two indifferent persons read over all the Statutes made since the Reformation and every where in stead of Papist write Protestant with this mercy too that the execution shall be now and then interrupted and a condemned Minister sometimes have reprive nay and more than wee can obtain of them they shall enjoy all the priviledges of Papists without the least envy from us If they refuse this faire offer let them never hereafter be so impertinent as to repine at our liberty and with the same breath complain of their own sufferings As to his desirable intention of Unity in the Church First I could wish they would let real Charity take root in their hearts Secondly not think the misdemeanours of some Popes a sufficient warrant to break the Unity of the Church Thirdly to receive the root of Christianity that is a practical Infallibility in the Church the ready and onely meanes to know the truth of Christs Law which being denied there is no Religion left in the World This is that which is chiefly requir'd without this how muchsoever wee have Christ in our tongues wee are Atheists in our hearts proud Luciferian Erecters of our selves above all that 's called God Judgers of Christ and his Law not obeyers and servants This is that which onely can make a Reconciliation both in Doctrine and Government and as long as it is neglected all wee endeavour towards peace is labour cast away If truly and cordially hee or any other study meanes for peace let them endeavour it so as to leave a Religion and a known Law of Christ and an open method of comming to it in the World Otherwise all lovers of Christ and Christianinity can have no share or participation with them FINIS ERRATA PAge 3. Line 1. Parricide p. 8. l. 9. Nice p. 18. l. 31. self-acknowledg'd p. 33. l. 10. Pope p. 37. l. 1. Sect. 6. p. 40. l. 8. other Crew p. 67. l. 34. this p. 68. l. 3. given by p. 88. l. 11. Premisses p. 96. l. 9. alleaging p. 101. l. 32. call'd p. 105. l. 22. solv'd p. 110. l. 21. which can p. 115. l. 2. quaere the Title in the Table p. 118. l. 34 shews it p. 119. l. 4. Patriarchs l. 24. the Novel p. 123. l. 30. be one man or one hors p. 143. l. 3. did it not p. 147. l. 5. by some p. 157. l. 29. rake p. 162. l. 21. Arch-Heretick p. 163. l. 10. Quid. p. 199. l. 3. their su p. 210. l. 20. which p. 217. l. 24. flagrant p. 223. l. 31. on any p. 223. l. 13 it in p 256. l. 1. by your p. 259. l. 20. as they p. 280. l. 2. in that p. 288. l. 20. of your p. 312. l. 29. in his Cap. 1. Sect. 4. Cap. 1 Sect. 6 7. 8 C. 1. S. 9. S. 9. S. 9 C. 2. S. 1. â— 2 â— 2. 1 Cor 11 18 C. 2 S. 2 â— 2. â— 3. C. 2. S. 2 3 4. C. 2. S. 4. C. 2. S. 5. C. 2. S. 7 8 9 10. C. 2. S. 12. C. 2. S. 7 8 9 10. C. 2. S. 6. C. 2 S. 5. C. 2. S. 6. C. 2. S. 10. C. 2. S. 12 In his Reply p. 241. C. 2. S. 3 4 5. S. 9. C. 3. S. 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 18 19 20 21 23 24. * C. 3. S. 15 16 17. S. 17. Mr. Daille l. 2. c. 4. C. 3. S. 22. See afterwards Part. 2. C. 3. S. 25 C. 3. S 22 C. 4. S. 1. C. 4 S. 2. C. 4. S. 3. * C. 7. S. 5. C. 4. S. 4. C. 4. S. 5. C. 4. S. 5. C. 4. S. 5. Ibid. C. 4. S. 5 6 7. C. 4. S. 7. Acts 10. 34 Acts 15. 7. C. 4. S. 7. C. 4. S. 11. Mark 16. 15. C. 4. S. 14. C. 4. S. 6. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. C 4. S. 8. Cyp. epist. 71. ad Quint. Aug. 2. de Bapt. contra Donatistas C. 4. S. 8. Ibid. C. 4. S. 8. C. 4. S. 9. C. 4. S. 8. C. 4. S. 7. C. 4. S. 5. C. 4 S. 10 C. 4. S. 5. C. 4. S. 10. C. 4. S. 10. Ibid. Ignat. ep ad Trall C. 4 S. 11. C. 4. S. 12. Ignat. Epist. ad Mariam Cassobil Tert. l. 3. carm in Marc. Hieron in Isa. 52. l. de Script Eccles. in Clem. Tert-de Praescript c. 32. Epiph Haer. 27. Ruffin Praef. lib. Praecognit C. 4. S. 11. C. 4. S. 13. C. 4. S. 15. C 4. S 5. C. 4. S. 16. C. 4. S. 16. C. 4. S. 17. C. 4. S. 18 C. 4. S. 19. C. 4. S. 20 C. 4. S. 20. C. 4. S. 21. C. 4. S. 21. C. 8. S. 5. C. 5. S. 1. C. 5. S. 2. C. 5. S. 4. C. 5. S. 5. C. 9. S. 9. C. 5. S. 5. C. 5. S. 6. C. 5. S. 7. C. 6. S. 2 3. C. 6. S. 2. C. â— S. 4. C. 6. S. 5. C. 6. S. 7. Ibid. C. 7. S. 9. C. 6. S. 10. C. 6. S. 11. C. 6. S. 12. C. 5. S. 12. C. 7. S. 20. C. 6. S. 13. Ibid. C. 6. S. 14. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. C. 6. S. 15 16. C. 6. S. 17. C. 6. S. 18. Ibid. Ibid. C. 6. S. 19. Ibid. C. 6 S. 19. Ibid. C. 6. S. 20. C. 6. S. 22. C. 6. S. 23. C. 7. S. 2 3 4. Henricus in Assert 7. Sacram contra Luth. Art 2. C. 7. S. 20. C. 7. S. 5. C. 7. S. 6. Part. 1. Sect. 19. Cap. 7. Sect. 11. C. 7. S. 8. C. 7. Sect. 9. C. 7. Sect. 10 C. â— Sect 11 C. 7. Sect. â— C. 7. Sect. 12 C. 7 Sect. 13 C. 7 Sect. â—4 C. 7. Sect. 15. C. 7. Sect. 17 C. 7. S. 2. C. 8. Sect. 1. Sect. 2. Sect. 2. C. 8. S. 3. C. 8. Sect. 4. Hierom. contra Iovinian C. 7. Sect. 5 C. 7. Sect. 12 C. 8. â— 5. C. 7. Sect. 17 C. 8. S. 5. C. 4. S. 14. C. 8. S. 7. C. 8. Sect. 6 C. 8. S. 7. C. 8. Sect. 8. C. 8. S. 7. See the 21 Art of the Church of England C. 8. Sect. 8 C. 9. Sect. 5 C. 9. S. 1. Ibid. C. 9. S. 2. C. 9. S. 6. C. 9. S. 4. C. 9. S. 5. S. 5. C. 9. S. 7. Dr. Ham. C. 7. S. 12. Art 31. of the Church of England C. 10 S. 3. C. 10. S. 3. C. 9. S. 5. C. 7. S. 5. C. 11 S. 1. C. 11. S. 2. C. 11 S. 3. Art 21 C. 9. S. 3. C. 11. S. 5. C. 7. S. 5. C. 11 S. 7. Lib. 5. num 79 Rushworth's Dial. the Apol for Tradition
in the Doctors judgment Not considering which yet any prudent man would that the whole world whom before they accounted onely Catholick and in which had been hundreds of Kings Queens and Bishops nay perhaps thousands for one of theirs had ever condemned by their contrary beliefe these Votes and Acts to bee scismatical and heretical Besides this King before the breach acknowledging himselfe subject to that Authority in Ecclesiastical matters as all Catholick Kings now doe and as all his Ancestor-Kings ever since Englands conversion had done it must be as I have told you often most apparent evidence and such as greater cannot be imagin'd which may warrant him to exalâ— himselfe above the Popes Authority so long setled in possession and that in those very things in which before he was acknowledgedly under him especially the contrary verdict of such an universality as I have before mention'd with its weight not to be counterpois'd preponderating and mightily prejudicing any pretence of Evidence Again if the thing were evident how happened it that no Christian King till the time of King Henry the eighth and in his time none but he should discern this clear evidence unless perhaps though they say love is blind yet his desire to Anna Bullen did open his eyes in such miraculous manner that he saw by the heavenly light of her bright star-like eyes that the Pope was Antichrist his Authority unlawful and himselfe who was then found under it in Ecclesiastical matters to be indeed above it in case the Popes spiritual power should cross his carnal pleasure To conclude my answer to this Chapter I would ask two things of Mr. Doctor one is in case a King should have broke from the Church and brought in Schism into his Country whether it could probably be perform'd in any other manner than the very method by which their Reformation was introduced The other is whether the Reformation be yet perfectly compleat or rather that Queen Elizabeth swept the Church indeed but left the dust sluttishly behind the door if it be not yet compleat I would gladly know how far this Reformation and Receding from Rome may proceed and what be the certain stints and limits of this rowling Sea which it may not pass For I see no reason in the Doctors grounds but if the secular powers think it convenient they may reform still end wayes as they please nay even if they list deny Christ to be God an acute Socinian will solve very plausibly all the objections out of Scripture and produce allegations which I doubt not he will make far stronger than the Doctor doth his against the Pope nor will there want some obscure testimonies out of Antiquity and express ones from the Arrian Hereticks to evince the Tenet if this then were voted by a King some of his Bishops and a Parliament the Doctor must not disobey and hold Christs Divinity since the thing was done by them to whom as the Doctor sayes rightfull power legally pertain'd They having no infallibility then may happen to vote such a thing and the Doctor having no infallible certainty to the contrary ought not recede from his lawful Superiours so as upon these grounds all religion may be reformed into Atheism and the infallibility of the Church once denied the temporal Power hath no reason to have his rightful authority stinted but at pleasure to make Reformation upon Reformation from generation to generation per omnia saecula saeculorum THE THIRD PART Containing the answers to the foure last Chapters of Dr. Hammonds Schism SECT 1. Doctor Hammonds second sort of Schism and his pretence that they retain the way to preserve Unity in Faith refuted MAster Hammond hath at length finish't his greatest task and done preaching of the first species of Schism as it is an offence against the subordination which Christ hath by himselfe and his Apostles setled in the Church and is now arrived to the second sort as it signifies an offence against the mutual unity peace and charity which Christ left among his Disciples This Schism against Charity for methods sake as he tells us he divides into three species The first is a Schism in the Doctrine or Traditions a departure from the unity of the Faith once delivered to the Saints from the institutions of Christ of the Apostles and of the Universal Church of the first and purest times whether in Government or practises c. Where first this methodical Dr. makes Faith and Charity all one putting his Schism against Faith for the first species of his Schism against mutual Charity Next he ranks also the rejecting Christs Institution of Government under this second species of Schism against Charity which most evidently was the first General Head of Schism hitherto treated of that is of the Offence against Subordination setled by Christ in the Church For Christ could not settle such a subordination in the Church but he must at the same time institute the Government of the Church since there can be neither subordination without Government nor Government without subordination So as now the Schism against Government is come to be one of the Schisms against mutual Charity and to mend the matter comprehended under the same Head with Schism against Faith Was ever such a confusion heard of And yet all this is done saith the Doctor for methods sake But to proceed the second species of his Schism against mutual Charity is an offence against external peace and Communion Ecclesiastical Where I find as much blundering as formerly For these words must either signifie an Offence against Superiors and Governors of the Church and then it is again co-incident both with the first general Head of Schism which dissolves the subordination of the Churches subjects and also with the first particular species of Schism against mutual Charity which according to the Doctors method included a breach from the Government instituted by Christ. Or else they must signifie an Offence against the mutually and equally-due correspondence and Charity which one fellow-member ought to have to another and then it falls to be the same with his third and last species which he calls The want of that Charity which is due from every Christian to every Christian. So that if the jumbling all the Bells together in a confused disorder may be called musical then the Doctors division may be styled methodical After this he subdivides this first species to wit Schism against Faith into A departure from those Rules appointed by Christ for the founding and upholding truth in the Church and into The asserting particular doctrins contrary to Christs and the Apostolical pure Churches establishment But first he cleares himselfe of the former of these by answering our suggestion as he calls it that in casting out the Authority of the Bishop of Rome they have cast off the Head of all Unity To which he tells us the answer is obvious First that the Bishop of Rome was never appointed by
Christ to be the Head of all Christian Unity or that Church to be the conservatory for ever of all Christian Truth more than any other Bishop or Church of the Apostles ordaining or planting Where I find almost as many absurdities hudled together as words For first what signifies the Bp. of Rome was not appointed by Christ Christ was not on earth when St. Peters Successors in the See of Rome sate there and when he ordained St. Peter chief of the Apostles Saint Peter was not yet Bishop of Rome Next if he meanes that St. Peter was not appointed by our Saviour as the Head of Christian Unity St. Hierom's testimony I suppose will be as good as the Doctors word who tels us Inter duodecim c. Amongst the twelve one was chosen that A HEAD being constituted the OCCASION OF SCHISM MIGHT BE TAKEN AWAY Where we see expresly Saint Peter the Popes Predecessor was advanced to be HEAD and this to take away occasion of Schism that is to be HEAD OF CHRISTIAN UNITY Thirdly hence also follows that Christian Unity is conserved by him more than by any other Bishop contrary to the Doctors assertion Fourthly he equivocates in the word Roman Church and takes in it a sence which he knowes we never mean't Our acception of it being of the Universal Church communicating with the Mother Church of Rome his of the private Diocess of Rome it selfe Fifthly it is groundless to affirm even of this private Church of Rome it selfe that she is not the conservatory of Christian Truth more than any other since the Doctor cannot but know the Fathers are of a contrary beleefe holding that the two chief Apostles dying there bequeathed to that Church as a sacred Legacy a greater vigour of Christian Tradition Again Histories and Fathers witnessing so unanimously her firm persistance above the rest objections often urged by our Authors to that purpose the Doctor might at least have afforded us one testimony of the contrary besides his own bare saying Lastly what is the Doctors intent in saying Christ did not appoint the Church of Rome conservatory for ever of all Christian truth What meanes this canting Parenthesis for ever As if Christ might perhaps appoint her to conserve truth for a while but meant after some time to discharge her of that office But this Parenthesis the Doctor reserved for a starting-hole that he might at pleasure cry out she had erred when he had found out some odd testimony which with the help of an id-est-clause might overthrow the Authority of the whole World His second Defence for relinquishing the means to preserve Unity of Faith which we charge them with is this that The way provided by Christ and his Apostles for preserving the Unity of Faith c. is fully acknowledged by their Reformation Which way sayes the Doctor is made up of two Acts of Apostolical Providence First their resolving upon some few heads of efficacy to the planting of Christian life through the world and preaching and depositing them in every Church Secondly their establishing an excellent subordination of Church-officers c. As for the first of these Acts as he calls them of Apostolical Providence if these two Heads he speaks of as thus deposited be indeed sufficient to form a Christian life in order to the attainment of Eternal bliss and that they came down certainly to us by this depository way at first in the Churches and so derived successively age by age Dr. Hammond is suddenly become a Proselyte and a plain Papist For we neither say we have any point of Faith superfluous for the Community of the Faithful nor that those we have came to us by any other meanes than seruando depositum by preserving uncorrupted those necessary doctrines thus deposited But I fear much when the matter comes to scanning Mr. Hammond in this his doctrine neither goes to Church nor stayes at home but halts very lamely in the mid-way He stayes not at home for his Church of England is so far from holding the points deposited by the Apostles in Churches a certain way to preserve Unity of Faith that nothing is more abominable to her than the name of Tradition This appeares by the sixth Article or Canon of Queen Elizabeth's female-headed General Council where the Scripture is made the sole ground of Faith and nothing affirmed as necessary to Salvation but what is built upon it whereas the Doctor here builds points necessary to salvation for sure those few heads of special efficacy to the planting a Christian life can be no lesse upon their preaching and depositing them in the Churches nay more the Unity of Faith that is Faith it self for Faith if not one is none upon this way of depositing Yet for all this he will not goe to Church neither though he stay not at home For ask him are those few Heads all that are necessary he will tell you nâ— yet which be those necessary Heads how many and why no more were thus delivered since this he sayes is A WAY TO PRESERVE UNITY IN FAITH and on the other side he sees what multiplicity is bred by the diverse interpretations of Scripture ask him I say these questions and no particular account can he give you only he had a mind to say somthing in geneneral lest he might be thought to have utterly contemned all Traditions Again these Churches in which were deposited those few Heads of such special eefficacy to plant Christian life were they infallible that is such as we may certainly trust to in their preserving that depositum if they were they might as well be infallible in other necessary points also and so the Doctor hath slipt by good hap into our Rule of Faith and though hoodwink't goes to Church again But if they be not infallible that is connot certainly tell us that they delivered us the right depositum and the same they received then the Drremaines as he is and hath brought nothing to his purpose For since Unity of Faith cannot be preserved without some efficacious meanes of bringing it down to us inerrably true unless this depositing was such as must upon necessity continue for ever which is that we call Infallibility or Indefectibility of the Church the providence of the Apostles had been very sleight and nothing at all to the Doctors purpose that is it had been no efficacious way to preserve Unity of Faith He addes afterwards And all this is asserted and acknowledged by every true son of the Church of England as zealously as is pretended by any Romanist Here again the Doctor seemes to step forwards towards the Church and to draw a great troup of backward unwilling Protestants after him For if they hold as I conceive he meanes by these words the doctrines deposited in the Church as zealously as the Romanists they must hold them as of Faith for so farre our well-grounded zeal carries us and that the depositary is so trusty as
alter old ones then you must either grant our Church in the fifteenth age to have been no Church which you dare not affirm for fear of spoiling your own mission or else grant that you were more bound to hold the Ceremonies recommended by her than those which descended from the Primitive times Since our Church could better see what was expedient for her present circumstances than the Primitive could foresee so long before hand what was likely to be convenient for future ages SECT 4. Of Doctor Hammonds charitablenesse in admitting all to his Communion and our pretended Uncharitablenesse for refusing to goe to their Assemblies IN the fifth place the Doctor professes like a good charitable man as hee is that they exclude no Christian from their Communion that will either filially or fraternally embrace it with them No truly to give your Religion its due it is a wonderful civil and courteous profession and admits all the old condemned Heresies into Communion provided they but professe Christ whatever points else they deny it matters not Nay it is sufficient if they call themselves Christians though all the world else calls them Hereticks yet your kind hearted Church cannot but friendly entertain them You keep open house for all commers The doctrine of Oportet haereses esse There must bee heresies is changed by your boon behaviour into It is impossible there should be heresies For whereas the world heretofore understood those to be Hereticks who held the letter of the Scripture and some points of Christianity but deny'd others which were the tenets of the Universal Church at that time you have now quite chang'd the former notion and think none to bee excluded from Communion that is none to be Hereticks that bear the name of a Christian so as though they deny all points of Christs doctrine yet professe Christs name and the outward letter of the Scripture let them come and welcome Anabaptists Brownists Presbyterians Quakers Carpocratians perhaps Arians nay even Simon Magus himselfe all these sew'd together only with the aiery sound of the word Christian will serve for broken-ware pieces to patch up Doctor Hammonds motley Church For since they hold to his grounds that is to professe Christs name and the letter of the Scripture he cannot in any reason admit some and refuse the rest Again the Doctor is willing to admit any that will filially or fraternally embrace communion with them that is all that will be either under them or at least not above them but is loath to admit communion with any that will paternally communicate with them that is be over and govern them No take heed of that as much courtesie as you please but not a dram of humility obedience nor subjection to Superiours These peace-preserving virtues would quite break the neck of Schism and Faction If there bee any such over-powering Authority though never so long setled in possession over the Countrey and acknowledged and beleeved by all Christians in never so many ages to bee of divine institution yet presently the spirit of Schism in the first place endeavours to break asunder the bonds of this paternal communion to pluck it down to the ground and cast it out of the Island You are willing you say to admit all to your Assemblies that acknowledge the foundation laid by Christ and his Apostles You love mightily to talk plausible words in the aire and in general as if you made account your Readers should bee all fooles to search no further than the empty sound of your universal sayings not applying them to the thing in question Good Mr. Doctor tell me what it is to acknowledge the foundation laid by Christ and his Apostles Is it to acknowledge Scripture All heresies in the world fly onely to it and make it their armour-house to oppugn Christ and his Church Arians and Socinians most of all and yet they can deny Christs Godhead So as by this means indeed you will have store of communicants Is it the true sence of the Scripture then truth being one and falshood manifold if their interpretation be different from yours both cannot bee true and consequently both acknowledge not the foundation left by Christ for falsifying his word cannot be that foundation Again if this bee the foundation left by Christ you must have some certain and known Rule to come by the true sence of the Scriptures else you cannot be certainly assured who acknowledge this foundation and so admit rashly to your Communion you know not whom Is it perhaps the true sence of Scripture but restrain'd to fundamentals still the same difficulty remaines unlesse you have some certain Rule to distinguish and sort out the Essentials from points of less importance to talk much of fundamentals and never tell us which are they is but a shuffling trick of a mountebank and very unbecomming a grave Divine Or is this Foundation perhaps the solid sence of Christs law written and planted in the tables of mens hearts by the Apostles and thence by a welllink't chain of Universal Tradition derived to our times If so you must admit onely Catholikes and exclude all the rest since onely they hold this foundation Or rather indeed since you deny this way of bringing down Faith to bee sufficient which Catholikes hold as a certain and infallible Rule it followes that if you will goe conseqently to your own grounds you must not admit them neither since this is not the by-you acknowledged foundation laid by Christ and his Apostles It remaines then that you are willing to admit all those that shall say they have the Foundation laid by Christ and his Apostles and then you cannot doubt but to have the brotherly fellowship of all hereticks and schismaticks in the world that have been are or shall bee since all pretend strongly in general termes to acknowledge that Foundation Nor is hee lesse devoutly charitable in the following words that they earnestly desire to bee admitted to the like freedome of external Communion with all the members of all other Christian Churches as oft as occasion makes us capable of that blessing of the one heart and the one lip This it is to bee so inured to a drowsy sounding vein of preaching Quodlibets till a man hath humm'd and drumm'd away all reason out of his head Speak sence man and let your pretended Charity come clad in Truth or else I must justly suspect it to bee nothing but Pharisaical hypocrisie I hate contradictions though told me in never so pious a tone Was it ever heard that any Catholike deny'd you Communion if you were capable of that blessing of one heart the same interiour beleefe and one lip the same exteriour profession To what purpose then are those seemingly pious words produc'd Leave off paying us with this hollow language empty of sence render your selves capable of that blessing in your actions renounce and repent your disobedience to your so-long-acknowledg'd Superiours Repeal your schismatical ordinances against