far modester than you and profest as he did dislike my opinions so he dissented no otherwise than as one Divine does from another and had never descended to censure any of them Perhaps of this point you may have heard the contrary but I have it under his own hand The second mistake is that he admonish't me of this point for he never descended to any particular and this you might understand as partly the other out of my Dedicatory of my Ratio villicationis written to him and presented in his lifetime The third that I had fore-prepar'd my Book of the Middle State and presently sent it him For the reason of my composing it was the many popular noises rais'd against me by persons some ignorant some malicious as if I were an Heretick which forc't me to write the Treatise in mine own defence and I dedicated it to my Lord though I knew no particular Exception of his against this point but judged he might have some because the greatest cry was against it The Translation as far as came to my knowledge was not made by any design upon earth though by the event I perceive it was out of speciall Providence in Heaven How things passed on your side and what were the true motâ—ves of your publishing the Bull and that Testimony of the Council I can onely collect from the phaenomena of all concurrent circumstances of which you may perhaps hereafter hear more You say the Publishers of the Bull had no respect to the Letter of Vindication I think you aym at one I wrote in Latin to a Person of Honour which was presented Him and by him shew'd to some Jesuits that frequented his House and they can be witnesses of the Truth between us This afterwards as I hear was translated into English and printed If this be the Letter you speak of I would gladly understand why you imagin the Author conceits himself inspir'd with the Genius of Mont-alt whose spirit I confess I take to be very solid and pious and generously adhering to persecuted Truth Nor do I find it unlawfull that any should wish to be inspir'd with it but truly conceive my self far below the hope of such Excellences What you heard well observ'd that all the Protestant Divines of England would subscribe to the same Protestation which is in that Letter I beleeve purely upon your report But tell me first may a Catholick protest nothing that a Protestant will subscribe to or can a Protestant profess nothing but what he will perform Again will any Protestant profess to renounce any Doctrin found to contradict any Authority constantly acknowledg'd for Infallible in the Catholick Church meaning the same by Catholick Church as my writings declare me to do that is all those who adhere to Tradition Will any Protestant be content to have lost his cause if any decree of a Pope be expresly repugnant to him which I there also profess How maliciously blind then was the observer you follow who could not see such distinctive expressions How uncharitable your self who catch at and magnifie every rash cavill out of a tooth to disgrace and abuse him that never did you injury Your calumny of my denying Decrees of Popes and Councils shall be answer'd in its due place You say the Publishers intended not to enter into the lists of Disputation which I easily beleeve and that they were perswaded the very reciting the Bull and Canon would have knockt down the Book which you say was the occasion of their setting them forth beyond all Reply How weak a conceit was this for men that saw both Bull and Canon cited and explicated in that very book and could not be ignorant that in many private Conferences the same Authorities had been debated You thought your Capitall Letters would have dazled the understanding of the adverse party so that none would have dar'd to look further into the meaning of those Authorities But God provided that al should not be so light of belief nor his Church led into Error by such a misgrounded Interpretation of its Decrees You complain much in your tenth Section that this pious intention of the Dispensers was wrong'd As though you did not know that Intentions are secret and must expect their reward from him that sees the heart Men judge of Actions and your self confess the effect was that pious that is credulous persons received satisfaction that is were seduced into Errour by that cuning practice and yet you think it not occasion enough for an understanding man to discover so prejudiciall an Interpretation forc't on the Church and would needs have it a wrong to you that one unknown not intended to be hurt by you should take this pains as if every honest and ableman were not interessed in the Churches quarrell of so high a nature as to set up an Opinion that may prove when examin'd erroneous for an Article of Faith In your eleventh Section you begin to produce your Arguments whereof the first is that all Orthodox writers who have treated this Subject of the State of separated Souls since the promulgation of the Bull a foresaid suppose it as a certain Truth But how many such do you cite Surely of five hundred which have written since those dayes your Readers might civilly expect at least half a score that positively assert it as an assur'd doctrin of the Church But such is the irregular way of discoursing your eminent Scholars use that when they have audaciously advanc't a proposition whereof they know nothing certain if it be deny'd against all Rules of Discourse and Logick they put the Defendant to prove the contrary which peradventure concerns not him a pin whether it be true or no As in the present what concerns it my Faith whether many or few interpret the Bull and Councill as you or I say To make a new Article of Faith the definition must be so clear that none can doubt of it And ipso facto that it needs Interpretation 't is evidently insufficient to make a new obligation of Faith Again suppose your Antecedent be true does any number of Interpreters lock up the understandings of those that follow that they may not see more than their Fore-goers If you say yes shew us some seal of Infallibility in their foreheads by which we may know so much or else your Faith will be but probable but a peradventure I peradventure no and Interest or Passion must supply the rest And such I beleeve is your Faith of this your new-born Article though somewhat an older Opinion In your twelfth Section you enquire into the state of the Question and when you have recited it out of the Bul you presently cry Victory without ever looking into the words and sence that one may note in you the wonted disposition of your great Masters to read the words but seldom take pains to understand them The Bull then sayes that in the dayes of the Popes Predecessor there rose a Question
you put in the Edition of the Bull of Benedictus and the Council of Florence For before that even the consorts of your Tenet held it no otherwise then for the common opinion of Divines LAST DIVISION Containing an Answer from Section the eighteenth to Section the two and twentieth The Catholick Rule of Faith defended The Vindicators weakness in making the unlearned Judges of Controversy His frequently mis-representing my Doctrin and manifold failings in his new attempts from the Bull and Council YOur eighteenth Section you begin with saying my Doctrin which is a close adhering to Tradition is the way to make fools stray You follow still the same truantly humour of using words without looking into the sence For if Tradition signify the delivery of the Doctrin preach't and taught by our forefathers your proposition signifies that to follow what we are taught by our forefathers is the way to make fools go astray Neither do I deny but that you speak consequently if first you make the Popes veracity the veracity of the whole Church and that all the Church but he can err and consequently he may correct the Doctrin which was believ'd by the Church in the age immediatly going before him then 't is true that to prefer the Belief of the former age before the Popes word will lead fools astray But for my part I desire to be one of those fools and to go so astray You run on in a full careere and tell us of the Authority of the Church and Councils in common and that things settled by them must not be brought in question not seeing because you will not that what the Church believ'd in the last Age is more the Church's decree then what she speaks either by Pope or Council unless she speaks the same that she believed the last Age and so you continue your discoursing with words not taking their meaning along with you In your nineteenth Section you come so home as to judge and condemn me by mine own Doctrin a great shame to me I confess if you make it good You argue therefore what have we seen but Masses Dirges Almes c. so far is almost true but why did you not put in by which in express terms we pray'd for the welfare of the Souls at the day of the General Judgment but you had reason to leave that out for it would have set a shrewd puzzell in your Argument We have heard constantly say you that Souls are deliver'd out of Purgatory by these powerfull helps before the day of Judgment In this part you have mended your former fault for there you sayd too little to serve your purpose if you had prov'd all you said and here you say more then can be prov'd to serve your purpose do you mean that your way was preach't constantly that is as a certain and establisht Doctrin of faith or that for a long time they preacht it as a probable truth or without engaging at all into the degree of its assuredness but perhaps you proceed more nicely since you onely said you heard it constantly not that it was preach'd constantly For to say a thing constantly imports that the speaker teaches it to be certain and it is not enough if for a long time he tells you it is likely to be so Now so far as concerns the delivery of Souls from Purgatory by the potent means you speak of was ever constantly taught but that the delivery should be made before the day of Judgment was taught but as a pious opinion if the Preacher understood the sence of the Doctours of the Schools themselves who add no such qualification because their principles being either Authority or Reason they find in Authority neither Fathers nor Councils nor Popes express in the point and Reasons much less favourable and to say the truth though they are apt enough to dispute whether there be a God a Trinity an Incarnation c. Yet I do not remember to have heard of any one who hath treated of his proposition so directly as to dispute it pro and con Which being so what certainty can we expect a Preacher should fix upon this Doctrin But to declare what I think those whom you appeal to will answer I beleeve it is that they never reflected to make any difference of the things the Preachers deliver'd them and much less upon the degrees of assent they gave to this or that point and as far as they can tell they gave the same assent to any place of Scripture the Preacher explicated as they did to this point unless some particular occasion put them in mind to qualify one and not the other But as they found by experience in other things that if any rub came to make them doubt of any thing a Preacher sayd then first they began to consider on what grounds they were bound to believe the point proposed so they have done in this and of those who have spent any competent time in examining both sides many have discover'd your grounds unsafe to build any certainty on and some confest them too weak to sustain even so much as a probability What the Gentleman whose letter you cite and with some imprudent circumstances will say why he was carryed away with your Arguments I know not but had he read my Books as much as I esteem his learning and vertue he would surely have met with full answers to your very objections which they who read yours cannot do nor so much as hear of the Arguments I use to maintain my opinion you on set purpose concealing them and proposing in their stead as my whole grounds a discourse made to a meer Philosopher or Heathen where the method of a regular writer oblig'd me to abstract from Revelation But that this answer I set down is for the greatest part of those that follow this opinion a true one is not onely manifest to all that reflect upon what passeth within them on the like occasions but experience hath taught me it in every country where I have conversed since the publishing this Doctrin In all which I have found divers who upon hearing of it acknowledg'd that before they had in their hearts a certain dislike of your opinion but they knew not why it having a kind of an uncouth semblance yet they could not pitch upon any thing to say solidly against it One passage I will intreat your patience to let me tell you Before I printed it I communicated this point to one of the greatest Divines of Christendome and confest to be so He presently reply'd it was against the Council of Florence and went immediately to his Chamber and fetcht down the Council when we had a little debated the text and he saw it did not reach home he shut up the Book with these words Look to it you will draw all the Regulars upon your back meaning all such of them as found great profit by perswading the people they should procure a sudden
Councils if they proceed duly in their discussion And must all this be conceald and onely three generall words which declare neither particular manner nor matter be barely alleadg'd as a ground of all your spitefull Rhetorick How strange a proceeding is this for a Christian My third note is that in case Christ be a perfect Law-giver and that the Faith he left be sufficient and no more necessary for the Church that is if a Council have nothing to do in making new Articles of Faith then I onely deny Infallibility to Councils in things unnecessary for the Church and unconcerning their duty as Definers of Faith and give them an absolute Inerrancy in all points necessary for the Church that is in all that can truly concern their main purpose that is defining Faith And more than this I beleeve you will find an hundred Catholick Doctors to one deny them as well as I. My fourth note shall be that you would make the denying Infallibility of Councils abstracting both from all matters and manners of proceeding or acceptation of the Church for so you treat it my singular opinion whereas thus spoken of we have for their Errability amongst the Franciscans Castillo and the learned Author of Systema Fidei who cites him for the Dominicans Sotus who tells us that if God by his secret judgment suffers a Council to err he will not permit it long to be conceald from the Church but will take order that it be corrected by another following Council before it be receiv'd in the Church For the Jesuits Bacon telling us it was the opinion of Saint Austin and of all the writers of that Age that the resolution of Faith was compleated in the reception of the whole Christian world For the Fathers Saint Austin himself whose known words are that Plenary Councils have been corrected by following ones where he seems also to speak even of matters of Faith Of Cardinalls Cusanus that it may be observ'd by all experience that an universall Council may fail For your own Doctors worthy Dean Cressy in whom you may find most of these Authors cited Exomol c. 33. where he acknowledges the placing the Infallibility of Councils ultimately in the acceptation of the Church an opinion at least allowable and according to his eminent learning and charity puts down the conveniences he observ'd in that Doctrin to the reducing the Heterodox party Nor onely these but indeed who is there of any note that will say a Council is Infallilible unless it proceed Conciliariter and that it may not proceed conciliarly or after the regular way of a Council I beleeve you are not unacquainted if you be let Pope Martin the fifth teach it you who in the last Session of the Council of Constance declares himself to hold and observe their Decrees made conciliariter non aliter nec alio modo and this too expresly in matters of Faith which caution of his shows he held a possibility of their proceeding illegally Now what they call Conciliariter I call in definitions of Faith attending to Tradition which put I hold and maintain them absolutely Infallible whereas I believe all except me if you examin the matter well and report it candidly put more numerous and more difficult conditions to their Infallibility and far more liable to contingency than what I require which is both extremely hard to fail and when it does must needs be most notorious to the whole world and so beyond my power to pretend or excuse it as you would wisely perswade the Reader by saying this Doctrin brings all into my hands So that we have eminently learned men of all the chief orders in Gods Church Cardinalls and Fathers to omit many or rather all others directly of my opinion in holding a Non est impossibile speaking in generall or rather I of theirs and yet I onely must be raild at as if none in the world held it or broacht it but I. Turn now I beseech you valiant Sir the mouth of your pot-gun against all these renowned Authors and discharge your intemperate spleen against them as abandoning the Catholick Church denying the Authority of Councils and such like which make up a great part of your worthy work and see how feeble an attempt you will make and whether you will not deserve as great an hiss as you have made a noise to no purpose but to breath out some of your swelling passion At least excuse your self to charitable Christians why omitting to mention all others Authority who held the same Doctrin with mine leaping over the backs of all distinctions both of matter and manner without which your discourse signify's nothing and lastly why leaving out words of mine within the same comma which should clear me you rawly took out three onely which were generall ones apply'd them to what particular sence you pleas'd nay extended them to that which was invidious and which I never held and by these arts abus'd the veneration which the vulgar justly have of Councils to stir up in them an undeserved ill opinion against me I pass by in my Book many such like carriages of yours this because you so often and so maliciously glance at I could not leave totally unreflected on If it would not spoil your sport I would crave leave to right the reader in the conceit you would imprint in him of my Romancicall Hell as you are pleas'd to term it the ridiculousness of which lies in your expressions not mine One would think by your putting Dancers Bowlers Fencers c. in other Letters they were my words but he would be mistaken One would think that the words attempting now in Hell in all their severall postures which signify'd as if they were playing tricks there were my words or sence but would be mistaken again One would have thought you might have had the candor not to omit the word quasi which would have spoild the exactness of the postures you fancy and so have much qualify'd your jeft Lastly one that had not known you might have imagin'd you would have transcrib'd to the full point and not still take two or three words single and then you should have seen the mixture of desperation fear and grief marring the perfect molds your Imagination had fram'd and made me say no more but that the shapes of the damned were frightfull and distracted But to omit other little advantages by which you strive in the translating 3 lines to render my sence ridiculous I would gladly know where you find these words spoken of damned Souls as you would here perswade us I would gladly know where you find the word now which you put as mine attempting now in Hell wheras the whole Chapter is intitled declares it self in each Paragraph to speak of their Bodyes onely not Souls and this not now but expresly at the day of Judgment or rather if it could be after it Were ever three lines singled out from their fellows so
it a la mode has reason neither to take offence nor give any upon that account but civilly to proceed with a gentile and unengag'd indifferency as in a business that concerns him not enough to be angry about And if you have such an esteem of your Religion you shall do very well to follow that Maxim But if you conceit writing in Religion to be one of the most efficacious courses to breed an eternall and incomparable mischief to the readers if it be so handled that he may think both sides as men call it probable and that it sinks into neithers heart then I beleeve your pen will prove sharp and stinging as wee see the Fathers is in such occasions though some milk and honey towards the Persons bee mingled for Charity and Edifications sake Now let me perform my promise You say you cannot digest their boldnes who usurp the Authority of the supreme tribunal to brand any opinion with the title of Heresy whilest the Church has not done it to their hands Yet presently after you do it your self branding this opinion of Purgatory as Hereticall and bringing your Evidence that you are convinc't it is condemned And I pray who offâ—â—s to censure another but he takes himself to bee convinc't that it is against some Rule which he supposes sufficient to make a Catholick Truth as against Scripture Councils the generality of the Fathers or as you do against the Definition of a Pope and this to him is a Conviction that it is Condemned before he censures it Nor have you any more to build on than your own Perswasion that it is defin'd your self professing that the Question is brought to those niceties that one need have his Vnderstanding perfectly calm to judge of it So that on your perfectly calm judgment entirely relies this your censure Thus much to your self But as to the universall proposition of censuring opinions you seem a great stranger in the world For what famous Divine what University what Bishop is not thought fit to censure a malignant proposition Is there not regularly in all Dioceses some Censor Librorum expresly appointed Is not every Preacher subject to be forbidden the Chair if he advance a proposition that the Bishops Theologall thinks not fit to be suffer'd Are you ignorant of the pudder at Paris about censuring Monsieur Arnaulds letters which censure was not approved at Rome And yet you cannot digest their boldness who usurp the Authority of the supreme Tribunal to brand any opinion with the title of Heresy while the Church has not done it to their hands Know great Divine that the Pastor or Doctor who lets a wicked proposition run uncontroll'd among the people till means bee made to get it censuâ—'d and forbidden in Rome which how hard it is if the maintainer have great Friends may appear by the long contest betwixt the order of Saint Dominick and the Jesuits about certain propositions of Molina wrongs his own conscience and is unfaithfull to his vocation in suffering the infection to sink deeply into the hearts of the Faithfull ere he prepare an Antidote Besides when would the Pope take notice of what is publisht in France or England if no body cry Fire How many how violent out-cryes were there in France before the Jesuits wicked cases were condemn'd at Rome So that this principle of yours betrayes the Church into the hands of any potent Heresy that shall spring in a far Country Let me therefore intreat you not to use so uncivill terms towards all the learned Doctors of the Church I hope you will not be offended that I omit to answer some small-shot of yours in this Section that I may pass to the next in which I find my self taxed of a wrong Method in seeking Truth out of a story which as I do not particularly remember so am I far from denying for the Method you report as I understand you is truly mine that is as a Divine to find out the Truths in Philosophy and then the Mysteries of our Faith will square well enough with them and so I doubt not but I have been subject to declare it many times Nor can I conjecture who it was that gave mee the Answer you mention but shrewdly ghess that he either did not understand mee or the matter or both And because by your proceeding I fear you are in the same Errour I will endeavour to explicate my sentiments and leave the judgment of the cause to upright Understanders My conceit of matters of Faith is that the Scriptures and Creeds and sometimes also our Doctors deliver them in words well known but whose vulgar sence Divines see impossible to bee true For example where it is sung that the Eternall son descended from heaven the vulgar conceive a locall motion by which he came down into the B. Virgins womb and as I remember I saw it painted thus at Frankford in a Catholick Church whither I went to Mass The Holy Ghost above coming towards the Virgin and sending rayes before it in which was a little child carry'd by them towards that Blessed Mother An apprehension which the learned know to bee impossible So by our expression of Christ's sitting at the right hand of his father what doth a vulgar hearer imagin but an old man sitting in an high chair and his young Son in another set at his right hand I cannot believe you think it possible this meaning should be literally true To find out then the true sense I conceive Philosophy a fitting instrument So that by Philosophy we come thus to understand our Faith and by understanding it to be able both to defend it and propagate science out of it A certain sort of Divines if I wrong them not in calling them so there is who conceiting as soon as they have the words they know the meaning reckon not upon this way but cast about to find out more and other words that shall lead them to the defence and propagation of the known truths and think they must not look what Philosophy sayes but teach her what she ought to say This I conceive to have been the difference between me and the eminent Schollar that conferr'd with me When I had read thus far I expected to see the other Method strongly maintain'd mine as strongly laid flat on the ground but looking farther I onely find your own censure and that such a one as is hard to judge whether it be a dispraise or a commendation But whatsoever it is with mistake or addition From which last to begin you suppose I intend out of Philosophy to frame a Divinity and if I understand you right independently from Revelation which I am sure you can find neither in my words nor my writings but onely that revealed propositions were to be explicated by Philosophical ones known without Revelation Do you make no difference between inventing Divinity-truths and finding out the Meanings of the Words in which they are deliver'd Do not Lawyers dispute
prudently foyl'd you in every encounter in this Question that he hath left nothing for me but to discover your falshood in such by-questions as you thrust in to stuff out your Volume FOURTH DIVISION Containing an Answer to his seventeenth Section The Authours Doctrin of Councils explicated This new opinion of Purgatory in likelihood later than Saint Gregory IN your seventeenth Section you first put upon me that I am arm'd against the Authority of Popes and Councils and then you run headlong on with declamatory invectives upon that supposition But as the world is curious I conceive some will light on my defence as well as on your calumny to whom I thus explicate the true state of the question It is known to all Christians that Christ and his Apostles taught the world the Christian faith It is known to all Catholicks that this same faith has continued in the Catholick Church now fifteen ages It is known to the same that the means of continuing this faith hath been by Pastours and Fathers teaching their Children what themselves had learn'd by the same way It is likewise known that in divers ages there arose up divers Hereticks who endeavour'd to bring in Doctrins contrary to the received Faith and that Bishops sometimes in particular especially the Bishop of Rome sometimes in Collections or Councils with-stood and confounded such Hereticks confirming the old belief and rejecting all new inventions It is evident that to do this it fuffices to have veracity enough to attest what the old Doctrin was and power enough to suppress all such as stir against it Thus far all goes well Of late Ages among our curious School-men some have been so subtle that the Old faith would not serve them but they thought it necessary to bring in new points of Faith and because what was not of Faith could not become of Faith without a new revelation they look't about for a new revelation and finding the two supreme Courts of Christian discipline seated in General Councils and the Pope they quickly resolv'd to attribute the power of encreasing Christian Faith to these two Springs of Christianity Now the first difference betwixt the two parties engag'd in the present controversy is whether the Faith deliver'd by the Apostles be sufficient to govern the Church by or there be necessary fresh Additions of such points as cannot be known without a new revelation In which they whom I follow hold the negative they whom I suppose you follow the affirmative Out of this question springs a second whether in the Councils and in the Pope is to be acknowledg'd a Prophetical kind of Spirit by which towards the ordinary government of the Church they have a gift to reveal some things not before revealed nor deducible out of things already revealed by the natural power of discourse which God has left to mankind to govern it self by In which point also I follow them that deny you and your eminent learned men stand up for the Affirmative I hope by this any ingenious Reader will perceive that if the Faith deliver'd by Jesus Christ joyn'd with the natural power of discoursing be sufficient to govern the Church of God then those who give power to Councils and Popes sufficient to govern by this way give them as much as is necessary for the Church But if new Articles be necessary to the government of the Church then and onely then they fall short So that no understanding person reading these lines can doubt but the true question is this whether the Faith deliver'd by Christ be sufficient for the government of the Church or that we must expect new additions to our Faith every age or when occasion presents it self Whence it will easily appear that all the great noyse you make and furious Rhetorick you use of my denying the Authority of Councils my being arm'd against them and such like angry stuff are but uncharitable uncivil and highly injurious clamours without any true cause or ground at all But we shall hear more of these hereafter Now any prudent Christian that shall with moderate attention have read but so far will judge the question already decided For who dare maintain Christ's Doctrin was imperfect And indeed all that have any little modesty on your side will not say new Articles of Faith are necessary but that whatsoever the Church defines was before revealed though when they come to declare themselves they demand really new Articles onely calling them Explications of the former or Deductions from them And if they would justify that they were but such Deductions as natural reason can deduce there would remain no controversy which in very deed the Churches practise shews to be the truth In the first Council it being recorded that there was Conquisitio magna and all Councils and Popes ever since proceeding in the same style But here I must remember you what you said in the beginning concerning Pargatory that the reason why you write against my opinion was because it was translated into English And so I now protest that you are the cause why I write of this subject in English My books generally are to debate what I think in the points I write of with learned men whose care it is to divulge truths to the people dispensing to every one the quantity he is capable of not to raise any new thoughts in ignorant heads Your crying out against me forces me to a necessary defence before the people wherefore if any disputings concerning this matter displease any person of Judgment let it light upon your head who are the provoker and compeller of me into this new task which both age and other thoughts make me slowly and unwillingly undertake But I must not be mine own chuser but follow God As to what you say against this Doctrin first you desire your Reader to consider that if these grounds to wit that the Pope and the Council can err without distinguishing in what either matter or manner of proceeding Christian Faith is a meer mockery I confess the proposition grave in words but in sence not worthy a School-boy For first I ask you whether you mean in necessary points or unnecessary ones If you say in both I doubt your whole School will desert you For who is there that hath an ounce of brains who will give authority to the Church to determin all the subtle quirks of the School But if you say onely necessary ones then before you went farther against me you should have prov'd that the verities come by inheritance from Jesus Christ are not all that are necessary which question you never think on and so brandish your Logick against the apparitions in the clouds Secondly I ask you whether without counsel or with it If you say without it again your School will desert you If you say with it I ask you how much counsell and to what period In all which you will be at a loss Must it hold till by reason they
see a necessary connexion with the deliver'd Faith if you say so you desert your vertue of prophesying and come over to our School which you so abominate as rational and faithless yet this experience teaches us is the way that Popes and Councils use to take If you say their consulting must not hold till they see it by reason then tell me what Oedipus or Geometrician can guess or fix the terminating line of counsell prerequisite These points a Scholar would have setled You distinguish nothing but jumble all your Bells together into a confused noise and deafen more then instruct your Hearers Now 't is to much purpose to talk of the force of the word Anathema whilest you have not settled a matter in which the Church hath a power to impose it What an inconsiderate manner of arguing is this You say Catholiks require no other assurance of their Faith then upon this firm foundation that our holy Mother the Church is their infallible directress The proposition is the very Tenet we mainly advance and stick to Go but consequently to this and we shall have no quarrell You add another ground that the Councils her mouth are the unerring deliverers of truth This also is very true and never deny'd by us But there rises a great question whether Councils be perpetually and in all cases the mouth of the Church look upon Cariolanus his abridgment of the Councils and read his division of General Councils into approbata and reprobata and ex parte approbata and ex parte improbata and see how ignorantly you go to work even in the grounds of your own eminent learned men who will oppose you peradventure more then I and yet you preach Christian Religion is a mockery if this be taken away I desire not to look into particulars unless you force me to it For I cannot discover even your Errours without discovering too the vanity of that School which you nickname the Church and confidently take upon you to be one of her Masters I doubt not if you attentively consider your eminent Scholars you will find many of them speak indeed gloriously of Councils but unless I be strangely deceiv'd they give them less of inward and reall Authority then I while they make them in effect but Cyphers to the Pope without whom they signify nothing though added perhaps to him they increase his signification yet surely not very much since in many of those Masters opinion he alone is infallible and I think in every ones opinion all together are not much more Whereas the Doctrin I follow gives them an absolute Inerrancy in testifying receiv'd truths which is clearly sufficient to conserve and propagate the Faith of the Church I beleeve you mistake the meaning of that grave and worthy Person whom without any ground at all for your conceit you call my Scholar since he seriously protests he never gave his mind that way nor ever read over any considerable part of my Books nor particularly this of the Middle State his true meaning I conceive is we may know when Councils and Consistory's apply themselves right by examining not Tradition it self for that's evident in the sence of the Faithfull but their proceedings by Tradition whether they be conformable to it Which is not onely a maintainable but excellent truth And by this method the Divines of those dayes examin'd the Doctrin of John 22. For Tradition is the Law of Christ planted in the hearts of all Christians not to be examin'd it being to be read fair written there by their externall words and conversations Now if a Pope or Council be supposed to delver Doctrin against this 't is past darkness and examining since all the Christian world cannot choose but resent it and know it to be against their Faith and Judgment So that you plainly misunderstand the meaning of Tradition which is no hidden thing but the publick and settled belief of the Christian world You will say 't is impossible a Pope or Council should proceed so grosly I wish there were no examples of it But the truth is if instead of a Pope consider'd onely personally you take him as presiding in his Church and Seat and joyn'd with it which is a kind of more then a Provinciall Council but much more if you take a General Council without extraordinary violence without or within both mainly visible this cannot happen and so they have infallibility in attesting the received Doctrins most absolutely sufficient to secure the Church against being mis-led by them By the same Errour you look to determin Faith by Inquest not knowing it cannot be unknown in a Catholick Country to them that live there See the story of Luther Were men doubtfull of their Faith before he and his fellows in iniquity set themselves to snarl at it Therefore Inquest may be made how to answer their Argumments but not to understand what the Church held before opposition rose How much mistaken is all your discourse about the proceeding to higher Tribunals after so great diligence of scrutiny There is no such thing as scrutiny necessary to find out Faith nor ever was the Church to seek her Faith Since she once receiv'd it from Jesus Christ she never lost it and so is to look into it not for it If any thing be to be look for it is not faith it may be some Theologicall Verity not faith Your discourse therefore is wholly out of the way No wonder then you find your self at a loss and cry out like a blind man for a hand to guide you since instead of Christs faith you look for a new faith One would have it an Article of our Christian faith that his Order is a true Religious Order Another that one hang'd for treason is a true Martyr others seek some private revelation that brings in profit to be canoniz'd for faith and other such fine questions to be put in the Creeds of the Church and if it be not yeelded there 's a power in the Church to impose such beliefs upon men presently the denying Doctrin is an Exterminating School and pulls up by the roots all the foundations of Christian Religion Nor will there want some to say that though these things be true they are not to be published but Catholicks are to be left in ignorance of such tender points But will not the mischief by degrees grow intolerable if once it should come to that height that the People by a preoccupated credence be apt to be stirr'd seditiously against their naturall and lawfull Governour by any surreptitious Rescript fetch't from beyond Sea freshly seal'd with the new stamp of faith and to believe all Christianity is rain'd if such a Rescript nay the Interpretation of the procurers be any way doubted of O strange unhappy times You press farther that according to me the Church hath de facto erred in the Bull and Council so long treated of What a strange boldness is this you bring an Interpretation