and ancient Custom And to averr That if there be nothing to be reply'd in answer to the Fathers better however to deny all the Fathers than grant the Mass to be a Sacrifice What Luther drolls upon the Fathers in his Table-talk will not pass with the Vindicator to have been in earnest because I suppose he thinks it was in his Cups But it is strange that his serious preferring Melancthon before all the Fathers should by the Vindicator be call'd not an affront or contempt against the Fathers but a complement to Melancthon And yet some of the Church of England that think themselves Learned have been heard to say That they do not see why Dr. Tillotson Dr. Stillingfleet Dr. Tenison Dr. Sherlock c. may not pass for Fathers of as good Authority in the Church as St. Ambrose St. Austin c. 7. To the Proof of Luther's setting up his own Authority against the Church and maintaining his own Doctrines as infallible nothing is answer'd The instance which the Considerer gives is the Doctrine of Consubstantiation wherein Luther pretends Certainty and Revelation in God's Word Could any man have perswaded me says Luther Epist. ad Argent there was nothing but Bread and Wine in the Sacrament he had much oblig'd me For being in great perplexity I took great pains in Discussing the point I endeavour'd with all my might to extricate and free my self as well perceiving I should thereby very much incommode the Papacy But I see I am caught there is no way of escaping left me For the words of the Evangelists This is my Body c. are too plain and clear to be forc'd to any other meaning It is evident that in this Doctrine Luther was neither Catholick nor Church of England Protestant But yet so much a Catholick he was as to hold the real presence of the Body and Blood of our Lord in the Sacrament Being forc'd to it as himself Confesses by the words of Scripture But how one that holds a Doctrine so contradictory to the sense and reason of a Church of England man should deserve the extravagant Encomiums of the Vindicator I cannot understand 8. To Luther's altering the publick Liturgy and reforming the Service of the Mass the Vindicator replies in great fury that the Considerer has mistaken Hospinian But yet he saves me the labour of examining the Quotation and rectifying the Folio by his yeilding the cause For he confesses that Luther was deputed to throw out all that Part of the Service of the Mass that made the Sacrament a Sacrifice And what is throwing out but Altering and Reforming the Service of the Mass But then he says Luther did not impose his Form as obligatory Not as obligatory si quid melius illis revelatum fuerit if any new Revelation could supply them with a better But can any one say he did not impose it as obligatory before and instead of the ancient Form of the Church Or otherwise what signified his writing a Book for the abolishing the most ancient and venerable Service of the Mass To Luther's taking upon him the Authority of Ordaining Bishops and Ministers the Vindicator admits the fact but says it was done not out of choice but necessity A worthy Answer What necessity was there Were there no Bishops in Germany at that time Or does it any where appear that ever the Church allow'd of any such necessity Yes the Vindicator presents us with a well known passage of St. Austin In Alexandria per totum Aegyptum Si desit Episcopus consecrat Presbyter This passage is well known not to be St. Austin's but the words of another Author see St. Austin's Works Qu. de utroque Test 101. Nor does the word Consecrat signifie Ordaining The Presbyters in Aegypt or any other place being never permitted to Ordain upon any pretence whatsoever But Consecrat here may signifie the same with Consignat and by this is meant Consecration of Chrism which tho proper to a Bishop yet it seems in Aegypt was done by Presbyters in the Bishop's absence But it was not for the Vindicator's purpose to give the true sence of this passage For if the Presbyterian Ordination fails where will the Church of England find Refuge when her own Ordination shall be call'd in Question 10. To Luther's sentencing the Canon-Law consisting of the Decrees of Councils and Popes to the Fire and Burning them in a solemn Assembly of the University of Wirtenberg the Vindicator owns the fact to be true But he denies that it was done upon Luther's own Authority For he had a Commission as a Preacher of God's Word and he had taken an Oath at his going out Doctor to confound as much as in him lay all pernicious Doctrines A very solid Defence Luther it seems did pass sentence upon the Decrees of Councils c. for the confounding Doctrines which in his own private Judgment he thought pernicious But he did it as a Preacher of God's Word and a Doctor not as the Arch-Reformer Martin Luther But the Vindicator distrusting this Argument says Luther had other motives And what were those His Books had been solemnly burnt at Rome as Heretical His own people were startled at it so that he was fore't boldly to make Reprisals to buoy up his Followers courage A fair Concession The Church Censur'd Luther's Books as Heretical Luther returns the Censure upon the Church and Condemns her Decrees as pernicious And yet this in a Reformer was no Usurping an Authority but only declaring his Opinion as the Scholars did at the Oxon Decree against Bellarmin and other Jesuits without knowing or being able to shew that those Writers held any such pernicious Tenets 11. To Luther's pronouncing Anathema's and Excommunicating the Reform'd that dissented from him the Vindicator replies in a Question Is there no difference between a Judicial Anathema and a Wish of Execration So that Luther might Curse but not Anathematize his Dissenting Brethren The Monks says he writ upon their MSS. Anathema to all that should violate them I suppose he means by MSS. the Registers of Founders Statutes and Donations belonging to Monasteries The weight and effects of which Curses if we may believe Reform'd Writers themselves are both felt and dreaded to this very day But the Vindicator after three or four unhandsom Sarcasms pretends to prove his point from the Considerer's own words Luther requir'd not Conformity to his Doctrines out of any Authority he claim'd to impose them which Authority he renounc't Here the Vindicator leaves off in the middle of a sentence very politickly and like a Reform'd Controvertist lest the other end should sting him The sentence goes on but yet which is somewhat more he required a Conformity to his Doctrines from a Certainty of Divine Truth which he pretended to be in them And so the Obedience he refus'd as a Magistrate he claim'd as an Oracle and would have his own pretended Apostolical certainty of Doctrine set up instead of the Church's
of Costerus to have its full force yet if he held Fornication a mortal damnable sin as certainly he did neither Priests nor the Vindicator would be any gainers by it for both he that fornicates and he that marries after Vows are equally liable to eternal Damnation But if Luther could have liv'd continently as he says he did whilst a Monk and nothing appears to shew he could not what can be alleg'd in defence of his doubly wicked sacrilegious Marriage 4. To the Objections of Luther's rejecting the Authority of the present Church and the denying it to be a true Church the Vindicator knows not what to answer However to blind the matter something must be said and therefore the Church which Luther contemn'd must be the Court of Rome But then to the Question which himself puts concerning the Visibility of the Church for many Ages even according to Luther's Note of it viz. the true and sincere preaching of the Word he gives you no other Answer than what might be expected from an ordinary Quaker That in all that dark midnight of Popery Midday is darkness to some sort of Creatures which filled the Earth for so many Ages there were still some Gleams of Light some Witnesses that arose to give Testimony to the Truth to protest against Innovations But whether those Gleams those Witnesses were Lutherans or Calvinists or Zuinglians or Cranmerians or Parkerians he knows not They seem to me to have been an invisible people and like the Spanish Black-Bills in Oates's Plot to have liv'd under ground or at least the saying there were such people may serve or a time to beguile the unwary and to keep on foot and carry on the holy Cheat. But instead of a proof that they were indeed the Visible Church of Christ he refers us to a testy saying of Scaliger's that has nothing of Truth in it But the Vindicator seems much offended that Luther should be charg'd with denying the Validity of the former Clergy's Ordination Yet he does not reflect that Luther argued no true Consecration of the Eucharist from the defect of Ordination as being convinc'd of it by the Devils argument And as for the Flourish he speaks of 't is his own not Luther's Nor doth Luther's proceeding in the Work of the Ministry prove that he own'd his Mission from the preceeding Church but rather that he look'd upon himself to have had an extraordinary Mission or otherwise what Authority could he pretend and certainly so great an Apostle would do nothing without just Authority to Ordain and Commission others Of which in its proper place To Luther's calling the Pope Antichrist Bishops his Apostles and Universities his Lupunaria the Vindicator seems to subscribe and applaud him in it and I doubt not but he would contribute his Faggot towards the Burning of him in effigie But yet this is an Error exploded by learned Protestants Hammond Thorndyke Grotius and others and has been preach'd against in this University by much learneder men than the Vindicator Here I must beg leave to digress with the Vindicator to two gross mistakes of his p. 27. whereby he thinks he has given the Church of Rome a terrible blow The first is That to give an inferior sort of Cult or Respect to the Elements is to worship them with Divine Worship which is false ex terminis unless it be true that an inferior worship is the supreme The second mistake is That for a Priest to operate the presence of the Body and Blood of Christ which Church-of England Ministers pretend to do after their fashion is neither more nor less than to make God. So then to operate the presence of a thing is to make the thing To operate e. g. in Baptism the presence of the Holy Ghost is to make the Holy Ghost And so also to occasion the presence of the Vindicator of Luther in the Divinity or Logick School would make him a Vindicator of Luther which is utterly impossible 5. To Luther's rejecting Councils the Vindicator writes pro and con 1. That he did so when in his private Judgment they went contrary to Scriptures and so says he do all the Reformed he might have added and all Hereticks in the world all of them preferring their private interpretation of Scripture to that of the Church But secondly Luther did not so because he never refus'd if we may believe his Defender to be concluded by the Authority of a Council legally summon'd The noise of his Adversaries says the Vindicator who were perpetually crying Councils and Canons when they had nothing else to say for their Cause and was not that enough might perhaps force out an expression or two from him c. He had fire in his temper and a German bluntness and upon these provocations might possibly strain a phrase with too great freedom And what was the innocent freedom this Reformer took It was only to asperse the most sacred and famous Councils that ever were the Apostolical at Jerusalem and the first Nicene submitted to by Protestants themselves Arguing from the Injunction of the first to abstain from Blood and things strangled which was only Temporary that it is lawful not to obey the Decrees of Councils And saying of the second That its Canons were Hay Straw Wood Stubble and particularly concerning the Third Canon of that Council prohibiting the Clergy to have with them in their House any Women unless their Mother Sister Grandmother or Aunt That he did not understand tbe Holy Ghost in this Council What Has the Holy Ghost nothing to do but to bind and burden its Ministers with impossible dangerous and unnecessary Laws And lastly he affirm'd That the Christian Doctrine receiv'd more Light from the Children's Catechism than all the Councils This one Text beware of false Prophets Mat. 17. 15. says swaggering Luther may suffice against the Authorities of all the Popes Fathers Councils and Schoolmen who attribute to Bishops and Ministers the sole power of Judging and Deciding Controversies In the very Council of Nice the best that ever was before or since even then began they to make Laws and claim that power Wherefore since such an Error and so great Sacrilege has been able to prevail so long I will and command once for all that those Sophisters hold their Prating c. And is all this in a Reformer nothing else but straining a phrase and so great a wickedness in him no sin 6. The Arraignment of Luther for speaking contemptuously of the Fathers the Vindicator says is a rank Calumny But is at a Calumny to say he speaks contemptuously of the Fathers who was not afraid to assert In the Writings of every one of the Fathers how great Errors are there how oft do they contradict themselves who is there of them that does not very many times wrest the Scriptures Is not that a Contempt of the Fathers to call the Thomists Blockheads for proving the Sacrifice of the Mass by a multitude of the Fathers
Zuinglius the Vindicator calls an ordinary Dream as if he himself had had many such But does he not at the same time deny the Testimonies of Zuinglius and Luther And he that will give the Lye to his own Party even those he pretends to Vindicate what Arguments can be sufficient to convince him If such a clear Discovery of the variety and subtilty of Satan's temptations and wiles as the Considerer consonant to the Word of God has made which all good men thankfully receive is therefore rejected because it condemns the principal Reformers out of their own Works and Confessions what wise man that consults his eternal good will not rather abominate such Reformers than deny the Truth 14. To the Resemblance of Luther's Change of Religion in several particulars with that of Mahomet's the Vindicator replies That he was almost tempted to return the kindness with a Parallel between some body and Judas Intimating that every one that leaves the Church of England and becomes a Catholick must be a Judas And consequently that the Greatest and most Excellent Person in the Nation must be so too and yet at the same time remain the Supreme Head of the Church of England But he not daring to speak out what he meant by some body chuses rather to asperse Pope Boniface as if he had begun a new Kingdom in the Church about fifteen years before Mahomet For the proof of which he gives us no Argument and yet he would have us believe it tho at the same time Demonstration on our side will not convince Protestants of Luther's beginning a new Kingdom As to the Book he mentions call'd Turco-Papismus if he means by it that Roman Catholicks are Turks I suppose the Church of England will not bear him out in it Unless such as lamented the taking of Buda and wish'd less prosperous success to the Christian Arms. But upon the whole matter the Vindicator thinks the Parallel childish and the Considerer not skill'd in hitting features Let us see then Did not Luther resemble Mahomet in those particulars urg'd by the Considerer As 1. In rejecting the Sense and Exposition of Scripture receiv'd in former times This Innovator urging that the Sense and Meaning of the Scriptures as the other that the Words and Writings thereof were falsified And was it not Luther that said That he scorn'd to submit himself or his Doctrine to the Judgment of Bishops the Fathers of the Church and that the World had been long enough guilty of such a foolish Humility And did Mahomet ever say any thing more rebellious 2. Did not Luther resemble Mahomet in the manner of his Coming Neither of them working Miracles yet pretending to an extraordinary Authority in Reforming the World. Both of them destitute of the Virtues of the Holy Spirit temperance meekness c. propagating their Principles the one by his Railing Tongue the other by his Sword. Some of Luther's own Brood said of him That he had much of the Evil Spirit in all his Reproofs very little of the meek amicable Spirit of God. Even his Friend Melancthon said little less when he wrote to Calvin That for twenty years he had expected Banishment from Luther upon the account of some difference between them concerning the Bread-Worship of some of Luther's Followers 3. Did not Luther resemble Mahomet in Sensuality and the indulging his Appetites pleading much for the Necessity of Marriage scouting the Counsels of Perfection and of a stricter Life as Celibacy Monastical Poverty Obedience c. Dispensing with his own Vows The Vindicator's Argument pag. 23. That Luther might Dispence with his own Vows without having recourse to the Judgment of the Church is new Divinity for tho it be true that no Power in the Church can Dispense where the cause is not just yet it is as true that the Votary v. g. Mart. Luther is incapable of judging of the justness of the cause or taking upon him Authority of Dispensing in his own case And therefore the Reasons that Luther and his Vindicator seem to offer that his Vow was not binding ought to have been weigh'd in the Sanctuary and have pass'd the Judgment of the Church His own private thinking his Vows null not being sufficient to make them so unless his pretended extraordinary Mission could also give him an extraordinary power of Dispensation The Vindicator's darling reason of Luther's picking out Bora for the making the President he was going to set the more conspicuous and the declaring openly that the Quarrel between him and Rome was irreconcilable is the publishing his own and Luther's shame And what he says against Celibacy one of our Lord's Counsels of Perfection that many that made profession of it liv'd wicked lives may as fitly be apply'd against Matrimony one of the Holy Sacraments and Sodom and Gomorrah as easily there be found for I do not read that any in those Cities profess'd a single Life and yet both Celibacy and Matrimony remain Holy Institutions in the Church of Christ for bringing Souls to Heaven 4. Did not Luther resemble Mahomet in his attempting to degrade the formerly receiv'd Head of the Church upon Earth as Mahomet did the Head thereof in Heaven pronouncing the Chief Pastor of Christ's Flock Antichrist and the Church of God his Spouse applying to him all the Marks of that great false Prophet whose steps Luther himself notoriously follow'd The Considerer gives more Instances of the Parallel But I remember what the Vindicator answers to the Considerer's pressing Luther's preferring Turcism to Christianity the Alcoran to the Bible and Mahomet to Christ That here his fancy had made a Gyant of a Windmill The Considerer had no thought of Windmills but the Vindicator it seems had which made him slip as he phrases it from one Paragraph to another without answering the Arguments of any of them Lastly To the Considerer's Sentence upon Martin Luther according to our Saviour's Rule by their fruits you shall know them That it was easie to discern this Person Martin Luther not to have been possess'd with the Good but the Bad Spirit the Vindicator seems to answer That one that teacheth true Doctrine may be a bad man and that the Doctrine of the Apostles and the Primitive Church is ne'r the worse for such men's Preaching it But he should have observ'd That Luther was no ordinary Preacher but the Beginner of a new Church and therefore his Life should have been like that of the Apostles To prove that it was so the Vindicator parallels him with St. Paul p. 25. in wrestling against Principalities and Powers c. there enumerating the greatest part of that Apostles Virtues adding I could not forbear setting down this Panoply of St. Paul wherewith Luther compleatly arm'd himself in his Spiritual Warfare and I do not know whether this Description belongs so justly to any man as him since the days of the Apostles And in the Conclusion of his Book he is more extravagant in the Praise of this monstrous Reformer Such absurdities need no Reflections The few Instances given in this Paper more largely insisted on by the Judicious Considerer are I think sufficient to satisfie any unprejudic'd Reader That Luther was not a St. Paul or indeed any Saint or good Christian but on the contrary a Sacrilegious Insolent Opposer of the Catholick Religion that under the shew of Reformation divided the Church of Christ If therefore what is said in the Considerations of the Spirit of Martin Luther be true the Church of England in her Vindicating and Abetting so notorious a Schismatick in the very Act of Separating himself from the Whole True Visible Hierarchical Church of Christ must be Schismatical And that what is said in the Considerations c. is true evidently appears from the preceding Reflections wherein is briefly and plainly shew'n That the Oxford Vindicator has prov'd nothing to the contrary FINIS