was wasted by excessive dilapidations and all sacred things had been exposed to sale in so sordid a manner that it was grown to a Proverb But I will not enlarge further on the ill things others had done than as it is necessary to shew the good things that were done by him One of his Cathedrals Ardagh was fallen down to the ground and there was scarce enough remaining of both these Revenues to support a Bishop that was resolved not to supply himself by indirect and base methods he had a very small Clergy but Seven or Eight in each Diocess of good sufficiency but every one of these was multiplyed into many Parishes they having many Vicarages a piece but being English and his whole Diocess consisting of Irish they were barbarians to them nor could they perform any part of divine Offices among them But the state of his Clergy will appear best from a Letter that he writ to Archbishop Laud concerning it which I shall here insert Right reverend Father my honourable good Lord. SInce my coming to this place which was a little before Michaelmas till which time the settling of the state of the Colledge and my Lord Primate's Visitation deferred my Consecration I have not been unmindful of your Lordships commands to advertise you as my experience should inform me of the state of the Church which I shall now the better do because I have been about my Diocesses and can set down out of my knowledge and view what I shall relate and shortly to speak much ill matter in a few words it is very miserable The Cathedral Church of Ardagh one of the most ancient in Ireland and said to be built by S. Patrick together with the Bishops House there down to the ground The Church here built but without Bell or Steeple Font or Chalice The Parish Churches all in a manner ruined and unroofed and unrepaired The people saving a few British Planters here and there which are not the tenth part of the remnant obstinate Recusants A Popish Clergy more numerous by far than we and in full exercise of all Iurisdiction Ecclesiastical by their Vicar-General and Officials who are so confident as they Excommunicate those that come to our Courts even in matrimonial causes which affront hath been offered my self by the Popish Primates Vicar-General for which I have begun a Process against him The Primate himself lives in my Parish within two Miles of my House the Bishop in another part of my Diocess further off Every Parish hath its Priest and some two or three a piece and so their Mass-Houses also in some places Mass is said in the Churches Fryers there are in diverse places who go about though not in their Habit and by their importunate begging impoverish the people who indeed are generally very poor as from that cause so from their paying double Tythes to their own Clergy and ours from the dearth of Corn and the death of their Cattle these late Years with the Contributions to their Souldiers and their Agents and which they forget not to reckon among other causes the oppression of the Court Ecclesiastical which in very truth my Lord I cannot excuse and do seek to reform For our own there are Seven or Eight Ministers in each Diocess of good sufficiency and which is no small cause of the continuance of the people in Popery still English which have not the Tongue of the people nor can perform any Divine Offices or converse with them and which hold many of them Two or Three Four or more Vicarages apiece even the Clerkships themselves are in like manner conferred upon the English and sometimes Two or Three or more upon one Man and ordinarily bought and sold or let to farm His Majesty is now with the greatest part of this Countrey as to their Hearts and Consciences King but at the Popes discretion Kilmore Apr. 1. 1630. Will. Kilmore Ardagh Here was a melancholy prospect to a Man of so good a mind enough to have disheartned him quite if he had not had a proportioned degree of Spirit and courage to support him under so much weight After he had recovered somewhat of the spoils made by his Predecessor and so put himself into a capacity to subsist he went about the reforming of abuses And the first that he undertook was Pluralities by which one Man had a care of Souls in so many different places that it was not possible to discharge his duty to them nor to perform those Vows which he made at his Ordination of feeding and instructing the Flock committed to his care And tho' most of the Pluralists did mind all their Parishes alike that is They neglected all equally yet he thought this was an abuse contrary both to the nature of Ecclesiastical Functions to the obligations that the care of Souls naturally imported and to those solemn Vows that Church-men made at the Altar when they were ordained And he knew well that this corruption was no sooner observed to have crept into the Christian Church than it was condemned by the Fourth general Council at Chalcedon For when some that had removed from one Diocess to another continued to have their share in the dividend of the Church which they had left as well as of that to which they had gone the Council decreed That such transgressours should restore all that they had got from the Church which they had left and should be degraded if they refused to submit to this regulation He thought it a vain and indeed an impudent thing for a Man to pretend that he answered the obligation of so sacred a trust and so holy a Vow by hiring some mercenary Curate to perform Offices since the Obligation was personal and the ecclesiastical Functions were not like the Levitical Service in the Temple in which the observing their Rites was all that was required But the watching over Souls had so many other things involved in it besides officiating according to the Rubrick that it drew this severe reflection from a witty Man in which though the Wit of it may seem too pleasant for so serious a subject yet it had too much sad truth under it That when such Betrayers and Abandoners of that trust which Christ purchased with his own Blood found good and faithful Curates that performed worthily the obligations of the pastoral Care the Incumbent should be saved by Proxy but be damned in Person Therefore the Bishop gathered a meeting of his Clergy and in a Sermon with which he opened it he laid before them both out of Scripture and Antiquity the Institution the Nature and the Duties of the Ministerial Imployment and after Sermon he spoke to them largely on the same subject in Latin stiling them as he alwayes did His Brethren and fellow Presbyters And exhorted them to reform that intolerable abuse which as it brought a heavy scandal on the Church and gave their Adversaries great advantages against them so it must very much
imitated they have built and endowed Seminaries for their Diocesses in which a competent number of young Ecclesiasticks are bred at Studies and Exercises suitable to that Profession to which they are to be dedicated and as they find them well prepared they are by the several steps and degrees of the Pontifical led up to the Altar and kept there till Benefices fall and so they are removed from thence as from a Nursery into the several parts of the Diocesses By this means the Secular Clergy of France have in a great measure recovered their reputation and begin now to bear down the Regulars whose Credit and Wealth had risen chiefly by the Ignorance and Scandals of the Curates In this the present Archbishop of Rheims has set a pattern to the rest suitable to the high Rank he holds in that Church for he has raised a Seminary that cost him Fifty thousand Crowns a building and above Five thousand Crowns a Year in supporting the expence of it in which there are about One hundred Ecclesiasticks maintained and out of these he Ordains every Year such a number as the extent of his Diocess does require And with these he supplies the Vacancies that fall This is a way of imploying the Revenues of the Church that is exactly suitable to the sense of the Primitive times in which a Bishop was not considered as the Proprietor but only as the Administrator and Dispencer of the Revenue belonging to his See And there is scarce any one thing concerning which the Synods in those Ages took more care than to distinguish between the Goods and Estate that belonged to a Bishop by any other Title and those that he had acquired during his Episcopat for though he might dispose of the one the other was to fall to the Church But now to return to the Subject that led me into this digression there is nothing that can have a stronger operation to overcome all prejudices against Episcopacy than the proposing eminent Patterns whose Lives continue to speak still though they are dead Of which my native Country has produced both in the last and in the present Age some great and rare Instances of which very eminent effects appeared even amidst all that rage of furious Zeal into which that Nation was transported against it And I suppose the Reader will not be ill pleased if I make a second digression to entertain him with some passages concerning them but will bear with it perhaps better than with the former And since my Education and the course of my Life has led me most to know the Affairs of Scotland I will not enter upon a Province that is Foreign to me and therefore shall leave to others the giving an account of the great Glories of the Church of England and will content my self with telling some more eminent things of some of our Scottish Bishops In which I will say nothing upon flying Reports but upon very credible if not certain Information There was one Patrick Forbes of Aberdeenshire a Gentleman of Quality and Estate but much more eminent by his Learning and Piety than his Birth or Fortune could make him He had a most terrible Calamity on him in his Family which needs not be named I do not know whether that or a more early principle determined him to enter into Orders He undertook the labour of a private Cure in the Country upon the most earnest invitations of his Bishop when he was Forty Eight Years old and discharged his Duty there so worthily that within a few Years he was promoted to be Bishop of Aberdeen in which See he sat about Seventeen Years It was not easie for King Iames to perswade him to accept of that Dignity and many Months past before he could be induced to it for he had intended to have lived and dyed in a more obscure corner It soon appeared how well he deserved his Promotion and that his unwillingness to it was not feigned but the real effect of his humility He was in all things an Apostolical Man he used to go round his Diocess without noise and but with one Servant that so he might be rightly informed of all matters When he heard reports of the weakness of any of his Clergy his custome was to go and lodge unknown near their Church on the Saturday Night and next day when the Minister was got into the Pulpit he would come to Church that so he might observe what his ordinary Sermons were and accordingly he admonished or encouraged them He took such care of the two Colledges in his Diocess that they became quickly distinguished from all the rest of Scotland So that when the troubles in that Church broke out the Doctors there were the only persons that could maintain the Cause of the Church as appears by the Papers that past between them and the Covenanters And though they begun first to manage that Argument in Print there has nothing appeared since more perfect than what they writ They were an honour to the Church both by their Lives and by their Learning and with that excellent temper they seasoned that whole Diocess both Clergy and Laity that it continues to this day very much distinguished from all the rest of Scotland both for Learning Loyalty and Peaceableness and since that good Bishop died but three years before the Rebellion broke out the true source of that advantage they had is justly due to his Memory One of these Doctors was his Son Iohn the Heir of his Vertues and Piety as well as of his Fortune But much superiour to him in Learning and he was perhaps inferior to no Man of his Age which none will dispute that have read his Instructiones Historico-Theologicae a Work which if he had finished it and had been suffered to enjoy the privacies of his Retirement and Study to give us the Second Volume had been the greatest Treasure of Theological Learning that perhaps the World has yet seen He was Divinity Professor at Aberdeen an endowment raised by his Father But was driven out by the Covenant and forced to fly beyond Sea One memorable thing of his Father ought not to be left unmentioned he had Synods twice a year of his Clergy and before they went upon their other business he always began with a short discourse excusing his own infirmities and charging them that if they knew or observed any thing amiss in him they would use all freedom with him and either come and warn him in secret of secret errours or if they were publick that they would speak of them there in publick and upon that he withdrew to leave them to the freedom of Speech This condescension of his was never abused but by one petulant Man to whom all others were very severe for his insolence only the Bishop bore it gently and as became him One of the Doctors of Aberdeen bred in his time and of his name William Forbes was promoted by the late King while he
my Ability would extend unto though I had already at your Grace's commendation received Mr. Dunsterville to be in my House with the allowance of Twenty Pound per annum The next Day before my departing Mr. Hilton made a motion to me That where he had in his Hands sufficient to make the Benefice of Kildromfarten void if I would bestow it upon Mr. Dean he would do so otherwise it should remain in statu I answered with profession of my love and good opinion of Mr. Dean whereof I shewed the reasons I added I did not know the place nor the people but if they were mere Irish I did not see how Mr. Dean should discharge the duty of a Minister to them This motion was seconded by your Grace But so as I easily conceived That being sollicited by your old Servant you could do no less than you did and notwithstanding the Lecture he promised your Grace should be read to me in the matter of Collations would not be displeased if I did as became me according to my Conscience and in conformity to your former motion for Mr. Crian Mr. Dean after pressed me that if without my concurrence your Grace would conferr that Living upon him I would not be against it which I promised but heard no more of it till about April last In the mean while the Benefice next unto that which Mr. Dunsterville was already possessed of falling void Mr. Crian not coming to me nor purposing to do so till after Christmas and whensoever he should come my House as I found not affording room for him and Mr. Dunsterville both whose former Benefice was unable be said to maintain him chiefly he promising Residence and taking of me for that purpose an Oath absolutely without any exception of Dispensation I united it to his former and dismissed him to go to his Cure wherein how carelesly he hath behaved himself I forbear to relate To return to Mr. Dean About mid April he brought me a Presentation to Kildromfarten under the broad Seal I could do no less but signifie to the Incumbent who came to me and maintained his Title requiring me not to admit Whereupon I returned the Presentation indorsing the reason of my refusal and being then occasioned to write to the Lords Iustices I signified what I thought of these Pluralities in a time when we are so far overmatcht in number by the adverse part This passed on till the Visitation wherein Mr. Dean shewed himself in his Colours When the Vicar of Kildromfarten was called he said he was Vicar but would exhibite no Title After the Curate Mr. Smith signified to me That his Stipend was unpaid and he feared it would be still in the contention of two Incumbents Vpon these and other Reasons I sequestred the Profits which I have heard by a Simonaical compact betwixt them should be for this Year the former Incumbents Neither did Mr. Dean write or speak a Word to me hereabout till the day before the Communion in the inclosed That very Morning I was certified that he purposed to appeal to your Grace which made me in answer to his next â—o add Quod facias faccitius Here I beseech your Grace give me leave to speak freely touching this matter so much the rather because it is the only root of all Mr. Dean's despite against me Plainly I do thus think That of all the diseases of the Church in these times next to that of the corruption of our Courts this of Pluralities is the most deadly and pestilent especially when those are instituted into charges Ecclesiastical who were they never so willing yet for want of the Language of the people are unable to discharge them Concerning which very Point I know your Grace remembers the Propositions of the learned and zealous Bishop of Lincoln before Pope Innocent I will not add the Confession of our Adversaries themselves in the Council of Trent nor the judgment of that good Father the Author of the History thereof touching non-Residency Let the thing it self speak Whence flow the ignorance of the people the neglect of Gods worship and defrauding the Poor of the remains of dedicate things the ruine of the mansion-Houses of the Ministers the desolation of Churches the swallowing up of Parishes by the Farmers of them but from this Fountain There may be cause no doubt why sometimes in some place and to some Man many Churches may be committed but now that as appears by the late Certificates there are besides the titular Primate and Bishop of Priests in the Diocesses of Kilmore and Ardagh 66. of Ministers and Curates but 32. of which number also 3. whose wives came not to Church In this so great odds as the adversaries have of us in number to omit the advantage of the Language the possession of peoples Hearts the countenancing of the Nobility and Gentry Is it a time to commit many Churches to one Man whom I will not disable and he saith he hath a very able Interpreter and I think no less which made me once to say That I would sooner confer the Benefice of Kildromfarten upon him than upon himself which resolution I do yet hold in how ill part soever he take it But what hath he done in the Parishes already committed to him for the instruction of the Irish that we should commit another unto him he that cannot perform his duty to one without a helper or to that little part of it whose Tongue he hath is he sufficient to do it to three No it is the Wages is sought not the Work And yet with the means he hath already that good Man his Predecessor maintained a Wife and a Family and cannot he in his solitary he had once written Monkish life defray himself Well if there can be none found fit to discharge the duty let him have the Wages to better his maintenance But when your Grace assureth us we shall lack no Men when there is besides Mr. Crian whom Dr. Sheriden hath heard preach as a Frier in that very place which I account would be more to Gods Glory if there now he should plant the Truth which before he endeavoured to root out besides him we have Mr. Nugent who offereth himself in an honest and discreet Letter lately written to me we have sundry in the Colledge and namely two trained up at the Irish Lecture one whereof hath translated your Grace's Catechism into Irish besides Mr. Duncan and others with what colour can we pass by these and suffer him to fat himself with the blood of Gods people Pardon me I beseech your Grace when I say We I mean not to prescribe any thing to you my self I hope shall never do it or consent to it And so long as this is the cause of Mr. Dean's wrath against me whether I suffer by his Pen or his Tongue I shall rejoyce as suffering for Righteousness sake And sith himself in his last Letter excuses my intent I do submit my actions after
might have cleared all controversies and put all Heresies to silence How durst sundry holy and learned Men have rejected his decisions whether right or wrong is not now the question unchristianly out of doubt on their parts if he had been then holden the infallible Oracle of our Religion As when Polycrates with the Bishops of Asia and Irenaeus also yielded not to Victor excommunicating the Eastern Churches about the celebration of Easter when S. Cyprian with the first Council of Carthage of eighty six Bishops had Decreed That such as were baptized by Hereticks should be rebaptized and certified Stephanus of this Decree and he opposed it and would have nothing innovated would Cyprian after that have resisted and confuted Stephanus his Letter had he known him for infallible And how doth he confute him as erring writing impertinently contrary to himself Yea let it be observed that he doth not only not account Stephanus infallible but not so much as a Judge over any Bishop See the Vote of Cyprian and note those Words Neque enim quisquam nostrum Episcopum se esse Episcoporum constituit aut tyrannico terrore ad obsequendi necessitatem collegas suos adigit quando habeat omnis Episcopus pro licentia libertatis potestatis suae arbitrium proprium tanquam judicari ab alio non possit cum nec ipse possit alterum judicare Sed exspectemus universi judicium Domini nostri Iesu Christi qui unus solus habet potestatem praeponendi in Ecclesiae suae gubernatione de actu nostro judicandi A passage worthy to be noted also for the clearing of the independence of Episcopal Authority from the Pope which I now let pass Neither was S. Cyprian herein alone Firmilianus and the Eastern Bishops resisted Stephanus no less as appears by his Epistle which in the Roman Edition of Manutius set forth by the command of Pius the Fourth with the survey of four Cardinals whereof one is now a Saint with exquisite diligence is wholly left out And Pamelius saith he thinks purposely for himself is of the mind that it had been better it had never come forth But to return to our purpose The Fathers of the Council of Africk and S. Augustine amongst them resist three Popes succeeding each other Zosimus Boniface and Coelestinus about appeals to Rome shall we think they would ever have done it if they had known or imagined them to be the supream and infallible Judges in the Church I let pass the Schism between the Greek and the Latin Church which had not happened if this Doctrine had been anciently received Nay it is very plain in Story that the Bishop of Rome's lifting up himself to be universal Bishop chiefly caused it To conclude neither Liberius nor Honorius to omit many other Bishops of Rome had ever been taxed of heresie if this had anciently been currant that the Pope is infallible I will not stand now to examine the shameful defence that Bellarmine makes for the latter of these bearing down Fathers Councils Stories Popes themselves as all falsified or deceived herein Wherein because he is learnedly refuted by Dr. Raynolds I insist not upon it This I press That all those Writers and Councils and amongst them Pope Leo the Second accursing Honorius did not then hold that which by Pighius and the Iesuites is undertaken that the Pope is infallible Even the Council of Basil deposing Eugenius for obstinately resisting this Truth of the Catholick Faith That the Council is above the Pope as an Heretick doth shew the sense of Christendom even in these latter times how corrupt soever both in Rule and Practice And because you make this infallible Judge to be also an infallible Interpreter of Holy Scripture how happens it that Damasus Bishop of Rome consults with Hierome about the meaning of sundry Texts of Scripture when it seems himself might have taken his Pen and set him down quickly that which should have taught both him and the whole Church not only without danger but even possibility of error Sure we are little beholding to the diligence of our Ancestors that have not more carefully registred the Comentaries or because they have had for sundry Ages small time to write just Commentaries the Expositions which in their Sermons or otherwise the Bishops of Rome have made of Holy Scripture A work which if this Doctrine were true were more worth than all the Fathers and would justifie that blasphemy of the Canon Law where by a shameful corruption of S. Augustine the Decretals of Popes are inrolled amongst the Canonical Scriptures I am already too long in so plain a matter Yet one proof more which is of all most sensible Being admonished by this your conceit of an infallible Interpreter I chanced to turn over the Popes Decretals and observed the interpretation of Scriptures What shall I say I find them so lewd and clean beside the purpose yea oftentimes so childish and ridiculous both in giving the sense and in the application that I protest to you in the presence of God nothing doth more loath me of Popery than the handling of Holy Scripture by your infallible Interpreter alone Consider a few of the particulars and especially such as concern the Popes own Authority To justifie his exacting an Oath of Fealty of an Archbishop to whom he grants the Pall is brought our Lord Iesus Christ who committing the care of his Sheep to Peter did put too a condition saying Si diligis me pasce oves meas Christ said If thou lovest me feed my Sheep Why may not the Pope say If you will swear me fealty you shall have the Pall. But first he corrupts the Text Christ said not If thou lovest me Then Christ puts not Peters love as a condition of Feeding but feeding as a proof and effect of his love And if the feeding of Christs sheep were sought love to him and them might suffice to be professed or if he would needs have more than Christ required to be sworn What is this to the Oath of Fealty Straight after to the Objection that all Oaths are prohibited by Christ nor any such thing can be found appointed by the Apostles after the Lord or in the Councils he urges the Words following in the Text Swear not at all quod amplius est à malo est that is saith he Evil compels us by Christs permission to exact more Is it not evil to go from the Popes obedience to condemn Bishops without his privity to translate Bishops by the Kings commandment See the place and tell me of your Interpreters Infallibility Treating of the Translation of Bishops or such as are elected unto other Sees he saith That since the spiritual Band is stronger than the carnal it cannot be doubted but Almighty God hath reserved the dissolution of the spiritual Marriage that is betwixt a Bishop and his Church to his own judgment alone charging that whom God hath joyned man
Bonner laid against the First Parliament in Queen Elizabeths time to be true of all the rest Then that he accounts Bishop Bonner to have excepted against this Parliament because the Bishops there were no Bishops as not canonically ordained Where it was because there was no Bishops true or false there at all His last proof is That Dr. Bancroft being demanded of Mr. Alablaster whence their first Bishops received their Orders answered That he hoped a Bishop might be ordained of a Presbyter in time of necessity Silently granting That they were not ordained by any Bishop And therefore saith he the Parliamentary Bishops are without order Episcopal and their Ministers also no Priests For Priests are not made but of Bishops whence Hierome Quid facit c. What doth a Bishop saving Ordination which a Presbyter doth not I have not the means to demand of D. Alablaster whether this be true or not Nor yet whether this be all the answer he had of Dr. Bancroft That I affirm that if it were yet it follows not that D. Bancroft silently granted they had no Orders of Bishops Unless he that in a false Discourse where both Propositions be untrue denies the Major doth silently grant the Minor Rather he jested at the futility of this Argument which admitting all this lying Legend of the Nags-head and more too suppose no Ordination by any Bishops had been ever effected notwithstanding shews no sufficient reason why there might not be a true consecration and true Ministers made and consequently a true Church in England For indeed necessity dispenses with Gods own positive Laws as our Saviour shews in the Gospel much more then with Mans And such by Hieroms Opinion are the Laws of the Church touching the difference of Bishops and Presbyters and consequently touching their Ordination by Bishops only Whereof I have treated more at large in another place for the justification of other reformed Churches albeit the Church of England needs it not To confirm this Argument it pleaseth F. Halywood to add That King Edward the Sixth took away the Catholick Rite of Ordaining and instead of it substituted a few Calvinistical Prayers Whom Queen Elizabeth followed c. And this is in effect the same thing which you say when you add That Coverdale being made Bishop of Exceter in King Edward 's time when all Councils and Church Canons were little observed it is very doubtful he was never himself canonically consecrated and so if he were no canonical Bishop he could not make another Canonical To F. Halywood I would answer That King Edward took not away the Catholick Rite of Ordaining but purged it from a number of idle and superstitious Rites prescribed by the Popish Pontifical And the Prayers which he scoffs at if they were Calvinistical sure it was by Prophecie for Calvin never saw them till Queen Mary's time when by certain of our English Exiles the Book of Common Prayer was translated and shewed him if he saw them then Some of them as the Litany and the Hymn Veni Creator c. I hope were none of Calvin's devising To you if you name what Councils and Church Canons you mean and make any certain exception either against Bishop Coverdale or any of the rest as not Canonical Bishops I will endeavour to satisfie you Mean while remember I beseech you That both Law and Reason and Religion should induce you in doubtful thingâ— to follow the most favourable sentence and not rashly out of light surmises to pronounce against a publick and solemn Ordination against the Orders conferred successively from it against a whole Church Wherein I cannot but commend Doctor Carriers modesty whose Words are these I will not determine against the succession of the Clergy in England because it is to me very doubtful And the discretion of Cudsemius the Jesuite which denies the English Nation to be Hereticks because they remain in a perpetual succession of Bishops And to take away all doubt from you that some of these Ordainers were only Bishops elect and unconsecrated besides Miles Coverdale in King Edward's time Bishop of Exceter cast in Prison by Queen Mary and released and sent over Sea to the King of Denmark know that William Barlow was another in King Edward's days Bishop of Bath and Wells in Queen Mary's beyond the Seas in the company of the Dutchess of Suffolk and Mr. Bertie her Husband at the time of Dr. Parker's Ordination Elect of Chichester A third was Iohn Scory in King Edward's time Bishop of Chichester and at the time of the said Ordination Elect of Hereford A fourth was Iohn Hodgeskin Suffragan of Bedford And these four if they were all ordained according to the Form ratified in King Edward's days were presented by two Bishops at least to the Archbishop and of him and them received Imposition of Hands as in the said Form is appointed One Scruple yet remains which you have in That these Men did consecrate Doctor Parker by vertue of a Breve from the Queen as Head of the Church who being no true Head and a Woman you see not how they could make a true Consecration grounded on her Authority But to clear you in this also you must understand the Queens Mandate served not to give Power to ordain which those Bishops had before intrinsecally annexed to their Office but Leave and Warrant to apply that Power to the person named in that Mandate A thing unless I have been deceived by Reports used in other Countrys yea in the Kingdoms of his Catholick Majesty himself Sure I am by the Christian Emperors in the Primitive Church as you may see in the Ecclesiastical Histories and namely in the Ordination of Nectarius that I spake of before Yea which is more in the Consecration of the Bishops of Rome as of Leo the Eighth whose Decree with the Synod at Rome touching this matter is set down by Gratian Dist. 63. c. 23. taken from the example of Hadrian and another Council which gave to Charles the Great Ius potestatem eligendi Pontifâ—cem ordinandi Apostolicam Sedem as you may see in the Chapter next before See the same Dist. c. 16 17 18. and you shall find that when one was chosen Bishop of Reate within the Popes own Province by the Clergy and people and sent to him by Guido the Count to be consecrated the Pope durst not do it till the Emperors Licence were obtained Yâ—â— that he writes to the Emperour for Colonus That receiving his Licence he might consecrate him either there or in the Church of Tusculum which accordingly upon the Emperours bidding he performed Yet another Exception you take to the making our Ministers That we keep not the right intention First Because we neither give nor take Orders as a Sacrament By that Reason we should have no true Marriages amongst us neither because we count not Matrimony a Sacrament This Controversie depends upon the definition of a Sacrament
THE LIFE OF WILLIAM BEDELL D. D. Lord Bishop OF Killmore in Ireland WRITTEN By GILBERT BURNET D. D. Now Lord Bishop of Sarum To which are Subjoyned Certain Letters which passed betwixt Spain and England in Matter of Religion concerning the general motives to the Roman Obedience between Mr. Iames Waddesworth a late Pensioner of the Holy Inquisition in Sevil and the said William Bedell then a Minister of the Gospel in Suffolk LONDON Printed for Richard Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1692. THE PREFACE THe Contests that have been raised in this Age concerning the lawfulness and the usefulness of the Episcopal Government have engaged so many learned Men to treat that Argument so fully that as there is very little excuse left for the Ignorance or obstinacy of those who still stand out against the Evidence of a Cause made out so clearly so there is scarce any thing left to be said by any whose zeal may set him on to handle a matter that seems to be now exhausted There is one sort of Arguments yet remaining that as they are more within every ones compass to apprehend and apply so they have a greater force on Mens affections which commonly give a biass to their understandings For conviction has an easie access to us when we are already inclined to wish that were true concerning which we imploy our enquiries And in practical matters such as Government Arguments fetched from great Patterns do not only prepare us to think well of such Forms but really give us truer and juster Ideas of them than speculative Discourses can raise in us which work but coldly on persons unconcerned An Argument not foreign to this is used by all the Assertors of Episcopacy in which the force of the reasoning is equal to the truth of the assertion Which is that it is not possible to think that a Government can be criminal under which the World received the Christian Religion and that in a course of many Ages in which as all the corners of the Christian Church so all the parts of it the sound as well as the unsound that is the Orthodox as well as the Hereticks and Schismaticks agreed the persecutions that lay then so heavy on the Church made it no desireable thing for a Man to be exposed to their first fury which was always the Bishops portion and that in a course of many Centuries in which there was nothing but Poverty and labour to be got by the Imployment There being no Princes to set it on as an Engine of Government and no Synods of Clergymen gathered to assume that Authority to themselves by joynt designs and endeavours And can it be imagined that in all that glorious Cloud of Witnesses to the truth of the Christian Religion who as they planted it with their Labours so watered it with their Blood there should not so much as one single person be found on whom either a love to truth or an envy at the advancement of others prevailed so far as to declare against such an early and universal corruption if it is to be esteemed one When all this is complicated together it is really of so great Authority that I love not to give the proper name to that temper that can withstand so plain a demonstration For what can a Man even heated with all the force of imagination and possessed with all the sharpness of prejudice except to the inference made from these Premisses that a Form so soon introduced and so wonderfully blest could not be contrary to the Rules of the Gospel and cannot be ascribed to any other Original but that the Apostles every where established it as the Fence about the Gospel which they planted so that our Religion and Government are to be reckoned Twins born at the same time and both derived from the same Fathers But things so remote require more than ordinary knowledg to set them before us in a true light And their distance from us makes them lessen as much to our thoughts as Objects that are far from us do to our Eyes Therefore it will be perhaps necessary in order to the giving a fuller and amiabler prospect of that Apostolical Constitution to chuse a Scene that lies nearer and more within all peoples view that so it may appear that for the living Arguments in favour of this Government we need not go so far as to the Clement's the Ignatius's the Polycarp's the Ireneus's the Denys's and the Cyprian's that were the glories of the Golden Ages Nor to the Athanasius's the Basil's the Gregorie's the Chrysostome's the Martin's the Ambrose's and the Austin's that were the beauties of the Second but Silver Age of Christianity but that even in this Iron Age and dreg of time there have been such Patterns as perhaps can hardly be matched since Miracles ceased We ought not to deny the Church of Rome the just Praises that belong to some of the Bishops she has produced in this and the last Age who were burning and shining Lights and we ought not to wonder if a Church so blemisht all over with the corruptions of her Clergy and in particular of the Heads of them covers her self from those deserved Reproaches by the brightness of such great names and by the exemplary Vertues of the present Pope which being so unusual a thing it is not strange to see them magnifie and celebrate it as they do France has likewise produced in this Age a great many Bishops of whom it must be said That as the World was not worthy of them so that Church that used them so ill was much less worthy of them And though there are not many of that stamp now left yet Cardinal Grimaldy the Bishop of Angiers and the Bishop of Grenoble may serve to dignifie an Age as well as a Nation The Bishop of Alet was as a great and good Man told me like a living and speaking Gospel It is true their intanglements with the See of Rome and the Court of France were things both uneasie and dangerous to them but I love not to point at their blind Sides it is their fair one that I would set out and if we can bear the highest commendations that can be given to the Vertues of Heathen Philosophers even when they do eclipse the reputation of the greater part of Christians it will be unjust for any to be uneasie at the Praises given to Prelates of another Communion who are to be so much the more admired if notwithstanding all the corruptions that lye so thick about them that they could hardly break through them they have set the World such examples as ought indeed to make others ashamed that have much greater advantages But since the giving of Orders is almost the only part of their function that is yet entirely in their Hands they have indeed brought a regulation into that which was so grosly abused in former times that cannot be enough commended nor too much
was in Scotland in the Year one thousand six hundred thirty and three to the Bishoprick of Edenburgh that was then founded by him so that that glorious King said on good grounds that he had found out a Bishop that deserved that a See should be made for him he was a grave and eminent Divine my Father that knew him long and being of Council for him in his Law-matters had occasion to know him well has often told me That he never saw him but he thought his Heart was in Heaven and he was never alone with him but he felt within himself a Commentary on these Words of the Apostles Did not our Hearts burn within us while he yet talked with us and opened to us the Scriptures He preached with a zeal and vehemence that made him often forget all the measures of time two or three Hours was no extraordinary thing for him those Sermons wasted his Strength so fast and his ascetical course of life was such that he supplyed it so scantly that he dyed within a Year after his Promotion so he only appeared there long enough to be known but not long enough to do what might have been otherwise expected from so great a Prelate That little remnant of his that is in Print shews how Learned he was I do not deny but his earnest desire of a general Peace and Union among all Christians has made him too favourable to many of the Corruptions in the Church of Rome but tho' a Charity that is not well ballanced may carry one to very indiscreet things yet the Principle from whence they flowed in him was so truly good that the errors to which it carried him ought to be either excused or at least to be very gently censured Another of our late Bishops was the noblest born of all the Order being Brother to the Lord Boid that is one of the best Families of Scotland but was provided to the poorest Bishoprick which was Argile yet he did great things in it He found his Diocess overrun with ignorance and barbarity so that in many places the name of Christ was not known but he went about that Apostolical Work of planting the Gospel with a particular industry and almost with equal success He got Churches and Schools to be raised and endowed every where and lived to see a great blessing on his endeavours so that he is not so much as named in that Country to this day but with a particular veneration even by those who are otherwise no way equitable to that Order The only answer that our angry people in Scotland used to make when they were pressed with such Instances was that there were too few of them But some of the severest of them have owned to me that if there were many such Bishops they would all be Episcopal I shall not add much of the Bishops that have been in that Church since the last re-establishing of the Order but that I have observed among the few of them to whom I had the honour to be known particularly as great and as exemplary things as ever I met with in all Ecclesiastical History Not only the practice of the strictest of all the Antient Canons but a pitch of Vertue and Piety beyond what can fall under common imitation or be made the measure of even the most Angelical rank of Men and saw things in them that would look liker fair Ideas than what Men cloathed with Flesh and Blood could grow up to But of this I will say no more since those that are concerned are yet alive and their Character is too singular not to make them to be as easily known if I enlarged upon it as if I named them But of one that is dead I may be allowed to say somewhat with whom the See of Aberdeen was as happy in this Age as it was in his worthy Predecessor Forbes in the last both in the number of the Years for he sat seventeen Years in that Chair and in the rare qualities that dignified them both almost equally He also saw his Son fill the Divinity Chair as the other had done but here was the fatal difference that he only lived long enough to raise the greatest expectation that I ever knew upon any of that Nation of his standing for when all hoped to se in him a second Dr. Forbes or to bring it nearer home another Bishop Scougall for that was his Fathers name he dyed very young The endearing gentleness of the Father to all that differed from him his great strictness in giving Orders his most unaffected humility and contempt of the World were things so singular in him that they deserved to be much more admired than his other Talents which were also extraordinary a wonderful strength of Judgment a dexterity in the conduct of Affairs which he imployed chiefly in the making up of Differences and a Discretion in his whole deportment For he had a way of Familiarity by which he gave every body all sort of freedom with him and in which at the same time he inspired them with a veneration for him and by that he gained so much on their affections that he was considered as the common Father of his whole Diocess and the Dissenters themselves seemed to esteem him no less than the Conformists did He took great pleasure in discoursing often with young Divines and set himself to frame in them right and generous Notions of the Christian Religion and of the Pastoral Care so that a Set of Men grew up under his Labors that carry still on them clear Characters of his spirit and temper One thing more I will add which may afford a more general Instruction Several years ago he observ'd a great heat in some young Minds that as he believed had very good intentions but were too forward and complained much of abuses calling loudly and not very decently for a Reformation of them upon which he told them the noise made about reforming abuses was the likeliest way to keep them up for that would raise Heats and Disputes and would be ascribed to envy and faction in them and ill-minded Men that loved the abuses for the advantages they made by them would blast and misrepresent those that went about to correct them by which they would fall under the jealousie of being ill affected to the Church and they being once loaded with this prejudice would be disabled from doing the good of which they might otherwise be the Instruments Therefore he thought a Reformation of Abuses ought to be carried on by every one in his station with no other noise than what the things themselves must necessarily produce and then the silent way of conviction that is raised by great Patterns would speak louder and would recommend such Practices more strongly as well as more modestly Discourses work but upon speculative people and it has been so long the method of factious and ill designing Men to accuse publick Errors that he wished those to
religious qualities of those he ordained as well as he satisfied himself by his Examination of their capacity and knowledge He had alwayes a considerable number of his Clergy assisting him at his Ordinations and he alwayes Preached and administred the Sacrament on those occasions himself And he never ordained one a Presbyter till he had been at least a year a Deacon that so he might have a good account of his behaviour in that lower degree before he raised him higher He lookt upon that power of Ordination as the most sacred part of a Bishop's trust and that in which the Laws of the Land had laid no sort of imposition on them so that this was intirely in their Hands and therefore he thought they had so much the more to answer for to God on that account and he weighed carefully in his thoughts the importance of those Words Lay hands suddenly on no Man and be not a partaker of other Mens Sins Therefore he used all the precaution that was possible for him in so important an affair He was never prevail'd on by any recommendations nor importunities to ordain any as if Orders had been a sort of Freedom in a Company by which a Man was to be enabled to hold as great a portion of the Ecclesiastical Revenue as he could compass when he was thus qualified Nor would he ever ordain any without a title to a particular Flock For he thought a title to a maintenance was not enough as if the Church should only take care that none in Orders might be in want but he saw the abuses of those emendicated titles and of the Vagrant Priests that went about as Journeymen plying for Work to the great reproach of that sacred Imployment and in this he also followed the Rule set by the fourth general Council that carried this matter so high as to annul all Orders that were given without a particular designation of the Place where the person was to serve For he made the Primitive times his Standard and resolved to come as near it as he could considering the corruption of the Age in which he lived He remembred well the grounds he went on when he refused to pay Fees for the Title to his Benefice in Suffolk and therefore took care that those who were ordained by him or had Titles to Benefices from him might be put to no charge For he wrote all the Instruments himself and delivered them to the persons to whom they belonged out of his own Hands and adjured them in a very solemn manner to give nothing to any of his Servants And that he might hinder it all that was possible he waited on them alwayes on those occasions to the Gate of his House that so he might be sure that they should not give any gratification to his Servants He thought it lay on him to pay them such convenient wages as became them and not to let his Clergy be burthened with his Servants And indeed the abuses in that were grown to such a pitch that it was necessary to correct them in so exemplary a manner His next care was to observe the behaviour of his Clergy he knew the lives of Churchmen had generally much more efficacy than their Sermons or other labours could have and so he set himself much to watch over the Manners of his Priests and was very sensibly touched when an Irishman said once to him in open Court That the Kings Priests were as bad as the Popes Priests These were so grosly ignorant and so openly scandalous both for drunkenness and all sort of lewdness that this was indeed a very heavy reproach Yet he was no rude nor morose Reformer but considered what the times could bear He had great tenderness for the weakness of his Clergy when he saw reason to think otherwise well of them and he helpt them out of their troubles with the care and compassion of a Father One of his Clergy held two Livings but had been cousened by a Gentleman of Quality to farm them to him for less than either of them was worth and he acquainted the Bishop with this Who upon that writ very civilly and yet as became a Bishop to the Gentleman perswading him to give up the bargain but having received a sullen and haughty answer from him he made the Minister resign up both to him for they belonged to his Gift and he provided him with another Benefice and put two other worthy Men in these two Churches and so he put an end both to the Gentleman 's fraudulent bargain and to the Churchman's Plurality He never gave a Benefice to any without obliging them by Oath to perpetual and personal residence and that they should never hold any other Benefice with that So when one Buchanan was recommended to him and found by him to be well qualified he offered him a Collation to a Benefice but when Buchanan saw that he was to be bound to Residence and not to hold another Benefice he that was already possessed of one with which he resolved not to part would not accept of it on those Terms And the Bishop was not to be prevailed with to dispense with it though he liked this Man so much the better because he found he was akin to the great Buchanan whose Paraphrase of the Psalms he loved beyond all other Latin Poetry The Latin form of his Collations will be found at the end of this Relation which concluded thus Obtesting you in the Lord and enjoyning you by vertue of that obedience which you owe to the great Shepherd that you will diligently feed his Flock committed to your care which he purchased with his own Blood that you instruct them in the Catholick Faith and perform Divine Offices in a Tongue understood by the people and above all things that you shew your self a pattern to Believers in good Works so that the adversaries may be put to shame when they find nothing for which they can reproach you He put all the Instruments in one whereas devices had been found out for the increase of Fees to divide these into several Writings nor was he content to write this all with his own hand but sometimes he gave Induction likewise to his Clergy for he thought none of these Offices were below a Bishop and he was ready to ease them of charge all he could He had by his zeal and earnest endeavours prevailed with all his Presbyters to reside in their Parishes one only excepted whose name was Iohnston He was of a mean Education yet he had very quick Parts but they lay more to the Mechanical than to the Spiritual Architecture For the Earl of Strafford used him for an Engineer and gave him the management of some great Buildings that he was raising in the County of Wicklo But the Bishop finding the Man had a very mercurial Wit and a great capacity he resolved to set him to work that so he might not be wholly useless to the Church and therefore
he proposed to him the composing an universal Character that might be equally well understood by all Nations and he shewed him that since there was already an universal Mathematical Character received both for Arithmetick Geometry and Astronomy the other was not impossible to be done Iohnston undertook it readily and the Bishop drew for him a Scheme of the whole Work which he brought to such perfection that as my Author was informed he put it under the Press but the Rebellion prevented his finishing it After the Bishop had been for many years carrying on the Reformation of his Diocess he resolved to hold a Synod of all his Clergy and to establish some Rules for the better government of the Flock committed to him The Canons then established will be found at the end of this Work He appointed that a Synod should be held thereafter once a Year on the Second Week of September and that in the Bishop's absence his Vicar General if he were a Priest or his Arch-Deacon should preside That no Vicar should be constituted after that unless he were in Orders and should hold his place only during the Bishop's Pleasure He revived the ancient custome of Rural Deans and appointed That there should be three for the three Divisions of his Diocess who should be chosen by the Clergy and should have an inspection into their deportment and make report to the Bishop of what past among them and transmit the Bishop's Orders to them and that once a Month the Clergy of each Division should meet and Preach by turns without long Prayers or Preambles And that no Excommunication should be made but by the Bishop in person with the assistance of such of his Clergy as should be present The rest related to some things of less importance that required amendment When the News of this was carried to Dublin some said it was an illegal Assembly and that his presuming to make Canons was against Law and brought him within the guilt of a Praemunire So that it was expected that he should be brought up as a Delinquent and censured in the Starr-Chamber or High Commission-Court But others lookt on what he had done as nothing but the necessary discharge of his Episcopal Function And it seemed strange if some Rules laid down by common consent for the better Government of the Diocess should have furnished matter for an Accusation or Censure His Arch-Deacon that was afterwards Archbishop of Cashill gave such an account of this matter to the State that nothing followed upon it The Bishop had indeed prepared such a Justification of himself as would have vindicated him fully before equitable Judges if he had been questioned for it Archbishop Vsher who knew well how much he could say for himself upon this Head advised those that moved that he might be brought up upon it To let him alone lest he should be thereby provoked to say more for himself than any of his Accusers could say against him When he made his Visitations he alwayes preached himself and administred the Sacrament and the business of his Visitations was what it ought truly to be to observe the state of his Diocess and to give good Instructions both to Clergy and Laity The Visitations in Ireland had been matters of great Pomp and much Luxury which lay heavy on the inferiour Clergy Some slight enquiries were made and those chiefly for Forms sake and indeed nothing was so much minded as that which was the reproach of them the Fees that were exacted to such an intollerable degree that they were a heavy grievance to the Clergy And as the Bishops Visitation came about every Year so every third Year the Archbishop made his Metropolitical Visitation and every seventh Year the Kings Visitation went round And in all these as they were then managed nothing seemed to be so much aimed at as how to squeeze and oppress the Clergy who were glad to purchase their Peace by paying all that was imposed on them by those severe Exactors These Fees at Visitations were not known in the Primitive Times in which the Bishop had the whole Stock of the Church in his hands to defray what expence necessarily fell on him or his Church It is true when the Metropolitan with other Bishops came and ordained the Bishop at his See it was but reasonable that their expence should be discharged and this came to be rated to a certain Summ and was called the Inthronistick and when these grew unreasonably high the Emperours reduced them to a certain proportion according to the Revenues of the Sees But when the Bishops and the inferiour Clergy came to have distinct Properties then the Bishops exacted of their Clergy that which other Vassalls owed by their Tenure to the Lord of the Fee which was the bearing the expence of their Progress but when they began first to demand those Subsidies from their Clergy that Practice was condemned and provision was made That in case a Bishop was so poor that he could not bear the charge to which his Visitation put him he should be supplyed by the richer Bishops about him but not prey upon his Clergy And both Charles the Great and his Son Lewis took care to see this executed Yet this abuse was still kept up so that afterwards in stead of putting it quite down it was only regulated so that it might not exceed such a proportion but that was not observed So that an arbitrary Tax was in many places levied upon the Clergy But our Bishop reformed all these excesses and took nothing but what was by Law and Custome established and that was imployed in entertaining the Clergy And when there was any overplus he sent it alwayes to the Prisons for the relief of the Poor At his Visitation he made his Clergy sit all with him and be covered whenever he himself was covered For he did not approve of the State in which others of his Order made their Visitations nor the distance to which they obliged their Clergy And he had that Canon often in his Mouth That a Presbyter ought not to be let stand after the Bishop was set He was much troubled at another abuse which was that when the Metropolitical and Regal Visitations went round a Writ was served on the Bishops suspending their Jurisdiction for that year And when this was first brought to him he received it with great indignation which was increased by two Clauses in the Writ By the one it was asserted That in the year of the Metropolitans Visitation the whole and entire Iurisdiction of the Diocess belonged to him the other was the Reason given for it Because of the great danger of the Souls of the people Whereas the danger of Souls rise from that suspension of the Bishops Pastoral power since during that Year he either could not do the duty of a Bishop or if he would exercise it he must either purchase a Delegation to act as the Archbishop's Deputy and that could not be
Mr. King's silliness which it concerns me the more to clear him of that I be not accounted silly my self I beseech your Lordship to take information not by them which never saw him till yesterday but by the ancient either Church or Statesmen of this Kingdom in whose eyes he hath lived these many Years as are the Lord Primate The Bishop of Meath the Lord Dillon Sir James Ware and the like I doubt not but your Lordship shall understand that there is no such danger that the Translation should be unworthy because he did it being a Man of that known sufficiency for the Irish especially either in Prose or Verse as few are his matches in the Kingdom And shortly not to argue by conjecture and divination Let the Work it self speak yea let it be examined rigoroso examine If it be found approveable let it not suffer disgrace from the small boast of the Workman but let him rather as old Sophocles accused of dotage be absolved for the sufficiency of the Work Touching his being obnoxious it is true that there is a scandalous Information put in against him in the High Commission Court by his despoiler Mr. Baily as my Lord of Derry told him in my hearing he was and by an excommunicate despoiler as my self before the Execution of any sentence declar'd him in the Court to be And Mr. King being cited to answer and not appearing as by Law he was not bound was taken pro confesso deprived of his Ministry and Living Fined an hundred Pound Decreed to be attached and imprisoned His Adversary Mr. Baily before he was sentenced purchased a new Dispensation to hold his Benefice and was the very next day after as appears by the date of the Institution both presented in the King's Title although the Benefice be of my Collation and instituted by my Lord Primate's Vicar Shortly after inducted by an Archdeacon of another Diocess and a few dayes after he brought down an Attachment and delivered Mr. King to the Pursevant He was haled by the Head and Feet to Horseback and brought to Dublin where he hath been kept and continued under Arrest these four or five Months and hath not been suffered to purge his supposed Contempt by Oath and Witnesses that by reason of his sickness he was hindered whereby he was brought to Death's Door and could not appear and prosecute his defence And that by the cunning of his Adversary he was circumvented intreating that he might be restored to liberty and his cause into the former estate But it hath not availed him my Reverend Colleagues of the High Commission do some of them pity his Case others say the Sentence past cannot be reversed lest the credit of the Court be attached They bid him simply submit himself and acknowledge his Sentence just Whereas the Bishops of Rome themselves after most formal proceedings do grant restitution in integrum and acknowledge That Sententia Romanae Sedis potest in melius commutari My Lord if I understand what is Right Divine or humane these be wrongs upon wrongs which if they reached only to Mr. King's person were of less consideration but when through his side That great Work the Translation of God's Book so necessary for both his Majesty's Kingdoms is mortally wounded pardon me I beseech your Lordship if I be sensible of it I omit to consider what feast our adversaries make of our rewarding him thus for that service or what this example will avail to the alluring of others to conformity What should your Lordship have gained if he had dyed as it was almost a miracle he did not under Arrest and had been at once deprived of Living Liberty and Life God hath reprieved him and given your Lordship means upon right information to remedy with one word all inconveniencies For conclusion good my Lord give me leave a little to apply the Parable of Nathan to King David to this purpose If the way-faring man that is come to us for such he is having never yet been settled in one place have so sharp a Stomach that he must be provided for with Pluralities sith there are Herds and Flocks plenty suffer him not I beseech you under the colour of the King's name to take the coset Ewe of a poor Man to satisfie his ravenous appetite So I beseech the Heavenly Physician to give your Lordship health of Soul and Body I rest My Lord Your Lordship 's most humble servant in Christ Jesus Will. Kilmore Decemb. 1. 1638. By these practices was the printing of the Bible in Irish stopt at that time but if the Rebellion had not prevented our Bishop he was resolved to have had it done in his own House and at his own charge and as preparatory to that he made some of Chrysostome's Homilies the three first upon the parable of the rich Man and Lazarus together with some of Leo's all which tended chiefly to commend the Scriptures in the highest strains of Eloquence that were possible to be translated both into English and Irish and reprinting his Catechism he added these to it in both Languages and these were very well received even by the Priests and Friers themselves He lived not to finish this great design yet notwithstanding the Rebellion and confusion that followed in Ireland the Manuscript of the Translation of the Bible escaped the storm and falling into good Hands it is at this time under the Press and is carried on chiefly by the zeal and at the charge of that Noble Christian Philosopher Mr. Boyle who as he reprinted upon his own charge the new Testament so he very cheerfully went into a Proposition for reprinting the Old But this is only one of many instances by which he has expressed as well his great and active zeal for carrying on the true interest of Religion as by his other publick labours he has advanced and improved Philosophy But to go on with the concerns of our Bishop as he had great zeal for the purity of the Christian Religion in opposition to the corruptions of the Church of Rome so he was very moderate in all other matters that were not of such importance He was a great supporter of Mr. Dury's design of reconciling the Lutherans and the Calvinists and as he directed him by many learned and prudent Letters that he wrote to him on that subject so he allowed him 20 l. a year in order to the discharging the expence of that negotiation which he payed punctually to his Correspondent at London And it appeared by his managing of a business that fell out in Ireland That if all that were concerned in that matter had been blest with such an understanding and such a temper as he had there had been no reason to have despaired of it There came a company of Lutherans to Dublin who were afraid of joyning in Communion with the Church of Ireland and when they were cited to answer for it to the Archbishop's Consistory they desired some time might be
granted them for consulting their Divines in Germany And at last Letters were brought from thence concerning their Exceptions to Communion with that Church Because the Presence of Christ in the Sacrament was not explained in such a manner as agreed with their Doctrine The Archbishop of Dublin sent these to our Bishop that he might answer them and upon that he writ so learned and so full an answer to all their Objections and explained the matter so clearly that when this was seen by the German Divines it gave them such entire satisfaction that upon it they advised their Countreymen to join in Communion with the Church For such is the moderation of our Church in that matter that no positive definition of the manner of the Presence being made Men of different sentiments may agree in the same acts of Worship without being obliged to declare their Opinion or being understood to do any thing contrary to their several Perswasions His moderation in this matter was a thing of no danger to him but he expressed it on other instances in which it appeared that he was not afraid to own it upon more tender occasions The Troubles that broke out in Scotland upon the account of the Book of Common Prayer which encreased to the height of the swearing the Covenant and putting down of Episcopacy and the turning out of all Clergy Men that did not concur with them are so well known that I need not inlarge upon them It is not to be denyed but provocations were given by the heats and indiscretions of some Men but these were carried so far beyond all the bounds either of Order in the Church or Peace in the State that to give things their proper names it was a Schismatical rage against the Church backt with a rebellious fury against the State When the Bishop heard of all these things he said that which Nazianzene said at Constantinople when the stir was raised in the second General Council upon his account If this great tempest is risen for our sakes take us up and cast us into the Sea that so there may be a Calm And if all others had governed their Diocesses as he did his one may adventure to affirm after Dr. Bernard That Episcopacy might have been kept still upon its Wheels Some of those that were driven out of Scotland by the fury of that time came over to Ireland among these there was one Corbet that came to Dublin who being a Man of quick Parts writ a very smart Book shewing the parallel between the Jesuites and the Scotch Covenanters which he printed under the Title of Lysimachus Nicanor The Spirit that was in this Book and the sharpness of the stile procured the Author such favour that a considerable Living falling in the Bishop of Killala's Gift he was recommended to it and so he went to that Bishop but was ill received by him The Bishop had a great affection to his Countrey for he was a Scotchman born and though he condemned the courses they had taken yet he did not love to see them exposed in a strange Nation and did not like the Man that had done it The Bishop was a little sharp upon him he played on his Name Corby in Scotch being a Raven and said it was an ill Bird that defiled its own Nest. And whereas he had said in his Book That he had hardly escaped with his own life but had left his Wife behind him to try the humanity of the Scots he told him He had left his Wife to a very base office Several other things he said which in themselves amounted to nothing but only expressed an inclination to lessen the faults of the Scots and to aggravate some provocations that had been given them Corbet came up full of wrath and brought with him many Informations against the Bishop which at any other time would not have been much considered but then it being thought necessary to make examples of all that seemed favourable to the Covenanters it was resolved to turn him out of his Bishoprick and to give it to Maxwell that had been Bishop of Rosse in Scotland and was indeed a Man of eminent parts and an excellent Preacher but by his forwardness and aspiring he had been the unhappy instrument of that which brought on all the disorders in Scotland A Pursevant was sent to bring up the Bishop of Killala and he was accused before the high Commission Court for those things that Corbet objected to him and every Man being ready to push a Man down that is falling under disgrace many designed to merit by aggravating his faults But when it came to our Bishop's turn to give his Sentence in the Court he that was afraid of nothing but sinning against God did not stick to venture against the Stream he first read over all that was objected to the Bishop at the Barr then he fetched his Argument from the qualifications of a Bishop set down by S. Paul in his Epistles to Timothy and Titus and assumed that he found nothing in those Articles contrary to those qualifications nothing that touched either his Life or Doctrine He fortified this by shewing in what manner they proceeded against Bishops both in the Greek and Latin Churches and so concluded in the Bishops favour This put many out of countenance who had considered nothing in his Sentence but the consequences that were drawn from the Bishop's expressions from which they gathered the ill disposition of his mind so that they had gone high in their Censures without examining the Canons of the Church in such Cases But though those that gave their Votes after our Bishop were more moderate than those that had gone before him had been yet the current run so strong that none durst plainly acquit him as our Bishop had done So he was deprived fined and imprisoned and his Bishoprick was given to Maxwell who enjoyed it not long For he was stript naked wounded and left among the dead by the Irish but he was preserved by the Earl of Tomond who passing that way took care of him so that he got to Dublin And then his Talent of Preaching that had been too long neglected by him was better imployed so that he preached very often and very much to the edification of his Hearers that were then in so great a consternation that they needed all the comfort that he could minister to them and all the Spirit that he could infuse in them He went to the King to Oxford and he said in my Author 's hearing That the King had never rightly understood the innate hatred that the Irish bore to all that professed the true Religion till he had informed him of it But he was so much affected with an ill piece of News that he heard concerning some misfortune in the King's affairs in England that he was some hours after found dead in his Study This short digression I hope may be forgiven me for the person was very extraordinary
if an unmeasured ambition had not much defaced his other great abilities and excellent qualities The old degraded Bishop Adair was quickly restored to another Bishoprick which came to be vacant upon a dismal account which I would gladly pass over if I could for the thing is but too well known One Adderton Bishop of Waterford who as was believed had by a Symoniacal compact pâ—ocured such favour that he was recommended to that Bishoprick and had covered his own unworthiness as all wicked Men are apt to do by seeming very zealous in every thing that is acceptable to those who govern and had been in particular very severe on Bishop Adair came to be accused and convicted of a crime not to be named that God punished with fire from Heaven and suffered publickly for it He expressed so great a repentance that Dr. Bernard who preached his funeral Sermon and had waited on him in his Imprisonment had a very charitable opinion of the state in which he dyed Upon this Adair's Case was so represented to the King that he was provided with that Bishoprick From which it may appear That he was not censured so much for any guilt as to strike a terrour in all that might express the least kindness to the Scotch Covenanters But our Bishop thought the degrading of a Bishop was too sacred a thing to be done meerly upon politick Considerations Bishop Bedell was exactly conformable to the Forms and Rules of the Church he went constantly to Common Prayer in his Cathedral and often read it himself and assisted in it always with great reverence and affection He took care to have the Publick Service performed strictly according to the Rubrick so that a Curate of another Parish being imployed to read Prayers in the Cathedral that added somewhat to the Collects the Bishop observing he did this once or twice went from his place to the Reader 's Pew and took the book out of his Hand and in the hearing of the Congregation suspended him for his presumption and read the rest of the Office himself He preached constantly twice a Sunday in his Cathedral on the Epistles and Gospels for the Day and catechised alwayes in the Afternoon before Sermon and he preached always twice a Year before the Judges when they made the Circuit His Voice was low and mournful but as his matter was excellent so there was a gravity in his looks and behaviour that struck his Auditors He observed the Rubrick so nicely that he would do nothing but according to it so that in the reading the Psalms and the Anthems he did not observe the common custome of the Minister and the People reading the Verses by turns for he read all himself because the other was not enjoyned by the Rubrick As for the placing of the Communion Table by the East wall and the bowing to it he never would depart from the Rule of observing the Conformity prescribed by Law for he said That they were as much Nonconformists who added of their own as they that came short of what was enjoyned as he that adds an Inch to a measure disowns it for a Rule as much as he that cuts an Inch from it and as he was severe to him that added Words of his own to the Collect so he thought it was no less censurable to add Rites to those that were prescribed When he came within the Church it appeared in the composedness of his behaviour that he observed the Rule given by the Preacher of Keeping his Feet when he went into the House of God but he was not to be wrought on by the greatness of any Man or by the Authority of any persons example to go out of his own way though he could not but know that such things were then much observed and measures were taken of Men by these little distinctions in which it was thought that the zeal of Conformity discovered it self There is so full an account of the tenderness with which he advised all Men but Churchmen in particular to treat those that differed from them in a Sermon that he preached on those Words of Christ Learn of me for I am meek and lowly that I am assured the Reader will well bear with the length of it It was preached soon after some heats that had been in the House of Commons in the Parliament of Ireland in which there were many Papists and in it the sense he had of the way of treating all differences in Religion whether great or small is so well laid down that I hope it will be looked on as no ordinary nor useless piece of Instruction IS it not a shame that our two Bodies the Church and Commonwealth should exercise mortal hatreds or immortal rather and being so near in place should be so far asunder in affection it will be said by each that other are in fault and perhaps it may truly be â—aid that both are the one in that they cannot endure with patience the lawful superiority of the worthier Body the other in that they take no care so to govern that the governed may find it to be for their best behoof to obey until which time it will never be but there will be repining and troubles and brangles between us This will be done in my Opinion not by bolstering out and maintaining the errours and unruliness of the lower Officers or Members of our body but by severely punishing them and on both sides must be avoided such Men for Magistrates and Ministers as seek to dash us one against another all they may And would to God this were all but is it not a shame of shames that Mens emulations and contentions cannot stay themselves in matters of this sort but the holy profession of Divinity is made fuel to a publick fire and that when we had well hoped all had been either quenched or raked up it should afresh be kindled and blown up with bitter and biting Words God help us we had need to attend to this Lesson of Christ Learn of me for I am meek and lowly in Heart or to that of the Apostle It behoves the servant of God not to contend but to be meek towards all instructing with lenity those that be contrary affected waiting if at any time God will give them a better mind to see the truth 2 Tim. 2.25 And here give me leave R. W. and beloved Brethren and Sisters to speak freely my mind unto you I know right well that I shall incur the reproof of divers yet I will never the more for that spare to utter my Conscience I hope wise Men will assent or shew me better For my part I have been long of this mind that many in their Sermons and Writings are to blame for their manner of dealing with the adversaries of their Opinions when they give Reins to their Tongues and Pens to railing and reproachful Speeches and think they have done well when they exceed or equal them in this Trade wherein to
the Communion should not be adminstred to them in both kinds That the Bread in the Lord's Supper is transubstantiated into his Body That he is there sacrificed for the quick and the dead That there is any Purgatory besides Christ's Blood That our good Words can merit Heaven That the Saints hear our Prayers and know our Hearts That Images are to be worshipped That the Pope is Infallible and can command Angels That we ought to pray to the Dead and for the Dead In all these notwithstanding you may profess your teachableness if by sound Reasons out of God's Word you shall be convinced of the truth of them And because we know not how far it will please God to call us to make resistance against sin whether unto Blood it self or no it shall be Wisdom for us to prepare our selves to the last care of a godly life which is to dye Godly This the Apostle Paul calleth Sleeping in Iesus implying thereby our Faith in him our being found in his Work and our committing our Souls into his Hands with peace such a sweet and Heavenly Sleep was that of S. Stephen whose last Words for himself were Lord Iesus receive my Spirit and for his Tormentors Lord lay not this sin to their charge wherewith I will end this Writing and wish to end my life when the will of God shall be to whose gracious protection dear Sister I do heartily commit you November 23. 1641. These Advices shew in what temper that holy Man was in this his extremity They had a very good effect on the Lady for as by reading them over very often she got to be able to say them all without Book so she did that which was much more she lodged them in her heart as well as in her memory While this good Man was now every day waiting fâ—r his Crown the Rebells sent to him desiring him to dismiss the company that was about him but he refused to obey their cruel order and he resolved to live and dye with them and would much more willingly have offered himself to have dyed for them than have accepted of any favour for himself from which they should be shut out And when they sent him word That though they loved and honoured him beyond all the English that ever came into Ireland because he had never done wrong to any but good to many yet they had received orders from the Council of State at Kilkenny that had assumed the government of the Rebells that if he would not put away the people that had gathered about him they should take him from them he said no more but in the Words of David and S. Paul Here I am the Lord do unto me as seems good to him the will of the Lord be done So on the eighteenth of December they came and seized on him and on all that belonged to him and carried him and his two Sons and Mr. Clogy prisoners to the Castle of Lochwater the only place of strength in the whole County It was a little Tower in the midst of a Lake about a Musquet shot from any Shoar And though there had bâ—â—n a little Island about it anciently yet the Water had so gained on it that there was not a foot of Ground above Water but only the Tower it self They suffered the Prisoners to carry nothing with them for the Titular Bishop took possession of all that belonged to the Bishop and said Mass the next Lords day in the Church They set the Bishop on Horseback and made the other Prisoners go on foot by him And thus he was lodged in this Castle that was a most miserable dwelling The Castle had been in the hands of one Mr. Cullum who as he had the keeping of the Fort trusted to him so he had a good allowance for a Magazine to be laid up in it for the defence of the Country But he had not a pound of Powder nor one fixt Musquet in it and he fell under the just punishment of the neglect of his trust for he was taken the first day of the Rebellion and was himself made a prisoner here All but the Bishop were at first clapt into Irons for the Irish that were perpetually drunk were afraid lest they should seise both on them and on the Castle Yet it pleased God so far to abate their fury that they took off their Irons and gave them no disturbance in the Worship of God which was now all the comfort that was left them The House was extreamly open to the weather and ruinous and as the place was bare and exposed so that Winter was very severe which was a great addition to the misery of those that the Rebels had stript naked leaving to many not so much as a Garment to cover their nakedness But it pleased God to bring another Prisoner to the same Dungeon that was of great use to them one Richard Castledine who had come over a poor Carpenter to Ireland with nothing but his Tools on his back and was first imployed by one Sir Richard Waldron in the carpentry work of a Castle that he was building in the Parish of Cavan But Sir Richard wasting his Estate before he had finished his House and afterwards leaving Ireland God had so blest the industry of this Castledine during Thirty years labour that he bought this Estate and having only Daughters he married one of them out of gratitude to Sir Richard's youngest Son to whom he intended to have given the Estate that was his Fathers He was a Man of great vertue and abounded in good Works as well as in exemplary Piety he was so good a Husband that the Irish believed he was very rich so they preserved him hoping to draw a great deal of Money from him He being brought to this miserable Prison got some Tools and old Boards and fitted them up as well as was possible to keep out the Weather The Keepers of the Prison brought their Prisoners abundance of Provision but left them to dress it for themselves which they that knew little what belonged to Cookery were glad to do in such a manner as might preserve their lives and were all of them much supported in their Spirits They did not suffer as evil doers and they were not ashamed of the Cross of Christ but rejoyced in God in the midst of all their afflictions and the old Bishop took joyfully the spoiling of his Goods and the restraint of his person comforting himself in this That these light afflictions would quickly work for him a more exceeding and eternal weight of Glory The day after his imprisonment being the Lord's day he preached to his little flock on the Epistle for the day which set before them the pattern of the humility and sufferings of Christ and on Christmas day he preached on Gal. 4.4 5. and administred the Sacrament to the small Congregation about him their Keepers having been so charitable as to furnish them with Bread and Wine And
His Devotion in his Closet was only known to him who commanded him to pray in secret In his Family he prayed alwayes thrice a day in a set Form though he did not read it This he did in the Morning and before Dinner and after Supper And he never turned over this duty or the short Devotions before and after Meat on his Chaplain but was always his own Chaplain He lookt upon the Obligation of observing the Sabbath as moral and perpetual and considered it as so great an Engine for carrying on the true ends of Religion that as he would never go into the liberties that many practised on that day so he was exemplary in his own exact observation of it Preaching alwayes twice and Catechising once and besides that he used to go over the Sermons again in his Family and sing Psalms and concluded all with Prayer As for his Domestick concerns he married one of the Family of the L' Estranges that had been before married to the Recorder of S. Edmondsbury she proved to be in all respects a very fit Wife for him she was exemplary for her life humble and modest in her Habit and behaviour and was singular in many excellent qualities particularly in a very extraordinary reverence that she payed him She bore him four Children three Sons and a Daughter but one of the Sons and the Daughter dyed young so none survived but William and Ambrose The just reputation his Wife was in for her Piety and Vertue made him choose that for the Text of her Funeral Sermon A good name is better than Oyntment She dyed of a Lethargy three years before the Rebellion broke out and he himself preached her Funeral Sermon with such a mixture both of tenderness and moderation that it touched the whole Congregation so much that there were very few dry Eyes in the Church all the while He did not like the burying in the Church For as he observed there was much both of Superstition and Pride in it so he believed it was a great annoyance to the Living when there was so much of the steam of dead Bodies rising about them he was likewise much offended at the rudeness which the crowding the dead Bodies in a small parcel of Ground occasioned for the Bodies already laid there and not yet quite rotten were often raised and mangled so that he made a Canon in his Synod against burying in Churches and as he often wisht that Burying-Places were removed out of all Towns so he did chuse the most remote and least frequented place of the Church-Yard of Kilmore for his Wife and by his Will he ordered that He should be laid next her with this bare Inscription Depositum Gulielmi quondam Episcopi Kilmorensis Depositum cannot bear an English Translation it signifying somewhat given to another in Trust so he considered his Burial as a trust left in the Earth till the time that it shall be called on to give up its dead The modesty of that Inscription adds to his Merit which those who knew him well believe exceeds even all that this his zealous and worthy Friend does through my hands convey to the World for his memory which will outlive the Marble or the Brass and will make him ever to be reckoned one of the speaking and lasting Glories not only of the Episcopal Order but of the Age in which he lived and of the two Nations England and Ireland between whom he was so equally divided that it is hard to tell which of them has the greatest share in him Nor must his Honour stop here he was a living Apology both for the Reformed Religion and the Christian Doctrine And both he that collected these Memorials of him and he that copies them out and publishes them will think their Labours very happily imployed if the reading them produces any of those good effects that are intended by them As for his two Sons he was satisfied to provide for them in so modest a way as shewed that he neither aspired to high things on their behalf nor did he consider the Revenue of the Church as a property of his own out of which he might raise a great Estate for them He provided his eldest Son with a Benefice of Eighty Pound a Year in which he laboured with that fidelity that became the Son of such a Father and his second Son not being a Man of Letters had a little Estate of 60 l. a year given him by the Bishop which was the only Purchace that I hear he made and I am informed that he gave nothing to his eldest Son but that Benefice which he so well deserved So little advantage did he give to the enemies of the Church either to those of the Church of Rome against the marriage of the Clergy or to the dividers among our selves against the Revenues of the Church The one sort objecting that a married state made the Clergy covetous in order to the raising their Families and the others pretending that the Revenues of the Church being converted by Clergymen into Temporal Estates for their Children it was no Sacriledge to invade that which was generally no less abused by Churchmen than it could be by Laymen since these Revenues are trusted to the Clergy as Depositaries and not given to them as Proprietors May the great Shepherd and Bishop of Souls so inspire all that are the Overseers of that Flock which he purchased with his own Blood that in imitation of all those glorious patterns that are in Church-History and of this in the last Age that is inferior to very few that any former Age produced they may watch over the Flock of Christ and so feed and govern them that the Mouths of all Adversaries may be stopt that this Apostolical Order recovering its Primitive spirit and vigour it may be received and obeyed with that same submission and esteem that was payed to it in former times and that all differences about lesser matters being laid down Peace and Truth may again flourish and the true ends of Religion and Church-Government may be advanced and that instead of biting devouring and consuming one another as we do we may all build up one another in our most holy Faith Some Papers related to in the former History Guilielmus Providentiâ Divinâ Kilmorensis Episcopus dilecto in Christo A. B. Fratri Synpresbytero salutem AD Vicariam perpetuam Ecclesiae Parochialis de C. nostrae Kilmorensis Dioecesios jam legitimè vacantem ad nostram collationem pleno jure spectantem praestito per te prius juramento de agnoscenda defendenda Regiae Majestatis suprema potestate in omnibus causis tam Ecclesiasticis quam Civilibus intra ditiones suas deque Anglicano ordine habitu Lingua pro Viribus in dictam Parochiam introducendis juxt a formam Statutorum hujus Regni necnon de perpetua personali Residentia tua in Vicaria praedicta quodque nullum aliud Beneficium Ecclesiasticum una
Church and ancient Councils there is no succession of true Pastors But among Protestants the said due Form and right intention are not observed ergo no succession of true Pastors The said due Form and right intention are not observed among Protestants in France Holland nor Germany where they have no Bishops and where Laymen do intermeddle in the making of their Ministers And for England whereas the Councils require the Ordines minores of Subdeacon and the rest to go before Priesthood your Ministers are made per saltum without ever being Subdeacons And whereas the Councils require three Bishops to assist at the consecration of a Bishop it is certain that at the Nags-Head in Cheapside where consecration of your first Bishops was attempted but not effected whereabout I remember the controversie you had with one there was but one Bishop and I am sure there was such a matter And although I know and have seen the Records themselves that afterward there was a consecration of Dr. Parker at Lambeth and three Bishops named viz. Miles Coverdal of Exceter one Hodgeskin Suffragan of Bedford and another whose name I have forgotten yet it is very doubtful that Coverdal being made Bishop of Exceter in King Edward's time when all Councils and Church-Canons were little observed he was never himself Canonically consecrated and so if he were no Canonical Bishop he could not make another Canonical And the third unnamed as I remember but am not sure was only a Bishop elect and not consecrated and so was not sufficient But hereof I am sure that they did consecrate Parker by vertue of a Breve from the Queen as Head of the Church Who indeed being no true Head and a Woman I cannot see how they could make a true Consecration grounded on her Authority Furthermore making your Ministers you keep not the right intention for neither do the Orderer nor the Ordered give nor receive the Orders as a Sacrament nor with any intention of Sacrificing Also they want the Matter and Form with which according to the Councils and Canons of the Church holy Orders should be given namely for the Matter Priesthood is given by the delivery of the Patena with Bread and of the Chalice with Wine Deaconship by the delivery of the Book of the Gospels and Subdeaconship by the delivery of the Patena alone and of the Chalice empty And in the substantial form of Priesthood you do fail most of all which Form consists in these Words Accipe potestatem offerendi Sacrificium in Ecclesia pro Vivis Mortuis which are neither said nor done by you and therefore well may you be called Ministers as also Laymen are but you are no Priests Wherefore I conclude wanting Subdeaconship wanting undoubted Canonical Bishops wanting right intention wanting Matter and due Form and deriving even that you seem to have from a Woman the Head of your Church therefore you have no true Pastors and consequently no true Church And so to conclude and not to weary my self and you too much being resolved in my understanding by these and many other Arguments That the Church of England was not the true Church but that the Church of Rome was and is the only true Church because it alone is Ancient Catholick and Apostolick having Succession Vnity and Visibility in all Ages and Places yet what Agonies I passed with my Will here I will over-pass Only I cannot pretermit to tell you That at last having also mastered and subdued my will to relent unto my understanding by means of Prayer and by God Almighty's Grace principally I came to break through many tentations and impediments and from a troubled unquiet Heart to a fixed and peaceable tranquillity of Mind for which I do most humbly thank our sweet Lord and Saviour Iesus before whom with all reverence I do avouch and swear unto you as I shall answer it in the dreadful Day of Judgment when all Hearts shall be discovered That I forsook Protestant Religion for very fear of Damnation and became a Catholick with good hope of Salvation and that in this hope I do continue and increase daily And that I would not for all the World become a Protestant again And for this which here I have written unto you in great hast I know there be many Replyes and Rejoynders wherewith I could never be satisfied nor do I desire any further Disputation about them but rather to spend the rest of my life in Devotion yet in part to give you my dear good Friend some account of my sel◠having now so good an occasion and fit a Messenger and by you if you please to render a reason of my Faith to Mr. Hall who in his said printed Epistle in one place desires to know the Motives thereof I have thus plainly made relation of some Points among many Whereunto if Mr. Hall will make any Reply I do desire it may be directly and fully to the Points and in friendly Terms upon which condition I do pardon what is past and of you I know I need not require any such circumstances And so most seriously intreating and praying to our gracious Lord to direct and keep us all and ever in his holy Truth I commend you unto his heavenly Grace and my self unto your friendly love Your very affectionate and true loving Friend James Waddesworth Sevil in Spain April 1. 1615. ✚ To the Worshipful his respected Friend Mr. William Bedell at his House in S. Edmundsbury or at Horinger be there delivered in Suffolk Kind Mr. Bedel MIne old acquaintance and Friend having heard of your health and worldly well-fare by this Bearer Mr. Austen your Neighbour and by him having opportunity to salute you with these few Lines I could not omit though some few years since I wrote you by one who since told me certainly he delivered my Letters and that you promised answer and so you are in my debt which I do not claim nor urge so much as I do that in truth and before our Lord I speak it you do owe me love in all mutual amity for the hearty affectionate love which I have and ever did bear unto you with all sincerity For though I love not your Religion wherein I could never find solid Truth nor firm hope of Salvation as dow I do being a Catholick and our Lord is my Witness who shall be my Judge yet indeed I do love your person and your ingenuous honest good moral condition which ever I observed in you nor do I desire to have altercations with Mr. Ioseph Hall especially if he should proceed as Satyrically as he hath begun with me nor with any other Man and much less would I have any debate with your self whom I do esteem and affect as before I have written nor would I spend the rest of my life which I take to be short for my Lungs are decaying in any Questions but rather in Devotion wherein I do much more desire to be hot and
fall to challenge not only the infallibility but which were more dangerous the Authority of their Judge If it be thought better to leave scope to Opinions opposition it self profitably serving to the boulting out of the Truth If Unity in all things be as it seems despaired of by this your Gellius himself why are we not content with Vnity in things necessary to Salvation expresly set down in Holy Scripture And anciently thought to suffice reserving Infallibility as an honour proper to God speaking there Why should it not be thought to suffice that every Man having imbraced that necessary Truth which is the Rule of our Faith thereby try the Spirits whether they be of God or no. If he meet with any that hath not that Doctrine receive him not to House nor salute him If consenting to that but otherwise infirm or erring yet charitably bear with him This for every private Man As for the publick order and peace of the Church God hath given Pastors and Teachers that we should not be carried about with every wind of Doctrine and amongst them appointed Bishops to command that Men teach no other or foreign Doctrine which was the end of Timothy his leaving at Ephesus 1 Tim. 1.3 Then the Apostles themselves by their example have commended to the Church the wholesome use of Synods to determine of such controversies as cannot by the former means be composed but still by the Holy Scriptures the Law or Rule as you say well by which all these Iudges must proceed Which if they do not then may they be deceived themselves and deceive others as experience hath shewed yet never be able to extinguish the truth To come to Antiquity There is not any one thing belonging to Christian Religion if we consider well of more importance than how the purity of the whole may be maintained The Ancients that write of the rest of Christian Doctrine is it not a miracle had they known any such infallible Judge in whose Oracle the security of all with the perpetual tranquillity of the Church is contained they should say nothing of him There was never any Age wherein there have not been Heresies and Sects to which of them was it ever objected that they had no infallible Judge How soon would they have sought to amend that defect if it had been a currant Doctrine in those times that the true Church cannot be without such an Officer The Fathers that dealt with them why did they not lay aside all disputing and appeal them only to this Barr Unless perhaps that were the lett which Cardinal Bellarmine tells the Venetians hindred S. Paul from appealing to S. Peter Lest they should have made their Adversaries to laugh at them for their labour Well howsoever the Cardinal hath found out a merry reason for S. Paul's appealing to Caesars Judgment not Peter's lest he should expose himself to the laughter of Pagans what shall we say when the Fathers write professedly to instruct Catholick Men of the forepleadings and advantages to be used against Hereticks even without descending to tryal by Scriptures or of some certain general and ordinary way to discern the Truth of the Catholick Faith from the prophane novelties of Heresies Had they known of this infallible Judge should we not have heard of him in this so proper a place and as it were in a cause belonging to his own Court Nay doth not the writing it self of such Books shew that this matter was wholly unknown to Antiquity For had the Church been in possession of so easie and sure a course to discover and discard heresies they should not have needded to task themselves to find out any other But the truth is infallibility is and ever hath been accounted proper to Christs judgment And as hath been said all necessary Truth to Salvation he hath delivered us in his Word That Word himself tells us shall judge at the last day Yea in all true decisions of Faith that word even now judgeth Christ judgeth the Apostle sits Iudge Christ speaks in the Apostle Thus Antiquity Neither are they moved a whit with that Objection That the Scriptures are often the matter of Controversies For in that case the remedy was easie which S. Augustine shews to have recourse to the plain places and manifest such as should need no interpreter for such there be by which the other may be cleared The same may be said if sometimes it be questioned Which be Scriptures which not I think it was never heard of in the Church that there was an external infallible Judge who could determine that question Arguments may be brought from the consent or dissent with other Scriptures from the attestation of Antiquity and inherent signs of Divine Authority or humane infirmity but if the Auditor or Adversary yield not to these such parts of necessity must needs be laid aside If all Scripture be denied which is as it were exceptio in judicem ante litis contestationem Faith hath no place only reason remains To which I think it will scarce seem reasonable if you should say Though all Men are lyers yet this Iudge is infallible and to him thou oughtest in conscience to obey and yield thy understanding in all his Determinations for he cannot err No not if all Men in the World should say it Unless you first set down there is a God and stablish the authority of the Books of Holy Scripture as his voice and thence shew if you can the warrant of this priviledge Where you affirm The Scriptures to be the Law and the Rule but alone of themselves cannot be Iudges If you mean without being produced applied and heard you say truth Yet Nicodemus spake not amiss when he demanded Doth our Law judge any Man unless it hear him first he meant the same which S. Paul when he said of the High Priest thou sittest to judge me according to the Law and so do we when we say the same Neither do we send you to Angels or God himself immediately but speaking by his Spirit in the Scriptures and as I have right now said alledged and by discourse applyed to the matters in question As for Princes since it pleased you to make an excursion to them if we should make them infallible Judges or give them Authority to decree in Religion as they list as Gardiner did to King Henry the Eight it might well be condemned for monstrous as it was by Calvin As for the purpose Licere Regi interdicere populo usum calicis in Coena Quare Potestas n. summa est penes Regem quoth Gardiner This was to make the King as absolute a Tyrant in the Church as the Pope claimed to be But that Princes which obey the truth have commandment from God to command good things and forbid evil not only in matters pertaining to humane society but also the Religion of God This is no new strange Doctrine but Calvins and
ours and S. Augustines in so many words And this is all the Headship of the Church we give to Kings Whereof a Queen is as well capable as a King since it is an act of Authority not Ecclesiastical Ministery proceeding from eminency of power not of knowledge or holiness Wherein not only a learned King as ours is but a good old Woman as Queen Elizabeth besides her Princely dignity was may excel as your selves confess your infallible Judge himself But in power he saith he is above all which not to examine for the present in this Power Princes are above all their Subjects I trow and S. Augustine saith plainly to command and forbid even in the Religion of God still according to Gods Word which is the touchstone of Good and Evil. Neither was King Henry the Eight the first Prince that exercised this power witness David and Solomon and the rest of the Kings of Iudah before Christ. And since that Kings were Christians The affairs of the Church have depended upon them and the greatest Synods have been by their Decree as Socrates expresly saith Nor did King Henry claim any new thing in this Land but restored to the Crown the ancient right thereof which sundry his Predecessors had exercised as our Historians and Lawyers with one consent affirm The rest of your induction of Archbishops Bishops and whole Clergy in their Convocation-House and a Council of all Lutherans Calvinists Protestants c. is but a needless pomp of words striving to win by a form of discourse that which gladly shall be yielded at the first demand They might all err if they were as many as the Sand on the Sea Shoar if they did not rightly apply the Rule of Holy Scriptures by which as you acknowledge the external Iudge which you seek must proceed As to your demand therefore how you should be sure when and wherein they did and did not err where you should have fixed your foot to forbear to skirmish with your confirmation That though à posse ad esse non valet semper consequentia yet aliquando valet frustra dicitur potentia quae nunquam ducitur in actum To the former whereof I might tell you that without question nunquam valet And to the second that I can very well allow that errandi potentia among Protestants be ever frustra This I say freely That if you come with this resolution to learn nothing by discourse or evidence of Scripture but only by the meer pronouncing of a humane external Judge's Mouth to whom you would yield your understanding in all his determinations If as the Jesuites teach their Scholars you will wholly deny your own judgment and resolve that if this Iudge shall say that is black which appears to your Eyes white you will say it is black too you have posed all the Protestants they cannot tell how to teach you infallibly Withal I must tell you thus much that this preparation of mind in a Scholar as you are in a Minister yea in a Christian that had but learned his Creed much more that had from a Child known the Holy Scriptures that are able to make us wise to salvation through the Faith that is in Christ Iesus were too great weakness and to use the Apostles Phrase childishness of understanding But at length you heard a sound of Harmony and Consent that in the Catholick Church as in Noah 's Ark was infallibility and possibility of salvation which occasioned you to seek out and to enter into this Ark of Noah The sound of Consent and Infallibility is most pleasing and harmonious and undoubtedly ever and only to be found in the Catholick Church to wit in the Rule of Faith and in the Holy Scriptures and such necessary Doctrine as perfectly concordeth with the same But as in Song many discords do pass in smaller Notes without offence of the Ears so should they in smaller matters of Opinion in the Church without the offence of judicious and charitable minds Which yet I speak not to justifie them nay I am verily of the mind That this is the thing that hath marred the Church Musick in both kinds that too much liberty is taken in descant to depart from the Ground and as one saith notae nimium denigrantur The fault of the Italians though they think themselves the only Songsters in the World But to return to you tell me I beseech you good Mr. Waddesworth was this the Harmony that transported you The Pope himself saith I cannot err and to me thou oughtest to have recourse for decision of doubts in matters of Faith And whereas this is not only denyed by Protestants but hath been ever by the French and anciently I am sure by the Spanish lately by some Italian Divines also unless he use due means to find the truth yea whereas it is the issue of all the Controversies of this age in this snare you fastened your Foot This was the Center that settled your Conscience this the solid and firm foundation of your Faith What and did it not move you that some limit this infallibility of the Pope thus If he enter Canonically if he proceed advisedly and maturely using that diligence that is fit to find out the Truth that is as you said before proceeding by the Rule the Scriptures Albeit to the Fathers of the African Council it seemed incredible as they write in their Synodal Epistle to P. Coelestine standing for Appeals to himself that God can inspire the right in tryal to one denying it to many Bishops in a Council Tell us then who made you secure of these things or did you in truth never so much as make question of them but hearing this harmonious sound The Pope is the Infallible Iudge you trusted the new Masters of that side Gregory de Valentia and Bellarmine that whether the Pope in defining do use diligence or no if he do define he shall define infallibly Alas Sir if this were the rest you found for the soale of your Foot instead of moveable Water you fell upon mire and puddle Or rather like to another Dove mentioned in Scripture columba seducta non habens Cor by the most chaffy shrap that ever was set before the Eyes of winged Fowl were brought to the door-fal Excuse my grief mixed I confess with some indignation but more love to you though I thus write Many things there be in Popery inconvenient and to my conceit weakly and ungroundedly affirmed to say no more but this is so absurd and palpable a flattery as to omit to speak of you for my part I cannot be perswaded that Paulus the Fifth believes it himself For consider I pray what needed anciently the Christian Emperours and sometimes at the request of the Bishops of Rome themselves to have gathered together so many Bishops from so divers parts of the World to celebrate Councils if it had been known and believed then that one Mans Sentence
sever not For it is not by humane but râ—ther divine power that spiritual marriage is dissolved when as by translation or cession by the authority of the Bishop of Rome whom it is plain to be the Vicar of Iesus Christ a Bishop is removed from his Church An admirable interpretation of the Text Quos Deus conjunxit by which the Pope not only challengeth that which is proper to Gods judgment only as he saith viz. to dissolve the Bond of spiritual Wedlock but because that is the stronger of carnal it seems also when it shall please him The anointing of a Prince since Christs coming is translated from the Head to the Shoulder by which Principality is fitly designed according to that which is read Factus est principatus super humerum ejus for signifying also whereof Samuel caused the shoulder to be set before Saul Who should ever have understood these Texts if your infallible Interpreter had not declared them But this is nothing yet to the exposition of those Texts which the Pope interprets in his answer to the Emperour of Constantinople as Subditi estote omni humanae Creaturae propter Deum c. He tells him that S. Peter wrote that to his own Subjects to provoke them to the merit of humility For if he had meant thereby to lay the yoke of subjection upon Priests it would follow that every Servant were to rule over them since it is said Omni humanae creaturae After It is not barely set down Regi praecellenti but there is put between perhaps not without cause tanquam And that which follows ad vindictam malefactorum laudem verò bonorum is not to be understood that the King or Emperor hath received the power of the Sword upon good and evil Men save only those who using the sword are committed to his jurisdiction according to that which the Truth saith They which take the Sword shall perish with the Sword For no Man ought or can judge anothers Servant since the Servant according to the Apostle standeth or falleth to his own Lord. For the love of God consider this Interpretation and compare it with S. Chrysostome upon Rom. 13. Nay do but read the Text attentively and judge of the infallibility of your interpreter Straight after he tells the Emperor That he might have understood the prerogative of Priesthood out of that which was said not of every Man but of God not to the King but to the Priest not to one descending of the Royal Stock but of the Priestly Linage of the Priests to wit which were in Anathot Behold I have set thee over Nations and Kingdoms to pull up and destroy to build and to plant See the Prerogative of the Priesthood out of Ieremies calling to be a Prophet O if he had been high Priest This had been a Text for the nonce But he goes on It is said in Gods Law also Diis non detrahes Principem populi tui non maledices Which setting Priests before Kings calls them Gods and the other Princes Compare this exposition with David's and Paul's Psal. 82. and Acts 23.5 and ye shall see how the Interpreter hath hit the mark Again you ought to have known quod fecit Deus duo magna luminaria c. See the Exposition and the difference between the Pope and Kings both in the Text and Gloss. Now although the Gloss-Writer were no excellent Calculator yet out of Clavius the account may be cleared who tells us the Sun exceeds the Moon 6539. times and a Fifth I let pass the collection out of Pasce oves meas that he belongs not to Christs Fold that doth not acknowledge Peter and his Successors his Masters and Pastors out of Quodcunque ligaveris that nothing is excepted Indeed the Pope excepts nothing but looseth Vows Contracts Oaths the Bond of Allegiance and Fealty between Subjects and their Princes The Commandment of Christ Drink ye all of this c. But our Lord expounds himself Iohn 20. Whose sins ye remit they are remitted c. Ex ore sedentis in Throno procedebat gladius bis acutus This is saith the Pope the Sword of Solomon which cuts on both sides giving every Man his own We then who albeit unworthy hold the place of the true Solomon by the favour of God do wisely exercise this Sword when such causes as in our audience are lawfully canvassed we do with Iustice determine This interpretation first corrupts the Text for it hath not out of the Mouth of him that sate on the Throne but that sate on the Horse next it perverts it for it is not the Sword of Iustice but of Christs Word which is more piercing than any two-Edged Sword that issueth out of his Mouth As for that of Iustice he never assumed it but renounced it rather when he said Man who made me a divider to you Luke 12.14 ¶ To prove that in other Regions besides the patrimony of the Church the Pope doth casually exercise temporal Iurisdiction it is said in Deuteronomy Si difficile sit ambiguum c. And because Deuteronomy is by interpretation the second Law Surely by the force of the Word it is proved that what is there decreed should be observed in the New Testament For the place which the Lord did chuse is known to â—e the Apostolick See For when as Peter fleeing went out of the City the Lord minding to call him back to the place he had chosen being asked of him Lord whither goest thou answered I go to Rome to be crucified again The Priests of the Tribe of Levi are the Popes coadjutors The high Priest or Iudge he to whom the Lord said in Peter Quodcunque ligaveris c. His Vicar who is a Priest for ever after the Order of Melchisedeck appointed by God the Iudge of quick and dead He that contemns the Popes Sentence is to be excommunicated for that is the meaning of being commanded to be put to death Doth not this well follow out of the word Deuteronomy And Rome is the place that Christ did choose because he went he said to be crucified there Only there is a scruple of the High Priest for as much as he that is High Priest after Melchisedeck's Order 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hath a Priesthood that passes not into another Heb. 7. He adds there that Paul that he might declare the fulness of power writing to the Corinthians saith Know ye not that ye shall judge the Angels how much more the things of the World Is this then the Popes plenitude of Power to judge secular things or was Corinth the Apostolick See and so many Popes there even of the meanest of the Church What shall we say to that Exposition of the famous Text Tu es Petrus super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam The Lord he saith taking Peter into the fellowship of the undivided Vnity would have him to be
not drawn from any thing à parte rei as what the true Church is what it teacheth or such â—â—ke but from opinion and testimony What Men say of that of Rome and of the reformed Churches c. Now Opinions are no certain grounds of Truth no not in natural and civil matters much less in Religion So this Argument at the most is but Topical and probable Let us see the parts of it And first that ground The testimony of our selves and of our contraries is much more sufficient and certain than to justifie our selves alone Surely neither the one nor the other is sufficient or certain It is true that if other proof fail and we will follow conjectures he is in probability an honester Man that others beside himself say well of than he that alone testifieth of himself And yet according to truth this latter may be a right honest Man and dwell as we say by ill neighbours or where he is not known or requires not the testimony of other Men Whereas the other being indeed a knave is either cunning to conceal it or hath suborned other like himself to say for him or dwels by honest Men that judge and say the best And in this very kind our Saviour attributes so little to testimony as he pronounces a woe to them that all Men speak well of So in our case it is more probable I grant if there were no other Argument to clear it but Opinion and most Voices that you have the true Church and are in the way of salvation than we because we give you a better testimony than you do us But it is possible we are both deceived in our Opinions each of other we through too much charity and you and others through ignorance or malice Herein undoubtedly we have the advantage of you and the rest and do take that course which is more safe and sure to avoid sin that if we do fail of the truth yet we be deceived with the error of Love which as the Apostle saith hopeth all things and is not puffed up We avoid at the least that gulph of rash judgment which me thinks if the case be not too too clear we should all fear With what judgment you judge you shall be judged Thou that judgest another condemnest thy self But that you may a little better consider the weakness of this discourse if the testimony of our selves and our contraries were sufficient and certain to make truth and ever more safe and secure to follow that side which hath that testimony it had been better to have become a Jewish Proâ—elyte in the Apostles times than a Christian For the Christians acknowledged the Jews to be the people of God heirs of the promises and of Christ and stiled them Brethren notwithstanding their zeal to the Ceremonies and Traditions of their Fathers excused their ignorance bare with them laboured to give them content in all things Whereas they to the contrary called those that professed Christ Hereticks and Sectaries accursed them drew them out of their Synagogues scourged them cast them in Prison compelled them to blaspheme As you do now Protestants to abjure though in other cruelties I confess you go far beyond them By like reason a Pagan in S. Augustine's time should rather have made himself a Christian among the Donatists than with the Catholicks For the Catholicks granted the Donatists Baptism to be true accounted them Brethren The Donatists to the contrary renounced their Brother-hood and Baptism both re-baptized such as fell to their side used these forms to their Friends Save thy Soul become a Christian like to those used by your Reconcilers at this day Lastly consider if this ground of the testimony of our contraries for our part and their lack of ours for theirs be sure you have justified the cause of the Protestants in the main Question Which is the better Religion For whatsoever a Protestant holds as of Faith you cannot deny to be good and Catholick nor any Christian Man else For he binds him to his Creed to the Holy Scriptures and goes no further And in these he hath your testimony for him But he denies many things which you believe and accounts them foreign yea repugnant to Faith as the Popes infallibility Transubstantiation Purgatory worshipping of Images invocation of Saints In all these you speak only for your selves in some of these you have not us only but all other Christians your opposites to say nothing of the Jews and Turks whom I might as well chock you withal as you do the Protestants with Anabaptists So by this reason our Profession is more safe and secure and questionless is more Catholick than yours Neither have we in this discourse the Argument only as you see very appliable and favourable to us but which I would entreat you by the way to observe the conclusion it self often granted by moderate and sober Men of your own side viz. That our course is in sundry things more safe than yours As in making no Image of God In trusting only in the merits of Christ. In worshipping none but the Trinity In directing our Prayers to our Lord Jesus Christ alone In allowing Ministers to marry In diverse other Points also many of your side say the same with the Protestants and defend us from the imputations which others of you lay upon us as is shewed in the Catholick Apology by the reverend Bishop of Chester This to the proposition Let us come to the Assumption where you mince too much the Protestants Opinion touching the Church of Rome when you make them say It is peradventure faulty in some things Nay without peradventure they say It is corrupt in Doctrine superstitious and Idolatrous in Religion tyrannical in government defiled in manners from the crown of the Head to the soal of the Foot no soundness in it as the Prophet saith of another like it yet the vital parts not perished ready to dye yet not dead A true Church though neither the Catholick Church nor yet a sound member of the same That also is false in the assumption that the Puritans deny the Church of England to be a true Church Unless the Puritans and Brownists be with you all one which you have made diverse Sects above and then are you to blame as to multiply names whereof I have told you before so now again to consound them What is now the Conclusion It would be more safe and secure to become a Roman Catholick But the Proposition will not infer thus much simply but only in this respect For Topical arguments as you know hold only caeteris paribus We must then inquire if there be no other intrinsical arguments by which it may be discerned whether cause be the better whether pretence to the Church and Truth more just more evident Whether it may be warranted to return to Babel because God hath some people there when as he commands those that are there to come out
can be more fraudulent more sottish And because I have mentioned Gratian his whole compilation is full of falsification and corruption of Antiquity take an example or two in the matter we have in hand The Milevitane and after the African Councils under pain of excommunication prohibit Appeals beyond the Seas Which Canons were made purposely to meet with the usurpations of the Bishops of Rome of which I have spoken somewhat before Now in the citing this Canon Gratian adds this goodly explication nisi forte Romanam sedem appellaverint thus excepting that abuse which these Councils directly sought to prohibite Again S. Augustine to inform a Christian man what Scriptures he should hold for Canonical bids him follow the Authority of the greater part of the Catholick Church amongst which are those quae Apostolicas sedes habere Epistolas accipere meruerunt which had the honour to have the Apostles sit in them and to receive Epistles from them Gratian fits it thus inter quas Scripturas sanc illae sunt quas Apostoliâ—â— sedes habere ab ea alii meruerunt accipere Epistolas And accordingly the title of that Canon is Inter Canonicas The Decretal Epistles are numbred amongst the Canonical Scriptures True it is that in the end of the next Canon Gratian adds a good limitation and worth the remembring that this must be understood of such Decrees in which there is nothing found contrary to the Decrees of the Fathers foregoing nor the Precepts of the Gospel Belike even in Gratian's time it was not holden impossible That in the Sanctions and Decretals of Popes something might be decreed contrary to the Gospel which may be added to your Judges Infallibility which hath been touched before But these be old tricks of the Champions of the Papacy At this day perhaps it is better Yes and that shall ye ununderstand by the Words of the Children of the Church of Rome themselves the Venetians But first ye are to know that among certain Propositions set forth in defence of that State there was one the fourth in number of eight That the Authority promised by our Saviour Christ to S. Peter under the metaphor of the Keyes is meerly Spiritual For confirmation whereof after other proof was said That the Authority of the highest Bishop is over Sin and over Souls only according to the words of that Prayer of the Church about S. Peter qui B. Petro animas ligandi atque solvendi Pontificium tradidisti Cardinal Bellarmine undertook to answer these Propositions and coming to this place he saith That peradventure Gods providence to take away such deceipts whereby the Author of these Propositions would deceive the simple with the words of the holy Church misunderstood inspired into the Reformers of the Breviary that they should take out of that Prayer the word animas as anciently it was not there nor ought to be because that Prayer was formed out of the words of the Gospel Quodcunque ligaveris quodcunque solveris Now mark the Rejoinder that is made to him by Iohannes Marsilius who numbering up his errors in the defence of every Proposition roundly tells him Erra XIV perche dice c. He errs in the fourteenth place for that he saith That those which have taken out of the Breviary the word animas were inspired by the Holy Ghost I know not whether the Holy Ghost be the Author of Discord This I know well that one of his Gifts and of his Fruits is Peace Those which made that Prayer had this intention to explain the Words Quodcunque ligaveris with the Word animas by that Text which explaineth them quorum remiseritis peccata sins being in the Soul and not in the body left any should believe that the Pope were Dominus in temporalibus spiritualibus of Goods of Bodies and of Souls and that he might loose and bind every thing as it seems the L. Cardinal believeth And they explained them with the Word animas by which explication a remedy is put unto all those discords which may arise between the Pope and Princes de meo tuo Wheras those which have lately taken it away out of the Breviary have anew stirred up occasion of discords and contentions Besides that it is a thing known of all Men that in the Books of the Councils of the Canons of other Doctors in a word even in the very Breviaries and Missals there have been and are taken away those things which are in favour of Princes of the Laity to see if at length there might be established the opinion de illimitata Potestate Pontificis in temporalibus So as he that compares together the Books printed in the year 30. in 50. and those at this day as well of the Councils as others evidently perceives the vintage that marvail it is that we post vindemiam have found some few Clusters for the defence of our gracious Prince This is a means if it go on further to make all writings to lose their credit and to ruine the Church of God Be it spoken by the occasion that the Lord Cardinal hath given me thereof and for charities sake and for the desire that these writings be no more touched which be also said with all humility and reverence He errs in the fifteenth place for that he saith that in the ancient Breviaries there was not the word animas And I have seen Breviaries written with pen above 200 years ago and printed above an hundred in them is the word animas and if it were not yet ought it to be put in to take away the occasions of discords Thus he there As for the Prayer corrected or corrupted rather if you look the old Breviaries yea even that set forth by Pius the Fifth printed by Plantine with the Priviledge of the Pope and his Catholick Majesty Anno 77. upon the nine and twentieth of Iune ye shall find it to run thus Deus qui B. Petro Apostolo tuo collatis clavibus regni Coelestis animas ligandi atque solvendi Pontificium tradidisti concede ut intercessionis ejus auxilio peccatorum nostrorum nexibus liberemur Per Dominum Now in the late correction Animas is left out and we understand the Reason In the end of the same Book there is an Advertisement to the Reader the beginning whereof I will not stick to set down verbatim it is this Because in this Defence I have often said that Authors are made to recant and that out of their Books many things are taken away sincerely said in favour of the power of Temporal Princes to establish by these means the Opinion De suprema authoritate Papae in temporalibus I have thought good to advise the Reader that the quotations by me brought are taken ad verbum out of those Books which are incorrupt and contain the opinion of the Authors sincerely And that the more ancient the Copies be and further from these our times so much the
better they be And in particular I desire that he be advertised that the Cap. Novit de judiciis printed in Rome the year 1575. by Joseph de Angelis with licence of Superiours is the text which was followed by the Author of the eight Positions and by me which contains sincerely the opinion of Navarrus and of the Parisians Which in the Books printed since is changed in such manner as it is no more the same but is become the contrary to wit that of Cajetane c. Tell me good Mr. Waddesworth in the sight of God what is fraud if this be not And thus not only the Authors of this Age any way inclining to reformation as Erasmus Rhenanus Cassander Ferus but Vives Faber Cajetane Pol. Virgil Guicciardine Petrarch Dante yea Authors of six or seven hundred years old are set to School to learn the Roman Language and agree with the Trent Faith For it is not the Authority and Monarchy of the Pope alone that is sought though that be Summa summarum whereunto all comes at last but no voyce must be heard dissenting from that which he teaches Therefore it is that Bertramus Presbyter is appointed by your Spanish Index printed at Madrid to be wholly abolished The former had catechized him to say instead of visibiliter invisibiliter with many other pretty explications as where he saith the Elements in the Lords Supper Secundum creaturarum substantiam quod prius fuerant ante consecrationem hoc post consistant the explication is secundum externas species Sacramenti But the surest way was to take him clean away And so indeed in the Bibliotheca Patrum he is and that purposely as Marguerinus de la Bigne confesseth in his Preface The Ancient Fathers are perhaps free For the Council of Trent appointed that in the writings of the ancient Catholicks nothing should be changed save whereby the fraud of Hereticks a manifest error is crept in But who shall be the Judge of that the Inquisitors and Censors themselves For my part I cannot say that I have spent many hours in the tryal of this point nor have I had ancient Copies thereto requisite But I will intreat you to consider with me one example or rather two or three in one Father and in the matter that I named whereby you may guess at the rest In S. Cyprian's Works imprinted at Rome by P. Manutius sent for to Venice by Pius the Fourth to set forth the Fathers as himself saith most perfectly cleansed from all spots the Epistle of Firmilianus Bishop of Caesarea beginning Accepimus per Rogatianum is wholly left out and Pamelius thinks purposely and adds perhaps it had been more wisdom it had been never set out at all S Cyprian was not of that mind who translated it into Latin as the stile it self witnesses and Pamelius also is enforced to confess The matter is it too quick and vehement against Stephanus Bishop of Rome He saith he is moved with just indignation at the manifest folly of Stephanus that boasting so much of the place of his Bishoprick and that he hath the succession of Peter upon whom the foundations of the Church were set brings in many other Rocks c. He saith he hath stirred up contentions and discords throughout the Churches of the whole World Bids him not deceive himself he hath made himself a Schismatick by separating himself from the Communion of the Ecclesiastical Vnity for while he thinks he can separate all from his Communion he hath separated himself only from all He taxes him for calling S. Cyprian a false Christ a false Apostle and a deceitful workman which being privy to himself that these were his own due preventingly he objected to another No marvel if this gear could not pass the Press at Rome In S. Cyprians Epistle De Vnitate Ecclesiae these Words Primatus Petro datur c. and after Vnam Cathedram constituit and again Et Cathedra una are foisted into the Text in that Roman edition In that of Pamelius also besides these another clause is added forsooth out of Gratian and a Copy of the Cambron Abby Qui Cathedram Petri super quam fundata est Ecclesia deserit These patches being all left out the sense is nevertheless compleat and perfect And for the last which speaks most for the Popes Chair the Supervisors themselves of the Canon Law by the commandment of Gregory the Thirteenth acknowledge that in eight Copies of Cyprian entire in the Vaticane Library this Sentence is not found But besides these there is one wherein his opuscula alone are contained and another at S. Saviours in Bologna in which it is found But what account they make of it appears by this that supplying the whole sentence in another place of Gratian they leave it out Wherein as their Conscience is to be commended and Manutius his modesty or theirs who surveyed that Edition that would not follow one Copy against eight so is Pamelius's boldness to be corrected that out of one and that not fully agreeing with Gratian neither shames not as himself sayes veriti non sumus to farce in this reading into the Text against all the rest Printed and Manuscript which he used above twenty in number as he sets them down in a Catalogue in the beginning of his Edition It is now little more than two hundred years ago that Frier Thomas of Walden wrote against Witcleff He in the second Book of his first Tome the first Article and second Chapter cites this very place of Cyprian and cites it to fortifie Witcleff's assertion of his own mind For having recited Witcleff's Words he concludes them thus Haec ibi and then proceeds Addamus nos quod Cyprianus dicit omnes Apostolos pares fuisse potestate honore Addamus quod Hieronymus dicit super omnes Apostolos ex aequo fortitudo solidatur Ecclesiae c. Yet neither in that Chapter nor in that whole discourse doth he once mention these Words now conveyed into Cyprian nor any where else that I can find in all his Work though he cite this Tractate often under the name of Liber contra Haereticos Schismaticos How fit had it been to answer the objection out of Cyprian by Cyprian if he had not found that Gratian after his manner had been too bold or negligent in this passage The same Author in his third Tome De Sacramentalibus Doct. 10. cites a long place out of this same Treatise beginning at those words An esse sibi cum Christo videtur qui adversum Sacerdotem Christi facit c. Again Cap. 81. two places one immediately before the Sentences charged with those former words another after The one beginning Loquitur Dominus ad Petrum Ego tibi dico quia â—tu es Petrus c. The other Vnitatem tenere firmiter vendicare debemus c. Certainly unless Waldensis meant by faint-pleading to betray the cause he undertook he would never have
use any more Words Believe then if you please that the Commemoration of Christs Sacrifice in the Lords Supper or the Oblations of the faithful are to be made for all that decease after Baptism in the attempting of whatsoever sin they dye yea suppose in final impenitence of any deadly crime That such as be damned may thereby have their damnation made more tolerable Believe that without any impropriety of Speech the same form of Words may be a thanksgiving for one and an appeasing of Gods wrath for another Believe also if you can beieve what you will that S. Tecla delivered the Soul of Falconilla out of Hell and S. Gregory the Soul of Trajan and that as may seem saying Mass for him sith he was forbidden thenceforth to offer any Host for any wicked Man Believe that Macarius continually praying for the Dead and very desirous to know whether his Prayers did them any good had answer by miracle from the Scull of a dead Man an Idolater that by chance was tumbled in the way O Macarius when thou offerest Prayers for the Dead we feel some ease for the time Believe that on Easter even all the damned Spirits in Hell keep Holy day and are free from their torments S. Augustine such is his modesty will give you leave to believe this as well as Purgatory if you please as he is not unwilling to give as large scope to other Mens Opinions as may be so they reverse not the plain and certain grounds of Holy Scripture In all these you may if you please follow Authors also as S. Damascene Paladius Prudentius Sigebert and others But give the same liberty to others that ye take Compel no Man to follow your Opinion if he had rather follow Danaeus's Reasons For my self I would sooner with S. Augustine himself whose words touching S. Cyprian Danaeus here borrowed confess this to be naevum candidissimi pectoris coopertum ubere Charitatis than be bound to justifie his conceit touching the commemoration of the Dead in the Lords Supper And as he saith of S. Cyprian so would I add Ego hujus libri Authoritate non teneor quia literas Augustini non ut Canonicas habeo sed eas ex Canonicis considero quod in iis divinarum Scripturarum authoritati congruit cum laude ejus accipio quod non congruit cum pace ejus respuo Which Words I do the rather set down that they may be Luthers justification also against F. Parsons who thinks he hath laid sore to his charge when he cites very solemnly his Epistle ad Equitem Germ. Anno Domini 1521. where he saith He was tyed by the authority of no Father though never so holy if he were not approved by the judgment of Holy Scripture Surely this is not to deny and contemn as he calls it or as you to controll the Fathers to account them subject to humane infirmities which themselves acknowledge But the contrary is to boast against the Truth to seek to forejudge it with their mistakings which needs not so much as require their Testimonies I will forbear to multiply words about that whether the testimonies of Antiquity which favour the Protestants be many or few whether they do indeed so or onely seem prima facie whether they be wrested or to the purpose whether all this may not by juster reason be affirmed of the passages cited by the Romanists out of Antiquity setting aside matters of ceremony and government which your self confess by and by may be divers without impeaching unity in Faith and opinions ever to be subjected to the trial of Scriptures by their own free consent and desire Judge by an instance or two that this matter may not be a meer skirmish of generalities Tertullian in his latter times whether as Saint Hierome writes through the envy and reproach of the Roman Clergy or out of the too much admiring chastity and fasting became a Montanist and wrote a Book de Pudicitia blaming the reconciling of Adulterers and Fornicators In the very entrance almost thereof he hath these words Audio etiam edictum esse propositum quidem peremptorium Pontifex scil Maximus Episcopus Episcoporum dicit Ego moechiae fornicationis delicta poenitentia functis dimitto Pamelius in his note upon this place writes thus Bene habet annotatu dignum quod etiam jam in haerest constitutus adversus Ecclesiam scribens Pontificem Romanum Episcopum Episcoporum nuncupet infra Cap. 13. bonum Pastorem benedictum Papam Cap. 21. Apostolicum Thus Pamelius and presently lanches forth into the Priviledges of the See of Rome and brings a number of testimonies for that forgery of Constantines donation The like note he hath in the life of Tertullian where he makes the Pope thus set forth the former Edict to have been Zephyrinus's quem saith he Pontificem Maximum etiam jam haereticus Episcopum Episcoporum appellat Baronius also makes no small account of this place and saith The title of the Pope is here to be noted And indeed prima facie as you say they have reason But he that shall well examine the whole web of Tertullians discourse shall find that he speaks by a most bitter and scornful Ironie as Elias doth of Baal when he saith he is a God The word scilicet might have taught them thus much Yea the title Pontifex Maximus which in those days and almost two ages after was a Pagan term never attributed to a Christian Bishop first laid down by Gratian the Emperour as Baronius also notes in the year of our Lord 383. because it savoured of Heathenish superstition though it had been as a title of Royalty used by the former Christian Emperours till that time This title I say might have made them perceive Tertullians meaning unless the immoderate desire of exalting the Papacy did so blind their eyes that seeing they saw and yet perceived not In the same character though with more mildness and moderation is the same title for the other part of it used by Saint Cyprian in his Vote in the Council of Carthage Neque n. quisquam nostrum se esse Episcopum Episcoporum constituit aut tyrannico terrore ad obsequendi necessitatem Collegas suos adigit Bellarmine saith he speaks here of those Bishops that were in the Council of Carthage and that the Bishop of Rome is not included in that sentence who is indeed Bishop of Bishops What! and doth he tyrannously inforce his Colleagues to obedience also For it is plain that Cyprian joyns these together the one as the presumptuous title the other as the injurious act answering thereto which he calls plain tyranny And as plain it is out of Firmilianus's Epistle which I vouched before that Stephanus Bishop of Rome heard ill for his arrogancy and presuming upon the place of his Bishoprick Peters Chair to sever himself from so many Churches and break the bond of peace now with the Churches of the
by the learned and truly noble Lord of Plessis in his Mysterium iniquitatis But his Book I suppose you cannot view and it would require a just volume to shew it though but shortly It shall be therefore if you will the task of another time And yet because I do not love to leave things wholly at random consider a few Instances in some of these Pope Boniface III. obtained that proud and ambitious Title of Oecumenical so much detested by S. Gregory Pope Constantine and Gregory II. revolted Italy from the Greek Emperors Obedience forbidding to pay Tribute or obey them Pope Zachary animated Pipine High Steward of France to depose Chilperick his Lord and dispensed with the Oaths of his Subjects Pope Stephen II. most treacherously and unjustly perswaded the same Pipine not to restore the Exarchate of Ravenna to the Emperor after he had recovered it from Astulfus King of Lombards but to give it to him Pope Nicholas II. and Gregory VI. parted the prey with the Normans in Calabria and Apulia creating them Dukes thereof to hold the Constantinople's Country in Vassalage of them This latter also was the first as all Historians accord that ever attempted to depose the Emperor against whom he most impiously stirred up his own Children which most lamentably brought him to his end Pope Paschal II. would not suffer for the full accomplishment of this Tragedy his Son to bury him Pope Adrian IV. demanded Homage of the Emperor Frederick Alexander III. trod on his neck Celestine III. crowned Henry VI. with his Feet Innocent IV. stirred up Frederick II. his own Servants to poison him practised with the Sultan of Aegypt to break with him This is that Innocent of whose Extortions Matthew Paris relates so much in our Story whom the learned zealous and Holy Bishop of Lincoln on his Death-bed proved to be Antichrist and in a Vision stroke so with his Crosier-staff that he died Boniface VIII challenged both Swords pretended to be superior to the King of France in Temporal things also Clement V. would in the vacancy of the Empire that all the Cities and Countries thereof should be under his disposition made the Duke of Venice Dandalus couch under his Table with a Chain on his neck like a Dog e're he would grant Peace to the Venetians This Clement V. commanded the Angels to carry their Souls to Heaven that should take the Cross to fight for the Holy Land What shall I say more I am weary with writing thus much and yet in all this I do not insist upon private and personal Faults Blasphemies Perjuries Necromancies Murthers barbarous Cruelties even upon one another alive and dead nor on Whoredoms Incests Sodomies open Pillages besides the perpetual Abuse of the Censures of the Church I insist not upon these more than you did upon King Henry's Passions I tell you not of him that called the Gospel a Fable or another that instituted his Dei's to strangle Sin like Christ's Blood Of him that dispensed with one to marry his own Sister for the Uncle to marry with the Neece or a Woman to marry two Brothers a Man two Sisters by Dispensation is no rare thing at this day The Faculty to use Sodomy the Story of Pope Joan are almost incredible and yet they have Authors of better Credit than Bolseck It may be said that Iohn XXII called a Devil incarnate that Alexander VI. the Poisoner of his Cardinals the Adulterer of his Son-in-laws Bed incestuous Defiler of his own Daughter and Rival in that villany to his Son sinned as Men which empeacheth not the Credit of their Office That Paulus V. Vice-deus takes too much upon him when he will be Pope-almighty but the Chair is without Error Wherein not to insist for the present but admitting it as true that wickedness of mens Persons doth not impeach the Holiness of their Functions which they have received of God nor make Gods Ordinances as his Word and Sacraments of none effect But tell me for Gods love Master Waddesworth is it likely that this Monarchy thus sought thus gotten thus kept thus exercised is of God Are these men that wholly forsaking the feeding of the Flock of God dream of nothing now but Crowns and Scepters serve to the Church to no use in the World unless it be to break the ancient Canons and oppress with their Power all that shall but utter a free word against their Ambition and Tyranny are they I will not say with you good Heads of Gods Church but Members of it and not rather Limbs of Satan Consider those Texts My Kingdom is not of this World Vos autem non sic Consider the Charge which S. Peter gives to his fellow Presbyters 1 Pet. 5.2 3 4. Now I beseech our Lord deliver his Church from this Tyranny and bless you from being a Member of such a Head CHAP. XI Of lack of Succession Bishops true Ordinations Orders Priesthood I Come now to your Motive from Succession Where I marvel first that leaving the Succession of Doctrine which is far more proper and intrinsecal to the Churches being you stand upon that of Persons and Offices Yea and about them too immediately pass from that which is of Essence to the external Formalities in Consecration and Ordination according to the ancient Councils Have you forgotten what you said right now that matters of Ceremony and Government are changeable Yea but in France Holland and Germany they have no Bishops First what if I should defend they have because a Bishop and a Presbyter are all one as S. Ierom maintains and proves out of Holy Scripture and the use of Antiquity Of which Judgment as Medina confesseth are sundry of the ancient Fathers both Greek and Latin S. Ambrose Augustine Sedulius Primasius Chrysostome Theodoret Oecumenius and Theophylact which point I have largely treated of in another place against him that undertook Master Alablaster's Quarrel Besides those Churches in Germany have those whom they call Superintendents and general Superintendents as out of Doctor Bancroft by the Testimony of Zanchius and sundry German Divines you might perceive Yea and where these are not as in Geneva and the French Churches yet there are saith Zanchius usually certain chief Men that do in a manner bear all the sway as if order it self and necessity led them to this course And what are these but Bishops indeed unless we shall wrangle about names which for reason of State those Churches were to abstain from As for that you say Lay-men intermeddle there with the making of their Ministers if you mean the election of them they have reason for anciently the People had always a right therein as S. Cyprian writes to the Churches of Leon and Astorga there in Spain Plebs ipsa maxime habet potestatem vel eligendi dignos Sacerdotes vel indignos recusandi and in sundry places of Italy this usage doth continue to this day If ye mean it in Ordination ye are deceived and wrong these Churches
which if it be put to be a sign of a holy thing these be both so and a many more than seven If a Seal of the New Testament so are there but those two which we properly call Sacraments Baptism and the Lords Supper In which last as to the intention of Sacrificing surely if ye allow the Doctrine of the Master of the Sentences That it is called a Sacrifice and Oblation which is offered and consecrated by the Priest because it is a Memory and Representation of the true Sacrifice and holy Immolâ—tion made on the Altar of the Cross. And that Christ once dyed on the Cross and there was offered up in himself but is daily offered up in a Sacrament because in the Sacrament there is a remembrance â—f that which was onceâ—done which he there confirms by the Authorities of the Fathers cited by Gratian in the Canon Law If this Doctrine I say may yet pass for good and this be the Churches intention we want not this Intention of sacrificing Add to this the Confession of Melchior Canus who saith the Lutherans do not wholly deny the Sacrifice but grant a Sacrifice of Thanksgiving which they call the Eucharist they will have none for sin which they call propitiatory If he had put hereto unless it be a Mysterie he had rightly expressed the Opinion of the Protestants Thirdly You object We want the matter and Form with which Orders should be given Namely for the matter in Priesthood the delivery of the Patena with Bread and the Chalice with Wine In Deaconship the delivery of the Book of the Gospel c. By which reason the seven first Deacons had no true Ordination for then there was no Gospel written to be delivered them Nor those Priests whom the Pope shall make by his sole Word saying Esto Sacerdos Whom notwithstanding sundry famous Canonists hold to be well and lawfully ordained and Innocentius himself saith That if these Forms of Ordination were not found out any other Ordainer might in like manner make Priests with those Words or the like for as much as these Forms were in process of time appointed by the Church And if we list to seek for these metaphysical Notions of Matter and Form in Ordination which at the most can be but by Analogy how much better might we assign the persons deputed to sacred Functions to be the matter as those that contract are by your selves made the matter in Matrimony and the imposing of Hands with the expressing the Authority and Office given to be the Form In Dionysius though falsely called the Areopagite yet an antient Author you shall find nothing else nor which I may tell you by the way any other Orders save Bishops Priests and Deacons And to come to that wherein you say we fail most of all the substantial Form of Priesthood tell me ingenuously good Master Waddesworth how do you know that our Lord Jesus Christ made his Apostles or they other Priests with this Form which hath no mention or footstep in the Gospels or otherwhere in Holy Scripture Nor so much as in the Council of Carthage that from whence the manner of giving other Orders is fetched nor in Gratian nor in any other antient Author that I can find save in the Pontifical only And is the present Pontifical of such Authority with you as the Form of Priesthood the substantial Form can subsist in no other Words than those that be there expressed To omit the late turkesing whereof consider what Augustinus Patritius writes in his Preface before that which at Pope Innocent the Eighth his commandment he patched together That there were scarce two or three Books found that delivered the same thing Quot libri tot varietates Ille deficit hic superabundat alius nihil omnino de eâ re habet raro aut nunquam conveniunt saepe obscuri implicati Librariorum vitio plerunque mendosi And in truth in this your essential Form of Priesthood the old Pontificals before that which he set forth either had other Words at the giving of the Chalice and Paten as may seem or wanted both that Form and the Matter also together The Master of the Sentences declaring the manner of the Ordination of Priests and the reason why they have the Chalice with Wine and Paten with Hosts given unto them saith it is Vt per hoc sâ—iant se accepisse potestatem placabiles Deo hostias offerendi Hugo in like manner Accipiunt Calicem cum vino Patenam cum Hostia de manu Episcopi quatenus potestatem se accepisse cognoscant placabiles Deo Hostias offerendi Stephanus Eduensis Episcopus in the same Words Datur eis Calix cum Vino Patena cum Hostia in quo traditur iis potestas ad offerendum Deo placabiles Hostias So Iohannes Ianuensis in his Summ entitled Catholicon verbo Presbyter If you ascend to the higher times of Rabanus Alcuinus Isidâ—rus you shall find that they mention no such matter of delivering Chalice or Paten or Words used at the delivery and no marvel â—or in the Canons of the fourth Council of Carthage they found none Dionysiâ—s falsly called Arcopagita whom I mentioned before setting down the manner of Ordaining in his time The Priest upon â—oth his knees before the Altar with the Bishâ—ps right-Hand upon his Head is on this manner sanctified by his Consecrator with holy Invocations Here is all save that he saith after he hath described that also which pertains unto the Deacon that every one of them is signed with the Cross when the Bishop blesseth them and proclaimed and saluted by the Consecrator himself and every one of that sacred Order that is present The Greek Scholiast very lively shews the meaning and manner of this proclaiming He saith The Ordainer pronounceth by name when he signeth him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Such a Man is consecrated from being Presbyter to be a Bishop in the name of the Father c. and so in the Presbyter and Deacon Clemens Romanus if F. Turrian and the rest of the Romish Faction deceive us not or be not deceived themselves in attributing to him the eight Books of the Apostolick Constitutions that bear his name cuts the matter yet more short and without either crossing or proclaiming appoints the Bishop to lay his Hands upon him in the presence of the Presbytery and the Deacons using a Prayer which you may see at length in him for the increase of the Church and of the number of them that by Word and Work may edifie it For the party elected unto the Office of Priesthood that being filled with the operations of Healing and Word of Doctrine he may instruct Gods people with meekness and serve him sincerely with a pure mind and willing heart and perform holy Services without spot for his people through his Christ to whom c. These last Words which are in the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Carolus Bovius
Bishop of Ostuna interpretâ— Sacrificia pro populo tâ—o immaculata perficiat Marvel that he added not tam pro vivis quam pro defâ—nctis Sure if S. Paul Rom. 15.16 had not added the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he had sacrificed also This was the antient and Apostolick manner of Ordination if the Author be worthy of credit But that ye may perceive what tampering there hath been to bring Ordinations to the Form which the present Pontifical prescribes consider with me the Words of Amalarius Bishop of Triers in his second Book de Ecclesiast Officiis where in the Office of the Subdeacon he thus writes Miror quâ de re sumptus usus in Ecclesia c. I marvel whence the use was taken in our Church that very often the Subdeacon should read the Lesson at Mass since this is not found committed unto him by the Ministry given him in Consecration nor by the Canonical Writings nor by his name And streight after Nam primaevo tempore For in antient time the Deacon read not the Gospel which was not yet written but after it was enacted by our Fathers That the Deacons should read the Gospel they appointed also that the Subdeacon should read the Epistle or Lesson It appears then that in Amalarius time who lived with Charles the Great and Lewis his Son that ridiculous Form was not in the Pontifical where the Book of the Epistles is given to the Subdeacons and power to read them in the holy Church of God as well for the Quick as the Dead The same Author coming to speak of Deacons telleth of their consecration by Prayer and imposition of Hands and confuteth that in the present Pontifical which he saith he found in a little Book of Holy Orders made he knows not by what Author That the Bishop alone should lay Hands on the Deacon At last he adds There is one Ministry added to the Deacon viz. to read the Gospel which he saith doth well befit him quia Minister est But of the delivery of the Book of the Gospels with authority to read the Gospel for the Quick and Dead not one Word In the next Chapter of Presbyters he expounds their name and saith further hunc morem tenent Episcopi nostri Our Bishops have this Fashion they anoint the Hands of Presbyters with Oyl which Ceremony he declares touching imposition of Hands upon them he remits us to that he said before in the Deacon Then he shews out of Ambrose and Hierom That these are all one Order with Bishops and ought to govern the Church in common like Moses with the seventy Elders As for delivery of Chalice and Wine or Paten and Host with power to sacrifice so well for the Quick as the Dead he makes no mention Judge you whether these were thought to be the matter and essential Form of Priesthood in his time Yet one Author more will I name in this matter not only because he is a famous Schoolman and one of Luthers first Adversaries and therefore ought to be of more account with that side but because he professeth the end of his writing to be circa Sacramentum ordinis cautos reddere ne pertinax quisquam aut levis sit circa modum tradendi aut recipiendi ordines It is Cardinal Cajetane in the second Tome of his Opuscula Tit. De modo tradendi seu recipiendi Ordines Read the whole where these things I observe for our present purpose 1. If all be gathered together which the Pontificals or which Reason or Authority hath delivered the nature of all the rest of the Orders except Priesthood only will appear very uncertain 2. The lesser Orders and Subdeaconship according to the Master of the Sentences were instituted by the Church 3. The Deacons instituted by the Apostles Acts 6. were not Deacons of the Altar but of the Tables and Widows 4. In Deaconship there seems to be no certain Form for according to the old Pontificals the laying of Hands upon the Deacon hath no certain Form of Words but that Prayer Emitte quaesumus in eos S. Sanctum Which according to the new Pontificals is to be said after the imposition of Hands For the giving of the Book of the Gospels hath indeed a form of Words but that impresseth not the Character for before any Gospel was written the Apostles ordained Deacons by imposition of Hands 5. In the Subdeaconship also there is no Pontifical which hath not the matter without Form viz. the delivery of the empty Chalice c. These things with more which he there sets down he would have to serve to the instruction of the learned touching the uncertainty of this whole matter to teach Men to be wise to sobriety that is every Man to be content with the accustomed Pontifical of the Church wherein he is ordained And if ought be omitted of those things which be added out of the new Pontificals as for example that the Book of the Epistles was not given with those Words Take Authority to read the Epistles as well for the Quick as the Dead there is no need of supplying this omission by a new Ordination for such new additions make no new Law Learn then of your own Cajetane that the new additions of delivery of the Chalice with Wine and Paten with Hosts and authority to offer sacrifice for the Quick and the Dead make no new Law Learn to be content with the Pontifical of the Church wherein you were ordained Wherein first is verbatim all that which your Pontificals had well taken out of the holy Words of our Saviour Accipe Spiritum Sanctum quorum remiseris peâ—cata remittuntur eis quorum retinueris retentâ— sunt Which methinks you should rather account to contain the essential Form of Priesthood than the former both because they are Christs own Word and joyned with that Ceremony of laying on Hands which antiently denominated this whole action and do express the worthiest and principallest part of your Commission which the Apostle calls the Ministry of Reconciliation 2 Cor. 5.18 19. Then because this Office is not only deputed to consecrate the Lords Body but also to preach and baptize which in your Pontifical is wholly omitted in a larger and more convenient Form is added out of S. Paul 1 Cor. 4.1 and be thou a faithful Dispenser of the Word of God and of his holy Sacraments In the name of the Father c. As to that you add That we offer no Sacrifice for the Quick and Dead and therefore well may be called Ministers as all Lay-men are but are no Priests I have met with sundry that pull this Rope as strongly the other way and affirm that because by the very Form of your Ordination you are appointed Sacrificers for the Quick and the Dead well may ye be Mass-Priests as ye are called but Ministers of the New Testament after S. Paul 's Phrase ye are none For that Office stands principally in preaching the Word whereof in
your Ordination there is no Word said And as little there is in Scripture of your Sacrifice which makes Christ not to be a Priest after the order of Melchisedeck c. with much more to this purpose Where my Defence for your Ministry hath been this That the Form Receive the Holy Ghost whose sins ye remit they are remitted c. doth sufficiently comprehend the Authority of preaching the Gospel Use you the same equity towards us and tell those hot Spirits among you that stand so much upon formalities of Words That to be a Dispenser of the Word of God and his holy Sacraments is all the duty of Priesthood And to you I add further that if you consider well the Words of the Master of the Sentences which I vouched before how that which is consecrated of the Priest is called a Sacrifice and Oblation because it is a Memorial and Representation of the true Sacrifice and holy Offering made on the Altar of the Cross and joyn thereto that of the Apostle that by that one Offering Christ hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified and as he saith in another place through that Blood of his Cross reconciled unto God all things whether in Earth or in Heaven you shall perceive that we do offer Sacrifice for the Quick and Dead remembring representing and mystically offering that sole Sacrifice for the Quick and Dead by the which all their sins are meritoriously expiated and desiring that by the same we and all the Church may obtain remission of sins and all other Benefits of Christs Passion To the Epilogue therefore of this your last Motive I say in short Sith we have no need of Subdeaconship more than the Churches in the Apostles times and in truth those whom we call Clerks and Sextons perform what is necessary in this behalf Sith we have Canonical Bishops and lawful Succession Sith we neither want due intention to depute Men to Ecclesiastical Functions nor matter or Form in giving Priesthood deriving from no Man or Woman the Authority of Ordination but from Christ the Head of the Church you have alledged no sufficient Cause why we should not have true Pastors and consequently a true Church in England CHAP. XII Of the Conclusion Mr. Waddesworth's Agonies and Protestation c. YEt by these you say and many other Arguments you were resolved in your understanding to the contrary It may well be that your Understanding out of its own heedless hast as that of our first Parents while it was at the perfectest was induced into error by resolving too soon out of seeming Arguments and granting too forward assent For surely these which you have mentioned could not convince it if it would have taken the pains to examine them throughly or had the patience to give unpartial hearing to the Motives on the other side But as if you triumphed in your own conquest and captivity you add that which passeth yet all that hitherto you have set down viz. That the Church of Rome was and is the only true Church because it alone is Antient Catholick and Apostolick having Succession Vnity and Visibility in all Ages and Places Is it only antient To omit Ierusalem are not that of Antioch where the Disciples were first called Christians and Alexandria Ephesus Corinth and the rest mentioned in the Scriptures antient also and of Antioch antienter than Rome Is it Catholick and Apostolick only Do not these and many more hold the Catholick Faith received from the Apostles as well as the Church of Rome For that it should be the Vniversal Church is all one as ye would say the part is the whole one City the World Hath it only succession where to set aside the enquiry of Doctrine so many Simoniacks and Intruders have ruled as about fifty of your Popes together were by your own Mens Confession Apostatical rather than Apostolical Or Unity where there have been thirty Schisms and one of them which endured fifty years long and at last grew into three Heads as if they would share among them the triple Crown And as for dissentions in Doctrine I remit you to Master Doctor Halls peace of Rome wherein he scores above three hundred mentioned in Bellarmine alone above three-score in one only head of Penance out of Navarrus As to that addition in all Ages and places I know not what to make of it nor where to refer it Consider I beseech you with your wonted moderation what you say for sure unless you were beguiled I had almost said bewitched you could never have resolved to believe and profess that which all the World knows to be as false I had well nigh said as God is true touching the extent of the Romish Church to all Ages and places Concerning the agonies you passed I will say only thus much if being resolved though erroneously that was truth you were withholden from professing it with worldly respects you did well to break through them all But if besides these there were doubt of the contrary as methinks needs must be unless you could satisfie your self touching those many and known Exceptions against the Court of Rome which you could not be ignorant of take heed lest the rest insuing these agonies were not like Sampsons sleeping on Dalilahs knees while the Locks of his Strength were shaven whereupon the Lord departing from him he was taken by the Philistins had his Eyes put out and was made to grind in the Prison But I do not despair but your former resolutions shall grow again And as I do believe your religious asseveration that for very fear of damnation you forsook us which makes me to have the better hope and opinion of you for that I see you do so seriously mind that which is the end of our whole life so I desire from my Heart the good hope of salvation you have in your present way may be as happy as your fear I am perswaded was causeless For my part I call God to record against mine own Soul that both before my going into Italy and since I have still endeavoured to find and follow the truth in the Points controverted between us without any earthly respect in the World Neither wanted I fair opportunity had I seen it on that side easily and with hope of good entertainment to have adjoyned my self to the Church of Rome after your example But to use your words as I shall answer at the dreadful day of judgement I never saw heard or read any thing which did convince me nay which did not finally confirm me daily more and more in the perswasion that in these differences it rests on our part Wherein I have not followlowed humane conjectures from foreign and outward things as by your leave methinks you do in these your motives whereby I protest to you in the sight of God I am also much comforted and assured in the possession of the truth but the undoubted Voice of God in his Word which is more
he might be the instrument of bringing about a great change even at Rome went thither He was at first well received by the Pope himself But he happened to say of Cardinal Bellarmine that had writ against him That he had not answered his Arguments Upon which a complaint was carried to the Pope as if he had been still of the same mind in which he was when he published his Books He excused himself and said That though Bellarmine had not answered his Arguments yet he did not say they were unanswerable and he offered to answer them himself if they would allow him time for it But this excuse was not accepted so he was cast into the Inquisition but was never brought to any Tryal He was poysoned not long after and his Body was cast out at a Window and all his Goods were confiscated to the Pope This was the tragical end of that great but inconstant Man If he had had as good a Soul as he had a great understanding together with vast learning considering his education and other disadvantages he had deserved to have been reckoned among the greatest Men of his Age. In his Fate it appeared how foolishly credulous Vanity makes a Man since he that was an Italian born and knew the Court of Rome so well could be wrought on so far as to believe that they were capable of pardoning and promoting him after the mischief he had done their Cause This account of that matter my Author had from Master Bedell's own Mouth But now Mr. Bedell had finished one of the Scenes of his life with great honour The most considerable addition he made to his learning at Venice was in the improvements in the Hebrew in which he made a great progress by the assistance of R. Leo that was the chief Chacham of the Jewish Synagogue there From him he learn'd their way of pronunciation and some other parts of Rabbinical learning but in exchange of it he communicated to him that which was much more valuable the true understanding of many passages in the Old Testament with which that Rabbi expressed himself often to be highly satisfied And once in a solemn dispute he prest his Rabbi with so clear proofs of Jesus Christ being the true Messias that he and several others of his Brethren had no other way to escape but to say that their Rabbins every where did expound those Prophecies otherwise according to the Tradition of their Fathers By Leo's means he purchased that fair Manuscript of the Old Testament which he gave to Emmanuel Colledge and as I am credibly informed it cost him its weight in Silver After Eight Years stay in Venice he returned to England and without pretending to Preferment or aspiring to it he went immediately to his charge at S. Edmundsbury and there went on in his ministerial labours with which he mixt the translating Paulo's immortal Writings into Latine Sir Adam Newton translated the two first Books of the History of the Council of Trent but was not master enough of the two Languages so that the Archbishop of Spalata said it was not the same Work but he highly approved of the two last that were translated by Mr. Bedell who likewise translated the History of the Interdict and of the Inquisition and dedicated them to the King But no notice was taken of him and he lived still private and unknown in that obscure corner He had a Soul of too generous a composition to stoop to those servile compliances that are often expected by those that have the distribution of Preferments in their power He thought that was an abjectness of Spirit that became not a Christian Philosopher much less a Churchman who ought to express a contempt of the World a contentedness with a low condition and a resignation of ones outward circumstances wholly to the conduct of Divine Providence and not to give that advantage which Atheists and Libertines take from the covetousness and aspirings of some Churchmen to scoff at Religion and to call Priesthood a Trade He was content to deserve Preferment and did not envy others who upon less merit but more industry arrived at it But though he was forgot at Court yet an eminent Gentleman in Suffolk Sir Thomas Iermyn who was a privy Counsellour and Vice-Chamberlain to King Charles the First and a great Patron of Vertue and Piety took such a liking to him that as he continued his whole life to pay him a very particular esteem so a considerable Living that was in his Gift falling void he presented him to it in the Year 1615. When he came to the Bishop of Norwich to take out his Title to it he demanded large Fees for his Institution and Induction But Bedell would give no more than what was sufficient gratification for the Writing the Wax and the Parchment and refused to pay the rest He lookt on it as Simony in the Bishop to demand more and as contrary to the command of Christ who said to his Apostles Freely ye have received and freely give And thought it was a branch of the sin of Simony to sell Spiritual things to Spiritual persons and since whatsoever was askt that was more than a decent Gratification to the Servant for his pains was asked by reason of the thing that was granted he thought this was unbecoming the Gospel and that it was a sin both in the Giver and in the Taker He had observed that nothing was more expresly contrary to all the Primitive Rules Chrysostome examined a complaint made against Autonine Bishop of Ephesuâ— for exacting Fees at Ordination Autonine dyed before the Process was finished but some Bishops that had paid those Fees were upon that degraded and made incapable to officiate any more though they pretended that they paid that Money as a Fee for obtaining a Release from such Obligations as lay on them by Law to serve the Court. Afterwards not only all Ordinations for Money but the taking Money for any Imployment that depended upon the Bishops Gift was most severely condemned by the Council of Chalcedon The Buyer was to lose his Degree and the Seller was to be in danger of it And after that severe censures were every where decreed against all Presents that might be made to Bishops either before or after Ordinations or upon the account of Writings or of Feasts or any other expence that was brought in use to be made upon that occasion and even in the Council of Trent it was Decreed That nothing should be taken for Letters dimissory the Certificates the Seals or upon any such like ground either by Bishops or their Servants even though it was freely offered Upon these accounts Mr. Bedell resolved rather to lose his Presentation to the Parsonage of Horingsheath than to purchase his Title to it by doing that which he thought Simony And he left the Bishop and went home But some few days after the Bishop sent for him and gave him his Titles without exacting Fees of him
and so he removed to that place where he stayed Twelve Years during which time he was a great honour to the Church as well as a pattern to all Churchmen His habit and way of living was very plain and becoming the simplicity of his Profession He was very tender of those that were truly poor but was so strict in examining all Vagabonds and so dexterous in discovering counterfeit Passes and took such care of punishing those that went about with them that they came no more to him nor to his Town In all that time no notice was ever taken of him though he gave a very singular evidence of his great capacity For being provoked by his old acquaintance Wadsworth's Letters he writ upon the points in controversie with the Church of Rome with so much learning and judgment and in so mild a strain that no wonder if his Book had a good effect on him for whom it was intended It is true he never returned and changed his Religion himself but his Son came from Spain into Ireland when Bedell was promoted to the Bishoprick of Kilmore there and told him That his Father commanded him to thank him for the pains he was at in writing it he said It was almost alwayes lying open before him and that he had heard him say He was resolved to save one And it seems he instructed his Son in the true Religion for he declared himself a Protestant on his coming over This Book was printed and dedicated to the late King while he was Prince of Wales in the Year 1624. The true Reasons that obstructed Bedell's preferment seem to be these He was a Calvinist in the matter of Decrees and Grace and Preferments went generally at that time to those that held the other Opinions He had also another Principle which was not very acceptable to some in power he thought Conformity was an exact adhereing to the Rubrick and that the adding any new Rite or Ceremony was as much Nonconformity as the passing over those that were prescribed So that he would not use those Bowings or Gesticulations that grew so much in fashion that Mens affections were measured by them He had too good an understanding not to conclude That these things were not unlawful in themselves but he had observed that when once the humour of adding new Rites and Ceremonies got into the Church it went on by a fatal increase till it had grown up to that bulk to which we find it swelled in the Church of Rome And this began so early and grew so fast that S. Austin complained of it in his time saying That the condition of Christians was then more uneasie by that Yoke of Observances than that of the Jews had been And therefore Bedell thought the adhering to established Laws and Rules was a certain and fixed thing whereas Superstition was infinite So he was against all Innovations or arbitrary and assumed Practices and so much the more when Men were distinguished and markt out for Preferment by that which in strictness of Law was a thing that deserved punishment For in the Act of Vniformity made in the first Year of Queen Elizabeth's Reign it was made highly penal to use any other Rite or Ceremony Order or Form either in the Sacraments or in Morning or Evening Prayers than what was mentioned and set forth in that Book And this was particularly intended to restrain some that were leavened with the former Superstition and yet for saving their Benefices might conform to the New Service but retain still with it many of the old Rites in sacred Offices And it seems our Legislators were of the same mind when the last Act of Vniformity was past for there is a special Proviso in it That no Rites or Ceremonies should be openly used in any Church other than what was prescribed and appointed to be used in and by the said Book Therefore he continued to make the Rubrick the measure of his Conformity as well before his promotion as after it But he was well satisfied with that which the Providence of God laid in his way and went on in the duties of his pastoral care and in his own private Studies and was as great a Pattern in Suffolk of the pastoral care in the lower degree as he proved afterwards in Ireland in the higher Order He laboured not as an Hireling that only raised a Revenue out of his Parish and abandoned his Flock trusting them to the cheapest Mercenary that he could find nor did he satisfie himself with a slight performance of his duty only for fashions sake but he watched over his Flock like one that knew he was to answer to God for those Souls committed to his charge so he preached to the understandings and Consciences of his Parish and Catechised constantly And as the whole course of his own most exemplary behaviour was a continued Sermon so he was very exact in the more private parts of his Function visiting the Sick and dealing in secret with his people to excite or preserve in them a deep sense of Religion This he made his work and he followed it so close and lived so much at home that he was so little known or so much forgot that when Diodati came over to England many years after this he could hear of him from no person that he met with though he was acquainted with many of the Clergy He was much amazed at this to find that so extraordinary a Man that was so much admired at Venice by so good Judges was not so much as known in his own Countrey and so he was out of all hope of finding him out but by a meer accident he met him on the Streets of Londen at which there was a great deal of joy on both sides And upon that Diodati presented him to Morton the learned and antient Bishop of Duresme and told how great a value P. Paulo set on him upon which that Bishop treated him in a very particular manner It is true Sir Henry Wotton was alwayes his firm and faithful Friend but his Credit at Court had sunk for he fell under necessities having lived at Venice in an expence above his appointments And as necessitous Courtiers must grow to forget all concerns but their own so their interest abates and the favour they are in lessens when they come to need it too much Sir Thomas Iermyn was in more credit though he was alwayes suspected of being too favourable to the Puritans so that his inclinations being known the characteâ— he could give of him did not serve to raise him in England While he was thus neglected at home his fame was spread into Ireland and though he was not known either to the famous Bishop Vsher or to any of the Fellows of Trinity Colledge in Dublin yet he was chosen by their unanimous consent to be the Head of their Colledge in the Year 1627. and as that worthy Primate of Ireland together with the Fellows of the Colledge
participant each of other Rather I concluded that seeing many of the best learned Protestants did grant The Church of Rome to be a true Church though peradventure faulty in some things And contrarily not only the Catholicks but also the Puritans Anabaptists Brownists c. did all deny the Church of England to be a true Church therefore it would be more safe and secure to become a Roman Catholick who have a true Church by consent of both parties than to remain a Protestant who do alone plead their own cause having all the other against them For the testimony of our selves and our contraries also is much more sufficient and more certain than to justifie our selves alone Yet I resisted and stood out still and betook my self again to read over and examine the chiefest Controversies especially those about the Church which is cardo negotii and herein because the Bearer stayes now a day or two longer I will inlarge my self more than I purposed and so I would needs peruse the Original quotations and Texts of the Councils Fathers and Doctors in the Authors themselves which were alledged on both parts to see if they were truly cited and according to the meaning of the Authors a labour of much labour and of travel sometime to find the Books wherein I found much fraud committed by the Protestants and that the Catholicks had far greater and better armies of evident Witnesses on their sides much more than the Protestants in so much that the Centurists are fain often to censure and reject the plain testimonies of those Ancients as if their new censure were sufficient to disauthorize the others ancient sentences And so I remember Danaeus in Commentariis super D. Augustin Enchirid. ad Laurentium Where S. Augustin plainly avoucheth Purgatory He rejects S. Augustines Opinion saying hic est naevus Augustini But I had rather follow S. Augustine's Opinion than his Censure for who are they to control the Fathers There are indeed some few places in Authors which prima facie seem to favour Protestants as many Hereticks alledge some Texts of Scriptures whose sound of Words seem to make for their Opinions But being well examined and interpreted according to the Analogy of faith and according to many other places of the same Authors where they do more fully explain their Opinions so they appear to be wrested and from the purpose In fine I found my self evidently convinced both by many Authorities and by many Arguments which now I do not remember all nor can here repeat those which I do remember But only some few Arguments I will relate unto you which prevailed most with me besides those aforementioned First therefore I could never approve the Protestants evasion by Invisibility of their Church For though sometime it may be diminished and obscured yet the Catholick Church must ever be visible set on a Hill and not as Light hid under a Bushel for how should it enlighten and teach her Children if invisible or how should Strangers and Pagans and others be converted unto her or where should any find the Sacraments if invisible Also the true Church in all places and all Ages ever holds one Vniformity and Concord in all matters of Faith though not in all matters of Ceremony or Government But the Protestants Church hath not in all Ages nor in all places such uniform concord no not in one Age as is manifest to all the World and as Father Parsons proved against Fox's Martyrs Wickliffe Husse and the rest Ergo the Protestants Church not the true Church Again by that saying Haereses ad originem revocasse est refutasse and so considering Luther's first rancor against the Dominicans his disobedience and contempt of his former Superiours his vow-breaking and violent courses even causing rebellion against the Emperour whom he reviles and other Princes most shamefully surely such arrogant disobedience Schism and Rebellions had no warrant nor vocation of God to plant his Church but of the Devil to begin a Schism and a Sect. So likewise for Calvin to say nothing of all that D. Bolsecus brings against him I do urge only what Mr. Hooker Dr. Bancroft and Saravia do prove aganst him for his unquietness and ambition revolving the Commonwealth and so unjustly expelling and depriving the Bishop of Geneva and other temporal Lords of their due obedience and ancient inheritance Moreover I refer you to the stirs broils sedition and murthers which Knox and the Geneva-Gospellers caused in Scotland against their lawful Governours against their Queen and against our King even in his Mothers Belly Nor will I insist upon the passions which first moved King Henry violently to divorce himself from his lawful Wife to fall out with the Pope his Friend to marry the Lady Anne Bullen and soon after to behead her to disinherit Queen Mary and inable Queen Elizabeth and presently to disinherit Queen Elizabeth and to restore Queen Mary to hang up Catholicks for Traytors and to burn Protestants for Hereticks to destroy Monasteries and to pill Churches Were these fit beginnings for the Gospel of Christ I pray was this Man a good Head of Gods Church for my part I beseech our Lord bless me from being a Member of such a Head or such a Church I come to France and Holland where you know by the Hugonots and Geuses all Calvinists what Civil Wars they have raised how much Blood they have shed what Rebellion Rapine and Desolations they have occasioned principally for their new Religion founded in Blood like Draco's Laws But I would gladly know whether you can approve such bloody broils for Religion or no I know Protestants de facto do justifie the Civil Wars of France and Holland for good against their Kings but I could never understand of them quo jure If the Hollanders be Rebels as they are why did we support them if they be no Rebels because they fight for the pretended liberty of their ancient Priviledges and for their new Religion we see it is an easie matter to pretend Liberties and also why may not others as well revolt for their old Religion Or I beseech you why is that accounted Treason against the State in Catholicks which is called Reason of State in Protestants I reduce this Argument to few Words That Church which is founded and begun in Malice Disobedience Passion Blood and Rebellion cannot be the true Church but it is evident to the World That the Protestant Churches in Germany France Holland Geneva c. were so founded and in Geneva and Holland are still continued in Rebellion ergo They are not true Churches Furthermore where is not Succession both of true Pastors and of true Doctrine there is no true Church But among Protestants is no succession of true Pastors for I omit here to treat of Doctrine ergo no true Church I prove the minor where is no consecration nor ordination of Bishops and Priests according to the due Form and right intention required necessarily by the