give the Presbyterians and the Presbyterians take them to be Antichristian Some of you are Arminians some Calvinists some say Christ dyed for all and some say no some are for Justification only by Christs Passive Righteousness and some also by his active with other such differences even in these fundamentall points I repeat their words just as I have heard they make use of them with the people and now I shall open the deceit of them in particular Answers to each part And 1. For the matter of unity I have spoken of it before and dare leave it to all the world that are judicions whether the Papists or we are more unanimons or more divided Only to the Instances of division I shall speak further now 1. For the matter of Church Government we are all agreed in the substance of it except a very few straglers As concerning the duty of Penitence Confession Restitution Contrition and of the excommunicating the obstinate and Absolving the penitent c. All this we agree is the duty of the Presbyters and we agree that these Presbyters may have a President only some think that the President is ejusdem ordinis of the same order differing but in degree and hath no power jure divino but what the Presbyters have but only the exercise is restrained as to the Presbyters by men but others think that the President is a Bishop eminently of another order having not only the exercise but the power above the Presbyters And is this difference so great a business And do not these cheaters know that if for this they would reproach us they must do so by themselves Know they not that among their own Schoolmen there is the same difference or in most points the same And know they not that if differences in Ceremonies or Modes should unchurch us or disgrace us it would fall as foul on the whole Catholick Church and that in the very primitive times Did they never read of the difference between the Asian and the Roman Churches about the celebration of Easter day and how Polycrates and the rest did plead Tradition against the Church of Romes Tradition and how Irenaeus did reprehend the Bishop of Rome for his uncharitable censure of the Churches for so small a difference And how Polycarp and Anicetus Bishop of Rome could not agree as building upon contrary Traditions but yet maintained Christian peace as Eusebius out of Irenaeus his Epistle to Victor tels us lib. 5. Hist Eccl. cap. 26. And the English and Irish Churches long after that adhered to the Asian way even after the Councill of Nice had ended the controversie on the Roman side And who knows not how many more controversies greater then these of ours have been among the Churches of Christ without their unchurching or disparagement to Religion And for the Doctrinal Controversies mentioned most of them lie more in words then in sence and all of them are far from the foundation though they be about Christ who is the Foundation If one of your picture-drawers mistake the complexion of Christ or if one should say he was not buried in a sheet these are errours about Christ that is the foundation and yet far from the foundation Those of us that say Christ dyed for all and those that say he dyed not for all do agree as your School-men do that he dyed for all as to the sufficiency of his death and price but he dyed not for all as to the actuall efficiency of pardon and salvation Is not this your doctrine and is not this ours and are not you as much disagreed about it as we what else meant the late decision against the Jansenists and what meaneth the present persecution of them in France And yet have you the faces to make this a reproach of us And for the righteousness of Christ we are commonly agreed that it is both his Obedience and Passion that we are justified and saved by though we are not all of a mind about the reason of their several interests which difference is so far from unchristening us that it makes no considerable odds among our selves who are censorious enough in cases of difference And for different forms of worship sure these men do wilfully forget what a number of Offices and Mass books have been among themselves and other Churches and what a number of Letanies or Liturgies of several ages and Churches they have given us in the Bibliotheca Patrum but more of this anon 2. And as for the changes and unfixedness which they charge us with we are contented that 1. Our principles 2. And our practises be compared with the Papists and then let even modest and judicious enemies be judges which of us are more fixed or more mutable 1. For our Principles we take only Christ to be the chief Foundation of our Faith and his inspired Prophets and Apostles to be the secondary foundation whereas the Papists build upon many a most ungodly ignorant man because he is the Pope of Rome And which of these is the firmer foundation 2. We take nothing for our Rule but the sure word of God contained in the holy Scriptures but the Papists take the Decrees of all Popes and Councils for their Rule Our Rule they confess to be Divine and infallible Their Rule we affirm to be humane and fallible Which then is like to be more firm Our Rule the sacred Scriptures in the Originall languages as to the words and the matter of them as to the sence the Papists themselves confess unchangeable but whether they will say as much of their own I will try by two or three Instances 1. What an alteration Pope Sixtus and Pope Clement made in the Vulgar Latine Bible which is one part of their Rule I told you before and Dr. James his Bellum Papale will tell you the particulars 2. The other part is their Decrees of which Pope Leo the tenth in Bulla contr Luth. in Binnius page 655. saith the holy Popes our predecessors never erred in their Canons and Constitutions And yet hear what Pope Julius the second saith in his General Councill at the Laterane with their approbation Cant. pragmat sanct monitor Binnius vol. 4. pag. 560. Though the Institutions of sacred Canons holy Fathers and Popes of Rome and their Decrees be judged immutable as made by Divine Inspiration yet the Pope of Rome who though of unequal merits holdeth the place of the Eternal King and the Maker of all things and all Laws on earth may abrogate these Decrees when they are abused You see here from the mouth of Infallibility it self if the Roman faith have any of what continuance we may judge their Immutable Decrees to be of which are made as by Divine inspiration they are Immutable till the Pope abrogate them who being in Gods place though of unequal merits O humble confession is of power to do it 3. We have a Rule that was perfected by Christ and his Apostles to which
the second and third Age produced no Councils the greater deceivers then are the Papists that have found us Councils then and so you have no Catholick succession proved Yea but he saith they have successions of Popes Martyrs and Confessors which is sufficient for their purposes See the strength of Popery Any thing is sufficient for your purposes it seems Rome had Bishops therefore they were the Universal Rulers of the Church A strong consequence Rome had Martyrs and Confessors therefore it was the Mistris of all Churches Who can resist these arguments But why did you not prove that your Confessors and Martyrs suffered for attesting the Popes Soveraignty If they suffered but for Christianity that will prove them but Christians and not Papists Thus you see to the confusion of the Papists that they have nothing to shew for the succession or antiquity of Popery for the three first Ages Yea worse then nothing For here he comes in with some of the Decretals forsooth of some of their Bishops Decretals unknown till a while ago in the world brought out by Isidore Mercator but with so little cunning as left them naked to the shame of the world the falshood of them being out of themselves fully proved by Blondell Reignolds and many more and confessed by some of themselves Here you see the first foundation of Papal succession even a bundle of fictions lately fetcht from whence they please to cheat the ignorant part of the world But in the fourth and fifth ages H. T. doth make us amends for his want of proof from the three first But suppose he do what 's that to a succession while the three first ages are strangers to Popery Well! but lets hear what he hath at last His first proof after a few silent names is from the Council of Nice And what saith that why 1. It defined that the Son of God is consubstantiall to his Father and true God And what 's that to Popery 2 But it defined the Popes Soveraignty But how prove you that Why it is in the thirty ninth Arab. Canon O what Consciences have those men that dare thus abuse and cheat the ignorant As if the Canons of the first General Council had never been known to the world till the other day that Alphonsus Pisanus a Jesuite publisheth them out of Pope Julius and I know not what Arabick book These men that can make both Councils and Canons at their pleasure above a thousand years after the supposed time of their existence do never need to want authority And indeed this is a cheaper way of Canon-making in a corner then to trouble all the Bishops in the world with a great deal of cost and travail to make them But if this be the foundation the building is answerable Their Bishop Zosimus had not been acquainted with these new Articles of an old Council when he put his trick upon the sixth Council of Carthage where for the advancement of his power though not to an universall Monarchy yet to a preparative degree he layeth his claim from the Council of Nice as saying Placuit ut si Episcopus accusatus fuerit c. which was that If an ejected Bishop appeal to Rome the Bishop of Rome appoint some of the next province to judge or if yet he destre his cause to be heard the Bishop of Rome shall appoint a Presbyter his Legate c. In this Council were 217. Bishops Aurelius being president and Augustine being one They told the Pope that they would yield to him till the true copies of the Council of Nice were searched for those that they had seen had none of them those words in that Zosimus alledged Hereupon they send abroad to the Churches of the East to Constantinople Alexandria Antioch c. for the ancient Canons From hence they received several copies which all agreed but none of them had either Zosimus forgery in nor the forged clause which Bellarmine must have in much less the eighty Canons of Pisanus the Jesuite or this one which H. T. doth found his succession on but only the twenty Canons there mentioned which have not a word for the Popes Soveraignty And here note 1. That Zosimus knew not then of Pisanus Canons or else he would have alledged them nor yet of Bellarmines new part of a Canon for the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome 2. That Zosimus himself had not the faith the wit or the memory to plead either Scripture Apostolical Institution or Tradition for his priviledge but only a false Canon of the Council of Nice as looking no higher it seems for his authority 3. How early the Roman Bishops begun both to aspire and make use of forgeries to accomplish it 4. That there was no such Apostolick or Church Tradition for this Roman power as our Masters of Tradition now plead for which all the Catholick Church must know For the whole Council with all the Churches of Constantinople Alexandria Antioch c. that is in a manner all save Rome were ignorant of that which Zosimus would have had them believe and Bellarmine and H. T. would have us to believe 5. Note also how little the Church then believed the Popes infallibility 6. Yea Note how upon the reception of the several Copies of the Nicene Canons they modestly convicted Zosimus of falshood And how the Council resolved against his usurpation See in the African Councils the Epistle of Cyril and Alexandria and Atticus of Constantinople and the Epistles of the Council to Boniface and Celestine In their Epistle to Boniface before they had received their answers from other Churches about the Nicene Canons they tell him that they believed they should not suffer that Arrogancy non sumus istum typhum passuri But to Celestine they conclude more plainly though modestly Presbyterorum quoque sequentium c. i. e. Let your holiness as beseemeth you repell the wicked refuges of Presbyters and the Clergy that follow them because this is not derogate or taken from the African Church by any Definition of the Fathers and the Nicene Decrees most plainly committed both the inferiour Clergy and Bishops themselves to the Metropolitans For they did most prudently and most justly provide that all businesses N. B. all should be ended in the very places where they begun and the Grace of the holy Ghost will not or should not be wanting to each province which equity should by the Priests of Christ be prudently observed and most constantly maintained Especially because it is granted to every one to appeal to the Councils of their own Province or to a Universall Council if he be offended with the judgement of the Cognitors Unless there should be any one that can think that our God can inspire a justice of tryall into any one man N. B. and deny it to innumerable Priests that are congregated in Councill Or how can that judgement that 's past beyond sea be valid to which the necessary persons of the witness
25. Tertul. cont Marcion Carm. lib. 4. cap. 7. Athanas Tom. 2. Epist 39. Et in Synops Sacr. scrip Hilar. Pictav Explanat in Psalmos Cyril vel Johan Hierosol Catech. 4. Concil Laodic Can 59. Epiphan haeres 8. 76. de Mensur ponderib Greg. Nazianz. Carmin de veris genuinis libris SS Amphiloch in Balsam pag. 1082. Hieronym in Prolog in lib. Reg. Prol. in lib. Solom Et Epist ad Laetam passim Ruffinus in Symbolum But what need I cite any more when Dr. Cosin hath done it in a volume purposely where this allegation also of the third Conc. Carthag is answered AND now having shewed you that Papists cannot prove any Catholick Succession or Continuation or Tradition of their Religion let us consider of their silly shift by instancing in some by-points common to them with others Of which I shall say the less because I have spoke to it already in my Safe Religion And before I mention any particulars remember that I have proved before that ignorance or difference about many points not essential to Christianity may consist with our being of one Religion and Catholick Church and therefore such differences are nothing to the point of succession of the Catholick Church or Religion This is plain to any reasonable man And that the Papists may see that for their parts they have nothing to say against it I shall add to what is said that they tolerate or plead for the toleration of greater differences among themselves which yet they affirm to consist with the unity of faith I will now give you but an instance or two The Jesuits maintain that if a man do but believe in their Pope and Church as infallible he may not only as some say be ignorant of some Article of the Creed it self and yet be a true Catholick yea and be saved but also believe a false Article as from God and the Church The former is commonly taught not only by such as Suarez that say the Article of Christs Descent into Hell is not to all of Necessity to Salvation but by many others in the Doctrine of Implicite faith The later clause you may see among others in Franc. Albertinus the Jesuite Corollar pag. 250. where his objectors put this case Suppose twenty Bishops preach to a countrey man a false Article as if it were spoken by God and the Church that proposal of the twenty Bishops is so sufficient that the Countrey man prudently formeth an evident practical judgement and morally certain to believe with a speculative assent the Article proposed by the twenty Bishops for the Authority of God as the formal reason Three absurdities seem hence to follow 1. That the Countrey man should be obliged under mortall sin to believe the twenty Bishops and so the precept of faith should bind to believe a falshood 2. The Countrey man should be in Gods Grace without faith In Grace because he commits no mortal sin yea he obeys the command of believing Yet without faith because he believes a falshood opposite to faith and so loseth faith 3. God should concur to deceive To the first Albertinus answereth that it s no Absurdity that the command of faith do oblige to believe a falshood it being not per se but per accidens To the second he saith that the Countrey man doth not lose his grace or faith because the falshood believed is not formally opposite to the true faith but materially Here you see that a man may hold an Article opposite to the faith materially and yet not only be a true Christian in grace and faith but also in so doing obey by accident the command of believing so be it he believe in their Church And if that be so with what face can these men say that our Church or Religion is new or not the same with the Greeks c. when we have the same formal Object of faith and differ in no Essential Material point See here their lubricity and partiality One Instance more The second Council of Nice that decreed for Image-Worship doth yet expresly decree that Latria Divine worship is to be given only to God Thomas Aquinas sum 3. q. 25. art 3. 4. purposely maintaineth that Latria Divine Worship is to be given to the Image of Christ and to the Cross that he dyed on and to the sign of that Cross Here is an Article of their faith expresly contradicted And yet Aquinas is a member of their Church And if any say he is no member it s proved past doubt for the Pope hath Canonized him for a Saint So that now it is a part of their Religion to take him for a true believer And Albertinus hath as he thinks proved that though in many other matters of fact the Pope be fallible yet in the Canonizing of Saints he is infallible because of some promise of Gods speciall assistance if one knew where to find it Abundance of such Instances might be brought that prove that the Papists own men as true believers that deny or contradict Articles of their faith But what need we more then that France and thousands elswhere are yet members of their Church that deny the Laterane and Florentine definition for the Popes Supremacy above a General Council and when most Papists hold that Angels are incorporeal contrary to the definition of the said second Council of Nice And therefore by their own law nay much more we may well say that those were of our Religion that differed from us in nothing that is indeed or our esteem Essential to the faith Now to a few particulars 1. The Papists tell us that Fulk confesseth that Hierom Austin Ambrose c. held the invocation of Saints H. T. p. 49. Answ 1. If any hold that they should desire the departed Saints to pray for them as they do the living we have reason enough to take it for their error but it s no proof that they are not of the same Church and Religion with us As long as they give no part of that adoration or honour to Saints which is proper to God the Father Son or Holy Ghost it is not inconsistent with true Faith and Christianity 2. But yet we must tell you that the Primitive Church was unacquainted with the Romish prayer to Saints Till the end of the fourth Century they are not able to prove that ever three men if any one were for any prayer to the Dead at all except such a conditional speech in an Oration as Greg. Nazianzen hath If holy souls have any care or feeling of such things as these receive this Oration Orat. 11. I intreat the Reader that needeth information of the way of Antiquity in this point to read Bishop Ushers Answer to the Jesuite on this point page 418 c. Where he saith that for nine parts of the first four hundred years he dare be bold to say that the Jesuite is not able to produce so much as one true testimony out
as well able to prove that a London Convocation was a General Council Pighius pleading for the Pope saith plainly that General Councils were the devise of Constantine And the Popes themselves do fetch the most specious Evidences for their primacy from the Decrees or Edicts of Emperors Valentinian Gratian and others And what power had those Emperors at the other side of the world 3. And then before the Nicene Council what General Councils were there since the Apostle days None doubtless that the world now knows of It 's senseless enough to think that 350 Roman Bishops at the second Council of Nice or the 150 Bishops in the third Council at Constantinople or the 165 Bishops at the second Council at Constantinople or the 150 Bishops at the first there were the Universal Church of Christ But it will be more ridiculous to say that the new-found Concilium Sinuessanum imagined without proof to meet in a certain Cave for the deposition of an Idolatrous Pope were a General Council Where then was the Head the unity the form of the Church for 300 years Was it governed all that time think you by a General Council yea or ever one day since the Apostles Well but was there ever such a thing at all Indeed men have a fairer pretence when the Church was contained in a family or a City or a narrow space to call the meetings of the Apostles or other Christians then by the name of a General Council but they are hard put to it if this be all The great Instance insisted on is the Council Act. 15. But were the Bishops of all the Churches there or summoned to appear Act. 14. 23. they had ordained them Elders in every Church but few of them were there Timothy Titus abundance were absent It 's plain that it was to the Apostles and Church at Hierusalem as the Fountain and best informers that they sent Not because these were the Universal Church but because they were of greatest knowledge and authority If it could be proved that all the Apostles were there it would no more prove them a General Council then that the Deacons of one Church were ordained by a General Council Act. 6. And Matthias and Justus put to the Lot by a General Council Act. 1. and that Christ appeared to a General Council after his Resurrection and gave the Sacrament of his Supper to a General Council before his death So that it is most evident from the event that Christ never made a General Council the Head or Governor of his Church and that there never was such a thing the world much less continually Argum. 3. The form or unity no nor the well-being of the Catholick Church dependeth not on that which is either unnecessary unjust or naturally or morally impossible But a true General Council is none such It cannot be or if it were it would be unnecessary and unjust Therefore it is not the Head or Soveraign Governor of the Church on which its being unity or well being doth depend I have nothing here to prove but the Minor And 1. I shall prove the Impossibility 2. The non-necessity 3. The unjustice of a General Council and so that no such thing is to be expected A true General Council consisteth of all the Pastors or Bishops of the whole world or so many as Morally may be called All. A General Council of Delegates from all the Churches must consist of so many proportionably chosen as may signifie the sense and consent of all or else it is a meer name and shadow Both these are Morally if not Naturally Impossible as I prove 1. From the distance of their habitations some dwell in Mesopotamia some in Armenia some in Ethiopia some in Mexico the Philippines or other parts of the East and West-Indies some at St. Thome's some dispersed through most of the Turks Dominions Now how long must it be before all these have tidings of a Council and summons to appear or send their Delegates Who will be at the cost of sending messengers to all these Will the Pope Not if he be no richer then Peter was How many hundred thousand pound will it cost before that all can have a lawful summons And when that is done it will be long before they can all in their several Nations meet and agree upon their Delegates and their instructions And when that is done who shall bear their charges in the journey Alas the best of the Churches Pastors have had so little gold and silver that they are unable themselves to defray it A few Bishops out of each of these distant Countries will consume in their journey a great deal of money and provision To provide them shipping by Sea and Horses and all other necessaries by land for so many thousand miles will require no small allowance And then consider that it must be voluntary contribution that must maintain them And most love their money so well and know so little of the need of such journeys and Councils that doubtless they will not be very forward to so great a contribution And it is not to be expected that Infidel Princes will give way to the transporting of so much money from their countries on the Churches occasions which they hate But suppose them furnished with all necessaries and setting forward How long will they be in their journey Shipping cannot always be had Many of them must go by land It cannot be expected that some of them should come in less than three or four if not seven years time to the Council And will ever a General Council be held upon these terms 2. Moreover the persons for the most part are not able to perform such journeys Bishops are Elders Most of them are aged persons The wisest are they that are fit to be trusted in so great a business by all the rest And few attain that maturity but the aged Especially in the most of the Eastern Southern Churches that want the helps of Learning which we have And will the Churches be so barbarous as to turn out their aged faithful Pastors upon the jaws of death Some of them are not like to live out so long time as the journey if they were at home They must pass through raging and tempestuous Seas through Deserts and enemies and many thousand miles where they must daily conflict with distress It were a fond conceit to think that without unusual providences ten Bishops of a thousand â—â—ould come alive to the Council through all these labors and difficulties And moreover it 's known how few bodies will bear the Seas and so great change of air How many of our Souldiers in the Indies are dead for one that doth survive And can ancient Bishops spent with studies and labors endure all this Most studious painful Preachers here with us are very sickly and scarse able to endure the small incommodities of their habitations And could they endure this 3. Moreover abundance of the Pastors of
do so by the Scriptures 2. And can any Learned Papists be so ignorant as not to know that the Arrians pretended the Authority of General Councils and so do many other Hereticks and that the Authority of Pope and Councils are frequently pretended for contrary opinions among them and may be pretended by many an Heretick And will they therefore grant that the Decrees of Popes and Councils are no sufficient discovery of their Faith If Hereticks pretending to your Test of Faith disprove not that to be your Faith then Hereticks pretending to our Rule and Test of Faith which is the Holy Scripture is no proof that it is not our Rule of Faith I do therefore conclude that the Proof of a Succession of such Churches as have received the Holy Scriptures is a valid proof of a succession of Churches of our Religion seeing we have no Religion doctrinally but the Holy Scriptures And this as far as modesty will permit I challenge all the Jesuites on Earth to confute with any solid Reasons yet adding that we do ex superabundanti prove a succession also of Churches that never owned Popery even the greatest part of the Christian world But let these men themselves but prove to us a succession of their Church even such as they require of us Let them prove that from the Apostles days the Catholick Church or any one Congregation of twenty men did hold all that now their Councils and Popes have Decreed and are esteemed Articles of their Faith and I am contented to be their bondslave for ever or to bear a fagot or be used by them as cruelly as their malice can invent or flames or their strappado's execute Let my Head be at their Mercy if they can but prove that Succession of Popery as they require us to do of Protestancy or as I have produced of our Churches and Religion In the 15th and 16th Detection I have more largely spoken to them of this point to which I refer the Reader In the very principal point of their Papal Soveraignty they have nothing but this gross deceit to cheat the world with The Roman Emperors divers ages after Christ did give the Bishop of Rome a Primacy in their Empire and hence these men would perswade us that even from Christ they have had a Soveraignty over all the Christian world Wink but at these small mistakes and they have won the Cause 1. Suppose but Christs Institution to stand in stead of the Emperors 2. Suppose divers hundred years after Christ to have been in the Apostles days 3. Suppose Primacy to be Soveraignty or Universal Government 4. But especially grant them that the Roman Empire was all the Christian world and then they have made good that part of their Cause That there were many Nations without the reach of the Roman Empire that had received the Christian Faith is past doubt Socrates lib. 1. c. 15. saith that Thomas chose Parthia Bartholomew chose India Matthew Ethiopia to plant the Gospel in but the middle India was not converted till Constantines days by Frumentius and Edesius and Iberia by a Maid So Euseb l. 3. c. 3. tells us of Thomas his Preaching to the Parthians and Andrew to the Scythians Et in vit Const l. 4. c. 8. that there were many Churches in Persia cap. 91. how Constantine wrote for them to the King Godignus and others of them maintain that the Abassines did receive the Gospel from the beginning Besides Scotland and many other Countries that were not under the Roman Power And none of these were Governed by the Pope These three Arguments against the Papal Cause I shall here premise to more that follow 1. If all that part of the Christian world that was out of the reach of the Roman Empire did never submit to the Soveraignty of the Pope then hath he not been successively or at any time the actual Head of the Universal Church But the Antecedent is most certain therefore so is the Consequent How an old woman the Emperors Mother of Habassia did baffle their Jesuites by asking them How it came to pass if obedience to the Pope be necessary to salvation that they never had heard from him till now I have told you after from themselves If Primacy were Soveraignty and Emperors and Councils were Gods yet the Indians Abassines Persians and many more in the East and the Scots and Irish and Danes and Sweeds and Poles and Muscovites and most of Germany in the West and North should be no subjects of the Pope 2. If the Rule and Test of the Faith of Papists never had a Real Being or no succession from the Apostles then their Faith and Church hath either no Real Being or no such Succession But the Antecedent is true as I prove It is either General Councils or Popes or the Church Essential as they use to call it that is the Whole Body that is the Rule of their Faith If it be General Councils 1. They had no being from the Apostles till the Council of Nice therefore the Rule of the Papists Faith was then unborn 2. Yea they never had a being in the world There was never any thing like a General Council since the days of the Apostles to this day The first at Nice had none save one John of Persia who its like was some persecuted Bishop that was fled or if one or two more its not material but the Bishops of the Empire and out of the Western parts so few as was next to none The following Councils as Constantinop 1. c. were only out of one piece of the Empire The Council of Trent I disdain to reckon among the modester pretenders to an Universality 2. And if it be not General Councils but the Pope that is the Rule of their Faith then 1. Their Faith hath been interrupted yea and turned to Heresie and to Infidelity when the Pope hath so turned 2. And why then do they tell our people that they take not the Pope for the Rule of their Faith 3. If it be the Major part of the Universal Church 1. It 's known that two to one are against them or at least the Greater part therefore by that Rule their Faith in the Papal Soveraignty is false 2. And yet it would be hard if a man must be of no Belief till he have brought the world to the pole for it Argum. 3. If all the stir that the Papists make in the world for the Papal Government be but to rob Christian Princes and Magistrates of their Power then are they but a seditious Sect But the Antecedent is apparent For there are but two sorts of Government in the Church The one is by the Word applyed unto the Conscience which worketh only on the willing either by General exhortations as in Preaching or by personal application as in Sacraments Excommunication and Absolution And this is the work of the present Pastors and cannot be performed by the Pope Nor would he be
Christianity 14. We desire also to be informed by them what is the use of the Churches Creed and why they have used frequently to make confession of their faith Was it not the whole faith Essential to Christianity which they confest If not then it was not fit to be the badge of the Church or of the Orthodox if yea then it seems those Creeds had in them the essentials distinguished from the rest 15. we would know whether every thing delivered or defined by any General Council be of such necessity to salvation that all must explicitely believe them all that will be saved If so then whether any Papist can be saved seeing they understand them not all If not then sure a distinction must be made 16. And we would know how they can countenance ignorance so much as they do if all things revealed be of equal necessity to salvation 17. And what mean they to distinguish of Implicite and Explicite faith Is it enough to believe as the Church believes and not know what in any particular then it is not de fide or necessary to salvation to believe the resurrection of Christ or of man or the life to come For a man may believe that the Church is in the right and yet not know that it holdeth any of these Is it enough to believe the formal object of faith which with us is Gods veracity without the material Or is it enough to remain Infidels and only believe that the Church are true Believers If you hold to this you make no act of faith but one the believing that the Church that is the Pope or Council are true believers to be of Necessity to salvation But if there be something that is Necessary to be actually that is explicitely believed then must not that be distinguished from the rest and made known 18. Whence is it that you denominate men fideles believers with you Is it from a Positive faith or for not holding the contrary If the latter then Stones and Beasts and Pagans and their Infants may be believers If the former then that Positive faith from whence all believers are denominated must be known 19. Is not that true faith and all that is essential to Christianity which doth consist with saving grace or to use your phrase with true Charity If not then either Infidels and no Christians may have true Charity or else true Charity may be in the unjustified or both If yea which doubtless you will yield then sure men of lower knowledge and faith then Doctors may have true Charity and therefore true faith 20. Lastly I appeal to your own confessions Bellarmine often distinguisheth between the points that all must of Necessity explicitely believe and the rest And Suarez in three parts Thom. Disp 43. Sect. 4. faith of the Article of Christs descending into Hell If by an Article of faith we understand a truth which all the faithfull are bound explicitely to know and believe so I do not think it necessary to reckon this among the Articles of faith because it is not altogether necessary for all men Here you see that Suarez distinguisheth between Articles of Necessity to all and those that are not and that he excepts even the Descent into Hell from this number of Articles Necessary to all I might cite many more of your writers but the thing is well known But perhaps you 'l say that though all that is de fide be not necessary to be believed explicitely by all yet implicitely it must I Ans 1. that which you call Implicite believing is no believing that point but another point yea a point that doth not so much as infer that for it followeth not the Church is infallible therefore Christ descended into Hell 2. And we believe all that is de fide with an Implicite faith as well as you But it is an Implicite Divine faith and not humane For we are sure that All that God saith is true and this Divine veracity is the formal object of our faith And we believe that all that is in Scripture is true and that all that was ever delivered by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost is true Object But all that is de fide is so necessary that it will not stand with salvation to believe the contrary or deny or dis-believe any point of faith Answ 1. That cannot be true For no man can prove that a point may not be denyed and disputed against by a true Believer as long as he is ignorant that it is true and from God the same ignorance that keeps him from knowing it may cause him to deny it and gainsay it 2. Do not your own differing Commentators Schoolmen and Casuists on one side at least dispute voluminously against some Truths of Divine revelation If you change a mans mind from the smallest error by dispute do you take that to be a change of his state from death to life Aenaeas Sylvius thought a General Council was above the Pope but when he came to be Pope Pins the second he thought the Pope above a General Council was this a change from death to life It seems by his Bull of Retractation he thought so but so did not several General Councils was the Catholick Church Representative at the Councill of Basil or Constance or Pisa in a state of death and damnation for believing the Pope to be subject to a General Council or was the Council at Laterane another Representative Catholick Church in a state of death for holding the Contrary Must either Pope John the twenty second or Pope Nicolas be damned because of the contrariety of their Decrees If the Council of Toletane the first ordain that he that hath a Concubine instead of a wife shall not be kept from the Sacrament doth it prove them all in a state of death If Bellarmine confess that the sixth General Council at Constantinople have many errors doth it follow that the Catholick Church representative was in a damnable state If the second Council at Nice maintain the corpercity of Angels and the first Council at the Latarane maintain the contrary doth it follow that one of them was in a state of death I think not though I am sure it proves a General Council fallible when approved by the Pope and therefore Popery a deceit Bellarmine sometime tells us of the change of his own mind And the Retractations of Austin a better man tell us of the change of his mind in many things And yet it followeth not that he was in a state of death and unjustified before Object But all that is de fide is of Necessity to the Salvation of some though not of all Answ 1. If that be granted yet you must grant us leave to distinguish between Points necessary to be believed by all and points that are not thus necessary to all 2. But in what case is it that you mean that other points are of Necessity to some 1. Is it to those some
there must concur a Divine Institution which they can no where shew and a call from man Nemo dat quod non habet what man or men have power to make a Head to the Catholick Church But whether they will call it an Efficient Cause or only a Causa sine qua nen Election and Ordination must go to make a Pope Now either they will put these into their Definition or not If not know of them whether a man without Election and Ordination may be Pope If so what makes him one If Possession then he that can conquer Rome and sit down in the chair is Pope If not possession what then and why may not any man say I am Pope well but doubtless they will tell you that Election or Ordination or both is Necessary If so then first for Election is it Necessary to the being of a Pope that some certain persons Elect who have the Power or will any Electors serve whosoever If any will serve then every Monastery or every Parish may choose a Pope If there must be certain Authorized Electors see that those be named in the Definition or at least declared And then first know whether these Electors are impowered to that work by Divine Law or by Humane If by Divine let them shew it if they can In Scripture they can never find who must choose the Pope And their Tradition if that were a Divine law hath no such precept as appeareth by the alterations and divers wayes And if it be but by a Humane Ecclesiasticall Canon then it seems the Papacy is so too for the Power received can have no higher a cause then the Power giving or authorizing 2. When you come to know who these Electors must be you open their nakedness For first if they say It must be the Cardinals ask them where then was the Pope when there were no Cardinals in the world And whether that were a Pope or not that was chosen by the whole Romane Clergie or whether those were Popes or not that were chosen by the People Or those that were chosen by the Emperours or those that were chosen by Councills If they tell you that it must be the Romane Clergie Know whether the Cardinals be the whole Romane Clergie who are Bishops of other Churches or whether they are not meerly Titular at least many of them And whether the People the Council or the Emperours were the Romane Clergy If they would perswade you that either the people or the Emperour or Council did not elect the Pope but only shew whom the Romane Clergy should elect interposing exorbitantly some unjust force with the Due Election then all currant History cryeth shame against them and we will lay the Dispute on that with them readily though it were with Baronius himself Nothing almost is more evident in the Papal History then that there have been at least these five ways of election among them Let them put it upon this issue with us when they will If they allow of any of these as valid which ever it be as they must or give up their succession then 1. We would know by what Law of God the Emperour of Germany may choose a Head for the Catholick Church any more then the Emperour of Habassia or the King of France or Spain 2. And we would know when the Emperour hath chosen one and the Clergy another if not some others a third whether both were not true Popes if both parties were authorized Electors And if yet the People choose one and the Romane Clergy another and the Cardinals alone a third and the Emperour a fourth and the Councill a fifth must all these stand or which of them and why Or if they tell you that it must be the particular Roman Church then 1. If the people of that Church choose one and the Clergy by major vote another and the Cardinals a third which is the true Pope 2. And then the succession is gone however For they were no Popes that Emperors or Councils chose 2. If they shall tell you that it is not Election but Consecration that makes a Pope yea or that Consceration is of Necessity with Election then 1. Demand of them whether it be any one whosoever that may Consecrate or whether this high power be confined to certain hands If any may serve or any Bishops then he that can get three drunken Bishops to consecrate him may be Pope And then there may be an hundred Popes at once But if it be confined to certain hands 2. Let it be put down in the Definition or at least declared who those are that must ordain or consecrate him 3. And if they say that It must be only the Italian Bishops that must consecrate then 1. Know of them by what Law of God they have power to consecrate a Head to the universal Church when all nations are agreed that quod pertinet ad omnes ab omnibus tractari debet 2. And by what Law they can create or Generate a creature of a more noble species then themselves as if a beast should beget a man Or whether this prove not that as a Bishop at first was but Presbyter primae sedis like the fore man of a Jury and thence sprung an Archbishop who was Episocopus primae sedis and thence a Patriarck who was Archiepiscopus primae sedis so in process of time when Pride grew riper the Pope grew to be Patriarcha primae sedis but not till long after the Head or Governour of the universall Church nor Patriarcha Patriarcharum no more then the Archbishops or Bishops were at first Episcopi Episcoporum But if they can shew us no law of God empowring these speciall consecrators any more then others then where is the Papacy that dependeth on it There is nothing in Scripture to empower the Italian Bishops any more then the Gallicane Germane or Asian to Consecrate a Head for the Catholick Church 3. But suppose there were yet we must be resolved whether it be some or all the Italian Bishops that must do it If but some which be they and how is their power proved If all or any then 1. What shall we do when some of them consecrate one Pope and some another and some a third which hath fallen out which of these is the Pope If Consecration give the Power then all are Popes 2. And still the Papal succession is overthrown while many Popes had no Consecration by Italian Bishops Thus you may see what a case the poor Jesuits or Fryars will be in if you put them but to insert the necessary Electors and Consecrators in their Definition of a Pope 2. But that 's not the worst you must require them to put his necessary Qualification in the Description For if no Disposition of the Matter be necessary but ex quolibet ligno fit mercurius Romanus then a Jew or other Infidel may be Pope which they will deny And if any Disposition of the subject be
of necessity to the Reception of the form then cause them to put it down And then 1. It is either true Godliness and then farewell Papacy 2. Or it is common honesty and sobriety and then still farewell Papacy 3. Or it is learning and knowledge and then Alphonsus à Castro and others of their own will bear witness that some Popes understood not their Grammar and one good man being saith Wernerus rudis literarum was fain to get another Compope to say his offices though it happened that they could not agree and so a third was chosen and his choice disliked and a fourth chosen till there was six chosen Popes alive at once 4. If age be necessary then the Children Popes one at least have interrupted the succession 5. Yea if the Masculine Gender be but Necessary Pope Joan hath interrupted the succession unless between forty or fifty of their own Historians deceive us 6. but all this is the smallest part the Question is whether faith in Christ be of Necessity to a Pope If so then what will you say to John the twenty third that denyed the life to come and to those that have been guilty of Heresie So that by that time they have put the necessary Qualification of a Pope into their Definition you shall find them hard put to it 3. But yet the worst is behind They be not agreed about the very form of the Papacy For some say He is the Head of all the Catholick Church But others with the General Councils of Constance and Basil say that he is the Head only of the singular members but a subject to the Catholick Church represented in a Council which receiveth its power immediately from Christ so that you may see what a case they will be in if they be but forced to tell you what they mean by a Pope and to Define him too 3. And if they use the name of a General Council call them to Define what they mean by a General Council some of them will say It must be a true Representative of the whole Catholick Church so that Morally they are all Consenting to what is there done But then the doubt remaineth whether there be a Necessity of any certain Number of Bishops If not it seems the whole Church may agree that twenty or ten or two or one shall represent them and be a general Council But if this must not hold then Must All the Bishops of the world be there or only some and how many Binnius saith Vol. 1. pag. 313. that a General Council is that where all the Bishops of the whole world may and ought to be present unless they be lawfully hindred and in which none but the Pope of Rome by himself or his Legates is wont to preside And vol. 3. pag. 229. It is when all the Church is morally Represented the Pope presiding But what a loss are we here at 1. How prove they that only Bishops should be members of a Council and not Presbyters 2. But if that were granted them without proof and contrary to practise yet we are at a far greater loss to know what a Bishop is that must here be a member Is he only the Primus Presbyterorum in a presbyterie Or is he the Ruler of a Presbyterie they Ruling the people Or is he the sole Ruler of Presbyters and people And is he to be in every Parish where are divers presbyters or only in every Classâ—s or lesser Synod or only in every County or Province Or shall the old Rule stand that every City must have one If so then are not all our Corporations true Cities And so by any of these Rules there have been few General Councils in the world And what word of God is there why London Worcester Canterbury should have Bishops and Shrewsbury Ipswich Plimouth and hundreds such should have none so that if the very matter of your Councils be so humane and disordered what is the Council composed of such As most of them use the term Bishop you would put them as hard to it to Define a Bishop almost as to define a Pope 3. But suppose they help you over this rub yet by their Definition they null many General Councils because the Pope presided not there even the first General Council it self at Nice whatsoever they boldly feign to the contrary 4. And by this Rule either we never had a General Council or but few For instance At the first Session of the Council of Trent the last and most famous Council there were but four Archbishops and twenty two Bishops taking in the Titular Bishops of Upsal Armach and Worcester And at divers other Sessions after but eight or nine or very few more In the fourth Session which Decreed to receive Tradition with equal pious affection and reverence as the holy Scriptures and which gave us a false Catalogue of the Canonical Books there were but the Popes Legates two Cardinals nine Archbishops titular and all and forty one or forty two Bishops titular and all Now we would fain know whether this was the whole Church morally represented and whether these twenty two or forty one were all the Bishops of the world or the hundreth part of them Yea whether all the Bishops of the African Asian and other Churches could and ought to have been there If they say that most of the Bishops of the world are Hereticks or Schismaticks and had nothing to do to be there we are sure that this is but the impudent censure of a sect that unchurcheth most of Christs Church for far less faults then it self is guilty of But how is this heavy censure proved 5. Nay to make short of it its plain by this Definition that a General Council is but a name at least since the daies when the Church lay in a narrow room and that no such thing is to be expected in the world For 1. If all Bishops or half come thither what shall their poor flocks do the while 2. How many years must they be travailing from America Ethiopia and all the remote parts of the Christian world 3. So much shipping and provision and so many thousand pound a man is necessary for the Convoy of many that alas the poor Bishops be not able to defray the hundreth part of the charge 4. Abundance of them are so aged and weak that they are unfit for the journey 5. Their Princes are some of them Infidels and some at wars and will never give them leave to come 6. They must pass through many Kingdoms of the enemies or that are in wars that will never suffer them to pass 7. The tediousness and hazards of the journey with change of air is like to be the death of most of them and so it s but a plot to put an end to the Church 8. The length of General Councils is such some of them being ten years and some as that at Trent eighteen years that so many Bishops to be so long
at Anatolius his rising and the equaling him with Rome but they never excepted one word that ever I found against the saying that it was because of the Empire that Rome by the Fathers had the Primacy given it And the Reason given by themselves Concil Constant Can. 5. is because Constantinople is new Rome But Binnius saith that Rome receiveth not the Canons of this Council neither but only their condemnation of Macedonius And he saith that every Council hath just so much strength and authority as the Apostolick seat bestoweth on it For saith he unless this be admitted no reason can be given why some Councils of greater numbers of Bishops were reprobated and others of a smaller number confirmed Bin. Vol. 2. p. 515. What would you have more Sirs Do you not see yet what the Popish Catholick Church is and what they mean when they mouth it out to you and ask you whether your private Judgement be safer or wiser then that of the whole Church or of all the Christian world You see they mean all this while but one man whom Gretser and others plainly confess they call the Church So that indeed it is General Councils and all the Christian world or Church that are the ignorant fallible and oft erring part and it is one man that sometime is reputed an incarnate Devil by a General Council too that is the unerring Pillar of the Church and wiser then all they Do you not see that they make a meer nothing or mockery of General Councils any further then they please the Pope And can you expect that any thing should please them that is against his Greatness or as Julius the second calls it his holding the place of the great God the Maker of all things and all Laws What a vile abuse is it then of the Pope to trouble the world by the meetings and Consultations of General Councils when he can sit at Rome and contradict them infallibly and Good man is fain to save the Catholick Church from the Errors that General Councils the Representative Catholick Church would else lead them into and therefore could he not with less ado infallibly make us Laws Canons and Scriptures without them For sure that which the Pope can do against a General Council he can do without them If he can Infallibly contradict a General Council and Infallibly Rule us contrary to their Judgement he may no doubt Infallibly Rule us without them And therefore of late times they have learnt so much wit that you may look long enough before you see a General Council And I think the Council of Constance were no better Prognosticators then William Lilly nor no more effectuall Lawgivers then Wat Tyler when they Prognosticated or Ordained Decennial Councils And I will be judged by all the world And here also you may see what account the Papists make even of the first General Councils It s all one with them to judge others Hereticks for contradicting especially the four first General Councils compared to the four Evangelists as the Scripture it self and yet who would have thought it they profess themselves to reject the Canons or Decrees of both these the first of Constantinople and that of Calcedon in part And now I think on it by this priviledge I cannot see but the Pope is priviledged from all possibility of being an Heretick personally But these things are on the by I return to the point in hand which is to prove to you that not only the Romish Universal Monarchy and Vice-godhead but even its Patriarchal Primacy was no Apostolical Tradition but an Humane Institution founded on this Consideration that Rome was the Imperial Seat and City 5. And Humane it must needs be 1. For we find that Councils did not declare it as any part of the Law of God but Ordain it as an act of their own 2. We find them adding the Patriarchate of Constantinople which was a new seat neither Patriarch nor Bishop residing there in the Apostles dayes or long after 3. Yea we find them giving this new Patriarch the second place and once making him equal with old Rome which they would never have presumed to do if they had thought that the Patriarchship of Alexandria Antioch or Rome had been of Divine Institution for what horrible arrogancy would that have been when the Holy Ghost by the Apostles had made Alexandria second and Antioch third and Rome first for a Council to set Constantinople before two of them and equal with the first 6. And therefore we have reason to think that if Patriarchs be desirable creatures there may more and more new ones now be made as lawfully as Constantinople was 7. And we do not think that a General Council or Pope can make a man of one Nation to be Patriarch of the Church in another Nation that perhaps may be in wars with the Prince of the first Nation but that each Prince with the Church under their Power hath more to do in it then either Pope or Council And if Portugal and France set up Patriarchs at home they do as lawfully as the Patriarch of Constantinople was set up 8. And therefore we must needs judge that to disobey the Pope or withdraw from his subjection if he had never forfeited his Patriarchship by the claim of an Universal Headship were no greater a sin then to disobey or withdraw from the Patriarch of Alexandria Antioch or Constantinople either the Government by Patriarchs and Arch-bishops is of Gods ordaining and approving or not if not as most of the Protestants hold then it is no sin to reject any of them If it be of God then to reject any of them though in simple error is a sin of disobedience through ignorance but is far from proving a man to be no member of the Catholick Church for sure Patriarchs are far from being Essential parts of the Catholick Church For 9. We conclude as in the Papists own Judgement the Catholick Church may be without the Patriarch of Constantinople Alexandria or Antioch so may it therefore without the Pope of Rome CHAP. XX. Detect 11. THE great endeavour of the Papists is to advance Tradition The Council of Trent Ses 4. hath equalled it with the Scriptures as to the pious affection and reverence wherewith they receive it On pretence of this Tradition they have added abundance of new Articles to the faith and accuse us as Hereticks for not receiving their Traditions And this is a principall difference betwixt us that we take the Scriptures to be sufficient to acquaint us with the will of God as the Rule of faith and holy living and they take it to be but part of the word of God and that the other part is in unwritten Tradition which they equal with this as afore For the maintaining of Tradition it is that they write so much to the dishonour of the holy Scripture as you may find in Rushworths Dialogues and Tho. Whites Defence of them and
and what was the doctrine and practice of the Christians in their times and what Books they made the ground of their faith so that as true Universal impartial naturally-or-rationally-infallible History or Testimony differeth from a private pretended-prophetical assertion or from the Testimony of one party only so doth our Tradition excell both the sorts of Popish Tradition both that of the Papal and that of the Councill party And now judge who may better boast of or extol Tradition they or we and to what purpose Cressy White and such men do bring their discourses of Tradition 2. But yet we have not so done with them till Tradition have given them their mortal stroak You appeal to Tradition to Tradition you shall go But what Tradition mean you The Tradition of the Catholick Church And where is this to be found and known but in the profession and practice of the Church and in the Records of the Church Well then of both these let us enquire The first and great Question between you and us is Whether the Pope be the Head and Soveraign Ruler of the whole Catholick Church and then whether the Catholick Church and the Roman are of equal extent What saith Tradition to this 1. Let us enquire of the present Church and there we have the profession and practice of all the Greek Church the Syrians the Moscovites the Georgians and all others of the Greek Religion dispersed throughout the Turks Dominions with the Jacobites Armenians Egyptians Abassines with all other Churches in Europe c. that disclaim the Headship of the Roman Pope all these do with one mouth proclaim that the Church of Rome is not and ought not to be the Mistriss of the world or of all other Churches but that the Pope for laying such a claim is an usurper if not the AntiChrist This is the Tradition of the Greeks this is the Tradition of the Abassines the far greatest part of the Church on earth agree in this Mark then what is become of the Roman Soveraignty by the verdict of Tradition even from the vote of the greatest part of the Church Rome hath no right to its pretended Soveraignty Babylon is faln by the judgement of Tradition If you have the faces again to say that all these are Hereticks or Schismaticks and therefore have no vote we answer If a minor party and that so partial and corrupt seeking Dominion over the rest may step into the Tribunal and pass sentence against the Catholick Church or the greatest part of it blame not others if on far better grounds they do so by that part And for shame do not any more hereafter use any such self-condemning words as to ask any Sect How dare you condemn the Catholick Church Do you think all the Church is forsaken but you c And let us ask you as you teach your followers to ask us If we must turn from the Universal Church to any Sect why rather to yours then another why not as well to the Anabaptists or other party as to the Papists But your common saying is that the Greeks Protestants and all the rest were once of your Church and departing from it they can have no Tradition but yours for their spring is with you To which we answer 1. The vanity of this your fiction shall by and by be answered by it self 2. You say so and they say otherwise why should we believe you that are a smaller partial and corrupted part 3. Well then let us go to former ages seeing it is not the present Church whose voice you will regard only by the way I pray forget not 1. That you do ill then to call us still to the Judgement of the present Church and dare not stand to it 2. And that you do ill to perswade men that the greater part of the Church cannot err if you sentence the greater part as Schismaticks or Revolters But how shall we know the way and mind of the ages past If by the present age then the greater part giveth us in their sence against you If by the Records of those times we are content to hear the Testimony of these And first when we look into the Antients themselves we find them generally against you and we find in that which is antiquity indeed no footsteps of your usurped Soveraignty but a contrary frame of Government and a consent of antiquity against it 2. When we look into later History we find how by the advantage of Romes temporal greatness and the Emperors residence there your greatness begun and preparation was made to your usurpation and how the translation of the Imperial Seat to Constantinople made them your Competitors yea to begin in the claim of an universal Headship and we find how it being once made a question you got it by a murdering Emperor resolved on your side for his own advantage We find that it was long even till Hildebrands dayes before you could get any great possession for all this sentence It would but be tedious here to recite our Historical Evidence we refer you to what is done already by Goldastus and Bishop Usher de statu success Ecclesiar and in his Answer to the Jesuits Challeng and in his Discourse of the Antient Religion of Ireland c. specially by Blondel in his French Treatise of Primacy and Dr. Field and many others that have already given you the testimony of Antiquity More then you can give a reasonable answer to I have produced in my Book called the safe Religion In plain English instead of Apostolical Tradition for your Soveraignty we find that eight hundred years after the dayes of Christ you had not neer so much of the Catholick Church in your subjection as you have now that at four hundred or five hundred if not till six hundred years after Christ you had no known part of the world that acknowledged your universal Soveraignty but only the Latine Western Church submitted to the Pope as their Patriarch and the Patriarch primae sedis the first in order among the Patriarchs and that before the dayes of Constantine and the Nicene Council he was but a Bishop of the richest and most numerous Church of Christians and we see no proof that of an hundred years after Christ he was any more then the chief Presbyter of a particular Church If all this will not serve we have National Evidences beyond all exception that the Ethiopian Churches of Habassia the Indians Persians c. were never your subjects to this day That England Scotland and Ireland here in your Western Circuits were not only long from under you but resisted you maintaining the Council of Calcedon against you and joyning with the Eastern Churches against you about Easter day c. And that the Eastern Churches and many great Nations as Tendue Nubia c. that now are revolted were never your subjects and some of them had little to do with you And yet if all this will not serve
could not be brought either because of the infirmities of sex or of age many other impediments intervening For that any i. e. Legates should be sent as from the side of your holiness we find not constituted by any Synod of the Fathers Because that which you sent us by our fellow Bishop Faustinus as done by the Nicene Council in the truer Councils received as the Nicene sent from holy Cyril our fellow Bishop of the Church of Alexandria and from venerable Atticus the Bishop of Constantinople out of the Authentick Records which also heretofore were sent by us to Boniface your predecessor Bishop of venerable memory by Innocent a Presbyter and Marcellus Subdeacon by whom they were from them to us directed in which we could find no such matter And do not ye send your Clergy executors to potent men do not ye yield to it lest we seem to bring the smoaky Arrogancy of the world or secular arrogancy into the Church of Christ which preferreth the light of simplicity and day of humility for them that desire to see God For of our brother Faustinus we are secure that the safe brotherly charity in your holinesses honesty and moderation can suffer him to stay no longer in Africa Well said Aurelius Well said Augustine Well said all you African Fathers Had others stuck as close to it as you the Papacy had been kept from the Universall Monarchy Note here 1. That this Council lookt no higher for the power of the Pope and other Metropolitans then to the Council of Nice and thought it a good argument that the Pope had no such power because no Council had so subjected the African Church And therefore they never dreamt that Christ or the Apostles had given it him 2. Note that they evince the Nullity of his pretended power out of the Nicene Council 3. Note that they took him not to be above a Council having power to dispense with its Canons 4. Note that by the Nicene Council not some but all business must be ended where they begin and this Council so interpreted them and therefore there 's no appeals to the Pope 5. And that he that saith otherwise unjustly chargeth the Holy Ghost to be wanting to the Church 6. That this order is to be held fast 7. That they took it for a sufficient reason against appeals to Rome because all might appeal to a provincial or general Council 8. Note that they thought it a thing not to be imagined by a man that God should give his Spirit to any one man even to the Pope to enable him to try and judge and deny it to a Council General or Provincial This seemed to them a thing that none should imagine so that they little dreamt of the Roman infallibility or power of Judging all the world 9. Note also that they thought the Pope to be uncapable of this universal judgement were it but by distance and the natural impediments of age sex and many the like that must needs hinder the necessary witnesses from such a voyage or journey So that they give an Argument from Natural necessity against the Popes pretended Soveraignty and judgement 10. Note also that they plainly make such judgements to be invalid for want of necessary witness and means of prosecution 11. And whereas the Pope might object that he could prevent all this by his Legates they flatly reject that too and say they find no such thing Constituted by any Synod so that they both rejected the Popes trying and judging by Legates in other Metropositans jurisdiction and they took it for a sufficient ground to do so that there was no Council had so constituted little dreaming of a Scripture constitution or Apostolical Tradition And if the Pope may neither judge them by himself nor his Legates he may sit still 12. Next they convince the Roman Bishop of sending them a false Canon of the Nicene Council 13. And they shew us here what way the Pope then took to get and keep his Power even by sending to the secular commanders of the Provinces in whom they had special interest by their residence at Rome to execute their wills by force 14. And note how the Council plainly accuseth them for this of introducing secular Arrogancy into Christs Church that better loveth simplicity and humility and light 15. And note how plainly they require the Bishop of Rome to do so no more 16. And how plainly they tell him that Faustinus his stay any longer in Africa will not stand with that honesty and moderation of the Bishop of Rome which is necessary to the safety of brotherly charity I give you but the plain passages of the Council as they lie before you and scrue no forced consequences from them And now let Binnius and his brethren go make women and children believe that it was not Appeals to Rome but a trouble some manner of tryal that the Council was against And let H. T. tell men that take him for infallible of a Nicene Canon for the Popes Supremacy and Monarchy And let him perswade ideots and dotards that the Catholick Church in the fourth and fifth ages was for the universal Government of the Pope And so I proceed to his next proof Saith H. T. The first Constantinop Council decreed the Bishop of Constantinople to be chief next the Bishop of Rome Answ 1. You see then that Primacy was but the Institution of Councils for order sake 2. You see then that it was grounded on a secular reason for so saith the Canon because it is new Rome 3. You see then that the Popes Primacy was but honorary and gave him no universal Government For the primacy here granted to Constantinople gave them no Government over Alexandria Antioch c. 4. Yea expresly the second Canon limits all Bishops without exception to their own Diocess And so doth the third Canon expresly affirming that according to the Nicene Council in every province the provincial Council ought to administer and govern all things See now what a proof here is of Catholick succession of the Roman Monarchy Nay how clearly still it is disproved to that time The next proof of H. T. is from the third Act of the first Council of Ephesus that Peter yet lives and exercises judgement in his Successors Answ He turns us to look a needle in a bottle of hay That Council is a large volume containing six Tomes in Binnius and not divided into Acts. But I suppose at last I have found the place Tom. 2. c. 15. where the words that Peter was the Head of the Apostles though nothing to their purpose are neither spoken nor approved by the Council but only by Philip a Presbyter Celestines Legate And the Council though specially moved by his concurrence to extoll Celestine to the highest yet 1. Never spake a word of his Governing power or Soveraignty but only his concent And when they mention the Roman Church it is only their concent which they predicate 2.
And they extoll Cyril equally with Celestine Novo Paulo Celestine they forgot Peter Novo Paulo Cyrillo Unu◠Celestinus Unus Cyrillus c. The next witness brought is the Council of Calcedon as caling Leo Universal Archbishop and Patriarch of old Rome and sentence is pronounced against Dioscorus in the names of Leo and Saint Peter Answ 1. This is but one of your common frauds It was not the Council that called him universall Archbishop but two Deacons in the superscription of their Libels viz. Thedodorus and Ischirion And were they the Catholick Church 2. By Universal Archbishop it s plain that they meant no more then the chief in dignity and order of all Archbishops and not the Governour of all 3. I have shewed you before that this very Council in its Canons not only give the Bishop of Constantinople equal priviledges with the Bishop of Rome but expresly say that Rome received this primacy of order à patribus from a Council because it was Sedes Imperii the seat of the Emperour I thought I had given you enough of this Council before Sure I am when Bellarmine comes to this Canon he hath nothing to say for his cause but plainly to charge this famous fourth General Council with lying or falshood and to say that the Pope approved not this Canon But approved or not approved if this was the Catholick Church representative sure I am that their testimony is valid to prove that there was then no Catholick reception of the Roman Monarchy as of God but contrarily a meer primacy of Dignity and Honour given it newly by men In the sixth age he had not one Council to pretend it seems for the Roman Soveraignty for he cites none but about other matters of which anon In the seventh age which he calls the sixth though then the Soveraignty was claimed by Boniface he citeth no Council for it niether In the eighth age from the year seven hundred he cites the second Council of Nice as approving an Epistle of Pope Adrian wherein he saith that the Roman Church is the Head of all Churches Answ 1. But whether Adrian himself by the Head meant the chief in Dignity or the Governour of all is a great doubt 2. But whatever he meant the Synods approving his Epistle for Images is no proof that they approved every word in it 3. Yea Tharasius seems to imply the contrary calling him only Veteris Romae primas testatorum principum successor as if his Sea had the Priviledge only of being the Primate of Rome and not the Ruler of the world 4. But if this Council did as it did not openly own the Papal Soveraignty it had been no great honour to him For as in their decrees for Images they contradicted two Councils at Constantinople and that at Frankford contradicteth them so might they as well contradict the Church in this Even as they defined Angels to be corporeal which the Council of Laterane afterward contradicted But the plain truth is it was the scope of Adrians Epistle as for Images which they expressed themselves to approve And that their Image-worship it self hath no Catholick succession me thinks they should easily grant considering not only 1. That there is nothing in the first ages for them 2. And that Epiphanius and many before him speak expresly against it 3. But specially that there have been more General Councils of those ages against them then for them and that before this of Nice decreed for them the representative Catholick Church except still the Pope be the Catholick Church did condemn them I suppose by this time you will think it needless for me to follow H. T. any further in his Catalogue I am content that any impartial sober person judge whether here be a satisfactory proof of a Catholick succession of the Papal Soveraignty when through so many ages they bring not a word for any succession at all much less that it was owned by the Catholick Church and least of all that all the rest of Popery was so owned Object But at least some other points of Popery are proved by H. T. to have such a succession Answ Peruse his proofs and freely judge Two of the thirty two Articles which I mentioned before he speaks to The one is that Bishops Priests and Deacons should abstain from their Wives or be degraded But 1. The Council which he cites for this is but a Provincial Council in Spain in the fifth Age and what 's this to Catholick succession 2. The Evidences for the Antiquity of Priests marriages are so clear and numerous that I will not thank any of them to confess their doctrine a Novelty 1 Cor. 9. 5. Have we not power to lead about a Sister a Wife as well as other Apostles and as the brethren of the Lord and Cephas I hope they will not deny that Peter had a Wife 1 Tim. 3. 2 4. A Bishop must be blameless the husband of one Wife One that ruleth well his own house having his children in subjection with all gravity ver 12. Let the Deacons be the husbands of one wife ruling their children and their own houses well Tit. 1. 7. If any be blameless the husband of one Wife having faithfull children The Antient Canons called the Apostles say Can. 6. Let not a Bishop or Presbyter put away his own Wife on pretence of Religion And if he reject her let him be excommunicated but if he persevere let him be deposed Let Bellarmine perswade those that will believe him that this Canon speaks but of denying them maintenance Canons as well as Scripture are unintelligible to these men The Canons at Trull of the fifth and sixth Council do expresly expound this Apostolick Canon as I do here and they profess it was the Apostles concession then to the Bishops to marry and they themselves forbid any to separate Priests from their Wives and professedly oppose the Roman Church in it Can. 12 13. For this Bellarmine lib. 2. cap. 27. de Pontif. Rom. reproacheth them and that 's his answer Forsooth the Pope approved not these Canons 1. Let Adrians words be read and then judge 2. What if he did not Our enquiry is of Catholick Tradition and succession and not of the Popes opinion But it s easie to bring much more for this Another point that H. T. proves is The same Canon of Scripture which they own And for this he brings one Provincial Council Carth. 3. as in the sixth Age. An excellent proof of Catholick succession through all Ages But have we not better proof of the contrary Let him that would be satisfied peruse these records and judge Euseb Eccles Hist l. 3. cap. 9. vel 10. and there Joseph li. 1. cont Apion Constitut Apostol whosoever was the author lib. 2. cap. 57. Canon Apostult Dionys Eccl. Hier. cap. 3. Melet. in Euseb Eccl. Histor lib. 5. cap. 24. Origen in Niceph. hist Eccles lib. 5. cap. 16. Orig. Philocal cap. 3. Euseb Hist l. 6. cap.
sensible Image made of any sensible matter but such an Image as is to be conceived with the understanding Origen against Celsus lib. 7. page 373 384 386. 387. is large and plain against this use of Images as the Protestants are And the Eliber Concil C. 36. saith Placuit picturas in Ecclesia esse non debere ne quod colitur aut adoratur in parietibus depingatur It seemeth good to us that Pictures ought not to be in the Church lest that which is worshipped or adored should be painted on Walls Some Papists would sain find a sense for this anon contrary to the words But Melch Canus plainly saith that the Council did not only imprudently but impiously make this law to take away Images Loc. Theol. lib. 5. cap. 4. conc 4. I shall cite no more but intreat the Reader that is willing to be informed how much Antiquity was against the Papists in the points of Images to peruse only Dallaeus de Imaginibus and Usher in his Answer to the Jesuite and Sermon to the Parliament And I provoke the Papists to confute what is in them alledged if they can H. T. hath no better shift to salve their credit Manual page 319 320. then to set their own Schoolmen and General Council together by the ears The second Council of Nice that did most for Images did openly renounce the adoring them with Divine honour and Tharasius solemnly professed Duntaxat in unum verum Deum latriam fidem se referre reponere They did refer and repose faith and divine worship in the true God alone But Aquinas sum 3. q. 25. a. 3. 4. maintaineth as I before observed that the Image of Christ and the Cross and the sign of the Cross are to be worshipped with Divine worship And what saith H. Turbervile to this Why This is a meer school opinion and not of faith with us Urge not therefore what some particular Divines say but hearken to the Doctrine of Gods Church Very good Is not this so gross a kind of jugling that would never down if devout ignorance and implicite faith had not prepared the stomacks of the people 1. You see here that to contradict the Determination of a General Council is not of faith with them But it is not against your faith Do you give leave to meer school opinions to contradict General Councils See here what 's become of the Popish faith If the Determinations of Councils be not Articles of faith with you then you have no faith but give up your cause And if they be then Aquinas and his followers are Hereticks 2. And then see what 's become of the Popes Infallibility in Canonizing Saints that have sainted Thomas Aquinas that proves a Heretick by your Law so that your cause is gone which way ever you turn you 3. And then see what it is to pray to Saints when some of them are made Hereticks by your own Laws 4. And then also see at what Unity the Church of Rome is among themselves when it is the very common doctrine of their learned Schoolmen which contradicteth a General Council Are you not well agreed that while 5. And lastly note what a Holy Church you have when the common sort of your most learned Divines are thus made Hereticks See Bishop Ushers allegations of Th. Arundels Provincial Council at Oxford 1408 ex Guil. Linewood lib 5. And Jac. Naclantus in Rom. cap. 1. fol. 42. saith We must not only confess that the faithfull in the Church do worship before the Image as some cautelously speak but that they adore the Image without any scruple yea and that they worship it with the same worship as the Prototype so that if it be worshipt with Divine worship the Image must have Divine worship And Cabrera in 3. part Thom. qu. 25. art 3. disp 2. num 15. there cited by Usher saith that it is of faith that Images are to be worshipped in Churches and without and we must give them signs of servitude and submission by embracing lights offering incense uncovering the head c. 2. That Images are truly and properly to be adored with an intention to adore themselves and not only the samplars represented in them This Conclusion is against Durandus and his followers whose opinion by the Moderns is judged dangerous rash and savouring of Heresie and M. Medina reporteth that M. Victoria reputed it heretical but our conclusion is the common one of Divines If Images be improperly only adored then they are not to be adored simply and absolutely which is manifest Heresie And if Images were to be worshipped only by way of Remembrance because they make us remember the samplars which we thus adore as if they were present it would follow that all creatures are to be adored with the same adoration as God which is absurd 3. The Opinion of Saint Thomas that the Image must be worshipped with the same act of adoration as the samplar which it representeth is most true most pious and very consonant to the decrees of faith Thus Cabrera who adds that this is the doctrine of Thomas and all his Disciples and almost all the old Schoolmen and particularly of Cajetan Capreolus Paludanus Ferrariensis Antoninus Soto Alexand. Ales Albertus Magnus Bonaventura Richardus de media villa Dionysius Carthusianus Major Marsilius Thom. Waldensis Turrecremata Clichtovaeus Turrian Vasquez c. And Azorius saith It is the constant opinion of Divines Institut Moral tom 1. lib. 9. cap. 6. Yea in the Roman Pontifical published by the Authority of Clement the eighth it is expressed that The Legates Cross shall have the right hand because Divine worship is due to it See here whether the Pope himself be not an Heretick and the Pontifical contain not heresie and the whole rabble of the Schoolmen hereticks by contradicting the determination of the General Council at Nice 2. which H. T. citeth and the doctrine which he saith is the doctrine of Gods Church such is the faith and unity of the Papists But they will say still that though all these worship the very Cross and Images themselves and that with Divine worship yet there be some of a better mind that do but worship God by the Image such as H. T. c. Answ And do you think that rational Pagans did not know as well as you that their Images were not Gods themselves and so worshipped them not as Gods but as the representers and instruments of some Diety Lactantius Instit lib. 2. cap. 2. brings them in saying thus Non ipsa c. We fear not them but those whom they represent and to whose names they are consecrated And Arnobius thus Deos per simulachra veneramur It is the Gods that we worship by Images And Augustine thus reporteth the Pagans sayings in Psal 96. Non ego lapidem c. I do not worship that stone nor that Image which is without sense And in Psal Psal 113. cono 2. Nec simulachrum nec daemonium
in their own shame Vigilius saith he proceeded to that insolency that he excommunicated Mennas for four moneths And Mennas did the same by him But Justinian being moved to anger with such things sent some to lay hold on him But Vigilius being afraid of himself fled to the Altar of Sergius the Martyr and laid hold on the Sacred Pipes would not be drawn away till he had pul'd them down But by the Mediation of the Empress Theodora the Pope was pardoned and Menna and he absolved one another A fair proof of the Vicarship 3. And so it was that Pope Honorius was condemned for an Heretick by two or three General Councils 5. Also when they meet with any big words of their own Popes as I command this or that they take it for a proof of the Vicarship As if big words did prove Authority Or as if we knew not how lowlily and poorly they spoke to those that were above them As Gregory the first for instance was high enough towards those that he thought he could master but what low submissive language doth he use to secular Governors that were capable of overtopping him And what flattering language did his successors use to the most base murderers and usurpers of the Empire 6. Another Roman deceit is this When they find any mention of the exercise of the now thriving Roman Power over their own Diocess or Patriarchal circuit they would hence prove his universal Power over all And by that Rule the Patriarch of Alexandria or Constantinople may prove as much 7. Also when they meet with the passages that speak of the elevation of their Pope to be their first Patriarch in the Roman Empire or any Power that by the Emperors was given him they cunningly confound the Empire with the world and especally if they find it called by the name of the world and they would perswade you that all other Christians and Churches on earth did ascribe as much to the Bishop of Rome as the Roman Empire did It s true that he was in the Empire acknowledged to be first in order of dignity because of Rome the seat of his Episcopacy especially when General Councils began to trouble themselves and the world about such matters of precedency And it s well known from the language of their writers as well as from the words of Luke 2. 1. that they usually called the Empire all the world And from such passages would the Papists prove the Primacy at least of the Pope over all the world But put these Juglers to it to prove if they can that beyond the Rivers Meroes and Euphrates and beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire the Pope did either exercise Dominion or was once so much as regarded by them any more then any other Bishop except there were any adjacent Island or Countrey that had their dependence upon the Empire I hope they will not deny that the Church extended much beyond the Empire Though our History of that part of it be much defective And let them prove if they can that ever any of those Churches had any regard to the Roman Bishop any more then to another man Let them tell you where either the Empire of the Abassines or any other out of the line of the Imperial power was any whit like-subject to the Pope 8. But their chief fraud is about names and words When they meet with any high complemental title given to the Bishop of Rome they presently conclude that it signifieth his Soveraignty Let us instance in some particulars and shew the vanity of their conclusions from them 1. Sometimes the Roman Bishops are called Summi Pontifices the chief Popes and hence some gather their Supremacy But I suppose you will believe Baronius their chief flatterer in such a case as this And he tells you in Martyrolog Roman April 9. that Fuit olim vetus ille usus in Ecclesia ut Episcopi omnes non tantum Pontifices sed summi Pontifices dicerentur i. e. It was the ancient custom of the Church to call all Bishops not only Pontifices Popes but chief Popes And then citing such a passage of Hierom Epist 99. he addeth Those that understand not this ancient custom of speech refer these words to the Popedom of the Church of Rome 2. As for the names Papa Pope Dominus Pater Sauctissimus beatissimus dei amantissimus c. it s needless to tell you that these were commonly given to other Bishops 3. And what if they could find that Rome were called the mother of all Churches I have formerly shewed you where Basil saith of the Church of Caesarea that it is as the mother of all Churches in a manner And Hierusalem hath oft that Title 4. Sometime they find where Rome is called Caput Ecclesiarum and then they think they have won the cause When if you will consult the words you shall find that it is no more then that Priority of Dignity which not Christ but the Emperours and Councils gave them that is intended in the word It s called the Head that is the chief Seat in Dignity without any meaning that the Pope is the universal Monarch of the world 5. But what if they find the Pope called the Archbishop of the Catholick Church or the Universal Bishop then they think they have the day I answer indeed three flattering Monks at the Council of Calcedon do so superscribe their libels but they plainly mean no more then the Bishop that in order of dignity is above the rest And many particular Churches are oft called Catholick Churches There 's difference between A Catholick Church and The Catholick Church And the Bishop of Constantinople had that Title even by a Council at Constant an 518. before the Bishop of Rome had it publikely or durst own it It was setled on the Patriarch of Constantinople to be called the Oecumenical or Universal Patriarch Who knoweth not that Emperours gave such Titles at their pleasure Justinian would sometime give the Primacy to Rome and at another time to Constantinople saying Constantinopolitana Ecclesia omnium aliarum est caput The Church of Constantinople is the Head of all other Churches An. Dom. 530. C. de Episcopis l. 1. lege 24. And it s known that this Justinian that sometime calls Rome the Head did yet when the fifth General Council had condemned Vigilius Pope of Rome permit Theodora his Empress to cause him to be fetcht to Constantinople and drag'd about the street in a halter and then banished till they had forced him to subscribe and submit to the Council even as they had deposed Pope Silverius his predecessor And Baronius himself mentioneth a Vaticane Monument which as it calls Agapetus Episcoporum princeps on one side so doth it call Menna the Apostolick Universal Bishop Which Baronius saith doth mean no more then that he was Universal over his own Provinces aad if that be so any Bishop may be called Universal And do not these
readeth their own writers or liveth among them and seeth their lives will hardly think so He that had but seen the Murders of their Popes for the obtaining of the Popedom or how Pope Stephen raged against the Carcass of Pope Formosus drawing it out of the grave and changing its Pontifical habit to a secular and cutting off his fingers or he that had seen Pope Christopher casting the Corps of Pope Leo the fift into the River Tiber or Pope Sergius keeping the said Christopher bound in prison or Pope Boniface the seventh putting out his Cardinals eyes would scarce believe that the Holy Seat of Peter were indeed Holy all which Platina and others of their own writers give us notice of He that readeth Baronius himself telling us To. 10. an 897. n. 6. how Pope Stephen the seventh defiled St. Peters seat with unheard of sacriledge not to be named and sect 4. ib. and how the Princes of Tuscia were brought into Peters Chair and Christs Throne being monstrous men of most filthy lives and desperate manners and every way most filthy He that shall read the same flattering Cardinal saying Can. 900. sect 1. that ugly monsters were thrust into the Papacy that it was dawbed with dung infected with stinks defiled with filthiness and collowed by these with a perpeutal infamy And an 912. sect 8. that at Rome the most powerful and the most sordid whores did Rule at whose will the seats were changed Bishops were made and which is horrid to be heard and not to be spoken their sweet-hearts false Popes were thrust into Peters seat And that for an hundred and fifty years the Popes were wholly faln from the vertue of their Predecessors being disorderly and Apostatical rather then Apostolical not entring by the door but by the back-door saith a passionate Papist Genebrard Chron. l. 4. an 901. I say he that shall read these impartially will scarce think the Head of their Church hath been Holy which is an Essential part of it nor that their succession is uninterrupted But if besides these you would read but Nic. Clemangis Alvarus Pelagius de planctu Ecclesiae lib. 2. art 2. fol. 104. and many such like or their Poets Mantuan Pantes c. or Petrarch Mirandula c. you would think the Holiness of Rome-should be the poorest proof in the world of their being the only Church Their Espensaeus and others recite that Distich Vivere qui cupitis sanctè discedite Româ Omnia cùm liceant non licet esse bonum Platina saith in vita Marcellini Our vices are so increased that they have scarce left us any place for mercy with God How great is the Covetousness of the Priests especially of those that rule all how great lust how great ambition and pomp how great ignorance of themselves and of the Christian doctrine how little Religion and that rather counterfeit then true how corrupt manners even such as in the prophanest secular men were to be detested its not worth the speaking when they sin so openly and so publikely as if they sought Praise by it Their Claudius Espensaeus on Tit. pag. 75. saith Where is there under the Sun a greater liberty clamor impunity of all evil that I say not infamy and impudency then at Rome verily it is such as no man can believe but he that hath seen it and no man can deny it that hath seen it This was written since the Council of Trent And in the Council of Trent their Cornelius Muss a Bishop there and the wonder of his age among the Papists saith that there was no monsters of filthiness or sink or plague of uncleanness with which both people and Priest was not defiled In the very Sanctuary of God there was no shame no modesty no hope or regard of good living but unbridled and untamed lust singular audaciousness incredible wickedness And after more of the like he adds Would they had not faln from Religion to superstition from faith to infidelity from Christ to Antichrist yea as men that had no souls from God to Epicurus or Pythagoras saying in an impious heart and an impudent mouth there is no God And yet now of a long time there hath been no Pastor that would require or seek them again I say there was none to seek them because they all sought their own things but not one the things of Jesus Christ The same Bishop Cornelius Muss after the Council writes thus To. 2. Serm 2. Dom. V. Quadr. The Roman Name is hatefull with all Nations and see I pray you how little esteem the Church it self is of because of the scandals that are heard seen and felt I speak not now of enemies that call it Babylon Hell the Whore and say it is the sink of all Errours But I speak of friends that groan and daily sigh within themselves saying O holy City how art thou thus profaned O glorious City that art thus become vile thus contemned and neglected These and many more such Testimonies of their own writers Rivet and many of ours have oft set before them Guicciardine their Historian saith that Those are called Good Popes whose Goodness is not worse then other mens wickedness And if you think that now the matter is much mended read but Claud. Espensaeus in Tit. 1. pag. 75. complaining that the promises made by the Pope of Reformation at the Council of Trent were all broken and nothing done but deceit and shews And of Pope Sixtus the fifth Bellarmine gave out his judgement that he thought when he dyed he went to the Devil saying Qui sine paenitentia vivit sine paenitentia moritur proculdubio ad infernum descendit He that lives without Repentance and dyeth without Repentance undoubtedly goes to Hell And saith Watson of him in Quodl b. pag. 56 57. Bellarmine said to an English Doctor Conceptis verbis quantum capio quantum sapio quantum intelligo Dominus noster Papa descendit ad infernum As far as I can reach as far as I have any wisdom as far as I understand in plain terms our Lord the Pope is gone to Hell But which way he went thither all the world knows not but Barthol Morisot in the Life of Henry the Great of France cap. 17. saith That when the Spaniards perceived his contrivances to forsake their party lest he should join with the enemy they caused him to be strangled in the night by a Franciscan or one in a Monks habit and the next day gave out that a Domestick Devil had strangled him and to make good the report a Book was written of his life and printed where all the wickedness of Pope Alexander the sixth is charged on him And how the Popes are still chosen by impious Juglings and combinations Rivet tells you out of your own champion Cardinal Perron his Legationes Negotiat And of the saying of Cardinal Ossatus ad D. Ville roy Epist 87. concerning Pope Clement the eighth esteemed one of the very best of
Apostate Heretical or Schismatical any more then whether Jerusalem Ephesus Philippi or any other Church be so faln If you are not faln I am glad of it if you are I am sorry for it and so I have done with you unless I knew how to recover you Would you not laugh even at the Church of Jerusalem that was truly the Mother Church of the world if they should thus reason We are not faln away therefore we must Rule over all the world and no man is a Christian that doth not obey us This is the sport you make in the cheating of souls Well but let us follow you though our cause be not concerned in it 1. I answer that we accuse you not of renouncing the name of Christ 2. We must needs fear that according to to your own definition of Heresie you are guilty of many Heresies And to your Questions I answer 1. I pray you tell us what General Councils did ever condemn one half of the Heresies mentioned by Epiphanius Augustine or Philastrius Was there ever a greater rabble of Heresies then before ever a General Council was known and were they dead and buryed before the first General Council was born 2. Did you not smile when you wrote these delusory Questions How can a General Council condemn you or any great part of the Church for instance the Greeks c. If you be not there it s not a General Council And will you be there to condemn your selves you have more wit and less grace then so And I pray what General Council did ever condemn the Greeks for those many errors charged on them If the Greeks themselves were not there it was not a General Council so considerable a part are they of the Church And what General Council hath condemned the Abassines Egyptians c. 3. Do you think General Councils are so stark mad or horridly impious as to condemn so many Kingdoms with one condemnation for Heresie Why they know that men must be heard before they be condemned and a Kingdom consisteth of many millions of souls And it is not enough to know every mans faith if we know the faith of the King or Pope or Archbishop or Bishops And how long shall they be examining each person in many Kingdoms 4. But yet I can say more of your Church then of others He that kills the Head kils the Man Your Usurping Head is an Essential part of your New-formed Church But your Head hath been condemned by Councils therefore your Church in its essential part hath been condemned by Councils Do you not know that all the world as well as the feigned Council Sinuessan condemned your Pope Marcellinus for Offering to Idols Know you not that two or three General Councils condemned Pope Honorius as a Monothelite Yes no doubt you know it Know you not that the second General Council of Ephesus condemned and excommunicated your Pope And that the Council of Basil called by him did the like If you do not see Bellarmines parallel of them de Conciliis lib. 2. cap. 11. Do I need to tell you what the Council of Constance did Or for what John 22. alias 23. and John 13. and other Popes were deposed by Councils 2. And for Fathers do I need to tell you how many condemned Marcellinus Liberius Honorius and others How oft Hilary Pictav in fragmentis in recit Epist Liberii doth cry out Anathema tibi Liberi prevaricator presuming to curse and excommunicate your Pope Need I tell you what Tertullian saith against Zephernius Yea what Alphonsus à Castro and divers of your own say against Liberius Honorius Anastasius Celestine and tell us that many Popes have been Hereticks At least give us leave to believe Pope Adrian the sixth himself Read Dom. Bannes in 2 m 2ª q. 1. art 10. Where he proves at large against Pighius that a Pope may be an Heretick and laughs at Pighius that now after two hundred years would prove them false witnesses which write that Pope Honorius was condemned for an Heretick by three Popes viz. Agatho Leo the second and Adrian the second 3. But perhaps you 'l say that though your Popes have been condemned by Councils yet so have not your maintained doctrines Answ Yes that they have too Did not the Councils at Constantinople condemn the Doctrine of the second Nicene Council for Image-worship and the Council at Frankford do the like And those two at Constantinople were as much General as your Council of Trent was and much more And yet that same Council at Nice did condemn the doctrine of St. Thom. Aquinas and your Doctors commonly of worshipping the Image of Christ and Cross and sign of the Cross with Latria divine worship And did not your General Councils at Laterane and Florence declare that the Pope is above a Council and that they cannot depose him c. And yet your General Councils at Constance and Basil determine the contrary as an Article of Faith and expresly affirm the former to be Heresie See then your own doctrine even in a fundamental point condemned by General Councils of your own which side soever you take the Popes or the Councils And did not the sixt Council of Carthage of which St. Augustine was a principal member not only detect Pope Zosimus forged Canon of Nice but also openly and prevalently resist and reject your Usurpation and refuse your Legates and Appeals to you If you would cloak this believe your own Pope Boniface Epist ad Eulalium saying Aurelius sometime Bishop of Carthage with his Colleagues did begin by the Devils instigation to wax proud against the Church of Rome in the times of our Predecessors Boniface and Celestine And if you have learnt to except against this Epistle see your Bishop Lindanus justifying it Panopl l. cap. 89 Or at least believe your Champion Harding against Jewels Challenge art 4. sect 19. After the whole African Church had persevered in schism the space of twenty years and had removed themselves from the obedience of the Apostolick seat being seduced by Aurelius Bishop of Carthage Again note that Austin was one of them But you 'l say that this was not a General Council Answ True for when part riseth against part it cannot be the whole that is on either side Moreover do you not know that the Greeks have condemned you oft And truly their Councils have been much more General then yours at Trent was where about forty Bishops altered the Canon of Scripture and made Tradition equal with it I think verily this one County would have afforded a far better Council of a greater number But I 'le once more name one General Council that hath condemned your very foundation and that is the fourth General Council at Calcedon before mentioned Act. 15. Can. 28. Act. 16. where you may find 1. That the ancient Priviledges of the Roman Throne were given them by the Fathers in Council 2. That the Reason was because Rome was the
Imperial City 3. They give Equal Priviledges to the seat of Constantinople because it was now become New Rome 4. That the Roman Legates would not be present at this act 5. But the next day when they did appear and pretended that this act was forced the Bishops all cryed No man was compelled It s a just decree we all say thus we all approve it Let that stand that is decreed it s all right 6. Here specially note that this General Council thought they needed not the Popes Approbation for the validity of their Decrees when they pass them and take them for valid even contrary to the will of the Pope Speak you that bear the least reverence to a General Council Did this Council think that their Decrees were invalid if the Pope approve them not You see if you be not wilfully blind they did not And who is now to be believed Bellarmine and his party and the present prevalent party of the Papists that say Councils not approved by the Pope are invalid or without authority or the Council of Calcedon that thought otherwise 7. Note that the Popes Legates called this An humbling and depressing and wronging of the Papacy and therefore entred their dissent see Bellarmines Confession lib. 2. de Pontif. cap. 17. Binnius notes on this Council Baronius an 451. 8. Note also that the shifts of Bellarm. Binnius Baronius Becanus Gretser c. are apparently false that say this Canon was surreptitiously brought into the Council for Aetius Act. 16. openly professed the contrary and all the Bishops professed their consent to the last 9. Note also that this is one of the four Great Councils which the Papists themselves compare to the four Gospels and in it were six hundred and thirty Fathers 10. Note also that this great Council is against them and on the Protestant side in the very foundation of all our differences Whether the Roman Priviledges be jure divino or humano And though it be but the Priviledges and not the now claimed Vicarship that was in Question yet the Conclusion is the stronger against them because the lesser was denyed But their last shift is that this Clause or Canon was not approved and so is Null 1. Mark then you that wrote this Manuscript that we have General Councils against you but we want the Popes Approbation And in good sadness was that the meaning of your Question What Council that is what Pope condemned our Church Can it be expected that this one man should condemn himself or can you be no Heretick till then 2. But let it be so this once Did not your Pope approve of this Council when Gregory the first did liken it with the other three to the four Gospels and said of this Tota devotione Complector integerrima approbatione custodio I embrace it with my whole devotion I keep it with most entire approbation Greg. 1. Regist l. 1. Epist 24. cited in the Decrees Dist 15. c. 2. I think this is expresly a full Approbation not without excepting any part only but excluding all such exceptions And the like Approbation of Gelasius in the Roman Council is cited there also in the Decrees ibid. pag. 33. I did also before instance the sixt General Council against you approved by Pope Adrian in his Epistle to Tharasius in the second Nicene Council And indeed it is no hard matter to prove you condemned by your own Popes also If you could but understand the plainest words in a matter that is against your opinions and wills there needed no talk to perswade you that Pope Gregory the first condemned the Title of Universal Bishop or Patriarch professing earnestly that he was the forerunner of Antichrist that would usurp it But the plain truth is as sad experience teacheth us no words of Fathers Popes or Councils much less of Scripture are intelligible to you when your wills are against the matter But we may truly say of you that lay all on the will of the Pope as Austins Observator your Lodovicus Vives freely speaketh in schol in August lib. 20. de Civit. Dei cap. 26. Those are taken by them for Edicts and Councils which make for them or are on their side the rest they no more regard then a meeting of women in a workhouse or a washing place Do you understand this language of one of your own but too honest to have much company Well but you have a third Question By what Authority was she otherwise reproved Answ By the Authority of that Precept Levit. 19. 17. and many the like By the same Authority that Paul reproved Peter Gal. 2. and withstood him to the face by such Authority as any man may seek to quench a fire in his neighbours house or pull a man out of the water that is drowning or as any one Pastor may reprove another when he sinneth By the same Authority as Irenaeus rebuked Victor and the Asian Bishops withstood him and as Cyprian and the Council of Carthage reproved Stephen and the rest aforecited did what they did By as good Authority as the Church of Rome condemneth the Greek Church doth the Greek Church and many another condemn the Church of Rome 3. The next case is about the Roman schism To your Questions I answer 1. To Question whether Papists be Schismaticks is to question whether Ethiopians be black Do you not at this day divide from all the Christian world save your selves Do you not unchurch most of the Christians on earth O dreadful presumption when Christ is so tender of his interest and his servants and is bound as it were by so many promises to save them and not forsake them You ask what Church you left and when was it and whose company Sensless Questions By a Church if you mean the Universal Church there is but One in all and therefore One Universal Church cannot forsake another but when part of it forsaketh the other part and arrogateth the title of the whole to themselves do you doubt whether this be Schism If you mean a particular Church How can Spain Italy France and many more Kingdoms go out of a particular Church that contain so many hundred particular Churches in them No more then London can go out of Pauls Church The Catholick is but One containing all true Christians on earth and you have been guilty of a most horrid Schism as ever the Church knew For 1. You have set up a Church in the Church An Universal Church in the Universal Church A new form destructive to the old Your Pope as Christ-representative is now an Essential part of it and no man is a member of it that is not a member of the Popes body and subject to him So that even the Antipdes and the poor Abassians that know not whether the Pope be fish or flesh or never heard of such a name or thing must all be unchristened unchurched and damned if you be Judges Yea and Bellarmine tells us which indeed your
Church Constitution doth infer that all that are duly baptized are interpretatively or implicitely baptized into the Pope 2. And as you have devised a New Catholick Church so you hereby cast off and disown all the Christians of the world that be not of your party determining it as de fide that none of them can be saved who yet had rather venture on your Curse and Censure then into your Heresie and Schism 3. And hereby you fix your selves in this Schism and put us that unfeignedly long for peace out of all Hope of ever having Peace with you because you will hearken to it on no terms but that all men become subjects to your usurping Representative-Christ which we dare as soon leap into the fire as do Do you know now where the Church or Body was that you forsook It was all over the world where ever there were any Christians Were it not a great Schism think you if a few Anabaptists should say We are the whole Church and all others are Hereticks or Schismaticks Or was it not a great Schism of the Donatists to arrogate that title to themselves and unchurch so many others And what Church did they forsake Augustine tells them over and over what the Catholick Church was that they withdrew from even all true Christians dispersed over the earth Or that Church which begun at Hierusalem and thence diffused it self through the world But he never blames them for separating from the Universal Roman Head or Vicar but from the Church of Rome as a conspicuous combination of particular Churches Optatus and he do blame them for withdrawing as also from other Churches What if John of Constantinople in prosecution of his title of Universal Patriarch had concluded as you that none in the world are Christs members but his members nor of the Church but his subjects had not this been a notorious schism Tell us then what Church he had forsaken and answer your self But your last Caution in a parenthesis doth condemn your selves What I Must that Church that 's true be visible from Christs time then as Constantinople nor most other were never true Churches which is false so Rome it self was never a true Church which is false also Did you think that there was a Church at Rome in Christs time Sure you are not so ignorant By this Rule there should be no true Church but that at Jerusalem and those in Judaea But suppose you had said since the Apostles time This also had excluded most Churches on earth But if you mean the Universal Church we grant you easily that it hath been visible ever since Christs time but not alway in one place or Country Is not the greater part of Christians in the world whom you schismatically unchurch a visible company Doubtless you know they are Yea the Abassines and many Churches that being out of the Roman Empire did never so much as submit to your Primacy of Order nor had you ever any thing to do with them more then to own them as Christians yet now are condemned by your Arrogancy because they will not begin in the end of the world to enter into a new Church which they nor their Fore-fathers had ever any dependance on It was a shrewd answer of an old woman that the Emperor of Habassia's Mother gave to Gonzalus Rodericus the Jesuite pressing her to be subject to the Pope as the Vicar of Christ or else she could not be subject to Christ Neque ego inquit illa neque mei sancto Petro obedientiam negamus in eadem nunc sumus fide in quae fuimus ab initio ea si recta non erat cur per tot aetates ac secula nemo repertus est qui nos errrantes commonerent i. e. We are in the same Belief as we were from the beginning If it were not right why did no man in so many ages warn us of our error till now Mark here a double Argument coucht against the Pope One from Tradition even Apostolical Tradition for Godignus himself saith that no man doubts but Ethiopia received the faith from the beginning even from the the Eunuch and St. Mathew The other is that sure that Pope that cannot in so many ages look after his flock no not so much as to send one man to tell them that they erred till about one thousand five hundred years after Christ was never intended by Christ to be the Universal Governour of the world What! will Christ set any on an Impossible work Or make it so necessary to people to obey one that they never so much as hear from But what said the Jesuite to the old woman Why he told her Non potuisse Romanum Pontificem qui totius Christi Ecclesiae pastor est praeteritis retro annis Doctores in Abassiam mittere eò quod Mahumetani omnia circumdarent nec ullum ad ipsos additum relinquerant Nunc vero aperta jam Maritima ad Aethiopiam via id praestare quod nequivit prius that is The Pope of Rome who is the Pastor of the whole Church of Christ was not able in the years past to send Doctors into Habassia because the Mahomitans compassed all and left not any passage to them But now the seas are open he can do that which he could not before Liter Gonzal Roder. in Godign de Reb. Abass lib. 2. cap. 18. pag. 324. A fair answer As if Christ had set either the Pope or the Abassines an impossible task and appointed a Governour that for so many hundred years could not govern or the people must be so many hundred years no Christians though they believed in Christ till the Pope could send to them And how should these and all such Countries send Bishops to a General Council As your own Canus Loc. Theol. saith of the Jesuites so say I of your New Church Vocati estis ad secietatem Jesu Christi quae sine dubio societas cum Christi Ecclesia sit qui titulum sibi illum arrogant hi videant an Haereticorum more penes se Ecclesiam existere mentiantur i. e. You are called to the society of Jesus Christ which society being undoubtedly the Church of Christ let them see to it that arrogate this title to themselves whether they do not imitate hereticks by a Lying affirmation that the Church is only with them lib. 4. c. 2. fol. mihi 116. But we do not hence conclude that all that have lived and dyed in your profession have been no members of the Church because that your Church is guilty of Heresie and notoriously of Schism For we know that millions that live among you consent not to your usurpations Nay do not so much as understand your errors thereabout And some hold them but Notionally as uneffectual Opinions And every one is not a Heretick that holdeth a point that is judged Heretical and which is Heresie in another that holdeth it in another sort And there are errors called Heresies by most
can he not Govern it without a Visible Monarch Why then did the world never hear of such a man Yea the whole world is the Kingdom of Christ himself though not in that special sort as his Church is For all Power in heaven and earth is given him Mat. 28. 18 19. and for that end he Dyed Rose and Revived that he might be Lord of the Dead and Living Rom. 14. 9. and he is made Head over all things to the Chruch Eph. 1. 22 23. And hath this Kingdom an Universal Visible Monarch Yes the Pope is the man Long hath he laid claim to it Princes you see whose hands your Crowns and Kingdoms are in Deceive not your selves they are the Popes For certainly they are all Christs and if he be to be believed he is the Vice-christ and so succeedeth him in the Monarchy of the world But then why doth not this simple Pope lay claim to the Empire of Indostan and Tartarie and China and Constantinople as well as of these smaller Kingdoms of Europe 2. And for the Metaphorical title of an Army I answer It sufficeth that it hath an Universal General in Heaven that can command it twice as well there as the Pope can on earth yea and is as Visible to the Antipodes yea to me as ever the Pope was All the world is Gods Army But I will not say that the Pope or any man is Generall of it save Christ nor will I call him The Lord of Hosts 3. And for the Sheepfold of Christ he ahth appointed particular Shepheards to watch for the several parts of the flock But if one man were to look to all the sheep in the world he would make such work as the Pope would do with the sheep of Christ If you tell us still that Christ is out of sight I answer He is even at hand he is coming he will not be long In the mean time it is the duty of every Pastor to feed the flock of God that is among them not as Lords over Gods Heritage as the Vice-christ would be and when the chief Shepheard doth appear we shall receive the Crown 1 Pet. 5. 1 2 3 4. Peter never dreamed poor man that he was the chief Shepheard himself 4. For the Metaphor of a Family I answer That God can Govern all the Families in the world and when the Pope can do so then all the world shall acknowledge him the Master of the Family Till then we have learned that the whole Family of Heaven and Earth is named of God and of the Redeemer-God-and-Man but not of the Pope of Rome 5. And for the similitude of a Ship I answer One man can Govern a ship of the common size but a ship as big as all the world I think no man but Christ can govern And so confident am I in this opinion that I profess I will not be in that ship as big as the world which the Pope shall undertake to Govern if I do but know how to get out of it Pag. 146. He goes on to tell us that even the bruits have their Governours and instanceth in the Bees Answ I am not well acquainted with Irrational Governours or Governments but seriously it is no Article of my faith that one Bee can Govern all the Bees in the world Nor one Ape all the Apes in the world Let it suffice the Pope that every particular Church be a Bee-hive and every Hive have its proper Governour Next he again tells Prince Charls that we should not deny that to the Church which we see is necessary to all humane Societies Answ Was this man in his wits Have all Societies or any Society an Universal Humane Governour Who is it that is the Universal Chancellor of all the Academics on Earth Who is it that is the Ruler of all the Colledges of Physitians in the world I know what Schoolmaster we have in our own School here but I never heard of an Universal Schoolmaster for all the world nor for all England who is the Universal Governour of all the Companies of Merchants in the world Or who is the Universal King In the Conclusion he gathers up all into seven reasons Why the Church should have a Vice-christ 1. That the militant Church might be like the triumphant who have one Invisible Head Answ 1. Christ is visible to the Church in Heaven 2. When you have proved that any meer man is Christ or Head in Heaven then we will grant that a meer man shall be Christ and Head on earth 3. Earth is not yet fit to be conformed to Heaven in its Government 4. Is it not the truest conformity that Heaven and Earth have one and the same Lord though visible to them and not to us yet ruling us by visible officers 5. But if this will not serve le ts have on earth a visible Government therefore let us have no Pope that is invisible to almost all the world but Pastors that are visible in their particular Churches The second Reason is That the militant Church differ not from it self but as each particular Church hath one Visible Head or Pastor so the whole should have Answ 1. Content if the Pope can shew as good a Commission for the whole and be as able to Govern the whole and will really be present with the whole and visible to them 2. Is the world unlike it self if all the world have not one King as every particular Kingdom hath Or one Schoolmaster as every particular School hath The third Reason is For preserving Unity Answ 1. And well it is done by you And what unity will you keep at the Antipodes Or in the vast dominions of Heathen and Mahometan Princes where Christians are dispersed but you come not neer them 2. We have a better unity already in One God One Christ One Spirit One Gospel One Baptism One Hope c. 3. The Mahometans have more unity then you The fourth Reason is To fulfill the doctrine of the Prophets and Christ Answ You should have better shewed such a doctrine before you had made use of it as a reason The fifth Reason is That the Christian Church may be like the Jewish Answ When the Christian universal Church is no bigger then the Jewish that one may Govern it as well we will hearken to you Let the Pope undertake no larger a Circuit The sixth Reason is That there may be some one Supream judge to punish Bishops and define matters of faith call Councils extinguish heresies and schisms Answ 1. One Christ is enough for the Catholick Church for all these uses I find the Articles of saith as well defined by Christ as by the Vice-christ I have searcht the writings both of Christ and the Vice-christ and in my poor judgement there is no comparison between them nor hath the Pope one jot mended the Scripture 2. And for Heresies and Schisms Christ hath extinguisht many but for ought I see the Pope rather increaseth them In
the Murdering of Princes and the pretence of power to dispense with oaths of Allegiance and fidelity and who hath actually so oft pretended to disoblige the subjects and expose Princes and their Dominions to the first occupant I know that many of the seculars in England disowned this doctrine But 1. So never did the Pope but hath owned and practised it 2. By disowning it they disown Popery it self if they know what they do For it is an Article of their Faith and so Essential to their Religion as explicitly held and is determined by a Pope and an approved General Council even 12. the fourth at Lateran under Innocent the third as I before recited the words at large in the third Argument against them here I know some of the Papists would perswade the world that it was none but Mariana the Jesuite that wrote for King killing and that it was first condemned by themselves But the Parliament of Paris tells another story of them as it is recited by Thuanus who was President and then present Hist lib. 130. ad an 1604. And Rivet names them Guignardus that wrote in praise of the murder of Henry the third and of Ode Pichenatus Barterius suborned by Varada c. And Albineus the Jesuite did hear the Murderer of Henry the fourth confess before he did the fact and put off the examiners with this answer that God had given him that special gift to forget when once he had absolved a sinner whatsoever was confessed by him And why was it that France did expel the Jesuites and set up a Pillar of Remembrance of their villanies till Henry the fourth would needs gratifie the Pope by calling them in again and told the Parliament that the peril of it should be on him and so it was for it cost him his life And why did the same Parliament of Paris Novemb. 1610. condemn Bellarmines book against Barclay as an engine of treason and rebellion And the Theological faculty of Paris April 4. 1626. condemned Santarellus Book as guilty of the same villany stirring up people to Rebellion and King-killing And May 12. the University confirmed it And March 13. the Parliament condemned the Book to be burnt And it 's worth the reading which Rivet recites of the Answers of the Jesuites in Paris when the Parliament askt them their judgement of that Book viz. Seeing their General had approved the Book and judged the things that are there written to be certain whether they were of the same mind They answered that Living at Rome he could not but approve what was there approved of But say the Parliament What think you Say the Jesuites the clean contrary Say the Examiners But what would you do if you were at Rome Say the Jesuites That which they do that are at Rome At which said some of the Parliament What! have they one Conscience at Rome and another at Paris God bless us from such confessors as these But yet some of the Papists will seem so honest as to say that private men may not kill a King till he be deposed Very true But withall it is their currant doctrine that if once he be excommunicate he is then no King yea or if he be an Heretick and so being no King they may kill the man and not kill the King This is the jugling of these seeming Loyall subjects You may see it in their own writings Suarez advers Sect. Anglic. lib. 6. cap. 4. Sect. 14. cap. 6. Sect. 22 24. Azorius Jesuita Instit Moral part 1. l. 8. c. 13. He that would see more of their mind in this let him read the Mysterium Patrum Jesuitarum and the Jansenians mysterie of Jesuitism and Bishop Rob. Abbots Antilogia ad Apolog. Eudaemojohan But what need we more then the Decrees of a Pope and General Council and the practice of the Church of Rome for so many ages And for the Popes power to absolve them from all oaths of Allegiance and fidelity the foresaid Pope Innocent and his approved General Council have told the world enough of their mind to put us out of doubt of it But leaving abundance of forreign instances I shall mention but one or two at home The Papists have lately had the confidence to affirm that the Powder-plot and the Spanish invasion in one thousand five hundred eighty eight were not upon a quarrell of Religion nor owned by the Pope King James hath said already so much against them in these points that I think it needless to say any more especially also after Bishop Abbots Antilogia but only here to produce one Testimony of their own concerning the Spanish Invasion Cardinal Ossatus in his 87. Epist ad D. de Ville-roy tels us that Pope Clement the eighth one of the best of all the late ones did press for the King of France to join with Spain in the Invasion of England and the Cardinal answered that the King was tied by an Oath to the Queen of England to which the Pope replyed that The Oath was made to an Heretick but he was bound in another Oath to God and the Pope adding withall that Kings and other Princes do permit themselves all things or tolerate themselves in all things which make for their commodity and that the matter is gone so far that it is not or should not be imputed to them or taken for their fault and he alledged the saying of Franciscus Mariae Duke of Urbine that indeed every one doth blame a Noble man or Great man that is no Soveraign if he keep not his Covenants or fidelity and they account him infamous but supream Princes may without any danger of their reputation make Covenants and break them lye betray and perpetrate other such like things This was good Pope Clement the eighth And can we look for better from the rest You see what Oaths and Covenants are with them And that the design was still carried on against the Queen upon account of Religion and the Realm to have been invaded by the Spaniard on that account and that the principal point of the Plot was to prepare a party within the Realm that might adhere to the invaders all this with much more Sir Francis Walsingham that well knew hath testified to Monsieur Critoy in his Letter Cabal part 2. pag. 39. Thuanus a Moderate Papist and a most knowing and impartial Historian tells you lib. 89. p. 248 249. ad an 1588. that the Spaniards pretended to undertake the expedition only for Religion sake and therefore took with them Martin Alarco Vicar general of the Holy Inquisition with abundance of Capuchins and Jesuites and that they had with them the Popes Bull which they were to publish as soon as they landed and that Cardinal Allan was appointed as the Popes Legate to land at the same time and with full power to see to the restoring of Religion And that the said Bull had these expressions that the Pope by the Power given from God by lawfull
offenders is a positive duty which at all times is not a duty but unseasonably performed is a sin For a Magistrate therefore to punish such offenders when it apparently tendeth to hinder the progress of the Gospel and overthrow the peace and safety of the Christian State is not a Duty but a sin Would any of these Objectors be against a Magistrates releasing of a Jesuite out of Prison in exchange for a faithful Minister of the Gospel especially of many as prisoners are commonly exchanged in war If not why should they be against the releasing of such a man to higher ends even to save mens souls To give Liberty is but to Permit or not to Hinder or not to Punish and therefore is but the not-doing of a work when it is unseasonable as Sacrifice is when God requireth Mercy And he that may Permit or forbear to punish may on a just reason promise so to do So that this is but forbearing the punishing of Papists when we cannot punish them without the exceeding hurt of the Church and wrong to many thousand souls But I know I speak all this in vain for the Pope will never consent that Protestants shall sow their seed at Rome lest it quickly unneast him But in the mean time let the Papists here confess if they be reasonable that we have no reason to give Liberty to them that will give none to us or upon unequal terms If they claim a special Title to it as having the juster cause we desire no more then a fair tryall of that and let them that have the juster cause take all 3. Another particular that should here be agreed on is this whether the former be consented to or not That on both sides where the Teachers have any Toleration or forbearance they may be forced by the Magistrate to teach the Ignorant people that adhere to them the great Articles of the Christian faith both words and sense which we are all agreed in Which was Bishop Ushers motion to the Papist Priests in Ireland For saith he among the Papists the people are suffered to perish for want of knowledge the vulgar superstitions of Popery not doing them half that hurt that the ignorance of those common principles of faith doth which all true Christians are bound to learn Serm. at Wansted page 33. 4. Another necessary particular to be agreed on is that we use not bitter invectives against each other nor uncharitable contendings especially in the ears of the ignorant people that have not yet learned the common truths which we agree in but that our Debates be managed only in such Assemblies as are capable of them and in a sober Christian way 5. Another is that such Magistrates that will not grant Toleration may yet on both sides avoid cruelties and inflict no more penalties for matters of meer Religious worship then necessity shall require and that herein they may agree upon some equality in the several Nations And in this let Spain Italy Austria and the rest for shame consent to be as moderate as the Turk and to shut up the doors of their bloody Inquisition 6. Let us all agree to renounce all Treachery and unfaithfulness against the Soveraign Powers and all seditious disturbances of the Peace of Common-wealths 7. Let those afford us the common Love of men that think us not capable of the special Love of Christians and so let us Love our Neighbours as our selves and study to do good and not hurt to one another and give over plotting to undermine one another and destroy one anothers civil interest and get our Neighbours under our feet This much well practiced would do something to the peace of the Christian world CHAP. LV. THE lowest Degree that none but incarnate Devils one would think should resist is this that if we will needs live as enemies yet we may remember that we have all greater enemies and therefore let us give over our wars and let every Nation be quietly governed by their own Laws and Soveraigns and let us all join together against the common enemies of Christ We cannot but know that much of Christs interest lyeth in our hands and that if either party were devoured by the Turk it would be a heavy blow to the Christian cause If God should suffer that proud enemy to come and make a third among us to end our quarrels we must justifie him in his judgements and must to our perpetual shame confess that by our proud and passionate contendings and unpeacebleness and self-seeking we did betray the Christian cause O wonderfull stupidity and impiety of great men and Learned men professing so much zeal for God that they can no more agree nor bear in Love and Compassion with each other nor cease their wars when a raging potent enemy stands over them ready to devour them both Let the Venetians take the honour and we the shame How ever their own Interest may engage them yet materially their wars are more honourable then ours The Pope is eager for a General Peace among his subjects that they may be strenghthened to devour us But it were an honester design that would give him more comfort at last to mediate a Peace among all Christians that in this at least they might be one to oppose the Turk and rescue the Heritage of Christ which he hath oppressed And O what a blessed thing it were if the Jesuites Fryars and Protestants could but agree to join together for the conversion of the poor Indians And either preach in the same or several Countries without seeking the destruction there of one another yea and afford each other help that the English Hollanders and others might send Preachers as well as Merchants into the Indies and we might there contribute our endeavours to propagate the Gospel though in our different wayes not envying hating and hindering each other but remembring we all confess one Christ though not one Vice-christ Conclusion I Have cast out these Proposals meerly to acquaint the peaceable Christian what he should desire that the frame of his heart may be right before God and not with any expectation that they should be so regarded as to procure what they drive at I am not so weak or ignorant of the inconsiderableness of the Proposer or of the selfishness and ungodliness of the world But yet I may lawfully take the comfort of the most uneffecutal desires and endeavours that are honest And for those that would have us Reconciled upon the Grotian terms or upon the French Foundation of a General Council and would have all forced as our Bishops attempted to come over to their way and deny Liberty to the rest that cannot thus close with them and all that think that the Church must have some Visible Head or Soveraign to unite in I shall shew them their errour in a distinct Disputation which I am publishing next to this as a supplement and therein I shall give them such further Proposals for
Natural existence For where is it when called how long have they sate But this none will affirm Not in Moral existence For there is no such thing pretended nor possible I confess the Common wealth is not dissolved at the death of the Prince because a Successor being determined of by Law as in hereditary Government there is one hath presently right to the place though he want solemn admittance or if elective yet Rex non moritur both because the successor hath an Intentional Moral being in the Fundamental Law and the Intention of the Electors conjunctly and they presently make an actual choice or else the power so far as is necessary for execution falls in the mean time into the hands of some Trustees of the Republick while they are electing and the soveraign is in fieri Or if it be in some dissolvable body whose actual Session is intermitted yet they are still in Moral being and ready to assemble and the Soveraignty for so much as is of ordinary exercise even over the Universal body is in the mean time in the hands of some other Assembly who therefore may be said to partake of the Soveraignty But none of this is so in the present case Here is no General Council ordinarily in natural being and therefore in the vacancy not in Moral being There is none that pretendeth to be in Moral being For the Council of Trent which was the last pretended General Council is dissolved and the Pope would not take it well if any shall call another without him and no time is appointed for it The Decennial Council determined of at Constance is an empty name and that Decree did but serve to prove that really General Councils are not the Supream Governors of the Church For no one obeyeth them in that And whether ever the Pope or any one else will call a General Council again we cannot tell So that now there is none nor we know not whether there ever will be But further Argum. 2. That which is the Head or form of the Catholick Church or any way Necessary to its Being or Unity hath ever been found in it or at least within this thousand years or at least in the primitive purer ages or sometime at least But a true General Council is not always in being nor ever was within this thousand years no nor in the purer ages nor ever at all therefore it is no Head of the Church nor necessary to its unity The Major will not be denyed The proof of any branch of the Minor may serve turn much more of all 1. That a General Council hath not been this forty years in being all men will confess If the Church have been Headless forty years or wanted any thing Necessary to its Being or Unity then was it so long no Church or many Catholick Churches which are known untruths 2. If the Church have had any General Council within this thousand years it was either that of Trent that of Canstance Basil Florence the Laterane c. But none of these were such For 1. there were no Bishops from the most of the Christian world I have told you before how few at Trent did the most egregious parts of their work few more then forty The Churches of Syria Armenia Ethiopia and the most of the Christian world were never so much as fairly invited to be there If at Florence the Patriarch of Constantinople and two or three Greeks more were present what 's that to all the Churches of the Greek Profession through the world besides all others The ancient Councils called General contained All the Bishops that could and would come For all were to be there and not one Bishop chosen by two hundred or by a Prince instead of two hundred But at these later Councils were neither all nor so much as any Delegates though but chosen by hundreds to represent them from most of the Churches of the world Besides the packing and fore-resolutions of the Popes that ruled all and many other Arguments that nullifie these pretended General Councils I say not that all of them were useless but none of them were any more like to Oecumenical or Universal then Italy and its few servants are like to all the Christian world And that the Ancient Councils were not General I mean the four first or any like them I easily prove 1. From the Original of them and the Mandates and the Presidents and Ratifications and Executions It was the Roman Emperors that called them and that sent their Mandates to the Lieutenants and other secular Officers to see to the execution and to the Bishops to be there It was the Roman Emperors that by themselves or their Lieutenants were present to Rule them all according to the proportion of secular interest It was the same Powers that Ratified them and what they ratified went for currant and their Ratification was sought by the Bishops to that end It was the same Power that banished them that obeyed not and compelled men to submit to them Now let any man of Reason tell me what Power Constantine Theodosius Martian or any Roman Emperor had to summon the Bishops that were subjects in the Dominions of all other Princes through the world What Authority had they out of their own Dominion 2. Yea de facto the case is known 1. That they did not summon the Bishops of other Princes Dominions 2. That those Bishops at least no considerable number were there What Mandates or Invitations were sent to all the Churches of India Ethiopia Persia or the parts of Parthia Armenia Ireland Scotland c. that were out of the Roman Power Whoever those one or two were that Eusebius calls Bishops of Persis Parthia Armenia it 's a plain case that there were no due Representatives of all or any of these Churches there that were without the verge of the Empire No Brittish Irish that is then Scottish Bishops were there nor any from abundance other Churches And the other Councils after that at Nice make less pretense to such a thing So that it is most evident that General Councils then were but of the Bishops of the Empire or the Roman world unless a Bishop or two sometime might drop in that lived next them And was the Church no wider then the Empire Let Baronius himself be judge that tells you of the Churches planted by the primitive Preachers in India Persia and many other parts of the world Let Godignus be judge that confesseth the Ethiopians had the Gospel since the Apostles days and I pray in what age were they Papists Let Raynerius be judge that saith the Churches of Armenia and others planted by the Apostles were not subject to the Church of Rome Let the Antiquities of Brittain and Ireland be evidence But the case is undenyable All this noyse then of General Councils comes but from a supposition that the Roman world was the whole Christian world A small mistake We home-bred Rusticks may shortly be
the Churches live under Mahometans and other Infidels that will not give them leave to travail so far into the Countries of Christian Princes on such occasions They hate us and our Religion They are oft at war with us and then would hang those Bishops as Intelligencers that should offer to come among us 4. And they must many of them pass through the Countries of other Princes that are Infidels and oft in war with the parts which they come from or go to And it cannot be expected that in such cases they should allow them passage through their Countries If one do all will not When poor Lithgow had travailed nineteen years he was tortured strappado'd and disjoynted and made a cripple at Malaga in the Spanish Inquisition And thanked God and the English Embassador that he sped so well 5. Even at home in Europe the Princes are so commonly in Wars as are France Spain Venice Sweden Denmark Poland the Emperor Brandenburgh Holland Portugal England Transylvania c. at this very day that there is not the least probability that they should all or half consent to have so many of their subjects pass into their enemies Countries to reside so long Jealousies raised by particular Interests would make it Treason 6. Moreover many Princes understand that the Pope hath no power to call such Councils nor any man else and they know the design of the Pope to subject the world to himself And therefore they will abhor that their subjects should travail so far at his call that hath such designs or at another mans that hath no authority to call them This hath made the Emperor of Habassia so resolutely resist the Popes pretensions as Godignus Maffaeus and others do declare Few Princes will endure to have their subjects brought under a forreign Power 7. And if you suppose all the Bishops come to the Council the very number out of all the Christian world to make any thing like a General Council would be so great as would be unfit for one or two or ten or twenty Council houses or Assemblies 8. And they would be uncapable of conferring through diversity of languages Few of the Abassines Egyptians Syrians Armenians or of most of the world understand and speak any language that would commonly be understood and used in a Council Nor is it possible to do it by Interpreters For so many Interpreters cannot be used to tell all that understand not what every man saith and to expound their minds to others This would waste an age in a Council so that such a Council would be a very Babel 9. And Councils use to be so long that it cannot be expected that after so many years journey old men should live to see the issue or do any great matters there Eighteen years at Trent would consume a great many of the Bishops How many even of the Popes own Legates dyed before that Council could be finished 10. And if they should live to see the end can you dream that they should live to perform the like tedious dangerous journeys and voyages to bring back the Decrees of the Councill to their Churches Judge now whether such Councils are not Naturally Impossible I will add but this No men can be compelled And to make all the world at once agree to so difficult a task and agree upon the time and place must be a Miracle One will be for it and another against it One for one time and place and another for another through most of the world We see how hardly any two Princes can agree upon times places and all circumstances in their Treaties 2. Let us next enquire of what Necessity such a Council is If it be Necessary for Church government it is either to make Laws or to execute them But for neither of these therefore they are not Necessary 1. Christ hath made us Laws already sufficient for salvation And I hope he hath not constituted so loose a Society and left his Body to such mutations as that they must so frequently have new Laws And if it must sure it must be from their Soveraign who hath reserved the Legislative Power to himself as his Prerogative Legislation is the highest act of Supremacy and chief flower in the Crown of Soveraignty The Church is Christs subjects and shall subjects make their own Laws Scripture is sufficient If this be all that we need General Councils for to make Universal Laws to the Church we can spare them as well as Traytors in a Common-wealth And for Execution of Laws it is either Magisterial by force of the Sword and this they have nothing to do with it being the Princes right Or it is for the Excommunicating Church offenders And to cast them out of particular Churches is the work of the Pastors of those Churches Others cannot know the persons and hear the cause If all Church-causes should come to a General Council Millions of men must be attending them at once And if it be to judge who shall be cast out of the Communion of the Churches and what Churches themselves are to be excommunicated the Synods of neighbour Pastors are to do as much of that as is to be done Where then is the Necessity of such Councils at such rates Augustine said that drunkenness in his time was grown so strong that there must be a Council to suppress it Could they do such feats as to cure Drunkenness Whoredom Covetousness Pride I would be for them 3. If a General Council were called it must be a most unjust Assembly For 1. It would be guilty of cruelty and destroying the Church of Christ by killing so many of the Pastors as aforesaid 2. It would be guilty of cruelty and Church destoying by the starving and desertion of the flocks at home What will become of the poor peoples souls when they are left to the Wolves to Hereticks and Deceivers and to the temptations of their own flesh and the world being for ten or twenty years or for ever deprived of their Pastors under pretense of a General Council Basil in his seventieth Epistle tells the Western Bishops that they of the East could not come to solicite their own cause with them For saith he If any one of us N. B. do for the least moment leave his Church he presently leaveth his people to deceivers And on this ground he shews that they could not so much as spare Bishops to be meer Messengers to them Much less could they have spared a sufficient number to stay seven or ten years together If any think that such Necessities are unusuall he knows not the world And Councils are most usefull if ever when necessities are greatest 3. In Councils things are carried by Votes and so Abassia Armenia Mexico and places so remote that they can send but one or two would be out-voted by that corner of the world where the Council is called that can send in proportionably an hundred for one and so under the name of
a General Council a faction might promote any heresie or carnal interest and no Churches would be so enslaved as those that send at the dearest rates Italy and a few more parts at Trent would over-vote all the Churches of East and South and set up what interest or opinion they please And so if one corner of the Church can err all may err for all the Council Where there is an equal interest there should be an equal power in Councils which will certainly be otherwise 4. If the Pope be he that must call General Councils we shall have none till it will stand with his interest And if he have not the power of calling them no one else hath for none pretendeth to it And if they must be called by universal consent three hundred years is little enough for all the world to treat of the time place and other circumstances and consent 5. And if the Pope must call them he will easily by the very choice of the place procure the accomplishment of his own designs 6. Those that think it the Popes prerogative to call a Council do also affirm as I before shewed in the express words of Binnius and others that a Council hath no more power then the Pope will give them and that when they are convened by him and have done their work it is all of no Validity if he allow it not If he approve one half that half is valid and his approbation will make their Decrees the Articles of our faith when as the other half which he disapproveth shall not be worth a straw And is it not a most foolish thing for all the world to put themselves to so much charge to defray the expenses of their Bishops and hazzard their lives and lose their labours at home for so many years and hazzard the Churches by their absence when for ought they know the Bishops of the whole Christian world do but lose all their labour and nothing shall be valid if they please not the Pope of Rome And is it not most abominable justice in him thus to put all the world to trouble and cost and hazzard the Churches and the Pastors lives for nothing when if the infallible spirit be only in himself he might have done the work himself and saved all this cost and labour 7. By what Justice shall all the Catholick Church be obliged by the Decrees of such a General Council Is it by Law or Contract If by Law it is by Divine Law or by Humane If by Divine let it be shewed that ever God made such a Government for the Catholick Church and then take all If by Humane Laws it is impossible and therefore not to be affirmed For no Humane Soveraign hath power to make Laws for all the world If you say is it by contract then 1. All those Nations that thought not meet to send any Bishops to the Council will be free 2. And so will all those be that sent Bishops who dissented from the rest For contract or Consent bindeth none but Contracters or Consenters And so England is not bound by the Council of Nice Ephesus Calcedon Constantinople c. 8. By what Justice shall any people be required to send Delegates on such terms as these to Councils or to stand to their definitions when they have done When our faith and souls are preciouser things then so boldly to cast upon the trust of a few Delegates so to be chosen and employed What Bishops other Countries will choose we know not And for our own 1. In almost all Countries it is the Princes that choose or none must be chosen but who they will which is all one 2. If the Bishops choose it s those that are highest with the secular power that will have the choice who perhaps may choose such as are contrary to the judgement of most of that Church that is thought to choose them Most Nations have a Clergy much at difference The Remonstrants and Contramonstrants in Holland would not have chosen like members for the Synod In the Bishops days men of one mind were chosen here in England to Convocations The next year we had a Learned Assembly that put down the Prelacy for which a Convocation had formed an Oath to be imposed on all Ministers but a little before And why should the judgment of the Prelates be taken for the judgement of the Church of England any more then the other when for number learning and piety to say the least they had no advantage laying aside ignorant ungodly men in point of number Till the Spanish match began to be treated on the Bishops of England were ten if not twenty to one Augustinians Calvinists or Antiarminians Now the Arminians would be thought the Church of England and their doctrine agreeable to the doctrine of that Church Would they not accordingly have differed if they had been sent to a General Council How bitterly are the Articles of the Church of Ireland decryed by the Arminian Bishops since sprung up both in Ireland and England so that if Delegates be sent to any Council they may speak the minds of those that sent them which perhaps is the King or a small prevailing party but not of the rest which perhaps may the best and most If Jeremiah of Constantinople be of a Council he will go one way If Cyril be of a Council he will go another way And his counterfeit Successor undo what he did 9. No Church that sendeth three or four Bishops to represent a thousand or two thousand Pastors can be sure how those Bishops will carry it when they come thither For ought we know they may betray our cause and cross their instructions They may be perverted by the reasonings of erroneous men or bribed by the powerfull And to cast our faith on so slender an assurance is little wisdom 10. If consent only bind us to the Decrees of Councils to submit to them as our Rule then is Posterity bound that did not consent as their Fathers did or are they not If not we are free If yea by what bond And then why do not the Grotians in Ireland and England obey the Antiarminian Decrees of the Churches in both Did not the Church of England send Bishop Carlton Bishop Hall Bishop Davenant afterward a Bishop Dr. Ward Dr. Goad and Balcanquall Episcopal Divines to the Synod of Dort and so England was a part of that Synod And yet the Grotians and Arminians think not themselves bound to receive the Doctrine of that Synod nor to forbear reproaching it 11. It is unjust that any especially most of the Churches should be obliged by the votes of others and oppressed by Majority meerly because their distance or poverty or the age or weakness of their Pastors disableth them to send any or an equal number or to defray the charge of their abode c. Ah if good Pope Zachary or Archbishop Boniface had considered that the essence or unity of the Church
did consist in a General Council that must be fetched partly from the Antipodes they would have thought better on it before they had excommunicated Virgilius for saying that there were Antipodes or quod alius mundus alii homines sunt sub terras Dr. Heylin tels us in his Geography Lib. 1. pag. 25. that Bede de ratione temporum cap. 32. calleth it a fable that there are Antipodes and not to be believed and adds that Augustine Lactantius and some other of the Learned of those better times condemned it as a ridiculous incredible fable whose words saith he I could put down at large did I think it necessary And did that age dream that the Being or Unity of the Church or the salvation of the Believers soul depended on this Article that a General Council partly called from the Antipodes must be the Churches Head or Governours or that the Pope at least must be acknowledged and obeyed by every Christian soul that will be saved at the Antipodes And Sir Fradcis Drake and Cavendish would not have been so famous for compassing the world if men had understood that when the Gospel is spread through the earth so many poor old Bishops must ordinarily take half such Journies or voyages to do their business If the Decree of the Council of Constance had been executed to have had a General Council evry ten years many would scarce have had time to go and come But the charitable Church of Rome hath found out a Remedy not only by the rarity of their Councils let them decree what they will to the contrary but also by condemning the most of the Churches and the remotest as Hereticks and sending them to Hell to save them a journey to the General Council 12. Moreover such Councils are unjust because of the multi tude of Bishops that must there meet and cannot be heard speak As the case standeth already there are many more Bishops in the world then can meet and speak and hear in one or two or three Assemblies And many thousand more may be made If I should say that all the Rectors of particular Churches whom they call Parish Presbyters are Bishops and have votes in Councils they would easilyer deny it then disprove it or invalidate the proofs already brought But to proceed on their own grounds me thinks they that make him a Bishop who hath Presbyters and Deacons under him should admit all those Pastors of particular Churches that have Presbyters under them as their Curates which are many Or if they say that only Cities must have Bishops yet must they on their own grounds admit a Bishop for each City And if every City in a few Kingdoms in Europe had a Bishop in the Council there would be no room for all the rest of the world But how prove they that Countrey Parishes may not have Bishops Why may not on their own grounds every four or six parishes have one Hath God forbid it where and when sure they will not say it is of Divine institution that a Bishop have just so many Parishes and Presbyters under him and neither more nor less The number is confest to be left undetermined And what if Christian Princes Bishops and people agree to settle Bishops in every such small number of Parishes by what Law can they exclude them from a General Council If they say by the Canons of former Councils I answer 1. Those Canons are contrary to Scripture 2. They contradict one another 3. They themselves do not obey the Canons of many such Councils 4. Those Councils have no power to make Laws much less Laws that shall reach to this time and place But they will say Pauls command to Titus 1. 3 5. and the example Acts 14. 23. is only of ordained Elders or Bishops in every City therefore they may not ordain them any where but in Cities But I deny the consequence Most ancient interpreters by Elders Acts 14. 23. Understand meer Presbyters And then it would as much follow that Presbyters must be ordained no where but in Cities What if I can prove that the Apostles never gathered a solemn Assembly of Christians for Divine Worship any where but in Cities or that they never administred the Lords Supper any where but in Cities will it follow that therefore we ought not to Assemble or administer the Sacrament any where but in Cities But what if this were granted they cannot deny but every corporation such as most of our Burroughs and Market Towns in England are may truly be called Cities in that Scripture sence And if every such City had a Bishop Even England France Germany and Italy a little spot of the world would make Bishops enough for two or three Councils and more then could Assemble and do the work Two shifts they have against the over-greatness of the number One is the course now taken to have but one Bishop over many Cities and a very large Circuit of the Countrey The other is to depute one out of many from every Countrey to represent the rest and so it shall be a Representative General Council though not a Real But for the first 1. Who hath authority to make such diminutions 2. What if those that are supposed to have that authority shall be otherwise minded 3. It s apparently against the word of God and tendeth to the frustrating of the Office that true Bishops should be so rare By their own Rule each City should have one And let Brerewoods Enquiries or any such writers help you to conjecture how many that would be And for the other way 1. A Representative General Council is another thing quite different from a Real 2. What word of God have they to prove such a Representative Council Doubtless none And will they give us a Church form and center of Unity meerly of their own brains upon supposition that it is prudential 3. Men are of exceeding different degrees of understanding and of different judgements actually so that if e. g. England should send one or two or ten men to represent the rest to a General Council it s more then possible that they may give their judgements in many points so far contrary to the minds of those that sent them that twenty or an hundred to one at home may be against them For we cannot send our understandings and all our reasons with them to the Council when we send them And so no man can say that any such Council doth express the mind of the greater part of the Church 4. By this rule you may reduce a General Council to a dozen men or to the four or five Patriarks For all the rest may choose them as their representatives 5. But it s not to be expected that all the Churches should be satisfied of the lawfulness or fitness of such substitutions and representations And therefore they will not consent or elect men for such a power and work And who may justly force them 13. Moreover such
Councils are unjust because there can be no just satisfaction given by men that live at so vast a distance that this great number that come thither are truly Bishops yea or Presbyters either It s not possible under many years time so much as to take any satisfactory account of their ordination and abiding in that office and the truth of their deputations or elections And when in their elected Representative Councils there will be perpetual controversies between several parties as there is in Parliaments whether it be this man or that which is truly elected in how many years will all these be decided before they begin their work So that I may well conclude laying all these seven considerations together the distance of places the age and state of the Bishops the state of the Civil Governments which they live under their necessary labours at home and the ruine that will befall their Churches by so much absence the diversity of their languages the multitude of the Bishops and the difficulty of knowing the Ordination and Qualifications of persons so remote to prove their capacity I say all these together do plainly shew that such General Councils are impossible and unjust and therefore not the standing Government or form of the Church or the center of its Unity Argum. 4. As the Synod it self is impossible needless and unjust so it is Impossible that they should do the work of a Head or Soveraign Power if they could Assemble therefore they are not appointed thereunto The Antecedent is partly manifest by what is said from their different languages and other considerations Moreover 1. The persons that will have appeals to them and causes to be judged if really they will do the work of a Soveraign Power and Judge will be so many millions that there will be no room for them about their doors nor any leisure in many years to hear their causes If you say It was not so in former Councils I answer that is because they were not truly General or were called in such times when the Church did lie in a narrow compass and not in such remote parts of the world and because they were assembled indeed but occasionally to advise upon and determine some one particular mans case or few and never took upon them to be the Soveraign power or head of the Church or its essential form or Center of Unity 2. These millions of persons that have so many causes will have so far to travail that it will put them to great cost and labour to come and attend and bring all their witnesses And if they be not sounder bodyed then our English Souldiers the poor people of Mexico and other parts of those Indies to look no further will be a great part of them dead by the way before they can reach the General Council e. g. if it should be in the midst of Europe 3. And the Council will not be competent Judges of so many causes which by distance must needs be much unknown in many weighty Circumstances whose cognisance is necessary 4. And lastly such Councils will sit so seldom that the work will be undone Argum. 5. If God had intended that such a Council should have been the form of his Church or the necessary Governour of it he would have acquainted us with his will concerning some certain Power to summon them or would have authorized some or other to call such a Council But he hath not acquainted us with his will herein nor authorized any to call such a Council therefore it was not his intent that it should be the form or necessary Governour of his Church Either this Council must meet by an Authoritative call or by consent If by such a call who must call them The Popes pretense to this Authority is voluminously and unanswerà bly confuted long ago and it s well known what ever Baronius say that the ancient Councils were called by the Emperors and many since have been called by Emperours and Cardinals And if you say that it belongs to the Emperour I answer what hath he to do to summon the subjects of the French Spaniards Turks Aethiopian c And by this it appears that we never had true Universal Councils They were but General as to the Roman world or Empire For who ever precided it is certain that the Emperours called them And what had Constantine Martian Theodosius or any Roman Emperour to do to call the subjects in India Aethiopia Persia c. to a Council Nor de facto was there any such thing done Is it not a wonderfull thing that the Pope and all his followers should be or seem so blinded to this day as to take the Empire for the whole earth or the Roman world for all the Christian world yet this is their all If you say that it must be done by the consent of Princes then either of Christian Princes or of all If of the Christian only you must exclude the Bishops that are under Mahometan and Heathen Princes and then it will be no General Council especially if it be now as it was in the time of Jacob à Vitriaco the Popes Legate in the East who saith that the Christians of the Easterly parts of Asia alone exceeded in number the Christians both of the Greek and Latine Churches And whether it be all Princes or only Christian Princes that should consent who can tell whether ever it will be God hath not promised to lead them to such a consent And they are unlikely of themselves as being many and distant and of different interests and apprehensions and usually in wars with one another so that if an age should be spent in treating of a General Council among them it s ten to one that the treaty will be in vain and its next to an impossibility that all should consent Besides no man can shew a Commission from God to enable them and only them to such a work But if you say that it must be done by the consent of the Bishops themselves the Impossibility moral is apparent who will be found that will be at the cost and pains to agitate the business among them No one can appoint the time and place but by consent of the rest Who doth it belong to to travail to the Indies Aethiopia Aegypt Palestine and all the rest of the world to treate with the Bishops about the time and place of a Council And how many lives must he have that shall do it And when he findeth them of a hundred minds what course shall he take and how many more journies about the world must he make to bring them to an agreement But I am ashamed to bestow more words on so evident a case Argum. 6. The Head or Soveraign of the Church as of every body Politick hath the Legislative Power over the whole The Pope or a General Council have not the Legislative Power over the whole Therefore the Pope or General Council are not the
head or Soveraigns of the Church The Major is of unquestionable verity in Politicks Legislation is the first and chief work of Soveraignty The Minor is proved 1. Ad hominem by the confession of the chief Opponents Grotius de Imperio summar potest doth purposely maintain it and so do others See of this Lud. Molinaeus new Book supposed against the Presbyterians his Paraenesis 2. It is the high Prerogative of Christ the true King and Soveraign of the Church which none must arrogate He was faithfull in all his house as was Moses His Law is perfect It is sufficient to make the man of God perfect even a sufficient rule of faith and life No man must add thereto nor take ought therefrom but do whatsoever he hath commanded Deut. 12. 32. To the Law and to the Testimony if they speak not according to these it is because there is no light in them Isa 8. 20. Object But men may make By-laws under Christ and his Laws Answ True but as those are in this case no proper Laws so no man or men may make them for the Unversal Church For the business of those Laws is only to determine of circumstances which God hath made necessary in genere and left to the determination of men in specie And we may well know that there was some special reason why Christ did not determine of these himself And the reason is plain even because that they depend so much on the several states capacities customs c. of men that they are to be varied accordingly in several times and places If one standing Law would have fitted all the world or all ages in these matters Christ would have made it himself For if you say he makes some Laws and neglect others that are of the like kind and might as well have been done by himself you make him imperfect and insufficient to his work And if it be not fit that one Universal Law be made for the world then a Council must not make it And as the sufficiency of Christs law so the nature of the things declare it that these matters must not be determined of by an universal Law Should there be an universal Law to determine what day of the week or what hour of the day every Lecture or occasional Sermon shall be on Or what place every Congregation shall meet in Or where the Minister shall stand to preach Or what Chapters he should read each day Or what Text he should preach on or how long Whether by an hour-glass or without in what habit of apparrel particularly when many a poor man must wear such as he can get yea or what gestures or postures of body to use when that gesture in one Countrey signifieth reverence which in another rather signifieth neglect with abundance the like And the same is plain from the nature of the Pastoral office Every Bishop or Pastor is made by Christ the Ruler of the flock in such cases and they are bound to obey him Heb. 13. 17. And therefore a General Council must leave them their work to do which Christ hath put upon them and not take it out of their hands especially when being in the place and seeing the variety of circumstances they are more competent judges then a General Council at such distance The plain truth is Christ hath left them none of that work to do which belongeth to a Head or Soveraign but they make work for themselves that there may seem to be a Necessity of a power to do it The Church needeth none of their Laws Let us have but the Holy Scriptures and the Law of Nature and the civil Laws of men and the guidance of particular Pastors pro tempore and the fraternal Consultations and Agreements of Councils not to make any more work but to do this foresaid work unanimously and the Church can bear no more there is nothing left for Legislators Ecclesiastical to do We can spare their Laws and therefore their power and work Their business is but to make snares and burdens for us and therefore we can live without them and cannot believe that the felicity or unity or essence of the Church consisteth in them Argum. 7. All the inferior officers do derive their power from the supream All the other officers of the Catholick Church do not derive their power from the Pope or a General Council therefore a Pope or General Council are not the supream The Major is an unquestioned Maxime in Politicks It s essential to the Sovereaign to be the fountain of power to all under him Yea if it be but a deputed derived Soveraignty secundum quid so called as the Viceroy of Mexico Naples c. yet so far he must be the fountain of all inferiour power The Minor is maintained by most Christians in the world Every Bishop or Presbyter hath his power immediately from Jesus Christ as the Efficient cause though man must be an occasion or causa sine qua non or per accidens The Italian Bishops in the Council of Trent could not carry it against the Spaniards that the Pope only as Head was immediately jure divino and the rest but mediante Papa Moreover it is easie to prove out of Scripture that God never set up any Soveraign power in his Church personal or collective to be the fountain of all other Church power nor sendeth us to have recourse to any such for it Nor can they prove such a power on whom it is incumbent And lastly its most easie to prove de facto that the Bishops or Presbyters now in the several Churches in the world did not receive and do not hold their power from any such visible Head whether Pope or Council Though the Popelings do yet so do not all the rest of the Christian world Who are not therefore no Ministers or no Church of Christ whatever these bare affirmers and pretenders may imagine Nor are all the Ministerial actions in the world null which are not done by a power from him And even the Papists themselves will few of them pretend to receive their several powers of Priesthood from a General Council This therefore is not the Soveraign power or head of the Church Argum. 8. The Head or Soveraign Power hath the finally decisive Judgement and in great causes all must or may appeal to them A General Council hath not the finally decisive judgement nor may all men in great causes appeal to them Therefore a General Council is not the Head or Soveraign power The Major is undenyable The Minor is proved 1. In that it is not known nor hath the world any rule or way to know in what cases we must appeal to a General Council and what not and what is their proper work 2. In that an appeal to them is an absolute evasion of the guilty and in vain to the innocent because of the rarity of such Councils or rather the nullity 3. Because the prosecuting of such an Appeal
the said Headship of the Pope or Council 2. Because else most of the Christians of the world at this day are Apostates and unchristened Or if that seem a tolerable conclusion to the Romanists Yet 3. Because then Christ had no Church for some hundreds of years which I know they will not think so tolerable a conclusion For to dream that the ancient Christians did know any Head of the Church but Christ or were engaged in loyalty to the Pope or Council is a disease that few are lyable to except such as are strangers to the writings of those times or such as read them with Roman spectacles resolved what to find in them before hand Argum. 14. All Christians are bound to study or labor to be acquainted with the Laws of the Soveraign power of the Church All Christians are not bound to study or labor to be acquainted with the Laws of Popes and Councils Therefore the laws of Popes and Councils are not the Laws of the Soveraign power of the Church The Major is proved in that all subjects must obey the Laws of the Soveraign power But they cannot obey them unless they know them Therefore they are bound to endeavour to know them The Minor is proved 1. In that they being written in Latine and Greek which a very small part of the Christians of the world do understand and their Teachers not sufficiently expounding them and they being more copious and voluminous more obscure and uncertain of which next then for all private Christians to understand the people cannot learn these having enough to do to learn Gods Word 2. The Papists that deny the use of the Holy Scriptures to the people in a known tongue and deny the necessity of understanding them will sure say the same of their Decretals and Canons unless they mean to set them up above the Scripture as well as equal them thereto Argum. 15. The Soveraign Head of the visible Church and Center of our unity must be evident that all the Christian world may know it The Pope and General Council are not such Therefore neither of them are the Head of the Visible Church The Major is confessed by the Opponents and it 's plain because men cannot obey an unknown power The Minor is known by common experience For many a year together by Bellarmines confession learned and wise men could not tell which was the true Pope yea their Councils could not tell Most of the Christian world to this day cannot discern his Commission for that power which he pretendeth to A true General Council now no man can know because it is a non ens Their pretended General Councils are so ravelled in confusion that they are not agreed among themselves which are indeed such and which not but many are rejected and many suspected of which Bellarmine giveth us a list and those that one receiveth another rejecteth and the most by far are rejected by most of the Christian world And when some would take up with the four first and some with six and some with eight the Papists deridingly ask them whether the Church hath not as much authority now as it had then And how shall the Christian world know whether it were a true General Council or not Of which see the difficulties first to be resolved which I have recited in my Disputations against Popery Argum. 16. The Laws of the Soveraign Power of the Church must be certain or else how shall we know what to obey The Laws of Popes and General Councils are not certain Therefore c. The Minor is proved by experience The Popes Decretals are many unknown and many proved forgeries by Blondell ubi sup and many others beyond all question and none of them proved Laws to the Church The Canons of the first Council of Nice are not agreed on among the Papists Many others are proved forged Many are flatly contrary to each other as I have shewed ubi sup and how then shall Christians know what to obey The ancient Canons condemned the gesture of kneeling on the Lords day and consequently then at the Lords Supper the reading of the Heathens Books and many such things which are now taken for lawful The later Councils that contradict the former do seem to most of more questionable authority then they And what Councils are to be received and what rejected they are not agreed among themselves nor have any certain Rule to know by on which they are agreed Nor will their Popes or Councils yet resolve them this great question So that Christians are at a loss concerning these Laws and know not which of them they are obliged by and which not Argum. 17. If the Pope or Council be the Head of the Church then must their Laws be preached to the people by their Teachers But the Laws of Popes and Councils need not be preached to the people by their Teachers Therefore c. The reason of the Major is because the Laws that they must obey in matters spiritual in order to salvation the Ministers must preach to them But these are pretended to be such Therefore c. As to the Minor 1. It would be but an unhansome thing in their own hearing for Preachers to take their Texts out of the Canons or Decretals and preach these day after day to the people which yet they have need to do many a year if the obedience of them be our necessary duty 2. Ministers are commanded to preach only the Gospel and it is said to be sufficient or able to make us perfect and build us up to salvation Therefore we need not preach the Canons or Decretals Argum. 18. While a Visible Head cannot be agreed on even by those that would have the Church united in suoh a Head it is all one to them as if there were no such Head and the union still is unattainable by them But even among the Papists themselves a Visible Head is not cannot be agreed on Therefore c. What good will it do to say we must center some where and know not where and obey some body and know not who The Italians and Spanish make the Pope the Infallible Head and say a General Council without him may err and is but the body The French make the Council the Head and say the Pope may err and that the infallibility such as they plead for is in the Council It is not a Head but this Head in specie that is the form of the Church if any such be And therefore they must needs according to their own principles be of divers Churches while they place the Soveraignty in several sorts and persons Till they better agree among themselves in their Fundamentals and Essentials of the Church we have small encouragement to think of uniting on any of their grounds Argum. 19. The Soveraign Power or Headship over the Church is a thing undoubtedly revealeed in the Holy Scripture For we cannot imagine that the Scripture should be silent in so
weighty a point without intolerable accusation of it The Soveraign Power or Headship of Pope or Council is not revealed in the Holy Scripture Therefore c. They have not yet produced a Text to prove either of them Those produced by the Italians for the Popes Headship are disclaimed by the French as meaning no such thing and our Writers have largely manifested their abusing of the Text. So have they done of those that are brought for the Headship of Councils These texts are spoke to so fully by Chamier Whitaker Amesius and abundance more that I think it in vain to do it here again That of 1 Tim. 3. 15. that the Church is the pillar and ground of Truth doth not speak a word of a General Council nor a word of Headship The whole Church united in Christ is the Pillar and Ground that is the certain Receptacle and retainer of the Truth the Law of Christ being written in their hearts None seems more to favour their concecit then Ephes 4. 15 16. which Grotius fastens on But even that is against them and not for them For 1. It is Christ and only Christ that is here said to be the head and all other parts contradistinguished and excluded from Headship and the Body is not said to be united in them 2. And it is by association and mutual communication of their several gifts that the parts are compacted together and edifie the whole and not by meeting in any one and deriving from it Object But were not the Apostles General Officers and so the Church united in General officers Answ This is little to the Question For 1. the Apostles had one among them to be the Soveraign or Head of the rest but were of equal power 2. Nor did a major part of their whole number make such a Head for the Church to unite in nor do we read that ever a Major vote carryed it among them against a Minor for they were all guided by the Spirit Yet its true that they met ofter together then a General Council can 2. The Apostles as extraordinarily qualified and as the Secretaries of the Spirit have no successors But the Apostles as ambulatory unfixed Ministers had even then many companions For Barnabas Luke Apollo and abundance more did then go up and down preaching as well as the Apostles yet had not any one of them a special charge of Governing all the Churches nor yet all of them united in a body For the Apostles called not the Evangelists and other fellow workers to consult in Councils about the Government of the whole But both they and their helpers did severally what they could to teach and settle the Churches 3. Who be they now that are the Apostles successors If all the Bishops in the world the case is as we left it If any small number of Primates or Patriarcks how shall we know which and how many If they be not twelve why should one Apostle have a successor and not others But there are no twelve only that lay claim to the succession And if you go further who can limit and say who and how many they be and how far the number may be increased or decreased and by whom In Cyprians dayes he and his fellows in the Council at Carthage declare that all Bishops were equal and none had power over other And so thought others in those times Nor was there then any number of Bishops that claimed to be the sole successors of the Apostles to rule all the rest And if they had when the Church increaseth the Rulers must increase But this is not to the main point Argum. 20. The Scripture doth appropriate the Universal Headship to Christ only and deny it to all others therefore neither Pope nor Council are the Universal Head Eph. 5. 23. It is the peculiar Title of Christ to be Head of the Church to whom it must be subject 1 Cor. 11. 3. The Apostle would have us know that the Head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is the man and the Head of Christ is God So that there is a particular Head over some parcell of the body below Christ but to be the Universal Head of every man is the proper Title of Christ In 1 Cor. 12. the unity of the body and diversity of the members is more largely expressed then any where else in Scripture and there when the said unity of the body had been so fully mentioned the Apostle comes to name the Head of that Unity Vers 27. which is only Christ Now ye are the body of Christ and members in particular The Church is never called the body of the Pope or of a Council but the body of Christ yea as was even now said in the next words the Apostles Prophets and Teachers are enumerated to the particular members contradistinct from the Head so far are all or any one of them from being the head themselves And in Col. 2. 10 17 19. it is Christ only that is called the Head and the body is said to be of Christ and he only is mentioned as the Center of its Unity And not holding the Head from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministred and knit together increaseth with the increase of God And Col. 1. 18. And he is the Head of the body the Church If any say that you cannot hence argue Negatively that therefore no one else is the Head I answer They may as well say when it is affirmed that the Lord he is God you cannot thence conclude that Baal is not God The Apostle plainly speaks this of Christ as his peculiar honour And he spoke to men that knew well enough that natural bodies have but one Head unless they be Monsters And he would not so oft insist on this Metaphor intending so great a disparity in the similitude and never discover any such intention So in Ephes 1. 22. He gave him to be Head over all things to the Church which is his Body the fulness of him that filleth all in all And in Ephes 4. the Apostle purposely exhorteth us to the observation of this unity and purposely telleth us by a large enumeration wherein it doth consist but in all he never mentioneth the Pope or a Council yea he plainly excludeth them Vers 3 4. c. Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace There is one body and one spirit even as you are called in one hope of your calling One Lord One Faith One Baptism One God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all But unto every one of us is given Grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ He gave some Apostles and some Prophets and some Evangelists and some Pastors and Teachers for the perfecting of the Saints for the work of the Ministry for the Edifying of the body of Christ till we all come in the unity of the
must be done to reduce them into Practice 1. THE first General Ground is this Peace and Holiness must be carried on together Yea Peace must be sought as a Means to Holiness and therefore Holiness which is the End must be preferred The wisdom that is from above is first Pure then Peaceable Gentle easie to be intreated c. Jam. 3. A man may be saved that cannot attain Peace with men and therefore we are commanded to seek it as an uncertain good Rom. 12. 18. If it be possible as much as in you lyeth live peacably with all men But no man can be saved without Holiness Heb. 12. 14. Follow Peace with all men and Holiness without which no man shall see God There is a kind of Unity among Devils For if Satan were divided against Satan how could his Kingdom stand Mat. 12. There is a Peace in a state of misery and sin which hindereth mens recovery For when the strong man armed keeps his house the things that he possesseth are in Peace It is a state of greatest danger on earth to be United in evil and to have Peace in a way of sin And therefore it is no wonder if there be more lovers of Peace then of Holiness and more that will cry out of our Divisions then of our ungodliness and more that cry out of so many Religions then of irreligiousness and ungodliness For nature may make a man in love with Unity and Peace but not with Holiness for with that it is at Enmity Hence it is that we hear so many Worldlings Swearers Drunkards Whoremongers cry up unity and cry down so many minds and wayes And hence it is that so many such wicked livers do turn Papists on supposition that there is more unity with them And so the Popish party among us are the sink into which the filth and excrements of our Churches are emptyed 2. The second General Ground From hence it followeth that the first closure of the members of the Church must be upon principles of Faith and Holiness and therefore only between the Professors of Faith and Holiness And therefore we ought not to be solicitous of obtaining a Unity with open ungodly men For what Communion hath light with darkness or what concord hath Christ with Belial If men will not agree with us in the great Principles of Godliness nor join with us in avoiding crying sins and living an Holy life it is they that are the Separatists and withdraw from our communion If they will not come to us in Piety we must not come to them in Impiety And to attempt a union with them in Government and Ceremonies when we cannot bring them to a Union with us in seeming Godliness is as vain as to attempt to an Association with the dead and to make a marriage with a stinking Corps It is therefore but a carnal stir that Papists and some Reconcilers make to have a Union so General as shall take in the most impious rabble that ought to be excommunicated and should conjoin the living and the dead And therefore in some cases we are all called to separate by him that calleth us in other cases to unity And he tels us that he came not to send peace with such but division 3. The third General Ground Unity and Peace are such excellent things and so much depend upon Love and Holiness and suppose also so much Illumination that the perfection of them is reserved for Heaven and as it is but a small measure of Illumination and Love and Holiness that is here attainable in comparison of that which we shall have in heaven so it is but a small measure of Peace and Concord And therefore though our desires and endeavours should go as high as we can yet our expectations on earth must not fly too high This hath been my own error I have not sufficiently considered that perfect Peace as well as perfect Holiness is the prerogative of Heaven and that true Peace will be imperfect while the Light and Vertue which is supposed to it is imperfect And it is a blind absurd conceit of them that wonder we have not perfect Unity when yet they murmur at Piety and think a little may serve the turn and any sin is tolerable that 's directly against God but not disunion So much for the General Grounds The Particular Grounds are these following 1. Ground IT is the Prerogative of the Lord Jesus to be the only Head and Soveraign of the Church And his will revealed is our Law and in him only must we center and not in any Vicarious Universal Head And from him must all receive their power and all must worship God according to his praescript Eph. 4. 3 4 5. 1. 21 22. Mat. 28. 18 19. Col. 1. 18. Acts 4. 12. 3. 22. 7. 37. Mat. 3. 17. 1 Cor. 3. 5 22. 1 Cor. 1. 12. Gal. 2. 9 10. 2. Gr. The Holy Scriptures with the Law of Nature are the only Laws of Christ unless as he may possibly by extraordinary Revelation oblige some person to a particular duty not contrary to that word but left undetermined which yet is so rare a thing that men must not rashly presume of such a matter 1 Tim. 1. 3. Gal. 1. 7 8. 9. Isa 8. 20. 1 Cor. 4. 6. 2 Tim. 3. 17. Deut. 12. 32. Mat. 15. 9 11. 3. It is the prerogative of Christ himself to be the supream absolute and final Judge of the sence of his own Laws and of the causes that are to be tried thereby And therefore it is treasonable folly to attribute any of this to man and to cry out for an Absolute Judge of Controversies here on earth when one saith This is the sence of Scripture and another saith that is the sence saith the Papist But who shall be Judge To which I answer How far man is Judge I shall tell you in the next but the Absolute Judge and the final Judge is only Christ He that made the Law is the proper Judge of the sence of his own Laws Do you not know that Christ will come to judgement and that all secrets must then be opened by him and he must decide what man cannot Man is to Judge but in tantum ad hoc secundum quid limitedly so far as he must execute but Christ only Judgeth entirely finally and absolutely 2 Cor. 4. 3 4 5. 1 Tim. 5. 24. Jam. 4. 11 12. 1 Pet. 1. 17. 2. 23. 1 Cor. 2. 15. Act. 23. 3. 1 Cor. 13. 9 10 11 12. Mark 7. 9 13. 4. All Councils whether General or Provincial or Classical which consist of the Bishops or Pastors of several Churches met together are appointed and to be used directly but gratiâ Unitatis Communionis Christianae and not directly gratia regiminis for the Governing of Pastors in order to Unity and Communion and not as a Regimental as to the Pastors This Proposition which is of exceeding consequence was voluntarily asserted to me
on by Catholikes who rooting out the hereticks may possess it without contradiction and may keep it in the purity of faith saving the right of the principal Lord so be it that he himself do make no hinderance hereabout and oppose any impediment and the same Law is to be observed with them that are not principal Lords And the Catholikes that taking the sign of the Cross shall set themselves to the rooting out of the hereticks shall enjoy the same indulgences and holy priviledges which were granted to those that go to the releif of the holy land Moreover we Decree that the believers receivers defenders and favourers of Hereticks shall be excommunicate firmly decreeing that after any such is noted by excommunication if he refuse to satisfie within a year he shall from thence forth be ipso jure infamous and may not be admitted to publike Offices or Councils or to the choice of such nor to bear witness And he shall be intestate and not have power to make a will nor may come to a Succession of inheritance And no man shall be forced to answer him in any cause but he shall be forced to answer others And if he be a Judge his sentence shall be invalid and no causes shall be brought to his hearing If he be an Advocate his Plea shall not be admitted If a Notary or Register the Instruments made by him shall be utterly void and damned with the damned Author And so in other the like cases we command that it be observed Thus they go on further commanding Bishops by themselves or their Arch-deacons or other fit persons once or twice a year to search every Parish where any Heretick is found to dwell and put all the Neighbourhood to their Oaths whether they know of any Hereticks there or any private meetings or any that in life and manners do differ from the common conversation of the faithful c. And the Bishops that neglect these things are to be cast out and others put into their places that will do them And Pope Gregory 7. l. 4. Epist 7. expresly stirs up the people to cast off their Princes saying And for the conspiracy of Hereticks and the King we believe it is not unknown to you that are near them how it may be impugned by the Catholike Bishops and Dukes and many others in the German parts for the faithful of the Church of Rome are come to such a number that unless the King shall come to satisfaction they may openly profess to choose another King and observing Justice we have promised to favour them and will keep our promise firm c. The sum of all is that all that the Pope calls Hereticks must be condemned and destroyed and all Kings Princes or Lords that will not execute his sentence and root them out must be disposessed of their Dominions and the subjects absolved from their fidelity whatever Oaths they had taken and all others that do but favour or receive them be utterly undone I fetch not these things out of the writings of the Protestants nor from any private Doctors of their own but from the very words of a General Council confirmed by the Pope and unquestionably approved by them And abundance the like might be produced And many ages saw this doctrine put in execution when the Emperors of Germany were deposed by the Pope and the Subjects absolved from their Allegiance as the many volumes written in those times and published together by Goldastus testifie And the King of France or any other that tolerate any of the supposed Hereticks may see what a censure they are exposed to if meer necessity were not their security Perhaps some will say that this Decree was not de fide but a temporary precept Answ When a precept requireth duty it may be a point of Faith to believe it Precepts are the Objects of Faith at least as they are assertions that the thing commanded is our duty It is an Article of faith that God is to be loved and obeyed and our Superiors to be honoured and our Neighbour to be loved and Charity to be exercised c. The Creation the Incarnation of Christ his death resurrection ascension glorification intercession his future Judgement the Resurrection of the body c. are all matters of fact and yet matters of faith too If practicals be not Articles of faith then we have no Articles of faith at all for all our Theology and Religion is practical Do Papists murder poor Christians by the thousands and yet not fide divina believe that it is their duty so to do Either it is a duty or a sin or indifferent If a sin woe to their Pope and Council and if this be no sin with them I know not why the world should be troubled by them with the name of sin If it be indifferent what then shall be called sin If they can swallow such Camels as the blood of many thousand Christians what need they strain at Gnats and stick at private Murders or Fornication or Lying or Slandering any more then the Jesuit Casuists do that are cited by the Jansenian in his Mysterie of Jesuitism But if these Murders and deposing Kings be indeed a duty how can they know it to be so but by Believing And indeed if a General Council and the Pope are to be believed who give it us with a Decernimus firmiter statuimus then it is doubtless a point of faith and if they are not to be believed then Popery is all but a meer deceit Object 2. But may we not be Roman Catholikes though we joyn not with them in this point Have not many such renounced it and so may we Answ If you renounce the Decrees of a Pope and General Council you renounce your Religion in the very foundation of it and cannot be Papists if you know what you do but are in the Roman account as errant Hereticks as those that they have tortured and burnt to ashes though here in England where they cannot handle you as they would do they dare not tell you so And if you may renounce the Decrees of a Pope and General Council when they say It is a duty or lawful to extirminate all as Hereticks that believe not Transubstantiation and to seize upon the Lands of Princes that will not do it and to deliver them to others that will and absolve their Vassals from their fidelity I say if you may renounce them in this why may not we have as free leave to renounce them in other things as groundless CHAP. VI. Argum. 4. THE true Catholike Church is Holy the Church of Rome hath for many generations been unholy therefore the Church of Rome was not in any of those Generations the true Catholike Church The Major Proposition is an Article of the Creed professed by themselves as much as by us I Believe the Holy Catholike Church The unholiness of the Church of Rome I prove undenyably thus If an Essential part of
What though some in England took the King to be the Soveraign and some the Parliament and soom thought it was in both Conjunct did this prove that you were more than one Common-wealth Answ Where the Soveraignty is mixt and not in either alone if any one shall set up the one as the only Soveraign and subject the other to them they change the form of the Commonwealth but do not set up two Commonwealths but if half take one for the Soveraign and the other half take the other for the Soveraign they plainly divide the Commonwealth into two if they do it only in mind and the secret thoughts of their hearts this cannot be known to others and so cannot be the ground of a Society but if they do it by a publike consent and practice they evidently make two Commonwealths What else brought us into a war which ended not till one party was subdued It is not possible that one Political body should have two Soveraigns specifically distinct Indeed it may have five hundred natural persons in the Soveraignty as in a Senate but they are but one Political person or one summa potestas 2. But I prove the Minor by another Argument Where there are two three or four Heads or Soveraigns at once numerically distinct there are two or three or four Churches But the Roman Church pretending to be Catholike hath had two or three or four Heads at once numerically distinct therefore it was two or three or four Churches The Major is a known truth to all that are verst in any degree in the doctrine of Politicks It is not only two species of Soveraignty but two individual Soveraigns that are inconsistent with the numerical Unity of a Political body Two or ten or two hundred may joyn in one Soveraignty as one Political person as I said but if there be two Soveraigns there are certainly two Societies for if both be Supream neither is Subordinate The Minor is not to be denyed for the Papists lay their very foundation on a supposed division for sooth Peter and Paul were both at once their Bishops And there is not many of them that adventure to tell us that Peter only was the Supream and that Paul was under him but they make them as equals or coordinate and some of them say that Paul was the Bishop of the uncircumcision and Peter of the Circumcision and then Peters Church is confined to the Jews And they do not tell us that one Headship was divided between them For then that example would direct them still to have two Popes or two Bishops to a Church so that Peter being a Head and Paul a Head they had sure distinct bodies But whether they stand to this or not they cannot deny their many following divisions The twenty third schisme as Wernerus a zealous Papist in fasciculo tempor reckons them was between Felix the fifth and Eugenius of which the said Wernerus speaking saith That hence arose great contention among the writers of this matter pro contra and they cannot agree to this day for one part saith that a Council is above the Pope the other part on the contrary saith No but the ' Pope is above the Council God grant his Church peace c. Of the twenty second schisme the same Wernerus saith thus ad annum 1373. the twenty second schisme was the woâ—st and most subtile schisme of all that were before it For it was so perplexed that the most Learned and Conscientious men were not able to discuss or find out to whom they should adhere And it was continued for fourty years to the great scandal of the whole lergy and the great loss of souls because of Heresies and other evils that then sprung up because there was then no discipline in the Church against them And therefore from this Urbane the sixtht to the time of Martin the fifth I know not who was Pope After Nicolas the fourth there was no Pope for two years and an half and Celestine the fifth that succeeded him resigning it Boniface the eighth entered that stilled himself Lord of the whole world in Spirituals and Temporals of whom it was said He entered as a Fox lived as a Lyon and dyed like a Dog saith the same Wernerus The twentieth schisme saith the same Author was great between Alexander the third and four Schismaticks and it lasted seventeen years The nineteenth schisme was between Innocent the second and Peter Leonis and Innocent get the better because he had more on his side saith he The thirteenth schisme saith Wernerus was between another and Benedict the eighth The fourteenth schisme saith the same Author was scandalous and full of confusion between Benedict the ninth and five others which Benedict saith he was wholly vitious and therefore being damned appeared in a monstrous and horrid shape his head and tail were like an Asses and the rest of his body like a Bear saying I thus appear because I lived like a beast In this schisme saith Wernerus there were no less then six Popes at once 1. Benedict was expulsed 2. Silvester the third gets in but is cast out again and Benedict restored 3. But being again cast out Gregory the sixt is put into his place who because he was ignorant of letters and yet infallible no doubt caused another Pope to be Consecrated with him to perform Church Offices which was the fourth which displeased many and therefore a third is chosen which was the fifth instead of the two that were fighting with one another but Henry the Emperor coming in deposed them all and chose Clement the second who was the sixth of all them that were alive at once But above all schisms that between Armosus and Sergius and their followers was the fowlest such saying and unsaying doing and undoing there was besides the dismembring of the dead Pope and casting him into the water And of eight Successors saith Wernerus I can say nothing observable of them because I find nothing of them but scandalous because of the unheard of contention in the holy Apostolike sea one against another and together mutually against each other Reader wouldst thou be troubled with any more of these Relations I tell thee nothing but from their own Historians and that which multitudes of them agree in I go not to a Protestant for a word But one Pope in those contentious times I find lived in some peace and that was Silvester the second of whom saith Wernerus as others commonly This Silvester was made Pope by the help of the Devil to whom he did homage that all might go as he would have it but he quickly met with the usual End as one that had placed his Hope in deceitful Devils Well! I shall now appeal to reason it self whether this were one Church that for fourty or say others fifty years together had several Heads some of the people following one and some another and the most Learned and most Conscientious not able
absent from home is but to give up the Church to Infidelity or Impiety unless the Bishops be such things as the Church can spare 9. When they come together they cannot many of them understand one another because of the diversity of their languages 10. And the Number would be so great that ten or twenty Council-houses or rooms would not hold them so that they could not Converse in one Assembly so that a true General Council now is but a name to amuse those that think the world is no bigger then a man may ride over in a weeks journey 6. And yet even this Definition of Binnius is ridiculous For he makes it enough that all the Bishops of the world may and ought to be there whether they be there or not But then what if laziness or danger deterr them or detain them Is that a Council where Bishops ought to be and are not How many must de facto be present any or none Prove if you can that forty Bishops are a General Council because the rest ought to be there And who shall be judge of each mans case whether he could or ought to have been there will you judge men before they are heard or their cause known Your saying that they ought to have been there is no proof And yet Binnius hath one exception unless lawfully hindred Good still If all the Bishops in the world be lawfully hindered it seems it is a General Council when no body is there You see now what you put the poor Papists too if you put them to define a General Council or tell you what they mean by that word And therefore I again advise you let them not befool you with empty or ambiguous words And when they are all to pieces among themselves let them not make you believe they are united by agreeing in One word when they are several things that are meant by that one word CHAP. XIX Detect 10. VVHen they go about from Councils or other History to prove the Soveraignty of the Pope let them not cheat you by confounding 1. An humane Ordinance with a Divine 2. And an alterable point of Order with an unalterable essential part of the Church 3. Or a meer Primacy in the same Order or office with a Governing Soveraignty or a different Order or office First therefore we would learn of them whether the preheminence and order of the five Patriarchal Sees began not about the first General Council to be lookt after but was setled some while after For till there were General Councils such as were so called there was no great occasion of determining which should have the first second or third seat 2. Or when ever the time was yet we enquire whether these other Sees as of Jerusalem Antioch Alexandria or some of them were not Patriarchal as soon as Rome and whether Councils that speak of priority or posteriority do not in the same manner and on the same grounds and to the same ends give Alexandria and Antioch their places as they give to Rome the first place Surely we find them speaking of them as matters of the same Order and nature saying Rome shall have the first place or seat Constantinople the second Alexandria the third Antioch the fourth and Jerusalem the fifth 4. And therefore we enquire whether all these have not the same kind of right to their preheminence whether it be Divine or Humane And that the very foundation of this Patriarchall order yea of Romes Patriarchall Primacy which was the preparative to its universal Soveraignty was not a meer humane invention given on occasion of the Imperiall seat at Rome and not any institution of Christ to Peter and his Successors I desire you not to take from my word but all that will not be fool'd out of all Historicall verity by Popish audacity let them take it from the express words of the fourth great approved General Council viz. of Calcedon which the poor Jacobites and other Churches of the East and South are so reproached for rejecting In Act. 16. Binnii pag. 134. these are their words Definitiones Sanctorum Patrum sequentes ubique Regulam quae nunc relecta sunt 150. Deo amantissimorum Episcoporum qui congregati sunt sub piae memoriae Imperatore majore Theodosio in Regia civitate Constantinop Nova Roma cognoscentes nos eadem definivimus de privilegiis ejusdem Sanctissimae Constantinop Ecclesiae novae Romae Etenim sedi Senioris Romae propter Imperium civitatis illius N. B. patres consequenter privilegia reddiderunt Et eadem intentione permoti 150. Deo amantissimi Episcopi aequa sanctissimae sedi novae Romae privilegia tribuerunt rationabiliter judicantes Imperio Senatu Urbem ornatam aequis Senioris Regiae Romae privilegiis frui i. e. We following alway the Definitions of the holy fathers and the Canon and knowing those that now have been read of the hundred and fifty Bishops most beloved of God that were Congregated under the Emperour of pious memory Theodosius the Greater in the Royall City Constantinople new Rome have our selves also defined the same things concerning the Priviledges of the same most holy Church of Constantinople new Rome For to the seat of old Rome because of the Empire of that City the Fathers consequently gave the Priviledges And the hundred and fifty Bishops most beloved of God being moved with the same intention have given equall Priviledges to the most holy Seat of New Rome reasonably judging than the City adorned with the Empire and Senate shall enjoy equal Priviledges with old Regal Rome I do not stand to note that this Council was called by Martian that his Lay Officers were called the Judges or how light the Council made of Rome when they said Qui contradicunt Nestoriani sunt qui contradicunt Romam ambulent Bin. p. 98. Nor do I stand so much on it that they gave Constantinople equal priviledges But it may confound all the Papal Juglers on earth to find an approved General Council affirming 1. That Romes Priviledges even its meer primacy were given by the Fathers 2. And that because it was the Imperial City 3. And therefore on the same reason they do the like by Constantinople 4. And that the General Council of Constant had gone before them on these grounds so that you have the vote of two of the first four great General Councils that it was not so from the beginning nor an Apostolical Tradition but the act of the Fathers because of the Imperial City If a General Council can err Popery is a deceit If it cannot err then the very Primacy of order in the Pope was then but new and humane on a Carnal ground done by man that might do the like by others and therefore undo this again But say they Pope Leo confirmed not this Answ 1. Still then the Church Representative it seems may err and the Pope only is infallible 2. Leo and his Delegates were offended
we have your own Confessions I have elsewhere mentioned some Canus Loc. Theol. lib. 6. cap. 7. fol. 201. saith Not only the Greeks but almost all the rest of the Bishops of the whole world have vehemently fought to destroy the Priviledge of the Church of Rome and indeed they had on their side both the Arms of Emperors and the greater number of Churches and yet they could never prevail to abrogate the Power of the one Pope of Rome Mark here whether the Catholick Church was then your subjects when the greater number of Churches and most of the Bishops of the whole world as well as the Greeks were against you and vehemently fought against your pretended priviledges Rainerius supposed contra Waldenses Catal. in Bibliotheca Patrum Tom. 4. pag. 773. saith The Churches of the Armenians and Ethiopians and Indians and the rest which the Apostles converted are not under the Church of Rome Read and blush and call Baronius a parasite What would you have truer or plainer And what Controversie can there be where so many Nations themselves are witnesses against you And you may conjecture at the numbers of those Churches by what a Legate of the Popes that lived among them saith of one Corner of them Jacob. Ã Vitriaco Histor Orient cap. 77. that the Churches in the Easterly parts of Asia alone exceeded in multitude the Christians both of the Greek and Latine Churches Alas how little a thing then was the Roman Catholick Church If all this were not enough the Tradition of your own Catholick Church is ready to destroy the Papacy utterly For that a General Council is above the Pope and may judge him and depose him and that is de fide and that its Heresie to deny it and that all this is so jure that ne unquam aliquis peritorum dubitavit no wise man ever doubted of it all this is the judgement of the General Council of Basil with whom that of Constance doth agree And whether these Councils were confirmed or not they confess them lawfully called and owned and extraordinary full and so they were their Catholick Church Representative and so the Popes Soveraignty over the Council is gone by I radition but that 's not the worst For if a free General Council should be called all the Churches in the world must be equally there represented And if they were so then down went the usurped Head-ship of the Pope For we are sure already that most of the Churches in the world are against it and therefore in Council they would have the Major vote And thus by the concession of the Roman Representative Catholick Church the Pope is gone by Tradition So that by that time they have well considered of the matter me thinks they should be less zealous for Tradition CHAP. XXI Detect 12. ANother of the Roman frauds is this They perswade men that the Greeks the Protestants and all other Churches were once under their Papal soveraignty and have separated themselves without any just cause and therefore we are all schismaticks and thereforefore have no vote in general Councils c. A few words may serve to shew the vanity of this accusation 1. Abundance of the Churches were so strange to you that they had not any notable communion with you 2. The Greek Churches withdrew from your Communion but not from your subjection If any of the Patriarcks or Emperours of Constantinople did for carnal ends at last submit to you it was not till lately nor was it the act of the Churches nor owned nor of long continuance So that it was your Communion and not your subjection that they withdrew from 2. And as for us of the Western parts we answer you 1. We that are now living our Fathers or our Grand-fathers were not of your Church and therefore we never did withdraw 2. There were Churches in England before the Roman Power was here owned And therefore if it was a sin to change the first change was the sin when they subjected themselves to you and not the later in which they returned to their ancient state 3. And for the Germanes or English or whoever did relinquish you they have as good reason for it as for the relinquishing of any other sin If they did by the unhappiness of ill education or delusion submit to the usurped Soveraignty of the Pope they had no reason to continue in such an error Repentance is not a Vice when the thing Repented of is a vice Justifie therefore your usurpation or else it is in vain to be angry with us for not adhering to the usurper and the many corruptions that he brought into the Church CHAP. XXII Detect 13. ANother deceit that they manage with great confidence is this say they If the Church of Rome be the true Church then yours is not the true Church and then you are Shismaticks in separating from it But the Church of Rome is the true Church For you will confess it was once a true Church when Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans and if it ceased to be a true Church tell us when it ceased if you can If it ceased to be a true Church it was either by heresie or Schism or Apostacy but by none of these therefore c. A man would think that children and women should see the palpable fallacy of this Argument and yet I hear of few that the learned Papists make more use of But to lay open the shame of it in brief I answer 1. The deceit lieth in the ambiguity of the word Church As to our present purpose observe that it hath these several significations 1. It is taken oft in Scripture for one particular Church associated for personal communon in Gods Worship And thus there were many Churches in a Countrey as Judea Galatia c. 2. It is taken by Ecclesiastical writers often for an Association of many of these Churches for Communion by their Pastors such as were Diocesan Provincial National Churches whereof most were then ruled by Assemblies where a Bishop Archbishop Metropolitan or Patriarck as they called them did preside 3. It is taken oft in Scripture for the Body of Christ the holy Catholick or Universal Church containing all true Believers as mystical or all Professors of true faith as visible 4. It is taken by the Papists oft for one particular Church which is the Mistris or Ruler of all other Churches And now I come to apply these in answer to the argument 1. If the Question be of a true particular Church we grant you that the Church of Rome was a true and noble Church in the daies of Paul and long after and thus Paul owneth it in his Epistle as a true Church And to the question when it ceased to be a true Church I answer 1. What matter is it to us whether it be reasoned or not any more then whether Corinth Ephesus Coloss Thessalonica or Jerusalem be true Churches or ceased In charity we regard them all
but otherwise what is it to the faith or salvation of the world whether Rome or any one of these be yet a true Church or be ceased I know not well whether there be any Church at Coloss or Philippi or some other places that had then true Churches And doth it therefore follow that I am not a true believer what would you say to such a fellow that should argue thus concerning other Churches as these men do of Rome and say e. g. If Philippi be a true Church then England are no true Churches If it be not when did it cease to be a true Church Would you not answer him What is it to me whether Philippi be a true Church or not May not we and they be both true Churches How prove you that And whether it be ceased or not ceased doth no what concern my faith or salvation further then as my charity is to be exercised towards them So say we of Rome It was a true particular Church in the Apostles dayes And if it be still a true Church what hinders but we may be so to But whether it be so or not is little to me It concerneth not my faith or Salvation to know whether there be any such place as Rome on earth or whether it were consumed long ago If a man were so simple as to believe a report that Rome was destroyed by Charls of Bourbon and never inhabited or had a Pope since he were but such a Heretick as Pope Zachary and Bishop Boniface made of Virgilius for holding there be Antipodes though further from the South 2. And if you take the word Church in the second sence for a Diocesan or Patriarchiall Church or Association of Churches supposing such forms proved warrantable the same answer serveeth as to the first 3. But to come to the true state of our Controversie If by a true Church you mean either of the two last that is 1. The whole Universal Church or 2. A Mistris Church that must Rule all the rest it was never such a true Church in Pauls dayes And therefore here we turn this argument of the Papists against themselves If the Church of Rome were neither the whole Catholick Church nor the Mistris of all other Churches when Paul wrote his Epistle to them then it is not so now nor ought to be so accounted But the former is proved 1. That the Church of Rome was not the whole Catholick Church then no man that 's well in his wits can doubt that reads what a Church there was at Jerusalem what a Church at Ephesus and Philadelphia Smyrna Thyatira Laodicea Corinth and abundance more Prove that all or any of these were parts of the Church of Rome if you can 2. Where doth Paul once name them either the Catholick Church or the Mistris or Ruler of all Churches or give the least hint of any such thing or mention any Pope among them whom the whole world was to take to be their Soveraign Head Is it not an incredible thing that Paul and all the Apostles would forget to make any mention of this priviledge or teach them how to use it or teach other Churches their duty in obeying the Church of Rome if indeed they had been made the Mistris Church Men that can believe what they list may say what they list But for my part I will never think so hardly of Paul and all the Apostles as to accuse them of so great oblivion or negligence And therefore I conclude Rome was neither the Universal Church nor the Mistris Church then not many an age after and therefore it is not so to be accounted now So that you see how easily this silly Argument shews its shame But though it concern not our main question I shall tell them further that the Matter of the Roman Church must be distinguished from its New Political Form For the Matter so many of its members as are true Christians are part of the Catholick Church of Christ though not the whole And for the form 1. There is the form of its severall parts and the form of the whole The form of any parts of the Roman Church that are Congregations or particular Churches of true Christiant may make those parts true Churches that is there may be many a true Parish Church that yet live under the Papall Yoak But as to the Politicall form of their Roman Catholick Church as it is a Body Headed by one claiming an Universall Monarchy so the form is false and Antichristian and therefore the Church as Papall must be denominated from this form and can be no better And this is our true answer to the question whether the Church of Rome be a true Church There are I doubt not among them many a thousand true members of the Catholick Church and there may be true particular Churches among them having true Pastors and Christian people joyned for Gods worship though I doubt there is but few of them but do fearfully pollute it and I am confident that salvation is much more rare and difficult with them then it is with the Reformed Catholicks yet that many among them are true Christians and saved I am fully perswaded especially when I have read such writings as Gersons Guil. Parisiensis Ferus Kempis c. And I think the better of Bellarmine himself for saying of Kempis de imitatione Christi Ego certe ab adolescentia usque in senectam hoc opusculum saepissime volvi revolvi semper mihi novum apparuit nunc etiam mirifice cordi meo sapit Bellarm. de Scripter Eccl. pag. 298. But the Pope as a pretended Universal Monarch is a false Head and consequently their Papall Church as such is a false Antichristian Church and no true Church of Jesus Christ And by the way I conceive you are thus to understand a clause in a late oath of Abjuration drawn up by the last Parliament to be offered to the Papists viz. that the Church of Rome is not the true Church that is 1. Not the whole Catholick Church but part of it as they are Christians 2. Nor a true Church at all as Papal and so formally as the Now Romish Church But all this is little to our main Question CHAP. XXIII Detect 14. ANother great Endeavour of the Papists is to edness unity consistency and setledness in Religion but we are still at uncertainty and to seek incoherent not tyed together by any certain bond but still upon divisions and upon change And they instance thus A while ago you were Episcopal and then Presbyterian and now you are nothing but every one goes his own way A while ago you worshipped God in one manner in Baptising Marrying Burying Common Prayer the Lords Supper and now you have all new Where is the Church of England now some of you are for one Government and some for another the Lutherans have superintendents the Calvinists are Presbyterians And what names of reproach do the Episcopal
did Reject the chief of the Popish errors as we do Besides many particular points named in my Safe Religion they Rejected with us the Popes Catholick Monarchy the pretended Infallibility of the Pope or his Councils the new form of the Papall Catholick Church as Headed by him with other such points which are the very fundamentall controversies between us and the Papists So that besides that the Papists themselves profess our Religion the major part of the Catholick Church did profess it with the Rejection of the Papacy and Papall Church and so you may as easily see where our Religion was before Luther as where the Catholick Church or most of Christians were before Luther 3. And beside both these our Religion was professed with a yet greater Rejection of Romish corruptions by thousands and many thousands that lived in the Western Church it self and under the Popes nose and opposed him in many of his ill endeavours against the Church and truth together with them that gave him the hearing and were glad to be quiet and gave way to his tyranny but never consented to it Concerning these we have abundant evidence though abundance more we might have had if the power and subtilty of the Papall faction had not had the handling of them 1. We have abundance of Histories that tell us of the bloody wars and contentions that the Emperours both of East and West have had with the Pope to hinder his tyranny and that they were forced by his power to submit to him contrary to their former free professions 2. And we have abundance of Treatises then written against him both for the Emperours and Princes and against his doctrine and tyranny some store of them Goldastus hath gathered And intimations of more you have in their own expurgatory Indices 3. And we have the histories and professions of the Albigenses Waldenses Bohemians and others that were very numerous and if Raynerius say true they affirmed about the year one thousand one hundred that they had coutinued since the Apostles and no other Originall of them is proved 4. Particular evidence unanswerable is given in by Bishop Usher de Succes statu Eccl. and Answer to the Jesuites and the Ancient Religion of Ireland and in Dr. Field and Morneyes Mysterie of Iniquity and of the Church and Illyricus and many others 5. Even Generall Popish Councils have contended and born witness against the Popes superiority over a Councill 6. And in that and other points whole Countreyes of their own are not yet brought over to the Pope 7. They have still among themselves Dominicans Jansenists c. that are reproached by the Jesuites as siding with Calvin in many Controversies as Catharinus and many more in others Most points of ours which we oppose to Popery being maintained by some or other of them 8. But the fullest evidence is the certain history or knowledge of of the case of the common people and Clergy among them who are partly ignorant of the main matters in Controversies between us as we see by experience of multitudes for one to this day and are generally kept under the fear of fire and sword and torments so that the truth of the Case is this the Roman Bishops were aspiring by degrees to be Arch-bishops and so to be Patriarchs and so to have the first seat and vote and to be called the Chief Bishops or Patriarchs and at last they made another thing of their office and claimed about six hundred years or more after Christ to be universal Monarchs or Governours of all the Church But though this claim was soon laid it was comparatively but few even in the West that made it any Article of their faith but multitudes sided with the Princes that would have kept the Pope lower and the most of the People medled not with the matter but yielded to necessity and gave place to violence except such as the Albigenses Bohemians Wicklefists and the rest that more openly opposed So that no man could judge of the multitude clearly which side they were on being forced by fire and sword and having not the freedom to profess their minds So that in summ our Religion was at first with the Apostles and the Apostolick Church and for divers hundred years after it was with the universal Christian Church And since Romes usurpation it was even with the Romanists though abused and with the greater part of the Catholick Church that renounced Popery then and so do now and also with the opposers of the Pope in the West under his own nose You see now what Succession we plead and where our Church and Religion still was If any deny that we are of the same Church and Religion with the Greeks Abassines and most of the Christian world yea all that is truly Christian I easily prove it 1. They that are Christians joyned to Christ the Head are all of the same Church and Religion for none else are Christians or united to Christ but the Church which is his Body But the sincere Greeks Abassines c. and we are Christians united to Christ the Head therefore we are all of one and the same Church and Religion 2. They that believe the same holy Scripture and differ in no essential part of the Christian faith are of the same Church and Religion but so do both we and all true Christians therefore we are all of one Church and Religion 3. They that are truly regenerate and Justified hating all known sin longing to be perfect Loving God above all and seeking first his Kingdom and Righteousness and accounting all things but as dung in comparison of Christ these are all of the true Catholick Church and the true Christian Religion but such are all that are sincere both of the Greeks Abassines c. and the Reformed Churches as we prove 1. To others by our Profession and Practice by which only they are capable of judging of us 2. To ourselves infallibly against all the Enemies of our salvation in Hell or Earth by the knowledge and acquaintance with our own hearts and the experience of the work of God upon them All the Jesuites in the world cannot perswade me that I love not God and hate not sin and prefer not the Love of Christ before all the world when I feel and know that I do till they can prove that they know my heart better then I do 4. If Christ Consent to it and we Consent to it then we are all that are sincere in their profession of the true Catholick Church and Religion for if he consent and we consent who is there that is able to break the match But Christ consenteth and we consent as we prove by parts 1. His consent is expressed in his Gospel that whoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life and whoever will may drink of the water of life freely 2. And our consent we openly professed at Baptisme and have frequently renewed and our own
that I must needs conclude that either the Liturgy or much of it is forged or that the generality of your own Relators of their practice are grosly deceived and do deceive which is not likely because they are many and write at several times and it is against themselves 3. And as for the procession of the Holy Ghost and the denyal of two wills in Christ some of your own writers profess that the former in the Greeks and the later in many others is found to be but a verbal difference the same words not signifying the same thing in their esteem as in ours 4. However if they would but become the subjects of the Pope they might be of your Church for all this and therefore seeing they are the subjects of Christ we shall take both Ethiopians and Copties to be of the same Catholick Church with us for all these and many other of their errors Lastly saith H. T. Let him not cite the Armenians for they hold but one nature in Christ and that his flesh was changed into his Divinity and were condemned by the Council of Calcedon Answ The Armenians are a considerable part of the Catholick Church Binnius in the life of Eugenius the third saith their Catholick so call they their chief Bishop hath infinite that is above a thousand Bishops under him Oth. Frisingensis hath the like 1. Though they held but one nature in Christ it was not by permixtion or confusion of the natures as Eutiches imagined but Conjunction or Coalition Nicephor Hist Eccles lib. 18. cap. 53. And divers of your own writers say the difference is found to be but in words And even all this they now deny as you may see in their own Confession published not eighty years ago Artic. 26 27 28 29 30. c. 2. That they change the humane nature of Christ into the Divinity is your slander and therefore no good argument 3. That they were condemned by the five Acts or in any Act of the Council of Calcedon is another untruth sure you go much upon trust that dare venture to stuff your book with such falshoods But the best is your simple Papists know not but all is true they must believe you and cannot disprove you The Armenians then and we are of one Catholick Church and Religion notwithstanding all your forgeries and vain exceptions I know that one or two petty Councils chid them for not mixing water with wine in the Eucharist and more then that the Canons of the General Council called Quinisexti do condemn the same error as theirs and also their deputing the Sons of Priests successively to the Priesthood and not shaving their hair and their eating eggs and cheese on Saturdayes and Sundayes in Lent But 1. We fear not to say that we are of the same Church with men that err more then not shaving or then eating eggs and cheese comes to or any of this 2 And remember that this is one of your Reprobate Councils 3. And one that the third time when two General Councils before had done it did Canon 36. give aequalia privilegia equal priviledges to the Seat of Constantinople as Rome had So that I think you will have no mind of this General Council And if any other have judged them Eutichians though I renounce that opinion yet I must tell you that my Charity covereth far greater errors in the Papists or else I could not take them for Christians If the Question had ever been started in a Council whether mans soul and body are two Natures or but one it s ten to one but it would have made another heresie and yet perhaps the real difference have been no more then it is now there is no Controversie about it But H. T. addeth Protestants pretence to the Fathers of the first five hundred years is very idle because were it true as it is most false that those Fathers were Protestants yet could not that suffice to prove them is continued Succession of one thousand six hundred years Answ 1. It sufficeth us if those Fathers were Christians as we are though having no usurper of an universal Monarchy to Protest against they were not to be called Protestants 2. It is an idle pretence indeed to go about to prove a Succession of one thousand six hundred years by the bare instance of five hundred years but your idle head hath forged more idle pretences then this by way of calumniation But yet we may prove the Antiquity of our Religion from those Fathers and the Novelty of yours and a Succession for those five hundred years and for the rest if the whole Christian world had been big enough for you to see you might have discerned our Evidence of a further Succession He adds 2. Because those of the sixth age must needs know what was the Religion and Tenets of them that lived in the fifth age by whom they were instructed and with whom they daily conversed better then our Protestants can now do who have Protested on their salvation that it was the very same with theirs received from them by word of mouth c. Answ 1. Any thing will serve for the simple that will believe you But I pray you tell us whether it were all or some of the sixth age that made this solemn Protestation that you mention If all or most or the ten thousandth man tell us where we may find that Protestation If a few they were not the sixth age 2. If Pope Boniface alone was not the sixth age tell us where that age did Protest on their salvation that the Bishop of Rome was taken by their Fore fathers for the universal Monarch and Head of the Church beyond his bare Primacy of order 3. What age hath protested on their salvation that the Roman prohibition of reading Scriptures or of receiving the Eucharist in both kinds or other points anon to be mentioned were the Religion of their Fore-fathers and so from age to age 4. I pray you tell us where to find this Protestation of the tenth age which Genebrard Bellarmine and others of your own so complain of as having not learned men nor any Council but Apostatical Popes and an ignorant wicked Clergy that suspected a man of Heresie if he understood Greek or Hebrew and of Magick or Conjuring if he medled with Mathematicks 5. It is legible in the writings of the sixth Age that they did fetch the doctrine of the fifth age from their writings and not only from word of mouth What else mean the preservation of those writings and those numerous citations out of them Nay more they would not trust their memories in a General Council for the Canons of the Church no nor for the Canons of the next preceding Council no nor for the Common Creed but had all read and repeated out of the writing before the Council when there was occasion And let Conscience be free to speak truth for a few sentences and tell us in good sadness
John Baptist that was dead not only before Rome had a Church but also before the time that Bellarmine and his Brethren pretend that Peter received his Commission to be the universall Head And did not this writer know that Protestants can give him the same names as for them and if printing them be proof their proof is as good If it be not what proof shall we have Our proof is the Holy Scriptures written by the Inspiration of the Holy Ghost in those times Thence we prove that the first Church held the same belief as we have yea though it be not incumbent on us we will thence prove that the Catholick Church was not then Papists Why else do we still appeal to Scriptures and they refuse to stand to the tryal of it any otherwise then as expounded by the Pope but that we are confident and they diffident of them We know the Apostles faith from the Apostles but the Papists will not know it but from the present Church of Rome They tell you the Apostles were for them but how know we that Why by the testimony of the next age and where is that testimony Why the third age received it and how is that proved Why because the fourth age was of their mind And how prove you that Why in the upshot because the present age is of their mind Why but most Christians of the present age are against them yea but they are none of the Church It is only the present Church of Rome Well! but the present Church of Rome represented in a General Council may err I but the Pope cannot in Cathedra and in approving a Councill So that the summ is this If the Pope himself may be judge the Apostles were Papists But if the Apostles may be heard themselves they were none I make no doubt though Bellarmine deny it but other Churches can prove as good a succession as the Romane as to Bishops And poor Bellarmine after all is fain to give up this Mark as insufficient to prove a true Church Lib. ◠de Eccles cap. 8. Dico secundò Argumentum à successione legittna adferri à nobis praecipuè ad probandum non esse Ecclesiam ibi non est haec successio quod quidem evidens est ex quo tamen n◠colligitur necessario ibi esse Ecclesiam ubi est successio By his own confession then succession will not prove the Romanists a true Church But as to a succession of Religion and a continuation of the Catholick Church for my part I am so far from declining it in argumentation that I here solemnly profess to all the Papists that shall read these words that AS SOON AS I SHALL SEE ANY CERTAIN PROOF BY CATALOGUE OR ANY OTHER WAY THAT THE CATHOLICK CHURCH HATH SUCCESSIVELY FROM AGE TO AGE BEEN PAPISTS I WILL TURN PAPIST WITHOUT DELAY AND I CHALLENGE THEM TO GIVE US SUCH PROOF IF THEY CAN. Nay if they will prove that in the first age alone or the second or third alone the Catholick Church were Papists I am am resolved to turn Papist Nay I am most confident they cannot prove that in any one age to this day the Catholick Church were Papists And as to H. Ts. Catalogue I return him further answer that no one named by him in the first age had any one of their errors And no one named by him to the year four hundred I may add to the year six hundred if his false catalogue be truly corrected was a Papist so well hath he proved the Popish Succession But for the plainer opening of this I shall add the discussion of another of their deceits CHAP. XXV Detect 16. ANother notable fraud of the Papists is to confound all their own errors and corruptions together and then to instance in some of those errors that are common to them with some others and to omit the Essentiall parts of Popery And so they would make the world believe that if they prove the Antiquity of any points in difference between them and us they do thereby prove the antiquity of Popery and so of the succession And so they would make our Religion also Essentially to consist in every inferiour difference between us Suffer them not therefore thus to juggle in the dark but distinguish between the Essentials of Popery or the main difference between them and us and the other errors which are not proper to them alone Thus Bellarmine opens his jugling lib. 4. de Eccles cap. 9. where he pleadeth Antiquity of Doctrine as a Note of the true Church And saith he Jam duobus modis c. Two wayes we may by this Mark prove our Church 1. By shewing the sentences of the Ancients by which we confirm all our tenets and refute our adversaries But this way saith he is most prolix and obnoxious to many calumnies and objections Mark Papists and take heed of appealing to Antiquity The other way saith he is shorter and surer by shewing first from the confession of the adversaries that our tenents are the doctrine of all the antients c. And indeed if the weakness or rashness of any Protestants be the Papists strength its time for us to be more prudent but if it be the Papists unhappiness that cannot understand the antients in the antients but only from the Pope or the Protestants the Fathers are faln into the hands of Babies as well as the Scriptures and the Protestants have too little wit if they will join with the Pope in an abusive interpreting the Fathers for the Papists And thus Bellarmine proceeds to cite Calvin and the Centurists as giving them the Fathers But wherein Forsooth in the point of Free-will Limbus Concupiscence Lent Lay baptism in necessity c. And therefore by our Confessions Antiquity is for the Papists And this is their shortest and surest way The more fools we then Is not here great diffidence in the Fathers when they have more confidence in our sayings then their writings But this jugling will not serve the turn Take up the Essentials of Popery and prove a Catholick succession of them and you shall win the day In Explication of my former professions I here again solemnly promise and protest that WHEN EVER I SEE A VALID PROOF OF A CATHOLICK SUCCESSION OF THESE FOLLOWING POINTS I WILL PRESENTLY TURN PAPIST OR OF ANY ONE OF THEM I WILL TAKE UP THAT ONE And I provoke the Papists that boast of Tradition Succession and Antiquity to do this if they are able 1. Let them prove a Catholick Succession or continuation of this point that The Pope of Rome is appointed by Christ to be the universall Monarch Soveraign Governour Head of the Catholick Church and the Vicar of Christ on earth and holding the place of God himself whom all must obey 2. And that the true and only Catholick Church is a Society thus headed and Governed by the Pope and that no man is a true member of the Catholick Church that is
not the subject of the Pope as universal Monarch Nor can any other be saved as being without the Church 3. And that the Church of Rome is by Gods appointment the Mistris of all other Churches 4. And that the Pope of Rome is Infallible 5. That we cannot believe the Scriptures to be the word of God or the Christian doctrine to be true but upon the Authoritative Tradition of the Roman Church and upon the knowledge or belief of their Infallibility that is we must believe in the Pope as Infallible before we can believe in Christ who is pretended to give him that infallibility 6. That no Scripture is by any man to be interpreted but according to the sence of the Pope or Roman Church and the unanimous consent of the Fathers 7. That a General Council approved by the Pope cannot err but a General Council not approved by the Pope may err 8. That nothing is to us an Article of faith till it be declared by the Pope or a General Council though it was long before declared by Christ or his Apostles as plain as they can speak 9. That a General Council hath no more validity then the Pope giveth it 10. That no Pastor hath a valid Ordination unless it be derived from the Pope 11. That there are Articles of faith of Necessity to our Salvation which are not contained in the Holy Scriptures nor can be proved by them 12. That such Traditions are to be received with equal pious affection and reverence as the holy Scriptures 13. That Images have equal honour with the Holy Gospel 14. That the Clergy of the Catholick Church ought to swear obedience to the Pope as Christs Vicar 15. That the Pope should be a temporal Prince 16. That the Pope and his Clergy ought to be exempted from the Government of Princes and Princes ought not to judge and punish the Clergy till the Pope deliver them to their power having degraded them 17. That the Pope may dispossess Princes of their Dominions and give them to others if those Princes be such as he judgeth hereticks or will not exterminate Hereticks 18. That in such cases the Pope may discharge all the subjects from their allegiance and fidelity 19. That the Pope in his own Territories and Princes in theirs must burn or otherwise put to death all that deny Transubstantiation the Popes Soveraignty or such doctrines as are afore expressed when the Pope hath sentenced them 20. That the people should ordinarily be forbidden to read the Scripture in a known tongue except some few that have a license from the ordinary 21. That publick Prayers Prayses and other publick worship of God should be performed constantly in a language not understood by the People or only in Latine Greek or Hebrew 22. That the Bread and Wine in the Eucharist is Transubtantiate into the very body and blood of Christ so that it is no more true Bread or Wine though our eyes tast and feeling tell us that it is 23. That the consecrated host is to be worshipped with Divine worship and called our Lord God 24. That the Pope may oblige the people to receive the Eucharist only in one kind and forbid them the Cup. 25. That the sins called venial by the Papists are properly no sins and deserve no more but temporal punishment 26. That we may be perfect in this life by this double perfection 1. To have no sin but to keep all Gods Law perfectly 2. To supererogate by doing more then is our Duty 27. That our works properly merit salvation of God by way of Commutative Justice or by the Condignity of the works as proportioned to the Reward 28. That Priests should generally be fordidden Marriage 29. That there is a fire called Purgatory where souls are tormented and where sin is pardoned in another world 30. That in Baptism there is an implicite vow of obedience to the Pope of Rome 31. That God is ordinarily to be worshipped by the Oblation of a true proper propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead where the Priest only shall eat and drink the body and blood of Christ while the Congregation look on and partake not 32. That the Canon of Scripture is the same that is declared by the Council of Trent I will pass by abundance more to avoid tediousness And I will not stay to enquire which of these are proper to the Papists But I am resolved so to receive many of them as they can prove a Catholick succession of that is that they were in all ages the Doctrine of the Universal Church And I crave the charity of such a proof from some Papist or other if they have any charity in them and that they will no longer keep universal Tradition in their purses And I would desire H. T. to revise his Catalogue and instead of twenty or thirty dead and silent names that signifie no more then Blanks or Cyphers he would prove that both those persons and the Catholick Church did in every age hold these thirty two forementioned doctrines And when hath done then let him boast of his Catalogue Till they will perform this task let them never more for shame call to us for Catalogues or proof of succession But if they are so unkind that they will not give us any proof of such a Catholick succession of Popery we shall be ready to supererogate and give them full proof of the Negative That there hath been no such succession of these thirty two points as soon as we can perceive that they will ingeniously entertain it though indeed it hath been often done already But certainly it belongeth to them that superinduce more Articles of Faith to prove the continuation of their own Articles through all ages of which anon Well! but one of these Articles at least the Popes Soveraignty H. T. will prove successively if you will be credulous enough In the first age he proves it from Peters words Act. 15. 7 8 9 10. God chose Peter to convert Cornelius and his company therefore the Pope is the Universall Monarch Are you not all convinced by this admirable argument But he forgot that Bellarmine Ragusius in Concil Basil and others of them say that no Article can be proved from Scripture but from the proper literall sence To say somewhat more he unseasonably talks of the Council of Sardis and Calcedon an 400. 451. lest the first age have but a blank page In the second age he hath nothing but the names of a few that never dreamt of Popery and a Canon which you must believe was the Apostles that Priests must communicate Of which we are well content In the third Age he nameth fifteen Bishops of Rome of whom the last was deposed for offering incense to Saturn Jupiter c. But not a syllable to prove that one of these Bishops was the universal Monarch Much less that the Catholick Church was for such Monarchy But to excuse the matter he tells you that
which is all that this will prove even in some that otherwise might be good men We deny not but that Zosimus would fain have extorted a confession of his usurped power and a submission to it from Aurelius Augustine and the rest of the Africane Council But yet he could not do it We confess that Leo the first and Gregory the first and others were very busie for the extending of their power And that the Romane Bishops were long endeavouring to have put the halter on the Africanes heads yea and long about the French before they got them under And shall these partial ambitious men be the witnesses And because they would have had more power doth it follow that it was their due 2. Again if they find that any distressed Churches or Bishops have but sent to Rome for help they presently gather thence that they took the Pope to be Christs Vicar General As when Chrysostome sent to Innocent and Basil and the rest in the East did send so oft for help into the West when as the reasons were but such as these 1. Because Rome during the Emperors residence there was the place where life or death was last pronounced on every mans cause by the secular power and therefore the Bishop of Rome had the greater opportunity to befriend other Churches 2. And afterward Rome had a great secular influence on the Empire 3. And because in the divisions of the East about Arrianisme they thought the countenance of the Orthodox in the West might have done somewhat to turn the scales 4. Because the Bishop of Rome being taken for the Patriarch of the first place his voice might do much against an adversary I will delay you now which no more instances then those of Basils time from the East Eusebius Meletius Basil and the rest of the Orthodox being both pestered with the Arrians and all to pieces also among themselves do send for help to the West Basil Epist 69. But to whom and for what Not to the Bishop of Rome only nor by name but equally to the Bishops of Italy and France without any mention of the Romane power And it was not that the Pope might decide all by his soveraign power which certainly was so neer a way to their relief that no wise man can imagine them so mad as to forget it if it had been a thing then known and approved of But only they desire that some may be sent to help them to be the stronger party in a Synod or at least some one to comfort them and put some countenance on their cause And Epist 70. Basil writeth himself in the name of the rest but to whom To the Bishops of France and Italy and France before Italy without taking notice of an universal Head of the Church at Rome And what doth he so importune them for not that the Pope would decide the controversie but that they would acquaint the Emperour with their state because the West had an Orthodox Emperor and the East an Arrian or send some to them to see how it stood with them so that it was but either help from the Emperor or countenance from the number of Bishops because they were over voted quite at home that they desired So Epist 74. Basil again writes to the Bishops of the West and so no more to the Romane Bishop then the rest and he giveth these as his Reasons For saith he what we here speak is suspected as if we spoke through private contention But for you the further you are remote from them by habitation so much credit you have with the people whereto is added that the grace of God helpeth you to relieve the oppressed And if Many of you unanimously decree the same things it is manifest that the multitude will produce a certain reception of your opinion Wonderfull if there were then a Vicar General of Christ at Rome that it never came into their mind to crave his decision or help as such O but say the Papists that was because they had to do only with the Arrians that cared for no authority that was against them Answ 1. But would these Arrians have so much regarded the votes of the French and Italian Bishops yea or a few men sent from them and yet not regard the Head of the Church The Arrians sure had heard of this Headship if any had And would not the Orthodox desire so much as a word from Rome for this advantage 2. But it is false that they were only the Arrians that they called for help against They expresly say that it was also because they were divided among themselves by personal quarrels How importunately doth Gregory Nyssen afterward call for help from others and telleth Flavianus in his Epist to him of their misery as if all were lost And the only sad instance was that Helladius counted a good Bishop had proudly neglected him and made him stand at his door when he went to visit him a great while before he was let in and then did not bid him sit down and then did not speak to him first but two or three strange angry words This was the great business But to proceed with Basil Epist 77. he falls to chiding the Western Bishops for not sending to them nor regarding them and their communion and to touch their pride he addeth We have one Lord one faith one hope Whether you think your selves the Head of the universal Church the head cannot say to the feet I have no need of you or if you place your selves in the order of other Church-members you cannot say to us we need you not And would you here believe that the Papists have the faces to cite this passage of Basil for their Headship because here is the word Head When as its plain 1. That Basil by the Head means but the chiefest part and not the soveraign power 2. That he speaks to all the Bishops of the West and not only to the Romane Bishop 3. That he doth it as a smart reproof of their arrogancy and not in any approbation at all But any thing will serve them More from Basil I shall have occasion to mention anon 3. Nore also that when the Papists find but any Heresie condemned by the Bishop of Rome they cite this as a testimony of their Soveraignty As if other Patriarch and Bishops condemned them not as well as they Or as if we knew no that the Church desired the most general vote against Hereticks and therefore would be loth to leave so great a Bishop out 4. And when they find the Pope excommunicating forreign Bishops they cry up this as a Testimony of his Headship As if we did not know 1. That to refuse Communion with another Church or Bishop is no act of Jurisdiction over them 2. That other Bishops have made bold also to excommunicate the Pope I 'le now but recite those words of Nicephorus lib. 17. cap. 26. which you use to glory in as many do
men know what Council of Carthage decreed that the Bishop primae sedis should be called neither Summus Sacerdos nor Princeps Sacerdotum vel aliquid hujusmodi tantum Episcopus primae sedis i. e. Not the chief Priest or the chief of Priests but the Bishop of the first seat And how long will they shut their eyes against the testimony of two of their own Popes Pelagius and Gregory the first that condemned the name of Universal Bishop Sometime they find the Church of Rome called Apostolick and so were others as well as that as is commonly known And sometime the Pope is called the Pillar of the Church And what of that so are many others as well as he as all the Apostles were as well as Peter The Church is built on the Foundation of the Apostles and Prophets That the Pastors of the Church were ordinarily called the Pillars and props of it as by Nicephorus Gildas Theodoret Basil Tertullian Dionysius Hierom Augustine c. you may see proved in Gatakers Cinnus page 395 396. And lastly when the Papists read their Popes called the Successors of Peter they take this as a proof of their Soveraignty Whereas 1. Peter himself had no such Soveraignty 2. They succeed him not in his Apostleship 3. They are called Pauls Successors as well as Peters 4. Others are called Peters Successors too as well as they by the Fathers 5. And other Bishops ordinarily are called the Apostles Successors and other Churches called Apostolick Churches I shall only set before them the words of one man at this time Hesychii Hierosol apud Photium Cod. 269. and desire them to tell me whether ever more were said of the Pope yea or of Peter then he saith of Andrew calling him Chori Apostolici primogenitus primitus defixa Ecclesiae columna Petri Petrus fundamenti fundamentum principii principium vel primitiae qui vocavit antequam vocaretur adduxit priusquam adduceretur i. e. The first begotten of the Apostolick Chore the first fixed Pillar of the Church the Peter of Peter or the Rock of Peter the Foundation of the Foundation the Principal of the Principal who called before he was called and brought others to Christ before he was brought to him by any others And the same Hesychius saith of James apud Photium Cod. 275. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. i. e. With what Praises may I set forth the servant and Brother of Christ the chief Emperour or Commander or Captain of the New Hierusalem the Prince or chief of Priests the President or Principal of the Apostles the Crown or Leader among the Heads the principal Lamp among the Lights the principal planet among the Stars Peter speaketh to the people but James giveth the Law or sets down the Law Can they shew us now where more then this is said of Peter himself Much less of the Pope CHAP. XXVII Detect 18. ANother of the Principal Deceits of the Papists is the forging and corrupting of Councils and Fathers and the citation of such forgeries Be carefull therefore how you receive their Allegations till you have searched and know the Books to be genuine and the particular words to be there and uncorrupted They have by their greatness obtained the opportunity of possessing so many Libraries that they might the easilyer play this abominable game But God in mercy hath kept so many monuments of Antiquity out of their hands partly in the Eastern and partly in the Reformed Churches as suffice to discover abundance of their wicked forgeries and falsifications Of their forging Canons yea feigning Councils that never were as Concil Sinuessan Concil Rom. sub Silvestr See Bishop Ushers Answer to the Jes pag. 12 13. As also of their forging Constantines Donation and Isidore mercators forging of a fardell of Decretals and of their falsifying and corrupting in the Doctrine of the Sacrament the works of Ambrose of Chrysost or the Author operis Imperfecti of Fulbertus Bishop of Chartres of Rabanus of Mentz of Bertram or Ratrannus c. Read I pray you the words detecting their horrible impious cheats But their Indices expurgatorii will acquaint you with much more And yet their secreter expurgations are worst of all What words of Peters Primacy and others for their advantage they have added to Cyprian de unitate Ecclesiae see in Jer. Stephens his Edition of it where much more additions to Cyprians works are detected out of many Oxford Manuscripts Andreas Schottus the Jesuite publishing Basils works at Antwerp Lat. A. D. 1616. with Jesuitical fidelity left out the Epistle in which is this passage following which should not be lost speaking of the Western Bishops he saith verily the manners of Proud men do use to grow more insolent if they be honoured And if God be merciful to us what other addition have we need of But if Gods anger on us remain what help can the pride of the West bring us when they neither know the Truth nor can endure to speak it but being prepossessed with false suspicions they do the same things now which they did in the case of Marcellus contentiously disputing against those that taught the truth but for Heresie confirming it by their authority Indeed I was willing not as representing the publike person of the East to write to their Leader Damasus but nothing about Church matters but that I might intimate that they neither knew the truth of the things that are done with us nor did admit the way by which they might learn them And in general that they should not insult over the calamitous and afflicted nor think that Pride did make for their dignity when that one sin alone is enough to make us hatefull to God so far Basil in that Epistle left out by the Jesuite in which you may see the Romane power in those daies in the consciences of Basil and such other Fathers in the East And by the way how Tertullian reverenced them you may see lib. de pudicit pag. 742. where he calls Zepherinus as we say all to naught And the Asian Bishops condemning of Victor with Irenaeus his reproof of him Cyprians and Firmilians condemning Stephen Marcellinus his condemnation by all Liberius his being so oft Anathematized by Hilary Pictav the resistance of Zosimus and Boniface by the Africans c. shew plainly in what esteem the now-infallible universal Head was then among the Fathers and in all the Churches But when the Papists come to the mention of such passages what juglings do they use sometime they silence them sometime they pass them over in a few words that are buried in a heap of other matters sometime they bring in some forgeries to obscure them But commonly they make a nose of wax of Councils and Fathers as well as of Scripture and put any ridiculous sence upon them that shall serve their turns though perhaps six men among them may have five or six Expositions An Epistle of Ciril of Jerusalem to Austin is forged by one
and many read it When the Gunpowder Plot was in hand they had contrived presently to give it all abroad that the Puritans did it Read Mr. Samuel Clark of it in his Mirror of Gods Judgements Fol. and you shall find this fully detected When Fisher the Jesuite had held his conference with Dr. Featley and Dr. White there being present two Earls one of them the Earl of Warwick having business shortly after beyond sea fell unknown into Dr. Westons company at Saint Omers who presently tells it him for news how Fisher had confounded the Protestant Doctors and that two Earls and so many people were turned by it to the Church of Rome not knowing that he that heard him was one of the two Earls and that there were not so many people there and how they were confirmed against Popery by that Dispute And when the Earl of Warwick brought home this jeast Dr. Weston hearing what sport was made with it in England writ a simple excuse for his Lying which I have at hand but find it had been better for him to have said nothing Should I recite but half the forgeries of this nature by which the Priests and Jesuites cheat the poor people I must be voluminous But alas their very worship of God is much of it composed of Lyes and is not that like to be acceptable worship How their Offices and Legends are stuff with fictions Canus and many of their own confess And Cassander saith that so few of the reliques in all Germany would be found true ones if examined that its better quite take off the people from the veneration of them Instancing in one of old that was worshipped as a Saint and upon enquiry was found to be the bones of a Thief Agobardus Bishop of Lyons saith Usher complained about eight hundred years ago that the Antiphonary used in his Church had many ridiculous and phantastical things in it and that therefore he corrected much of it cutting off what seemed superfluous or light or lying or blasphemous Agobard ad Cant. Lugd. de Correct Antiphon pag. 396. And not long since Lindanus made the like complaint that Not only Apochryphal matters out of the Gospel of Nicodemus and other toyes are thrust in but even the secret prayers yea alas for shame and grief the very Canon varying and redundant are defiled with most filthy faults Reader I will trouble thee no more with stirring in this puddle but only warn thee as thou lovest thy soul trust it not on the bare reports of such Lyars but try before thou trust and give not up thy sense and Reason to men that make so little or so ill a use of their own If thou refuse this Council say not but thou wast warned CHAP. XXXI Detect 22. ANother of their Deceits is by quarrelling with our Translations of the Bible and making the people believe that we have so corrupted it that it is none of the word of God and so they openly scorn it and deride it As to this point though Learned men can soon confute them by vindicating the Text as in the Original Languages and then vindicating our Translation yet the common disputant need not put them and himself to so much trouble If really they will but let the Law of God contained in the Holy Scripture be the Rule by which our difference shall be tryed and decided we will cut short the rest of the controversie and take it wholly together and we will stand to the Vulgar Latine which is it that themselves applaud We are content that this be the Rule between us Yea rather then they shall shift off the unlearned by these tricks we will admit of their own Translation which the Rhemists have with little friendship to our cause composed Only we must intreat them that their Commentaries and conceits be not taken into the Text as part of the Word of God So that this quarrell is quickly at an end The Scripture is so full against them that no Translation that makes it not another thing can make it to be on their side CHAP. XXXII Detect 23. ANother of the Designs of the Papists is to bring all the faithfull Pastors of the Churches into contempt or suspicion at least with the People that so they may draw them to refuse our helps and the Papists may deal with them alone whom they know they are easily able to over-reach Though our people have not that absolute Dependance upon their Teachers as theirs have yet an ordinate Dependance is Necessary to them or else God would never have appointed Teachers and Pastors for his Church The Papists dare not trust their followers so much as to read a Bible in their vulgar tongue Much less to Read our writings against their errors and impieties No nor their Priests and Fryars ordinarily to read them No nor commonly to read the writings of their own Party No not those nor the strongest of those that are written against us for fear lest the objection should prove too hard for the answer or lest they should understand the truth of our doctrine in some measure Sr. Edw Sands in his Europae Specul professeth how hard he found it to meet with the Works of Bellarmine himself in any Book-sellers shop in Venice or other parts of Italy But our people have all leave to keep and read the Papists writings We dare venture them upon the light upon equal terms But yet we know them to be insufficient for the most part to defend even plain and necessary truths against the Cavils of adversaries that overmatch them in learning and other abilities Now lest we should but afford them our assistance the Papists principal design is to bring them into false conceits of the Ministers and make us odious to them that they may neglect our help and the easilyer hearken to other Teachers And if they can but prevail in this design the day is their own and the souls of our unhappy people are like to be undone And the more is it to be feared lest at last they should this way prevail both because of the sin that lyeth on our selves in too reserved and negligent a doing of our work and because of the great obstinacy and unprofitableness of the people that hate the light and unthankfully despise it or will not obey it and work by it while they may The designs of the Papists against the Ministry are these 1. They principally endeavour to delade the Rulers of the Land and set them against them of which more anon 2. They are very busie to procure an overthrow of their established maintenance To which end they animate all sects to rail against Tythes 3. They labour by seoffs and nicknames to make them odious As they were the Authors or chief fomenters of the old scorn under the name of Puritans so are they of many more of late If in Court or Parliament City or Countrey you hear men set themselves of purpose to scorn or
whether the tongues of these men be fit to call us Mercenaries or Hirelings or such as preach for filthy lucre Or whether ever greater impudence was manifested by the vilest Son of Adam then for such men that Lord it over Emperors Kings and Princes and devour the wealth of the Christian world to call poor Ministers of Christ Covetous or Hirelings that are content with food and rayment and a mean education of their children and that have done so much to take down the Lordliness and Riches of the Clergy Judge of this dealing and if you had rather have the Popish Priesthood with the numberless swarm of Fryars and several orders you may take them and say you had your choice CHAP. XXXIII Detect 24. ANother of their designs Conjunct with the last mentioned is to perswade the world that they only have a true Ministry or Priesthood and an Apostolical Episcopacy and true Ordination and that we and all other Churches have no true Ministers but meer Lay men under the name of Ministers because we have no just Ordination And how prove they all this Why they say that they have a Pope that is a true Successor of Saint Peter but we have no Succession from the Apostles and therefore no just Ordination because no man can give that Power which he hath not And we are Schismaticks separated from the Church and therefore our Ordinations are invalid And some of our Churches have no Bishops and therefore say they we have no true Ministry there nor are they true Churches These are their Reasons In answer to which I shall first refer the Reader to my Second sâ—eet for the Ministry in Justification of their Call Where these Reasons are confuted and our calling vindicated and I shall forbear here to repeat the same things again Also I refer you for a fuller Answer to the London Ministers Jus Divinum Ministerii and to Mr. Tho. Balls Book for the Ministry and Mr. Masons Book in vindication of the Ministry of those Reformed Churches that have not Prelates and to Voetius Desper Caus 2. Though we need not fetch our Ordination from Rome yet as to them we may truly say that if they have any true Ordination and Ministry then so have we For our first Reformers were Ordained by their Bishops which is enough to stop their mouths If they say that our Schism hath cut off our power of Ordination I answer ad hominem that though it is they that are indeed the Notorious Schismaticks yet if we were what they falsly say we are it would not null our Ordination Confirmation or such other acts And this is the Judgement of their own writers I shall at this time only cite the words of one of them and of many in that one and that is Thom. Ã Jesis de Conversione Gentium lib. 6. cap. 9. Where he affirms it to be one of the Certainties agreed on that Schismaticks lose not nor can lose any spiritual power consisting in the spiritual Caracter of Baptism or Confirmation of Orders For this is indelible as Dr. Thomas teacheth here Art 3. and Turrecremata confirmeth lib. 4. sum part 1. c. 7. and Silvester verb. Schismatici and it appeareth by Pope Urbans Can. Ordinationes 9. q. 1. Who judgeth those to be truly ordained that were ordained by Schismaticall Bishops And from Austin lib. 6. de Bapt. Cont. Donatist cap. 5. where he saith that A Separatist may deliver the Sacrament as well as have it He next addeth that yet such are deprived of the faculty of Lawfull using the Power which they have so that it will be their sin to use it though it be not a nullity if they do use it and that thus those are to be understood that speak against the Ordination Confirmation c. of Schismaticks viz. that it is unlawfull because their power is suspended by the Church but not a Nullity because they have the Power pag. 316. He puts the Question Whether Schismatical Presbyters and Bishops do want the Power of Order or only want Jurisdiction And he answereth out of D. Thom. 22. q. 39. art 3. that they want Jurisdiction and cannot Absolve Excommunicate or grant indulgences and so they cannot elect and give Benefices and make Laws But yet they have the holy Power of Orders and therefore a schismaticall Bishop doth truly make and consecrate the Eucharist truly Confirm truly Ordain and when he Electeth and promoteth any to Ecclesiastical Orders they truly receive the Character of Order but not the Use because they are suspended if knowingly they are ordained by a Schismatical Bishop He next asketh Whether this punishment depriving them of Jurisdiction take place with all Schismaticks And answers that some say that before the Council of Constance this punishment belonged to all notorious Schismaticks but not to the unknown ones but since that Councill it takes place only on those that are expresly and by name denounced or manifest strikers of the Clergy Others say otherwise But he himself answers that If a schismatick be toleraeted and by the common error of the people be taken for lawfull there 's no doubt but all his acts of Jurisdiction are valid which we shall affirm also of Hereticks But if a Presbyter or Bishop be a manifest Schismatick then some say that those acts that require Jurisdiction are invalid but others say that they are all valid in case the Schismatick be not by name excommunicated or a manifest striker of the Clergy Thus far Thom. Ã Jesu opening the judgement of the Papists Doctors themselves in the point And by the way our new superprelatical Brethren that degrade others that want their Ordination yea or commands and nullifie their Acts should learn not to go beyond the Papists themselves if they will go with them And observe that it is but their own Canons that is their own wills that the Papists here plead when the Council of Constance hath so altered the business 2. Though this that is said is enough as to the Papists yet I add for fuller satisfaction that their succession is interrupted and therefore they are most unfit to be our Judges in this They have had so long schisms in which no man knew who was the right Pope nor knoweth to this day and so long removes and vacancies and such interpositions of various wayes of choosing their Pope and interruptions by Hereticall Popes condemned by General Councils besides Murderers Adulterers Symonists and such as their own Writers as Genebrard expresly say Were not Apostolical but Apostatical yea Popes that by General Councils have been judged or charged with infidelity it self as I have formerly proved that there 's nothing more certain then that their succession hath been interrupted 3. They cannot be certain but its every age interrupted and that there 's no true Pope or Bishops among them because the intention of the Ordainer or Consecrator is with them of necessity to the thing and no man can be certain of
the Intention of the Ordainers And therefore Bellarmine is fain to take up with this that though we cannot be sure that he is a true Pope Bishop or Presbyter that is ordained yet we are bound to obey him But where then is the Certainty of succession 4. What succession of Episcopal Consecration was there in the Church of Alexandria when Hierom Epist ad Evagrium tells us that At Alexandria from Mark the Evangelist even till Heraclus and Dionysius their Bishops the Presbyters did alwayes name one man that Bishop whom they chose from among themselves and placed in a higher degree Even as if an Army make an Emperour or the Deacons choose one of themselves whom they know to be industrious and call him the chief Deacon Thus Hierom shews that Bishops were then made by meer Presbyters And in the same Epistle he proves from Scripture that Presbyters and Bishops were then all one And if so there were no Prelatical Ordinations then at all And your Medina accusing Hierom of error in this saith that Ambrose Austin Sedulius Primasius Chrysostom Theodoret Oecumenius Theophilact were in the same heresie as Bellarmine himself reporteth him So that Presbyters now may either ordain or make themselves Bishops as those of Alexandria did to do it And as Hierom there saith All are the successors of the Apostles and our Bishops or Presbyters are such as much at least as yours yet Apostles as Apostles have no Successors at all as Bellarmine well teacheth lib. 4. de Pontif. cap. 25. saying Bishops do not properly succeed the Apostles because the Apostles were not ordinary but extraordinary and as it were delegate Pastors who have no Successors Bishops have no part of the true Apostolick Authority Apostles could preach in the whole world and found Churches but so cannot Bishops The Apostles could write Canonical Books but so cannot Bishops Apostles had the gifts of tongues and miracles but so have not Bishops The Apostles had Jurisdiction over the whole Church but so have not Bishops And there is no Succession but to a Predecessor but Apostles and Bishops were in the Church both at once as appeareth by Timothy Titus Evodius and many more If therefore Bishops succeed Apostles to what Apostle did Titus succeed and whom did Timothy succeed To conclude Bishops succed Apostles but in the same manner as Presbyters succeed the seventy two Disciples But its manifest that Presbyters do not properly succeed the seventy two Disciples but only by similitude For those seventy two Disciples were not Presbyters nor did they receive any Order of Jurisdiction from Christ Philip Stephen and others that were of the seventy two had never been after Ordained Deacons if they had been Presbyters before Thus Bellarmine See now what 's become of the Popish Apostolical Successors among their Bishops And the scope of all this is to prove that all Bishops receive their Power from the Pope and so their succession is confined to him alone and therefore as oft as there have been interruptions in the Papal Succession so oft the Succession of all their Church was interrupted But if Bishops succeed not Apostles and have not any of the Apostolick Power who then doth the Bishop of Rome succeed Why Bellarmine hath a shift for this but how sorry an one it is you shall bear cap. 25. he saith that The Pope of Rome properly succeedeth Peter not as an Apostle but as an Ordinary Pastor of the whole Church Let us then have no more talk of the Apostolick seat or at least no more Arguing from that name You see then that Peter was not the Universal Vicar as an Apostle nor doth the Pope so succeed him And do you think this doth not give away the Vicarship Which way hereafter will they prove it But an Objection falls in Bellarmines way that If this be so then none of the Bishops of Africk Asia c. were true Bishops that were not made by the Pope To which he answers as well as he can that its enough that the Pope do Consecrate them Mediately by making Patriarchs and Arch-bishops to do it and so Peter did Constitute the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch who thus receiving authority from the Pope did Rule almost all Asia and Africk But 1. That almost marreth the whole Cause For where now is the universal Headship 2. Did Bellarmine think in good sadness that Alexandria and Antioch were made at first the seats of Patriarchs having as large Jurisdiction as afterward they attained 3. How will he prove that Peter made these two Patriarchates and that not as an Apostle but as an Ordinary Vicar General 4. Who made the Patriarchate of Constantinople and gave them that vast Jurisdiction Did Peter many hundred years after his death Or did the Pope of Rome that tooth and nail resisted and still sought to diminish his Power Or rather did not the General Councils do it by the Emperors Commands the Pope excepting and repining at it 5. Who made the Patriarch of Jerusalem and who made James Bishop of Jerusalem did Peter And who made Timothy and Titus Bishops did Peter or Paul And who gave Paul that Power not Peter certainly Reader do not these men jest with holy things Or is it like that they believe themselves 6. Bellarmine confesseth that the Potestas Ordinis interioris jurisdictionis are both as immediately from God to every Bishop as to the Pope cap. 22. And why then should it be denyed of the power of exterior Jurisdiction 1. Is one part of the Essence of the Office given by the Pope and the rest without him 2. And what if it be proved that exterior and interior Jurisdiction of a Pastor is all one Though the matter of obedience be exterior yet the Jurisdiction is exercised only on the soul directly in one case as well as another it being the mind on which the obiglation lyeth and the Pastoral Rule is powerful and effectual and further then you procure consent you are despised For it s the Magistrates work to use violence Bishops as Bishops can but perswade and deal by words with the inner man And thus you see what is become of the Papists Succession 5. Most of the Ministers in England till within these few years were ordained by Bishops If that were of Necessity they have it 6. He that is ordained according to the Apostles directions or prescript in Scripture hath the true Apostolical Ordination but so are we Ordained therefore The Apostles never Confined Ordination to Prelates much less to those Prelates that depend on the Pope of Rome The Bishops to whom the Apostles committed this Power are the same that are called Presbyters by them and they were the Overseers or Pastors but of one single Church and not of many Churches And such are those that Ordain among us now Gregor Nazianzen Orat. 18. saith thus I would there were no Presidency nor Prerogative of Place and Tyrannical Priviledges that so we might be known
only by vertue or meer desert But now this Right side and Left side and Middle and Lower Degree and Presidency and Concomitancy have begot us many Contritions to no purpose and have driven many into the Ditch and have led them away to the region of the Goats What Hierom saith both in his Epistle to Evagrius and on Tit. cap. 2. is commonly known The many plain Testimonies of Anselmn are commonly Cited as plain as Hieroms Alphons à Castro advers Haeres lib. 6. in nom Episcop had more ingenuity then to joyn with them that would wrest Hieroms words to a sence so contrary to their most plain importance Tertullian cap. 17. de Bapt. thought Lay-men in Necessity might Baptize and so doth the Church of Rome now Why then may not Presbyters in such a case at least Ordain when as he there saith Quod ex aequo accipitur ex aequo dari potest And ibid. he saith that it is but propter Ecclesiae honorem that Bishops Rule in such matters and that peace may be kept and Schism avoided But that probati quique seniores did exercise Discipline in the Assembly he testifieth in Apologet. Mr. Prin hath cited you abundance of Fathers that were for the parity of the Ministry or against Prelacy jure Divino Isidore Pelusiat lib. 3. Epist 223. ad Hieracem Episcopatum fugientem saith And when I have shewed what difference there is between the ancient Ministry and the present Tyranny why do you not Crown and Praise the Lovers of equality If you would see more of the Antients making Presbyters to be Bishops and Consenting with Hierom read Sedulius on Tit. 1. Anselm Cantuar in Enarrat in Phil. 1. 1. Beda on Act. 20. Alcuinus de Divinis officiis c. 35 36. and on John lib. 5. Col 547. c. Epist 108. And that Presbyters may Ordain Presbyters see Anselmn on 1 Tim. 4. 14. And Institut in Concil Colon. de sacr Ordin fol. 196. see also what 's said by our Mart. Bucer script Anglic. pag. 254 255 259 291. sequ Pet. Martyr Loc. Commu Clas 4. Loc. 1. sect 23 pag. 849. And Wickliffes Arguments in Waldensis Passim And your own Cassander Consult Artic. 14. saith It is agreed among all that of old in the Apostles dayes there was no difference between Bishops and Presbyters but afterwards for Orders sake and the avoiding of Schism the Bishop was set before the Presbyters And Ockam determineth that by Christs Institution all Priests of what degree soever are of equal Authority Power and Jurisdiction Reynold Peacock Bishop of Chichester wrote a Book de Ministrorum aequalitate which your party caused to be burnt And Richardus Armachanus lib. 9. cap. 5. ad Quest Armen saith There is not found in the Evangelical or Apostolical Scriptures any difference between Bishops and simple Priests called Presbyters whence it follows that there is one Power in all and equall from their Order cap. 7. answering the Question Whether any Priest may Consecrate Churches c. he saith Priests may do it as well as Bishops seeing a Bishop hath no more in such matters then any simple Priest though the Church for reverence to them appoint that those only do it whom we call Bishops It seems therefore that the restriction of the Priests Power was not in the Primitive Church according to the Scripture I refer you to three Books of Mr. Prins viz. his Catalogue his Antipathy of Lordly Prelates c. and his unbishoping of Timothy and Titus where you have the Judgements of many writers of these matters And also to what I have said in my Second Disputation of the Episcopal Controversiès of purpose on this point 7. The chief error of the Papists in this cause is expressed in their reason No man can give the Power that he hath not wherein they intimate that it is Man that giveth the Ministerial Power whereas it is the gift of Christ alone Man doth but design the person that shall receive it and then Christ giveth it by his Law to the person so designed and then man doth in vest him and solemnize his introduction As a woman may choose her an husband but it is not she that giveth him the Power over her but God who determineth of that Power by his Law affixing it to the person chosen by her and her action is but a condition fine qua non or cause of the capacity of the matter to receive the form And so is it here When do but obey God in a right choice and designation of the person his Law doth presently give him the Power which for orders sake he must be in a solemn manner invested with But matters of Order may possibly vary and though they are to be observed as far as may be yet they alwayes give place to the Ends and substance of the work for the ordering whereof they are appoineed 8. Temporal power is as truly and necessarily of God as Ecclesiastical and it was at first given immediately by him and he chose the person And yet there is no Necessity that Kings must prove an uninterrupted Succession God useth means now in designing the persons that shall be Governors of the Nations of the earth But not alway the same means nor hath he tyed himself to a successive Anointing or Election else few Kings on earth would hold their Scepters And no man from any diversity in the cases is able to prove that a man may not as truly be a lawful Church-governor as a lawful Governor of the Commonwealth without an uninterrupted succession of Ministerial Collation 9. If Bellarmine be forced to maintain that with them it is enough that a Pastor have the place and seem lawfull to the people and that they are bound to obey him though it should prove otherwise Then we may as well stand on the same terms as they 10. In a word our Ordination being according to the Law of Christ and the Popes so contrary to it we are ready at any time more fully to compare them and demonstrate to any impartial man that Christ doth much more disown their Ordination then ours and that we enter in Gods appointed way Mr. Eliot in New England may better Ordain a Pastor over the Indians converted by him then leave them without or send to Rome or England for a Bishop or for Orders But again I must refer you of this subject to the Books before mentioned and the Sheet which I have written lest I be over-tedious CHAP. XXXIV Detect 25. ANother of their Deceits is In pretending the Holiness of their Churches and Ministry and the unholiness of ours This being matter of fact a willing and impartial mind may the easier be satisfied in it They prove their Holiness 1. By the Canonized Saints among them 2. By the devotion of their Religious Orders and their strictness of living 3. By their unmarried Clergy 4. By their sanctifying Sacraments and Ceremonies In all which they
as if they said that no men but Papists have souls in their bodies and laid their faith on this and as soon I think should I believe them if this were their belief It s a good preservative against Popery when a man cannot turn Papist without putting out his eyes and renouncing his wit and reason and common experience as well as his charity yea without denying of what he knoweth by his own soul But let us come to their Evidences 1. They say We have no Canonized Saints I answer 1. All the Apostles and Saints of the first ages were of our Religion and many of them have been beholden to the Pope for Canonizing them 2. We have no usurper among us that pretendeth Infallibly to know the hearts of others nor to number Gods Saints But with us the Holy Ghost maketh Saints and their lives declare it and those that converse with them discern it so far as to be highly confident and men discern it in themselves so far as to be Infallibly though not perfectly certain 3. It seems the Pope takes Saints to be rare with them that they must be named and written with red Letters in an Almanack And H. T. Man pag. 84. is fain to send us for proof to their Chronicles and Martyrologies and he nameth four Saints that they have had viz. Saint Austin the Monk Saint Bennet Saint Dominick and Saint Francis Now we all know that none but Saints are saved and that without holiness none can see God Heb. 12. 14. So that it seems if sanctity be so rare among the Papists salvation must be rare But as for us we make it our care to admit none but Saints to our Church Communion though we preach to others to prepare them for it For we believe that the Church is a Holy Society and find Paul calling the whole Churches that he writes to by the title of Saints and we believe it is the Communion of Saints that is there to be held And if we had no more Saints in one County at once yea in some one Parish at once then would fill up the Popes Calendar so as to have one for every day in the year we should betake our selves to bitter lamentation Whereas the Church of Rome takes in all sorts of the unclean and is so impure and polluted a society that its a wonder how they should have the face to boast of their holiness to men that live among them and know them Thousands of their members are stark Infidels as not knowing the Essentials of the Christian Faith It s known here in Ireland that abundance of them know not who Christ was but that he was a better man than Saint Patrick Bishop Usher saw it and lamented it that they perished as Heathens for want of knowing Christianity it self while they went under the name of Catholicks and therefore he would have perswaded the Popish Priests to have Consented that they should be all taught a Catechism of the common principles that we are agreed in but he could not procure it when Dr. Jo. White asked one of them in Lancashire who Jesus Christ was she answered that sure it was some good thing or else it should not have been put into the Creed And how much swearing whoredom drunkenness and other wickedness is in their Church is known not only by the complaints of their own writers but by the too common experience of Travailers We have known Papists that have turned from them by the experience of one journey to Rome and seeing what is there And for Church censures by which any of these should be purged out they are laid by and reserved for other uses even as thunder-bolts for the Popes Adversaries and the servants of Christ whom they take for Hereticks and for Princes whom the Pope would have deposed and murdered These things are not meer words but the lives of many Kings and Princes have been the sacrifice of the Roman Holiness And what need you any further proof that their Church is as the common wilderness and not as the Garden of Christ and is a Cage of all unclean birds then that they actually keep them all in their Communion It made my heart rise at their hypocrisie and filthiness to read one sentence in one of the most learned and sober and honest of all their Bishops that have written and that is Albaspinaeus Observat 1. pag. 1. saith he Siquis unquam hoc seculo quod nescio an acciderit Communione fuit privatus sola fuit Eucharistiae perceptione in reliquis suae vitae partibus quam ante Excommunicationem habuit eandem cum caeteris fidelibus consuetudinem usum retinuit That is If ever any one man in this age was put from the Communion which I know not whether such a thing hath come to pass it was only from the receiving the Eucharist in the other parts of his Life be retained the same familiarity and converse with other believers which he had before his Excommunication Here you see from a credible Bishop that lived in the thickest of their Clergy in France that he knew not that any one person in the age that he lived in was ever kept from the Lords Supper but if he were yet that was all he was still a member of their Church and familiar with the rest Let the Christian world then observe by their practice what an abominable hypocritical contest they make for to prove the Power of Church-government to be only in their Pope and the Prelates to whom he giveth it and when they have done do make no more use of the Power which they so pretend to as not to exercise the Censures of the Church upon one offendor there in an age How were that man worthy to be thought of or to be used that would set all the world on fire by contending that no Schoolmaster or Physitian should be suffered in the whole world but himself and such as he giveth power to and when he hath done will not by himself or his subjects and dependants teach or heal one person in an age were such an one meet to live on the earth Or should we judge that man in his wits that would believe him O what a stye is the Roman Society what dunghills are in their Assemblies and yet must not the Shovel or the Beesom be used once in an Age what no weed pulled up no super fluous branch cut off Is this the use of all the Canons of their Church concerning Excommunication and abstention Must the Christian world be at such a vast expence to maintain so rich and numerous a Clergy for this And must we cast out our Pastors to receive such as these when we should be ashamed if we had not exercised more of the cleansing power of the Keyes in one Parish Church then Albaspinaeus knew of among the Papists in a whole age But perhaps there is little of this filth among them to be cast out He that
license they conversed And being sent to preach they go to play the whoremongers And that there was scarce any one of the Holy Nuns without her carnall male Devotary by which they broke their first faith with Christ c. This was your Holy Church And li. 2. art 28. he saith That most of the Clergy mix themselves with gluttony drunkenness and whoredom which is their common vice and most of them give themselves to the unnaturall vice Sodomie Thus continually yea and publikely do they offend against that holy chastity which they promised to the Lord besides those evils not to be named which in secret they commit which Papers will not receive nor pen can write Abundance more he hath of the same subject and their putting their choicest youth into houses of Sodomie This book of Alvarus Pelagius Bellarmine calleth Liber insignis de Scriptor Ecclesiast Math. Paris in Henr. 3. p. 819. tells us of Cardinal Hugo's farewell speech to the people of Lons when he departed with the Popes Court Friends saith he since we came to this City we have brought you great commodity and alms When we came hither we found three or four whore houses but now at our departure we leave but one but that one reacheth from the East Gate to the West Gate O Holy Pope and Holy Church But Costerus the Jesuite easily answers all that I have said Enchirid. cap. 2. de Eccles that The Church loseth not the name Holy as long as there is but one that 's truly Holy Answ Is this your sanctity I deny your conclusion For 1. If the Head be unholy an essential part is unholy and therefore the Church cannot be Holy 2. One person is not the Matter of the Church as one drop of Wine cast into the sea doth not make it a sea of Wine and one Italian in England makes not England Italian nor one Learned man make England Learned And let the Papists observe that it is from the very words of their own that I have spoken of them what is here recited and not from their adversaries And therefore I shall be so far from believing the Gospel upon the Account that their Church is Holy that recommendeth it or from believing them to be the only Church of Christ because of their Holiness that I must bless God that I live in a sweeter air and cleaner Society and should be loath to come out of the Garden into the Channel or sink to be made clean or sweet but say that the travaller learned more wit that left us this Resolution Roma vale vidi satis est vidisse revertar Cum leno aut meretrix scurra cinadus ero 2 THE second Proof which they bring of the Holiness of their Church is the strict life of their Fryars as Carthusians Franciscans and others Answ Having been so long already on this point I will be but short on this branch In a word 1. I have no mind to deny the Graces of the spirit in any that have them Though travellers tell me lamentable stories of your Fryars Guil. de Amore and his companions said much more and many other Popish Writers paint them out in an odious garb yet I do not doubt but God hath his servants among them 2. But I must tell you that this also shews the Pollution of your Church in comparison of our Churches that Holiness and Religion are such rarities and next to Miracles among you that it must be cloistred up or confined to certain orders that are properly called Religious as if the People had no Religiousness or Holiness When our care and Hope is to make all our Parish Churches far more Religious and Holy then your Monasteries or Convents Yea were not this Church much more Religious and Holy where I live I think I should have small comfort in it 3. THeir third Proof of the Holiness of their Churches is their unmarried Clergy Answ 1. I will not stir too long in this puddle or else I could tell you out of your own writers of the odious fruits of your unmarried Clergy Only because the essential parts of your Church are they that neerliest concern your cause I will ask you in brief whether it was not Pope John the eleventh that had Theodora for his whore whether it was no Pope Sergius the third that begot Pope John the twelfth of Marosia whether John the twelfth alias the thirteenth saith Luitprandus and others of your own did not ravish maids and wives at the Apostolick doors and at last was killed in the Act of Adultery whether it were not Pope Innocent of whom a Papist wrote this distich Octo Nocens pueros genuit totidemque puellas Hunc merito potuit dicere Roma patrem And whose Son was Aloisus made Prince of Parma by Pope Paul the third And for your Arch bishops Bishops Priests c. I shall now add but the words of your Dominicus Soto de Instit Jure qu. 6. art 1. cited by Rivet We do not deny saith he that in the Clergy such as keep Concubines and are Adulterers are frequent 2. We have many that live unmarryed as well as you but not on your terms 3. We know that Paul directed Timothy and Titus to ordain him a Bishop that was the Husband of one Wife and ruled well his house having his children in subjection and that the Church a long time held to this doctrine and that Greg. Nyssen was a marryed Bishop But if you are wiser then the Spirit of God or can change his Laws or can prove the Holy Ghost so mutable as to give one Law by Paul and other Apostles and another by the Pope we will believe you and forsake the Scripture when you can so far bewitch us and charm us to it We believe that a single life is of very great Convenience to a Pastor when it can be held and that Christs Rule must be observed Every man cannot receive this saying but he that can let him receive it And whether Ministers be Marryed or not Marryed as many now living in the next Parishes to me are not no more then my self it is a strange thing with us to hear of one in many Counties that was ever once guilty of fornication in his life and if any one be but once guilty in the Ministry he is cast out though he should be never so penitent as any man that readeth the Act for ejecting scandalous Ministers and Schoolmasters may see As also you may there see that if he were but once drunk if he swear curse or be guilty of other scandalous sins he is cast out without any more ado And none are so earnest for the through execution of this Law as the Ministers If a Minister do but go into an Alehouse except to visit the sick or on weighty business it is a scandalous thing among us we do not teach as the Jesuites cited by the Jansenist Montaltus that a man may lawfully go into a
Whorehouse to exhort them from Whoredom though he hath found by experience that when he comes among them he is overcome and playes the Whoremonger with them Lest the vices of your Clergy should be laid open and punished you exempt them from the secular power and will not have a Magistrate so much as question them for whoredom drunkenness or the like crimes It is one of Pope Nicolas Decrees as Caranza pag. 395. recites them that No Lay man must judge a Priest nor examine any thing of his life And no secular Prince ought to judge the facts of any Bishops or Priests whatsoever And indeed that is the way to be wicked quietly and sin without noise and infamy But for our parts we do not only subject our selves and all our actions to the tryal of Princes and the lowest Justice of Peace as far as the Law gives him power but we call out to Rulers daily to look more strictly to the Ministry and suffer not one that is ungodly or scandalous in the Church And if one such be known our Godly people will all set against him and will not rest till they cast him out in times when there is opportunity for it and get a better in his stead The whole Countrey knows the Truth of this If you say as the Quakers do that yet the most among us are ungodly I answer that Those among us that are known ungodly and scandalous are not owned by us nor are members of our Church or admitted to the Lords Supper in those Congregations that exercise Church-discipline but they are only as Catechuments whom we preach to and instruct if not cast out Your eighth General Council at Constantinople Can. 14. decreed that Ministers must not fall down to Princes nor eat at their Tables nor debase themselves to them but Emperors must take them as Equals But we are so far from establishing Pride and Arrogancie by a Law that though we hate servile flattery and man-pleasing yet we think it our duty to be the servants of all and to condescend to men of low estate and much more to honour our Superiors and God in them The same Council decreed Canon 21. that None must compose any Accusations against the Pope No marvail then if all Popes go for Innocents But we are lyable to the accusations of any And because you charge our Churches with Unholiness and that with such an height of Impudency as I am certain the Divel himself doth not believe you that provokes you to it even that there is not One Good among us nor one that hath Charity nor can be saved unless by turning Papist I shall therefore go a little higher and tell you that I doubt not but the Churches in England where I live are purer far than those were in the dayes of Augustine Hierom c. yea and that the Pastors of our Churches are less scandalous then they were then what if I should compare many of them even to St. Augustine St. Hierom and such others both in Doctrine and Holiness of Life should I do so I know you would account it arrogancy but yet I will presume to make some comparison and leave you to Judge impartially if you can As for the Heavenliness of their writings let but some of ours be compared with them and you will see at least that they spake by the same spirit and for their Commentaries on Scripture did we miss it as oft as Ambrose Hierom and many more we should bring our selves very low in the esteem of the Church Even your Cajetane doth more boldly censure the Fathers Commentaries then this comes to And as to our lives the Lord knows that I have no pleasure in opening any of the faults of his Saints nor shall I mention any but what are confessed by themselves in Printed Books and mentioned by others and to boast of our own Purity I take to be a detestable thing and contrary to that sense of sin that is in every Saint of God But yet if the Lords Churches and servants are slandered and reproached as they were by the Heathens of old the vindicating them is a duty which we owe to Christ Those Ministers that I Converse with are partly Marryed and partly unmarryed The Marryed live soberly in Conjugal Chastity as burning and shining lights before the people in exemplary Holiness of Life The unmarryed also give up themselves to the Lord and to his service and I verily think that of many such that converse with me there is not one that ever defiled themselves by incontinency and I am confident would be ready to take the most solemn Oath of it if any Papist call them to it And for the people of our Communion through the mercy of God such sins are so rare that if one in a Church be guilty once we all lament it and bring them to penitence or disown them And were the Churches better in the third fourth fift sixt or following Ages I doubt not And I judge by these discoveries 1. By the sad Histories of the Crimes of those times 2. By the lamentable complaints of the Godly Fathers of the Bishops and people of their times What dolefull complaints do Basil Gregory Nazianz. and Greg. Nyssen and Chrysostom Austin c. make it were too long to recite their words What complaints made Gildas of the Brittish Church What a doleful description have we of the Christian Pastors and People in his dayes from Salvian through his whole Book de Gubernat 3. I judge also by the Canons and by the Fathers directions concerning Offendors For example Gregory Mag. saith of drunkards Quod cum venia suo ingenio sunt relinquendi ne deteriores fiant si à tali consuetudine evellantur And was this the Roman Sanctity even then And was this St. Gregories Sanctity that Drunkards must be let alone with pardon lest if they be forced from their custome they be made worse Then fairfall the Ministers of England If such advice were but given by one of us it would seem enough to cast us out of our Ministry We dare not let one drunkard alone in our Church-communion where Church-discipline is set up So Augustine saith that Drunkenness is a mortal sin Si sit assidua if it be daily or usual And that they must be dealt with gently and by fair words and not roughly and sharply If one of us should make so light of Drunkenness what should we be thought I cite these two from Aquinas 22. q. 150. art 1. 4. ad 4 m art 2. 1. Many Canons determine that Priests that will not part with their Concubines shall be suspended from officiating till they let them go Whereas with us a man deserveth to be ejected that should have a Concubine but one night in his life Gratian Distinct 34. citeth c. 17. of a Toletane Council saying that he that hath not a Wife but a Concubine in her stead shall not be put from the Communion His
putting an Oath to all the Clergy of the Christian Church within your power to be true to the Pope and to obey him as the Vicar of Christ Who first taught men to swear that they would not interpret Scripture but according to the unanimous Consent of the Fathers Who was the first that brought in the doctrine or name of Transubstantiation and who first made it an Article of faith Who first made it a point of faith to believe that there are just seven Sacraments neither fewer nor more Did any before the Council of Trent swear men to receive and profess without doubting all things delivered by the Canons and Oecumenical Councils when at the same time they cast off themselves the Canons of many General Councils and so are generally and knowingly perjured as e. g. the twentieth Canon of Nice forementioned These and abundance more you know to be Novelties with you if wilfulness or gross ignorance bear not rule with you and without great impudence you cannot deny it Tell us now when these first came up and satisfie your selves One that was afterward your Pope Aeneas Sylvins Epist 288. saith that before the Council of Nice there was little respect had to the Church of Rome You see here the time mentioned when your foundation was not laid Your Learned Cardinal Nicol. Cusanus lib. de Concord Cathol c. 13. c. tells you how much your Pope hath gotten of late and plainly tells you that the Papacy is but of Positive right and that Priests are equall and that it is subjectional consent that gives the Pope and Bishops their Majority and that the distinction of Diocesses and that a Bishop be over Presbyters are of Positive right and that Christ gave no more to Peter than the rest and that if the Congregate Church should choose the Bishop of Trent for their President and Head he should be more properly Peters Successor then the Bishop of Rome Tell us now when the contrary doctrine first arose Gregory de valentia de leg usu Euchar. cap. 10. tells you that the Receiving the Sacrament in one kind began not by the decree of any Bishop but by the very use of the Churches and the consent of believers and tels you that it is unknown when that Custom first begun or got head but that it was General in the Latine Church not long before the late Council of Constance And may you not see in this how other points came in If Pope Zosimus had but had his will and the Fathers of the Carthage Council had not diligently discovered shamed and resisted his forgery the world had received a new Nicene Canon and we should never have known the Original of it It s a considerable Instance that Usher brings of using the Church service in a known tongue The Latine tongue was the Vulgar tongue when the Liturgy and Scripture was first written in it at Rome and far and neer it was understood by all The service was not changed as to the language but the language it self changed and so Scripture and Liturgy came to be in an unknown tongue And when did the Latine tongue cease to be understood by all Tell us what year or by whom the change was made saith Erasmus Decl. ad censur Paris tit 12. § 41. The Vulgar tongue was not taken from the people but the people departed from it 5. We are certain that your errors were not in the times of the Apostles nor long after and therefore we are sure that they are Innovations And if I find a man in a Dropsie or a Consumption I would not tell him that he is well and ought not to seek remedy unless he can tell when he began to be ill and what caused it You take us to be Heretical and yet you cannot tell us when our errors did first arise Will you tell us of Luther You know the Albigenses whom you murdered by hundreds and thousands were long before him Do you know when they begun Your Reinerius saith that some said they were from Silvesters dayes and some said since the Apostles but no other beginning do you know 6. But to conclude what need we any more then to find you owning the very doctrine and practise of Innovation When you maintain that you can make us new Articles of faith and new worship and new discipline and that the Pope can dispense with the Scriptures and such like what reason have we to believe that your Church abhorreth Novelty If you deny any of this I prove it Pope Leo the tenth among other of Luthers opinions reckoneth and opposeth this as Hereticall It is certain that it is not in the hand of the Church or Pope to make Articles of faith in Bulla cont Luth. The Council of Constance that took the supremacy justly from the Pope did unjustly take the Cup from the Laity in the Eucharist Licet in primitivâ Ecclesiâ hujusmodi Sacramentum reciperetur a fidelibus sub utraque specie i. e. Though in the primitive Church this Sacrament was received by Believers under both kinds The Council of Trent say Sess 21. cap. 1 2. that this power was alway in the Church that in dispensing the Sacraments saving the substance of them it might ordain or change things as it should judge most expedient to the profit of the receiver Vasquez To. 2. Disp 216. N. 60. saith Though we should grant that this was a precept of the Apostles nevertheless the Church and Pope might on just causes abrogate it For the Power of the Apostles was no greater then the power of the Church and Pope in bringing in Precepts These I cited in another Treatise against Popery page 365. Where also I added that of Pope Innocent Secundum plenitudinem potestatis c. By the fulness of our power we can dispense with the Law above Law And the Gloss that oft saith The Pope dispenseth against the Apostle against the Old Testament The Pope dispenseth with the Gospell interpreting it And Gregor de valent saying Tom. 4. disp 6. q. 8. Certainly some things in later times are more rightly constituted in the Church then they were in the beginning And of Cardinal Peron's saying lib. 2. Obs 3. cap. 3. pag. 674. against King James of the Authority of the Church to alter matters conteined in the Srripture and his instance of the form of Sacraments being alterable and the Lords command Drink ye all of it mutable and dispensable And Tolets Its certain that all things instituted by the Apostles were not of Divine right Andradius Defens Concil Trid. lib. 2. pag. 236. Hence it is plain that they do not err that say the Popes of Rome may sometime dispense with Laws made by Paul and the four first Councils And Bzovius The Roman Church using Apostolical power doth according to the Condition of times change all things for the better And yet will you not give us leave to take you for changers and Novelists But let us add
which are not destructive to the Essentials of Christianity but only to some Integral part And there is a schism that doth not unchurch men as well as a schism that doth of which this is no place to treat But ad hominem me thinks your own writers put you hard to it who conclude as Bellarmine and many more do though Alphonsus à Castro and others be against it that Hereticks and Schismaticks are no members of the Church And Melch. Canus Loc. Theol. lib. 4. cap. 2. fol. 117. saith that that Hereticks are no parts of the Church is the common conclusion of all Divines not only of those that have written of late but of them also that by their Antiquity are esteemed the most Noble This is attested by Cyprian Augustine Gregory the two Councils of Lateran and Florence Rightly therefore did Pope Nicolas define that the Church is a collection of Catholicks If this be true it is an Article of faith And then Alphonsus à Cast and all of his mind are Hereticks and lost men And I pray you note what a case you are in Two Approved General Councils have determined that a Heretick is no member of the Church But multitudes of your own writers and Pope Adrian and many more of your Popes have judged that a Pope may be a Heretick and consequently no member of the Church And consequently judge what 's become of your Church when an Essential part of it is no part of the Church Your common shift which Canus ibid. and others fly to is that He must be a judged Heretick before he is dismembred But 1. Sure that is but for manifestation to men for before God he is the same if men never judge him 2. Where the case is notorious the offendor is ipso jure cut off 3. Then it is in the Popes Power to let whole millions of Hereticks to be still parts of the Church And so the world shall be Christians or no Christians as he please and why may he not let Turks and Infidels on the same grounds be parts of the Church For he may forbare to judge them if that will serve 4. Then all the Christians in the world that the Pope hath not yet judged and cast out are members of the Church And then millions and millions are of the Church that never were subjects of the Pope If you say It is enough that there is a General condemnation of all that are guilty as they are I answer then it is enough to cut off a Pope that there was a General condemnation against such as he 5. But if all this satisfie you not yet I told you before that two or three Councils and three Popes did all judge Pope Honorius guilty of Heresie and consequently both Popes and General Councils have judged that a Pope may be an Heretick therefore you have been judged Heretical in your Head which is an essential part of your Church And thus I have shewed you what is the schism of the Church of Rome which being but a part hath attempted to cut off all the rest and so hath made a new pretended Catholick Church As a part of the Old Church which consisteth of all Christians united in Christ we confess all those of you still to be a part that destroy not this Christianity But as you are new gathered to a Christ-Representative or Vicar General we deny you to be any Church of Christ If you be Church members or saved it must be as Christians but never as Papists For a Papist may be a Christian but not as a Papist And if yet you cannot see the Church that you separate from open your eyes and look into much of Europe and all over Asia almost where are any Christians look into Armenia Palestine Egypt Ethiopia and many other Countries and you shall find that you are but a smaller part of the Church If you will not believe what I have before proved of this hear what your own say Anton. Marinarins in the Council of Trent complaineth that the Church is shut up in the Corners of Europe and yet Domestick enemies arise that waste this portion shut up in a corner Sonnius Bishop of Antwerp in Demonstrat Relig. Christian lib. 2. Tract 5. c. 3. saith I pray you what room hath the Catholick Church now in the habitable world scarce three elnes long in comparison of that vastness which the Satanical Church doth possess If yet you boast that you have the same seat that formerly you had I answer so have the Bishops of Constantinople Alexandria and others whom you condemn And we say as Gregory Nazianz Orat. de land Athanasii It is a succession of Godliness that is properly to be esteemed a succession For he that professeth the same doctrine of faith is also partaker of the same throne But he that embraceth the contrary belief ought to be judged an adversary though he be in the throne This indeed hath the name of succession but the other hath the Thing it self and the Truth And he next addeth such words as utterly break your succession in pieces saying For he that breaketh in by force as abundance of Popes did is not to be esteemed a successor but rather he that suffereth force nor he that breaketh the Laws but he that is chosen in manner agreeable to the Laws nor he that holdeth contrary tenets but he that is endued with the same faith Unless any man will call him a Successor as we say a sickness succeedeth health or darkness succeedeth light and a strom succeeds a calm or madness or distraction succeedeth prudence Thus Nazianz pag. 377. We conclude therefore with one of your own Lyra Glos in Math. 16. Because many Princes and chief Priests or Popes and other inferiors have been found to Apostatize the Church consisteth in those persons in whom is the true knowledge and confession of Faith and Verity And so much to this empty Manuscript CHAP. XXXVI Detect 27. ANother of their Deceits is this To charge us with introducing New Articles of faith or points of Religion because we contradict the New Articles which they introduce and then they require us to prove our doctrines which are but the Negatives of theirs We receive no Doctrines of faith or worship but what was delivered by the Apostles to the Church These men bring in abundance of New ones and say without proof that they received them from the Apostles And because we refuse to receive their Novelties they call our Rejections of them the Doctrines of our Religion and feign us to be the Innovators And by this device it is in the Power of any Heretick to force the Church to take up such as these men call New points of faith If a Papist shall say that besides the Lords Prayer Christ gave his Disciples another Form or two or three or many or that he gave them ten New Commandments not mentioned in the Bible or that he oft descended after his Ascension and
Religion as if they were so many Articles of our Faith or at least were the common doctrines of our Churches They will not give us leave to do so by them when yet we have much more reason for it For 1. They teach the People that they are bound to believe as their Teachers bid them and they reproach us for confessing that we are not in all points of Doctrine infallible And yet we still confess this fallibility and say in plain terms that we know but in part 2. Divers of their particular Doctors that we use to cite are such as the Pope hath Canonized for Saints and they tell us that in Canonizing he is infallible And therefore an Infallibly Canonized Saint must not be supposed to err in a point of faith 3. They boast so much of Unity and Concent among themselves that we may the better cite particular Doctors And yet we think our selves bound to stand to their own Law in this and to charge nothing on them as the faith of their Church but what their Church doth own and therefore while they refuse to stand to particular Doctors we will not urge them to it for its good reason that all men should be the Professors of their own belief But what reason is there then that we may not have the same measure from them which they expect We profess to take no man nor Council of men for the Lords of our faith but for the Helpers of our faith They tell us that they know not where to find our Religion We tell them it is entirely in the written word of God and that we know no other Infallible Rule because we know no other Divine Revelation supposing what in Nature is revealed They tell us that All Hereticks do pretend to Scripture and therefore this cannot be the Test of our Religion I answer that so all cavillers and defrauders and extortioners may pretend to the Law of the Land to undo poor men by quirks of wit or tire them with vexatious suits And yet it follows not that we must seek another Rule of Right and take the Law for insufficient And what if Hereticks pretend to Tradition to General Councils and the Decretals of the Popes as you know how frequently they do Will you yield therefore that these are an infufficient Rule or Test of your own Religion Open your eyes and judge as you would be judged But I will come to some of the particular Opinions which they charge us with And because I know not a more weighty renowned Champion of their cause then Cardinal Richleiu then Bishop of Lucion I shall take notice of his twelve great errors which he so vehemently chargeth on the Reformed Churches as contrary to the Scripture And sure I shall do much to make clean our Churches if I fully wipe off all the pretended blots of errour that so wise a man could charge upon them In his Defens contra script 4. Ministr Charenton cap. 2. pag. 12. c. he begins his enumeration thus 1. The Scripture saith Jam. 2. that a man is not Justified by Faith only but you say that he is Justified by Faith alone and by Faith only which is found in no place of Scripture and do you not then resist the Scriptures Answ 1. We believe both the words of Paul and James that a man is Justified by Faith without the Deeds of the Law and saved through Faith not of works lest any man should boast Rom. 3. 28. Ephes 2. 8 9. and also that a man is Justified by works and not by Faith only Jam. 2 Did not this Learned man know that we believe all the Bible why then should he charge us with denying that which we retain and publickly read in our Churches as the word of God Did he think that we set so much by Luthers or any mans writings as by the Bible 2. But if he can prove that we understand not these words aright he should have evinced it better then by the use of the words Faith alone For our Churches by Faith alone do profess openly to mean no more then Paul doth by Faith without works And can they find fault with Paul 3. Indeed we are not all agreed upon the fittest Notion of the interest of Faith and works in our Justification but our difference is more in words and notions then matter of which see my Disput of Justification 4. And. why do you not quarrel with your own Cardinal Contarenus de Justif and others of your own that joyn with us in the doctrine of Justification His second Accusation is The Scripture saith that we can Love God with all the heart you say that no man can Love God with all the heart which is no where read in Scripture and yet do you not resist the Scriptures Answ 1. Unprofitable Confusion we distinguish between Loving God with all the Heart as it signifieth the sincerity and predominant degree of Love and so every true Christian hath it and as it signifieth some extraordinary degree above this meer sincerity and so some eminent stronger Christians have it and as it signifieth the highest Degree which is our duty and which excludeth all sinful imperfection And thus we say that no man actually doth Love God perfectly in this life nor do we think he speaks like a Christian that dare say Lord I Love thee so much that I will not be beholden to thee to forgive the imperfection of my Love or to help me against any sinful imperfection of it Your own Followers whom you admire as the highest Lovers of God do oft lament the imperfections of their Love as M. de Renty for instance in his Life But now if the question be only of the posse and not the act we say that the Potentia naturalis is in all and the Potentia Moralis which is the Habit is in the sanctified but this Moral Power is not perfect it self that is of the highest degree and without any sinful imperfection though yet it hath the perfection of sincerity and in some the perfection of an eminent degree And will not this content you His third Accusation is The Scripture saith that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ with the adjunction of those words that signifie a true Body and Blood you say that it is not Christs Body and Blood but only a figure sign and testimony which the Scripture no where saith Answ 1. The Scripture saith not that it is his Body and Blood substantially or by Transubstantiation And we say not as you feign that it is not his Body and Blood but a figure c. For we say that it is his Body and Blood Sacramentally and Representatively as he that personateth a King on some just account is called a King and as in actions of Investiture and Delivery the delivering of a Key is the delivering of the House and the delivery of a twig and turf is the delivery of the Land and the deliverer
that followed Grotius Arminius in doctrine and the Greek Church and were for a reconciliation with Rome on those terms which doubtless Rome would never have yielded to the interest that the Papists had among them and influence that they had on them or their proceedings is evident from what is said before and much from the copious Proofs produced by Mr. Prin in his forementioned Book Canterburies Tryal with the Introduct The Jesuites Letter cited by Prin ib. pag. 89. saith Now we have planted that Soveraign drugg Arminianism which we hope will purge the Protestants from their heresie and it flourisheth and bears fruit in due season The Articles exhibited in Parliament against many of the Bishops will tell you by their works who were the instigators of them Of themselves I know of none but Goodman that hath professed himself a flat Papist and I shall not think it my duty to suspect any one man of holding an Opinion which he professeth not himself unless the evidence be very strong to move suspicion But that many Papists were at work with them in that pretended Reconcilement Francis à S. Clara and divers others put us past doubt And that Papists crept into places in the Chruch under the garb of conformable Arminians is too well known It is no wonder therefore that Dr. Baily Dr. Goffe Dr. Vane Hugh Paul de Cressy and many more of them did opnely revolt when the game seemed to be spoiled that was plaid underboord It had been far less hurt to us I think if all the rest had been as open As for the King himself that was their Head if any conjecture that he was a flat Papist as I have heard many rashly say I think there is much evidence to confute them 1. That very Letter to the Pope forementioned on which the suspicion is most grounded if you mark it exactly doth intimate no more then a desire of a union and Reconciliation with some additions that may bear a tolerable sence 2. His own Profession of the Protestant Religion is sufficient evidence 3. His Disputation with the Marquess of Worcester cleareth it 4. His speech at death and Papers since published clear it more So that I think we may be confident that he was no nearer to Rome then was the reconcilable part of the Greeks and that he desired no more then Bishop Bromhal and other of his Bishops offer them to have the Church governed by Patriarcks and the Pope to be Principium Unitatis c. If any would know what Party Grotius was of I desire them carefully to peruse but these places in his writings which I have cited elsewhere Discus Apolog. Rivet pag. 255. pag. 7. vot pro Pace pag. 1 2 3. And of his friends in England among the Bishops in Paris and all France in Germany and Poland See Discus Apol. Rivet pag. 16. and my Discovery of Grotius Religion Yea for my own part I am perswaded that the Papists were as much afraid of King Charls and the Grotian design as of any thing that of long time hath been hatcht against them They are not all of a mind at home The French and moderate party no doubt applauded the design and liked such writings as S. Clara's and would gladly have married England and France in Religion But others the Italian Spanish Jesuited party might easily foresee what danger was in brewing for them Had France England Sweden Denmark and the German Lutherans agreed together to bear down the Calvinists as unreconcilable on one side as Grotius intimates it necessary and the Italians and their adherents that set up the Pope above a Council on the other side it would have made the Pope afraid as no doubt he was For though he was glad that we would draw neerer him and make him the Head in any sort yet he knew not how to stop so great an inundation as was like upon the union to over-flow him And hence was the malice of the Jesuites against the life of the King and withall that he was fain into such hands where he was like to do them little service Secret Windebanks Letter recited by Prin ubi sup tells us that it was the Jesuites that were the death of Father Leander and so were the Enemies of Francis S. Clara and his Book which caused it to incur a Roman Censure So that with one part of them that is the best way which the other is more afraid of then of Protestants We see it by the Jansenian contest We see it in that Cassander Erasmus Vives c. are excellent Catholicks with some of them and Heretical and vile with the rest 4. The persecuted Nonconformists of the Protestant party though they were most adverse to the Papists yet had some of the Popish brood at last crept in among them not only to spie out their minds and wayes but to head the party and sow among them the seeds of further discontent and error and to make them a Nursery for various sects For every where by their good wils the Jesuites will have some If you ask me for my proof of this I shall at this time give you but these two 1. The fruits that sprung up from among them and the manner of Production of which more anon 2. The words of the Jesuites Letter recited by Mr. Prin Introd pag. 90. I cannot choose but laugh to see how some of our own coat have re-incountred themselves you would scarce know them if you saw them and it is admirable how in speech and gesture they act the Puritans The Cambridge Schollars to their wofull experience shall see we can act the Puritans a little better then they have done the Jesuites they have abused our sacred Patron St. Ignatius in jest but we will make them smart for it in earnest I hope you will excuse my merry digression for I confess to you I am at this time transported with joy to see how happily all instruments and means as well great as lesser co-operate to our purposes Yet cannot I hear of any considerable infection among this party that way before Sir Henry Vane's dayes 5. How far they crept into all Societies under the name of Independants is opened by so many already in Print that I shall add no more of it 6. And it s a thing notorious that they have crept in among the Anabaptists and formented that Sect. The story of the Scottish Missionary that pretended himself a Jew and gave the Anabaptists the glory of his Conversion and Rebaptizing at Hexham and was discovered at Newcastle is published and commonly known whether he be yet in Prison or releast I know not And too many more have more cleanly plaid their game And though many of the more sober Anabaptists would not be so usefull to the Papists as they expected yet multitudes of them too far answered their expectations If you ask now what the Papists get by all this I answer you see in the Instance
did yet profess to take up offensive Arms only against Delinquents or rather even but defensive against those men that had got an Army to secure them from Justice And they still professed and vowed fidelity to the King which as I have shewed they manifested to the last of their power till they were imprisoned and secluded Read Mr. Irins Speech for Agreement with the King and read the writing of the London Ministers presented to the General and published against the Kings death and Read the Vindication of the secluded members and read the Passages of the war with Scotland and of the Imprisonment of many London Ministers and of the death of Mr. Love and others and tell me whether you can do men greater wrong then to defame them for being causers of that which they disowned though it cost them the loss of Liberty Estate or Life 4. And really if you take either Vanists or Levellers who were the chief agents in this for Protestants you may as well say that Papists are Protestants The world knows that the Prayers the Petitions Protestations and other endeavours of the Protestants even the Presbyterians was for the preventing the death of that King how ever many of them disliked his course and joyned with the Parliament against his adherents This is the very truth which they that have been eye witnesses all along have good reason to know whatever any Papist say to the contrary 5. And what Protestants be they that give power to any man on earth to depose Princes and give their Kingdoms to others or to disoblige all their subjects and warrant them to kill them and dispense with oaths and turn them all into smoak and straw as yours do Renounce your treacherous Principles and we will cease to charge you with them Let a General Council and Pope but Decree the contrary to what the forecited Pope and General Council have Decreed or else do you all declare that you think this Pope and Councill erred and then we will shake hands with you for then you will either cease to be true Papists or at least become tolerable members of humane societies Why doth not the Pope himself at least condemn these doctrines if really he disown them The case is too plain CHAP. XLIX Detect 40. THeir last course when all other fail is To turn from Fraud to Force and open Violence stirring up Princes to wars and bloodshed that they may destroy the professors of the Reformed Religion as far as they are able and do that by flames and sword by halters and hatches which they cannot do by Argument Hence have proceeded the bloody butcheries of the poor Waldenses and Albigenses formerly and now again of late and the wars in Bohemia the League and wars and Massacres in France the desolating wars of Germany the plots invasions and wars in England Most of the flames in Christendom of late ages have been kindled for the Pope by his Agents that he might warm him by that fire that others are consumed by Hence his own pretenses to the Temporal Sword and so many volumes written to justifie it and so many Tragedies acted in the execution And yet these men cry up Antiquity and Tradition I wonder what Bishop in all the world for above three hundred years after Christ did ever claim or exercise the temporal sword as much as to be a Justice of Peace nay it was their judgement that it did not belong to them Neither the Pope nor any Bishop on earth as such hath any thing to do with the coercive power of the sword nor may not inflict the smallest penalty on body or purse but only guide men by the Word of God and the utmost penalty they can inflict is to excommunicate them And they have nothing to do to destroy men when they have excommunicated them nor to cause the Magistrate to do it but rather should still endeavour their Conversion Synesius Epistol 57. against Andronicus saith as followeth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. To join together secular government with the Priesthood is to tye together things that are incoherent or such as cannot be tyed together The old times made the same men Priests and Judges For the Aegyptians and Hebrems did long make use of the Government of Priests But afterward as seems to me when Gods work began to be done in an humane manner God separated the two sorts of life and one of them was made sacred and the other appointed for Rule and Command For some he turned to these Materiall or common secular things and some he associated with himself The former were appointed for secular business the later for prayer But from both doth God require that which is honest or Good Why then dost thou revoke this Why wilt thou conjoin what God hath separated who wouldst not have us indeed to do the work of secular Rulers but by doing it to deprave or marr it then which what can be more unhappy Dost thou need a Ruler or Patron Go to him that manageth the Laws of the Commonwealth Dost thou need God in any thing Go to the Bishop or Priest of the City not that thou shalt be sure there to have all that thou desirest but that I will afford thee the best assistance that I can or will do my best in it So far Synesius Which I wonder how Petavius could pass over without some distorting observation considering how low it treads the Roman Kingdom But Baronius had the cunning as to extract even from hence some advantage to his cause even to shew the Power that Pastors have to excommunicate Rulers ad An. 411. as Synesius with the Council did Andronicus But 1. He went not out of his own circuit to play the Bishop in other mens Diocess 2. Much less did he take up the Temporal Sword against him but disclaimeth and detesteth any such thing Why doth not the Pope when he hath past his Excommunications content himself that he hath done his part but he must excite Princes yea force them to execute his rage and fall upon the Lives and Dominions of such Princes as he will call Heretical He knows how small account would be made of his brutish thunderbolts if he had not a secular Arm to follow them Nay why is he and many of his Cardinals and Bishops secular Princes themselves Why joyneth he those Functions of Magistracie and Priesthood which Synesius here tells us God hath separated and made incoherent in one and the same person Let the Pope usurp what Ecclesiastical power he please he would not so much disturb the Church by it if he did not second it by another power It is violence that he trusteth too He knows if it were not for Arms and Violence he would soon be spewed out by the Christian world And yet many of his followers that seem more moderate confess he hath nothing to do as Pope with any but the Spiritual Sword which works no further then Conscience doth
would have the causes taken away What! When I recite his very words Or was I deeply silent of the particular causes Do you mean Here or Throughout If Here so I was deeply silent of ten thousand things more which either it concerned me not to speak or I had not the faculty of expressing in one sentence If you mean Throughout you read without your eyes or wrote either with a defective Memory or Honesty Read again and you shall find that I recite the causes 3. But did I not all that my task required by reciting the Negation of the causes It was not saith Grotius the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome according to the Canons And I shewed you partly and the Canons shew you fully that that Primacy is the Universall Headship which Protestants I mean not Roman Grotian Protestants have ever used to call Popery But saith Mr. P. Grotius chargeth the Papists with it Answ 1. True but the Protestants much more as making many more faults by their withdrawing from Rome then they mended 2. And he chargeth not that which we have called Popery with it though he charge the Papists with it That some sins of the Papists did occasion it he confesseth and all the Papists that ever I spoke with of it do confess But I am referred for these causes charged on the Papists to Grot. Votum pag. 7 8. and thither I 'le follow Mr. P. that I may know how much he chargeth on the Papists himself And there I find that the things that Grotius found faulty in the Papists were but these two 1. That to the true and ancient doctrine many quirks of the Schoolmen that were better skli'd in Aristotle then the Scriptures were introduced out of a liberty of disputing not out of the Authority of Universal Councils And the Opinions stablisht in the Church were less fitly explicated 2. That Pride and Covetousness and manners of ill example prevailed among the Prelates c. And really did you think that he is no Papist that is but against the Schoolmens Opinions and the Prelates Pride Covetousness and Idleness and holdeth all that they call the Decrees of General Councils Hath not the Council at Lateran and Florence decreed that the Pope is above a General Council and the Council at Lateran decreed that Princes are to be deposed and their Subjects absolved from their fidelity if they exterminate not Hereticks such as Protestants out of their Dominions Is he no Papist that holds all that is in the Council of Trent if he be against some School-points not determined and against the Prelates Pride Well Sir I understand you better then I did And though you thought meet that your words might be conform to one another and not to truth to say that I called you Arminian and Pelagian I purpose if I had done so to call you an Arminian no more But I beseech you cry not out of persecution till the men of your mind will give us leave to be Rectors of Churches in their Dominions as you and others of your mind are allowed to be in these And demand not of Mr. Hickman the bread he eats nor the money he receives as if it were yours till we can have license to be maintained Rectors or at least to escape the Strappado in your Church But I promised you some more of Grotius in English to stop your mouth or open it whether you see cause and you shall have it Discus pag. 14. Grotius distinguisheth between the Opinions of Schoolmen which oblige no man for saith Melchior Canus our School alloweth us great liberty and therefore could give no just cause of departing as the Protestants did and between those things that are defined by Councils even by that of Trent The Acts of which if any man read with a mind propense to peace he will find that they may be explained fitly and agreeably to the places of the holy Scriptures and of the ancient Doctors that are put in the Margin And if besides this by the care of Bishops and Kings those things be taken away which contradict that holy doctrine and were brought in by evil manners and not by authority of Councils or Old Tradition then Grotius and many more with him will have that with which they may be content This is Grotius in English Reader is it not plain English Durst thou or I have been so uncharitable as to have said without his own consent that Mr. Pierce would have defended this Religion and that we have Rectors in England of this Religion and that those that call themselves Episcopal Divines and seduce unstudied partial Gentlement are crept into this garb and in this do act their parts so happily If words do signifie any thing it here appears that Grotius his Religion is that which is contained in the Council of Trent with all the rest and the reformation which will content him is only against undetermined School-Opinions and ill manners that Cross the doctrines of the Councils I 'le do the Papists so much right as to say I never met with a man of them that would not say as much Especially taking in all Old Tradition with all the Councils how much together by the ears now matters not as Grotius doth Yet more Discus p. 185. He professeth that he will so interpret Scripture God favouring him and pious men being consulted that he cross not the Rule delivered both by himself and by the Council of Trent c. Pag. 239. The Augustine Consession commodiously explained leath scarce any thing which may not be reconciled with those Opinions which are received with the Catholicks by Authority of Antiquity and of Synods as may be known out of Cassander and Hoffmeister And there are among the Jesuites also that think not otherwise Pag. 71. He tels us that the Churches that join with Rome have not only the Scriptures but the Opinions explained in the Councils and the Popes Decrees against Pelagius c. They have also received the Egregious Constitutions of Councils and Fathers in which there is abundantly enough for the correction of vices but all use them not as they ought They lye for the most part hid in Papers as a Sword in the Scabbard And this is it that all the lovers of piety and peace would have corrected And gives us Borromaeus for a president Pag. 48. These are the things which thanks be to God the Catholicks do not thus believe though many that call themselves Catholicks so live as if they did believe them but Protestants so live by force of their Opinions and Catholicks by the decay of Discipline Pag. 95. What was long ago the judgement of the Church of Rome the Mistris of others we may best know by the Epistles of the Roman Bishops to the Africans and French to which Grotius will subscribe with a most willing mind Rome you see is the Mistris of other Churches Pag 7. They accuse the Bull of Pius Quintus that it
hath Articles besides those of the Creed But the Synod of Dort hath more But those in the Bull are new as Dr. Rivet will have it But very many learned men think otherwise that they are not new if they be rightly understood and that this appeareth by the places both of holy Scripture and of such as have ever been of great authority in the Church which are cited in the Margin of the Canons of Trent Pag. 35. And this is it which the Synod of Trent saith that in that Sacrament Jesus Christ true God truly man is really substantially conteined under the form of those sensible things yet not according to the naturall manner of existing but Sacramentally and by that way of existing which though we cannot express in words yet may we by cogitation illustrated by faith be certain that to God it is possible And the Council hath found words to express it that there is made a change of the whole substance of the bread into the Body and the whole substance of Wine into the Blood which conversion the Catholick Church calleth Transubstantiation Pag. 79. When the Synod of Trent saith that the Sacrament is to be adored with Divine worship it intends no more but that the Son of God himself is to be adored I le add no more but that which tells you who is a Papist with the Grotians and who is none Pag. 15. In that Epistle Grotius by Papists meant those that without any difference do approve of all the sayings and doings of Popes for honor or lucre sake as is usual Ibid. He tells us that by Papists he meaneth not them That saving the right of Kings and Bishops do give to the Pope or Bishop of Rome that Primacy which ancient custom and Canons and the Edicts of ancient Emperors and Kings assign them Which Primacy is not so much the Bishops as the very Roman Churches preferred before all other by common consent It 's well it hath so mutable a foundation so Liberius the Bishop being so lapsed that he was dead to the Church the Church of Rome retained its right and defended the cause of the Universal Church This and much more I had given the Reader before in Latine but because Mr. Pierce thinks that I wrong Grotius if you have it not in English I have born so much respect to his words and to the Reader as to remove the wrong and thus far to satisfie his desire Having told you some of the Occasion of this writing I shall add somewhat of the Reasons of it but the less because I have given you so much of them already in my foresaid Discovery of the Grotian Religion 1. My principal Reason is that before expressed that Popery may be pulled up by the very roots For Italians French and all build on this that the Church must have one visible Head 2. That I might take in those parties of the Papists that I have past by or said less to in the former Part of the Book 3. Because I see what Influence the conceit that I dispute against hath on the minds of many well-meaning less judicious people 4. Because I perceive in part what influence the design of Grotius had upon England in the changes that were the occasion of our late wars He saith himself Discuss pag. 16. That the labors of Grotius for the Peace of the Church were not displeasing to many equal men many know at Paris and many in all France many in Poland and Germany and not a few in England that are placid and lovers of peace For as for the now-raging Brownists and others like them with whom Dr. Rivet better agreeth then with the Bishops of England who can desire to please them that is not touched with their venom So that he had Episcopal Factors here in England And whereas some tell me that Grotius was no Papist because he professed his high esteem of the Church of England and say they had Church-preferment here offered him and thought to have accepted it I answer 1. Either it was Grotius in the first Edition or the Church of England in the second Edition then in the Press that this must be spoken of if true 2. Was not Franciscus a Sancta Clara still the Queens ghostly Father a Papist for all he reconciled the Doctrine of the Church of England to that of Rome Grotius and he did plainly manage the same design 3. Mr. Pierce assures you by his Defence that Grotius hath still his followers in England of the party that he called the Church of England And is it any more proof that Grotius was a Protestant for joyning with them then that they are Papists that joyn with him Is not his Doctrine here given you in his Englished words Do you doubt whether the Council of Trent were Papists This makes me remember the words of the late King to the Marquess of Worcester when the Marbuess came into the room to an appointed conference about religion with him leaned on D. Bayly's arm he told the King that he came leaning on a Doctor of his own Church and the King replyed My Lord I know not whether I should think the better of you for the Doctors sake or the worse of the Doctor for your sake or to this purpose And indeed the Doctor quickly shew'd by professing himself a Papist what an Episcopal Divine he was And I think we have as fair advantage to resolve us whether to think the better of Grotius for the Church of Englands sake or the worse of those that he called the Church of England and that were of his mind for Grotius sake In a late Treatise De Antiqua Ecclesiae Brittanicae libertate Diatribe written by I. B. a Divine of the Church of England and printed at Bruges 1656 pag. 34 35. Thes 4. it is averred That since the ancient liberty of the British Church was by the consent of the whole Kingdom resumed remaining Catholick in all other things it may retain that Liberty without losing its Catholicism and without any note of Schism or Heresie This Liberty then was the Reformation And this he saith was maintained by Barnes a Papist and Benedictine Monk and Priest in a M. S. entituled Catholico-Romanus Pacificus c. 3. and that for this sober work of his the Peaceable Monk though of unblamed life and unspotted fame was snatch out of the midst of Paris and stript of his habit and bound on a Horse-back like a Calf and violently carryed into Flanders and so to Rome and so to the Inquisition and then put among the Bedlams where he dyed and not contented with his death they defamed him to have dyed mad Though Rome give Peace no better entertainment the Learned Author thinks that France will and therefore adds concerning the French Church Quâcum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 optanda foret etiamnum veteris redintegratio concordiae quam constat plus mille ab hinc annis amicissime intercessisse inter
and so it is apparent unto them yet most that are not members of it do not know it Arrians and Mahometans know us to be men professing such and such Articles of faith but they know not that to be the true faith nor us to be the true Church but judge the contrary In this sence contained in these Propositions it is that Protestants deny the Church to have been alwayes Visible and not as the Papists commonly mistake them Prop. 4. We are agreed that this Catholick Church is but One There are not two Visible nor two Mystical Catholick Churches Nor are the Mysticall and Visible two Bellarmine might have spared all his labour that he hath bestowed in vain upon this point to prove that the Visible and Invisible are not two Catholick Churches The Protestants are further from that Opinion then the Papists and it is more suitable to the Popish Interest and Cause to be of that Opinion then to the Protestants If it were not that they are past learning by the advantage of their Infallibility and especially of one man and one so mean condemned by them and that it is unlawfull to be a Teacher of Error I could tell them of a new device by the advantage of this distinction of Catholick Churches for the modelling their mistakes into a more specious plausible form then now it appeareth in to the rest of the Churches But we are glad of their company in any Truth and therefore will not disagree from them in that which makes against themselves One Objection I once heard a Learned Anabaptist cast in our way viz. There may be a Visible Church of hypocrites therefore the Mystical and Visible may be two Answ But the Question was of the Catholick Church and not of a particular Church We confess that some members of the Catholick Church are Mystical and Visible in the several respects before mentioned and that some are Visible and not Mystical or as Bellarmine well calls them Dead Members and not Living and that the Church as Visible is more comprehensive then the Church as Regenerate or Invisible and yet all but One Church though it have more members in it in one respect then in another And we confess that its possible for twenty or an hundred of these Dead members to constitute a particular Church by themselves though it is not usual for Visible Churches to be without Living members and so there may be a particular Visible Dead Member Analogically called a Member or a particular Visible Church that is thus Dead and these be parts of the Catholick Church as Visible But yet there is not two Catholick Churches One Visible and the other Invisible one alive and the other Dead In a Corn field there are 1. Good Corn. 2. Stricken blasted Corn that hath a name and shew but in deed no Corn. 3. Tares darnell cockle and such weeds It is called A Field as it conteineth them all It is called a Corn field only from the Corn. The Univocal proper parts of a Corn field is the Corn only The Visible and Analogical parts are also the blasted ears The darnel and cockle are no parts but noxious accidents There are not two fields of Corn one of true Corn and the of other blasted ears And yet the Corn field taken largely and Analogically hath more parties in it then true Corn and you may perhaps have some particular sheavs that are wholly of that which is blasted which you will call a sheaf of Corn Analogically only but a sheaf of weeds you will not at all call a sheaf of Corn. Even so in the Catholick Church there are sincere Christians which are true and living members and there are Hypocrites which are Analogically members and there are locally mixed many that by denying essential points of the Christian faith or by notorious Impiety do declare themselves to be weeds and no members of the Church at all Prop. 5. We are also Agreed that this One Visible Catholick Church is One Political Holy Society as united in Jesus Christ the Head who teacheth and ruleth it by his Ministers and other Officers in the several parts according to the necessity of each We call it One Political Society 1. Principally because that all the Church is united in this One Soveraign or Head the Lord Jesus and therefore it is called his body 2. They have all the same holy doctrine of faith and Law to live by and be judged by 3. They have all Church Officers of the same sort under Christ to teach and govern them 4. They have all the same kind of Holy Ordinances as Reading Preaching Praying Praise Sacraments c. appointed them by the Lord. 5. They are all engaged in One and the same Holy Covenant to the Lord More might be mentioned and shall be God willing in a peculiar Treatise of Catholicism or the Catholick Church And though Christ himself be not now seen among us yet may he truly be called a Visible Head For 1. He sometime lived visibly on earth 2. And is now the Visible King of all the Church as he is in the Heavens Though we see him not the Celestiall Inhabitants do It is but little of the world that seeth the Pope any more then they see Christ If one unseen to us may be a pretended Visible Head the other may be truly so So that the Body Head Laws Worship c. being Visible so is the Policy Prop. 6. We are agreed also that all these Christians and particular Churches are obliged by Christ even by the very Law of Nature and the ends of their calling and the General Laws of the Gospell to live in as much Love and Unity and Peace as they can and to hold as full and extensive communion as they can that is as far as their work requireth and their Capacity will permit and enable them those that are cohabitans and members of one Congregation must hold local communion in that Congregation unless Necessity prohibite Those that through distance are uncapable of joining in the same Assemblies should yet be conjoined 1. In the same Lord Faith Baptism Covenant Profession 2. In the same bond of Christian special Love 3. In the use of the same sort of holy worship as to the Substance though they differ in circumstances as in the Word Prayer Praises Sacraments c. 4. And in one sort of Church Officers and Government And as far as we have to do with each other all this should be manifested and we should readily own one another as Brethren and true Churches notwithstanding lesser differences Prop. 7. To these ends it is meet that the Bishops or Pastors of the Churches should hold in way of Association as frequent Assemblies as is needfull for the maintaining of mutual Love and Correspondency and right understanding of each other and to manifest their unity and assist each other in the work of God that it may be the more successfully carried on by united strength against
all oppositions Prop. 8. These Associations should so far know the members Associated as is necessary to the holding of a Christian Communion with them and therefore should not admit all into their Association but such as either produce the Evidences of sound faith and Holy life or literas communicatorias certificates from credible members of their communion that the persons are fit for their Communion Prop. 9. These Associations are principally for the Union and Communion of Churches and therefore must apply themselves to the maintaining and promoting of Unity Prop. 10. Such Associations should therefore have their set times of frequent meeting in Synods for Ordinary help of one another besides extraordinary meetings on extraordinary occasions which none should neglect Prop. 11. We agree that such Associated Pastors may have their Moderators either pro tempore or stated at the cause requireth And that it is no great matter whether he be called a President Bishop Moderator c. in which all should have liberty so far as that the peace of the Church be not cast away for such names Prop. 12. We are also agreed that whatsoever shall be concluded in order to the Union and Communion of Churches in any of these Synods the particular Associated Members must observe they being thereto obliged by Vertue of those General precepts thet require us to do all in Unity and Concord and with one mind and mouth to glorifie God and to avoid divisions c. Except they be such things as cannot be obeyed unless we violate the Law of God Thus far the Canons that is Agreements of lesser Synods or greater are obligatory Prop. 13. We are also Agreed that when ever the good of the Church requireth it there may be Greater Assemblies also held consisting of many of these conjunct or speciall members delegate by the rest And that this course should extend as far as our capacity will allow in needfull cases Prop. 14. Lastly we shall grant that where Pastors cannot through distance or other Impediments hold Synods or any particular Churches cannot send any competent members to such Synods yet may they when its needfull by messengers certifie each other of their faith professions practises and particular doubts and cases and so hold communion in some degree owning each other as Brethren in one Lord and by such intercourse of Messengers and Letters as we are capable of assisting and seeking assistance from each other As Basil and the rest of the Eastern Bishops did to the Western in their distress while they had hope And the faith of all the Churches that are neer enough for any externall communion being thus known their Literae Communicatoriae may be valid and satisfactory when any member passeth into other parts Thus far I hope we are Agreed This much I am sure we hold our selves But now the difference followeth We hold that this Universal Church which is one in Christ their Head as the world is one Kingdom in God the absolute Soveraign King is by Christ distributed into many Congregations dispersed over the face of the Earth and that these as several Corporations in one Kingdom have all their particular Governours and Order All forcible Government we ascribe to the Magistrate and deny it to the Pastors of the Church And that teaching and Guidance which is called Ecclesiastick Government we suppose is the work of every Pastor in his flock and the Ordering of the communion of Churches by Canons Agreements and their execution in part is the work of Synods And as in this Kingdom all the Free-schools are governed by the Schoolmasters who are all under the Prince and Laws without any General Schoolmasters to Teach or Oversee and Rule the rest and without Synods too though they may meet when their mutual Edification requires it and yet all the Schools in England are in Peace because no Archscoolmasters presume to rob the Magistrate of his power Even so we judge that if Pastors do but Teach and Guide their severall flocks and the Magistrate keep and use his power of forcible Government that is in seeing that they do their Offices faithfully and no Archpastors presume to take the power of the Magistrates out of their hands the Churches may have quietness and peace still allowing a greater Necessity of Communion and so of Synods among Churches then among Schools and reserving the rod to the secular power And we concieve that most of the stir that Popes and Popish Prelates have made about Church Government hath been but to rob the Magistrate of his due and to become themselves the Church-Magistrates through the world But that the Church hath any Politicall Universal Head but Christ alone either a Vice god or Vice-Christ either Pope or Council that any one is as Pope Julius saith of himself in the place of God the maker of all things and Laws this we deny That the whole Church on Earth is so one Political Society as to be under any one terrestial numericall Head whether personal or collective Pope Council or Patriarks having power of Legislation or judgement over the whole and by whom each member is to be Governed this we deny and think it as absurd and much more sinfull as to affirm that all the world must needs have one Visible Monarch under God to represent him and that he is no subject to the God of Heaven that acknowledgeth not this Visible Universall Monarch We deny that the Church is such a Society We deny that it hath such an Head We deny that it hath any such universal Humane Laws We deny that the parts of it are to be conjoyned by the subordinate Officers Cardinals Patriarks Archbishops or what ever of such an usurping Soveraign We affirm that no Christian should fancy or assert that any such Head and Order for unity is appointed by Christ or that it is Desirable or Rome to be the better liked of because it pleadeth for such an Order or vainly boasteth of such of an unity or that any should dare to contrive the promoting of it Yea we maintain that such fancies and contrivances are the most notable means of the division or desolation of the Churches And that it is the notable hinderance of the unity of all the Christian Churches that such a false Head and Center of unity is set up and an Impossible Impious unity pleaded for and furiously sought by fire and sword instead of the true desirable unity And that the Churches will never have true unity and peace if these principles of theirs be not disgraced and disowned and the true principles better understood I shall now give you some Arguments for our Assertion and then in the End shall give you the true Grounds and Means of unity CHAP. III. Our Arguments for the Negative IN the management of the Arguments for the Negative I shall principally deal with them that would Head the Church with a Council that is would make the Church to be autonomicall and be
the Soveraign or chief Governour of it self or the Church Representative of the Church reall as they use to call them As to them that Head it with the Pope I have said enough already and others much more especially Blondell unanswerably Yet I shall partly take them also in my way though I deal principally with the other And these brief Arguments may serve to confute the Vice-christship or Soveraignty of the Pope 1. There is no such Head Instituted by Christ The Scripture pretenses for it I have before confuted and they are so poor that they vanish of themselves 2. The Popes Soveraignty is against the Judgement of the Ancient Fathers and practise of the Primitive Church as I have proved in this and a former Book 3. It is against Tradition as brought down to us by the greatest part of the Church on earth by far as is before proved 4. It is against the Judgement of the far greatest part of the present Catholick Church as is proved 5. It is the the meer effect of pride and tyranny a plain design to set up one man over all the world for his greatness and their hurt 6. The pretense of this Soveraignty is the consequent only of Romes greatness and the will of Emperours that to conform the Ecclesiastical state to the civil did give a Primacy to the Bishop of Rome within the Empire 7. It is a meer impossibility for one man to be the Soveraign of all the Churches in the world and do the work of a Soveraign for them He had need of many millions and millions of Treasure to defray the charge which Peter had not While he pretends to govern all the world he doth but leave them ungoverned or not by him How can he govern all those Churches in the Dominions of Infidels that will not endure his Government There are more then all the Papists in the world now from under his Government voluntarily that could not be governed by him if they would 8. There are yet visible many great Churches that were planted by the Apostles or in their dayes and never were under Romes Soveraignty to this day as the Aetheopians Persians Indians and most that were without the verge of the Roman Empire 9. There is no use for such an Head as I shall shew anon of Councils 10. There is not so much Reason for it or possibility of it as that One man must be King or Monarch of all the world Considering that spiritual Government requireth residency and can less be done by Deputies then temporal And that Princes are truly Church-Governours also in their kind and way 11. It is an intolerable usurpation of the Power of all Christian Princes and Pastors who conjunctly in their several wayes are intrusted by God with the Government of the Churches under them 12. To make such a Soveraign is to make a new Catholick Church that Christ never made 13. And it s the most notorious schism dividing themselves from all the Catholick Church that are not their subjects 14. And inhumane cruelty to damn all as much as Heathens at least that believe not in the Pope be they never so holy 15. To set up a Vice-god as Pope Julius paraphrastically called himself and a Vice christ on earth over all the Church as the Papist commonly do maintaining that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ is to set up an Idoll and a name of Blasphemy against Jesus Christ whose prerogative it is to be the sole Universal Head And therefore he must needs be an Antichrist whether he be The Antichrist or not This much to the Pope Thes The Catholick Church of Christ is not one Visible Political body as joyned to one Universal Visible Head or Soveraign save only Christ And consequently it is not the way to heal the Churches divisions to draw all into such a body or endeavour such an Union This I make good by these following Arguments which reach both the Italian Papists that would have the Pope to be the Head or Soveraign and the French and Cassandrian who would have a General Council to be the Head and the Pope only to be the chief Patriarch and the Principium Unitatis For if I prove that the Body is not one as Headed by any except Christ I shall say enough against both these opinions But yet as is said it is principally against the later who are for the Headship of a Council that I shall direct my Arguments because they are the busie Reconcilers and because the rest are so largely confuted already on both sides Argument 1. That which is the true form of the Catholick Church of Christ it retaineth de facto at this day But it retaineth not a Political Union under a Visible Terrestrial Universal Head therefore this is not the true form of the Catholick Church Or what the Catholick Church is quoad essentiam that it is also quoad existentiam But it is not such a Body quoad existentiam therefore not quoad essentiam If any will grant the conclusion quoad essentiam vel formam and say that this Policy Head and Union are not essential to the Church but separable accidents tending only ad melius esse he will give away his cause For the Pars Imperans and pars subdita are the two essential parts of a body Politick or Republick whether Civil or Ecclesiastical as a soul and body are the parts of man and if it want either part the essence is destroyed It hath lost its Political form But I need not stand on this because the case is past controversie and I know not of any that make the objection or will go on such terms I am sure those do not that I have now to deal with Another thing there may be that is called a Church without this Form or Head but not this same thing or body that now we speak of The Major proposition I prove thus The Church of Christ is a true Church at this day or retaineth its essential parts therefore it retaineth its form If its essentials were not in existence the Church were extinct or did not exist But that the Church is not extinct or nulled the opponents will easily grant and the promise of Christ will easily prove The gates of Hell shall not prevail against it The Minor I prove thus If the Catholick Church be now Headed with one Visible Head beside Christ then it is either the Pope or a General Council But it is neither of these That it is not the Pope the French will grant And 1. It s proved at large by many a volume of Protestant writers and 2. By the present visible state of the Church The greatest part of the Church on Earth and all those in Heaven disown the Universall Soveraignty or Headship of the Pope The Greeks Abassines Armenians Protestants c. That it is not a General Council appeareth in that there is no such thing in Natural or Moral Existence Not in