Assemblies would not drop one word of any indignity shewed to any of their sacred images when they pass not by their wrath against their houses goods and cattel Such things are fond to imagine 2. Many of the Antients do note it as an abomination in some of the first Hereticks that they had introduced the use of Images into their worship with the adoration of them Theodoret. haeret sub lib. 1. tells us that Simon Magus gave his own image and that of Selene to be worshistped by his followers And Iraeneus Lib. 1. cap. 23. that the followers of Basilides used images and invocations and cap. 24. that the Gnosticks had images both painted ones and carved and that of Christ which they said was made originally by Pontius Pilate and this they adored And so doth Epiphanius also Tom. 2. lib. 1. Haer. 27. Carpocrates procured the images of Christ and Paul to be made and adored them and the like is recorded of others Now do you think they would have observed and reproved this practice as an abomination in the haereticks if there had been any thing in the Churches usage that might give countenance thereunto or at least that they would not have distinguished between that abuse of images which they condemned in the hereticks and that use which was retained and approved among themselves But they are utterly silent as unto any such matter contenting themselves to report and reprove the superstition and idolatry of the Hereticks in their Adoration of them But this is not all 3. They positively deny that they had any images or made any use of them and defend themselves against the charge of the Pagans against them for professing an imageless Religion Clemen Alexand. Strom Lib. 6. plainly and openly confesseth and testifieth that Christians had no Images in the world And in his Adhortat ad Gent. he positively asserts that the arts of Painting and Carving as to any religious use were forbidden to Christians and that in the worship of God they had no sensible image made of any sensible matter because they worshipped God with understanding What was the judgement of Tertullian is known from his book de Idololatria from whence if we should transcribe what is argumentative against image worship very little would be remaining But of all the Antients Origen doth most clearly manifest what was the doctrine and practice of the Church of God in his dayes as in other places so in his seventh book against Celsus he directly handles this matter Celsus charged the Christians that they made use of no images in the worship of God telling them that therein they were like the Persians Scythians Numidans and Seres all which impious nations hated all images as the Turks do at this day To which discourse of his Origen returning answer grants that the Christians had no images in their sacred worship no more then had the Barbarous nations mentioned by Celsus but withall adds the difference that was between those and these and tells you that their abstinence from Image worship was on various accounts And after he hath shewed wherefore those Nations received them not he adds that Christians and Jews abstained from all sacred use of Images because of Gods command Thou shalt fear as he reads the text the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve and thou shalt not make to thy self any graven image nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or in the earth beneath and adds that they were so far from praying to the images as the Pagans did that saith he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a thing expresly commanded in the Nicene Conventicle we do not give any honour at all to Images least we should give countenance to the error of ignorant people that there were somewhat of Divinity in them with very much more to the same purpose expresly condemning all the use of Images in the worship of God and openly testifying that there was no such usage among the Christians in those dayes heard of in the world Arnobius or Minutius Faelix acknowledgeth the same Cruces nec colimus nec optamus we do no more worship Crosses then desire them and grants that Christians had nulla note simulachra because no image could be made to or of him whom alone they worshipped What was the judgement of the Elibertine Council I have before told you Lactantius in his Institut ad Constant. lib. 2. by an happy anticipation answers all the arguments that you use to this day in defence of your image worship and concludes peremptorily that where there are any Images there is no Religion shewing how perverse a thing it is that the image of a dead man should be worshipped by a living image of God The time would fail me to relate the words of Eusebius Athanasius Hilarius Ambrosius Cyrillus Chrysostome Epiphanius Hierom Austin and others to the same purpose I cannot but think that it is fully evident to any one that consults antiquity that the image use and worship which is become the Tessera of your Church Communion by your espousing the Canons and Determinations of the second Nycene Synod was in part utterly unknown unto and in part expresly condemned by the whole Primitive Church for 600. years after Christ and that you have plainly by your Tridentine decree and Nicene Anathematismes cut off your selves from the Communion of the Catholick Church of Christ and all particular Assemblies that worship him in sincerity for the space of some hundreds of years in the world Thus things went in the Church of God before your Nicene Convention How did they succeed afterwards did image worship presently prevail upon their determinations or was that then the faith of the generality of the Church of Christ which was declared by the fathers of that Convention nothing less no sooner was the rumor of this horrible innovation in Christian Religion spread abroad in the world but that upon it there was a full assembly of 300. Bishops of the Western Provinces assembled at Franckeford in Germany wherein the superstition and folly of the Nicene Assembly was layed open their Arguments confuted their determinations rejected and image worship absolutely condemned as forbidden by the word of God and contrary to the Antient constant known practice of the whole Church of God And now Sir as I said you may begin to see what you have to do if you intend to speak any thing to the purpose concerning your figures and Images You must take the Decree of your Council of Trent and the Nicene Canons therein confirmed and prove confirm and vindicate them from the opposition made to them by Tertullian Arnobius Origen Lactantius the Synod of Franckeford and others of the Antients innumerable by whom they are rejected and condemned and yet when you have done so if you are able so to do your work is not one quarter at an end You can make nothing of this business untill you have confuted or burned the
antient Church-Fathers and Councils Imposing Rites unnecessary Persecution for Conscience Papal Supremacy The Branches of it Papal Personal Infallibility Religious Veneration of Images p. 48 CHAP. 5. The Principles of Fiat Lux re-examined Things not at quiet in Religion before Reformation of the first Reformers Departure from Rome no Cause of Divisions Returnal unto Rome no means of Vnion p. 89 CHAP. 6. Further Vindication of the second Chapter of the Animadversions Scripture sufficient to settle men in the Truth Instance against it examined removed Principles of Protestants and Romanists in reference unto Moderation compared and discussed p. 99 CHAP. 7. Vnity of Faith wherein consists Principles of Protestants as to the setling men in Religion and Vnity of Faith proposed and confâ—rmed p. 121 CHAP. 8. Principles of Papists whereon they proceed in bringing men to a setlement in Religion and the Vnity of Faith examined p. 161 CHAP. 9. Proposals from Protestant Principles tending unto Moderation and Vnity p. 204 CHAP. 10. Further Vindication of the second Chapter of the Animadversions The remaining Principles of Fiat Lux considered p. 301 CHAP. 11. Judicious Readers Schoolmen the Forgers of Popery 〈…〉 Discourse in Fiat Lux. p. 308 CHAP. 12. False Suppositions causing false and absurd consequences Whence we had the Gospel in England and by whose means What is our Duty in reference unto them by whom we receive the Gospel p. 315 CHAP. 13. Faith and Charity of the Roman Catholicks p. 351 CHAP. 14. Of Reason Jews objections against Christ. p. 362 CHAP. 15. Pleas of Prelate Protestants Christ the only supream and absolute Head of the Church p. 370 CHAP. 16. The Power assigned by Papists and Protestants unto Kings in matters Ecclesiastical Their several Principles discussed and compared p. 398 CHAP. 17. Scripture Story of the Progress and declension of Religion vindicated Papal Artifices for the promotion of their Power and Interest Advantages made by them on the Western Empire p. 423 CHAP. 18. Reformation of Religion Papal contradictions Ejice ancillam p. 447 CHAP. 19. Of preaching the Mass And the Sacrifice of it Transubstantiation Service of the Church p. 452 CHAP. 20. Of the Blessed Virgin p. 47â— CHAP. 21. Images Doctrine of the Council of Trent Oâ— the second Nicene The Arguments for the Adoâ—ration of Images Dctrine of the antient Church Of the chief Doctrine of the Roman Church Practice of the while Vain foundations of the pretences for Image Worship examined and reproved p. 477 CHAP. 22. Of the Latine Service p. 526 CHAP. 23. Communion p. 558. CHAP. 24. Heroes Of the Asses Head whose worship was objected to Jews and Christians p. 559 ERRATA PAge 2. l. 13. r. caeterarum p. 3. l. 23. r. advantage p. 4. l. 1. r. ultio l. 2. r. uocens p. 5. l. 16. r. up p. 7. l. 5. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p 11. l. 1. r Crescens p. 12. l. 16. r. you have neither p. 15. l. 1. r. pleadable p. 16. l. 11. r. â—v l. 29 r. parcas p. 67. l. 22. r. that p. 69 l. 5. r. what p. 71. l. 26. r. revengeth p. 75. l. 15. r. tumbled p. 76. l. 22. r. Lybya p 77. l. 24. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p 82 l. 10. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p 84. l. 1. r. pseudopigraphall p. 85. l. 30 r. Tharasius p. 87. l. 12. r. Demetriad l. 31 r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 91 l. â— r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 105 l. 32. r. from p. 106. l. 27. l. feat l 34. after that add they p. 117 l. 33. r. indispeasible p. â—19 l. 9. r. Bogomilus p. 127. l. 5. r. infallibly p. 132. l. 14. r. the p. 139. l 28. r. produce p. 144 l. 6. r. gencri l. 32. r. utique p. 145. l. 34. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 152. l. 8. dele it p. 335. l 7. r. retritius p. 337 l 4. r. suprstitious p. 343. l. 14. r. ipse p. 353. l. 1. r. quoi p. 355. l. 8. r. your Church p 357. l. 31. r. homines p. 359. l. 3 r. Brentius p. 375. l. 3. r. your p. 383. l. 13. r. the Church l. 14. r. affect it p. 389. l. 29. r. preside p. 393. l. 14. r. to p. 396. l. 12. r. preside p. 410. l. 24. r. whereas p. 417. l. 32. r. Panoruitanus p. 419. l. 16. r. with p. 420. l. 7 r. He l. 8. r. the p 439. l. 8. r. with p. 441. l. 22. r. nor p 455. l. 16. add part corr In divers places the Copy was mistaken the Church is Printed instead of our Church the intelligent Reader may easily see the mistake and do the Author right therein A Vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat Lux. CHAP. I. SIR I Have received your Epistle and therein your excuse for your long silence which I willingly admit of and could have been contented it had been longer so that you had been advantaged thereby to have spoken any thing more to the purpose than I find you have now done Sat citò si sat benè Things of this nature are alwayes done soon enough when they are done well enough or as well as they are capeable of being done But it is no small disappointment to find 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a fruitless flourish of words where a serious debate of an important cause was expected and looked for Nor is it a justification of any man when he has done a thing amiss to say he did it speedily if he were no way necessitated so to do You are engaged in a Cause unto whose tolerable defence opus est Zephyris hirundine multa though you cannot pretend so short a time to be used in it which will not by many be esteemed more than it deserves for all time and pains taken to give countenance to errour is undoubtedly mispent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the great Apostle We can do nothing against the Truth but for the Truth which Rule had you observed you might have spared your whole time and labour in this business However I shall be glad to find that you have given me just cause to believe what you say of your not seeing the Animadversions on your Bock before February As I find you observant of Truth in your Progress or failing therein so shall I judg of your veracity in this unlikely story for every man gives the best measure of himself And though I cannot see how possibly a man could spend much time in trussing up such a fardle of trifles and quibbles as your Epistle is yet it is somewhat strange on the other side that you should not in eight moneths space for so long were the Animadversions made publick before February set eye on that which being your own especiall concernment was to my knowledg in the hands of many of your party To dial friendly with you nolim caeterarum rerum te socordem codem modo Yea I doubt not but you use more diligence in your other affairs
sunt Nam intantum se Catholicos judicant ut nos ipsos titulo Haereticae praevitatis infament quod ergo illi nobis sunt hoc nos illis They are hereticks but they know it not they are hereticks unto us but not unto themselves for they so far judge themselves to be Catholick that they condemn us for the guilt of Heresie So then what they are to us that we are to them Especilly was your whole practice in this matter solemnly condemned in the Case of Priscillianus recorded by Sulpitius Severus in the end of his second Book the only Instance the Bellarmine could fix upon in all Antiquity for the putting of any men to death upon the account of Religion for the other whom he mentions he confesseth himself to have been a Magitian Ithacius with some other Bishops his Associates procured Maximus the Tyrant to put Priscillianus a Gnosticke with some others to death and to banish some of their followers What saith the Historian thereon Hoc modo saith he homines luce indignissimi pessimo exemplo necati aut exili is mulctati On this manner were those unworthy wretches either slain or punished by banishment by a very evil precedent And what was the success of this zeal Non solum saith he non repressest haeresis sed confirmata latius propagata The heresis was so farre from being repressed by it that it was the more confirmed and propagated And what ensued hereupon in the Church its self Inter nostros perpetuum discordiarum bellum exarsit quod jam per quindecim annos foedis dissensionibus agitatum nullo modo sopiri poterat Et nunc cum maximè discordiis Episcoporum turbari â—isceri omnia cernerentur cunctáque per eos odio aut gratia metu inconstantia invidia factione avâ—aritâ—a arrogantia somno desidia essent depravata postremo plures adver sum paucos bâ—nè consulentes insanis consiliis pertinacibus studiis certabant Inter haec plebs Dei optimus quisque probro atque ludibrio habebatur With which words he shuts up his Ecclesiasticall story Amongst ours a lasting war of discord was kindled which after it hath now for fifteen years been carried on with shamefull contentions can by no means be allayed And now especially when all things appear to be troubled and perverted by the discord of the Bishops and that all things are depraved by them through hatred favour fear inconstancy envy faction covetousuess pride sleepiness and sloth the most with mad counsels and pertinacious endeavours opposing themselves to the sew that are better advised Amongst all these things the people of God and every honest man is become a reproach and scorn Thus that Historian complaining of the consequents of this proceeding But good men lest not the matter so Martinus Turonensis presently refuseth all communion with them who had any hand in the death or banishment of the persons mentioned So doth Ambrose declare himself to have done Epist. 27. as did the rest of the sober godly Bishops of those dayes At length both Ithacius and Idacius the promoters of this work were solemnly excommunicated though one of them had before for very shame foregone his Bishoprick See Prosp. Chron. 389. and I sidore de Viris Illustribus So that here also the judgment and practice of your Church which she is fallen into is publickly eondemned and written against 1300 years ago Should I insist on all the Testimonies that of this kind might be produced Antè diem clauso componet vesper olympo than I could make an end of them I have added this Instance to the former as knowing them to be the two great pillars on which the tottering fabrick of your Church is raised and which if they were removed the whole of it would quickly fall to the ground and you see how long ago they were both publickly condemned 3. Your Papall Oecumenicall Supremacy hath two main Branches 1. Your Popes spirituall Power over all Persons and Churches in the things of Religion 2. His Power over Emperors Kings and Potentates in reference unto Religion or as you speak in ordine ad spiritualia The first your Church stumbled into by many degrees from the dayes of Victor who made the first notable halt to this purpose The latter you stumbled into in the dayes of Gregory the seventh or Hildebrand It were endless to declare how this fall of your Church hath been declared written against opposed condemned by Churches Councels Fathers Princes and learned men in all Ages Some few evidences to this purpose to satisfie your request I shall direct you unto It was written against and condemned by Cyprian Bishop of Carthage and that in a Councell at Carthage an 258. upon an attempt made by Stephen Bishop of Rome looking in some small degree towards that usurped Supremacy which afterwards was attained unto You may if you please there see him rebuked and the practice of your Church condemned The same Cyprian had done no less before in reference unto some actings of Cornelius the predecessor of Stephen Epist. ad Cornel. Though the pretensions of Cornelius and Stephen were modest in comparison of your present vast Claim yet the Churches of God in those dayes could not bear them It is prejudged in the most famous Councell of Nice which assigned bounds unto the Jurisdiction of Bishops giving to severall of them equall Authority Can. 6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let the ancient Customes be observed that as to Egypt Lybia and Pentapolis the Bishop of Alexandria have power over them or the Churches in them for so is the custome of the Bishop of Rome that is to have power over the adjoyning Churches likewise about Antioch and in other Provinces that the ancient Rights of the Churches be preserved Your Great Pope whom you so frequently call the Pastor of Christendome was here but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Bishop in the City or Church of Rome or of the Church in the City of Rome And bounds are assigned unto the Authority which he claimed by custome as to his of Alexandria and Antioch It is true the Church of Alexandria hath some power assigned ascribed or granted unto it above other Churches of Egypt Lybâ—a and Pentapolis for a warranty whereof the usage of the Roman Church in reference unto her neighbour Churches is made use of which to deal freely with you and to tell you my private thoughts was a confirmation of a disorder by your example which you were from that day forward seldome wanting to give plenty of So to this purpose Concil Antioch Can. 13 and 15. an 341. Concil Constantinop Can 2. an 381. But this Canon of the Nicene Fathers openly condemneth and is perfectly destructive of your at present claimed Supremacy Three Councels together in Africk within the space of twenty years warned your Church of her fall into this Heresie and opposed her attempts for the promotion of it The first at Carthage an 407. which
The Councell of Pisa deposed Gregory the twelfth and Benedict the thirteenth for Schismaticks and Hereticks The Councell of Constance accused John the twenty third of abominable Heresie Sess. 11. And that of Basil condemned Eugenius as one à fide devium pertinacem Haereticum Sess. 34. an erroneous Person and obstinate Heretick Other instances of the like nature might be called over manifesting that your Popes have erred and been condemned as persons erroneous and therein the Principle of their In fallibility I would be unwilling to tire your patience yet upon your reiterated desire I shall present you with one Instance more and I will do it but briefly because I must deal with you again about the same matter 5. Your Church is fallen by Idolatry as otherwise so in that Religious Veneration of Images which she useth whereunto you have added Heresie in teaching it for a Doctrine of Truth and imposing the belief of it by your Tridentine Determination on the Consciences of the Disciples of Christ. I know you would fain mince the matter and spread over the corrupt Doctrine of your Church about it with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 silken words as you do the Posts that they are made of with Gold when as the Prophetspeaks of your predecessors in that work you lavish it out of the bagge for that purpose But to what purpose Your first Councell the second of Nice which yet was not wholly yours neither for it condemns Honorius calls Thâ—rnsius the Oecumenicall Patriarch and he expounds in it the Rock on which the Church was built to be Christ and not Peter your last Councell that of Trent your Angelicall Doctor Thomas of Aquine your great Champions Bellarmine and Baronius Suarez Vasquez and the rest of them with the Catholick practise and usage of your Church in all places declare sufficiently what is your faith or rather misbelief in this matter Hence Azorius Institut Lib. 9 cap. 6. tells us that Constans est Theologorum sententia Imaginem èodem honore cultu coli quo colitur id cujus est Imago It is the constant judgement of Divines that the Image is to be worshipped with the same honour and worship wherewith that is worshipped whose Image it is The Nicene Councell by the instigation of Pope Adrian Anathematizeth every one who doth but doubt of the Adoration of Images Act. 7. Thomas contendeth that the Cross is to be worshipped with Latria p. 3. q. 25. a. 4. which is a word that he and you suppose to express Religious worship of the highest sort And your Councell of Trent in their decree about this matter confirmed the Doctrine of that Lestricall convention at Nice whose frauds and impostures were never paralleled in the world but by it's self And do you think that a few ambiguous flourishing words of you an unknown person shall make the world believe that they understand not the Doctrine and Practise of your Church which is proclaimed unto them by the Fathers and Mâ—sters of your perswasion herein and expressed in practises under their eyes every day Do you think it so easie for you Cornieum oculos configere as Cicero tells us an Atturney one Cn Flavius thought to do in going beyond all that the great Lawyers had done before him Orat. pro Muraena We cannot yet be perswaded that you are so great an Interpreter of the Roman Oracles as to believe you before all the Sages before mentioned to whom hundreds may be added And what do you think of this Doctrine and Practise of your Church Hath it been opposed judged and condemned or no The first Writers of Christianity Just In Martyr Irenaeus Origen Tertullian Arnobius Lactantius utterly abhorred the use of all Images at least in Sacris The Councell held at Elibâ—ris in Spain twâ—ve or thirteen years before the famous Assembly at Nice positively forbid all use of Pictures in Churches Can. 36. Plaquit Picturas in Ecclesia esse non debâ—re ne quod colitur adoratur in parietibus depingatur The Councell resolved that Pictures ought not to be in Churches that 〈◊〉 which is worshipâ—d and adored be not painted on walls Cyprian condemns it Epist. ad Demetriad And so generally do all the Fathers as may be gathered in the pittifull endeavours and forgeries of the second Nicene Councell endeavouring to confirm it from them Epiphanius reckons it among the errors of the Gnosticks and himself brake an Image that he found hanging in a Church Epist ad Johan Hierosol Austin was of the same judgement see Lib. de moriâ— Eccles. Cathol cap. 34. Your Adoration of them iâ— expresly condemned by Gregory the great in an Epistle to Serinus Lib. 7. Ep. 111 and Lib. 9. Epist. 9. The Greek Church condemned it in a â—ynod at Constantinople an 775. And one learned man in those last dayes undertaking its defence and indeed the only man of learning that ever did so untill of late they excommunicated and cursed him This was Damascenus concerning whom they used those expressions repeated in the second Nicene Councell 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Unto Mansour of an evil name and in judgement consenting with Saracens Anathema To Mansour a worshipper of Images and writer of Falshood Anathema To Mansour contumelious against Christ and traytor to the Empire Anathema To Mansour a teacher of impiety and perverse interpreter of Scripture Anathema Synod Nic. 2. Act. 6. For that it was Johannes Damascenus that they intended the Nicene Fathers sufficiently manifest in the Answer following read by Epiphanius the Deacon And this reward did he meet withall from the seventh Councell at Constantinople for his pains in asserting the veneration of Images although he did not in that particular pervert the Scripture as some of you do but laid the whole weight of his opinion on Tradition wherein he is followed by Vasquez among your selves Moreover the Western Churches in a great Councell at Frankeford in Germany utterly condemned the Nicene Determination which in your Tridentins Convention you approve and ratifie An. 794. It was also condemned here by the Church of England and the Doctrine of it fully confuted by Albinus Hoveden Annal. an 791. Never was any Heresie more publickly and solemnly condemned than this whereby your Church is fallen from its pristine purity But hereof more afterwards It were no difficult matter to procced unto all the Chief ways whereby your Church is fallen and to manifest that they have been all publickly disclaimed and condemned by the better and founder part of Professors But the Instances Insisted on may I hope prove sufficient for your satisfaction I shall therefore proceed to consider what you offer unto the remaining Principles which I conceived to animate the whole Discourse of your Fiat Lux. CHAP. V. Other Principles of Fiat Lux re-examined Things not at quiet in Religion before Reformation of the first Reformers Diparture from Rome no Cause of Devisions Returnal unto Rome no means of Union YOu proceed unto the fourth Assertion
against Protestants for dishonouring her and all that you say in in your Epistle in its Vindication is railing at me for minding you of your miscarriage My whole Book you say is nothing but calumnies a bundle of slanders a meer quiver of sharp arrows of desolation I am not sorry that you are sensible that it hath arrows in it tending to the desolation of your Abominations But I challenge you to give an instance of any one calumny or slander in it from the beginning to the end If you do not do so I here declare you to be really and highly guilty of that which you would falsly impose upon another Free your self by some one instance if you can if you cannot your reputation will follow your Conscience whether it will be hard for you to find them again The substance of that Chapter is this which is all that I shall now say to your nothing against it Protestants yield to the blessed Virgin all the honour that the Scripture allows them or direct them unto or that the Primitive Church did ascribe unto her and the Papists give her the honour due to God alone whereby they horribly dishonour God and her CHAP. 21. Images Doctrine of the Council of Trent Of the second Nicene The Arguments for the Adoration of Images Doctrine of the antient Church Of the chief Doctrine of the Roman Church Practice of the whole Vain foundations of the pretences for Image Worship examined and disproved YOur next procedure is to your Discourse of Figures or Images and my Animadversions upon it And here you say you will come up close unto me you mean in replying unto what I delivered about it But Sir I thought this had been contrary to your design You professed at the beginning of your Epistle that it was so and have made good use of that declaration of your self by avoiding every thing in my discourse that you found your self pressed with and too difficult a task for you to deal withal Why do you now begin to forget your self and to cast off the pretence you have hitherto shaddowed your self under and excused your self by from tergiversation Surely you think you are upon this head able to say somewhat to the purpose which you despaired of doing upon others of as great importance and therefore now you may argue and dispute which before the design of your Fiat would not permit you to do As far as I can observe you speak nothing at any time but what you think is at present for your turn But whether it have any consistency with that which elsewhere you have delivered you make it not much your concernment to enquire But we shall quickly see whether you had any just ground of encouragement to harness your self and to come up as you speak close to me in this business or no. It may be before the close of our Discourse you will begin to think it had been as well for you to have persisted in your former avoidance as to make this profession of a close dispute and whatever you pretend to the contrary really you have done so You hide the opinion and practice of your Church about the Worship of Images which you seem to be ashamed of instead of defending them and except against some passages in my Animadversions instead of answering the whole which you seem to pretend unto I shall therefore declare what is the true judgement of your Church in this matter and then vindicate the passages of my Discourse which you take notice of in your exceptions and under both heads declare the abomination of your faith and practice in your Doctrine about Images and Worship of them The Doctrine of your Church in this matter I suppose we may be acquainted with from the Determinations of your Councils the explication of your most famous Doctors the Practice of your people and the distinctions used by you to quit your selves from Idolatry in your Doctrine and Practice And you will thereby learn or may at lest to what purpose it is for you to seek to palliate and hide the deformity of that which your Mother and her wise men have made naked to all the world Your Council of Trent is very wary in this matter as it was in most of its other affairs and indeed seeing it was resolved not to give place to the Truth it became it so to be that it might keep any footing in the minds of men and not tumble headlong into contempt and reproach Many difficulties it had to wrestle withal It saw the practice of their Church which was not totally to be deserted least the great mysterie of its Infallibility should be impaired and its nakedness laid open the general complaint on the other side of learned and sober men that under a pretence of Image Worship as horrible Idolatry was brought into the Church of God as ever was practiced amongh the Heathen did not a little perplex it It had also the various and contradictory opinions of the great Doctors of your Church and Masters of your Faith about the kind of Worship which is due to Images all which had great followers ready to dispute endlesly in the maintenance of their several conceits Amidst these rocks and oppositions the Fathers found no way to sail safely but by the help of general and ambiguous words a course which in the like difficulties had frequently before stood them in good stead Wherefore they so expressed themselves that no party at variance among them might think their opinions condemned that the general practice of their Church might be countenanced and yet no particular asserted that was most obnoxious to the exceptions of the Lutherans Thus then they speak Imagines porro Christi Deiparae Virginis aliorum Sanctorum in Templis praeertim habendas retinendas eisque debitum honorem venerationem impertiendam non quod credatur quoniam honos qui eis exhibetur refertur ad Prototypa quae illae representant with much more to that purpose And we may observe That the Decree speaks only of the Images of Christ the blessed Virgin and other Saints not expresly mentioning the Images of God the Father of the Trinity and of the Holy Ghost nor of Angels which they knew to be made and to be had in veneration in their Church nor do they anywhere reject the use makeing or worshipping of them Yea in their following words they do plainly allow of the figuring of the Deity Quod say they si aliquando historias narrationes 〈◊〉 Scripturae cum id indoctae plebi expediet exprimi figurari contigerit doceatur populus non 〈◊〉 divinitatem figurari quasi corporeis oculis conspâ—i vel coloribus aut figuris exprimi possit The words are as most of the rest in this particuâ—ar as an bigâ—ous as the Oracles of Delphos This cannot be denyed to be in them however That the unlearned people are to be taught that the Deity is not painted or figured
in a short time to take off from your keenness in the management of this Charge For I hope you will allow that a man may speak the truth without being a Fanatick truth may get hatred I see it hath done so but it will make no man hatefull Without looking back then to your Fiat Lux I shall out of this very Epistle give you to see that you have certainly failed on the one hand in writing about things which you do not at all understand and therefore discourse concerning them like a blind man about colours and as I fear greatly also on the other for I cannot suppose you so ignorant as not to know that some things in your discourse are otherwise than by you represented Nay and we shall find you at express contradictions which pretend what you please I know you cannot at the same time believe Instances of these things you will be minded of in our progress Now I must needs be very unhappy in discoursing of them if this be Logick and Law that for so doing I must be concluded a Fanatick Fourthly You adde Your pert Assertion so oft occurring in your Book that there is neither reason truth nor honesty in my words is but the overflowings of that former intemperate zeal whereunto may be added what in the last place you insist on to the same purpose namely that I charge you with fraud ignorance and wickedness when in my own heart I find you most clear from any such blemish I do not remember where any of those expressions are used by me that they are no where used thus altogether I know well enough neither shall I make any enquiry after them I shall therefore desire you only to produce the instances whereunto any of the censures intimated are annexed and if I do not prove evidently and plainly that to be wanting in your discourse which is charged so to be I will make you a publick acknowledgement of the wrong I have done you But if no more was by me expressed than your words as used to your purpose did justly deserve pray be pleased to take notice that it is lawfull for any man to speak the truth And for my part 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he said in Lucian I live in the Countrey where they call a Spade a Spade And if you can give any one instance where I have charged you with any failure where there is the least probability that I had in my heart other thoughts concerning what you said I will give up my whole interest in this cause unto you Mala mens malus animus You have manifested your conscience to be no just measure of other mens who reckon upon their giving an account of what they do or say So that you have but little advanced your Charge by these undue insinuations Neither have you any better success in that which in the next place you insist upon which yet were it not like the most of the rest destitute of truth would give more countenance unto your reflection than them all It is that I give you sharp and frequent menaces that if you write or speak again you shall hear more find more feel more more to your smart more than you imagine more than you would which relish much of that insulting humour which the Land groaned under I suppose no man reads this representation of my words with the addition of your own which makes up the greatest part of them but must needs thinks that you have been sorely threatned with some personall inconveniencies which I would cause to befall you did you not surcease from writing or that I would obtain some course to be taken with you to your prejudice Now this must needs savour of the spirit of our late dayes of trouble and mischief or at least of the former dayes of the prevalency of Popery amongst us when men were not wont in such cases to take up at bare threats and menaces If this be so all men that know the Author of the Animadversions and his condition must needs conclude him to be very foolish and wicked foolish for threatning any with that which is as far from his power to execute as the person threatned can possibly desire it to be wicked for designing that evil unto any individuall person which he abhorres in hypothesi to be inflicted on any upon the like account But what if there be nothing of all this in the pretended menaces What if the worst that is in them be only part of a desire that you would abstain from insisting on the personall miscarriages of some that profess the Protestant Religion lest he should be necessitated to make a diversion of your Charge or to shew the insufficiency of it to your purpose by recounting the more notorious failings of the Guides Heads and Leaders of your Church If this be so as it is in truth the whole intendment of any of those expressions that are used by me for the most part of them are your own figments whereever they occurre what Conclusion can any rationall man make from them Do they not rather intimate a desire of the use of moderation in these our contests and an abstinence from things personall for which cause also fruitlesly as I now perceive by this your new kind of ingenuity and moderation I prefixed not my Name to the Animadversions which you also take notice of than any evil intention or design This was my threatning you to which now I shall adde that though I may not say of these Papers what Catullus did of his Verses on Rufus Verum id non impunè feceres nam te omnia secla Noscent qui sis fama loquitur anus Yet I shall say that as many as take notice of this discourse will do no less of your disingenuity and manifold falshood in your vain attempt to relieve your dying Cause by casting odium upon him with whom you have to do like the Bonassus that Aristotle informs us of Hist. Animal lib. 9. cap. 24. which being as big as a Bull but having horns turned inward and unusefull for fight when he is persued casts out his excrements to defile his persuers and to stay them in their passage But what now is the End in all this heap of things which you would have mistaken for Reasons that you aym at it is all to shew how unfit I am to defend the Protestant Religion and that I am not such a Protestant as I would be thought to be But why so I embrace the Doctrine of the Church of England as declared in the 29 Articles and other approved publick writings of the most famous Bishops and other Divines thereof I avow her rejection of the pretended Authority and reall Errours of the Church to be her duty and justifiable The same is my judgment in reference unto all other Protestant Churches in the world in all things wherein they agree among themselves which is in all things necessary that
observed reproved condemned and written against Only unto what shall be discoursed unto this pnrpose I desire liberty to premise these three things which I suppose will be granted Dabitur ignis tamen et si ab inimicis petam The first is that What is by any previously condemned before the embracing and practice of it is no less condemned by them than if the practice had preceded their condemnation Though you should say that your avowing of a condemned errour would make it no errour yet you cannot say that it will render it not condemned for that which is done cannot be undone say you what you will Secondly that Where any opinion or practice in Religion which is embraced and used by your Church is condemned and written against that then your Church which so embraceth and useth it is condemned and written against For neither do Protestants write against your Church or condemn it on any other account but of your opinions and practices and you require but such a writing and condemnation as you complain of amongst them Thirdly I desire you to take notice that I do not this as though it were necessary to the security and defence of the Cause which we maintain against you It is abundantly sufficient and satisfactory unto our consciences in your casting us out from your communion that all the wayes whereby we say your Church is fallen from her pristine purity are judged and condemned in the Scripture the Word of truth whither we appeal for the last determination of the differences between us These things being premised to prevent such evasions as you have accustomed your self unto I shall as briefly as I can give you somewhat of that which you have now twice called for 1. Your Principle and Practise in imposing upon all Persons and Churches a necessity of the observation of your Rites and Ceremonies Customes and Traditions casting them out of Communion who refuse to submit unto this your great Principle of all the Schisms in Europe was contradicted written against condemned by Councels and Fathers in the very first instance that ever you gave of it Be pleased to consider that this concerns the very Life and Being of your Church For if you may not impose your Constitutions observances and customes upon all others actum est there is an end of your present Church State Let us see then how this was thought of in the dayes of old Victor the Bishop of Rome An Dom. 96. condemns and excommunicates the Churches of Asia because they would not joyn with him in the Celebration of Easter precisely on the Lords day Did this practise escape uncontrolled He was written against by the great Irenaeus and reproved that he had cast out of Communion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whole Churches of God for a triviall cause His fact also was condemned in the justification of those Churches by a Councell in Palestine where Theophilus presided and another in Asia called together for the same purpose by Polycrates Euseb. Eccles. Hist. lib. 5. cap. 22 23 24 25. This is an early instance of a considerable Fall in your Church and an open opposition by Councels and Fathers made unto it And do not you S r deceive your self as though the fact of Victor were alone concerned in this censure of Irenaeus and others The Principle before mentioned which is the very life and soul of your Church is condemned in it It was done also in a repetition of the same Instance attempted here in England by you when Austine that came from Rome would have imposed on the Brittish Churches the observation of Easter according to the custome of the Roman Church the Bishops and Monks of these Churches not only rejected your Custome but the Principle also from whence the attempt to impose it on them did proceed protesting that they owned no subjection to the Bishop of Rome nor other regard than what they did to every good Christian. Concil Anglican p. 188. 2. Your Doctrine and Practise of forcing men by carnall weapons corporall penalties tortures and terrors of death unto the embracement of your profession and actually destroying and taking away the lives of them that persist in their dissent from you is condemned by Fathers and Councels as well as by the Scriptures and the light of Nature its self It is condemned by Tertullian Apol. cap. 23. Videte saith he ne hoc ad irreligiositatis elogium concurrat adimere libertatem Religionis interdicere optionem Divinitat is ut non liceat mihi colere quod velim sed cogar colere quod nolim with the like expressions in twenty other places All this externall compulsion he ascribes unto profaneness So doth Clemens Alexand. Stromat 8. So also did Lactantius all consenting in that Maxim of Tertullian Lex nova non se vindicat ultore gladio The Law of Christ revengeth not its self with a punishing sword The Councell of Sardis Epist. ad Alexand. expresly affirms that they disswaded the Emperour from interpesing his Secular power to compell them that dissented And you are fully condemned in a Canon of a Councell at Toledo Cap. de Judae distinc 45. Praecipit sancta Synodns nemini deinceps ad credendum vim inferre cui enim vult Deus miseretur quem vult indurat The holy Synod commandeth that none hereafter shall by force be compelled to the faith for God hath mercy on whom he will have mercy and whom he will he hardeneth Athanasius in his Epistle ad Solitar falls heavily on the Arians that they began first to compell men to their heresie by force prisons and punishments whence he concludes of their Sect atque ita seipsam quam non sit pia nec Dei cultrix manifestat it evidestly declares it self hereby to be neither pious nor to have any reverence of God In a Book that is of some credit with you namely Clemens his Constitutions you have this amongst other things for your comfort 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christ left men the power of their wills free in this matter not punishing them with death temporall but calling them to give an account in another world And Chrysostome speaks to the same purpose on Joh 6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He asked them saying Will you also go away which is the Question of one rejecting all force and necessity Epiphanius gives it as the character of thesemi-Arâ—ians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They persecute them that teach the Truth not confuting them with words but delivering them that believe aright to hatreds wars and swords having now brought destruction not to one City or Countrey alone but to many Neither can you relieve your selves by answering that they were true believers whom they persecuted you punish Hereticks and Schismaticks only for they thought and said the same of themselves which you assert in your own behalf So Salvian informs us Haeretici sunt sed non scientes denique apud nos sunt Haeretici apud se non
imagination and groundless presumption which hath not the least countenance given unto it by Scripture or Antiquity What a perplexed condition must you needs cast men into if they shall attend unto your perswasions to rest on the Pope's unerring guidance for all their Certainty in Religion when the first motive you propose unto them to gain their Assent is a Proposition so far destitute of any cogent Evidence of its Truth or innate Credibility that it is apparently false and easily manifested so to be 3. Were it never so true as it is notoriously false yet it would not one jot promote your design It is about Peter the Apostle and not the Pope of Rome that we are yet discoursing Do you think a man can easily commence per saltum from the imaginary Principality of Peter unto the Infallibility of the present Pope of Rome Quid Pape cum Petro what relation is there between the one and other Suppose a man have so good a mind unto your company as to be willing to set out with you in this ominous stumbling at the threshold what will you next lead him unto You say II. That S t Peter besides his Apostolical Power and Office wherein setting aside the prerogative of his Princedome before mentioned the rest of the Apostles were partakers with him had also an Oecumenical Episcopal Power invested in him which was to be transmitted unto others after him His Office purely Apostolical you have no mind to lay claim unto It may be you dispair of being able to prove that your Pope is immediately called and sent by Christ that he is furnished with a power of working Miracles and such other things as concurred to the constitution of the Office Apostolical and perhaps himself hath but little mind to be exercised in the discharge of that Office by travelling up and down poor despised persecuted to preach the Gospel Monarchy Rule Supremacie Authority Jurisdiction Infallibility are words that better please him And therefore have you mounted this Notion of Peters Episcopacy whereunto you would have us think that all the fine things you so love and dote upon are annexed Poor labouring perfected Peter the Apostle may die and be forgotten but Peter the Bishop harnessed with Power Principality Soveraignty and Vicarship of Christ This is the man you enquire after But you will have very hard work to find him in the Scripture or Antiquity yea the least footstep of him And do you think indeed that this Episcopacy of Peter distinct from his Apostleship is a meet stone to be layed in the foundation of faith It is a thing that plainly overthrows his Apostleship For if he were a Bishop properly and distinctly he was no Apostle If an Apostle not such a Bishop That is if his Care were confined unto any one Church and his residence required therein as the Case is with a proper Bishop how could the Care of all the Churches be upon him How could he be obliged to pass up and down the world in pursuit of his Commission of preaching the Gospel unto all Nations or to travail up and down as the necessity of the Churches did require But you will say that he was not Bishop of this or that particular but of the Church Vniversal But I supposed you had thought him Bishop of the Church of Rome and that you will plead him afterwards so to have been And I must assure you that he that thinks the Church of Rome in the dayes of Peter and Paul was the same with the Church Catholick and not looked on as particular a Church as that of Hierusalem or Ephesus or Corinth is a person with whom I will have as little to do as I can in this matter For to what purpose should any one spend time to debate things with men absurd and unreasonable and who will affirm that it is midnight at noon day I know the Apostolical Office did include in it the power of all other Offices in the Church whatever as the less are included in the greater But that he who was an Apostle should formally also be a Bishop though an Apostle might exercise the whole Power and Office of a Bishop is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 somewhat allyed unto Impossibilities Do you see what a Quagmire you are building upon I know if a man will let you alone you will raise a structure which after you have painted and gilded you may prevail with many harbourless Creatures to accept of an habitation therein For when you have layed your foundation out of sight you will pretend that all your building is on a Rock whereas indeed you have nothing but the rotten posts of such Suppositions as these to support it withall But suppose that Peter was thus a Prince Monarch Apostle Bishop that is a Catholick Particular Officer What is that to you Why III. This Peter came and preached the Gospel at Rome Though you can by no means prove this Assertion so as to make it de fide or necessarily to be believed of any one man in the world much less to become meet to enjoy a place among those fundamentals that are tendred unto us to bring us unto Settlement in Religion yet being a matter very uncertain and of little importance I shall not much contend with you about it Witnesses meerly humane and fallible you have for it a great many and exceptions almost without number may be put in against your Testimonies and those of great weight and moment Now although that which you affirm might be granted you without any reall advantage unto your Cause or the enabling of you to draw any lawfull inferences to uphold your Papal claim by yet to let you see on what sorry uncertain presumptions you build your faith and profession and that in and about things which you make of indispensable necessity unto Salvation I shall in our passage remind you of some few of them which I profess seriously unto you make it not only Questionable unto me whether or no but also somewhat improbable that ever Peter came to Rome 1. Though those that follow and give their assents unto this Story are many yet it was taken up upon the credit and report of one or two Persons as Eusebius manifests Lib. 2. cap. 25. Whether Dionysius Corinthius or Papias first began the Story I know not but I know certainly that both of them manifested themselves in other things to be a little too credulous 2. That which many of them built their Credulity upon is very uncertain if not certainly false namely that Peter wrote his first Epistle from Rome which he calls Babylon in the Subscription of it But wherefore he should then so call it no man can tell The Apocalypse of John who prophesied what Rome should be in after-Ages and thereon what name should be accommodated unto it for its false worship and Persecution was not yet written Nor was there any thing yet spoken of or known among the Disciples whence
abode of Peter there never once mentions him in any of the Epistles which from thence he wrote unto the Churches and his fellow labourers though he doth remember very many others that were with him in the City 7. He asserts that in one of his Epistles from thence which as I think sufficiently proves that Peter was not then there for he saies plainly that in his triall he was forsaken by all men that no man stood by him which he mentions as their sin and prays for pardon for them Now no man can reasonably think that Peter was amongst the number of them whom he complained of 8. The Story is not consistent with what is expresly written of Peter by Luke in the Acts and Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians Paul was converted unto the faith about the 38 th year of Christ or 5 th after his Ascension After this he continued 3 years preaching the Gospel about Damascus and in Arabia In the 40 th or 41 st year of Christ he came to Jerusalem to conferr with Peter Gal. 1. which was the first of Claudius As yet therefore Peter was not removed out of Judaea 14 years after that is either after his first going up to Jerusalem or rather 14 years after his first Conversion he went up again to Jerusalem and found Peter still there which was in the 52 d year of Christ and the 13 th of laudius Or if you should take the date of the 14 years mentioned by him shorter by 5 or 6 years and reckon their beginning from the passion and Resurrection of Christ which is not improbable then this going up of Paul to Hierusalem will be found to be the same with his going up to the Councel from Antioch about the 6 th or rather 7 th year of Claudius Peter was then yet certainly at Hierusalem That is about the 46 th year of Christ some while after you would have the Church to be founded by him at Rome After this when Paul had taken a long progress through many Countreys wherein he must needs spend some years returning unto Antioch Act. 18. 22. he there again met with Peter Gal. 2. 11. Peter being yet still in the East to wards the end of the Raign of Claudius At Antioch where Paul found him if any of your Witnesses may be believed he abode 7 years Besides he was now very old and ready to lay down his mortality as our Lord had shewed him and in all probability after his remove from Antioch spent the residue of his dayes in the Eastern Dispersion of the Jews For 9 ly much of the Apostles work in Palestine among the Jews was now drawing to an end the elect being gathered in troubles were growing upon the Nation and Peter had as we observed before agreed with Paul to take the Care of the Circumcision of whom the greatest number by far excepting only Judaea its self was in Babylon and the Eastern Nations about it Now whether these and the like observations out of the Scripture concerning the Course of S t Peters life be not sufficient to out-ballance the Testimony of your disagreeing Witnesses impartial and unprejudiced men may judge For my part I do not intend to conclude peremptorily from them that Peter was never at Rome or never preached the Gospel there but that your Assertion of it is improbable and built upon very Questionable grounds that I suppose I may safely conclude And God forbid that we should once imagine the present faith of Christians or their Profession of Christian Religion to be built upon such uncertain Conjectures or to be concerned in them whether they be true or false Nothing can be spoken with more reproach unto it than to say that it stands in need of such supportment And yet if this one Supposition fail you all your building falls to the ground in a moment Never was so stupendous a fabrick raised on such imaginary foundations But that we may proceed Let us suppose this also that Peter was at Rome and preached the Gospel there What will thence follow unto your advantage what towards the settlement of any man in Religion or bringing us unto the Unity of faith the things enquired after He was at he preached the Gospel at Hierusalem Samaria Joppa Antioch Babylon and sundry other places and yet we find no such Consequences pleaded from thence as you urge from his Coming to Rome Wherefore you adde 1 V. That St Peter was Bishop of the Roman Church that he fixed his seat there and there he died In gathering up your Principles I follow the footsteps of Bellarmine Baronius and other great Champions of your Church so that you cannot except against the method of our proposals of them Now this Conclusion is built on these three Suppositions 1. That Peter had an Episcopal Office distinct from his Apostolical 2. That he was at Rome 3. That he fixed his Episcopal Sea there whereof the Second is very Questionable the First and Last are absolutely false So that the Conclusion its self must needs be a notable fundamentall Principle of Faith It is true and I shewed it before that the Apostles when they came into any Church did exercise all the Power of Bishops in and over that Church but not as Bishops but as Apostles As a King may in any of the Cities of his dominions where he comes exercise all the Authority of the Mayor or particular Governour of that place where he is which yet doth not make him become the Mayor of the place which would be a diminution of his royall Dignity No more did the Apostles become Local Bishops because of their exercising Episcopal Power in any particular Church by virtue of their Authority Apostolical wherein that other was included as hath been declared And Cui Bono to what purpose serves this fictitious Episcopacy All the Priviledges that you contend for the Assignation of unto Peter were beâ—â—owed upon him as an Apostle or as a believing disciple of Christ. As such he had those peculiar grants made unto him The Keys of the Kingdome of heaven were given unto him as an Apostle or according to S t Austin as a believer as such was he commanded to feed the sheep of Christ. It was unto him as an Apostle or a professing believer that Christ promised to build the Church on the faith that he had professed You reckon all these things among the priviledges of Peter the Apostle who as such is said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or first in order As an Apostle he had the Care of all Churches committed unto him As an Apostle he was divinely inspired and enabled infallibly to reveal the mind of Christ. All these things belonged unto him as an Apostle and what Priviledge he could have besides as a Bishop neither you nor I can tell no more than you can when how or by whom he was called and ordained unto any such office all which we know well enough concerning
his Apostleship If you will then have any to succeed him in the enjoyment of any or of all these Privileges you must bespeak him to succeed him in his Apostleship and not in his Bishoprick Besides as I said before this imaginary Episcopacy which limits and confines him unto a particular Church as it doth if it be an Episcopacy properly so called is destructive of his Apostolical Office and of his Duty in answering the Commission given him of preaching the Gospel to every Creature following the Guidance of Gods Providence and conduct of the Holy Ghost in his way Many of the Ancients I confess affirm that Peter sate Bishop of the Church of Rome but they all evidently use the word in a large sense to imply that during his abode there for that there he was they did suppose be took upon him the especial Care of that Church For the same Persons constantly affirm that Paul also was Bishop of the same Church at the same time which cannot be otherwise understood than in the large sense mentioned And Ruffinus Prafat Recog Clement ad Gâ—udent unriddles the mystery Linus saith he Clâ—tus fuerunt ante Clementem Episcopi in â—rbe Roma sed superstite Petro videlicet at illi Episcopatûs Curam gererent iste verò Apostolatûs simpleret officium Linus and Cletus were Bishops in the City of Rome before Clemens but whilest Peter was yet alive they performing the Duty of Bishops Peter attending unto his office Apostolical And hereby doth he utterly discard the present new plea of the foundation of your faith For though he assert that Peter the Apostle was at Rome yet he denies that he ever sate Bishop there but names two others that ruled that Church at Rome joyntly during his time either in one Assembly or in two the one of the Circumcision the other of the Gentile-Converts And if Peter were thus Bishop of Rome and entred as you say upon his Episcopacy at his first coming thither whence is it that you are forced to confess that he was so long absent from his charge Five years saith Bellarmine but that will by no means salve the Difficulty Seven saith Onuphrius at once and abiding at one place the most part of his time besides being spent in other places and yet allowing him no time at all for those places where he certainly was Eighteen saith Cortefius strange that he should be so long absent from his especiall Cure and never write one word to them for their instruction or consolation whereas in the mean time he wrote two Epistles unto them who it seems did not in any speciall manner belong unto his Charge I wish we could once find our way out of this maze of uncertainties This is but a sad disquisition after Principles of faith to settle men in Religion by them And yet if we should suppose this also wee are farre enough from our journeys end The present Bishop of Rome is as yet behind the curtain neither can he appear upon the stage untill hâ— be ushered in by one pretence more of the same nature with them that went before And this is V. That some one must needs succeed Peter in his Episcopacy But why so why was it not needfull that one should succeed him in his Apostleship Why was it not needfull that Paul should have a successor as well as Peter and John as well as either of them Because you say that was necessary for the Church not so these But who told you so where is the proof of what you averre who made you judges of what is necessary and what is not necessary for the Church of Christ when himself is silent And why is not the succession of an Apostle necessary as well as of such a Bishop as you fancie had it not been better to have had one still residing in the Church of whose Infallibility there could have been no doubt or question One that had the power of working Miracles that should have no need to scare the people by shaking fire out of his slieve as your Pope Gregory the 7 th was wont to do if Cardinall Benno may be believed But you have now carried us quite off from the Scripture and Story and probable conjectures to attend unto you whilest you give the Lord Jesus prudentiall advice about what is necessary for his Church It must needs be so it is meet it should be so is the best of your proof in this matter Only your fratres Walenburgici adde that never any man ordained the Government of a Community more weakly than Christ must be supposed to have done the Government of his Church if he have not appointed such a Successour to Peter as you imagin But it is easie for you to assert what you please of this nature and as easie for any one to reject what you so assert if he please These things are without the verge of Christian Religion 〈◊〉 Towers and Palaces in the ayr But what must S t Peter be succeeded in his Episcopacy and what therewithall his Authority Power and Jurisdiction over all Churches in the world with an unerring judgement in matters of faith But all these belonged unto Peter as far as ever they belonged unto him as he was an Apostle long before you fancie him to have been a Bishop As then his Episcopacy came without these things so for ought you know it might goe without it This is a matter of huge importance in that Systeme of Principles which you tender unto us to bring us unto settlement in Religion and the Unity of Faith would you would consider a little how you may give some tolerable appearance of proof unto that which the Scripture is so utterly silent in yea which lyes against the whole Oeconomy of the Lord Jesus Christ in his ordering of his Church as delivered unto us therein dic aliquem dic Quintiliane colorem But we come now to the Pope whom here we first find latentem post Priâ—cipia and coming forth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with his Claim For you say VI. That the Bishop of Rome is the man that thus suecceds Peter in his Episcopacy which though it were settled at Rome was over the whoee Catholick Church So you say and so you profess your selves to believe And we desire that you would not take it amiss if we desire to know upon what grounds you do so being unwilling to cast away all Consideration that we may embrace a fanatical Credo in this unlikely business We desire therefore to know who appointed that there should be any such succession who that the Bishop of Rome should be this Successor Did Jesus Christ do it we may justly expect you should say He did but if you do we desire to know when where how seeing the Scripture is utterly silent of say such thing Did S t Peter himself do it Pray manifest unto us that by the appointment of Jesus Christ he had power so to do and that
flattering your selves with an imagination of any other Priviledge is that which hath wrought your ruine You are deceived if in this matter you are of Menander's mind who sayed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that all will of its own accord fall out well with you though you sleep securely As for all other Churches in the world besides your own wee have your concession not only that they were and are fallible but that they have actually erred long since and the same hath been proved against yours a thousand times and your best Reserve against particular charges of Errour lyes in this impertinent generall pretence that you cannot erre It may be you will ask for you use so to do and it is the design of your Fiat to promote the â—nquiry If the Church be fallible that is to propose unto us the things and Doctrines that we are to believe How can we with faith infallible believe her proposals And I tell you truly I know not how we can if we believe them only upon her Authority or she propose them to be believed solely upon that account but when she proposeth them unto us to be believed on the Authority of God speaking in the Srciptures we both can and do believe what she teacheth and proposeth and that with faith infallible resolved into the Veracity of God in his Word and we grant every Church to be so farre infallible as it attends unto the only Infallible Rule amongst men When you prove that any one Church is by any promise of Christ any grant of Priviledge expressed or intimated in the Scripture placed in an unerring condition any farther than as in the use of the means appointed she attends unto the only Rule of her preservation or that any Church shall be â—ecessitated to attend unto that Rule whether she will or no whereby she may be preserved or can give us an instance of any Church since the foundation of the world that hath been actually preserved and absolutely from all errour other than that of your own which you know we cannot admit of as you will do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a great and memorable work so we shall grant as much as you can reasonably desire of us upon the account of the Assertion under consideration But untill you do some one or all of these your crying out The Church the Church the Church cannot erre makes no other noyse in our ears than that of the Jews The Temple of the Lord the Temple of the Lord the Law shall not fail did in the ears of the Prophets of old Neither do we speak this of the Church or any Church as though we were concerned to question or deny any just Priviledges belonging unto it thereby to secure our selves from any pretensions of yours but meerly for the sake of Truth For we shall manifest anon unto you that you are as little concerned in the Priviledges of the Church be they what they will more or less as any Society of the Professours of Christianity in the world if so be that you are concerned in them at all So that if the Truth would permit us to agree with you in all things that you assign unto the Church yet the difference between you and us were never the nearer to an end for we should still differ with you about your share and interest therein and for ever abhor your frowardness in appropriating of them all unto your selves And herein as I sayed hath lyen a great part of your ruine Whilest you have been sweetly dreaming of an Infallibility you have really plunged your selves into errours innumerable and when any one hath jogged you to awake you out of your fatall sleep by minding you of your particular errours your dream hath left such an impression upon your imagination as that you think them no errours upon this only ground because you cannot erre I am perswaded had it not been for this one errour you had been freed from many others But this perfectly disiâ—ables you for any candid Inquisition after the Truth For why should he once look about him or indeed so much as take care to keep his eyes open who is sure that he can never be out of his way Hence you inquire not at all whether what you profess be Truth or not but to learn what your Church teacheth and defend it is all that you have to do about Religion in this world And whatever Absurdities or Inconveniencies you find your selves driven unto in the handling of particular points all is one they must be right though you cannot defend them because your Church which cannot erre hath so declared them to be And if you should chance to be convinced of any Truth in particular that is contrary to the determination of your Church you know not how to embrace it but must shut your eyes against its light and evidence and cast it out of your minds or wander up and down with a various assent between Contradictions Well said he of old 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This is flat folly namely for a man to live in rebellion unto his own light But you adde III. That your selves that is the Pope with those who in matters of Religion adhere unto him and live in subjection unto him are this Church in an assent unto whose infallible teachings and Determinations the Vnity of Faith doth consist Could you prove this Assertion I confess it would stand you in good stead But before we enquire aftes that we shall endeavour a little to come unto a right understanding of what you say When you affirm tâ—at the Roman Church is the Church of Christ you intend either that it is the only Church of Christ all the Church of Christ and so consequently the Catholick Church or you mean that it is a Church of Christ which hath an especiall Prerog ative enabling it to require obedience of all the Disciples of Christ. If you say the former we desire to know 1. when it became so to be It was not so when all the Church was together at Hierusâ—lem and no foundation of any Church at all laid at Rome Acts 1. 1 2 3 4 5. It was not so when the first Church of the Gentiles was gathered at Antioch and the Disciples first began to be called Christians for as yet we have no tydings of any Church at Rome It was not so when Paul wrote his Epistles for he makes express mention of many other Church in other places which had no relation unto any Churches at Rome more than they had one to another in their common Profession of the same faith and therein enjoyed equall gifts and Priviledges with it It was not so in the dayes of the Primitive Fathers of the first three hundred years who all of them not one excepted took the Roman to be a local particular Church and the Bishop of Rome to be such a Bishop as they esteemed of all other Churches and Bishops
for our Saviour tells us in the next words that the world cannot receive him that is men of the world carnally minded men cannot do so for he is the peculiar inheritance of those that are called sanctified and do believe Now if ever there was any world in the world any of the world in the earth some many of your Popes have been so and therefore by the testimony of Christ could not receive the Spirit that he promised unto his Church Again it is promised unto the Church Mysticall or Catholick in the first and chiefest notion of it that all her children shall be holy all taught of God and all that are so taught as our Saviour informs us come to him by saving faith you will not I am sure for shame affirm that this Promise hath been made good to all either Children or Fathers of your Church Innumerable other Promises made to the Catholick Church may be instanced in which you can no better or otherwise apply unto your Church than one of your Popes did that of the Psalmist to himself Thou shalt tread on the Lion and the Basilisk when he set his foot on the neck of Fredrick the Emperour But the Arguments are endless whereby the vanity of this pretence may be disproved I shall only adde Sixtly That it is contrary to all Story Reason and common sense For it is notorious that far the greatest part of Christians that belong to the Catholick Church of Christ of have done so from the dayes that Christianity first entred the world successively in all Ages never thought themselves any otherwise concerned in the Roman Church than in any other particular Church of name in the world And is it not a madness to exclude them all from being Christians or belonging to the Catholick Church because they belonged not to the Roman This I could easily demonstrate throughout all Ages of the Church successively But we need not insist longer on the disproving of that Assertion which implyes a flat Contradiction in the very terms of it If any Church be the Catholick it cannot therefore be the Roman and if it be the Roman properly it cannot therefore be the Catholick 2. If you shall say that you mean only that you are a Particular Church of Christ but yet that or such a Particular Church as hath the great Priviledges of Infallibility and universall Authority annexed unto it which makes it of necessity for all men to submit unto it and to acquiesce in its Determinations I answer 1. I fear you will not say so you will not I fear renounce your claim unto Catholicism I have already observed that your self in particular affirm the Roman and Catholick Church to be one and the same It is not enough for you that you belong any way to the Church of Christ but you plead that none do so but your selves 2. Indeed you do not own your selves in this very Assertion to be a Particular Church your claim of Universall Authority and Jurisdiction which you still carry along with you is inconsistent with any such concession 3. To make the best of it that we can what ground have you to give us this Difference between the Churches of Christ that one is fallible another infallible that one hath power over all the rest that one depends on Christ all the rest on that one where is the least intimation given of any such thing in the Scripture where or by whom is it expresly asserted amongst the Antient Writers of the Church Was this Principle pleaded or once asserted in any of the Antient Councels Some ambiguous expressions of particular Persons most of them Bishops of Rome in the declining days of the Church you produce indeed unto this purpose But can any rationall man think them a sufficient foundation of that stupendious fabrick which you endeavour to erect upon them I suppose you will not find any such Persons hasty in their so doing Those who are already engaged will not be easily recovered For new Proselytes unto these Principles you have small ground to expect any unless it be of Persons whose lives are either tainted with sensuality which they would gladly have a refuge for against the accusations of their Consciences or whose minds are entangled with worldly secular advantages suited to their conditions tempers and inclinations Thus I have with what briefness I could shewed you the uncertainty indeed falsness of those Generall Principles from which you educe all your other pleas and reasonings into which they must be resolved And now I pray consider the ground-work you lay for the bringing of men unto a Settlement in the Truth and unto the unity of Faith in opposition to the Scripture which you reject as insufficient unto this purpose The summe of it is an acquiesceney in the proposals and Determinations of your Church as to all things that concern faith and the worship of God The two main Principles that concurre unto it we have apart considered and have found them every way insufficient for the end proposed Neither have they one jot more of strength when they are complicated and blended together as they usually are by you than they have in and of themselves as they stand singly on their own bottoms A thousand falshoods put together will be farre enough from making one Truth A multiplication of them may encrease a Sophism but not adde the least weight or strength to an Argument An army of Cripples will not make one sound man And can you think it reasonable that we should renounce our sure and firm Word of Prophecy to attend unto you in this chase of uncertain Conjectures and palpable untruths Suppose this were a way that would bring you and us to an Agreement and take away the evil of our Differences I can name you twenty that would do it as effectually and they should none of them have any evil in them but only that whch yours also is openly guilty of namely the Relinquishment of our Duty towards God and Care of our own Souls to come to some peace amongst our selves in this world which would be nothing else but a plain Conspiracy against Jesus Christ and rejection of his Authority At present I shall say no more but that he who is lead into the Truth by so many Errors and is brought unto establishments by so many uncertainties hath singular success and such as no other man hath reason to look for Or he is like Robert Duke of Normandy who when he caused the Saracens to carry him into Jerusalem sent word unto his friends in Europe that he was carried into Heaven on the backs of Devils It may also in particular be easily made to appear how unsuited your means of bringing men unto the unity of faith are unto that Supposition of the present Differences in Religion between you and us which you proceed upon For suppose a man be convinced that many things taught by your Church are false and contrary to the
of Episcopacy under a pretence of establishing it and which insteed of asserting them to be Bishops in the Church would have rendred them all Curates to the Pope You would have us believe that Christ hath appointed one Episcopal Monarch in his Church with plenitude of power to represent his own Person which is the Pope and from him all other Bishops to derive their power being substituted by him and unto him unto their work And must not this needs be an acceptable defensative or Plea unto Prelate Protestants which if it be admitted they can be no longer supposed to be made Overseers of their flocks by the Holy Ghost but by the Pope which forfeits their Prelacy and besides asserts his Supremacy which destroyes their Protestancy Upon this occasion you proceed to touch upon somewhat of great importance concerning the Head of the Church wherein you know a great part of the difference between your self and those whom you oppose to consist In your passage you mention the use of true Logick but I fear we shall find that in your Discourse laudatur alget I should have been glad to have found you making what use you were able of that which you commend It would I suppose have directed you to have stated plainly and clearly what is it that you assert and what it is that you oppose and to have given your Arguments Catasceuastical of the one and Anasceuastical of the other but either you know not that way of proceedure or you considered how little advantage unto your end you were like to obtain thereby And therefore you make use only of that part of Logick which teacheth the nature and kinds of Sophisms in particular that of confounding things which ought to be distinguished However your Discourse such as it is shall be examined and that by the rules of that Logick which your self commend You say pag. 51. The Church says I must have a Bishop or otherwise she will not have such a visible Head as she had at first This that you may enervate you tell me that the Church hath still the same Head she had which is Christ who is present with his Church by his Spirit and his Laws and is man God still as much as ever he was and ever the same will be and if I would have any other visible Bishop to be head then it seems I would not have the same head and so would have the same and not the same This is but one part of my answer and that very lamely and imperfectly reported The Reader if he please may see the whole of it Ch. 10. p. 223 c. and therewithall take a specimen of your ingenuity in this Controversie It were very sufficient to render your following exceptions against it useless unto your purpose meerly to repeat what you seek to oppose but because you shall not have any pretence that any thing you have sayd is passed over undiscussed I shall consider what you offer in way of exception to so much of my answer as you are pleased your self to express and as may be supposed thought your self qualified to deal withal Thus then you proceed I cannot in Reason be thought to speak otherwise if we would use true Logick of the Identity of the head then I do of the Identity of the body of the Church This body is not numerically the same for the men of the first age are long ago gone out of the world and another generation come who yet are a body of Christians of the same kind though not numerically the same So do I require that since Jesus Christ as man the head immediate of other believing men is departed hence to the glory of his father that the Church should still have an Head of the same kind as visibly now present as she had in the beginning or else say I she cannot be compleatly the same body or a body of the same kind visible as she was But this she hath not this she is not except she have a visible Bishop as she had in the beginning present with her guiding and ruling under God Christ our Lord is indeed still Man God but his manhood is now separate nor is he visibly present as man which immediately headed his believers under God on whose influence their nature depended His Godhead is still the same in all things not only in its self but in order to his Church also as it was before equally invisible and in the like manner believed but the nature delegate under God and once ruling visibly amongst us by words nnd examples is now utterly withdrawn And if a nature of the same kind be not now delegate with a power of exterior Government as at the first then was then hath not the Church the same head now which she had then qui habet aures andiendi audiat How you have secured your Logick in this Dicourse shall afterwards be considered your Divinity seems at the first view lyable unto just exceptâ—ons For 1. You suppose Christ in his humane nature only to have been the Head of his Church and therefore the absence of that to necessitate the constitution of another Now this supposition is openly false and dangerous to the whole being of Christianity It is the Son of God who is the Head of the Church who as he is man so also is he over all God blessed for ever And as God and man in one person is that Head and ever was since his incarnation and ever will be to the end of the world To deny this is to overthrow the foundation of the Churches faith preservation and consolation it being founded and built on this that he was the Son of the living God Matth. 16. and yet into this supposition alone is your imaginary necessity of the Substitution of another Head in his room resolved 2. You plainly confess that the present Church hath not the same head that the Church had when our Lord Christ conversed with them in the dayes of his flesh That you say was his humane nature delegate under God which being now removed and separate another Person so delegate under God is substituted in his place Which not only deprives the Church of its first Head but also deposeth the humane nature of Christ from that office of headship to his Church which you confess that for a while it enjoyed leaving him nothing but what belongs unto him as God wherein alone you will allow him to be that unto his Church which formerly he was Confessing I say the humane nature of Christ to have been the head of the Church and now denying it so to be you do what lyes in you to depose him from his Office and Throne allowing his humane nature as far as I can perceieve to be of little other use then to be eaten by you in the Mass. 3. You make your intention yet more evident by intimating that the Humane Nature of Christ is now no more Head of
over the flocks but Ministers of their faith By these are the flocks of Christ governed as by shepherds appointed by him the great Bishop and Shepherd of their souls according to the Rules by him prescribed for the rule of the one and obedience of the other But if by governed by another man you mean absolutely supreamly at his will and pleasure then we deny that any Disciple of Christ is in the things of God so to be governed by any man and affirm that to assert it is to cast down Jesus Christ from his Throne But you say if he be not immediate head unto all but Ministers head the people and Christ heads the Ministers this in effect is nothing but to make every Minister a Bishop Why do you not plainly say what it is more then manifest you would have All this while you heed no more the Laws of the Land then constitutions of the Gospel Answ. I have told you how Christ is the immediate Head unto all and yet how he hath appointed others to preside in his Churches under him and that this should infer an equality in all that are by him appointed to that work is most senseless to imagine nor did I in the least intimate any such thing but only that therefore there was no need of any one supream head of the whole Catholick Church nor any place or room left for such an one without the deposition of Christ himself Because the King is the only supream Head of all his people doth it therefore follow that if he appoint Constables to rule in every parish with that allotment of power which by his Laws he gives unto them and Justices of Peace to rule over them in an whole County that therefore every Constable in effect is a Justice of Peace or that there is a sameness in their office Christ is the head of every man that is in the Church be he Bishop or Minister or private man and when the Ministers are said to head the people or the Bishops to head them the expression is improper an inferiour Ministerial subordinate rule being expressed by the name of that which is supream and absolute or they head them not absolutely but in some respect only as every one of them dischargeth the Authority over and towards them wherewith he is intrusted This assertion of Christs sole absolute Headship and denial of any Monarchical state in the Church Catholick but what ariseth from thence doth not as every child may see concern the difference that is about the superiority of Bishops to Ministers or Presbyters For notwithstanding this there are degrees in the Ministry of the Church and several orders of men are engaged therein and whatever there are there might have been more had it seemed to our good Lord Christ to appoint them And whatever order of men may be supposed to be instituted by him in his Church he must be supposed to be the Head of them all and they are all to serve him in the Duties and Offices that they have to discharge towards the Church and one another This headship of Christ is the thing that you are to oppose and its exclusiveness to the substitution of an absolute Head over the whole Catholick Church in his place because of his bodily absence from the earth But this you cast out of sight and instead thereof fall upon the equality of Bishops and Ministers which no way ensues thereon Both Bishops and Presbyters agreeing well enough in the Truth we assert and plead for This you say is contrary to the Gospel and the Law of the Land What is I pray that Christ is the only absolute Head of the Catholick Church No but that Bishops and Ministers are in effect all one But what is that to your purpose will it advantage your Cause what way ever that problem be determined Was any occasion offered you to discourse upon that Question Nay you perceive well enough your self that this is nothing at all to your design and therefore in your following discourse you double and sophisticate making it evident that either you understand not your self what you say or that you would not have others understand you or that you confound all things with a design to deceive for when you come to speak of the Gospel you attempt to prove the appointment of one supream Pastor to the whole Catholick Church and by the Law of the Land the Superiority of Bishops over Ministers as though these things were the same or had any relation one to another whereas we have shewed the former in your sense to be destuctive to the latter Truth never put any man upon such subter fuges and I hope the difficulties that you find your self perplexed withall may direct you at length to find that there is a deceit in your right hand But let us hear your own words As for the Gospel the Lord who had been visible Governour and Pastor of his flock on earth when he was now to depart hence as all the Apostles expected one to be chosen to succeed him in his care so did he notwithstanding his own invisible presence and providence over his flock publickly appoint one And when he taught them that he who was greatest among them should be as the least he did not deny but suppose one greater and taught in one and the same breath both that he was over them and for what he was over them namely to feed not to tyrannize not to domineer and hurt but to direct comfort and conduct his flock in all humility and tenderness as a servant of all their spiritual necessities and if a Bishâ—p be otherwise affected it is the fault of his Person not his place And what is it that you would prove hereby is it that Bishops are above Ministers which in the words immediately foregoing you asserted and in those next ensuing confirm from the Law of the Land is there any tendency in your Discourse towards any such purpose Nay do not your self know that what you seek to insinuate namely the instiâ—ution of one supream Pastor of the whole Catholick Church one of the Apostles to be above and ruler over all the rest of the Apostles and the whole Church besides is perfectly destructive of the Hierarchy of Bishops in England as established by Law and also at once casting down the main if not only foundation that they plead for their station and order from the Gospel For all Prelate Protestants as you call them assert an equality in all the Apostles and a superiority in them to the 70. Disciples whence by a parity of reason they conclude unto he superiority of Bishops over Ministers to be continued in the Church And are you not a fair Advocate for your Cause and well meet for the reproving of others for not consenting unto them But waving that which you little câ—re for and are not at all concerned in let us see how you prove that which we know you
greatly desire to give some countenance unto that is an universal visible Pastor over the whole Catholick Church in the place and room of Christ himself First You tell us that the Apostles expected one to be chosen to succeed Christ in his care But to have one succeed another in his care infers that that other â—â—â—sâ—â— o take and exercise the Care which formerly he haâ— and exercised which in this case is highly blasphemous once to imagine I wish you would â—ake more Care of what you say in things of this nature aâ—d not suffer the impetuous 〈…〉 your interest to cast you upon expressions so 〈◊〉 to thâ— honour oâ— Christ and safety of his Churâ—â— And how do you prove that the Apostles had any such expectations as that which you mention Our Saviour gave them equal commission to teach all Nations told them that as his father had sent him so he sent them that he had chosen them twelve but that one of them was a Devil never that one of them should be Pope Their Institution Instruction Priviledges Charge Calling were all equal How then should they come to have this expectation that one of them should be chosen to succeed Christ in his Care when they were all chosen to serve under him in the continuance of his care towards his Church That which you obscurely intimate from whence this expectation of yours might arise is the contest that was amongst them aâ—â—â—t preheminence Luk. 22. 24. There was a strife â—mongst them which of them should be the greatest 〈◊〉 you suppose was upon their perswasion that one should be chosen in particular to succeed the Lord Christ in his Care whereupon they fell into difference about the place But 1. Is it not somewhat strange unto your self how they should contest about a succession unto Christ in his absence who had not once thought that he would ever be absent from them nor could bear the mention of it without great sorrow of heart when afterwards he began to acquaint them with it 2. How should they come in your apprehension to quarrel about that which as you suppose and contend was somewhile before determined For this contest of yours was somewhile after the promise of the Keys to Peter and the saying of Christ that he would build his Church on the Rock Were the Apostles think you as stupid as Protestants that they could not see the Supremacy of Peter in those passages but must yet fall at variance who should be Pope 3. How doth it appear that this strife of theirs who should be greatest did not arise from their apprehension of an earthly Kingdom a hope whereof according to the then current perswasion of the Judaical Church to be erected by their master whom they believed in as the true Messiah they were not delivered from until after his Resurrection when they were filled with the Spirit of the New Testament Act. 1. Certainly from that root sprang the ambitious desire of the Sons of Zebedee after preheminence in his Kingdom and the designing of the rest of them in this place from the manner of its management by strife seems to have had no better a spring 4. The stop put by our Lord Jesus unto the strife that was amongst them makes it manifest that it arose from no such expectation as you imagine or that at least if it did yet your expectation was irregular vain and groundless For 1. He tells them that there should be no such greatness in his Church as that which they contended about being like to the Soveraignty exercised by and in the Nations of the earth from which he that can shew a difference in your Papal Rule erit mihi magnus Apollo 2. He tells them that his Father had equally provided a Kingdom that is heavenly and eternal for all them that believed which was the only greatness that they ought to look or enquire after 3. That as to their Priviledge in his Kingdom it should be equal unto them all for they should all fit on Thrones judging the twelves tribes of Israel so ascribing equal power Authority and dignity unto them all which utterly overthrows the figment of the supremacy of any one of them over the rest Luk. 22. 30. Matth. 19. 28. And 4. Yet further to prevent any such conceit as that which you suppose them to have had concerning the prelation of any one of them he tells them that one was their Master even Christ and that all they were brethren Mat. 23. 8. so giving them to understand that he had designed them to be perfectly every way equal among themselves So ill have you layed the foundation of your Plea as that it guides us to a full determination of the contrary to your pretence and that given by our Saviour himself with many reasons perswading his Disciples of the equity of it and unto an acquiescency in it And what you add that he presently appointed one to the preheminence you imagine is altogether inconsistent with what you would conclude from the striâ—e about it For the appointment you fancy preceded this contention and had it been real and to any such purpose would certainly have prevented it Thus you do neither prove from the Gospel what you pretend unto namely that Bishops are above Ministers so well do you plead your Cause nor what you intend namely that the Pope is appointed over them all Only you wisely add a caution about what a Bishop ought to be and do de jure and what any one of them may â—o or be de facto because it is impossible for any â—an to find the least difference between the domination which our Saviour expresly condemns and that which your Pope doth exercise Although I know not whither you would think meet to have him devested of that Authority on the pretence whereof he so domineers in the world Finding your self destitute of any countenance from the Gospel you proceed to the Laws of the Land To what purpose to prove that Christ appointed one amongst his Apostles to preside with plenitude of Power over all the rest of them and consequently over the whole Catholick Church succeeding him in his care certainly you will find little countenance in our Laws to this purpose But let us hear your own words again As for the Laws of the Land say you it is there most strongly decreed by the consent and Authority of the whole Kingdom not only that Bishops are our Ministers but that the Kings Majesty is head of the Bishops also in the line of Hierarchy from whose hand they receive both their places and jurisdiction This was established not only by one but by several Parliament Acts both in the reign of King Edward and Queen Elizabeth What will hence follow that there is one universal Bishop appointed to succeed Christ in his Care over the Church Catholick the thing you attempted to prove in the words immediately foregoing Do not the same Laws which assert
his Successors may be added 3. Protestants reach unanimously that it is incumbent on Kings to find out receive embrace and promote the Truth of the Gospel and the Worship of God appointed therein confirming protecting and defending of it by their Regal Power and Authority as also that in their so doing they are to use the Liberty of their own judgements informed by the wayes that God hath appointed for that end independently on the dictates determinations and orders of any other Person or Persons in the world unto whose Authority they should be obnoxious Heathen Kings made Laws for God Dan. 3. chap. 6. Jona 3. And the great thing that we find any of the Good Kings of Judah commended for is that they commanded the worship of God to be observed and performed according unto his own appointment For this end were they then bound to write out a Copy of the Law with their own hands Deut. 14. 18. and to study in it continually To this purpose were they warned charged exhorted and excited by the Prophets that is that they should serve God as Kings And to this purpose are there innumerable Laws of the best Christian Kings and Emperours still extant in the world In these things consists that Supremacy or Headship of Kings which Protestants unanimously ascribe unto them especially those in England to his Royal Majesty And from hence you may see the frivolousness of sundry things you object unto them As first of the Scheme or Series of Ecclesiastical Power which you ascribe to Prelate Protestants and the Laws of the Land from which you say the Presbyterians dissent which you thus express By the Laws of our Land our Series of Government Ecclesiastical stands thus God Christ King Bishop Ministers People The Presbyterian Predicament is thus God Christ Minister People So that the Ministers head in the Presbyterian Predicament toucheth Christs feet immediately and nothing intervenes You Pretend indeed that hereby you do exalt Christ but this is a meer cheat as all men may see with their eyes For Christ is but where he was but the Minister indeed is exalted being now set in the Kings place one degree higher then the Bishops who by Law is under King and Bishops too If I mistake not in my guess you greatly pleased your self with your Scheme wherein you pretend to make forsooth an ocular Demonstration of what you undertook to prove whereas indeed it is as trivial a fancy as a man can ordinarily meet withal For 1. Neither the Law nor Prelates nor Presbyterians ascribe any place at all unto the Kings Majesty in the Series of Spiritual Order he is neither Bishop nor Minister nor Deacon or any way authorized by Christ to convey or communicate power meerly spiritual unto any others No such thing is claimed by our Kings or declared in Law or asserted by Protestants of any sort But in the series of exteriour Government both Prelate Protestants and Presbyterians assign a Supremacy over all Persons in his Dominions and that in all Causes that are inquirable and determinable by or in any Court exercising Jurisdiction and Authority unto his Majesty All sorts assign unto him the Supreme place under Christ in external Government and Jurisdiction None assign him any place in Spiritual Order and meerly Spiritual Power Secondly If you place Bishops on the Series of exterior Government as appointed by the King and confirmed by the Law of the Land there is yet no difference with respect unto them 3. The Question then is solely about the Series of Spiritual order and thereabout it is confessed there are various apprehensions of Protestants which is all you prove and so do magno conatu nugas agere who knows it not I wish there were any need to prove it But Sir this difference about the Superiority of Bishops to Presbyters or their equality or Identity was agitated in the Church many and many a hundred year before you or I were born and will be so probably when we are both dead and forgotten So that what it makes in this dispute is very hard for a sober man to conjecture 4. Who they are that pretend to exalt Christ by a meer asserting Ministers not to be by his institution subject to Bishops which you call a cheat I know not nor shall be their advocate they exalt Christ who love him and keep his Commandments and no other 2. You may also as easily discern the frivolousness of your exclamation against Protestants for not giving up their differences in Religion to the Vmpirage of Kings upon the assignment of that Supremacy unto them which hath been declared When we make the King such an Head of the Catholick Church as you make the Pope we shall seek unto him as the fountain of our faith as you pretend to do unto the Pope For the present we give that honour to none but Christ himself and for what we assign in profession unto the King we answer it wholly in our practical submission Protestants never thought nor said that any King was appointed by Christ to be supreme infallible Proposer of all things to be believed and done in the Worship of God no King ever assumed that power unto himself It is Jesus Christ alone who is the Supreme and absolute Lawgiver of his Church the Author and finisher of our Faith and it is the honour of Kings to serve him in the promotion of his Interest by the exercise of that Authority and duty which we have before declared What unto the dethroning and dishonour as much as in you lyeth of Christ himself and of Kings also you assign unto the Pope in making him the Supreme head and fountain of their faith hath been already considered This is the substance of what you except against Protestants either as to Opinion or Practice in this matter of deference unto Kingly Authority in things Ecclesiastical What is the sense of your Church which you prefer unto your sentiments herein I shall after I have a little examined your present pretensions manifest unto you seeing you will have it so from those who are full well able to inform us of it Fas mihi Pontificum sacrata resolvere jura atque omnia ferre sub auras â—Siqua tegunt tenear Romaenec ligebus ullis For your own part you have expressed you seâ—f in this matter so loosely generally and ambiguously that it is very hard for any man to collect from your words what it is that you assert or what you deny I shall endeavour to draw out your sense by a few enâ—quiries As 1. Do you think the King hath any An â—ority vested in him as King in Ecclesiastical affairs and over Ecclesiastical Persons You tell us That Catholicks observe the King in all things as well Eeclesiastick as Civil pag. 59. that in the line of Corporal power and Authority the King is immediately under God p. 61. with other words to the same purpose if they are to any purpose at all
and righteousness of his wayes against their proud repinings Pray be as angry with me as you please but take heed of justifying any against God The task will prove too hard for you And yet to this purpose are your following contemptuous expressions For unto my observation that after these times the Goths and Vandals with others overflowed the Christian world you subjoyn either to punish them we may believe or to teach them how to mend their manners Sir I know not what you believe or do not believe or whither you believe any thing of this kind or no. But I will tell you what I am perswaded all the world believes who know the story of those times and are not Atheists and it is that though the Goths and Vandals Saxons Huns Francks and Longobards with the rest of the barbarous Nations who divided the Provinces of the Western Empire amongst them had it may be no more thoughts to punish the Nations professing Christianity for their sins wickedness and superstition though one of their Chief Leaders proclaimed himself the Scourge of God against them then had the King of Babylon to punish Judah for her sins and Idolatry in especial yet that God ordered them no less then he did him in his Providence for those ends which you so scorn and despise that is either to punish them for their sins or to provoke them to leave them by repentance Take heed of being a scoffer in these things least your bands be made strong God is not unrighteous who exerciseth judgement The Judge of all the world will do right Nor doth he afflict any people much less extirpate them from the face of the earth without a Cause Many wicked provoking sinful Idolatrous Nations he spareth in his patience and forbearance and will yet do so but he destroyes none without a Cause And all that I intended by the remembrance of the sins of those Nations which were exposed unto devastation was but to shew that their destruction was of themselves You leap unto another clause which you rend out of mydiscourse that these Pagans took at last unto Christianity and say happily because it was a more loose and wicked life then their own Pagan Profession But are you not ashamed of this trifling doth this disprove my Assertion Is it not true Did they not do so Did not the above mentioned Nations when they had settled themselves in the Provinces of the Empire take upon them the Profession of the Christian Religion Did not the Saxons do so in Brittany the Francks in Gaule the Goths and Longobards in Italy the Vandals in Africk the Huns in Bannonia I cannot believe you are so ignorant in these things as your exceptions bespeak you Nor do I well understand what you intend by them they are so frivolous and useless nor surely can any man in his right wits suppose them of any validity to impeach the evidence of the known stories which my discourse relates unto But you lay more weight on what you cull out in the next place which as you have layed it down is That these now Christened Pagans advanced the Popes authority when Christian Religion Was now grown degenerate and say now we come to know how the Roman Bishop became a Patriarch above the rest by means namely of the new converted Pagans But I wonder you speak so nicely in their chief affair As though that were the Question whether the Bishop of Rome according unto some Ecclesiastical constitutions were made a Patriarch or no and that whither he were not esteemed to have some kind of preheminence in respect of those other Bishops who upon the same account were so stiled When we have occasion to speak of this Question we shall not be backward to declare our thoughts in it For the present you represent the Pope unto us as the absolute Head of the Church Catholick the supream Judge of all controversies in Religion the sole fountain of Unity and spring of all Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction c. Nor did I say that your Pope was by these Nations after their conversion advanced unto the height you labour now to fix him in but only that his Authority was signally advanced by them which is so certain a Truth that your own Historians and Annalists openly proclaim it and you cannot deny it unless you would be esteemed the most ungrateful Person in the world But this is your way and manner all that is done for you is meer duty which when it is done you will thank no man for Are all the Grants of Power Priviledges and Possessions made unto your Papal See by the Kings of this Nation both before and since the Conquest by the Kings of France and Emperours of the Posterity of Charles the Great by the Kings of Poland Denmark and Sweden by the Longobards in Italy not worth your thanks It is well you have got your ends the net may be cast away when the fish is caught But an odd chance you say it was that they should think of advancing him to what they never heard either himself or any other advanced unto before among Christians but yet this was done and no such odd chance neither Your Popes had for a season before been aspiring to greater heights then formerly they had attained unto and used all wayes possible to commend themselves and their Authority not what truly it was but what they would have it to be unto all with whom they had to do and thereupon by sundry means and artifices imposed upon the nations some undue conceits of it though it was not fully nor so easily admitted of as it may be you may imagine But in many things they were willing to gratifie him in his pretensions little knowing the tendency of them many things he took the advantage of their streights and divisions to impose upon them many things he obtained from them by flattery and carnal compliances untill by sundry serpentine advances he had brought them all unto his bow and some of the greatest of them to his stirrup It was yet more odd say you and strange that all Christendome should calmly submit unto a power set up anew by young converted Pagans no Prince or Bishop either here or of any either Christian Kingdom either then or ever after to this day excepting against it Had not all the Bishops and Priests of Africa Egypt Syria Thrace Greece and all the Christian world acknowledged by an hundred experiments the supream Spiritual Authority of the Roman Patriarch in all times before this deluge of Goths and Vandals But why do I expostulate with you who write these things not to judicious Readers but to fools and children who are not more apt to tell a truth then to believe a lye But Sir you shall quickly see whose discourse yours or mine stand in need of week and credulous Reader That which you have in this place to oppose is only this that your Papal Authority received a signal advancement
was Let a man be never so partially addicted unto him and his work he must acknowledge that their frivolousness and impertinency considering the work he had in hand discover somewhat besides learning and wisdom in him So also did his driving of 10000. men besides an innumerable company or women and children altogether into the river Swale in Yorkshire and there causing them to baptize one another His Contest with the British Bishops about the time of the observation of Easter breaking the peace for a Circumstance of a Ceremony that hath cost the Church twenty times more trouble then it is worth is of the same nature And I desire to know whence you have your story of his inexpressible suffering here amongst us All that I can find informs us that he was right meetly entertained by King Ethelbert at his first Landing by the means of Berda his wife a Christian before his coming with all plentifull provision for himself and his companions The next news we hear of him is about his Archiepiscopacy his Pall and his Throne from whence he would not rise to receive the poor Brittans that came to confer with him Further of his sufferings as yet I can meet with nothing And these are the things which you thought your self able to except against in my story or the Progress and Declension of Religion The summ of it I shall now comprize in some few Assertions which you may do well to consider and get them disproved 1. The First is That the Gospel was preached in this Island in the dayes of the Apostles by persons coming from the East directed by the Providence of God for that purpose most probably by Joseph of Arimathea in chief without any respect to Rome or mission from thence 2. That the Doctrine preached then by them was the same that is now publickly professed in England and not that taught by the Church of Rome where there is a discrepancy between us 3. That the story of the coming of Fugatius and Damianus into the Province of Brittain sent by Eleutherius unto Lucius is uncertain improbable and not to be reconciled unto the state and condition of the Affairs in these Nations at the time supposed for its accomplishment 4. That about the fourth fifth and sixth Centuries the Generality of the Professors of Christian Religion in the world were wofully declined from the 〈◊〉 zeal piety faith love and purity in the worship of God which their Predecessors in the same Profession glorified God by and that in particular the 〈◊〉 Church was much degenerated 5. There the Bishops of Rome for five hundred years never laid claim unto that Soveraign Power and Infallibility which they have challenged since the dayes of Pope Gregory the seventh 6. That the Bishops of Rome in that space of time pretending unto some disorderly Supremacy over other Bishops and Churches though incomparably short of their after and present pretences were rebuked and opposed by the best and most learned men of those dayes 7. That the distraction of the Provinces of the Western part of the Empire by Goths Vandals Hunns Saxons Alans Franks Longobards and their associates was to less just in the holy Providence of God upon the account of the moral evils and Superstitions of the Professors of Christianity amongst them then was that which afterwards ensued of the Eastern Provinces by the Saracens and Turks 8. That these Nations having planted themselves in the â—rovinces of the Empire together with Christianity either received anew or retained many Pagaâ—ish Customs Ceremonies Rites and Opinions therewithal 9. That their Kings by Grants of Priviledges Donations and Concessions of Power made partly out o blind zeal partly to secure some interests of their own exceedingly advanced the Papal Power and confirmed their formerly rejected pretensions 10. That when they began to perceive and feel the pernicious effects and consequences of their own facility their grants being made a ground of farther incroachments they opposed themselves in their Laws and Edicts and Practices against them 11. That there was on all hands a sad declension in the Western Church in Doctrine Worship and Manners continually progressive unto the time of Reformation These are the principal Assertions on which my story is built and which it supposeth If you have a mind to get them or any of them called to an account and examined I shall if God will and I live give them their confirmation from such undoubted records as you have no just cause to except against CHAP. 18. Reformation of Religion Papal contradictions Ejice ancillam SOme of your following leaves are such as admit of no useful consideration Wilful mistakes diversions from the Cause under debate with vain flourishes make up both pages in them I shall pass through them briefly and give you some account from them of your self and your prevarication in the Cause whose defence you have undertaken Pag. 75. you undertake the thirteenth chapter of the Animadversions which discusseth the Story of the Reformation of Religion which you took up on common fame Fama malum quo non aliud velocius ullum And that you may be able to say somewhat to the discourse before you or to make a pretence of doing so you wholly pass by every thing that is contained in it and impose upon me that which is not in it at all which you strenuously exagitate For whereas a little to take off your edge in reflecting on the Persons whom you supposed instrumental in the Reformation especially King Henry the eighth I minded you how easie a thing it was to deprive you of your pretended Advantage by giving you an account oâ— the wicked lives with the brutish and Diabolical practâ—ces of many of your Popes whom you account the Heads of your Church and the very Center wherein all the lines of your Profession meet you feign as though I had imposed all the crimes I intimated them to be guilty of and many more whose names you â—eap together upon Popery or the Relâ—gion that you profess yea that I should say that it is nothing else but only an heap of the wickconâ—sses by you enumerated Now this I did not do but you feign it of your own heads that you may have somewhat to speak against and a pretence of intimating in the close of your discourse that you have considered the Chapter about Reformation whereas in truth you have not spoken one word unto it nor unto any thing contained in it And yet when you have done as if you had been talking about any thing wherein I am in the least measure concerned you come in in the close with your grave advice That I should take heed of blaspheming that innocent Catholick flock which the Angels of God watch over to protect them As though a man could not remember the wicked crimes of your nocent Popes but he must be thought to blaspheme the innocent flock of Christ which never had greater enemies in this world
as though it could be seen or expressed by colours but for some other end as it seems for their instruction which indeed is honest and fair dealing for they plainly tell them that by their pictures they teach them lyes the language of the Picture being that God may be so pictured whereby all your pictures and Images of God the Father as an old man of the Trinity as one person with three faces and the Holy Ghost as a Dove are approved 2. Religious Worship of Images is confirmed due honour and veneration or worship is to be given unto them saith the Council Now it is not mutual complement they are discoursing about There is no such intercourse between their Images and them ordinarily though sometimes civil salutations have passed between them Nor is it any token of Civil Subjection for Images have no eminency or authority of that kind but it is divine or religious veneration and worship which they affirm is to be assigned unto them 3. They say that due honour and veneration that is religious is to be assigned unto them but what in especial that honour and worship is they do not determine whither it be the same that is due to the sâ—mplar as some the most of your Divines think or whether it be an honour of some inferiour nature as others contend pugnant ipsi ne potesq the Synod leaves them where it found them sufficiently at variance among themselves 4. They further assert the worship that is given by them to Images to be religious or divine in that they affirm the honour done to the Image is referâ—ed unâ—â—â—he Prototype which it doth represent Now suppose this be Jesus Christ himself I suppose that they will grant that all the honour we yield to him by any way or means is divine or religious and therefore so consequently that which they would have to be given unto his Image that is a stock or stone which they fancy so to be must be so aâ—so Now Sir you may see from hence what it is that you are to speak unto and to defend or else to hold your peace in this matter And I shall yet make it a little more plain unto you Your Trent Council approves and commends the second Council of Nice as that which taught and confirmed that Doctrine and practice about Images and their Worship which your Church allows I shall therefore briefly let you know what was the judgement of that Council and what was the Doctrine and Practice confirmed in it under many dreadful Anathematisms This Second of Nice or Pseudo-Synod of the Greeks as it is called by the Council of Frankford whereunto we are sent by the Tridentine Fathers to be instructed in the due Worship of Images was assembled by the Authority of Irene the Empress a proud imperious woman her Son Constantine whose eys she afterwards put out and thrust him into a Monastery in the year 490. Tharasius was then Patriarch of Constantinoples and Hadrian the first Bishop or Pope of Rome This man most zealously or superstitiously addicted unto the worship of Images and that contrary to the judgement of most of the Western Churches as soon afterwards appeared in the Council holden at Frankford by the Authority of Charls the Great had a particular advantage both over the Empress and the Patriarch of Constantinople The Eastern Empire being then greatly weakened by its own intestine divisions and pressed on all sides by the Saracens the Empress began to entertain some hopes of relies from the French in the West whose power was then grown very great and to that end sollicited a marriage for her Son with the daughter of Charls the great and supposed that she might be helped therein by the mediation of Hadrian the Bishops of Rome having no small hand in the promotion of the attempt of Pipin and Charls the Great for the Crown of France and afterwards for the conquest of Italy and Germany And besides she was a woman her self zealously addicted to that kind of superstition which Hadrian had espoused as having in the time of Leo her Husband kept her Images in private contrary unto what she had solemnly sworn unto her Father as Credenus relates in his Annals As for Tarasius he was contrary to all Ecclesiastical Canons of a meer Lay-man at once per saltum made Patriarch of Constantinople which Hadrian upon his first hearing of greatly exclaimed against and refused to receive him into the society of Patriarchs upon his sending of his significatory Epistle This is fully declared in the Epistle of Hadrian extant in the Acts of the Council But yet afterwards bethinking himself how usefull this man might be unto his design in getting the worship of Images established in the East he declares that if he will use means to get the Heresie as he called it of the Image-opposers extirpated and their veneration established he would consent to his Election and Consecration or else not Finding how the matter was like to go with him this Lay-Patriarch undertakes the work and effectually prosecutes it in this Synod assembled at Nice by the Authority of Irence the Empress and her Son Constantine But by the way when the Council was assembled he omitted not the opportunity of improving his own interest getting himself stiled Oecumenical or Vniversal Patriarch which Anastasius Bibliothecarius in his dedication of his Translation of the Acts of this Convention unto John the eighth bewayles and ascribes it unto the flattery of the Greeks The frauds forgeries and follies of this Council and ignorance and dotage of the Fathers of it have been sufficiently by others discovered Our present concernment is only to enquire First What they taught concerning Image Worship and Secondly How they proved what they taught seeing unto them we are sent by the Tridentine Decree to be instructed in your faith in this matter First They make the having and use of Images in the Worship of God of indispensible necessity so that they anathematize and cast out of the Communion of the Church all that refuse to receive and use them according to their prescript Yea they proceed so far as in their approbation of the Confession of Theodosius the Bishop of Ammoria as to denounce an Anathema against them that do but doubt of their reception 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so he closeth his Confession which they all approve as Orthodox Anathema to them that are ambiguous or doubtful in their minds and do not confess with their hearts ex animo that Sacred Images are to be worshipped wherein they and and you with them add Schism to their Idolatry casting out of the Churches those who offend neither against the Gospel nor the determination of any General Council of old making the Rule of your Communion to consist in a sorry piece of Will-worship of your own invention which doubles the crime of your Superstition and layes an intolerable intanglement upon the Consciences of men which are perswaded from the
And again The light of thy Countenance is signed or lifted up upon us Psal. 4. Si hoc non sit testimoniorum satis ego nescio quid sit satis he must be very refractory and deserve a world of Anathematismes that is not convinced by all these testimonies that Images ought to be worshiped But quod non dant proceres dabit Histrio if the Scripture will not do it Miracles shall Of these we have an endless number heaped up by the good fathers to prove their Doctrine and justifie their practice The worst is that Tharasius almost spoiles the market by acknowledging that the images in their dayes would work none of the miracles they talked of so that they had them all upon hearesay Act. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But if any should say Why do our images work no miracles to them we answer because as the Apostles saith Signes are for unbelievers not for them that believe And yet the misadventure of it is that the most of the Miracles which they report and build their faith upon were wrought as by so amongst their chiefest believers And what were the Miracles themselves they boasted of such a heap of trash such a fardle of lyes as the like were scarce ever heaped together unless it were in the Golden Legend Hadrian insists on the leprosie and cure of Constantine as loud a lye as any in the Talmud or Alcoran Theodorus of Myra tells us of a Deacon that dreamed he saw one in his sleep whom he took to be St. Nicholas Ac. 4. Another tells us a tale of one that strock a nail in the forehead of an image and was troubled with a pain in his head untill it was pulled out Another dreamed that the blessed Virgin brought Cosma and Damiana to him and commanded them to cure him of his distemper One mans daughter anothers wife is helped by those images And they all consent in the story of the image of Christ made without hands or humane help by God alone 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he sent to Abgarus King of the Edessenes as bellowing a lye as any in the heard So true was it that the Council of Franckeford affirmed of this Idolatrous Conventicle that they endeavoured to confirm their superstition by feigned wonders and old-wives tales Sir This is the Doctrine this the Confirmation of it which we are directed unto and enjoyned to embrace by your Tridentine decree This is that yea and more also as you will hear by and by that you are bound to maintain and make good if you intend to say any thing to the purpose about figures or Images For you must not think by your sleight florishes to blind the eyes of men in these dayes as you have done formerly Own your Doctrine and practice or renounce it This Tergiversation is shameful and you will yet find your self farther pressed with the doctrine of Chiefest pallars of your Church and the publick practice of it For though this superstitious Conventicle at Nice departed from the faith of the antient Church and was quickly reproved and convinced of folly by persons of more learning sobriety and modesty then themselves in the very age wherein they lived yet it rose not up unto the half of the Abominations in the filth and guilt whereof your Church hath since rolled it self And yet because I presume you are well pleased with these Nicenians who gave so great a list to the setting up of your Idols I shall give you a brief account both what was the judgement and practice of them that went before them in this matter as also of some that followed after them with joynt consent detesting your folly and superstition You tell us somewhere in your Fiat that the Primitive Christians had the picture or half portraiture of Christ upon their Altars I suppose you did not invent it your self I wish you had told us of the Legend that suggested it unto you For you seem in point of story to be conversant in such learned Authors as few can trace you in If you please to have a little patience I shall mind you of some that give us another account of things in those dayes 1. Some there are of the first Christians who give us an account of the whole worship of God with the manner and form of it which was observed in their Assemblies in their dayes So doth Justin Martyr in his Apologies Tertullian in his Origen against Celsus with some others Now in none of these is there any one word concerning Images their use or their worship in the service of God although they descend to describe very minute particulars and circumstances of their way and proceeding 2. Some there are who give an account of the persecutious of several Churches with the out-rages of the Pagans against their Assemblies the Scriptures all the ordinances and worship as do those golden fragments of the first and best Antiquity the Epistles of the Churches of Vienna and Lions to the parishes of Asia of the Church of Smyrna about the Martyrdome of Polycarpus preserved and recorded by Eusebius and yet make no mention of any figures pictures or Images of Christ the Blessed Virgin or his Apostles or of any rage of their adversaries against them or of any spite done unto them which they would not have omitted had there been any such in use amongst them 3. There are besides these some unquestionable remnants of the conceptions that the Wisest and soberest of the heathen had concerning the Christians and their worship as in the Epistle of Pliny about their Assemblies and the rescript of Trajan as also in Lucian Philopatris in none of which is any intimation of the Nicene Images or their Adoration It may be you will undervalue this consideration because built upon testimony negatively when it doth not follow that because such and such mentioned them not therefore they were not then in use or being But Sir an Argument taken from the absolute silence of all approved Authors concerning any thing of importance supposed to be or happen in their dayes and who would have had just occasion to make mention of it had any such thing then been in rerum naturâ is as great an evidence and of as full a certainty as the monuments of times are capable of Is it possible for any rational man to conceive that if there had been such an use and veneration of Images in the primitive Churches as is now in the Roman or that the reception and veneration of them was made the tessara of Church Communion as it is by the Nicene Conventicle that all the first Writers of Christianity treating expresly and purposely of the Assemblies of the Christians and the worship of God in them with the manner and circumstances thereof would have been utterly silent of them or that those who set down and committed to record all the particularities of the Pagans rage in scattering their
in sacrificing according to the Order of that then in preaching of the Mysterie and Doctrine of this Did never any man inform you that one end of preaching the word was to regenerate the whole souls of men and to beget them anew unto God that it was also to open their eyes and to illuminate them with the saving knowledge of God in Christ that it was to beget and encrease faith in them that it was to be a means of their growth in Grace and in the knowledge of God that the Word preached is profitable for reproof Correction Dotrine and instruction in righteousness that it is appointed as the great means of working the souls of men into a likeness and conformity unto the Lord Jesus or the changing of them into his Image that it is appointed for the refreshment of the weary and consolation of the sorrowful and making wise of the simple Did you never hear that the word preached hath its effect upon the understanding and will as well as upon the Affections and upon these consequentially only unto its efficacy on them if they are not deluded Is growth in knowledge faith grace holiness conformity unto Christ Communion with God for which end the word is commanded to be preached nothing at all with you is being made wise in the mysterie of the Love of God in Christ to have an insight into and some understanding of the unsearchable treasures of his Grace and by all this the building up of souls in their most holy faith of no value with you Are you a stranger unto these things and yet think your self a meet person to perswade your Countreymen to forsake the Religion they have long professed and to follow you they know not whither Or do you know them and yet dare to thrust in your scurrility to their exclusion Plainly Sir the most charitable judgement that I can make of this Discourse of yours is that it proceeds from ignorance of the most important truths and most necessary works of the Gospel You next proceed to your plea from the Cherubims set up by Moses in the Holy place over the Ark and thence you will needs wrest an argument for your Images and the worship of them Although your Vasquez is ashamed of it and hath cashiered it long ago and that worthily as not at all belonging unto thus matter For 1. The Cherubims were not Images to which you say since the real Cherubims are not made of beaten Gold those set up by Moses must be only figures but it is of Images that we are speaking precisely and not in general of figures figures may include Types and Hieroglyphicks and any representation of things Images represent Persons and such alone are those about which we treat And if a Person be not presented by an Image it is not his Image Now I pray tell me what personal subsistences these Cherubims with their various wings and faces did represent Do you believe that they give you the shape and likeness of Angels It is true John the Bishop of Thessalonica in your Synod of Nice with the approbation of the rest of his company affirms that it was the opinion of the Catholick Church that Angels and Archangels were not altogether incorporeal and invisible but to have a slender body of ayre or fire Act. 5. But are you of the same mind or do you not rather think that the Catholick Church was belyed and abused by the Synod And if they are absolutely incorporeal and invisible how can an Image be made of them Should a man look on the Cherubims as Images of Angels would not the first thing they would teach him be a ley namely that Angels are like unto them which is the first language of any Image whatever The truth is the Mosaical Cherubims were meer Hieroglyphicks to represent the constant tender love and watchfulness of God over the Ark of his Covenant and the people that kept it and had nothing of the nature of Images in them 2. I say suppose of them what you please yet they were not set up to be adored as your Images are To which you reply It is not to my purpose or yours that they were not set up to be adored for Images in Catholick Churches are not set up for any such purpose nor do I anywhere say so No man alive hath any such thought no Trâ—â—â—tion no Council hath delivered it no practice infers it And do you think meet to talk at this rate have you no Tradition amongst you that you plead for the Adoration of Images hath no Council amongst you determined it doth not your practice speak it were you awake when you wrote these things did you never read your Tridentine Decree or the Nicene Canons commended by them is not the adoration of Images asserted an hundred times expresly in it hath no man alive such thoughts are not only Thomas and Bonaventure but Bellarmine Gregory de Valentia Baronius Suarez Vasquez Azorius with all the rest of your great Champions now utterly defeated and have not one man left to be of their judgement I would be glad to hear more of this matter Speak plainly do you renounce all adoration and worship of Images is that the Doctrine of your Church prove it so and I shall publickly acknowledge my self to have been a long time in a very great mistake But it was for this cause that I gave you a little Image of the Doctrine and practice of your Church in this matter at the entrance of our discourse foreseeing how you would prevaricaâ—e in our progress Come Sir if Image Worship be such a shameful thing that you dare not avow it deal ingenuously and acknowledge the failings of your Church in this matter and labour to bring her to amendment If you think otherwise and in truth yet like it well enough dâ—al like a man and dare to deteâ—d it at least as well as you can and more no 〈◊〉 can look for at your hands You mention somewhat of the different opinions of your Schoolmen in this matter which you sleight But Sir I tell you again that you and all your Masters are agreed that Images are to be adored and venerated that is worshipped and their disputes about that honour that rests absolutely on the Image and that which passeth on to the Prototype with the kind of the one and the other are such as neither themselves nor any other do understand You tell us indeed All Catholick Councils and practice declare such sacred figures to be expedient assistants to our thoughts in our divine meditations and prayers and that is all you know of it But if you intend Councils and practice truly Catholick or Primitive you can give no instance of allowing so much to Images as here you ascribe unto them no not one Council can you produce to that purpose for some hundreds of years but a constant current of Testimonies for the rejection of such pretend expediencies and assistances
able to except against in that discourse will speedily appear In the mean time pray take notice that I have no eagerness to oppose either you or your Church so you will let the Truth alone I shall for ever let you alone without opposition It was the defence of that and not an opposition to you that I was engaged in In the same design do I still persist in the vindication of what I had formerly written and shall assure you that you shall never be opposed by me but only so far and wherein I am fully convinced that you oppose the Truth Manifest that to be on your side and I shall be ready to embrace both you and it For I am absolutely free from all respects unto things in this world that should or might retard me in so doing But that I may hereafter speak somewhat more to the purpose in opposition unto you or else give my consent with understanding unto what you teach pray inform me how I may come to the knowledge of the customs of your Church which you say I neither do nor will understand I have read your Councils those that are properly yours your Mass Book and Rituals many of your Annalists or Historians with your writers of Controversies and Casuists all of the best note same and reputation amongst you Can none of them inform us what the Customs of your Church are If you have such Egyptian or Elâ—usinian mysteries as no man can understand before he be initiated amongst you I must despair of coming unto any acquaintance with them For I shall never engage into the belief of I know not what For the present I shall declare you my apprehension as to that Custome of your Church as you call it which we have now under consideration and desire your charity in my direction if I understand it 〈◊〉 aright It is your Custome to keep the Scriptures from the people in an unknown tongue somewhat contrary to this your former custome in this last age you have made some Translations out of a Translation and that none of the best the use whereof you permit to very few by virtue of special dispensation pleading that the use of it in the Church among the body of its members is useless and dangerous Again it is the Custome of your Church to celebrate all its publick worship in Latine whereof the generality of your people understand nothing at all and you forbid the exercise of your Church worship in a vulgar tongue understood by the Community of your Church or people These I apprehend to be the Customes of your Church and to the best of my understanding they are directly contrary 1. To the End of God in granting unto his Church the inestimable benefit of his Work and worship and 2. To the Command of God given unto all to read meditate and study his Word continually And 3. Prejudicial to the souls of men in depriving them of those unspeakable spiritual advantages which they might attain in the discharge of their duty and which others not subject unto your Auâ—hority have experience of And 4. Opposite unto yea destructive of that edification which is the immediate end of all things 〈◊〉 to be done in publick Assemblies of the Church And 5. Forbidden expresly by the Apostle who inforceth his prohibition with many cogent reasons 1 Cor. 14. And 6. Contrary to the express practice of the primitive Church both Judaical and Christian all whose worship was performed in the same language wherein the People were instructed by preaching and exhortations which I presume you will think it necessary they should well understand being 7. Brought into use gradually and occasionally through the 〈◊〉 negligence of some who pretend in the Churches of those dayes when the Languages wherein the Scripture was first written and whereinto for the use of the whole Church it had been of old translated as the Old Testament into Greek and the whole into Latine through the Tumults and Wars that fell out in the world became corrupted or were extirpated And 8 A means of turning the worship of Christ from a rational way of strengthening faith and increasing Holiness into a dumb histrionical shew exciting brutish and irregular affections and 9 Were the great cause of that darkness and ignorance which spread its self in former dayes over the whole face of your Church and yet continueth in a great measure so to do And in summ are as great an Instance of the power of inveterate prejudices and carnal interests against the light of the Truth as I think was ever given in the world These are my apprehensions concerning the Customs of your Church in this matter with their nature and tendency I shall now try whither you who blame my misunderstanding of them can give me any better information or Reason for the change of my thoughts concerning them But Carbones pro thesauro instead of either further clearing or vindicating your Customs and practice you fall into Encomiums of your Church a story of a Greek Bishop with some other thing as little to your purpose Fur es ait Pedo Pedius quid crimina rasis Librat in Antithetis doctas posuisse figuras Lundatur You are accused to have robbed the Church of the use of the Scripture and the means of its Edification in the worship of God and when you should produce your defensitive you make a fine Discourse quite to other purposes Such as it is we must pass through it First you say I have heard many grave Protestant Divines ingenuously acknowledge that divine Comfort and Sanctity of life requisite unto Salvation which Religion aymes at may with more perfection and less inconvenience be attained by the Customs of the Roman Church then that of ours For Religion is not to fit perching upon the lips but to be got by heart it consists not in reading but doing and in this not in that lives the substance of it which is soon and easily conveighed Christ our Lord drew a Compendium of all divine Truths in two words which our great Apostle again abridged into one Ans. 1. I hope you will give me leave a little to suspend my assent unto what you affirm Not that I question your veracity as to the matter of fact related by you that some Persons have told you what you say but I suppose you are mistaken in them For whereas the Gospel is the Doctrine of Truth according unto Godliness and the promotion of Holiness and Consolation which cannot at all be promoted but in wayes and by means of Gods appointment is the next end of all Religion they can be no Protestant Divines who acknowledge this end to be better attainable in your way then their own because such an acknowledgement would be a vertual renunciation of their Protestancy The judgement of this Church and all the reall grave Divines of it is perfectly against you and should you condescend unto them in other things would not embrace
here you give us two Languages the Syriack and Assyriack which names in the Original differed but little in sound but the languages themselves did as much in nature as French and English And the Syriack you tell us was that which is now so peculiarly called but what the Assyriack was you tell us not but only that when the Princes perswade Rabshakeh to speak 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aramith he intended an Assyrian language that was not Syrian The boys that grind colours in our Grammer Schools laugh at these Mormoes 8. Neither do you know well what you say when you affirm that the Language of Christ and his Apostles was the same that was ever since called the Syriack for the very instance you give manifests it to have been a different dialect from it the words as recorded by the Evangelists being absolutely the same neither with the Hebrew nor Targum nor Syriack Translation of the Old Testament That wherein we have the Translation of the Scripture and which prevailed in the Eastern Church being a peculiar Antiochian dialect of the old Aramaean Tongue And that whole language called the Syriack peculiarly now and whereof there were various dialects of old seems to have had its beginning after the Jews return from their captivity being but a degenerate mixture of the Hebrew and Chaldee whereunto also after the prevalency of the Macedonian Empire many Greek word were admitted and some Latine ones also afterwards 9. You advantage not your self by affirming that Assyria and Syria were several Kingdoms For as Strabo will inform you they were both originally called Syrian and indeed were one and the same until the more Eastern Provinces about Babylon obtaining their peculiar denominations that part of Asia which contains Comogena Phaenicia Palestina and Coelosyria became to be especially called Syria Originally they were all Aramites as every one knows that can but read the Scripture in its Original Language And now I suppose you may see how little you have advantaged your self or your cause by this maze of mistakes and contradictions For no errour can be so thick covered with others but that it will rain through The Jews you suppose to have lost their own language in the dayes of Hezekiah and to have spoken Syriack the Syrian and Assyrian to have been languages as far distant as French and English that when the Princes entreated Rabshakeh to speak the Syrian language 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they intended not the Syrian Language which was indeed the Jews but the Assyrian quite differing from it and so when they desired him not to speak 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you suppose them to have desired him not to speak in the Jews language but to speak in the Jews language which you say was the Syriack And sundry other no less unhappy absurdities have you amassed together But you will retrive us out of this Labyrinth by a Story of what a Greek Biship did and said at Paris in the presence of Doctor Cousins now bishop of Durham how he refused the Articles of the English Church and did all things according to the Roman mode asserting the use of Liturgies in the vulgar Greek Unto which I shall say no more but that it was at Paris and not at Durham Graeculus esuriens in caelum jusseris ibit I have my self known some eminent members of that Church in England two especially one many years ago called Conopius who if I mistake not upon his return obtained the honour of a Patriarchate being sent hither by the then Patriarch of Constantinople the other not many years ago called Anastatius Comnenus Archimandrite as his Testimonials be spake him of a Monastry on Mount Sinai Both these I am sure made it their business to inveigh against your Church practices having the Arguments of Nilus against your Supremacy at their fingers ends And if the Greek Chruch and you are so well agreed as you pretend why do you censure them as Hereticks and Schismaticks and receive only some few of them who are runnagates from their own Tents What may those whom you proclaim to be your enemies expect from you when you deal thus severely with those whom you give out to be your friends But as for this matter of the Scripture and prayers in an unknown tongue though they transgress not with so high an hand as you do the old Greeks being not so absolutely remote from the present vulgar as the Latine is from our English and the Languages of diverse other Nations whom you compell to your Church Service in that toague and besides they have the Scripture translated into their present vulgar tongue for the use of private persons yet we approve not their practice but look upon it as a great means of continuing that ignorance and darkness which is unquestionably spread over the major part of that Church which in some places as in Russia is to such a degree as to dispose the people unto Barbarism We know also that herein they are gone off from the constant and Catholick usage of their forefathers who for some Centuries of years from the dayes of the Apostles themselves who planted Churches amongst them both had the Bible in their own vulgar Tongue and made no use of any other in the publick Service of their Assemblies And that their example in your present degenerate condition which in some things you as little approve of as we do in others should have any great power upon us I know as yet little reason to judge Your last attempt in this matter is to vindicate what you have said in your Fiat as you now affirm That the Bible was kept in an Ark or Tabernncle not touched by the people but brought on t at times to the Priest that he might instruct the people out of it To which you say I answer That the Ark was placed in the Sanctum Sanctorum which was not entred into but by the Priest and that only once a year And Reply But Sir I speake not there of any Sanctum Sanctorum or of any Ark in that place was there or could there be no more Arks but one If you had been only in these latter days in any Synagogue or Convention of the Jews you might have seen even now how the Bible is still kept with them in an Ark or Tabernacle in imitation of their forefathers when they have no Sanctum Sanctorum amongst them You may also discern how according to your custome they â—ringe and prostrate at the bringing out of the Biblt which is the only solemn adoration left amongst them there be more Arks then that in the Sanctum Sanctorum if I had called it a Box or a Chest or a Cupboard you had let it pass but I used that word as more sacred The oftener that you touch upon this string the harsher is the found that it yields I would desire you to free your self from the unhappiness of supposing
Their perswasion in this matter is expressed in the beginning of the Epistle of Clemens or Church of Rome unto the Church of Corinth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Church that is at Rome to the Church that is at Corinth both locall Churches both equall And such is the language of all the Writers of those times It was not so in the dayes of the Fathers and Councels of the next three Centuries who still accounted it a particular Church Diocesaen or Patriarchal but all of them particular never calling it Catholick but upon the account of its holding the Catholick faith as they called all other Churches that did so in opposition to the Errours Heresies and Schilms of any in their dayes We desire then to know when it became the only or absolutely Catholick Church of Christ As also secondly by what means it became so to be It did not do so by virtue of any Institution Warrant or Command of Christ You were never able to produce the least intimation of any such Warrant out of any Writing of Divine Inspiration nor approved Catholick Writer of the first Ages after Christ though it hugely concern you so to do if it were possible to be done but they all expresly teach that which is inconsistent with such pretences It did not do so by any Decree of the first Generall Councels which are all of them silent as to any such thing and some of them as those of Nice Ephesus and Chalcâ—don expresly declare and determine the contrary at least that which is contrary thereunto We can find no other way or means whereby it can pretend unto this vast Priviledge unless it be the grant of Phocas unto Boniface that he should be called the Vniversal Bishop who to serve his own ends was very liberal of that which was not at all in his power to bestow And yet neither is this though it be a means that you have more reason to be ashamed than to boast of sufficient to found your present Claim considering how that name was in those dayes no more than a name a meer aâ—ry ambitions Title that carried along with it no reall power and stet magni nominis umbra Secondly We cannot give our assent unto this Claim of yours because we should thereby be necessitated to cut off from the Church and consequently all hope of salvation farre the greatest number of men in the world who in this and all foregoing Ages have called and do call upon the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ their Lord and ours This we dare not do especially considering that many of them have spent and do spend their dayes in great Affliction for their Testimony unto Christ and his Gospell and many of them every day seal their Testimony with their blood so belonging as we believe unto that holy army of Martyrs which continually praiseth God Now as herein we dare not concurre with you considering the charge given unto Timothy by Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be not partaker of other mens sins so indeed we are perswaded that your opinion or rather presumption in this matter is extreamly injurious to the Grace of Christ the Love and Goodness of God as also to the Truth of the Gospell And therefore Thirdly We suppose this the most Schismaticall Principle that ever was broached under the Sun since there was a Church upon the earth and that because 1. It is the most groundless 2. The most unchritable that ever was and 3. Of the most pernicious consequence as having a principal influence into the present irreconcileableness of Differences among Christians in the world which will one day be charged on the Authors and Abettors of it For it will one day appear that it is not the various Conceptions of the minds of peaceable men about the things of God nor the various degrees of knowledge and faith that are found amongst them but groundless impositions of things as necessary to be believed and practised beyond Scripture warrant that are the Springs and Causes of all or at least the most blameable and sinfull differences among Christians Fourthly We know this pretence should it take place would prove extreamly hazardous unto the Truth of the Promises of Christ given unto the Catholick Church For suppose that to be one and the same with the Roman and whatever mishap may befall the one must be thought to befall the other for on your Supposition they are not only like Hippocrates twins that being born together wept and joyed together and together died but like Hippocrates himself as the same individuall Person or thing being both the same one Church that hath two names Catholick and Roman that is Universall-Particular no otherwise two than as Julius Caesar was when by his overawing his Collegue from the execution of his Office they dated their Acts at Rome Julio Casare Consulibus For as they said Non Bibulo quiâ—quam nuper sed Caesare factum est Nani Bibulo fieri Consule nil memini Now besides the failings which we know your Church to have been subject unto in point of Faith Manners and Worship it hath also been at least in danger of Destruction in the time of the prevalency of the Gâ—ths Vandals Huns and Longobards especially when Rome its self was left desolate and without Inhabitant by Totilas And what yet farther may befall it before the End of the world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Only this I know that many are in expectation of a sad Catastrophe to be given unto it and that on grounds not to be despised Now God forbid that the Church unto which the Promises are made should be once thought to be subject unto all the dangers and hazards that you wilfully expose your selves unto So that as this is a very groundless presumption in its self so it is a very great aggravation of your miscarriages also whilest you seek to entitle the Catholick Church of Christ unto them which can neither contract any such guilt as you have done nor be liable to any such misery or punishment as you are Fifthly We see not the Promises made unto the Catholick Church fulfilled unto you as we see that to have befallen your Church which is contrary unto the Promises that ever is should befall the Catholick The conclusion then will necessarily on both instances follow that either your are not the Catholick Church or that the Promises of Christ have failed and been of none effect And you may easily guess which part of the Conclusion it is best and most safe for us to give assent unto I shall give you one or two instances unto this last head Christ hath promised his Spirit unto his Church that is the Catholick Church to abide with it for ever Joh. 14. 16. But this Promise hath not been made good unto your Church at all times because it hath not been so unto the head of it Many a time the Head of your Church hath not received the Spirit of Christ
out of his way that you speak not one word unto it yet I will say that it is a thing of that kind whereof there are frequent instances in your whole Discourse and for what reason is not very difficult for any man to conjecture CHAP. 15. Pleas of Prelate Protestants Christ the only supream and absolute Head of the Church PAg. 49. You take a view of the tenth Chapter of the Animadversions opposed unto the thirteenth and fourteenth Paragraph of your Fiat Lax wherein you pretend to set forth the various Pleas of those that are at Difference amongst us in matters of Religion These you there distribute into Independents Presbyterians and Protestants Here omitting the Consideration of the two former you apply your self unto what was spoken about Prelate Protestants as you call them You endeavour say you to disable both what I have set down to make against the Prelate Protestant and also what I have said for him I said in Fiat Lux that it made not a little against our Protestants that after the Prelate Protestancy was setled in England they were forced for their own preservation against the â—uritans to take up some of those Principles again which former Protestants had cast down for Popish as is the Authority of the visible Church efficacy of ordination difference between Clergy and Laity Here first you deny that these Principles are Popish But Sir there are some Jews even at this day who will deny any such man as Pontius Pilate to to have ever been in Jewry I have other things to do then to fill volumes with useless texts which here I might easily do out of the books both of the first Reformers and Catholick Divines and Councils What acquaintance you have with the Jews we have in part seen already and shall have occasion hereafter to examine a little further In the mean time you may be pleased to take notice that men who know what they say are not easily affrighted from it by a shew of such Mormoes as he in the Comaedian was from his own house by his servants pretence that it was haunted by Sprights when there were none in it but his own debauched companions I denyed those Opinions to be Popish and should do so still were I accused for so doing before a Roman Judge as corrupt and wicked as Pontius Pilate For I can prove them to be more Antient then any part of Popery in the sense explained in the Animadversions and admitted generally by Protestants We never esteem every thing Popish that Papists hold or believe Some things in your Profession belong unto your Christianity some things to your Popery And I am perswaded you do not think this Proposition Jesus Christ is the Son of God to be Heretical because those whom you account Hereticks do profess and believe it Prove the Principles you mention to be invented by your selves without any foundation in the Scripture or constant suffrage of the Antient Churches and you prove them to be Popish to be your own If you cannot do so though Papists profess them yet they may be Christian. This is spoken as to the Principles themselves not unto your explanation of them which in sundry particulars is Popish which were never owned by Prelate Protestants You proceed You challenge me to prove that these Principles were ever denyed by our Prelate Protestants And this you do wittily and like your self You therefore bid me prove that those principles were ever denyed by our Prelate Protestants because I say that our Prelate Protestants here in England as soon as they became such took up again those forenamed Principles which Protestants their forefathers both here in England and beyond Seas before our Prelacy was set up had still rejected When I say then that our Prelate Protestants affirmed and asserted those Principles which former Protestants denyed you bid me prove that ever our Prelate Protestants ever denyed them But whatever you can prove or cannot prove you have made it very easie for any man to prove that you have very little regard unto truth and sobriety in what you aver so that you may acquit your self from that which presseth you and which according to the rules of them you cannot stand before You tell us in the entrance of this discourse that you said that Prelate Protestants for their own preservation took up some of those Principles again which former Protestants had cast down for Popish And here expresly that you said not that they took up the Principles which themselves had cast down but only those which other before them had so dealt withall Now pray take a view of your own words whereby you express your self in this matter Chap. 3. S. 14. p. 189. ed. 2. Are they not these The Prelate Protestant to defend himself against them the Presbyterians and Independents is forced to make use of those very Principles which himself afore time not other Protestants but himself when he not others first contended against Popery destroyed So that upon him falls most heavily even like Thunder and Lightning from Heaven utterly to kill and cut him a sunder that great Oracle delivered by St. Paul If I build up again the things I not another formerly destroyed I make my self a prevaricator an Impostor a Reprobate What think you of these words do you charge the Prelate Protestant with building up what others had pulled down or what he had destroyed himself Is your Rule out of St. Paul applicable unto him upon any other account but that he himself was both the builder and destroyer Sir such miscarriages as these Protestants know to be mortal sins and if without contrition for them you have celebrated any Sacrament of your Church it cannot be avoided but that you have brought a great inconvenience on some of your Disciples Besides suppose you had spoken as you now faign your self to have done I desire to know who they are whom you intend when you say our Prelate Protestants so soon as they became such as though they were first Protestants at large and destroyed those Principles which afterwards they built up when they became Prelate Protestants seeing all men know that our Reformation was begun by Prelates themselves and such as never disclaimed the Principles by you instanced in But you tell me I do not only reject what you object against Prelate Protestants but also what you alledge in their behalf I do so indeed though I laugh not at you or it as you pretend and so must any man do who pleading for Protestancy hath not a mind openly to prevaricate For your Plea for them is such as if admitted would not only overthrow your Prelacy which you pretend to assert but also destroy your Protestancy which you will not deny but that you seek to oppose Nay it is no other but what was contradicted in the very Council of Trent by the Spanish Prelates as that which they conceived to have been an engine contrived for the Ruine
briefly mind you of the principles which you oppose in it and seek to evert by it as also of those which you intend to compass your purpose by Of the first sort are these 1. That the Lord Christ God and Man in one person is and ever continuâ—s to be the only absolute Monarchical Head of his own Church I suppose it needless for me to confirm this Principle by Testimonies of Scripture which it being a matter of pure Revelation is the only way of confirmation that it is capable of That he is the Head of his Church is so frequently averred that every one who hath but read the New Testament will assent unto it upon the bare repetition of the words with the same faith whereby he assents unto the writing its self whatever it be and we shall afterwards see that the notion of an Head is absolutely exclusive of competition in the matter denoted by it An Head properly is singly and absolutely so and therefore the substitution of another head unto the Châ—rch in the room of Christ or with him is perfectly exclusive of him from being so 2. That Christ as God-man in his whole person was never visible to the fleshly eyes of men and whereas as such he was Head of the Church as the Head of the Church he was never absolutely visible His humane nature was seen of old which was but something of him as he was and is the Head of the Church otherwise then by faith no man hath seen him at any time and it changeth the condition of the Church to suppose that now it hath a Head who being a meer man is in his whole person visible so far as a man may be seen 3. That the visibility of the Church consisteth in its publick profession of the Truth and not in its being objected to the bodily eyes of men It is a thing that faith may believe it is a thing that Reason may take notice of consider and comprehend the eyes of the body being of no use in this matter When a Church professeth the Truth it is the ground and pillar of it a City on a hill that is visible though no man see it yea though no man observe or contemplate on any thing about it It s own Profession not other mens observation constitutes it visible Nor is there any thing more required to a Churches visibility but its Profession of the Truth unto which all the outward advantages which it hath or may have of appearing conspicuously or gloriously to the consideration of men are purely accidental which may be separated from it without any prejudice unto its visibility 4. That the sameness of the Church in all Ages doth not depend on its sameness in respect of degrees of visibility That the Church be the same that it was is required that it profess the same Truth it did whereby it becomes absolutely visible but the degrees of this visibility as to conspicuousness and notoriety depending on things accidental unto the being and consequently visibility of Church do no way affect as unto any change Now from hence it follows 1. That the presence or absence of the Humane nature of Christ with or from his Church on earth doth not belong unto the visibility of it so that the absence of it doth no way inferr a necessity of substituting another visible head in his stead Nor was the presence of his humane Nature with his Church any way necessary to the visibility of it his conversation on the earth being wholly for other ends and purposes 2. That the presence or absence of the humane nature of Christ not varying his headship which under both considerations is still the same the supposition of another Head is perfectly destructive of the whole Headship of Christ there being no vacancy possible to be imagined for that supply but by the removal of Christ out of his place For he being the Head of his Church as God and man in his whole person invisible and the visibility of the Church consisting solely in its own profession of the Truth the absence of his humane nature from the earth neither changeth his own Headship nor prejudiceth the Churches visibility so that either the one or the other of them should induce a necessity of the supply of another Head Consider now what it is that you oppose unto these things You tell us â— That Christ was the Head of the Church in his humane nature delegated by and under Gâ—d to that purpâ—se You mean he was so absolutely and as man exclusively to his divine nature This your whole Discourse with the Inferences that you draw from this supposition abundantly manifests If you can make this good you may conclude what you please I know no man that hath any great cause to oppose himself unto you for you have taken away the very foundation of the being and 〈◊〉 of the Church in your supposition 2. You inform us That Christ by his Ascension into heaven ceased to be that Head that he was so that of necessity another must be substituted in his place and room and this we must think to be the Pope He is I confess absent from his Church here on earth as to his bodily appearance amongst us which as it was not necessary as to his Headship so he promised to supply the inconvenience which 〈◊〉 Disciples apprehended would ensue thereupon so that they should have great cause to rejoyce at it as that wherein their great advantage would lye John 16. 7. That this should be by giving us a Pope at Rome in his stead he hath no way intimated And unto those who know what your Pope is and what he hath done in the world you will hardly make it evident that the great advantage which the Lord Christ promised unto his Disciples upon his absence is made good unto them by his Supervisorship 3. You would have the visibility of the Church depend on the visibility of its Head as also its sameness in all ages And no one you are secure who is now visible pretends to be the Head of the Church but the Pope alone and therefore of necessity he it must be But Sir if the Lord Jesus Christ had had no other nature then that wherein he was visible to the eyes of men he could never have been a meet Head for a Church dispersed throughout the whole world nor have been able to discharge the Duty annexed by God unto that office And if so I hope you will not take it amiss if on that supposition I deem your Pope of whom millions of Christians know nothing but by uncertain rumors nor he of then to be very unmeet for the discharge of it And for the visibility of the Church I have before declared wherein it doth consist Upon the whole matter you do not only come short of proving the Indentity and Oneness of the Church to depend upon one visible Bishop as its Monarchical Head but also the
Principles whereby you attempt the confirmation of that absurd position are of that nature that they exclude the Headship of Christ and inâ—er no less change or alteration in the Church then that which must needs ensue thereon and the substitution of another in his room which destroyes the very essence and being of it Let us now consider what you further reply unto that which was offered in the Animadversions unto the purpose now discoursed of Your ensuing words are And here by the way we may take notice what a fierce English Protestant you are who labour so stoutly to evacuate my argument for Episcopacy and leave none of your own behind you nor acquaint the world with any though you know far better but would make us believe notwith tanding those far better reasons for Prelacy that Christ himself as he is the immediate Head of invisible influence so is he likewise the only and immediate Head of visible direction and government amongst us without the interposition of any Person delegate in his stead to oversee and rule under him in his Church on earth which is against the tenor both of sacred Gospel and St. Pauls Epistles and all Antiquity and the present Ecclesiastical Polity of England and is the Doctrine not of any English Protestant but of the Presbyterian Independent and Quaker How little cause you have to attempt an impeachment of my Protestancy I hope I have in some measure evidenced unto you and shall yet farther make it manifest as you give me occasion so to do In the mean time as I told you before that I would not plead the particular concernment of any party amongst Protestants no more then you do that of any party among your selves so I am sure enough that I have delivered nothing prejudicial unto any of them because I have kept my self unto the defence of their Protestancy wherein they all agree Nor have I given you an answer unto any Argument that tends in the least to the confirmation of such a Prelacy as by any sort of Protestants is admitted but only shewed the emptiness and pernicious Consequences of your Sophism wherewith you plead in pretence for Prelacy indeed for a Papal Supremacy and that on such Principles as are absolutely destructive of that Protestant Prelacy which you would be thought to give countenance unto And your ensuing Discourse wherein you labour to justifie your reflection on me is a pittiful piece of falsehood and Sophistry For first this double Head of the Catholick Church one of influence the other of direction and government which you fancy some Protestants to admit of is a thing that they declare against as injurious to the Lord Christ and that which would render the Church biceps monstrum horrid and deformed It is Christ himself who as by his Spirit he exercises the office of an head by invisible influence so by his Word that of visible direction and rule He is I say the only Head of visible direction to his Church though he be not a visible Head to that purpose which that he should be is to no purpose at all 2. If by the interposition of any person under Christ delegate in his stead you understand any one single Person delegated in his stead to oversee and rule the whole Catholick Church such an one as you now plead for in your Epistle it is intolerable arrogancy to intimate that he is designed either in the Gospel or St. Pauls Epistles or Antiquity whereas you are not able to assign any place or text or word in them directly or by fair Consequence to justifie what you assert And for the present Ecclesiastical policy of the Church of England if you yet know it not let me inform you that the very foundations of it are laid in a direct contrary supposition namely that there is no such single Person delegated under Christ for the Rule of the whole Catholick Church which gives us a new evidence of your Conscientious â—are in what you say and write 3. If you intend that which is not at all to your purpose Persons to rule under Christ in the Church presiding according to his direction and institution in and over the Particular Churches whereunto they do relate governing them in his name by his Authority and according to his Word I desire you to inform me wherein I have said or written or intimated any thing that may give you the least countenance in your affirming that by me it is denied or where it was ever denied by any Protestant whatever Prelatical Presbyterian or Independent neither doth this concession of theirs in the least impeach the sole Soveraign Monarchy of Christ and single Headship over his Church to all ends and purposes A Monarch may be and is the sole supream Governour and Political Head of his Kingdom though he appoint others to execute his Laws by virtue of Authority derived from him in the several Provinces Shires and Parishes of it And Christ is the only head of his Church though he have appointed others to preside and rule in his name in those distributions of his Disciples whereinto they are cast by his appoinment But you proceed Christ in their way is immediatâ— head not only of subministration and influence but of exterior derivation also and government to his Church Ans. He is so the supream and only Head of the Church Catholick in the one way and other though the means of conveying influences of Grace and of exterior Rule be various Then say you is he such an Head to all Belivers or no to all the whole body in general and every individual member thereof in particular if he be so to all you say then no man is to be governed in Affairs of Religion by any other man But why so I pray can no man govern in any sense or place but he must be a supream Head The King is immediate Head unto all his subjects he is King not only to the whole Kingdom but to every individual person in his Kingdom doth it thence follow that they may not be governed by officers subordinate delegated under him to rule them by his Authority according to his Laws or that if they may be so that he is not the only immediate King and supream Head unto them all The Apostle tells us expresly that the Head of every man is Christ 1 Cor. 11. 3. And that an head of Rule as the husband is the head of the wife Ephes. 5. 23. as well as he is an head of influence unto the whole body and every member of it in particular 1 Cor. 12. 12. Col. 2. 19. And it is a senseless thing to imagine that this should in the least impeach his appointment of men to rule under him in his Church according to his Law who are thereupon not heads but in respect of him servants and in respect to the particular Churches wherein they serve him Rulers or guides yea their servants for his sake not Lords