the Churches and not those private mens who Communicated it they were bound to refer theirs to the greatest Glory of God and the Edification of his Church and not to the Wills and Interests of the Court of Rome and its Prelates altho' ir was through their Channel that they had received it They did well therefore to make use of that which they had of good in their Call to purify that which was bad in it and they also did well to make use of it against the ill intention of those who had given it them for an ill end even as those who have received Baptism from an Heretical or Schismatical Society are bound by that same Baptism which they have received from them to oppose themselves as much as possibly they can to that Heresy or Schism and to make use of their very Baptism for it altho' it should be against the intention of those who gave it to them I acknowledge also that there were some few who received their Call immediately from the Churches hand I would say the Body of the faithful people and we may say of those that their Call was extraordinary in the sense that we call unusual things Extraordinary which happen very rarely and which are done against Custom and ordinary practice For howsoever that those Calls were not unlawfully made and without Right as I have proved in the foregoing Chapter it is notwithstanding True that it is not nor ought to be the Common Practice and that it has no place but in a case of absolute Necessity So also in the Church of Rome the Call of Martin V. may be said to be Extraordinary who was called to the Papacy immediately by the whole Body of the Latin Prelates assembled in the Council of Constance and not by the Colledge of Cardinals as it is ordinarily done As to those Ministers who succeeded them and who received their Ordination from the hands of the first Reformers their Call was without doubt Ordinary and conformable to the practice of the Antient Church according to the Idea that the Scripture gives us of it and all that it can have of Extraordinary consists in this that in the distinction of Bishops and Presbyters they have not followed them and it is the Presbytery and not the Bishop who gives the Ordination but in that very thing they did nothing remote from that which was practised in the Apostolick Church acording to the Idea of it that the Scripture furnishes us with since Saint Paul saith in express terms concerning Timothy That he had received it by the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery I do not here enter upon the Question whether that Distinction is of Divine or only of Humane Right I will say something to that in the close I do not so much as blame those who observe it as a thing very Antient and I would not have it made a matter of difference in those places wherein it is established but I say where that Distinction is not observed as it is not nor can be amongst the Protestants of this Kingdom their Call will not cease to be lawful since besides the Case of absolute necessity which sufficiently dispences with that Form besides that neither the Bishop nor the Presbyter are of themselves any more than Executors of the Will of the Church in that Regard and not the Masters of that Call besides that I say there is a Formal Text of the Apostle that justifies the Right that the Church has to give the Imposition of hands by the Presbytery which alone is sufficient to stop the mouth of all Contradiction whatsoever That being so explained we may easily see what we ought to answer to all those petty Objections of which the Author of the Prejudices has composed his fourth and fifth Chapters Some says he were called to the Ministry and made Pastors only by Lay-men others were ordained by Priests only and those who had been Ordained by Bishops lifted themselves up against their Ordainers and that Church which had given them their Mission I have shewn in the foregoing Chapter that those who were called by Lay-men that is to say by the whole Body of the Church had a sufficient Call That which I have also said concerning those who received their Ordination from the Presbytery does not leave any more difficulty and as to those who resisted their own Ordainers I have shewn that they did nothing in all that whereunto their very Office did not bind them We may see saith he yet further by the thirty first Article of their Confession of Faith that it was upon this supposition of a power given immediately by God to these men Extraordinarily sent to Order the Church a new that all their pretended Reformation is founded That Article of our Confession of Faith says not that the Church had absolutely perished nor that the Ministry was intirely extinguished but that the Church was fallen into Ruine and Desolation and that its State was interrupted which only shews that she as well as the Ministry under which she was were both in the greatest Corruption and this is that which we also hold It says not that God had given an immediate Mission to the Reformers but that God had raised them up after an extraordinary manner to order the Church a new That signifies that God by his Providence gave them Extaordinary Gifts to undertake so great a Work as that of the Reformation was and that he accompanied them with his Blessing All that includes neither a new Revelation nor a new immediate Mission and hinders not that the Right which they had to employ themselves in it should not be annexed to their Charge and that it should not be common not only to all the Pastors but even to all Christians as I have shewn in my Second part Their Discipline adds he Ordains that the Priests of the Roman Church who upon turning of Calvinists should be Elected to the Office of Ministers should receive a new Imposition of hands which shews that they suppose their precedent Mission to be Null and so that that which Luther and Zuinglius Received from the Church of Rome signify'd nothing whence it follows that that which they ascribe to them can be no other than Extraordinary There is a great Difference between the Call which was given before the Reformation and that which is at this day given in the Roman Church since those Two Communions are separated The Former was indeed very much corrupted but yet nevertheless it supposes the consent of the whole Latin Church and it was not given by a Party so confirmed in Errour where the second supposes no other than the consent of a Party so confirmed in those Errours which we believe to be most contrary to the Purity of the Gospel which makes the matter so that our Society can no more look upon it as a Lawfull Call in regard of it and its Service Besides that when
Prejudices had some interest to leave his Readers in the ignorance of those particular matters of fact but since he and I have not the same view of things he ought not to take it ill that I supply his defect and that I lay down that which he would not In the year 306. God having given peace to the Church after the cruel persecutions of Dioclesian the people of Carthage being assembled by the direction of some neighbouring Bishops chose Cecilianus for their Bishop in the place of Mensurius who had been dead some time before and Cecilianus afterwards received his Ordination at the hands of Felix Bishop of Aprungis This Election had displeased some of that Church through their private interests so that they formed a party against him and this party having called Secundus Primate of Numidia with a great many other Bishops to the number of Seventy they made his Ordination void and ordained one Majorinus in his place Cecilianus was upheld by a great part of the Church and kept himself in his Bishoprick Majorinus was upheld also by those of his party and the Bishops of Numidia which made them set up at Carthage Altar against Altar that is to say that each Bishop set up his Assemblies apart and so the Church of Carthage was rent But this Division did not stop at Carthage for the Bishops of Africa took part some with Cecilianus and the others with Majorinus one of these was called Donatus from whose name all that Sect came in the end to be called Donatists Each party laboured to fortifie themselves by reasons the Donatists on their side at first accus'd Felix the Ordainer of Cecilianus and afterwards Cecilianus himself of having been Traditors that is to say of having delivered their Bibles to the Pagans for them to burn them during the persecutions The others on the contrary maintained that it was a false accusation of which they had neither conviction nor proof because that Cecilianus had not been heard before his condemnation and they also accused some of those who had condemn'd him of having been themselves Traditors and to have mutually absolv'd one another of that crime in a Synod which they had held The quarrel growing high the Donatists presented a Petition to the Emperour Constantine to intreat of him some Judges because that in Africa they were all divided and parties and the Emperour commissioned for that purpose Milciades Bishop of Rome Merodes Bishop of Milan Maternus Bishop of Cologne Reticus Bishop of Autun and Marinus Bishop of Arles These Judges met together with some other Bishops of Italy all in number to nineteen and having taken an exact knowledge of that business they justified Cecilianus and confirmed him in his Bishoprick nevertheless without making void either the Ordination of Majorinus or that of his Successors but the Donatists would not acquiesce in this judgement They said that Milciades had himself been a Traditor and that he defended the Traditors They had recourse again to the Emperour who ordain'd that the cause should be search'd again and determined in a Council at Arles where the Donatists having been again condemn'd they appealed to the Emperours own person and the Emperour having taken cognizance of it himself condemned them After all this the Opinionativeness of the Donatists was so great that instead of submitting themselves to so many judgements they chose rather to separate themselves from the whole Church They made therefore a General Schism with the whole Christian World and to colour it with some appearance of reason they maintained that all the world had fallen into Apostasy through the meer Communion which it had with the Traditor Cecilianus They would no more own either any Church or Christianity in the world but what was in their party and they rebaptized all those who had been baptized in the Church since the business of Cecilianus S. Augustine and the other Fathers of Africa had fairly told them that Cecilianus was innocent that though he should not have been innocent the Judges could have done no less than to have absolved him there having been no proofs against him and that though even the Judges should have judg'd wrong yet all the world could not have been guilty of that crime since the greater part of the Churches and of the persons that compos'd them had had no knowledge of that affair that though they should have had knowledge of it they could have done no otherwise than referr'd it to Judges or lastly not being willing to refer it to Judges prudence and charity would have oblig'd them to have bore with the wicked in the external communion of the Church rather than to have broken Peace and Christian Unity for personal crimes which were not communicated to them who had no part in them All these reasons did not hinder the Donatists from remaining obstinate in their conclusion which was that all the Church had lost its righteousness by the Communion which it had with Cecilianus and that there was no more any Christianity in the World except in the party of Donatus From hence it was that the Question arose between them which of the two Parties was the Church Upon this History we must make four Observations which it may be will not be impertinent in the end The first is That the Donatists would not own that Party for Orthodox which was contrary to them whom they accused neither of any Error in the Faith nor any depravation of Worship and that the Church on its side did not accuse the Donatists of any Heresie in the Faith For as for the Question of the Validity or Invalidity of the Baptism of Hereticks neither the one nor the other made that the occasion of their breach and it was not upon that that the Donatists founded their Separation We confess both one sort and the other said Cresconius one and the same Jesus Christ born dead and risen again We have one and the same Religion and the same Sacraments and there is no difference between us about the practice of Christianity S. Augustine said also That their difference was not about the head but about the body that is to say that their dispute was not about Jesus Christ our Saviour but about his Church And elsewhere That they agreed in Baptism in the Creed and in the other Sacraments of our Lord. All the pretence of this Rupture was the personal faults of two or three Bishops which were not proved on one side nor owned on the other and whereof the greatest part of the world had no knowledge So that the Dispute concerning the Church was not between two Communions that contested one with the other about the purity of Doctrine but between two Communions which mutually acknowledg'd one another to be Orthodox yet disputed one with the other the title of the quality of the Church of Jesus Christ The second Observation that I shall make is that the opposite Party to the Donatists
Prejudices means that that visible extension is a perpetual mark of the Orthodox communion that alwayes distinguishes it from impure or heretical communions so that this Orthodox communion as far as it is visible can never be restrained to a few persons and places it is certain that this was not the opinion of S. Augustine nor that of the other Fathers and it is certain also that the celebrated Authors of the Church of Rome reject the Proposition in this sense as false and absurd and that in effect it is manifestly contrary to experience To set forth the truth of what I propound I will begin with experience and as that of our Age presents it self first to our view I say that if we must act at this day according to the principle That the true Orthodox Church ought to be visibly extended over all Nations we must conclude that there is no true Orthodox Church in the world For it is most true that of all the communions which at this day divide Christianity there is not any one to whom this mark can agree I will not say that there are divers parties in the known world which have not so much as yet heard of Christianity nor that there are others who after having received it have absolutely rejected it to embrace the Mahometan Religion I will not here speak of the Greek communion separated from the Roman nor of the Coptick or Nestorian or of the Jacobites or Armenian which evidently have not that visible extension throughout all Nations I will only speak of the Roman and the Protestant as they are at present He must sayes the Author of the Prejudices be wholly blind that can dare to maintain that the society of Calvinists which is wholly shut out of Italy Spain Flanders a great part of Germany Swedeland Denmark Muscovy Asia Africa of almost all America is that which Jesus Christ has spread over all the world But before he argues after this manner he ought to take heed that we cannot say the same thing of the Roman communion For is it not true that it is at this day excluded from Swedeland Denmark a great part of Germany a part of Switzerland a part of Greece Muscovy Africa Aethiopia Persia Tartary China Japan of the Indies and from the greatest part of America And the Author of the Prejudices ought not to pretend the prevailing of some Colonies of Missionaries whom the Pope sends here and there to gain Proselytes For since he will not have it that we should gain any thing by the Colonies of English and Dutch who have establish'd themselves in all the parts of the world why would he help himself by the Missionaries and Pensionaries that the Congregations de fide propaganda maintain in foreign Countreys Why should they be more reckon'd for any thing than those Colonies of English and Dutch who have the exercises of their Religion as free as those of the Roman Communion They are sayes he such Merchants as are in those Countreys only for the sake of Trade But do not those Merchants pray to God in the form of their Religion in what Countreys and with what design soever they are Is it that those Merchants being so much ty'd as they are to their Trading make no open profession of their Religion or that they have not in the greatest part of those places where they are their ordinary Assemblies with their Ministers as well as the Missionaries He must yield in good earnest that the Christians are now divided and separated from one another about matters of faith and worship in their different Societies or communions of which each one has its seat and bounds apart beyond which we cannot say they are visibly extended if we would speak with any reason and that there is no one that is throughout all Nations in the form of a communion of visible Society From whence it follows that all this dispute of the Author of the Prejudices is but a beating the air and which he can never apply to any real subject The Experience of former Ages is not less contrary to the Proposition of the Author of the Prejudices than that of our Age. For if we consult History we shall find that it has fallen out often that an Heretical communion has spread it self every where while the Orthodox communion was so limited that it did not seem to take up any space If in the time of the Arians they had disputed by this principle by which the Author of the Prejudices would decide our differences I mean if they would have treated that communion as Heretical that was not visibly spread over all the Nations and that as Orthodox which was the Arians had easily overcome The Heresie of the Arians and Eunomians sayes S. Jerom possess'd all the East except Athanasius and Paulinus S. Hilary sayes the same thing The greatest part of the Ten Provinces of Asia excepting Eleusius and some others do not truly know God In those time sayes the Author of the Life of S. Gregory Nazianzen the Church was oppressed by the Arian Heresie many Bishops were banished and vexed by torments and calumnies a thousand wayes many Presbyters and many numerous Flocks were brought down to the utmost misery exposed to the injuries of the weather as no more having any house of prayer where they might meet That Heresie had almost fill'd all the Earth and it triumph'd being upheld by the power of the Emperour so that good men had not so much as the justice of the Laws against the wicked And because the Pastors or to say better the concealed Wolves under the appearance of Pastors had the liberty to drive the Orthodox Bishops out of the Churches who alone were worthy to serve Jesus Christ the Soveraign Bishop it hapned that some overcome with fear others deceived by fair words others gained by money others surprized through their own simplicity embrac'd that Heresie and opened their bosoms and gave their communion to their adversaries This was that that oblig'd the Fathers to elevate the little number and the little flock above extension and multitude Where are those men saith Gregory Nazianzen who reproach us with our poverty and insolently boast themselves of their riches who would define the Church by multitude and contemn the little flock They measure Divinity they weigh the people in the ballance they esteem the illiterate and cover with injuries the lights of the world they heap together the common stones and despise the pretious not remembring that the more the thick darkness surpasses in number the Stars the more the ordinary stones surpass the pretious in quantity the more those Stars and pretious stones surpass the ordinary stones in purity and excellency This Father who had seen in his time the Hereticks masters of the whole Church and their communion spread very wide and far in the East and in the West while the Orthodox durst not appear was so far from having
the Magistrates receive their Jurisdiction from it He adds afterwards That it is the same in the Keys of the Church that Jesus Christ gave them to the whole Church in the person of Saint Peter And that it is the Church that Communicates them to the Prelats but which notwithstanding Communicates them without depriving it self of them so that says he the Church has them and the Prelats have them but in a different manner for the Church has them in respect of Origine and Vertue and the Prelats have them only in respect of Vse The Church has them vertually because she can give them to a Prelate by Election and she has them Originally also For the Power of a Prelate does not take its origine from it self but from the Church by means of the Eelction that it makes of him The Church that chose him gives him that Jurisdiction but as for the Church it receives it from no Body after its having once received it from Jesus Christ The Church therefore has the Keys Originally and Virtually and whenever she gives them to a Prelate she does not give them to him after the manner that she has them to wit Originally and Virtually but she gives them him only as to Vse To this we may add that some Councils of these latter Ages as those of Constance and Basil seem to have acted themselves upon this Principle when they gave themselves the Title of Representing the whole Universal Church Vniversalem Ecclesiam Representans For to what end did they take that specious Title if they would not acknowledge that the Origine of the Authority of the Prelats or the Pastors is in the Body of the whole Society and that it is from thence that it is transmitted to them to exercise it in the name of the whole Body But that which is most considerable is That it appears from the Testimony of the Holy Scripture that the Body of the Church that is to say the faithful people in opposition to the Pastors has taken part from the beginning in the Acts of its proper Government and particularly in the Calls of Ministers which evidently notes that it is a natural Right that belongs to it For that when after the Apostacy and Tragical Death of Judas they were to substitute another Apostle in his place Jesus Christ not having done it immediately by himself before his Ascention the History of the Acts relates that the whole Church which then only Consisted in an hundred and twenty Persons was Assembled and that upon the Proposal that Saint Peter made to them they appointed two upon whom the Lot having been cast and falling upon Matthias with a common consent he was put into the number of the Apostles They were there about the Call of an Apostle that is to say of a Minister who ought to come immediately from God and therefore it was that they cast the Lot but because the Church was then formed and that Jesus Christ being no more corporally present upon Earth those Calls could not be made wholly and immediately by him men took some part in them for by their Election they limited the Lot to two persons and in the end declared by their acquiesence that they look'd upon the Declaration of the Lot as if it had been the very voice of Jesus Christ This is all the part that men could take there but it was not only the Apostles who did those two things it was the whole Body of the Church The History notes that the Assembly was about an hundred and twenty persons that Saint Peter made a Proposal to them that upon that Proposal of Saint Peter they presented Two Joseph and Matthias and that the Lot falling upon Matthias he was numbred with the Eleven Apostles by common Agreement that is to say by the common consent of all That evidently shews us that the Body of the Faithful and not meerly the Body of the Pastors is the Right source of Calls The same things appear in the Call of the Seven Deacons for the Story expresly notes that the murmuring of the Greeks against the Hebrews falling out and giving occasion to the Apostles to think of that Call they called the multitude of the Disciples and that when they had made a Proposal to them the Assembly approved of it and that in the end they chose seven persons whom they presented to the Apostles who after having prayed to God laid their hands on them But that further le ts us see from whence a Lawful Call proceeds to wit from the Body of the Faithful and not meerly from the Body of the Pastors for it was the whole Assembly that approved of the Proposal of the Apostles and that chose and not the Apostles alone who did nothing else but propose and lay their hands on them This is further justified by the Practice of the Apostles which would readily admit the people in the most weighty Affairs that respected the Government of the Church into their deliberations and Acts when that might be done without Confusion So in the First Council of Jerusalem the Question being ventilated whether the Observation of the Ceremonies of the Law was necessary to the Gentiles it is said that it pleased the Apostles and Elders or Presbyters for it is the same thing with the whole Church to send to Antioch and write to the Church there That Letter was in effect written in the name of all and sent to all indifferently The Apostles and Elders and Brethren unto the Brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Cyria and Cilicia and it is expreslynoted that when Jude and Silas who were the bearers of that Letter were arrived at Antioch they Assembled the multitude that is to say the people and there acquitted themselves of their Commission which distinctly shews that the people then took cognizance of the matters of Religion and that they interven'd in publick Deliberations So when Saint Paul would Excommunicate the Incestuous person of Corinth he calls the Church to that Action In the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ when ye are gathered together and my Spirit let such a man be delivered unto Satan for the Destruction of the Flesh that the Body may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus which notes the same thing Those who have read the writings of Saint Cyprian Bishop of Carthage cannot be ignorant that that great Saint governed his Church by the common Suffrages not only of his whole Clergy but of all his people also and that he consulted with them in the most weighty Affairs since he has declared it himself in divers places of his writings I could not saies he in one of his Epistles to his Clergy answer to that which our Brethren Donatus Fortunatus Novatus and Gordius have wrote to me because I am alone for from the first entrance into my Bishoprick I purposed to do nothing of my self without your Counsel and the Consent
of their Ministers says the Author of the Prejudices some Passages of Scripture that clearly give Lay-men a Right to ordain Ministers in any case That demand is but a vain wrangling for when the Scripture recommends to the Faithful the taking diligent heed to the Preservation and Confirmation of their Faith and to propagate it to their Children it gives them clearly enough by that very thing a sufficient Right to make use of all the means that are proper for that and that are naturally appointed to it But every one knows that the Ministry is one of those means whence it follows that the Obligation that the Scripture layes upon the Faithful people in that respect includes that of creating it self its Pastors when it is not possible that they should have them otherwise for that he that ordains the end ordains also by consequence the means that are naturally appointed for that end When the Scripture commands that all things be done with Order in the Church it gives by that very thing clearly enough a sufficient Right to the Church to make its Pastors when it has none and when it can have none but by that way since it is clear that Pastors belong to that Order In fine when the Scripture teaches that the Faithful people have a Right to chuse their Pastors it teaches clearly enough by that very thing that they have also a Right themselves to instal them in their Office in a case of necessity for that Call consisting much more Essentially in Election than in Installation which is but a Formality there is no reason to believe that God would have given the people a Right to have chosen their Pastors and to have made them be install'd by other Pastors and that he has not given them at the same time that of installing them themselves when it cannot be done otherwise since naturally that which we have a Right to do by another we have a Right to do by our selves As to those who were ordained by meer Priests can the Author of the Prejudices be ignorant that the Distinction of a Bishop and a Priest or Minister as if they had two differing Offices is not only a thing that they cannot prove out of the Scripture but that even contradicts the express words of the Scripture where Bishops and Priests are the names of one and the same Office from whence it follows that the Priests having by their first Institution a Right to confer Ordination that Right cannot be taken from them by meerly humane Rules Can the Author of the Prejudices be ignorant that Saint Jerome Hilary the Deacon and after them Hincmar wrote formarly touching the Unity or as they speak the Identity of a Priest and a Bishop in the beginning of the Church and about the first rise of that distinction which was afterwards made of them into two different charges Can he be ignorant that Saint Augustine himself writing to Saint Jerome refers that difference not to the first Institution of the Ministry but meerly to an Ecclesiastical use Although says he that by different Terms of honour the custom of the Church has now brought in the Episcopacy to be above the Priesthood yet Augustine is in many things beneath Jerome Can he be ignorant that some Fathers Teach us that the Ordination of a Priest and a Bishop are but one and the same Ordination and not two which distinctly shews that they are but one and the same Office And as to the right of making Ordinations can the Author of the Prejudices deny that Saint Paul speaks of the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery Can he deny that the Priests did not heretofore ordain as well as the Bishops Does not Eutychius Patriarch of Alexandria relate that Saint Mark setting up Ananias to be Patriarch of that same Church of Alexandria established also twelve Priests with him to the end says he that when the See should be vacant it should be filled by one of them and that the Eleven that remain'd should lay their hands on him and bless and create the Patriarch and that afterwards they should chuse another man and make him a Priest in the place of him who should be chosen Patriarch and that by that means the number of Twelve might remain always compleat And does not Saint Jerome more Antient then Eutychius say to the same sence that at Alexandria down from Saint Mark the Evangelist unto Heraclius and Dionysius Bishops the Priests alwayes took out one from among themselves whom they set in the highest Seat and called him Bishop after the same manner says he as an Army makes an Emperour or as if the Deacons should chuse one out of themselves and call him their Arch-Deacon Does not Cassian relate the story of a certain young man named Daniel who liv'd among the Monks of Egypt about the year 420. and who was first made Deacon and in the end Priest by his Abbot called Paphnutius who was himself but a Priest Does not Baronius himself say after Anastasius that after the Death of Pope Vigilius in the year 555. Pelagius his Successor received his Ordination at the hands of two Bishops and a Priest of Ostia named Andrew Which shews that even then the Priests were not wholly excluded the Right of Ordination They were not yet absolutely so in the seventh Century since we learn from Bede's History That the Monks and Priests of the Isle of Jovan in Scotland not only ordained Priests among them but even Bishops also and that they sent them into England and that those Bishops were under their Abbot who was himself but a meer Priest It is therefore a Right that is naturally belonging to the Priests and of which they cannot be deprived by humane Constitution and Orders which cannot hinder that Right from alwayes remaining annexed to their Office and that they may not reducs it into Act when the necessity of the Church requires it In effect William Bishop of Paris has made no scruple to say according to his Hypothesis That if there were no more but three meer Priests in the World one of them must needs consecrate the other to be a Bishop and the other to be an Arch-Bishop And to speak my own Thoughts freely it seems to me that that firm opinion of the absolute necessity of Episcopacy that goes so high as to own no Church or Call or Ministry or Sacraments or Salvation in the World where there are no Episcopal Ordinations although there should be the True Faith the True Doctrine and Piety there and which would that all Religion should depend on a Formality and even on a Formality that we have shewn to be of no other than Humane Institution that Opinion I say cannot be lookt on otherwise then as the very worst character and mark of the highest Hypocricy a piece of Pharisaism throughout that strains at a Gnat when it swallows a Camel and I cannot avoid having at least a contempt of
those kind of thoughts and a compassion for those who fill their heads with them I come now to that which the Author of the Prejudices propounds That if the Church of Rome were so corrupted as we hold its Calls could not be lawful from whence it follows that our First Reformers who had received their Ordination from the Hands of the Bishops of that Church had received no other Call than what was Null and Unlawful But we have answered him already that although the Latin Church before the Reformation was very much corrupted the Essence of the Ministry did not fail to be preserved in it and that though its Calls were very rude and confused yet they did not cease to be Calls and to be lawful ones in proportion to that Good which remain'd in that Society wherein God yet kept the Truly Faithful The Foundation of the Christian Doctrine yet remaining there with its Efficacy which was found in some persons the Ministry and by consequence their Calls were yet lawful in that respect and the first Reformers who referred those which they received to their right and lawful use in freeing them from that impurity which they had they were by that means rectifyed purifyed and freed from that ill which they had It is to no purpose that he alleadges the Authority of some Antients who seem to have held Ordinations made by Hereticks Null for he cannot deny that the common Opinion of the Church was not contrary to it that all that ought to be held for good and lawful that was good and lawful in it self vvhich the Heretical or Schismatical Society held and to be approved rather than denyed This is vvhat Saint Augustine expresly teaches Not only says he our Fathers vvho lived before Cyprian and Agrippin but those also vvho lived since have observed that vvholsome Custom of approving and not denying all that vvhich they have found to be Divine and Lavvful that Hereticks and Schismaticks preserv'd intire and of rejecting that vvhich they beheld to be forreign and erroneous among them Let the Author of the Prejudices read what that Father has vvrote not only in his ovvn name but in the Name of the vvhole Church against Parmenio and the other Donatists vvho said that Baptism truly remained among Hereticks but not the Right to Administer Baptism and he will find that Saint Augustine strongly maintains that the Right of Ordination upon which that of administring Baptism depends remains even among Hereticks and Schismaticks in respect of all that good that remains there I have said elsewhere that in the Confusions of Arianism divers Ordinations made by Arian Bishops were not held to be Null In effect that of Meletius ordained by the Eudoxians who had it disputed for some time by some few vvas at last generally acknovvledged to be lavvful and that of Faelix Bishops of Rome vvhich vvas also made by the Arians vvas never called in question both the one and the other purifying their Ministry by returning to the Orthodox Faith I should have shut up this Chapter and vvith it this vvork if I did not further think my self bound to ansvver that great and solemn defiance of the Author of the Prejudices about the validity of my Baptism not that I pretend to vie vvith him in his manner of disputing but meerly because I believe that I have been very vvell baptised I do not fear says he openly to maintain to Monsieur Claude That remaining in the Principles of his sect he neither has nor can have any rational assurance of the validity of the Baptism which is administred and approved in their Communion That by consequence he does not know whether he is Baptised or whether any Calvinist ever was That all the certainty he can pretend to have is rash and ill grounded That it can be no other than a certainty of Fancy and Humour and not of Knowledge and Truth and that he can never have a rational one but in sincerely acknowledging the falseness of the Principles of his Religion and in rendring that deference and submission to the Catholick Church which he ows it I speak to him purposely after this manner to engage him the more to clear out this matter to us It was not necessary for that to speak to me after that manner for he very well knows that I have all the readiness in the World to content him A word is enough without any heat and Elevation of voice to make me obey What does he then desire I should do To shew him he adds what he has to do and what that proof ought necessarily to include I beseech him to note that the validity of the Baptism of the Calvinists depends upon four Principles Let him blot out the word Beseech which agrees neither with the manner in which he speaks to me nor with that wherewith I desire to obey him First as they were all Baptised in their Infancy they must to the end they may be certain that their Baptism was good be assured that the Baptism of Infants be good and that the Anabaptists who deny it are in an Errour Secondly as they were all Baptised by Sprinkling not by Immersion they cannot further be assured of the validity of their Baptism unless they know certainly that Baptism by sprinkling is good and that Immersion is not necessary In the third place as they all proceeded either mediately or immediately from the Catholick Church which they so loudly accuse of Heresy and Idolatry it necessarily follows that they were all Baptised either mediately or immediately by Hereticks They cannot therefore have rational Certainty of their being Baptised unless at least they are assured That the Baptism which they received in an Heretical Communion is good or that that which is administred by a man not Baptised does not fail to be good In fine the Calvenists being perswaded on one side that Baptism administred by Lay-men is Null and of no effect and on the other that the Catholick Priests and Bishops are false Priests and false Bishops yet notwithstanding as they derive their Baptism from those false Priests and false Bishops they must needs shew us by the Scripture the agreement of these opinions and that they can prove by clear and express passages out of it that although the Call of the Catholick Priests should be Null and Vnlawful they have yet nevertheless that Power of Baptising which the Laity has not See here therefore what I have to do but I need to say but a word to each point I say then as to the first That when the Scripture has said Be Baptised every one of you in the Name of Jesus Christ for the Promise is to you and to your Children and to all that are a far off even as many as the Lord our God shall call it has clearly established Infant Baptism For since Baptism ought to be given to them to whom the promise is made and that that is made
had a Plenitude a fulness of Power 11. What could they say to those Titles which the Popes attributed to themselves of being the spouses Husbands of the Church and the Vicars of Jesus Christ The Church my Spouse said Innocent the Third were not married to me if she did not bring me something she has given me a Dowry of an inestimable price the fulness of all spiritual things the greatness and spaciousness of Temporals the Grandeur and Abundance both of the one and the other She has bestowed on me the Miter in token of things Spiritual The Crown for a sign of the Temporal the Mitre for the Priesthood the Crown for the Kingdom substituting me in his place who had it wrote on his Vestment and his Thigh The King of Kings and Lord of Lords After the same stile Martin the fifth intitled himself in this manner in the Instructions which he gave to a Nuntio that he sent to Constantinople as Raynaldus relates The most Holy and most Happy who has Heavenly power who is the Lord of the Earth the successor of Peter The Christ or Annointed of the Lord the Lord of the Vniverse the Father of Kings the Light of the World the Soveraign High Priest Pope Martin 12. What could they say to that Scandalous applying to the Popes those passages of the Scripture which only and immediately regard God himself and his Son Jesus Christ Baronius relates that Alexander the Third making his Entry into the Town of Montpellier a Sarasin Prince prostrated himself before him and adored him as the Holy and venerable God of the Christians and that those that were of the Popes train ravished with Admiration said one to another those words of the Prophet All the Kings of the Earth shall worship him and all Nations shall do him service So in the Council of Later an one complemented Leo the Tenth with these Applications of Scripture God has given you all power both in Heaven and in Earth Weep not Daughter of Sion Behold the Lion of the Tribe of Judah of the stock of David And those of Palermo by the Relation of Paulus Jovius prostrate at the feet of Martin the Fourth made their addresses to him in the same words that they say to Jesus Christ before their Altars Thou that takest away the Sins of the World have mercy upon us Thou that takest away the the sins of the World have mercy upon us Thou that takest away the sins of the World grant us thy peace 13. What could our Fathers say to those strange Declarations of some Popes that maintained that all Laws resided in them that all the Rules of Justice were enclosed within their Breasts that it was necessary to the Salvation of every Creature that he should be subject to the Pope of Rome that they had in their hands the Temporal and Spiritual Sword and other expressions of the like nature So Paul the second answered Platina who requested him that he would dismiss him to the prosecuting of his suit about a very important affair before the Auditors of the Rota because the Sentence that the Pope had given was unjust Is it so then says he that you would have us be brought to be try'd before the Judges Do not you know that we have all the Laws shut up within our own Breast In the close of that business Platina having taken the boldness to say he would demand Justice of a Council the Pope put him into a strait Prison So also Boniface the Eighth begins one of his Decretals in these words Licet Romanus Pontifex qui jura omnia in scrinio pectoris sui censetur habere It was the same person who desin'd the necessity of subjecting ones self to the Pope after this manner Subesse Romana Pontifici omni humanae Creaturae dicimus declaramus definimus pronuntiamus esse de necessitate Salutis and who said that although the Papal Authority was given to a man and that though it was exercised by a Man it was never the less Divine that though the Papal power came to be depraved yet it could not be judged by any man but by God alone because the Apostle has said that the Spiritual man judges all things and is himself judged of no man That there are two Swords that are in the power of the Church the Spiritual and the Temporal the one of the which had its use for the Church and the other the Church her self exercised the one is in the hand of the Pope and the other in those of Kings and Souldiers but whose management depends on the good pleasure and the sufferance of the Pope 14. What could our Fathers say to those prodigious pretensions that the Popes made over Emperours and Kings even to make their Crowns depend on their pleasure to dethrone them to give away their Kingdoms to others and to absolve their Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance Every one knows what the decisions were that Gregory the Seventh made in a Council held at Rome in the year 1076. against the Emperor Henry the Fourth whom he had deposed and whose Subjects he had absolved of their Oaths of Allegiance One may call those decisions the Dictatorship of the Pope do but see some of their Articles as they are set down by Baronius That the Bishop of Rome only could wear the Imperial Ornaments That all Princes were wont to kiss the feet of the Pope alone That only his name ought to be mentioned in the Churches That there was but one chief name in the World which was that of the Pope That he had right to depose Emperours That his Decrees could be made void by none whosoever he were but that he alone could make void all others That he could loose the Subjects of wicked Princes from their Oaths of Allegiance The Decretals are full of the like attempt of Boniface the Eighth upon Philip the Fair one of our Kings He went so far as to excommunicate him and to absolve his subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance and in fine to give away his Crown to the Emperor Albert. I confess that he was punished as he deserved and that the French on this occasion served their Prince with great zeal The same Platina mentioned before could not forbear making this reflexion on the Death of this Pope Thus dy'd this Boniface who thought of nothing less then of terrifying Emperors Kings and Princes and all men that he might the more inspire into them a Religious respect and who pretended to give and take away by force whole Kingdomes to overturn and re-establish all men by the meer motion of his Will But howsoever it was the bad success of Boniface could not hinder our Fathers from judging as they ought of these insolent pretensions of the Popes and taking notice that those who made their very Religion to serve their Ambition seeing their Ambition had no bounds had a peculiar interest
None are ignorant how they had mingled some false pieces into the true Works of the Fathers as in those of Justin Martyr of Origen of Saint Cyprian of Saint Athanasius of Saint Hilary of Saint Ambrose of Saint Chrysostome of Saint Jerome of Saint Augustin and almost generally of all the Fathers whose names they have made use of to authorise their forgeries None are ignorant what alterations they had made in the true writings of the Fathers whether by changing their words or adding to them or sometimes in cutting off considerable clauses and whole passages entire Who sees not that these ill practises which of themselves are so odious in all sorts of matters and especially in those of Religion could not but encrease the just suspitions that our Fathers had of all that which they named Tradition 14. We might make the same judgment of that visible abuse about Reliques which was brought into the Church For on the one side the devotion of the people was so hot as to that point that it could not keep it self within any measure and on the other the Cheats about them were so multiplied that even those of the weakest understandings could not behold them without being ashamed of them That prodigious quantity of the wood of the true Cross which is scattered over the World witnesses this as likewise the Slippers and Hose of Saint Joseph the Shift of the Blessed Virgin her Coifs her Fillets her Girdles her two Combs her Cloaths her Wedding-Ring the Sword wherewith Saint Michael fought with the Devil the twelve Combs of the Apostles some of the Stones wherewith Saint Steven was stoned the Skin of Saint Bartholomew the Coals that broiled Saint Laurence Aarons Rod the Bones of Abraham of Isaac and Jacob And beyond all that the multiplication of one and the same Relique which is to be found in divers places for there is nothing more ordinary then for one to see two three or four Bodies of the same Saint as of Saint Gervase Saint Protais Saint Sebastian of Saint Pretonilla Saint Anthony and some others All which being very much recommended to the People as the true objects of their Devotion not only without any certain grounds but very often with all the appearances of falsness could not but create a vast prejudice of corruption in that Church and Religion 15. Moreover when our Fathers cast their eyes upon the four chief means that God has established in his Church for the preserving of true Faith and Piety in it which are the Scriptures the publick Worship Preaching and the Sacraments and when they considered after what manner they were altered and the use of all those means almost brought to nothing it was not possible they could do otherwise than conclude that corruption whereof we dispute For as to the Scripture instead of making that the only Rule of Faith they had joyn'd Traditions with them that is to say the most uncertain thing in the World the most subject to Impostures and the most mixed with humane inventions and weaknesses Instead of recommending the reading of that Divine word to the Faithful for their Instruction and their Comfort it could scarce be found even in the hands of some Church-men And as for the Schools they knew far better how to quote Aristotle the Master of the Sentences Albertus Magnus Saint Thomas and Saint Bonaventure then the Prophets and Apostles As for the publick Service they performed it some Ages ago in a strange Tongue unknown to the people who by this means were depriv'd of that benefit which they might justly expect So that the Assemblies were become in that respect Springs stopt up for any publick edification and their little Prayers themselves the Lords Prayer and the Creed were then read almost only in Latin and the Women and Children and People seemed to know God only by the Idea that was given them of that Tongue in which notwithstanding they understood nothing As for Preaching besides that the Pulpit in the greatest part of that time was abandoned we have yet some Books of the Sermons which they made in those days as of Jacobus de Voragine of a Menot a Maillard a Barelette a Discipulus de Tempore which did no very great honour to their Age. They treat there far oftner of the Legends of the Saints then the truths of Religion and that which was yet more deplorable instead of the Word of God they Preached almost nothing else but scandalously extravagant Opinions raw Parallels of a Saint with Jesus Christ ridiculous stories pleasant buffooneries and such like things which to speak moderatly were exceedingly remote from the natural design of the Pulpit and rendred it not only despised but after a sort odious For that which respects the Sacraments not to touch on those multitudes of unprofitable ceremonies wherewith they had loaded them we must confess that that opinion of the necessity of the intention of the Priest which was so generally taught in the School and which Eugenius the Fourth had defin'd in his Instruction to the Armenians in the Council of Florence it destroy'd almost all the benefit of those sacred Mysteries and cast mens Consciences into perpetual scruples and uncertainties For unless they could establish a revelation for every particular Christian what assurance could we have that he who administers the Sacrament to us had an intention to do that which the Church enjoyns him to do or that he had not an intention contrary to that of the Church What assurance could be given that in all that long Train of Priests Bishops and Popes that is to say the Bishops of Rome who had been from the beginning of Christianity down to this present time there had not been any in whom that intention which they make so necessary to the operation of the Sacrament had been defective Yet if one only Priest that shall happen to Baptise a Pope had not had an intention to Baptize him or if he himself was not truly a Priest by the default of the intention of him who gave him Orders or him who Baptized him If one only Bishop who confers Orders on a Pope then when he is made Priest had not an intention to do what the Church pretends to do all that which would come in consequence of that default would be spoiled the Bishops that that Pope afterwards should promote would not be lawful Bishops the Priests on whom those Bishops had conferred Orders would be no lawful Priests and the Sacraments that those Priests should administer would not be lawfully administred What could our Fathers think of such a dreadful confusion which they knew not how to undo unless by supposing a perpetual Miracle Which is that God should have so over-rul'd the intention of all those men that howsoever Wicked Athestical Hypocritical or Profane they should have been yet that not one of them nevertheless should fail in having an intention to do that which the Church enjoyns But what assurance have we
Fathers an Infallibility It is without doubt the Kings pleasure that we should submit our selves to his Officers and that we should obey them but he does not mean to advance them to be Infallible nor to ordain us to obey them if they shall happen to command us these things that are directly contrary to his service and to that Fidelity which we owe to our Soveraign It is then True that all those Exhortations to hear our Pastors and to obey their words are always to be restrain'd by this clause understood as far as their words shall be conformable to that of God that they can never go beyond that and that they cannot from thence draw any Priviledge of Infallibility 4. As these Gentlemen let slip nothing that may serve for their Interests so they ordinarily make use of that passage in the 18th Chapter of St. Matthew where Jesus Christ ordains that if any one receive an injury from another he is to reprove him between himself and him alone and if that first complaint signifies nothing then he must take witnesses with him and if he neglect to hear those witnesses he is to tell it to the Church and if he neglect to hear the Church he is to be unto us as a Heathen and a Publican All that that follows in the close of that discourse of Jesus Christ shews that he speaks there neither of Faith nor Worship but of some private quarrels that we might have against our Brethren to be taken away and of the use of that Discipline For the mind of our Lord is that before we break off absolutely with our Brethren we should observe all the Rules of Charity and that we should there make use of the Church but if he would refuse to hear the Church that in that case it was allowed us to treat him no longer as a Brother but as a real stranger Who sees not that if they would draw any thing of consequence from that passage they ought to pretend that the Church is Infallible not in matters of Faith for they are not medled with there but in matters of Fact and in the Censures that it gives upon private Quarrels in which nevertheless all the World agrees that she may be deceiv'd And therefore it is that these Gentlemen are wont to alleadge these last words Tell it to the Church and if he will not hear the Church let him be unto thee as the Heathens and Publicans and they alleadge them also as separated from the sequel of that Discourse because otherwise they could not but observe that they would signify nothing to them 5. In fine they produce those words of St. Paul to Timothy These things write I unto thee hoping to come unto thee shortly But if I tarry long that thou mayest know how to behave thy self in the House of God which is the Church of the living God the pillar and ground of the Truth How can say they the Church be the pillar and ground of Truth if it is not Infallible in the Doctrines it proposes as of Faith and in the Worship which it Practises But what likelyhood is there that he would have established an opinion so important as that of the Infallibility of the Latin Church on such Metaphorical terms which St. Paul did not make use of upon the sight of any Infallibility which should respect no other but the Latin Church in particular and which should much rather have respected the Church of Ephesus or the other Churches of Asia where Timothy was then when the Apostle wrote to him which yet did not fail of falling into Error in Terms which may be explained in divers sences and which have been appli'd to divers particular Bishops without yet pretending to raise them up to be Infallible what colour I say is there that they can prove the Infallibility of the Church of Rome It appears in the end of that discourse of St. Paul that he never thought of making the Church Infallible for in all that Chapter he aims at nothing else then to set down the duties of Bishops and Deacons and after having markt out in particular some qualities with which they ought to be endow'd and from what Vices they ought to be more especially exempt after what manner they ought to govern themselves he adds in the close of all That he wrote all that to his disciple to the end he might know how to behave himself in the House of God which is the Church of the Living God the pillar and ground of Truth Who sees not that that Infallibility comes not in at all to the purpose in that close of the Discourse Let the Bishops says he and the Deacons take heed they be wise sober c. That they hold the Mystery of the Faith in a pure Conscience that their Wives should be honest and faithful in all things that their Children should be well educated c. And that which I say in general I apply also to thee Timothy to the end thou mayst live unblameably in the House of God in the Church of the living God Add according to the Interpretation of these Gentlemen Which Church is Infallible and cannot err and there is nothing of any natural Connexion in it On the contrary that conceit of the Infallibility of the Church according to the Principle that our Adversaries makes use of in the Doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints would harden them in security for let them do as they will all would go well and after whatsoever manner the Pastors govern the Church could never be corrupted nor its Truth be lost Which would seem far more proper to inspire negligence into the Bishops then to animate them to do their duty In effect if they cannot tell how to exhort men by motives of that nature They ought then to confess the Truth to wit that these words The Pillar and Ground of Truth note the end and natural design of the Church that for which she is made and to which she is called which is to sustain and bear the Truth and to make it subsist in the World and so the discourse of the Apostle appears very just and well connected Behold says he after what manner the Bishops ought to frame their course and after what sort thou oughtest to live in the Church of God in behaving thy self in it so as remembring that God has appointed it to be the pillar and ground of his Truth Live therefore in that manner that may answer that end or that natural appointment of the Church Just as if the King exhorting one of the Officers of his Parliament to do his duty should tell him That he liv'd in a body that was the Pillar and Ground of Justice and the Rights of the Crown that is to say which is naturally ordain'd for the maintaining Justice in the State and to defend the Rights of the Crown But as that speech of the Prince would not establish any priviledge of
Glory and the Covenants and the giving of the Law and the service of God and the Promises of whom were the Fathers and who had the Oracles of God committed unto them and in whose bosom Christ according to the flesh was born If that Maxim of the Author of Prejudices were good it must necessarily have been good for that Church which had condemned Jesus Christ his Person his Call his Miracles his Doctrine and what right then had his Disciples to hear and follow him We have seen them from Reason and from the Testimony of a very considerable person of our Age and to whom one of the greatest Kings has given the honour of committing the concerns of his Conscience to him that if that Maxim had place that we ought entirely to refer our selves to the Authority of the Church we could not any more regard those Miracles when they were opposite to that Authority Let them tell us then what right the Disciples had to follow Jesus Christ by what right did the first Converts and those who were afterwards Converted by others embrace the Gospel And if they did it without any right and against their duty into what Labyrinths we cast you What would become of the Christian Church what would become of you your selves You form prejudices against us drawn from the faults that have say you appeared in the persons of our first Reformers You tell us of a pretended precipitancy by which the Magistrates of Zurich Reformed themselves you conclude from thence without entring upon the points in dispute that we ought to renounce the Reformation of our Fathers Answer then your selves to the Prejudices that according to your Maxim the Jews may form against the first Disciples of Jesus Christ and to the Consequence that they may draw from thence that without entring any further into a Discussing of the Points of that Religion without examining either the Miracles or the Antient Prophecies or the success of the Preaching of the Gospel or all the other things that we could alledge in our favour we ought to renounce our Christianity You your selves Authorise their Principle by one that is altogether like it which you lay down and which you know not how to make use of against them without overthrowing your selves in a word you draw the same Consequence from it with them shew us then by what secret Art both you and we may get out of that Abyss whereinto you have plunged us If your Fathers say you have Reformed themselves with an ill design you ought without farther examination to renounce their Reformation If the chief Authors of your Religion a Jew will say have adhered to Jesus with an ill design against the obligation which they had to cleave to the Church you ought to renounce their Christianity Answer if you can to those Arguments and set our Consciences in quiet As for us indeed we are not in pain for we know that that Principle which you urge to those unbelievers is false There is not any person who has not right to examine the points of that Religion and to discern by himself the true from the false the good from the bad that which is from God from that which which from men The Authority of the Church never goes so far as to hinder us with any justice from it and so there is nothing to reproach the first Christians 9. But we ought not to give over these reflections without making one upon the state of the Church in the times of the Councils of Sirmium of Milan and of Ariminum whereof I have spoken before There is no person who knows not that the Arrians were then Masters of the Ecclesiastical Ministry which they called the Catholick Church treating the Orthodox as Hereticks and Disturbers of its Peace deposing them and sending them into banishment The Poyson of the Arrians says Vincentius Lirinensis had not only infected one part but almost all the world and almost all the Latin Bishops some by force others by simplicity giving themselves over to be deceived found themselves engaged in the darkness of Error We are in that condition said Phaebadius that if we would be called Catholicks it is necessary that we embrace Heresie and yet nevertheless if we do not reject Heresie we cannot be truly Catholicks God did yet keep to himself notwithstanding some Bishops few in number but great in Courage and that small remnant in the end serv'd for a spark to rekindle the Fire of the Faith in the Church Apply then to them that Maxim which we have before opposed and weigh those Consequences that may be drawn from it against those and against the Faithful who Heard them and Read their Writings The least is that they were Schismaticks and Corruptors of the people who after having themselves broken off that obedience which they owed to the Church sollicited others to do the like They might have very well urged that they had the Scriptures on their side that they had the Council of Nice for them but they would have answered them That it was no longer time to dispute that they ought to submit themselves to and acquiesce in the definitions of the Church Since it was the duty of the Faithful to strip themselves of their own Conduct to rest upon that of the Church Nevertheless they did not fail generously to maintain the Truth to dispute and write for it to address themselves not only to the Bishops but to the people and to defend it against that specious name of a Church which they set before them and the words of Saint Hilary upon this subject are worthy of a particular consideration The Church says he terrified men by Banishments and by Prisons and constrained them to believe what she tells them she that her self had never been believed but by the Exile and Prisons which she suffered She which had been only Consecrated by the Persecution of men Bene a dignatione Communicantium She drives away the Priests forgetting that by the Banishment of her Priests she increased She boasts that she is beloved by the world but she could not belong to Jesus Christ unless the world hated her Haec de comparatione traditae nobis olim Ecclesiae nunc quam de perditae res ipsa que in oculis omnium est at que ore clamavit Can any one be rash enough to maintain that he was bound then to refer himself to the Authority of that Church to see with its Eyes to tread in its Steps and to rest himself upon its Conduct Will any say that that handful of good men who have since re-established Christianity was nothing else but a company of Rebels and of presumptuous minds Will they charge their Writing and their Letters to the people with Forgeries and Subornations Will they justifie their being Deposed their Banishments the Persecutions which they so constantly suffered Will they say that the Faithful that heard them were rash and
Scriptures And upon another occasion Lord to whom shall we go Thou hast the words of Eternal Life And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ the Son of the living God If those of the Church of Rome were accustomed to the reading of the Holy Scripture they would find the proofs of this Truth in a thousand places but the far greatest part of our Controversies come from the neglect they have of that Divine Book and that neglect it self is one fruit of that excessive confidence they have in their Guides The End of the First Part. An HISTORICAL DEFENCE OF THE Reformation Against a Book Intituled Just Prejudices against the CALVINISTS THE SECOND PART Of the Justice of the Reformation CHAP. I. That our Fathers could not expect a Reformation either from the hands of the Popes or from those of the Prelats WE may now methinks suppose it evident and proved That our Fathers had a right and were bound to examine by themselves the matters of Religion and not to refer themselves absolutely to the Conduct and Authority of their Prelats But from thence it manifestly follows that they had a right to Reform themselves For since they could examine only in order to discern the good from the bad and the true from the false who can doubt that they having a right to make that discernment would not also have had a right to reject that which they should have found to have been contrary to or alienated from Christianity which is precisely that which is called Reformation I acknowledge that it yet remains to be inquired into whether those things which they have rejected are indeed Errors and Superstitons as they are pretended to be and whether they did not deceive themselves in the Judgment that they made But who sees it not necessary for the deciding of that Question to go to the bottom and to enter upon that discussion which our Adversaries would avoid From whence it may appear as I have said in the beginning that all that Controversy which they raise against us about the Call of our Reformers is nothing else but a vain amusement and that to make a good Judgment of that Action of our Fathers and to know whether it be just or unjust we ought always to come to the bottom of the cause and to those things themselves which are Reformed for upon that the Question doth wholly depend whether they did well or ill Notwithstanding to shew that we would forget nothing that may serve for our Justification and that after the desire to please God we have not a greater then that of approving our selves to our Country-men and in general to all men we shall not fail to make yet some particular Reflexions upon the Circumstances of the Reformation which will more and more confirm the right of our Fathers and manifest the Justice of their Conduct and at the same time we shall answer to some Objections of the Author of the Prejudices That shall be the business of this Second Part. Our first Reflexion shall be on that deplorable State of the Latin Church in the days of our Fathers in respect of its Prelats for its Condition was such that there was no more hope of ever seeing a good Reformation to spring up by their Ministry In effect what could be expected from a Body that had almost wholly abandoned the care of Religion and of the Salvation of Souls which was plunged in the intrigues and interests of the World which kept the People in the ignorance of the Mysteries of the Gospel and in the most gross Superstitions and with which the whole body it self did entertain it self and was found to be possest by Ambition by Luxury and by Covetousness and engaged in the vilest manners and living in almost a general opposition to overthrow of all Discipline They will SEE then what a German Bishop says in a Book intituled Onus Ecclesiae who lived and wrote in the year 1519. that is to say near the very time of the Reformation but one who was no ways Luthers friend as it appears by his writings I am afraid says he That the Doctrine of the Apostle touching the Qualifications of a Bishop is but very ill observed in these days or rather that we are fallen into those Times which he noted when he said I know that after my departure ravenous Wolves will come among you not sparing the flock Where may one see a good man chosen to be a Bishop one approved by his works and his Learning and any one who is not either a Child or Worldly or Ignorant of spiritual things The far greater number come to the Prelateship more by underhand canvassings and ill ways then by Election and lawful ways That Disorder which may be seen in the Ecclesiastical Dignities sets the Church in danger of perishing for Solomon says There is one evil which I have seen under the Sun as an Error which proceedeth from the Ruler when a fool is raised to high dignity It is therefore that I said that the Bishops ought to excel in Learning to the end that by their Instructions and their Preaching they might govern others profitably But alas What Bishop have we now a days that Preaches or has any care of the Souls committed to him There are besides that very few who are contented with one Spouse alone that is to say with one only Church and who seek not to appropriate to themselves more Dignities more Prebends and what is yet more to be condemned more Bishopricks Our Bishops are feasting at their own Tables then when they should be at the Altar they are unwise in the things of God but they love the wisdom of the World they are more intent on Temporal Affairs say it may be that I suffer my self to be carried away by my Passion and that all these clamourous Accusations are but the effect of that Engagement in which we all are set against the Church of Rome But to leave no ground for that Suspicion besides what I have set down in general in the second Chapters of my first Part I will further produce here more particular Testimonies of that Truth by applying them to the Ages of our Fathers I will say nothing of my own head I will make their Authors that are not suspected by them to speak whose passages I will faithfully relate which they may see in the Originals if they will take the pains And as I hope that they will not lay to my charge what may appear to be too vehement in their Expressions so also I not do pretend to impute to the Prelats of these days that which those Authors censured in those of the former Times then on the work of Jesus Christ Their Bodies are adorned with Gold and their Souls defiled with filth they are ashamed to meddle with Spiritual things and their glory lies in their Scurrilous humor and carriage Whence it was that Catherine of
Sienna told them that in the blindness wherein they were they placed their glory in that which was truly their shame and that on the contrary they held those things to be a reproach to them whereon their honour and Salvation did depend to wit in humbling themselves under their Head which was God Furthermore they have no love for any but sinners they despise the poor and howsoever the Canons forbid them they keep about their persons Pimps debauchers of Women Flatterers Buffoons Players where they should have had wise and holy men In fine instead of the Law of Truth the Law of Vanity is in the mouths of the Bishops and the lips of the Priests preserve knowledge but it is that of the World and not of the Spirit And a little after At present says he the State and Dignity of the Bishops may be known by their Earthly riches by their affairs and sordid cares of the World by their troublesome Wars and by their Temporal Dominion Alas the Lord Jesus said plainly that his Kingdom was not of this World he retired himself alone into a Mountain when he knew that they went about to make him a King How then is it that he who holds the place of Jesus Christ not only accepts Dominion but seeks it and that he whom Jesus Christ has taught to be meek and lowly in heart should reign in pleasures in luxury in violence in pride in haughtiness in riches and in rapines And yet a little after The Bishops have renounced Hospitality they neglect the poor of Jesus Christ but they make themselves fat and feed their Dogs and other Beasts as if with a formed design they would be in the number of those to whom Christ shall say I was poor and you relieved me not go ye cursed into Eternal fire For Generally almost all the Bishops lie under the evil of Covetousness they are ravishers of others goods and but ill despencers of the Churches turning aside to other uses that which they ought to employ in Divine uses or the feeding of the poor What Bishop is there adds he who does not more love to be a rich Lord and Honoured in the World then to help the poor The whole design of their lives is but for the things of the World They love to array themselves after the Fashion of that and as for the Ecclesiastical Ornaments whether they be Corporal or Spiritual they scarce make any account of them and therefore it was that S. Brigit said That the Bishops took the counsel of the Devil who said to them Behold those honours which I offer you the riches that are in my hand I dispence pleasures the delights of the World are sweet you must enjoy them That same Saint says further that the Covetousness of the Bishops is a bottomless Gulph and that their pride and their luxurious Lives was an unsavoury steam which made them abominable before the Angels of Heaven and before the Friends of God upon Earth As to the other Prelats and the Curats the same Author represents them to us after this manner In these Times says he there are very few Elections that are Cononically made and without under hand canvassings on the contrary the greatest parts of the Prelats and Beneficed men are made by Kings and Princes in an unlawful manner and which is more being brought in by Canvassings and Simony they are confirmed by the Popes against the Priviledges of the Churches and the Statutes of Germany and against all manner of Justice Furthermore the Bishops ordinarily promote to dignities and the Cure of Souls their Cooks their Collectors of their Tribute their Pensionaries the Grooms of their Stables Hence Ubertine said That the Antient Holiness of the Prelats wasted away by degrees and that it began to fall by Canvassings by Pomp and by Simony by unlawful Elections by Covetousness and by the abundance and superfluity of Temporal things by the promotions that the Bishops made of their Creatures by neglecting the Divine-worship and by other perverse works and that by Reason of those ill dispositions the Devil was let loose against the present State of the Church Now none of them who are called to the Pastors Charge and the Cure of Souls inform themselves either of the quality of their Flock or of their manners or their vices Not one Prelate called to the Government of a Monastery will take the pains to Observe either its Rules or the Order of its Ceremonies or the Discipline of the Religious there is not wholly any more mention made of the Salvation and Edification of those that are under them but they only inform themselves very exactly of the plenty of their Revenues and what such a Benefice may bring in Yearly though yet they do not reside there It is these Curates that Vincentius cri'd out upon when he said O what Obduration is there in the Church of God! The Prelats are Proud Vain Sumptuous Simonists Covetous Luxurious Men that regard only this Earth They neglect their Ecclesiastical Duties they are void of Charity Intemperate Lazy For they neither perform Divine Offices nor Preach and do nothing but what creates Scandal They despise the foresight of their Holy Mother the Church which ordains that when the Rectors of Churches shall not be able to Preach they should employ fit persons which should in their stead edify the people by their word and their Example and that they should supply them with all needful things But on the contrary the Prelats and Curates are only careful to put into their places men that are very well skilled not to feed the sheep but to poll them to destroy and flea them He goes on with that vehemency throughout a large Chapter where he relates the many complaints of the Abbot Joachim Saint Catherine of Sienna and of Saint Brigitt Behold this last among the others Those who Rule the Churches commit three sins the one is that they live a beastly and luxurious life the other that they have a Covetousness as insatiable as the Gulphs of the Sea and the third is That they are Prodigal to satisfy their own vanity as the Torrents that pour forth their waters impetuously such horrible sins which they commit ascend up to Heaven before the face of God and hinders the Intercession of Jesus Christ as the black Clouds disturb the purity of the Air The Revenues of the Church are given not to the Servants of God but to those of the Devil to the Debauchers of Women to Adulterers Gamesters Hunters Flatterers and such like men and hence also it is that the house of God is become Tributary to the Devil The Abbot who ought never to be out of his Monastery but to be the head and example to the rest of the Religious is become the head of a whole Troop of leud Women with their Trains of Bastards instead of being an Example to and feeder of the poor he makes himself Master
against the abuses of the Court of Rome as those of the rest of the Prelats Can they tell us what effect the complaints of Emperors of Kings of Princes and of the People produced who for so long a Time panted after a Reformation It is a hundred and fifty Years said Arnald du Ferrier the Ambassador of France to the Council of Trent since a Reformation of the Church has been all along in vain demanded in divers Councils at Constance at Basil at Ferrara Let them tell us what good change has hapned since St. Bernard wrote That the Dignities of the Church were managed by a most dishonest bartering and with a Trade of darkness That the saving of Souls was no more sought after but the abundance of Riches That it was for this that they took their Orders that they frequented the Churches and Celebrated Masses and sung Psalms Now a days says he they strive without any shame for Bishopricks for Arch-Deaconries and Abbies and other Dignities to the end they may dissipate the revenues of the Church in Superfluity and Vanity What remains but that the Man of sin the Son of Perdition should be Revealed The Demon not only of the day but of the noon day who transforms himself into an Angel of Light and lifts up himself above all that is called God and worshipped What good change could they see since Cardinal Hugo borrowing the words of Saint Bernard had wrote That those words of David could not be more properly applied to any then to the Clergy They are not in Trouble as other men For every order of men has its Labours and its pleasures but I admire says he the wisdom of our Clergy who have chosen all the pleasures for themselves and rejected the Labour They are as proud as Souldiers they have as great a train of Servants as they and of Horses and Birds and they live as merrily as they They are arrayed like women with skins of great value they have rich Bids Baths and all the Allurements of soft delights But they take great heed least they put on a Breast-plate with the Souldiers or pass away the nights in the Field or to expose themselves to Battels and yet they take less heed to keep Modesty and the Laws of Decency which are proper to women and to labour so much as they do At the Resurrection then when men shall arise every one in his own order what place do you imagine those men will find The Souldier will not own them for they took no part with them in their Labours nor in their dangers The Labourers and Dressers of the Vineyard will not any more for the same Reason What then can they look for But to be driven from and accused by all Orders and to go into those places where there is no Order but where Everlasting horrour Dwels Has it been amended since William Bishop of Mande wrote these words Alas the Churches are reduced to that Condition that when they come to be vacant one can hardly find any persons fit to be chosen to succeed And if sometimes which rarely happens there be found some good Man hid as a Lilly among the Thorns the Number of the wicked and uncapable exceeds so much that they will never let a good man be chosen Prelate but crying up such as themselves they chuse men after their own hearts to the Ruin of the Church and the people that are under them Else if the greater part in the Church were good the Elections would be made by the Majority of voices and they would be good and Canonical for those that would chuse for God would be the far greater number then those who should chuse for the Devil But in these days it is quite the contrary It is the Fashion that there must be more wicked then good so that usually the Elections are rather Diabolical then Canonical and not made by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit but by a Conspiracy or Treacherous Machination All these Complaints were to no purpose the evil was too general and too inveterate to be stopt or remedied In the Council of Constance all those Nations who liv'd under the disorders of a long and obstinate Schisme propounded some Articles to Reform as well the Head as the Members and correct the ill manners of the Church But Martin the Fifth who was then Pope eluded that Proposition with saying That that Council had already lasted four years to the great damage of the Bishops and the Churches That it was needful to turn over that business to another Time and that that Affair deserved to be thought on more leisurely because says he according to St. Jerome every Province has its Maxims and its opinions which cannot be changed without stirring up great Troubles As if Justice Piety Holiness and good Discipline were not the same among all people and in every Countrey The Council of Basil assembled some Time after with a design to proceed to a Reformation of the Head and the Members A Declaration was made very Solemnly that there the very beginning and their first Acts should contain no other thing But when they would have meddled with the Court of Rome and the Popes Soveraign Authority every one knows after what manner Eugenius the Fourth exalted himself against them and what endeavours he used to separate them or at least to render their designs unprofitable That produced new Troubles and new disorders and cast the Latin Church into a new schism For that Council declaring its right deposed Pope Eugenius and chose Amadeus Duke of Savoy but all that came to nothing For Eugenius remained Master Amadeus was at length constrained to renounce the Papacy The Council of Basil and all its good designs were brought to nothing and things remained in the same State in which they were before Which made an Author in those Times say That there could not be any thing expected from those who presided in the Councils on the behalf of the Popes unless that when they saw the affairs of the Council ordered against their Masters and against themselves they should oppose their Decrees either by Dissolving the Council or making Divisions spring up in it So that says he matters come to nothing and return into their old Chaos that is to say into Error and Darkness which no man can be ignorant of at least that has any knowledge of things past and the Tragedy that hapned in our Age at the Council of Basil is a most manifest proof of Some Time after that Pope Innocent the Eighth being dead and all preparations made for a new Nomination Lionel Bishop of Concordia made a long and fine Oration to the Cardinals who were to go into the Conclave to perswade them to make a good Election that might answer the desires of the whole Church he represented to them That Christianity was threatned every day by the Power of the Turk that the Hussites were in
respect to the Pope to the Church of Rome and to the Legat himself in particular But Cajetan without being willing to hear him speak of his justification shut up all with this That it was his pleasure that he should revoke his Errors under pain of incurring the Censures with which he had received Orders to punish him adding That if he would not recant he had nothing to do but to withdraw himself and to come no more before him Luther withdrew from the Legats House and having been advertised some days after that they endeavoured to imprison him notwithstanding the safe Conduct of the Emperour he withdrew himself from Auspurg not being ignorant of what had befell John Hus and Jerome of Prague in the Council of Constance Before his departure he wrote to Cajetan two very submissive Letters in one of which he acknowledged that he had not in treating of that business of the Indulgences preserved all that respect which he ought to have had for the name of the Pope and that howsoever he had been urged by the carriage of his Adversaries he confest that nevertheless he ought to have handled that matter with more modesty humility and respect that if he had any ways displeased him he beg'd his pardon offering to publish it himself and to use civiller Terms for the Future He offered likewise not to speak any more from thence forward of Indulgences provided he imposed silence on the Questors also or obliged them to observe the same measures in their discourses And as to the Recantation which they required of him he protested that he had done it in good earnest if his Conscience had allowed him to have done it but that there was no command nor Counsel nor Consideration of any person in the World that could make him say or do any thing against his Conscience In the second Letter observing all along the same submissive and respectful Stile he declared to him That he had withdrawn himself from Auspurg and beg'd that he would not think the worse of him if he appealed from him to the Pope and at the same Time he sent him his Act of Appeal That Appeal was founded 1. Upon this That he had not determined any thing upon the point of Indulgences but that he had only proposed some Theses to be disputed on according to the Custom of the Schools 2. That the Opinions of the Doctors as well Canonists as Divines being very different and there being nothing defined for certain in the Church upon that subject he had had right to chuse one side to chuse one side to maintain in the dispute much more when he was urg'd to it by the indiscretion of the Questors who under a pretence of those Indulgences had dishonoured the Church of Rome and the power of the Keys by their detestable covetousness and scandalous Conduct seducing the People unto new opinions and selling Justifying Grace for Money 3. That he had not only submitted his Disputation to the Judgment of the Church but even to the Judgment of every man more Learned then himself and in particular to Pope Leo. From whence he concludes that he had had no just Cause to Cite him That nevertheless he had offered to his Legat to refer himself to the judgment of the Church of Rome and of the Universities of Basil of Friburg of Lovain and of Paris which his Legat would not accept That he would not let him see wherein his Error lay but that he had only pressed him meerly to recant threatning him if he did not or if he did not go to Rome he would Excommunicate him and all who adhered to him howsoever that he had always protested that he had not any opinion but what was founded on the Scripture on the Fathers and the Canons That therefore finding himself oppressed by that whole proceeding he appeal'd from the Legat and from all that the Pope through ill Information had done against him to the Pope himself better Informed Notwithstanding he withdrew himself from Auspurg and by his retreat rendred vain and ineffectual all the Conspiracies they had contrived against his person to make him a Prisoner Cajetan having failed of his intent Wrote to Frederick Duke of Saxony against Luther accusing him as guilty of a heinous Crime in that he would not Recant and further exhorted and required that Prince either to send him to Rome or to drive him out of his Territories Luther very solidly justified himself before his Prince and made him see the oppression and most evident Tyranny that they used against him And because that the Cardinal had formally declared in his Letter to Frederick that so weighty and Pestilentious an affair could not remain a long Time in that Condition and that the Cause should be carried on at Rome That menace obliged Luther to make an Act of Appeal from the Pope and from all his proceedings against him to a Council lawfully called At the same Time almost Leo sent a Bull into Germany confirming his Indulgences and the Doctrine upon which they were grounded That Doctrine was That by the Power of the Keys given to Saint Peter and to his Successors The Bishop of Rome had a right to pardon to the Faithful all the guilt and punishments of their Actual Sins to wit the guilt by means of the Sacrament of Penance and the temporal Punishment by means of Indulgences whether in this Life or in Purgatory and that by those Indulgences he could apply to the Living and the Dead the superabundance of the merits of Jesus Christ and the Saints either by way of Absolution or by way of Suffrage so that the Living and the Dead participating of those Indulgences were delivered from the Punishment that the Divine Justice would inslict on them for their actual sins He commanded therein all under pain of Excommunication from which they could not be absolved till the point of Death to believe it also and to the end no person might alledge ignorance he gave Order to all arch-Arch-Bishops and Bishops by vertue of their Holy Obedience to cause his Bull to be published in all their Churches giving nevertheless power to his Legat to proceed against the disobedient and to punish them as he should think fit Behold here the true History of the first Quarrel of Rome with Luther Let them judge now whether our Fathers under whose eyes all that business past could any more hope for a Reformation either from the Popes hand or his Prelats Instead of making a Holy and Christian Reflexion upon the just complaints of this man how mean and contemptible soever he might appear to them they thought of nothing but keeping up that evil which they did then in publishing their Indulgences which they knew had not any Foundation either in the Word of God or in the Practise of the Primitive Church They thought of nothing but how to protect them and indirectly to forbid those scandalous and wicked excesses of their
wrote to Leo with all the respect imaginable and let him see that the Questors and those who had till that time upheld them had dishonoured his See and his Church that as to himself he found himself very unhappy to see that their Calumnies should have prevailed over his Innocence and he further offered to give over that matter of Indulgences and wholly to be silent in it provided that his Adversaries should do the like But whether it was that all that Negotiation of Miltit was but feigned on his part or that in effect his counsel was not approved by those of his Party as Luther himself insinautes it is certain that from the time that that Letter had been drawn from him George Duke of Saxony a Prince that stuck very close to the Interests of the Pope desired that he would make a publick Disputation at Leipsic upon the matters in controversy the dispute was managed the beginning between Eccius and Carolostad concerning Free-will and Grace but they drew in Luther himself upon the subject of Indulgences of Purgatory and the Power of the Pope And they procured almost at the same time from the Universities of Cologn and Lovain a condemnation of divers Articles drawn out of his Books He defended himself against these new Adversaries and made the World see by his publick writings the truth of his Doctrine and the injustice of those Condemnations But within a little after Pope Leo being unwilling to try any thing further published his terrible Bull of Excommunication against him which they call the Bull Exurge There after having earnestly importuned Jesus Christ Saint Peter and Saint Paul with all the Saints in Paradise to come to the succour of the Church of Rome he sets down in particular one and forty Articles of Luthers Doctrine which he declared to be respectively pestilent destructive scandalous false heretical offending pious Ears seducing Souls and contrary to the Catholick Truth and to the Charity to the respect and obedience that was owing to the Church of Rome which is the Mother of all the Faithful and the Mistriss of the Faith and as such severally he condemned them disproved them rejected them and declared that they ought to be rejected by Christians of both Sexes He forbad all Bishops Patriarchs Metropolitans and generally all Church-men and Kings the Emperour the Electors Princes Dukes Marquesses Earls Barons Captains c. and in a word all sorts of men to hold those Articles or to favour them in any manner what soever under the penalty of Excommunication and being deprived of their Lands and of their Goods and treated as infamous Hereticks favourers of Hereticks and guilty of High Treason And as to Luther he complained of him that he would not come to Rome where he would have let him have seen that he had not done so much evil as he believed and he agravated it as a great rashness in him to have appealed to a Council against the Constitutions of Pius the Second and of Julius the Second who would have those punished as Hereticks that made such appeals That therefore he condemned as Hereticks him and all his Adherents if in the space of fifty days they did not renounce all their Errours he forbad all Christians to have any Commerce or Conversation with them or to yeild them any necessary things and gave his Orders to the Emperour to Kings and Princes c. to seize their Persons and to send them to Rome promising great rewards to those who should do so good a work Luther some time after wrote against that Bull and appealed afresh to a Council lawfully called notwithstanding he justified himself with great solidity about all those condemned Articles And it is pertinent to note that among those Articles that the Pope Anathematized as Heretical or Rash or Scandalous and contrary to the Catholick Truth these following Propositions might be found That that Proverb was most true that said That the best Pennance is a good Life that it would be very well if the Church in a Council should ordain that the Laity should receive the Communion in both kinds That the Treasure of the Church from whence the Pope drew his Indulgences is not the Merits of Jesus Christ and the Saints That the Bishop of Rome the Successour of Saint Peter is not the Vicar of Jesus Christ over all the Churches of the world nor that there was any one established by Jesus Christ himself in the Person of Saint Peter That it is not in the power of the Church or of the Pope to make Articles of Faith nor to establish new Laws for Manners or for good Works That tho' the Pope should hold with a great part of the Church an opinion which should not it self be erronious yet it would not be a sin or an heresy to hold a contrary opinion especially in things not necessary to Salvation until a General Council should have disproved the one and approved of the other that the Ecclesiastical Prelats and Secular Princes did not do ill when they abolished the Order of begging Friers That Purgatory could not be proved by the Holy Canonical Scripture These Propositions are declared to be either pestilent or pernicious or scandalous or heretical without specifying any one in particular for the Pope speaks of them only in the whole that they are such So it was that Leo and all his Court managed those matters To affirm that a true amendment of Life a holy and sincere return from Vice to Vertue is the best of all Pennances appeared to be a detestable crime to them To wish that a General Council might establish the Communion of the Eucharist according to the Institution of Jesus Christ and the Custom of the Primitive Church was such an abomination with them as was thought sufficient to deserve the Flames Not to beleive that the Merits of Jesus Christ and of the Saints made up a certain Treasure which neither Faith nor Holiness nor Repentance could give the Faithful any part of but which were to be dispenced only by the way of Indulgences for money pass'd in their Judgments for a Hellish Heresie To hold that our Faith has nothing else but the Word of God for its object and not that of men also and that God alone can impose moral Laws on the Conscience was in their opinion an astonishing wickedness To believe that one may without Herefy hold an opinion contrary to that of the Pope in matters not necessary to Salvation and not determined by any Council was a pestilent errour To give the least blow to the interests of Monks or the Fire of Purgatory was an horrible sacriledge for which there was not any remission After that condemnation the Pope wrote to John Frederick Elector of Saxony earnestly entreating him not to give any more protection to Luther and he sent Hierome Aleander his Nuntio into Germany to cause that condemnation to be executed But Aleander not being able to obtain of
God lose nothing either of its Truth or its Authority 3. It is a very strange thing that the Author of the Prejudices has not taken any heed in laying down a very bad Argument against us of furnishing us with a very good one against the Church of Rome in that Estate wherein it was in the days of our Fathers For if we ought to Judge of the Doctrine by the Qualities or the Actions of those who Teach it I pray consider what Judgment could our Fathers make of that Religion that the Court of Rome and its Prelats taught and whether they had not all the grounds in the World to reform themselves If there be no likelyhood that God committed the Care of Reforming his Church to persons who were guilty of Scandalous Actions there is far less that God has given Infallibility and a Soveraign Authority over mens Consciences to such persons as the Popes and Prelats in the days of our Fathers were according to the Description which the unsuspected Authors that we have quoted give us of them and divers others that we might here add to them if we so pleased And that which makes these two Arguments differ is that his concludes upon a Principle which we maintain to be false and ill where ours concludes upon a Principle which he himself admits and acknowledges to be good so that in his own Judgment we have a sufficient Fundation whereon to Establish the Justice of our Reformation Let us see nevertheless of what Nature those Actions are wherewith he reproaches our first Reformers I will not says he stay to examine the Accusations wherewith they have been charged by divers Authors I do not pretend to detain my self in any but those publick things that are so manifest and so exposed to the Eyes of all the World I confess he has Reason not to stay upon all that which his Passion has invented against them for who knows not that Calumny has no bounds especially when interest and passion stir it up Our Reformers are not the only persons who have been attacked after that manner The Jews said of John the Baptist that he had a Devil and of Jesus Christ that he was a Blasphemer a Samaritan a glutton and a Wine-bibber a friend of Publicans and sinners If then they have called the Father of the Family Beelzebub what will they not say of his Servants But what then are those things that are so Publick so manifest and so exposed to the Eyes of the whole World which the Author of the Prejudices has found fit to be insisted upon That new Gospel says he was Preached only out of the mouths of those Monks who had quitted their habit and their profession ouly to contract Scandalous Marriages or from the mouths of those Priests who had violated that Vow of Virginity which the Calvinists themselves confess to have been imposed on all Priests and on all Monks in the West by divers Councils and on all the Monks and all the Bishops in the East and the first fruit of this Doctrine was the setting open the Cloisters the taking off the Vails of the Nuns the abolishing of all Austerities and overthrowing of all manner of discipline in the Church This is that that forces him to say That the Reformers struck mens Eyes with a Spectacle that could not but create horrour according to the common Idea's of Piety and Vertue whech the Fathers give us The Author of the Prejudices will not take it ill that in order to our Answering him we must put him in mind what he himself exhorts us to To Transport our selves into another Time then that wherein we are at present and to represent to our selves our Separation in its first rise and during the first years wherein it was made amidst the Switzers and in France Upon his thus placing us in that State which he desires we will declare to him that The general Depravation which reign'd amidst the Monks and the Priests is to our Eyes a Spectacle worthy of horror according to the common Ideas of Piety and Vertue which the holy Scriptures and right Reason give us We will tell him that that which Scandalizes us is to see that for a respect of a purely humane Order they endured for so long a time a disorder that dishonoured the Latin Church that drew upon it God's Judgments and that laid open the Ministry of the Church to an everlasting reproach It is in the detesting of those Infamies and those Impurities that the true zeal of Christians ought to consist and it is to the searching out of a solid remedy for them that one ought to apply the Discipline of the Church and not to keep them up under a pretence of observing rash Vows and a Caelibasy that God never commanded If the Author of the Prejudices is more Scandalized to see Priests and Monks Married then to see them plunged into all the filthyness of Debauchery I cannot hinder my self from telling him that he makes Christianity a Law of Hypocrisy and it may be yet somewhat worse for Hypocrisy does not content it self with meer Names she would have fair appearances without of those things which she really rejects Whereas for him he rejects not only the things but their appearances also suffering patiently the loss of any more seeing either the things or their appearances provided we do not meddle with those empty names of Caelibacy and Virginity But true Moral Christianity inspires other Sentiments she would have us honour that Caelibacy and Virginity as gifts that come from God but she would also have a Contempt and horrour for those specious names when they shall be applyed to those beastlinesses and excesses which both God and Men condemn She would have us in that Case instead of being Scandalized to see a false Caelibacy made void and a vain shadow of Virginity abolished that we should on the contrary be edified to see them got out from those snares of sin and to have recourse to a lawful Marriage that God has allowed unto all and that he has even commanded unto those who have not received the gift of Continency It was in the View of this that our Fathers lookt upon the Marriage of those Priests and Monks as the Abolishing of an unjust Law contrary to the express words of Saint Paul if they cannot contain let them Marry and which moreover had produced such mischeivous effects as it was no longer possible for them to indure But says the Author of Prejudices we do not intend to speak of the Interests of Families of Marriage nor of base and fleshly passions in the lives of those Great Bishops and all those great men of old whom God opposed to the Heresies that rose up against his Church as Saint Cyprian Saint Athanasius Saint Basil Saint Gregory Nazianzen Saint Jerome Saint Epiphanius Saint Chrysostome and Saint Augustine They were all of them eminent in Sanctity in a disingagement
from Interests and continency was always joyned to their Ministry We may say of that Author without doing him an injury that he does not write ill what he thinks but that he scarce thinks well that which he writes and that which I shall here come to shew is an Example of it for he here lays down a great Trifle under the shew of one of the fairest things in the World Saint Cyprian Saint Athanasius and those other Bishops were not Marryed I see it but who told him That they did it by vertue of a general Law that forbad Bishops to be Married Who told him that divers other Bishops who were not less great then those for their Sanctity their disengagement from the interests of the World never lived in Marriage as Saint Spiridion Saint Gregory the Father of Gregory Nazianzen Saint Gregory Nysscne Saint Prosper Saint Hilary Sydonius Apollinaris Synesius Saint Eupsychus of Cesarea and divers others Who told him that Priests were not generally Married in the Primitive Church whether it were in the East or in the West as may be justified by a Thousand Proofs And in fine that they do not vainly wrangle in saying that those Bishops or those Priests were really Married before their Ordination but that they were not during their Prelateship or Priesthood whether it were that their Wives were dead and whether they were put away it is good to Note what the History of Saint Eupsychus of Cesaria in Cappadocia relates whom Saint Athanasius formally called a Bishop suffered Martyrdom within a little after his Marriage being as yet as it seemed in the days of his Nuptials and what Saint Cyprian relates of Novatus a Priest who was accused to have kicked his Wife who was great with Child and to have caused an Abortion which evidently concludes the use of Marriage during the Prelateship and Priesthood What then can the Author of the Prejudices conclude from the Example of Saint Athanasius and Saint Chrysostome and those others unmarried unless this that each one was in that regard in his full liberty and that as there were some that did marry so there were also some that did not Did he need for so little a matter to declaim Rhetorically and to set down these great words with an Emphasis That our Reformers struck mens Eyes with a Spectacle that could not but Create horrour according to the general Idea's of Piety and Vertue that the Fatheri give us I shall not say that the Idea's of Piety and Virtue do not depend on the Fathers but on the Gospel and right Reason and that it is by them that we ought to judge the Fathers and not those by the Fathers I will not say that the Fathers of the purer Antiquity are so far from giving us an horrour at the Marriage of Ecclesiasticks that Chrysostom assures us on the contrary that what Saint Paul wrote to Titus concerning a Bishops being the Husband of one Wife he has wrote wholly to stop the months of those Hereticks who condemned Marriage and to shew that Marriage is not only an Innocent thing but that it is so Honourable also that according to him it may be elèvated as high as the Episcopal Throne But I will only say and I will say it with an assurance of its being approved by all honest and upright men that the Marriage of Church-men which of it self is an honest and Holy State practised under the Old Law practised in the primitive Church and Authorised by the Scripture cannot be considered but with the greatest Edification when it shall be set in opposition to the disorders and filthinesses that Caelibacy has produced which is but a purely humane Institution without any lawful Foundation It belongs therefore to those of the Church of Rome to tell us whether they are much edified by the lives that their Priests led in the Age of the Reformation and by that permission which they gave them for a Sum of Money publickly to keep their Concubines They are to tell us whether they have no horrour for those strange assertions of their Doctors That a Priest Sins less who through the infirmity of the flesh falls into the Sin of Fornication then if he should marry and that it is a less evil for Priests to burn then to Marry As for us we have that general precept of Saint Paul which has its use as well in respect of Church-men as others if they cannot contain let them Marry and the Doctrine of the same Apostle Marriage is Honourable in all or in all things but the Whoremongers and Adulterers God will judge But the Author of the Prejudices says That the Law of Celibacy whether it were just or unjust or whether it did not begin if they will have it so till Pope Siricius's time they cannot at least deny That the spirit of God did not carry out all the Famous Bishops of Old and those who have been eminent for Sanctity to imitate Saint Paul and to follow that Counsel which he gives to renounce Marriage to set themselves wholly to please God and that the same spirit did not from the very first Ages of the Church inspire a very great number of Christians of both Sexes to remain Virgins all their Lives as Saint Justin witnesses and Origen against Celsus Whence then comes it to pass that there should have nothing appeared of that instinct or of those motions of Gods spirit in the pretended Reformers nor in the Societies which they have established any more than all those other Graces which shone so Illustriously in the Saints of Antiquity Here is yet further another example of that which I said just before that that Author does not take too much care of that which he writes For can there be a rasher thing in the World than to offer to thrust ones self into the Counsels of God and magisterially to decide what qualities the Reformers ought to have had Continency and Virginity are the Cifts that God distributes to men as he pleases but it is what he has given only to some Persons it no ways follows either that their Persons were not acceptable to him nor that he could not make use of them in the greatest works of his Providence Abraham the Father of the Faithful as the Scripture calls him was not he Married Isaac Jacob and the twelve Patriarchs who founded the Church of Israel were not they Moses the deliverer of the Antient People by whom God gave his Law and by whom he had wrought so many Miracles was not he Aaron and all the High-Preists who succeeded him were not they All those Calls and divers others whereof the Scripture speaks were methinks most weighty and for the greatest part extraordinary and nevertheless we do not see that God in giving them has made any Reflection upon the Advice of the Authour of the Prejudices Who ever gave him a right to lay down Rules with such Authority of what God ought
Parishioners of Saint Hilary Montanus But on the contrary in the view of that Ignorance under which they were held For see how they speak Our Lord said I have Compassion on the Multitude for they have nothing to eat and you see the Complaint that the Prophet made The Children ask for Bread and there is none to give unto them It were a small matter if they would content themselves with the not giving them the Bread of the Gospel They will not suffer them to take it and if they take it They snatch it out of their Hands They do not Instruct them and they would hinder them so that they should not Instruct thenselves out of the word of God and that that Prophecy should not be accomplish'd Erunt omnes docibiles Deo and they shall be taught of God I thought my self bound to make these first Reflections to shew the injustice and inequality of these men that we have to do with Nihil est says Cicero quod minus ferendum sit quam rationem vitae ab altero reposcere eum quinon posset suae reddere Notwithstanding after having a little cooled that impetuous motion of the Author of the Prejudices I shall not fail to Justify our Fathers touching the Principle upon which they made their Reformation I say then in the first place That they could not in that State wherein things were take the Church in their days for the Rule of their Faith without renouncing Common sence The Church in their days or to speak better that which they would call the Church was made up of Three sorts of persons The Court of Rome the Prelats and the other Clergy and the People The Court of Rome was the source of all evil it was that that had spread abroad all the Errors and Superstitions in the Latin Church or that had at least fomented and maintained them when they took their rise elsewhere Her Usurpations and the disorder of her Government was one of the complaints of our Fathers They complained of her Principles her Maxims and some decisions of the Faith which she had caused to pass in Councils that were servilely subjected to her will and her interests She was therefore a resolute party in this affair evidently interested and by consequence uncapable of Judging It is True that she called her self the Mother and the Mistress of all Churches and that one of her pretensions was Infallibility in the Faith But that very thing was one of the Errors of which our Fathers required a correction whatever probability she had of ascribing it to her self Adrian the sixth acknowledged a great part of the disorders of that Court in his instructions to his Nuntio whom he sent to the Diet of Nuremberg as we have already seen and the General voice of the whole Church which demanded a long time ago a Reformation in capite membris make it known enough to leave us out of all doubt Moreover the Court of Rome did so loudly and vehemently declare her self against a Reformation that it could not be any further hoped for and why should our Fathers have taken her for the Rule of Faith since not only the Gallican Church who lived in Communion with her maintained that she was not but even the Experience of many years had very evidently shewed that she could not be Does not Tertullian turned Montanist Testify That Eleutherius Bishop of Rome had received the Prophecies of Montanus of Priscilla and Maximilla and that he had already wrote Letters of Communion to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia which were Montanists and that those Letters should have their effect although Praxeas had not made them to be recalled in relating false things concerning those Churches and their Prophets And has not the sixth General Council condemned Pope Honorius as a Monothelite Heretick with Sergius Patriaerch of Constantinople and some others I know that some have said that that Council was deceived in the business of Honorius but without entring upon that Question in which it is certain that they deceive themselves as not long since P. Louis Thomassin Priest of the Oratory in his Dissertation about that sixth Council has acknowledged It is enough that that Council condemned Honorius for an Heretick and that it proscribed his name and his Memory For that Condemnation after what manner soever it hapned is an Authentick Declaration that a General Council has held that Popes may Err and by eonsequence that they are not the Rule of Faith And it is nothing to the purpose to say as P. Thomassin has done that Henorius Erred only in the quality of a private man and not as Pope or to speak more properly That he did not Err but only that he had a mind to make use of a Dispensation for the procuring the peace of the Church which was divided about the Question whether there were two wills and two operations in Jesus Christ or whether there was but one and that he desired that they would be silent about that point Which side soever they chuse it will always follow from that Example of Honorius that the Bishops of Rome are not the Rule of Faith For to make a Rule of Faith it is not enough to be exempt from Error either in quality of Popes or even in the quality of private men it is further necessary that they should be always in a state of not fomenting or entertaining Heresy but of opposing it on the contrary of condemning it when it has made any progress and of maintaining the True Faith But this is that which they cannot say of Honorius in respect of the Heresy of the Monothelites That Heresy had over-ran all the East the Patriarchates of the East were infected with it the Emperour Heraclius had established it by a publick Edict a Council it self held at Constantinople had confirmed it whether therefore they say that Honorius embraced Heresy in quality of a private man or whether they say that by a false Dispensation he would only have imposed silence on the Orthodox which way soever they take it is manifest that he was not in a state under the quality of Pope to put a stop to the course of Heresy nor to succour the true Faith For what likelyhood is there that as Pope he should have condemned himself as a private man or that in quality of Pope or as they speak ex cathedra he should have Published the Truth that ought to be held while his own private opinion was that he should hold his peace about it and suppress it It is therefore a Mockery to make a Rule of Faith of such a Pope who through his own private Heresy or his imprudent Dispensation could not hinder Monothelism from Triumphing And it cannot be a less one if they should pretend that the Church of Rome should be the True Rule of Faith while such Popes are her Head since she can do nothing without them and since they might
to correct them and notwithstanding to enter into its Communion and to live under its Ministry But so far are we from being able to make a supposition of this nature that on the contrary there is nothing more certain than this Truth That as there are Unjust Rash and Schismatical Separations so there may be also not only Just and Lawful ones but Necessary and Indispensable ones also So the Primitive Christians withdrew themselves from the Jewish Church after it had obstinately remained in its unbelief and afterwards the Orthodox in the first Centuries held no Communion with the Valentinians nor with the Manichees nor in general with those Hereticks who disturb'd the Purity of the Gospel with their Errors Nay when the Arians had even made themselves Masters of the Synods and Churches there was an actual Separation made of a very great number of persons as well of the Body of the Clergy as that of the People who would not have any Communion with them and who endur'd upon that account all sorts of persecutions Therefore also it was that S. Hilary Bishop of Poictiers earnestly exhorted the Bishops and the Orthodox people by a publick Letter that he address'd to them The Name of Peace sayes he to them is indeed very specious and the meer appearance of Vnity has something splendid in it But who knows not that the Church and the Gospel acknowledges no other Peace than that which comes from Jesus Christ that which he gave to his Apostles before the glory of his Passion and that which he left in Trust with them by his eternal Command when he was about to leave them It is this peace which we have taken care to seek when it has been lost and to re-establish when it has been disturbed and to preserve after we have found it again But the sins of our Times and the Ministers or Fore-runners of Antichrist will not suffer us to be the Authors of so great a good nor that we should so much as partake of it They have their Peace which they boast of which is nothing else but an Vnity of Impiety while they carry themselves not as the Bishops of Jesus Christ but as the Prelates of Anti-Christ And about the end of his Letter I exhort you sayes he that you take heed of Anti-Christ Be not deceived by a foolish love of Walls nor respect the Church more on Roofs and in Houses nor strive no more on such frivolous considerations for the Name of Peace As for my self I find more certainty in the Mountains in the Forests in the Lakes in Prisons in Gulphs for there it was that the Spirit of God animated the Prophets Separate therefore your selves from Auxentius who is an Angel of Satan an Enemy to Christ an open Persecutor a Violator of the Faith who made a deceitful Profession of the Faith before the Emperour in which he joyn'd Blasphemy to that Deceit Let him assemble as many Synods as he pleases against me let him make me be declared a Heretick as he has often already done let him proscribe me by Publick Authority let him stir up the wrath of the Great Men against me as much as he will he can never be any other to me than a Devil since he is an Arian I shall never have peace but with those who following the Decree of our Nicene Fathers would anathematize the Arians and acknowledge Jesus Christ to be truly God S. Epiphanius also relates that before the Synod of Seleucid wherein Arianism was establish'd many people who found themselves to be under the Jurisdiction of Arian Bishops remained firm in the confession of the True Faith and set up other Bishops themselves And the Histories of Socrates Theodoret and Sozomen may teach us that while the Arians possess'd the Temples and the Sees of the Churches the Orthodox held their Assemblies apart in the Fields as well as in private Houses With the same Judgement S. Ambrose teaches That Jesus Christ alone is he from whom we ought never to separate our selves and to whom we ought to say Lord to whom shall we go thou hast the words of eternal life That above all things the Faith of a Church ought to be regarded that we ought to hold it there if Jesus Christ dwells there but if a people may be found to be there who are Violaters of the Faith or that an Heretical Pastor has polluted that habitation we ought to separate our selves from the Communion of Hereticks and to avoid all commerce with that Synagogue That we ought to separate our selves from every Church that rejects the true Faith and does not preserve the fundamentals of the Apostles Preaching without fear lest its Communion should brand us with some note of Perfidiousness There could not therefore be a more unreasonable thing in the World than to prepossess ones self in general against all manner of Separation for it is manifest that the communion of men is no otherwise desirable than as it can consist with the communion of God and that when that of men shall be found to be directly opposite to the true service of God and our own salvation which is the only End of a Religious Society we ought no longer to hesitate about our Separation But to make out this Truth yet a little more clear we need but to set before their eyes what we have already said in the First Part that the Church may be consider'd either in respect of its Internal State in as much as it is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ the Society of the truly Faithful and the true Elect of God without any mixture of Hypocrites and the worldly pure throughout as she is in Gods sight or in respect of its External State in as much as it is a Society which in the profession of one and the same Religion includes a sufficiently great number of the Hypocrites and worldly who do not belong to the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ nor are of the Church but in appearance only That Distinction is evident enough of it self not to need any proof and our Adversaries themselves will not oppose it But altho' they do not oppose that Distinction yet they never fail of confounding both those respects For when they speak of the Promises that God has made concerning the perpetual subsistence of his Church where it would be just to refer them to the Church only as made up of the Truly Faithful since to speak properly God looks upon them alone as his true Church they refer them to the Church in as much as it is mixt with the worldly and hypocrites And when the Contest is about establishing the Duties to which a Religious Society engages us where it would be just to consider the Church as mingled with the good and the wicked the faithful and the worldly such as it appears to us they consider it as it is pure and without any mixture of Hypocrites such as it is in the
but three sorts of persons only to be in its Communion the Faithful the Catechumeni and the Penitents but as for those who taught false Doctrine or practis'd a false Worship it never had any Union with them Not only the Ancients had no Communion with them but to shew how necessary and indispensable they judg'd a separation from them to be they went so far as to refuse their Communion with the Orthodox themselves when either by surprise or weakness or some other interest they had receiv'd Hereticks into their Communion altho' as to themselves they had kept their Faith in its Purity We find in the Life of Gregory Nazianzen that his Father who was also called Gregory and who was Bishop of Nazianzen before him having been deceiv'd by a fallacious Writing and having given his Communion to the Arians all the Monks of his Diocess with the greatest part of his Church separated themselves from him altho' they well knew that he had not changed his mind nor embraced Heresie And even the Orthodox of the Church of Rome refused to hold Communion with Pope Felix as Theodoret tells us altho' he intirely held the Creed of the Council of Nice because he held Communion with the Arians This I mention not absolutely to approve of that carriage but only to shew how far their aversion went heretofore which they had for holding Communion with Hereticks Those who are prepossess'd against all sorts of Separation in the Matters of Religion ought to remember that the obligation that lyes upon them to hold Communion with those with whom they are externally joyn'd is not without its bounds and measures We are joyn'd together under certain conditions which are principally the profession of a pure faith or at least such as is free from all damnable Errors a Worship freed from all that which is opposite to the essence of Piety in a word a Publick Ministry under which we may work out our own salvation While these conditions remain they make the Communion subsist but when they fail the Communion fails also and there is a just ground for a Separation provided we observe these necessary Cautions They cannot say in this case that we separate our selves from the Church nor that we forsake her Communion or that we break her Unity For the forsaken party being truly such as we suppose it ought not to be any more looked on as the Church of Jesus Christ but only as a party of the worldly who were before mingled with the Truly Faithful and who through their obstinacy in their Errors and false Worship had discover'd themselves and had themselves torn off the vail which as yet confounded them after a manner with the others The Orthodox in the first Ages did not in the least break the Unity of the Church when they would not hold Communion with the Valentinians the Marcionites the Montanists the Manichees and the other Heterodox of those times as I have noted already no more than those who with so much constancy and resolution refused to hold Communion with the Arrians We ought not therefore presently to condemn all kind of Separation and since there are such kinds of it as are necessary just and lawful as there are such as are unjust and rash it would be the extremity of folly to judge of all after the same manner without any difference or distinction The Roman Church her self which has sometimes cut off whole Nations as France and Germany from her Communion which may have been seen to have been so often divided into divers parties whereof one has excommunicated the other would not it may be freely suffer that we should treat of matters with this confusion So that disputing at present about our Separation with her we shall demand no unjust or unreasonable thing when we tell them that we ought to examine of what nature that Separation is to consider the reasons and wisely to weigh the circumstances for if our Fathers separated themselves upon light grounds and without having any sufficient cause if they were even under circumstances which ought to have bound them to have remained united with the other Party which was not for a Reformation we shall agree with all our hearts to condemn them but if on the contrary the reasons which they had were just sufficient and necessary if there was nothing in the circumstances of times places persons that could hinder them from doing that which they did it is certain that instead of condemning them we should bless them we should think our selves happy in following their footsteps and as for the reproaches and venomous accusations of the Author of the Prejudices and such like we should bear them with patience looking on them as the effect of a blind passion Let us therefore begin to make that Examination by the Causes of our Separation Every one knows what the matters that divide us are that they are not either Points of meer Discipline such as that for which Victor Bishop of Rome separated his Church from those of Asia who should keep the Feast of Easter on the fourteenth day of the Moon nor meerly Questions of the School which consist in nothing but terms remote from the knowledge of the Vulgar as that which they call trium Capitulorum which raised so many troubles in the Times of the Emperour Justinian and Pope Vigilius nor in meer personal interests such as we may see in the Schisms of Anti-Popes nor purely in personal Crimes or Accusations as in the Schism of the Donatists nor even in a general corruption of Manners altho' that was extreamly great in the time of our Fathers The Articles that separate us are points that according to us essentially disturb the Faith by which we are united to Jesus Christ points which essentially alter the Worship that we owe to God which essentially deprave the sources of our Justification and which corrupt both the external and internal means of our obtaining Grace and Glory In a word they are such Points as we believe to be wholly incompatible with salvation and which by consequence hinder us from being able to give it the Title or the Quality of a true Church of Jesus Christ to a Party which is obstinate in the profession and practice of them and which would force us to be so too I confess that we cannot say that our Controversies are all of that importance there are some undoubtedly which are of lesser weight and force which it was fitting for them to reform themselves in but which notwithstanding would not have given alone a just cause of Separation In this rank I place the Question of the Limbus of the Antient Fathers that of the Local Descent of Jesus Christ into Hell that of the distinction of Priests and Bishops to be of Divine Right that of the keeping of Lent and some others of that nature where there might have been seen Error and Superstition enough to be corrected but which would not have
as Hereticks or the enemies of the Churches peace Therefore it was that Constance reproached Liberius that he was alone and that he opposed himself to all the world in the defence of Athanasius When so great a part of the world said he to him resides in thy person that thou alone shouldst take the part of a wicked man and dare to break the peace of the whole world I would be alone answered Liberius the cause of the faith is nevertheless weakned For heretofore there were but three found who resisted the Command of a King Liberius himself was banished from which he was not freed till after he subscribed to Arianism And as the West was then less infected with this Heresie than the East the Emperour caused a Council to assemble at Ariminum in which after specious beginnings the end was very unhappy For the Bishops renounced therein the Orthodox Doctrine which made the Son of God of one and the same Essence with his Father To this effect they rejected the word consubstantial which the Council of Nice had inserted into its Creed as a word that was scandalous sacrilegious and unworthy of God which was no where to be found in the Scripture and they banished it from the Church This appears by the Letter of that Synod it self to the Emperour Constance set down by S. Hilary in which they gave the Emperour thanks that he had shewn them what they ought to do to wit to decree that no body should speak any more either of substance or of consubstantial which are names unknown to the Church of God and that they rejoyced because they had acknowledged the very same thing that they had held before They add That the Truth which cannot be overcome has obtained the victory so that that name unworthy of God which was not to be found wrote in the Sacred Laws should not be for the future mentioned by any person and they declare That they intirely hold the same Doctrine with the Oriental Churches and that they have rendred unto them and him a full obedience It was that reason for which Auxentius Bishop of Millan an Arian said in his Letter to Valentinian and Valens Emperours That he ought not to endure that the Vnity of six hundred Bishops should be broken by a small number of contentious persons So that Vincentius Lirinensis makes no scruple to acknowledge That the poyson of Arianism had infected not some small parts only but almost all the world and it was to that sense that Phaebadius a French Bishop who lived in those times said That the subtilty and fraud of the Devil had almost wholly possessed mens minds that it perswaded them to believe Heresie as the right Faith and condemned the true Faith as an Heresie And a little lower having an eye to what had been done at the Council of Ariminum The Bishops saith he made an Edict that no one should mention one only substance that is to say that no one should preach in the Church that the Father and the Son were but one only vertue I might add to these testimonies that of Gregory Nazianzen in the Oration that he made in the praise of S. Athanasius There after having described the furies of George Patriarch of Alexandria and an Arian and the impieties of the Council of Seleucia he adds We may see one sort unjustly banished from their Sees and other put into their places after their having subscribed to the impiety which was required of them as a necessary condition Plotting never ceased on one side nor the Calumniator on the other This is that which has made many among us fall into the snare who were else invincible for although their error did not go so far as to seduce their minds yet they subscrib'd notwithstanding and by that means conspired with the most wicked men and if they were not partakers in their flames they were at least blackned with their smoak This is that which has made me often pour forth rivers of tears beholding wickedness spread abroad so wide and so much every where and that those themselves that ought to have been the defenders of the Word there have become the persecutors of the Orthodox Doctrine For it is certain that the Pastors have been carried away after an insensible manner and to speak with the Scripture divers Pastors have left my Vineyard desolate they have abused and loaded that desirable portion with shame that is to say the Church of God which the sweat and blood of so many Martyrs before and since the coming of jesus Christ had besprinkled and which was consecrated by the sufferings of God himself who dyed for our salvation If you except some few who have either been despised by reason of the obscurity of their names or who have resisted by their vertue for it is very requisite that there should yet have some remained to be as it were a seed and a root to Israel to make it flourish and revive again all were swayed by the Times There was only this difference among them that some were fallen deeper into the snare and others more slowly that some were the chief in wickedness and others held the second place Cardinal Baronius could not avoid making this reflection in setting down this passage So it was that Gregory deplored the ruine of the whole Eastern Church But if we would add the ruine that befell the Western Church which I have just before described we shall easily judge that there has not been any time since wherein the whole Christian World has been more disturbed than it was then since almost all the Preachers of the Churches were fallen into the precipice and that the face of the Catholick Church was never so dreadful But the second Action which we have propounded is not less certain than the former to wit that those among the Orthodox who had any zeal or courage separated themselves from the Body of their ordinary Pastors and would not own them for their Pastors while they remained in Heresie In effect that was the chief cause for which they suffered so many murders and banishments the Arians no wayes tolerating those who refused their Communion The perpetual Accusation wherewith they charged them was That they were the Schismaticks who had violated the Peace and Unity of the Church This is that which Auxentius reproached S. Hilary with and Eusebius of Verceille in the Letter which I have before cited They are said he men condemned and deposed who think of nothing but making of Schisms wheresoever they come for so it was that that false Bishop called the just Separation to which S. Hilary exhorted the faithful by his Writings as we have seen in the preceding Chapter Socrates the Ecclesiastical Historian relates upon this subject that the cruelty of the Arians proceeded to that height that they forced by all sorts of unjust wayes men and women to receive the Sacrament at their hands
there is reason for that or no it is sufficient that he consents that they should not any more have had those for their Pastors which were so before and that they should have withdrawn themselves from their communion and external worship we demand no more at present We ought now to pass on to the second Proposition upon which the Objection is grounded that I have propounded in the beginning of this Chapter and to examine whether the Priviledge of the Church of Rome is such that one ought not upon any pretence whatsoever to separate ones self from her communion All the world knows that this is the pretension of that Church and that it is for that that she makes her self the Mother and the Mistress of all others and that she has also made it to be defined in her Council of Trent It is upon that account that one of her Popes Boniface the Eighth formerly determined That it was necessary to the Salvation of every creature to be subject to the Bishop of Rome But clearly to decide so weighty a Question there seems to me to be only these two wayes The first is to enquire whether that Church can or cannot fall into Error and cease to be the True Church of Jesus Christ for if it be true that she can never fall into Errors nor lose the quality of a true Church we must conclude that we ought alwayes to remain in her Communion But if on the contrary she may erre and cease to be a true Church we must also conclude that we may and ought to separate our selves when there shall be a just occasion there The second way is that laying aside the Question Whether she may err or not we examine whether it be true that God has made her the Mistress of all other Churches as she pretends whether he has established her to be the perpetual and inviolable Center of the Christian Unity with a command to all the faithful not to fly off from her For if it be an Order that God has made we cannot resist it without destroying our selves but if it be only an ill-grounded pretension of that Church her communion is neither more necessary nor more inviolable than that of other particular Churches But as to the first of these wayes I have already shewn that it engages those who will follow it in the examination of the foundation and in effect the proofs that they set before us to establish the Infallibility of the Roman See are neither so clear nor so concluding that it should not be necessary to see whether the Doctrines that the Church of Rome teaches answer that pretension which she makes to be infallible and unable to fall away or to say better those proofs are so weak and so trivial that they themselves bind us to have recourse to the examination of the Doctrines of that Church to judge of her pretension by them These two Arguments are equally good as to their form The Church of Rome cannot err in the Faith therefore the things which she teaches us of Faith are true And the things which the Church of Rome teaches us are not true therefore the Church of Rome may err I do not here examine the question which of these two wayes of reasoning is the more natural I yield if they will that they should chuse the first but when they shall have chose it good sense would also require that if the things which they shall set before us to prove this Proposition The Church of Rome cannot err in the faith do no wayes satisfie the mind if instead of assuring us they plunge us into the greatest uncertainties we must pass over to the other way and by consequence we must enter into the examination of the foundation But to judge of what nature those proofs are which they give for the infallibility of the Church of Rome we need but a naked view of them For they are not the express declarations of the will of God although it should be very necessary that they should have such a one for the establishment of so great and peculiar a priviledge the knowledge of which is so very important to all Christians They are not evident consequences drawn from some passages of Scripture or some actions of the Apostles they are neither clear and convincing reasonings nor even strong presumptions and such as have much likelihood They are strained consequences which they draw as they are able from two or three passages of the Scripture and which a man that should have never heard them speak of that Infallibility with all his circumspection would not have gathered They produce the Testimony that St. Paul gives to the Church of Rome in his dayes That her faith was spoken of through all the world and they consider not that he gives the same testimony to the Thessalonians in far higher terms than to the Romans for he tells them That they were an example to the faithful and that the word of the Lord sounded from them not only in Macedonia and Achaia but in every place also Although they do not conclude the infallibility of the Church of Thessalonica from thence They do not see that he renders well near the same testimony to the Philippians in adding a clause that seems much more express to wit That he is assured of this very thing that he which had begun a good work in them would perform it until the day of Jesus Christ Although they cannot notwithstanding conclude infallibility from thence in the behalf of the Church of Philippi In effect these testimonies only regard the persons who at that time composed those Churches and not those who should come after them and do not found any priviledge on them They produce the passages of the Gospel that relate to S. Peter as this Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it and this I will give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven c. and this I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not when therefore thou art converted strengthen thy brethren and this Feed my sheep But to perceive the weakness of the consequence which they draw from these passages we need but to see that which is between two things of which it is necessary that we should be assured before we can conclude any thing First of all we must be assured that S. Peter was at Rome that he preached and fixed his See there for these actions are not so evident as they imagine they are inveloped with divers difficulties that appear unconquerable and accompanied with many circumstances that have no appearance of truth and which make at least that whole History to be doubted I confess that the Ancients did believe so but they have sometimes readily admitted Fables for truths and after all these
are matters of fact whereof we have not any Divine Revelation about which according to the very principle of our Adversaries all the whole Church may be deceived and which by consequence are not of faith nor can serve as a foundation for an Article so much concerning the faith as this is That the Church of Rome cannot err and that it is alwayes necessary to salvation to be in her communion Secondly We must be assured that the Bishops of Rome are the True and ordinary Successors of S. Peter in the Government of every Christian Church For why should not they be his Successors in the Government of the particular Church of Rome as well as the Bishops of Antioch in the particular Government of that of Antioch When the Apostles preached in those places where they gathered Churches and setled Pastors they did not intend that those Pastors after them should receive all the rights of their Apostleship nor that they should be Universal Bishops They say that there must have been one and that that could have been in no other Church but that where S. Peter dy'd But all this is said without any ground The Church is a Kingdom that acknowledges none besides Jesus Christ for its Monarch he is our only Lord and our Soveraign Teacher and after that the Apostles had formed Churches and that the Christian Religion had been laid down in the Books of the New Testament the Pastors had in those Divine Books the exact Rule of their Preaching and their Government Those who have applyed themselves only to that have alwayes well governed their Flocks without standing in need of that pretended Universal Episcopacy which is a Chimerical Office more proper to ruine Religion than to preserve it In the Third place we must be assured that S. Peter himself had received in those passages some peculiar dignity that had raised him above the other Apostles and some rights which were not common to all of them But this is what they cannot conclude from those forecited passages for granting that Jesus Christ has built his Church upon S. Peter has he not also built it upon the other Apostles is it not elsewhere written That we are built upon the foundations of the Apostles and Prophets Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone Is it not written That the New Jerusalem has twelve foundations wherein the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb are written If Jesus Christ has prayed for the perseverance of the faith of S. Peter has he not made the same Prayer for all the other Keep them sayes he in thine own name that they may be one as we are If he said to him Strengthen thy Brethren is it not a common duty not only to the Apostles but to all the Faithful Let us consider one another sayes S. Paul to provoke unto love and to good works If he said to him Feed my sheep did he not say to all in common Go and teach all Nations If he said to him I will give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven has he not said to all of them I appcint unto you a Kingdom as my Father hath appointed unto me Whatsoever ye shall bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven and whatsoever ye shall loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven In the Fourth place we must be assured that when there should be in all those passages some peculiar priviledge for S. Peter exclusive from the rest of the Apostles that it is a thing that could be transmitted down to his Successors and not some personal priviledge that resided in him alone and must have dyed with him For can we not say that the twelve Apostles being the twelve foundations of the Church the priviledge of S. Peter is to be first in order because he was the first who laboured in the conversion of the Jews at the day of Pentecost and in that of the Gentiles in the Sermon that he made to Cornelius May we not say that Jesus Christ has particularly prayed for his perseverance in the faith because that he alone had been winnowed by the Temptation that hapned to him in the Court of the High Priest That he said to him alone When thou art converted strengthen thy brethren because that he alone had given a sad experience of humane weakness That he said to him thrice Feed my sheep or my lambs because that he only having thrice denyed his Master by words full of horror and ingratitude our Lord would for his consolation and re-establishment thrice pronounce words full of love and goodness In fine when those Texts should contain a peculiar priviledge that might be communicated to the Successors of S. Peter we must be assured that that priviledge must be the perpetual infallibility of the Church of Rome and a certainty of never falling away from the quality of a True Church And this is that which they know not how to conclude from those passages for in respect of the first The Church may have been built upon S. Peter and upon his first Successors and remain firm and unshaken upon those foundations that is to say upon their Doctrine and Example although in the course of some Ages the Bishops of Rome have degenerated and changed the faith of their Predecessors and the words of Jesus Christ extended even to the Successors of S. Peter would not be less true when they should not extend themselves unto all those who bear that name S. Paul has called the Churches of Asia in the midst of which Timothy his Disciple was when he wrote his first Epistle to him he has I say called them the pillar and ground of Truth For although those Titles belong in general to every Church it is notwithstanding certain that they regard more directly and more particularly that part of the Universal Church I would say the Churches of Asia where Timothy resided when S. Paul wrote to him But the word of this Apostle does not fail to be true although in the course of many Ages those Churches have degenerated from their first purity and though the Successors of Timothy lost it very quickly after And as to the Prayer that Jesus Christ made to God that the faith of S. Peter might not fail when they would extend it down to his Successors they cannot conclude a greater Infallibility for them than that of S. Peter himself who preserving his faith concealed at the bottom of his heart outwardly denyed his Master three times and who according to the opinion of our Adversaries lost entirely his love and had fallen from a state of Grace being no more either in the Communion of God nor in that of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ Let the Church of Rome therefore call her self infallible as much as she pleases in vertue of the Prayer of Jesus Christ that Infallibility will not
hinder but that she may externally deny the faith of Jesus Christ but that she may intirely lose her love and the communion of our Saviour and the quality of the True Church and by consequence that we should not be bound to separate from her while she should be in that state and till it should please God to re-establish her See here of what force those proofs are which they produce to ground this special priviledge of the Church of Rome upon It is not hard to see that a man of good understanding who would satisfie his mind and his conscience upon so weighty a point ought not to remain there but that he ought to pass on to the other way of clearing that doubt which I have noted which is to judge of the pretension of the Church of Rome by the examination of her Doctrines and her Worship For it is there principally that the characters of truth and infallibility ought to be found and by consequence he must come to the foundation and no further amuse himself with Prejudices As to the second Way by which I have said we might clear this Question Whether it be necessary to the salvation of Christians to be joyned to the Church of Rome it consists in examining whether it be true that God has made her the Mistress of all other Churches whether there is any particular order that binds us indispensably to her For if that be so the Separation of our Fathers must be condemned but if it be not so we must judge of that Church as of all other particular Churches and say that we cannot and ought not to separate our selves from her but when we have just and lawful causes so to do There is no person who does not judge that we cannot pass over lightly a point of so great importance which ought to serve for a general and perpetual Rule to all Christians and that if the Church of Rome would so set her self beyond a state of equality above other Churches it is necessary that she should produce some very express and indisputable Order of God for it But instead of that she does nothing but reverberate the same passages which I have mentioned She boasts her self to be the See of S. Peter and under that pretence she applyes to her self all that she can find in the Scripture in favour of that Apostle and particularly the Order that Jesus Christ gave him to feed his sheep as if the Office of the Apostleship in which Jesus Christ re-established him by those words could be communicated to his Successors or as if the foundation that Jesus Christ supposed and upon which he re-established him in saying to him feed my sheep to wit that he should love him more than the rest was not a thing purely personal in S. Peter and whereof it was not in his power to transmit any part to his Successors nor by consequence to invest them with his Office which was restored to him only upon a supposition of that love or lastly as if the office of feeding Christ's sheep included an absolute and indispensable necessity for the sheep to receive their death when they should give it them under the name of their food It must be acknowledg'd that there never was a higher pretension than this of the Church of Rome for what more could she pretend to then to make Heaven it self depend on her communion and to leave no possibility of salvation to any but those who should be in her communion and under her dependance But it must also be acknowledged that there never was any thing worse established than that pretension They alledge in its favour nothing that is clear and distinct and even the consequences which they draw for it are made after a very strange manner This is in my judgement the Reason why our Adversaries when they treat of this matter do not insist much upon Scripture but fly off presently to the Fathers and the usage of the Ancient Church For by this means they hope to prolong the dispute to eternity and that notwithstanding the Church of Rome shall be alwayes in possession of that Despotical Authority which she exercises over the Churches that remain in her communion In effect the life of a man would scarce suffice to read well and throughly examine all the Volumes which have been composed on one side and on the other upon this Question of the place that the Church of Rome and its Bishops have held among the Christian Churches during the first six Centuries and of the Authority which they had then But to say the truth there is too much artifice in that procedure for that the Church of Rome should be the Mistress of all others and that no one could be saved but in her communion that does not depend upon the order of men but only on that of God and when they should find among the Antients a thousand times more complaisance for the See of Rome than they had that may very well establish an ancient possession and make clear the fact but it can never establish the right of it To establish a right of that nature a word of God an express declaration of his will is necessary for it is a right not only above nature but even above the ordinary and common favour that God gives to other Churches and which by consequence depends only upon God And so it is but a wandring from the way to go to search for the grounds of it in the Writings of Men. It is no hard matter to conceive that those Bishops which were raised to Dignities in the Metropolis of the World and engaged in the greatest affairs might mannage matters so as to ascribe to themselves those rights which no wayes belonged to them nor to imagine that their flatterers and Courtiers might not have offered more incense to them than they ought nor that those persecuted ones who had recourse to their protection might not have helped the increase of their Authority nor that the Princes and Emperors who had need of them might not have given them those priviledges which they ought not to have had that which renders to a just title all that which they alledge in their favour suspected and to no purpose at all Notwithstanding there are moreover evident matters of fact that let us clearly see that the Ancient Church did not acknowledge that Universal Episcopacy that the Bishops of Rome pretend to nor that absolute and indispensable necessity to be joyned to their See to be saved nor that their Church should be the Mistress of all the rest 1. Every one knows that the Bishops of Rome were anciently chosen by the suffrages of the people and of the Clergy of that Church without any other Churches taking part in those Elections which is a mark manifest enough that they did not mean that those Bishops should be Universal Bishops nor that they should have a more peculiar interest in their creation than
in that of other Bishops Since the Popes were raised to that high Dignity wherein we behold them at this day each Nation has thought that it ought in some manner to participate in their Nomination because the business was about one common interest they would have the Protectors of their Interests in the Colledge of Cardinals and Princes themselves have interpos'd but they can see nothing like that in the Primitive Church Rome alone made her Bishops without the participation of other Churches 2. Victor Bishop of Rome having excommunicated the Churches of Asia who celebrated the Feast of Easter after the manner of the Jews S. Irenaeus with the Bishops of France opposed themselves to that Excommunication and wrote as well to Victor as to the other Bishops and in effect those Churches of Asia did not cease to remain in the Communion of the Catholick Church notwithstanding that action of Victor as it appears from the Testimony of Socrates who formally sayes that those who contended about the business of Easter did not nevertheless refuse communion with one another So that their Bishops were called and received in the Council of Nice without any difficulty for Eusebius notes expresly among those who were called by Constantine the Syrians the Cilicians and the Mesopotamians who were Quartodecumani he sayes that Constantine would conferr pleasantly and familiarly with the Bishops about matters that were in question and that he would bring them all by that means to the same opinion even about the matter of Easter and S. Athanasius testifies that it was to accord that difference that all the World was assembled at the Council of Nice and that the Syrians came to the same opinion with the rest and that they earnestly contended against the Heresie of Arius which shews us that they assisted at the Council without any notice being taken of Victor's Excommunication From whence it is no very hard matter to conclude what Aeneas Sylvius Cardinal of Sienna and afterwards Pope has acknowledged in one of his Letters That before the Council of Nice every one lived according to his own wayes and that men had but a very small regard to the Church of Rome 3. In the sixth Century a great trouble being raised in the Church upon the occasion of three Writings the one of Theodoret Bishop of Cyrus the other of Ibas Bishop of Edessa and the third of Theodoret of Mopsuesta which had been read and approved in the Council of Chalcedon but whom the most judged to be Heretical Pope Vigilius openly took up the desence of those three Writings and vigorously oppos'd himself to the condemnation that the Emperour Justinian and the Eastern Patriarchs had made of them But in the end being drawn to Constantinople he changed his opinion and consented to that condemnation whither he was carried out to it by the complaisance which he had for the Emperour who had a great affection for that business or whether out of some other principle Howsoever it were that action appear'd so criminal in the eyes of a great number of Orthodox Bishops that they separated themselves and their Churches from the Communion of Vigilius and his Party and even the Church of Africa assembled in Council as Victor of Tunis an African Bishop witnesses who lived in those times Synodically excommunicated that Pope leaving him notwithstanding means to re-establish himself by repentance These Actions prove in my judgement very sufficiently that the faithful then did not look upon the Church of Rome as the Mistress of all others nor on the communion or dependance on its See as a thing absolutely necessary to the salvation of Christians There can nothing be said in effect more opposite to the Spirit of the Christian Religion than that Imagination God had heretofore fixed his Communion with that of the Israelites and established in Jerusalem and in its High Priests the center of Ecclesiastical Unity But when Jesus Christ brought his Gospel into the world he changed that order not by transporting the rights of Jerusalem to Rome nor those of the High Priests to the Popes but by abolishing wholly that necessity of Communion to a certain place and that particular dependance on a certain See This is what S. Paul clearly enough teaches in his third Chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians In the new man sayes he there is neither Greek nor Jew neither Circumcision nor Vncircumcision neither Barbarian or Scythian bond or free but Jesus Christ is all and in all He had had no reason to express himself after that manner if that new man whereof he spoke had necessarily been a Roman and depending on the Communion of the Bishop of Rome So also the same Apostle setting that Evangelical Church that Jesus Christ had assembled in opposition to the ancient and earthly Jerusalem makes not that opposition to consist in this that the one is Jerusalem and the other Rome the one the head City of Judaea and the other that of the Empire but he makes it to consist in this that one is earthly and the other heavenly the one below and the other on high the one ty'd to a certain place from whence it cannot go and the other independent on all manner of particular places in the world and having no necessary dependence on any but Heaven For it is to this purpose that he calls the Jerusalem that is above the heavenly Jerusalem the City of the living God the Church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven It is in the view of that that Jesus Christ said to the Samaritan Woman believe me the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father But the hour cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth The Samaritans would establish the center of Religion on the Mountain where Jacob and the twelve Patriarchs had built an Altar to God the Jews on the contrary established it in the City of Jerusalem To all that Jesus Christ opposes not the Capital City as the new Mountain which he had chosen nor Rome as another Jerusalem but the Spirit and the Truth that is to say Faith and Piety alone abstracted from all those relations to particular places and independent on all Cities and Mountains The same thing is justified by the censure that S. Paul passed on the Corinthians in that one said I am of Paul another I am of Apollos and another I am of Cephas that is to say of Peter For we ought not to imagine that those men meant that they were so of Paul or of Apollos or of Peter as to be no more of Jesus Christ or that they would take Paul or Apollos or Cephas for heads equal to Jesus Christ They were Christians and they were not ignorant of the difference they were to make between Jesus Christ and his Apostles No without doubt they were not ignorant
of it but they would have subordinate heads humane heads on whom they might depend by an external dependance and that was necessary for them to be by that means linked to Jesus Christ after the same manner that they would have us at this day to depend on the See of Rome Wherefore did S. Paul say to them Is Christ divided Why did he not say to them that as for Paul and Apollos they had no reason to take them for their heads but that it was far otherwise as to Peter since God had set up him and his Successors for ever to be the heads of the Universal Church Why in stead of that did he conclude after this manner That no one should glory in men for all things are yours whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come all are yours and ye are Christs and Christ is Gods Is it not to let them understand that Jesus Christ is the only head of the Church that there is only his communion that is absolutely necessary and that as for other Ministers whosoever they were they were appointed for our use as all other things to serve us in as much as they lead us to Jesus Christ If the Church under the New Testament ought to be inviolably ty'd to the See of Rome how should the Scripture have been silent in so weighty a truth which could not be ignor'd without extream danger nor contested without evident damnation Notwithstanding we do not find any other head of the Church in those Sacred Books but Jesus Christ nor any other High Priest but him We do not find in the Scripture any Universal Bishop nor Ministerial head or subordinate or any particular Church the Mistress of all others We find there indeed that Jesus Christ being ascended up on high gave some to be Apostles others to be Prophets some Evangelists some Pastors and Teachers for the assembling of the Saints for the work of the Ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ How came the Apostle to forget in that Enumeration the chief of all Offices to wit that of the Ministerial Head of the whole Church and the Universal Vicar of Jesus Christ in the Government and conduct of his flock If the Christian Church ought in that to resemble the Synagogue and to have as that a Soveraign High Priest upon earth who should be the head of that Religion and who should have his Successors as the ancient High Priest had whence comes it that the Scripture has alwayes regarded that Ancient High Priest as a Figure of Jesus Christ that it alwayes referred it to him and never to the Roman Bishops nor even to S. Peter who was then alive and who should by consequence have exercised that pretended charge which they would make to descend from him There is therefore no lawful foundation in all that pretension of Rome and her See We ought to pass the same judgement on all other Sees and other particular Churches with which it is just we should hold communion while they teach good and sound Doctrine and that we should even bear with them when they should fall into some errors provided they constrain no body to believe them but from which it is also just to separate our selves when they shall fall into errors contrary to the communion of Jesus Christ our only Saviour and when they would violently force all others to believe the same If in a long course of Ages Rome has usurped by little and little the rights that do not belong to her if she has found it very easie through the ignorance or complaisance of men in the diverse intrigues of the World to raise her Throne as high as our Fathers beheld it and as we do yet at this day If her flatterers have not failed alwayes to raise her pretensions as high as Heaven and if she has been lull'd asleep with the sound of those sweet charms that enchant her we do not believe that that ought to prejudice our separation We have no other aversion for her communion than that which our conscience gives us and if it shall please God to re-establish her in her ancient purity she would not have so great a joy to spread forth her arms to us as we should have an impatience to demand her peace of her But as long as we shall see her in that bad state wherein we are perswaded she is we cannot but bewail and pray for her and yet notwithstanding no body can blame us for preferring our own salvation to her communion CHAP. III. That the Conduct of the Court of Rome and those of her party in respect of the Protestants has given them a just cause to separate themselves from them supposing that they had had right at the foundation BEfore we leave this matter of our Separation from the Church of Rome there yet remains two Questions for us to examine the one Whether our Fathers were not too precipitate in so great an affair whether they did not act with too much haste or Whether they had sufficient motives from the conduct of those from whom they separated to forsake in the end their communion The other Whether with all that they can say that they separated themselves from the communion of the Catholick Church spread over the whole World as the Donatists did heretofore and whether they did not fall into the same crime with those ancient Schismaticks against whom Optatus and S. Augustine so strongly disputed I will treat of this second Question in the following Chapter and this here shall be design'd to the clearing of the former To effect this methinks we need but freely to set before their eyes all that I have said in the second Part touching the necessity that lay upon our Fathers to reform themselves For since it clearly results from those matters of fact which I have set down that the Popes and those of their party were so far from applying themselves seriously to a Reformation that they studied on the contrary only how to stifle the truth from the very first moment they beheld it appear and to defend their Errors and Superstitions by all manner of wayes who sees not that that inflexible resolution which had not yielded either to the first or second admonition rendred from that time the separation of our Fathers just and exempted them from all reproach For when there are Errors capable of giving ground for a separation it ought to be defer'd only upon a hope of amendment and that hope seem'd to be sufficiently destroy'd by those Historical actions which I have already set down Notwithstanding to shew them more and more how the conduct of our Fathers was very prudent in that respect and full of circumspection it will not be besides our purpose to resume here the close of their story from the unjust condemnation of Luther and his Doctrine made by Pope Leo the Tenth
of a shadow of Reformation that he had propounded which consisted only in most trivial matters he caused them to make a League among them for the defence of the Roman Religion and the destruction of the Lutherans Soon after they saw the effects of this League appear for Ferdinand and the Legat being gone into Austria they condemned to death some persons upon the account of Religion Clement elsewhere took the same cares for all places which they took in Germany to hinder the progress of the Reformation He wrote upon that subject into Switzerland into Bohemia France Poland Swedeland Denmark and he stirr'd up every where the Princes Magistrates and Prelates to overthrow the Reformed Wherefore they beheld soon after under his Pontificate the Inquisitions taken up in that pursuit the Prisons filled with Prisoners and the Scaffolds and the Stakes filled almost generally in all places that owned his Authority It was at this time that Antonius Pratensis Cardinal and Arch-Bishop of Sens held a Provincial Synod at Paris the ninety second Article of which was framed in these terms We intreat the Most Christian King our Prince and Soveraign Lord by the bowels of the mercies of God that according to his singular zeal and incredible devotion for the Christian Religion that he would suddenly banish from the Lands of his Jurisdiction all Hereticks and that he would extirpate that deadly and horrible plague which increases every day more and more The ninety third was framed after this manner Therefore it is that the Orthodox Princes if they would have any care for the Christian Name and would hinder the ruine of Religion ought necessarily to use all their endeavours to extirpate and destroy Hereticks That Arch-Bishop was very much interessed in the preservation of the ancient abuses for we find in the Dialogue of the Two Parishioners of S. Hilary Montanus that he was Cardinal Arch-Bishop of Sens Bishop of Alby Bishop of Valence Bishop of Gap and Abbot of Fleury We ought not to be astonished if he declaimed so much against the Reformation He was in effect one of those who opposed themselves to it in France with the greatest heat and if any would know his character they need but look to that which the Authors of that same Dialogue say of him This Du Prat was he not as great a Prelate as a S. Hilary of Poictiers a S. Martin of Tours a S. German of Auxerre and as a S. Lupus of Troye He had alone full as many Bishopricks as all those admirable Saints had together and moreover the Abby in which is the Body of S. Benorist but he has not done so many Miracles as all those Saints and he never resided in any of those Diocesses nor ever performed any other office of a Bishop than that only Ordinance against Martin Luther Philip Melancthon Oecolampadins Zuinghus for as yet Calvin and Beza were not talked of It is this good Prelate to whom they attribute the taking away of the Pragmatick Sanction that is to say the pure observation of the Ancient Canons of the Church of France and the having made the agreement between King Francis the First and Leo the Tenth which has destroyed all the Apostolical Discipline in France and abolished the Canonical Elections and subjected France to a deplorable servitude The same Spirit that the Cardinal Du Prat had brought into France reigned then in England Scotland Flanders Austria Poland and universally in all places where the Power of the Pope extended it self for there was nothing talked of there but the extream punishments which they inflicted on those pretended Hereticks and their very Judges who touch'd with some compassion did not readily do their duty according to the humour of the Court of Rome did not remain unpunished For it was for this reason that Pope Clement charged Cardinal Campeius his Legate to remove those Inquisitors who were in the Low-Countreys and to put others in their places who should better acquit themselves of so detestable a service as Raynaldus relates But while they acted after this manner the Light of the Reformation did yet spread it self abroad in divers places through an admirable blessing of God who has alwayes made the ashes of his Martyrs the seed of his Church For not only Saxony had receiv'd it but also a great part of Germany a great part of Switzerland Swedeland Denmark Prussia and Livonia also In the month of April in the year 1529. an Assembly of the Princes and other States of Germany was held at Spire whither Clement did not fail to send a Nuntio The first thing they did there was to reject the Assembly at the City of Strasburgh under a pretence that it had abolish'd the use of the Mass without waiting for the Imperial Diet. This violent procedure was quickly after followed by a Decree that Ferdinand Arch-Duke of Austria and some other Princes who took part with the Court of Rome made and whom the Emperour had expresly chosen for his Deputy Commissioners They ordain'd therefore in the first place that those who till then had observ'd the Edict of Wormes that is to say who not only had not receiv'd the Reformation but who had persecuted it with all their might should for the future do the like and force their Subjects to do the same and that as for those in whose Countreys that new Doctrine had been spread abroad provided they could not extirpate it without putting themselves into a manifest danger of stirring up troubles it should be their part at least to hinder any thing more from being innovated till the calling of a Council Secondly They ordained That above all things the Doctrine which opposed the substantial presence of the body of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist should neither be received nor propounded by any in all the compass of Germany and that the Mass should not be abrogated In the third place they decreed That they should not allow Preachers in any place to explain the Gospel otherwise than by the interpretations of the Fathers In fine they ordained grievous penalties against the Printers and Booksellers who should Print or Vend for the future the Books that contained that new Doctrine The other Princes and States of the Empire beholding this manifest oppression thought themselves bound to make an Act of Protestation to the contrary They remonstrated therefore That that new Decree contradicted that that had been passed in the preceding Assembly where every one was to be free in respect of his Religion That they did not pretend to hinder the other Princes and States from enjoying that liberty but that on the contrary they pray'd God that he would give them the knowledge of his Truth That they could not with a good conscience approve of the reason for which they would allow them to retain the Evangelical Doctrine to wit lest they should fall into new troubles for that would be to confess that it would be good to renounce that Doctrine
to the Emperour with great submission praying him to mitigate his Decree and not to expose them as he had done to the violence of their Enemies They wrote also to the other Christian Princes as well to inform them of what had pass'd at Ausburg as to justifie themselves against the many false accusations wherewith they were charg'd and to have them demand a General and free Council that should be held in Germany for the Reformation of the Church The Execution of this Decree of Ausburg fill'd for some time Germany with a thousand Persecutions against the Protestants by the Authority of the Imperial Chamber Behold here what the Emperour did to satisfie the desires of the Court of Rome it seems that he could have done nothing more vehemently and yet notwithstanding the Pope was not throughly contented He very much rejoyced to see the Protestants subjected to the most rigorous punishments But that Authority that Charles had taken upon him to appoint those Conferences to labour to bring those differences to an agreement the consent that he had given to the abolition of some Ceremonies and above all the promise of a Council within the prefixed term of a year were things that he could not digest judging them to be too contrary to the Soveraignty of his See And because the Emperour had press'd him about this last Article of a Council and even his Legate wrote to him that it was the general desire of all Germany he returned this Answer That having consulted the Cardinals about it divers of them had not found that a Council was a very fit means for the rooting out of the present Heresies because that those things that had been decided by former Councils or already established by the practice of many Ages ought not to be again called in question That this was a very bad precedent and could not be done without very great scandal and a manifest violation of the Apostolick See That nevertheless if the Emperour judged a Council to be absolutely necessary he might promise the Lutherans one but with this condition that they should presently depart from all their Errors and be obedient to their Holy Mother Church that they should hold her Doctrines and her Rites until it should be otherwise ordain'd by the Council to the Decrees of which they should wholly submit themselves That besides that the calling of a Council would be very scandalous and of exceeding bad example to all posterity That as to the place where it should be held he judg'd it absolutely necessary that it should be in Italy and that he did not see any City more fit for it than Rome it self which was the Seat of the Christian Faith that if notwithstanding Rome did not please him he might chuse one either in Bolognia or Placentia or Mantua The Pope went even so far as to write to the Christian Princes a Circulary Letter by which he advised them in the general of that which had pass'd at Ausburg and that for the intire rooting out of Heresie he was resolved to call a Council Notwithstanding all these Declarations consisted only in words for at the bottom his mind was wholly remote from the holding of a Council in which as Guicciardine sayes he apprehended that they might contest his Papacy with him which he had purchased by canvasings and money and that they would take cognizance of the affairs of the Florentines whom he had subdu'd and subjected to the Family of the Medici by force of Arms or as the Author of the History of the Council of Trent sayes he feared lest they should beat down that excessive Authority which the See of Rome had usurped over all other Bishops and over all Churches However it were he would not have one but he would that they should make use of Fire and Sword And it was for this that he wrote about that same time to Ferdinand the Emperour's Brother exhorting him to go himself in person to Bohemia to root out Heresie there He solicited also the Emperour and the Christian Kings to joyn their Arms with those of the Duke of Savoy against the Switz Cantons who had embraced the Reformation and his Intrigues or those of his creatures were so powerful that they enflamed a bloody War between the Reformed Cantons and the others wherein the Reformed were beaten many times which afforded great matter of joy to the Court of Rome In the year 1532. the Emperour having called the Imperial Diet to Ratisbon for the affairs of Hungary and Germany threatned by the Arms of the Turks the Princes and the other States assembled seeing clearly already that the Pope and his Court sought only to elude the Council by divers pretences solicited the Emperour that he would be pleased to call one himself by his Authority and they represented to him that it was his right in the quality of Roman Emperour that other Emperours had so used it and that he was the Head and Protector of all Christianity especially in case of the negligence and refusal of the Pope The Emperour would not hearken to this Proposition and yet nevertheless being urged by the necessity of his affairs and having a War to maintain with the Turk he granted a Peace to the Protestants who were already seven Princes and four and twenty Imperial Cities This Peace was made at the Mediation of Albert Cardinal and Arch-Bishop of Mayence and Lewis Prince Palatine of the Rhine and the Emperour made his Decree publick bearing in it express prohibitions to trouble or disquiet any person for matters of Religion only till the holding of a General Free and Christian Council which he endeavoured to have called within the term of a year or in case that a Council could not be held till a General Assembly of the States of the Empire wherein they might provide for the affairs of Religion This Decree displeas'd the Pope and all his Court extreamly who would neither have a Peace nor a Council nor any Assembly of the States to treat of Religion as it evidently appeared afterwards For after that the Emperour had set the affairs of Hungary and Austria in order and had been freed from the force of Solyman he went into Italy and having urged the Pope many times upon that subject the Pope alwayes eluded the Proposition as well by the conditions which he required that the Protestants should submit themselves to well knowing that they would not agree to them as by the default of the consent of the Kings of France and England without whom he said it was to be feared that the calling of a Council would create a new Schism in the Church Thus the Papacy of Clement pass'd away who dyed the twenty fifth of September 1534. His Successor who was Paul III. followed the same path of Clement in regard of the Protestants The first step that he made was to let his Nuntio Paulus Vergerius delcare that he was resolved to call a Council but at the
and which the Donatists acknowledg'd to be Orthodox was then actually and in effect spread over the whole Earth that is to say that it had a great extent among the Nations of it whereas that of the Donatists was shut up within one small part of Africk It was upon this that they abused a passage of the Canticles which they read after this manner Tell me O thou whom my soul loveth where thou feedest where thou makest thy flocks to rest in the South explaining this in the South as if he would have noted the place and said in Africa whereas it should be read at noon-day meerly to note the hour of the day when the Shepherd led his flock under some shade for their rest This is that which makes S. Augustine also speak to them sometimes of the Apostolical Churches and those to whom S. John wrote his Apocalypse with whom they had no communion and to reproach them so often for being separated from all the World The third Observation is That that Society which the Donatists acknowledged to be Orthodox and which was in effect spread over many Nations had not cut off the Donatists from its communion nor had separated the former from it if they had not excommunicated them nor pronounced Anathema's against those who should not hold Cecilianus to be innocent or the Traditors to have been good men When any one of them return'd to the Church they did not seek to make them renounce any other thing than their Schism nor to embrace any thing besides peace And even in the judgement of the Synod of Rome Milciades and his brethren offered to hold communion with the Bishops that Majorinus had ordained and in the Conference at Carthage they offered to the Donatist Bishops to own them for Bishops and to preserve their Sees to them without requiring any other condition of them than that of brotherly Unity It was therefore the Donatists who separated themselves wilfully out of a meer spirit of division and the Church was in respect of them in a passive Separation Lastly The fourth Observation is That although the Donatists should have had any just occasion to separate yet they had urged their Separation notwithstanding as far as it could go for they had carried it so far as even to break that general bond which yet in some manner united all those who make an external profession of Christianity good and bad Orthodox and Hereticks which yet in some manner make but one body in opposition to Pagans and other people absolutely Infidels Their Principle was That all the Christians in the World except the party of Donatus being sullied with the contagion of the Traditor Cecilianus all that they had also done became sullied by the uncleanness of their persons and upon this Principle they condemned the Christianity of the Universal Church they rejected her Baptism and her Sacraments although at the bottom they had the same with hers and they look'd upon that Society to be no otherwise than an Assembly of Pagans and Infidels with whom they would have nothing common This is what St. Augustine reproaches them with in divers places in his Writings They say sayes he that they are Christians but they say also that they only are so They make no scruple to say that they know that out of their Sect there are no Christians You hold sayes he to them elsewhere that all Christian Holiness has been abolish'd among the Nations where the Apostles had establish'd it because they have communicated with those whom your Fathers condemned in their Council of Carthage Therefore it was that they thought themselves grievously affronted when the Catholicks called them their Brethren they fled from their Communion they would not so much as sit together with them and they re-baptiz'd all those who had been baptiz'd in the Church when they came over to their Communion neither more or less than if they had come out of Paganism because they maintained that in effect the Church was absolutely perish'd throughout all the Earth except in their Party These are the matters of fact that I have thought my self bound to explain We must now return to the Objection of the Author of the Prejudices and examine it in the meaning of S. Augustine and the African Fathers the proposition of which it is composed The first is That there is a Church from which it is never allow'd any man to separate himself under what pretence soever and from which all those who do so separate themselves are Schismaticks This first Proposition is ambiguous and so confused that we can very hardly comprehend in what sense the Author of the Prejudices has meant it Every one knows that there is in the World a Body of people or of Nations who profess themselves to be Christians and to whom one may yet in some manner give the name of the Church because that all such Christians are yet in some respect within the General Call of the Gospel It is therefore this Church of which he means to speak But what likelihood is there that to accuse us of Schism he should have form'd so vagous an Idea of the Church since he knows very well that we are no more separated from this body than the other communions that compose it are or than the Church of Rome her self in particular is Every one knows that this body of Christians is divided into divers communions or particular Societies that bear the name of Churches as the Greek the Roman the Protestant the Coptick the Jacobite the Nestorian the Armenian Does he mean any one of these Churches But if that be so why does he not distinctly and without any hesitation tell us which it is and if he would that it should be that of Rome what ground is there to believe that he would have it so why did he not explain himself why did he make an end even to say That it should be in our choice whether that Church should be the Greek or the Nestorian or the Jacobites and that he did not pretend to determine it To what purpose are all these goings about Every one knows yet that God alwayes preserves in the world his truly faithful and his Children who are the true Church which he has predestinated to eternal Salvation But the Author of the Prejudices has formerly declared himself against this notion of the Church and he is so very earnest to reject it that we cannot impute it to him without doing him wrong We cannot even believe that he means That we ought not to separate our selves from a Communion when it is Orthodox and when those who separate themselves from it are Schismaticks For he has also declar'd himself against this Notion of the Church because sayes he in taking this way the examination of Schism would be remitted to that of the Opinions and that we must alwayes know whether the Communion that they forsake is Orthodox
the bad Fish the Vessels of Gold and Silver and those of Wood and Earth and in this confus'd notion the Church is the Field the Floor the Net and the House that the holy Scripture speaks of But as this mixture which I have spoken of may be understood two wayes either in respect of Manners or in regard of Doctrines we must note in the Third place that this notion of the Mixed Church according to S. Augustine is divided into two for he would have us sometimes conceive of it as a Body wherein the righteous are only mingled with the unrighteous that is to say with the wicked whose manners are vitious and corrupted and sometimes also he would have us conceive it as a Body where the Hereticks are mixed with the truly faithful as well as the righteous with the unrighteous In the former case the mixed Church is a pure communion in respect of Doctrine but corrupted in regard of manners and in the second it is a communion not only corrupted in regard of manners but impure also and corrupted in regard of its Tenets These two sorts of mixture are without doubt in the Hypothesis of S. Augustine the first made all the ground of his dispute against the Donatists and as for the second he often explains himself in his Books and particularly in the Psalms against the Donatists where he sayes That after Jesus Christ had purged his floor by the preaching of the Cross the righteous were as the new seed which he spread abroad over all the Earth to the end they should make another harvest at the end of the world But that this harvest grew up amidst the Tares because there are Heresies every where Haec messis crescit inter zizania quia sunt haereses ubique In that same Psalm and elsewhere in divers places he quotes the Example of the Jewish Church in which he saies that the Saints the Prophets and the righteous were mixed not only with the wicked whose manners were debauched and criminal but also with the superstitious and Idolaters that which leaves no difficulty about it for Idolatry is the greatest of all Heresies We must note in the Fourth place that S. Augustine would have us consider the mixed Church in two different States For as for that which respects mens manners he sayes that sometimes the wicked do not prevail over the righteous either in number or Authority but that sometimes also they prevail in such a manner that the good are often oppress'd under their multitude and this is that which he treats particularly of in his Third Book against Parmenianus And so in regard of Heresies he means that sometimes they grow so powerful as to infect almost all the Body and this is what he expresly shews in a Letter to Vincentius a Donatist Bishop and in that which he wrote to Hesychius Thus it is that S. Augustine has conceiv'd of the Church and according to these different notions and these different states he has spoken differently of separations from it As for that which regards the truly righteous and faithful there is no question but that he thought that we ought to have not only an internal communion of charity with them founded upon the Unity that is between all the members of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ who have all but one and the same faith one and the same piety and the same righteousness but an external communion also which consists in joyning with them in the same Assemblies in partaking of the same Sacraments in approving their faith piety good works and in one word in accounting them their brethren as far as it is possible for them to know them But this is not that which makes the difficulty all the Question is concerning the mixed Church and all the dispute is to know how according to S. Augustine the Corn and the Tares that is to say the truly faithful and the Hereticks ought to remain together in the same communion and in what case they might separate themselves We must therefore note in the Fifth place that in the Doctrine of that Father there is a certain separation that a man can never make under any pretence whatsoever without being a Schismatick and that there is another that he may lawfully make and which it is sometimes necessary that he should He has distinguish'd between two external bonds that should unite us to one another the first is that of the External and General Call to Christianity the second is that of the participation of the same Sacraments and the same Assemblies It is the first bond that S. Augustine would have to be inviolable not only in regard of the faithful between themselves but also in regard of the wicked and Hereticks and not only while we suffer them to be in the publick Assemblies but even then when we excommunicate them and deprive them of the communion of the Sacraments And thus it is that he understands that which Jesus Christ said in his Parable That the Tares ought not to be pluck'd up which the Enemy had sown among the good Wheat in the same field but that he would leave both to grow together until the harvest and it is this kind of Unity whereof he sayes that there is no just necessity of ever breaking praecidendae unitatis nulla est justa necessitas it is the Unity of the same Net that enclos'd both good and bad Fish the Unity of the same Floor that contain'd both the good Seed and the Chaff the Unity of the same Field where the Tares grew up with the Wheat the Unity of the same House where there are Vessels of Wood and Earth with those of Gold and Silver and in a word this Unity that we call the external and general call to Christianity It is therefore first of all in this sense that he means that there is a Church from which we ought never to separate our selves under any pretence whatsoever and from which all those who separate themselves are Schismaticks for he understands it of that mixed Church that Field that Floor that Net that common House out of which we must never go forth nor drive out others howsoever wicked and Heretical they may be there being none but God who can make this separation and who will in effect make it at the end of the world And as it was thus that the Donatists had separated themselves so it was chiefly upon this that he convinced them of Schism for they own'd none for Christians but those of their own Party they rejected the Baptism of all the rest they looked upon them as Pagans who had no more any shadow of Christianity and when Proselytes came over to them they made them pass through all the degrees of the Catechumeni before they would receive them and they began to make them Christians anew as if they had come out of a Society of absolute Infidels as I have noted in my Fourth
the Prejudices has set before us which is that Schismaticks are out of a state of Salvation For I hold that this Proposition cannot be maintain'd after the manner that the Author of the Prejudices has propounded it that is to say absolutely and without any distinction I am not ignorant that to establish this rigorous sentiment they produce some passages of the Fathers who have in effect spoke of Schism in extreamly vehement terms as if they had a design to exclude from the communion of God and all hopes of salvation all those in general who should be found engaged in it But that very thing ought to be an example to let us see that we must not alwayes take according to the rigour of the Letter all that the Fathers have said in the heat of their disputes For unless we should be altogether unreasonable we must place a difference between three sorts of persons who are to be found in a Schismatical communion 1. The Authors of Schism who usually are the Pastors and Guides of the flock 2. Understanding persons who take part in the affairs and who very well knowing what they do give their consent to Schism and defend the Authors of it 3. The people that is to say the ignorant persons who scarce know any thing that passes or who know but very confusedly And for that which regards the Authors and other intelligent persons as it is most frequently passion interest pride and ambition that make them separate and that all those passions turn them in the end into an implacable hatred against their brethren they deserve our condemnation for those crimes are incompatible with the Spirit of Jesus Christ and it is a manifest demonstration that the world and its corruption reigns in the souls of those who are guilty of it we must therefore say of such Schismaticks as these that while they remain in this condition there is no hope of salvation for them because that the true faith the Covenant of God and the communion of Jesus Christ cannot subsist under the reign of those brutal passions But to imagine that the whole body of a people who are to be found engaged in a Schism either through the faction of the more powerful or a conscience prepossess'd by a zeal without knowledge by a Piety too scrupulous should be depriv'd of all hope of salvation this would be without doubt to fall into a very rigid Opinion To make this clear by Examples I have already mentioned elsewhere that Victor Bishop of Rome excommunicated the Churches of Asia upon the difference about the day of Easter from whence there followed a Schism between those Churches and this of Rome I do not now enquire to which of the two parties the crime of the Separation ought to be imputed either to the Asiaticks who adhered too strictly to the custom of their Ancestors and the Authority of Polycarp or to Victor who without Prudence and Charity separated him from divers great and flourishing Churches about a matter that was left self-free and indifferent in Religion I only say that this would be an horrible injustice to condemn those people to eternal flames who should be found to be engaged in that ridiculous quarrel only through the capricious humours of their Bishops In effect we have seen that notwithstanding this Schism they did not fail both the one and the other to sit together in the Council of Nice We must pass the same judgement of a Schism that fell out in the fourth Century at Antioch between the Meletians and the Eustatians both the one and the other Orthodox and separated from the Arrians but who nevertheless would not communicate together because that although Meletius had preached and defended the Council of Nice and suffered persecution for it yet he had been created Bishop by the Arians by reason of which the other Orthodox would no more communicate with those of his party which obliged them to hold their Assemblies apart It was therefore a true Schism on one side and on the other but as it proceeded only from an excess of zeal on the side of the Eustatians we ought not to pass a sentence of damnation so lightly against them I say the same thing of the Schism that fell out about the end of the Fifth Century between Acatius Bishop of Constantinople and Felix the Third Bishop of Rome who mutually excommunicated one another for the interests of John Talaia and Peter Mongus competitors for the Patriarchate of Alexandria Acacius defended the side of Peter whom Felix accused to be a Heretick and an enemy to the Council of Chalcedon and Felix on the contrary upheld Talaia whom Acacius had accused of Perjury and to be unworthy of a Bishoprick and this Schism also lasted down to their Successors thirty and five years between the East and West But although Acacius drawn in by intrigues to the side of an hypocrite had wrong at the foundation yet we ought not notwithstanding to believe that all those great Churches who kept communion with him and defended his memory after his death were absolutely cut off from the hope of Paradise In the Sixth Century there was another Schism whereof I have already spoken which was very contentious and embroiled under the Emperour Justinian Vigilius being Bishop of Rome and Mennas Patriarch of Constantinople The ground of the quarrell was taken from the Writings that had been approved in the Council of Chalcedon and which afterwards were condemned as heretical by the Emperour Justinian and the condemnation was subscribed by Mennas and the other Patriarchs and their Bishops Vigilius who was of another opinion undertook the defence of those Writings and excommunicated Mennas and the rest who had condemned them But some Months after he took off his Excommunication at the solicitation of the Empress Theodora to whom he owed his Bishoprick and which was more in the following year he himself pronounced an Anathema against those three Writings But the Bishops of Africa Illyria and Dalmatia persisted to defend them and those in Africa assembled in Council excommunicated Vigilius as a dissembler Some time after Vigilius repenting himself of that which he had done undertook a second time the defence of those Writings Justinian on the contrary made an Edict by which he renewed their condemnation and Vigilius on his side excommunicated all those who should consent to this Edict In fine the Fifth General Council assembled at Constantinople where in spight of all the Decrees of the Bishop of Rome the three Writings were condemned and all those who should approve them were excommunicated Vigilius persisting in his opinion was banished and dyed some years after But his Successors Pelagius and Gregory approved the Council and subscribed to what had been done there and it was in fine generally received by all and reckoned for a Fifth General Council We must acknowledge that if the people were to be saved or damned according to the good or
bad conduct of their Pastors Heaven and Hell would be very miserably dispensed while the time of those disorders lasted For our adversaries themselves are constrained to confess that this quarrell that made so great a noise that produced so many Excommunications so many Separations so many acts of violence and so many banishments and which ended by the dishonour of the Council of Chalcedon was founded upon nothing but a personal animosity sayes Baronius or as Sirmundus sayes upon an indifferent controversie which concerned nothing the doctrine of the faith on which side soever it had been decided If we must therefore judge according to the relation of these two Authors all that we can say is that both the parties were equally Schismatical who violated the peace and unity of the Church without any just reason and who mutually excommunicated one another for nothing and if we add that rigorous judgement against the Schifmatical Societies without any exception or distinction we must say that there was then no longer a true Church upon the Earth nor any hope of salvation But to go yet further If all those who live in the communion of Schismaticks are out of the Church in a state of Damnation I would fain have them satisfie me about some difficulties that I find in the History of the same Vigilius For the two first years of his Papacy it was he that was called a false Pope a Schismatick an Usurper of the Bishoprick of Sylverius whom the Hereticks had banished to set up this man who had promised them to communicate with them And in effect Liberatus and Victor of Tunis relate that after he was in possession of the Papacy he wrote to the Hereticks as having the same faith with them and Bellarmine declares that at this time Vigilius was an Anti-Pope and a Schismatick because that Sylverius the lawful Pope was yet living and there could not be two lawful Popes at the same time Baronius and Petavius say the same thing Notwithstanding it is true that during these two years of Schism Vigilius was peaceably acknowledged to be the Bishop of Rome both by the Church of Rome and by all Christendom No Church refused to live in his communion no Bishop withdrew himself from him as a Schismatick He performed without any opposition all the Functions of his Bishoprick he received the honours and had the profits of it All the Earth was then Schismatical with him and by consequence there was no further either a Church or Salvation in the World if it was only in the person of Sylverius and some Bishops who had subscribed to the Sentence of the Deposition and Anathema that Sylverius being in Exile pronounced against Vigilius and against all those who should adhere to him After this I would fain have them tell me how Vigilius could pass from the state of a Schismatick to that of a true Pope It was say Baronius and Bellarmine by the consent of the Clergy and People of Rome who assembled together and chose him lawfully after the death of Silverius But besides that this new Ordination of Vigilius and this Assembly of the People and Clergy is an effect of the invention of Baronius which is grounded upon nothing but one word of Anastasius the Popes Library-keeper who lived above three hundred years after besides this I say that the People of Rome and that Clergy had not they themselves lost through Schism the form of the true Church how was it restored to them how could they re-establish themselves Who gave that right to a company of Schismaticks cut off from the communion and the covenant of Jesus Christ to make a Rebell a Schismatick an excommunicated person a man that by the sentence of Sylverius could not perform any Sacerdotal Function to make such a one I say a lawful Pope See here already some inconveniencies considerable enough that flow from that rigorous sentiment but if we would go yet further we may find it may be others that are not less severe For what will they say to the Schisms that fell out so frequently in the Latin Church through the concurrence of Anti-Popes Will they dare roundly to pronounce all those people who have lived and dyed under the obedience of those false Popes and who by consequence having been engaged in a true Schism have been totally cut off from the Christian Communion and deprived of salvation Let the Author of the Prejudices who has taken such pains to damn the World without any mercy take the pains if he pleases to examine one matter of fact that I will set before him and which should be enough methinks to decide this Question at least in regard of him It is this that during the great Schism of two Anti-Popes which was ended at the Council of Constance there were Saints that the Church of Rome has canonized and whom it prayes to who lived and dyed under two contrary obediences and who by consequence dyed both the one sort and the others in a true Schism For in the year 1380. S. Catherine of Siena dyed under the obedience of Vrban the Sixth in the year 1381. S. Catharine of Swedeland the Daughter of S. Bridget dyed under the same obedience In the year 1395. S. Margaret of Pisa dyed under the obedience of Boniface the Ninth in the year 1399. S. Dorothy of Prussia dyed under the obedience of the same Pope and in the year 1405. S. William the Hermite of Sicily dyed under the obedience of Innocent the Seventh On the other side in the year 1382. S. Peter of Luxemburg dyed under the obedience of Clement who was the Anti-Pope of Vrban and some time after S. Vincent of Ferrara lived and wrought Miracles in the party of Benoist the Anti-Pope of Gregory the Twelfth Behold here Saints of both sides and yet one or the others must of necessity have been Schismaticks From whence it appears that the Church of Rome her self is concerned to oblige the Author of the Prejudices to moderate his style and not to take as it seems he has done that which the Fathers have said in disputing against the Schismaticks in its utmost latitude But although all that I have said should have no place the holy Scripture distinctly decides this difficulty For if he would but read the History of the Ten Tribes of Israel after they were separated from that of Judah at the instigation of Jeroboam he will find that they were in a real Schism since they had forsaken the Worship at Jerusalem and had built new Altars against the express commandment of God and yet nevertheless that did not hinder God from preserving his truly faithful and elect even in the midst of them For there were those seven thousand who in the time of Elias had not bowed the knee to Baal and whom S. Paul calls the remnant of the Election of Grace were not these Israelites engaged in a bad party Had
receive the Sacraments from their hands They cannot say that the Church would then be dispersed nor that the greater number of the Pastors had carried away with them all the Rights of the Society but they ought on the contrary to say that being obstinate in Error and abandoning the Purity of the Faith they themselves in that respect lost the Right of being in the Society and making up a Body of an External Communion For that Principle remains always unshaken that Error Superstition and falshood do not give the least Right to any men to Assemble and that a Society is Just only in proportion to that that it has of true Doctrine and Evangelical Worship So that the greater number of the Pastors is not a Party absolutely necessary to the Body of the Church for its subsistence and this appears evidently from the Example of the Orthodox in the Time of the Arrians for as I have said before their External Communion did not cease to subsist in divers places separated from the Body of the Pastors they met together they prayed to God in Common they heard his word they received his Sacraments in a word they performed all the actions of Religion under the Ministry of those few persons that remained This is precisely the Case wherein our Fore-Fathers found themselves in the Time of the Reformation as I have before shewn and it will not signify any thing to say that that small number of Pastors that our Fathers followed had themselves according to us corrupted their Ministry by the Errors and Superstitions of the other Pastors and that they received their Call from their hands for I affirm that their return to the true Doctrine rectified their Call and freed it from all the impurity or ill it could have had after the same manner that Felix Bishop of Rome and Meletius Bishop of Antioch who being ordained by the Arrians rectified their Ministry by Preaching the Truth and opposing of Heresy and as Liberius and a great number of the other Bishops who had subscribed to Arrianism purified their Call in returning to the True Faith which they had forsaken It is certain therefore that the greater number of the Pastors is not a party of the Body of the Church absolutely necessary for the subsistence of the External Communion and that it is an Error to imagine that the bond of the Society depends on them or that there can be no Assemblies made of those who shall be separated from them but such as are Unlawful and Schismatical But in the Second place I affirm that it is not even absolutely necessary and in all respects to the making that External Society to subsist among the Faithful that it should have Pastors For as it is nature alone that makes man a Sociable living Creature that is to say that renders him capable of Civil Society and gives him also a right to it so also it is Grace which makes a Christian a sociable man which renders him I would say capable of a Religious Society and gives him a right to it Ten Men that should meet one another hy Chance in an uninhabited Desart would they not have a Right to joyn themselves actually together to assemble and to take all the joynt deliberations in publick that they should Judge necessary for their own preservation And would it not be an extravagance to demand of them what Magistrate had assembled them what publick Authority had called them together who had given them a right to speak among themselves and to consult for their common interests Then when there are lawful Magistrates their intervention is necessary for the calling and Authorising of Civil Assemblies and if any undertake to assemble together without their Authority or without their consent their Assemblies are rash and unlawful but it does not follow from thence that Magistrates should be so absolutely necessary to a Society that when there should be none men could not any more speak or act together nor assemble themselves nor take common Consultations It is the same thing in Religion if Ten Laymen of the Faithful should meet together casually or to speak better if the sole Providence of God should make them meet one another in a Desart Island or in the farthest part of America and engage them all their days in a strange Land and if they should come to acknowledge each other for true Faithful Christians can any believe that 〈◊〉 ought to remain so dispersed that they could never lawâ—â—â—â—â— commune together concerning the Christian Faith and Pieâ—â— nor meet together to provide for the preservation of their Religion This is that which I hold to be not only unable to be maintained but impious For as Nature alone assembles men when they have no Magistrates and cannot have any so Grace alone assembles Christians when they have no Pastors and cannot have any She will not suffer them to remain in an intire dispersion while there remains yet any means to assemble them it is she alone that convokes or calls them together and her instinct forms an unanimous consent in them that consent alone renders their Assembly as lawful as it can be made by the Convocation of Pastors Thus also divers Parties who divided the Latin Church in the Time of the Great Schism of the Anti Popes protested That they met together at the Council of Constance when they no more acknowledged the Pope nor by consequence held any more a Head that could lawfully call them together for they declared that they called one another together and that they assembled themselves sub Capite Christo under Jesus Christ their common Head that is to say by his instinct and under his Authority which suplied the want of a Pope Quatenus say they in illo quiest verus Ecclesiae sponsus congregati in unum simul matrem Ecclesiam divisam uniamus In respect of an Assembly in the Body of a Council each Bishop each Prelate was but a meer private man as much as every Believer is in respect of an Assembly in the Body of the Church and yet notwithstanding they assembled they reunited themselves they deposed a false Pope who troubled them even then and they created another A mutual Convocation then which is nothing else but an unanimous consent is sufficient to make an Assembly lawful when there is no Publick Authority that can call them together This is that which justifies the Conduct of our Fathers in some places of this Kingdom at the beginning of the Reformation for they Assembled sometimes without any Pastors to pray to God together and to Read the Holy Scriptures their Consciences could not any more allow them to be present at the Assemblies of the Roman Communion and not having further any Pastor who might Assemble them after the Ordinary manner the Spirit of Christianity Assembled them under the Soveraign Pastor and Bishop of Souls which is Jesus Christ and their mutual consent without doubt made their Society and their
the Form of her Government we cannot deny that in that respect she has not under-went divers changes I do not mention the Introduction of the Episcopal Order for that is a Question but I speak of those changes that have befel her through the Usurpations and Contests of the first See's and chiefly by the Usurpations of that of Rome which the greatest part of the World will own to have been very considerable Her Discipline and her Liturgies have also undergone many Changes and they cannot in that regard ascribe any Uniformity to the Church either in respect of Times or Places In fine she has sometimes beheld the Body of her Ordinary Pastors turned against her self she has seen a great part of her true Children scattered and dispersed here and there without being able to perform any Acts of an External Society and she has seen some of her Flocks deprived of their Pastors and forced to set up some among themselves in the room of those who had abandoned them For all that fell out in the days of the Arrians the Councils determined Heresy the greatest part of the Orthodox who opposed themselves to their Impiety were either banished or forced to fly into the Desarts and according to the Testimony of St. Epiphanius divers People who saw that their Bishops were turned Arrians in the Council of Seleucia looked on them as the miserable Desertors of their Ministry and set up themselves other Bishops The greatest part of those Changes that fall out in the Church come from two sources the one That she is mixed with the Worldly and Profane in the band of the same External Profession and the other That the Truly Faithful themselves who only are the Church of Jesus Christ as truly Faithful as they are fail not to have a great many other imperfections their knowledge is obscure their Righteousness is accompanied with its faults their Inclinations are not all right and even their most just Inclinations do not fail to have some farther irregularity These two Fountains produce an heap of evils and disorders the Worldly on their part bring thither Covetousness Ambition Pride Opinionativeness contempt of God his Mysteries and Worship Politick Designs Worldly Interests a Spirit of Grandeur Luxury Superstitions Heresies Love of Dominion Presumption Opinion of Infallibility Forgeries and all other Perversities of the heart of Man The Faithful they bring thither on their side their Ignorance their Negligence their Fearfulness their Simplicity and sometimes their Passions their Personal Interests and Vices From all which a Chaos is made up of darkness and Confusion a Mystery of Iniquity a Spiritual Babylon that perpetually makes war against the Church which reduces her sometimes into very strange Extreamities and which would without doubt destroy her if her Eternal Head did not keep her up above all I acknowledge that the Spirit of God fights against that Babylon on the Churches side and that he presides over that Chaos to expel those Confusions and to hinder the Churches Perishing But it must not be imagined under a pretence of that presence of the Spirit of God that there never happens any disorder in it He indeed always preserves the Essence of the Church but he frequently permits her State to be altered This is the Effect that that heap of Crimes Vices and Imperfections may produce which I have mentioned as well on the side of the Truly Faithful as on that of the Worldly They never go so far as to destroy her intirely but they go so far sometimes as to spoil her of her Ornaments of her External Advantages and even of her very Health if I may so speak and therefore Jesus Christ told his Disciples In the World you shall have Tribulation but be of good cheer I have overcome the World God has always preserved and he will preserve to the end of all Ages a Body of many persons united together in the Communion of his Son Jesus Christ This Body can never perish it can never cease to be nor lose any thing that is absolutely necessary to its subsistence but it may be deprived of its large Extent Temporal Splendor Worldly Glory Peace Rest and Visibility It may see its Ministry Corrupted in as much as it is in the hands of men it may see its External Worship dishonoured and Error and Superstition fill its Pulpits Possess its Schooles and diffuse it self over its Councils its true Members may be hindred from making external Assemblies and a Body of a Visible Communion and it may be abandoned by its Pastors and reduced to a Necessity of Creating others See here what the State of the Church is Upon all these Illustrations it will be no difficult matter to decide the Question concerning the Novelty and Antiquity of our Church For if we have made a Society essentially different from that which Jesus Christ and his Apostles formed at the first and which has all a long subsisted down from his Birth to this present if we cannot justly say That we are a Body of many Persons united together in the Communion of one only true God under one only Jesus Christ our Head and Mediatour if they can with any ground contest with us the Unity of the True Christian Faith Piety and Holiness in one word if we want any thing that is necessary to the Constitution of the Church and its subsistence or if there be any thing in us that hinders that that good which we have does not produce its effect to give us the Form and Nature of a True Church it is certain that we have made a new Church and by a Consequence a false and an Adulterous Church But if we can truly and justly glorify God for all that which makes up the Essence of a True Church if our Faith is sound if our Piety is pure if our Charity is sincere if we can upon good grounds maintain that God preserves and upholds in the External Communion of that Body which we compose the Truly Faithful and Just persons who only as I have said often are the Church it is certain also that there is nothing more unjust then that Accusation of a New Church which they charge us with There never was in the World any other Church of God then that of his truly just and Faithful Ones that Body only is in the Communion of the Father and of his Son Jesus Christ that alone is intrusted with the Truth that alone is animated by the Holy Spirit that alone is God's Inheritance his People his Vine his enclosed Garden his House and Mystical Family as the Scripture calls it that alone in fine has all the Rights of the Ecclesiastical Society the Right of External Assemblies that of the Ministry Sacraments Government and Discipline Let the Author of the Prejudices and his Brethren stir themselves as much as they please let them animate one another let them cry out write Prejudices and invectives never so much against us let
or two Nations Jerusalem and Babylon which although they be mixed together do not fail to be really separated and he would have the Head of the one to be Jesus Christ but the Devil the head of the other It is for the same Reason that he distinguishes between being in the Church and being of the Church for he would that although the wicked might be in the Church yet that nevertheless they were not of the Church that they doe not belong to its Body but that they are in its Body as ill humours that oppressed and disturbed it and it is to the Faithful alone Exclusively to all others that he ascribes all the Rights of the Church although the wicked may sometimes have the dispensing them in quality of Ministers and Pastors for he would in that Case that those might be inhabitants of Babylon who distributed that good which did not belong to them but to the Truly Faithful only the only Inhabitants of Jerusalem It is then a certain and manifest Truth That the Truly Faithful only are the Church and that to them alone belong all the Rights of the Church but if we would here add another to it which is not less certain since it is founded upon the promises of Jesus Christ to wit That there always has been a Church in the World it would evidently follow That if our Communion has the advantage of the True Faith and Worship over the Roman Communion in a word if we have Reason at the Foundation we are not only the True Church but that we are so by a Just Succession de jure and de facto to that Church which preceded us and which even preceded us immediately before the Reformation It is no more to be inquired after where it was or which it was for the promise of Jesus Christ assures us that he had one his Scripture Reason the Fathers declare to us that it consisted wholly in the Truly Faithful Put then these truly Faithful where you please in France in Spain in Italy in the West in the East or in the Indies if you will it is nothing to our Question If we are truly Faithful as they we are their lawful Successours in all the Rights of the Christian Society Whether we received the Faith from their hands or whether we received it elsewhere it matters not we do not fail to be their true Heirs for God as Saint John Baptist said may even of these Stones raise up Children unto Abraham They are our Fathers by the Right of Age but they are our Brethren also by the Unity of the same Faith and one and the same Spirit that animates us and makes us to be one Body with them When they were in the World in what condition soever they were the Ministry was theirs the Sacraments were theirs the Right of Assemblies belonged to them since those things can only belong to the Faithful and when God has sent them to their rest that Mystical Heritage could be raised by none but other true Believers for such is the Law of the Family of God that it is neither flesh nor blood nor Transmission of Pulpits and Benefices that make a Succession but the Spirit of Jesus Christ or as Tertallian speaks the Consanguinity of the Faith and Doctrine If then we have that Spiritual Consanguinity we are their true Successours and we make but one only body one Church with them But they will say How can it be that you should make but one only Body with the Church which was before the Reformation since that Church lived then in Communion with those from whom you are now Separated She had an Exterual Worship quite differing from yours she was under quite another Ministry then yours for she was under a Ministry that professed to invocate Saints religiously to Worship their Images and their Reliques to Sacrifice really the Body of Jesus Christ to believe Transubstantiation the Real Presence and all the other Articles that you at this day profess to reject How can you be the same Church How can your Ministers be Successours to those who were at that time Bishops arch-Arch-Bishops Cardinals Patriarchs and Popes Your Liturgies are different your Discipline is not less you have neither Feasts nor Processions nor any of the Solemnities practised openly among us how can it be otherwise then that you should be a new Church I answer First That if that Reasoning were Just it would conclude that the Church before the Reformation was not the same Church with that which the Apostles established at first for according to the Idea that the Holy Scripture gives us of the Apostolick Church we cannot see there any thing like to that which was done immediately before the Reformation We find there neither the same Tenets nor the same Worship nor the same Solemnities nor the same form of Ministry nor the same Government nor the same Discipline nor the same Sacraments nor the same Liturgies nor in fine any thing of that which our Fathers reformed Let them tell us then after what manner they mean that the Church before the Reformation was not the one and the same Church with that of the Apostles For if they were in effect two different Churches and that we were obliged to chuse one to have Communion with or an Identity with as they speak we should not hesitate upon the choice We should have a thousand times more Consolation and Assurance to find our selves conformed to the Apostolick Church then to be in nothing different from that which immediately preceded the Reformation since the Apostolick ought to be lookt on as the Mother Church the Original Exemplar or Pattern to all the Ages following from which it is not allowable to recede Let the Author of the Prejudices then if he pleases do one of these two things either shew us in the Church of the Apostles all those things which we have not in Conformity with the Church that was immediately before the Reformation and upon which ground he would have us be a new Church let him shew us that there was Transubstantiation there the Real presence the Sacrifice of the Mass the Adoration of the Eucharist the Worshipping of Images the Invocation of Saints the Worshipping of Reliques the Orders and vows of their Religious the Caelibacy of Church-men Worship in an unknown Tongue Their Feasts Processions and in general all that that according to him made us a new Church differing from that which preceded the Reformation or if he will not engage himself so far let him at least tell us after what manner he understands that the Church before the Reformation was not it self a new Church differing from that which the Apostles established He cannot tell how to do the first of those things because it is absolutely impossible and he can never do the second because his principles wholly oppose it and in effect it is true that those who believed and practised all that which I have
from that humane Intervention that the bad State of the Ministry proceeds If God would alwayes send them immediately as he did his Apostles and Evangelists there would be some ground to believe that it would never be remote from its first Institution but since they are men that send them no one can deny that it cannot be Corrupted through that Channel for God has never promised any thing to the contrary in that matter God has not promised that he would accompany those Elections and Humane Calls with an Infallible Spirit that should give them all a happy Success and besides that the experience of all the Ages past Contradicts it Jesus Christ himself seems purposely to have forbidden such a rash Imagination for although he knew the Heart and the thoughts of it yet nevertheless he would have a Judas added to the Number of his first Disciples and he permitted that a Nicholas who was afterwards the Head of the Sect of the Nicolaitans should have a part in the Election that the Church made of her first Deacons to give us to understand that it was not his intention actually to hinder the Ministry from ever falling into very bad hands 6. We must note in the sixth place That although the Church and the Ordinary Ministry which we speak of are two things naturally joyned together yet it is not the Church that depend s upon the Ministry but it is the Ministry on the contrary that depends upon the Church For the Ordinary Pastors were not Established but when the Church was first formed and when care was taken for its Preservation and Propagation so that naturally it preceded Pastors The Church was produc'd at first by the Extraordinary Ministry of the Apostles the first thing which they propounded was not to make Ordinary Pastors but true Beleivers They called men to the Knowledge of Jesus Christ they assembled them together they united them in a Society before they provided for the upholding of that Society in setting up an Ordinary Ministry in the midst of it They first took care for the birth of the New Creature and after they procured it Breasts to nourish it Therefore it is that the Ordinary Ministers were called Pastors in reference to Shepheards who fed and led their Flocks They were called Presbyters or Elders with reference to the Senators among the Jews they were called Bishops that is Overseers or Super-Intendants by an Allusion to the Super-Intendants of Victuals among the Greeks who were called Bishops also But the Shepheards suppose their Flocks the Chosen Senators among the people suppose the people the Super-Intendants or Overseers suppose those over whom they gave a right of Super-Intendance and Inspection The Ordinary Ministers therefore suppose the Church and not the Church the Ministers she is not because they are but they on the contrary because she is she does not own her being to them but they theirs to her This Truth will yet appear more clearly if we set before their eyes what I have already said in the first Chapter of this Fourth Part That the Ordinary Ministry is not absolutely necessary to the being of a Church but that it is only necessary to its well being and to hinder it from falling into Ruine For when the Faithful should have no Pastors they would yet be joyned together in a Society since it is Grace and Faith that unite s them and not the Ministry And as in the Civil Society it is the Nature and not the Magistrate that unites men and that after men are united in a Society the Magistrate is made by reason of Order and by the necessity of the preservation of that Society so that it is the Society that makes the Magistrate and not the Magistrate the Society So here it is the same The Faith and Grace Assemble men into a Religous Society they are those things that make the Church and afterward the Ministry arises by reason of Order and to help the preservation of the Church and so naturally it is the Church that produces the Ordinary Ministry and not the Ordinary Ministry that produces the Church The Church was the Fruit of the Extraordinary Ministry of the Apostles and Evangelists that Ministry produc'd it at first and not only produc'd it but it has always since made use of that means or that source for its subsistence and we may truly say that it yet produces it and that it will produce it unto the end of the World for it is the Faith that makes and alwayes will make the Church and it is the Ministry of the Apostles which makes and will always make the Faith It is their voice that calls Christians together at this day it is their word that Assembles them and their Teaching that unites them It is certain that the Ministry of the Apostles was singular that is to say only tyed to their persons without succession without Communication without Propagation but it ought not to be thought that it was also as Transitory a Ministry as that of other men for it is perpetual in the Church Death has not shut their Mouths as it has the others they speak they instruct they incessantly spread abroad the Faith Piety and Holiness among the Souls of Christians and there is not another Fountain from whence those Vertues can descend but from them If any demand of us what is that perpetual Voice that we ascribe to them We answer That it is the Doctrine of the New Testament where they have set down all the Efficacy of their Ministry and the whole vertue of that Word which gave a Being to the Church There it is that their True Chair and their Apostolick See is there is the Center of the Christian Unity there it is that they incessantly call men and join them into a Society every other Voice besides theirs is false and supposititious it is from theirs alone that the Church proceeds and because to Assemble with those is to Assemble with Jesus Christ we may very well say that not to Assemble with them is to disperse instead of Assembling But as to the Ordinary Ministry of the Pastors we cannot say the same thing it is not their Voice as it is distinct from that of the Apostles that begets the Faith that Assembles Christians into a Society or that produces the Church they are no more but meer dispensers of the Word of the Apostles or if you will External Instruments to make us the better understand their Voice They are not not only the Ordinary Pastors who gave a Being to the Church at first but yet further at this day to speak properly it is not their word that produces the Faith in those who had it not before for that which confirms it in those who have it and that which produces it in those who have it not is the word of the Apostles themselves to whom we must go for conduct if we would have good success They are then to speak properly no
Ministry and therefore Saint Paul describing the qualities of a Bishop begins with the desire to be a Bishop If any man says he Desire the Office of a Bishop he Desireth a good Work We are only then concerned about the two others to wit that of God and that of the Church As for the Will of the Church they cannot methinks deny that naturally it should not be that of the whole Body and not meerly that of the Pastors that ought to be required to it For they are not the Pastors alone who have an Interest in the call of a man it is generally the whole Body of the Church it is that which ought to be as I have said Instructed Served and Governed it is that that ought to receive the Sacraments from his hands who is called and that ought to be Comforted and Edified by his Word It s consent therefore is necessary there and it is of the Essence of the Call that it should intervene As to the Will of God both the one and the other of us agree that it is not any more not made known to men immediately and expresly for howsoever we may without doubt referr it to a particular Dispensation of his Providence the qualities or as they speak the Extraordinary Talents that some persons have for the exercise of that Office and especially when those Talents are joyned with internal Dispositions secret motions or desires to employ them in God's Work and the advancement of his Glory we affirm that that cannot be enough absolutely to conclude a Divine Revelation God has therefore on this occasion put his Will as a Trust into mens hands and that very thing that he has Instituted the Ordinary Ministry in the Church contains a Promise to Authorise those lawful Calls that they shall give to persons for that Office We are agreed upon that Point it concerns us only to know who are left in Trust with that Will the Pastors alone or the whole Body of the Church Those of the Roman Communion pretend the former and we pretend the latter To decide this difference I say That we cannot rationally own any other to be left in trust with the Will of God in that Respect then the Body to which he himself has naturally given the Right of the Ministry for whose sake he has Instituted the Ministry and which he has even bound by an indispensable Duty to have Ministers That Body I say which has as great an Interest in it as that of the Preservation of its Faith Piety and Justice and whose consent ought moreover necessarily to Intervene But that Body is that of the whole Church and not of the Pastors only it is to that as I have shewn before that the Ministry belongs it is for the sake of that that God has established it it is Indispensably bound to have Ministers it has the greatest Interests in it and it ought even naturally to concur It is that therefore that God has left his Will in Trust with as to those Calls and by Consequence it is from that that those Calls ought to proceed and it would be Absurd to make them flow from any thing else We have already frequently said That the Body of the Visible Church as it is upon Earth is alwayes mingled with the good and bad with the true Believers and the Wicked and that when these two Orders of persons are set in Opposition they are the truly Faithful only that are properly the Church of Jesus Christ That Church I say which he has appointed to Assemble in his Name to which he has promised his Presence to which he has given the Keys of his Kingdom the Power of Binding and Loosing and in a word to which he has given the Ministry and all the Rights that follow upon it or go before it so that to be of that Church it is necessary to be a True Believer and no Body without True Faith can have that Advantage the Prophane and the Wicked as just being all naturally Excluded But it is Evident that the Pastors may not be of the Number of those true Believers Experience justifies that the greatest Number may forsake the true Faith and there is no promise of God that that shall never happen in Respect of all of them It would then be a great Rashness to make those Pastors alone Depositaries of that Will of God whereof we speak and which is essentially necessary to the Call of Persons since not having any Revelation that promises that he will alwayes preserve the Faithful in their Body none can be assured that since the first rise of the Gospel till this present time they have alwayes been none can be assured that it never hapned or that it will never fall out that that Order may not be wholly fill'd up with and possess'd by the worldly and Hypocrites It would be to deposite the Will of God in a Body that might sometimes not be the true Church and not have the least part in its Interests it would be to derive that Call from a Source that might be wholly cut off from the Church It would be to make the Validity of the Sacraments that are a chief means of the Preservation and Propagation of the City of God to depend on the Inhabitants of Babylon which Saint Augustine says is alwayes mixed with the Inhabitants of Jerusalem which would be manifestly contrary to the Order of Gods Wisdom It is therefore without doubt more conformable to that Wisdom to make his Will known and by Consequence the Lawful Call of a man throughout the whole Body of the Church since that howsoever mixed the wicked may be there with the righteous in the same External Profession we are notwithstanding assured by the promises of God that there will be alwayes some true Believers in that External Profession even until the end of the World and by Consequence there will be alwayes the True Church that very same that Jesus Christ has Assembled and to which he has properly given as well the Right of the Ministry as all the other Rights of a Religious Society It is far more just that since God has not more immediately by himself declared his Will upon the occasion of those personal Calls that we should regard that Body which we are certain of that God loves and looks upon as his Family and as the Spouse of Jesus Christ his Son that we look upon it I say as his Interpreter in that Regard then to go to seek for his Voice and as I may so say his Oracle in a Body whereof we cannot have the same certainty that it cannot be or that it has not even sometimes been wholly made up of the unjust and worldly They will say it may be that it would not be better if those Calls should proceed from the Body of the Church although they might be certain that God alwayes preserves the truly Faithful there since the wicked most frequently prevail
House not only Vessels of Gold and Silver but Vessels also of Wood and Earth the one to Honour and the others to Dishonour They must wilfully shut their Eyes that will not acknowledge by these Passages that it is only to the Church of the Faithful and not to the Body of the Prelates that that Father refers all the Efficacy and Force of the Actions of the Ministry and all the Power of the Keys But further if you will he explains himself yet more expresly in the same Book out of which I have taken these last Words Hitherto says he I have methinks clearly enough demonstrated by the Holy Scriptures and by the Testimony of Saint Cyprian that the Wicked who have undergone no change in their Natural Estate may both give and receive Baptism Notwithstanding it is manifest that those men do not belong to the Church of God since they are Covetous Extortioners Vsurers Envious Malicious and Enslaved by such like Vices for the Church is the only Dove that is modest and Chast the Spouse without Spot and Wrinkle the Inclosed Garden the Sealed Fountain the Paradice full of Fruits and such other Titles that are given it can be understood of none but the Good the Saints and the Righteous that is to say those in whom not only the Operations of the Gifts of God are found that are common to the good and bad but who have also the inward and Supernatural Grace of the Holy Spirit It is to those that it is said Whosoevers Sins you shall remit they shall be remitted and whosoever Sins you retain they shall be retained I do not then see why we may not say that a wicked man may Administer Baptism since he may have it and as he has it to his ruine he may give it to others also to their ruine not because that that which he gives may be a Pernicious thing but because that he himself who receives it is a wicked man For when a wicked man gives Baptism to a good man who dwelling in the bond of Vnity is truly Converted the wickedness of him who gives it is overcome by the goodness of the Sacrament and the Faith of him who receives it and when his Sins are pardoned who is truly Converted to God they are pardoned to him by those with whom he is joyned by a true Conversion For the same Holy Spirit which was given to the Saints with whom he is united by the bond of Love is he who pardons them whether he knows that Body or whether he knows it not And so when the Sins of any are retained they are retained by those from whom they are separated by the Difference of their Lives and the Malice of their Hearts whether they know that Body or whether they do not It could not methinks be said either with greater strength or Clearness that all the Efficacy of the Actions of the Ministry that the Pastors Exercise depends not on the Body of the Pastors but on the Body of the truly Faithful and that in Effect they are those who pardon and retain Sins when the Ministers pardon or retain them From whence it necessarily follows That if the same Actions of the Ministry belong to the Society of the Faithful the Call of the Ministry does so also with a far greater Reason for if the Power of the Keys the right of Remitting and Retaining Sins belongs to the body of the Faithful only it must be every way necessary that the Pastors should hold the exercise of that Power from the body of the Faithful for if they should not hold it from thence they would have no Right to exercise it nor could have it elsewhere And if they should have it elsewhere or that it should belong properly to the body of the Pastors exclusively from the Simple Faithful it would be not only not true but it would be further absurd to say that the body of the Faithful exercised that Power by the Pastors or that they pardoned and retained Sins as Saint Augustine teaches I cannot avoid taking notice here by the by of that Ordinary Error whereinto those of the Church of Rome fall who do not believe that immediate absolute and Independent Authority that the Pope ascribes to himself over the whole Church but who would that the Power of the Keys is given to the whole Body of the Hierarchy that is to say to those Pastors who are Priests and Bishops For to prove their Opinion they do not fail to set the Sentiment of St. Augustine before us which plainly as we have seen shews us that the Keys were given to the whole Church from whence they draw two Conclusions The one against that great Authority that the Pope pretends to and the other for the Authority of the Bishops which they would have to flow immediately from Jesus Christ But of these two Conclusions it is certain that the First is just and wholly conforming with the thoughts of that Father but it is not less certain that the second is not and that at least without going about to deceive our selves willingly or to cheat the World we could not say that That Church figured by St. Peter to which God gave the Power of the Keys which is exercised by the Ministry of the Pastors should be any other according to Saint Augustine then the Body of the Truly Faithful and Righteous in opposition to the Worldly and the wicked who are mixed with them in the same External Profession and this is in my Judgment so clear and evident in the Doctrine of that Father that they must needs be ignorant of it who deny it It is therefore a manifest Illusion to go about to make use of those Passages in favour of the Bishops for that Church is not the Body of the Hierarchy but that of the Truly Faithful whether they be Laymen or Pastors and it is to those only that Saint Augustine ascribes all the Rights and all the Actions of the Ministry as it may appear by what I have related and by consequence it is to those that the lawful Call of the Pastors belongs and not to the Body or Order of the Hierarchy For it would be absurd to derive that Call from any thing else then from that very Church which has received the Power of the Keys and which is exercised in her Name and her Authority by her Ministers Tosta us Bishop of Abyla seems to have acknowledged this Truth conformably to the Principles of Saint Augustine for see after what manner he explains himself in his Commentaries upon Numbers upon the story of the man who was brought before the whole Assembly of Israel because some had found him gathering of Sticks upon the Sabbath Day and put him in Prison for it First of all he says That although the Acts of Jurisdiction cannot be exercised by the whole Community yet that Jurisdiction belongs to the whole Community in regard of its Origine and Efficacy because
of my people So that when the Favour of God shall have joyned me again to you we shall treat of all things in common according to what our mutual honour requires of us In his Tenth Epistle he complains of some Priests who without ever consulting others had received those into Communion who in time of Persecution had abjured Christianity and he order'd that they should be deprived of their Functons for says he they must give an account of their Actions before us and before the Confessors and before all the people when God shall give us the Favour to let us meet together again In the Twelfth he writes to the People of his Church Fratribus in plebe consistentibus he notes concerning those who had fell in time of Persecution and who desired ro be restored to the peace of the Church That when God should have sent Peace again to his Flock and that they should again recover their Assemblies that Affair should be examined in the presence of the people and that they should judge of it among themselves Tunc says he Examinabuntur singula presentibus judicantibus vobis In the 28th Epistle answering his Clergy who had consulted together concerning some Priests who had abandoned their Flocks I could not saies he make my self the sole Judge of business Which ought to be exactly managed not only with my Collegues but with the whole Body of the people also non tantum cum Collegis meis sed et cum plebe universa In the 68th Epistle answering as well in his own name as in the name of divers other Bishops of Affrica Assembled in Council to the Churches of Leon and Astorga on the matter of Basilides and Martial Bishops who had been deposed for their Crimes The People says he who obey the Commandments of the Lord and who fear God ought to separate themselves from a wicked Pastor and not to take any part in the Sacrifices of a Sacrilegious Priest Since it is the people who have chiefly the power to Elect those who are worthy and to reject those who are unworthy The Divine Authority it self has established this Law that the Priest should be chosen in the Presence of the People before the eyes of all to the end he should be approved as worthy of the Ministry by a publick Judgment and Testimony Therefore it is that God said to Moses in the Book of Numbers Thou shalt take Aaron thy Brother and his Son Eleazar and thou shalt make them come upon the Mountain in the presence of all the Assembly thou shalt take off Aarons Vestment and put it upon Eleazar for Aaron shall dye there He ordained that the Priest should be established in the presence of the whole Assembly to teach us that the Ordination of Priests ought not to be performed without the Knowledge of the people assisting to the end that in their presence the Crimes of the wicked and the Deserts of the good should be discovered and that so the Ordination should be good and lawful when it should be examined by the Suffrages and Judgments of all We find in the Book of the Acts that the same thing was practiced when they were to ordain another Bishop in the place of Judas Peter stood up in the midst of the Disciples and all the Multitude Assembled together into one place And that was observ'd not only in the Ordination of the Bishops and Priests but it was observ'd also in that of the Deacons as it appears from the same Book of the Acts where it is said that the Twelve Apostles called together the whole multitude of the Disciples Therefore according to Divine Tradition and the observation of the Apostles that Order ought to be diligently preserved and held which is also observ'd among us and almost in all Provinces that in Order to the making of lawful Ordinations the nearest Bishops of a Province should Assemble with the people who ought to ordain a Prelate and the Bishop should be chosen in the presence of the people who may perfectly know the Life and Conversation of every one And this is what was done amongst you in the Ordination of Sabinus our Colleague for by the Suffrages of all the Brethren and by the Judgment of the Bishops who came themselves to you after you had wrote they conferred the Order of Episcopacy on him and laid their hands on him in the Room of Basilides See here the first Question decided The second consists in knowing whether we can say with any Reason that altho' those Calls ought naturally to proceed from the whole Body of the Church as we have just before shewn yet that the Church has lost that Right and that it is now lawfully deprived of it That which gives ground for this Difficulty is that although in the Civil Society the Right of Creating of Magistrates seems naturally to belong to the whole Body of the Society yet it fell out that the Order of Nature has been interrupted for in Monarchical States it is not the people but the Prince only that confers Offices and that Right is so lawfully in him that there is no Office that does not depend upon his Nomination They may therefore pretend that the same thing falls out in the Religious Society from whence it will follow That it is no more the whole Body of the Church that ought to confer those Calls but the Body of the Prelates or if you will the Soveraign Monarch of the Church who is as they pretend the Pope But I maintain that that cannot be any ways said It is not so in respect of the Religious Society as it is in that of the Civil In the Civil the people may be lawfully deprived of the Right that Nature has given them to Create their Magistrates and to provide for its Government whether they be done by a voluntary Transmission which they themselves have made to a certain Family or to a certain Person to whose Rule they submit themselves or whether it come to pass by a just Conquest But these ways have no place in the Church she can neither create nor acknowledge a Soveraign Monarch in whose favour she should deprive her self of her Rights in that regard to make him an Absolute Master For being concerned for her own Salvation which she finds interested in the Functions of the Ministry and moreover having no assurance as I have already noted that he or those in whose Favour she should strip her self of her Rights should themselves be faithful it would be visibly to expose her self to give her self over into the hands of the Palpably Prophane the Unbelievers or Hypocrites to make her Enemies her Lords and it would be palpably to hazard her Faith and Conscience which she could never do without a Criminal negligence of which she never ought to incur the Guilt In the Civil Society where the matter is only about Interests and not about those that concern ones Salvation nothing hinders but
ordinary Ministry was intirely lost and that it was renewed by an extraordinary and immediate Call of God For it is upon that that with great heat to very ill purpose he spends his reasonings throughout his whole fifth Chapter in Allegations of Fathers and Observations to no purpose upon the Rights of that pretended immediate Ministry We Answer him in a Word that he only Combats his own Shadow for we do not hold that the Ordinary Ministry established by the Apostles was absolutely extinct It is a Good that belongs to the Church and as the Church has alwayes subsisted by the special Providence of God though in a different State that same Providence has also made that Good to subsist alwayes It is True that it was very ill dispens'd while it was in the hands of bad Stewards and that where the Inheritage should have been cultivated and have brought forth without doubt much fruit it produced on the contrary abundance of Thorns and Briars But notwithstanding the Inheritance was not lost The Ministry was alwayes preserved not only de Jure in as much as the Church is never lost but de facto also for it alwayes had Ministers ill chosen indeed ill called designed to bad uses called by very confused Calls but called notwithstanding and having a Right sufficient to make them do their Duty if they would and if they were capable So that the good State of the Ministry might be very well altered Corrupted Interrupted overthrown but the Ministry was not absolutely lost I will not be afraid even to go further and to say that when it should be true that the Ministry should be wholly annihilated that which notwithstanding has never hapned and it may please God that it never shall it would not be necessary that God should renew it by an immediate and every-way Supernatural Mission while there should be two or three of the Faithful in the World who would be able to Assemble together in the Name of Jesus Christ For the Right of the Ministry would alwayes remain in those two or three and they might confer a Lawful Call upon one of themselves If it could even happen that there should not be absolutely any more Faith upon the Earth and that Heresy or Paganism or Judaism or Mahumetanism should generally overspread the whole World without leaving any Truly Faithful in it which certainly will never come to pass since we have the promise of Jesus Christ to the contrary I say in that case Provided that the Book of the Holy Scripture remained the young Buds of the Church and that of the Ministry would subsist even there The Apostles who left it to the world would yet further call men from thence a second Time to the true Faith and by that true Faith to the Re-establishing of a Christian Society and by the Re-establishing of that Christian Society to that of the Ministry without any absolute necessity of Gods immediately sending new Apostles One man only who should learn the heavenly Truths contained in that Book might teach them to others and reduce Christianity to its first State if God would Accompany the word of that man with his Ordinary Blessing Those who are acquainted with History are not Ignorant that in the Fourth Century two young men named the one Edesius and the other Frumanius having been taken on the Sea and carried Captive to the King of the Indies converted many persons to the Christian-Faith in that Country and that they might make Assemblies there where they might celebrate the Worship of God This is that which manifestly discovers the Injustice of the Author of the Prejudices and other Writers of Controversy of the Church of Rome when they demanded Miracles to prove the Call of the first Reformers For while the Scripture remains in the midst of men it is not necessary to make new miracles to Authorize Ministers that Scripture sufficiently Authorises the Church immediately by it self to confer a Call when its Pastors forsake it It would sufficiently Authorise one man alone whoever he should be a Lay-man or Clergy-man to communicate the light of his Faith to others if he were the only Faithful Person that was in the World it would Authorise two or three Faithful who should find themselves alone to Assemble together and to provide for the Preservation and Propagation of their Society and Miracles would not be necessary for all that because in all that there would be nothing new there nothing that might not be included in the Revelation of the Scripture or drawn from thence by a just Consequence as it may appear from what I have handled in the foregoing Chapter Miracles are necessary to those who preach new Doctrines and those which are not of antient Revelation and which besides have not in themselves any Character of Truth such as the Sacrifice of the Mass the Corporal Presence of Christ in the Sacrament Transubstantiation Purgatory Invocation of Saints Merit of good Works Adoration of the Host c. are It belongs to those who teach those things to tell us whence they hold them and since they give us them as holding them from Gods hand it belongs to them to prove them by Miracles for they cannot prove them otherwise and when they should even have wrought Miracles or things that should pass for such it would belong to us to examine them since Jesus Christ has given us warnings upon that point which we ought not to neglect See here what I had to say upon the Fifth Chapter of the Author of the Prejudices The sixth wherein he treats further of the same matter contains nothing which I have not already satisfied It pretends that the Call of our First Reformers was not Ordinary under a pretence that some few received their Ministry from the people that others were ordain'd by meer Priests and that those who had been Ordained by Bishops have says he Anathematiz'd that Church from which they received their Ordination But as to the first we have shewn him that the Calls that are made by a Faithful People are Just and Lawful in a case of absolute necessity that naturally dispences with Formalities Besides that those Calls were very few in number that they were not followed that they do not infer any Consequence against the Body of the Pastors and that even when it should have had any Irregularity that Irregularity would have been sufficiently repaired by the hand of Fellowship which the other Pastors have given those who were so called and by the consent that the whole Body of that Society gave to their Calls We ought not for that to leave off holding them for Ordinary although in that Respect they should be remote from the Common Practice no more or less then they in the Church of Rome to leave off holding the Call of Pope Martin V. and that of divers other Popes for Ordinary although they were not made according to the accustomed Forms I demand
and another I am of Christ is Christ sayes he divided Was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul Which implyes this that we are all immediately united to Jesus Christ because it is he only who dyed for us and in his name alone that we are baptized and to pretend that the faithful are joyned to Jesus Christ by his Ministers is to divide him into as many Parties or into as many Sects as there are Ministers But it manifestly follows from thence that the faithful ought to be no further united with their Pastors than as it shall appear to them that their Pastors are to Jesus Christ and that they ought to separate from them when it shall appear to them that they themselves are separated from him and that they would separate the Flocks which they had committed to them This is what the light of common sense dictates without further reasoning for to what good would the Communion of those pretended Pastors tend howsoever invested they should be in Titles and Dignities without that of Jesus Christ That which I have said of their Communion with them I must also say of their dependence on them That which the Faithful have upon Jesus Christ is immediate and absolute and that which they have on their Pastors is mediate and conditional our Souls and our Consciences do not belong to them to dispose of at their will and pleasure In this respect we belong to Jesus Christ alone who has purchased us at the price of his blood and who governs us by his Spirit and his Word The Pastors are only Ministers Interpreters or the Heralds who make us to understand his Voice and all the dependence which we have on them is founded upon that which both they and we have upon Jesus Christ our Soveraign Lord of which it is both the cause and the rule and measure We ought therefore to be subject to them while they shall act as his Ministers and his Interpreters while their Actions and their Government bear the characters of his Authority But as those Ministers are men who may abuse their Offices and act against their head if it happen that the characters of the Divine Authority which subjects us to them do not appear in their word if there appear a contrary character there if instead of leading us to Jesus Christ they turn us from him if they would govern as Lords and not as Ministers if they attribute that absolute obedience to themselves which we own to none besides our Saviour In a word if to depend on them we must violate the dependence which we have on Jesus Christ can they then say that we cannot and that we ought not to separate from them and to renounce an unjust Government If they would decide this Question by the Scripture St. Paul tells us That if he himself or an Angel from Heaven should preach to us another Gospel than that which he has preached he should be accursed He sayes that upon the occasion of some false Teachers that troubled the Churches of Galatia and speaking only of them one would think that he ought to have been contented to have let his Anathema fall upon those particular Teachers that might err and who had not so great an Authority but that one might very well separate himself from them when they should happen to prevaricate But to take away all pretence of distinction and wrangling disputes he makes a most express choice of two of the greatest Authorities that were among creatures of an Angel and an Apostle the only two created Authorities to which God has communicated the favour of Infallibility and he has enjoyn'd us to anathematize them if it should happen that they should preach another Gospel than that of Jesus Christ we know very well that the Angels of Heaven are uncapable of ever committing that sin we know very well that he himself would never have committed it and yet notwithstanding he turns his discourse upon himself and upon the Angels and is not this to give us to understand that there is no created Authority either in the Heaven or upon the Earth upon which we ought absolutely to depend and from which we ought not to separate in case it should turn us from Jesus Christ Let them tell us whether the dependance that the people owe to the body of their ordinary Pastors that is to say of those who possess the Offices of the Church who may have been very ill chosen who may have intruded themselves by very bad wayes who may be carried out therein to all the passions and disorders of humane nature whether I say the dependence which they owe to them be stronger and more inviolable than that which they ought to have for an Apostle and such an Apostle as St. Paul and even for an Angel from Heaven if he should become a Preacher This latter dependence notwithstanding is not absolute it may be lawfully broken upon a certain case who will take the boldness to say after that that it cannot and ought not to be done in a like case But if to the Scripture we would add experience that would teach us that there have been sometimes those seasons in which good men have been forced to separate themselves from the Body of their Pastors for not to speak of the seven thousand which in Elias's time preserved their purity against the Idolatry whereinto the Church of Israel had fallen who according to all that appears lived separated from the Body of their Idolatrous Pastors at least in a negative Separation we need but to turn our eyes to the Example of the Orthodox in the time of the Arians For there are two actions evident in that History one that Arianism had invaded the body of the Ordinary Pastors and the other that those among the Orthodox who were of any zeal and courage separated themselves from that infected body and would not own them for True Pastors while they should remain in Heresie The first of these Actions is justified by almost an infinite number of proofs taken out either from History or the Testimony of the Ancients For before the death of Constantine the Arians who had been condemned in the Council of Nice fell upon the person of St. Athanasius and some time after they banish'd him as far as Treves This was their first Victory but they did not stop there they got over to their side the Spirit of Constance after the death of Constantine who remaining sole Emperour employed all his Authority and the Arians all their artifices to establish Arianism every where The greatest part of the Bishops fell either under their violence or seduction Divers Councils were assembled and many forms of faith laid down there which all tended to set up the Dogm of Arius some more openly and others more covertly Those among the Bishops who made any opposition were cruelly persecuted deposed from their places sent into exile and treated
Observation on their Story This Distinction that I have of these two sorts of separation is clearly to be found in the Doctrine of S. Augustine He notes both the one and the other in his third Book against Parmenio where he treats of this matter very largely When any brother sayes he that is to say any Christian among those who are in the Society of the Church falls into so great sins that they judge worthy of an Anathema I would have them proceed to his Excommunication if that may be done without any danger of Schism but yet it ought to be done with that charity that S. Paul recommends to us to wit that we should not treat him as an Enemy but as a Brother for you are not called to pluck up but to correct If he does not acknowledge nor correct his fault by repentance he wilfully goes out of himself from the Church and it will be his own will that separates him from the Christian Vnity Our Lord himself said to his servants when they would pluck up the Tares mixed with the Wheat leave them to grow up together until harvest and he gives the reason to wit lest sayes he that in plucking up the Tares you pluck up the Wheat also See here precisely these two separations whereof I speak the one that deprives one of the communion of the Sacraments and the other which breaks of Christian Unity one which is but to correct and the other which goes as far as to pluck up This Father alledges for the same thing the Example of S. Paul who in the Excommunication of the Incestuous person in Corinth did indeed deliver that miserable person to Satan but only for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus that is to say that he depriv'd him of the communion of the Sacraments but that he did not wholly pluck him up out of the field of the Church He alledges yet further what the same Apostle wrote to the Thessalonians If any man obey not our word by this Epistle note that man and have no company with him that he may be ashamed yet count him not as an enemy but admonish him as a brother He alledges lastly that which S. Paul wrote to the Corinthians touching the same incestuous penitent that they ought to pardon him Lest Satan should get an advantage over us for we are not ignorant of his devices What means the Apostle sayes he by these words lest Satan should get an advantage over us for we are not ignorant of his devices It is that under the appearance of a just severity he sometimes perswades to a violent cruelty desiring nothing more than to break the bond of peace and charity well knowing that while that bond shall be preserved among Christians he cannot hurt them and that his devices and designs would vanish There cannot be a more perfect example of that first separation given than that of the Donatists in respect of the Church for as I have said already they so absolutely separated themselves from it that they did not own it to be any longer Christian in any manner and therefore it was that they re-baptiz'd all those who came over to their party But we cannot also give a better example of the second than that of the Church it self in regard of the Donatists for although they would separate themselves from the Church yet the Church did not fail to look upon them as Christians and in some manner as Brethren The Donatists sayes S. Augustine are impious in going about to re-baptize all the world but as for us who have better sentiments we dare not even disapprove of the Sacraments of God in a Schismatical Communion In respect of the things about which we agree they are yet with us and in respect of the things about which we differ they are separated from us This approach to us and this separation are not ordered by the motions of the body but by those of the mind and as the union of bodies is made by the continuity of the places they fill up so the union of spirits also is made by the consent of wills If those who have forsaken the Vnity of the Church do other things than those that are done in the Church they are in that regard separated from her but if they do that which is done in the Church they remain as yet in that regard in a common union The Donatists are therefore with us in some things and they are separated from us in some others I cannot here avoid taking notice of the Error into which the Author of the Prejudices seems to have fallen about the meaning of these words of S. Augustine in the second Book against Parmenianus praecidendae unitatis nulla est justa necessitas There is no just necessity to break off Vnion For it seems that he thought that this Maxim regarded all manner of separation not considering that it only respects that of the Donatists which consisted in the breaking the general bond of Christianity and not that which consists in refusing our communion to those who corrupt Religion by their pernicious Superstitions and Errors If he had taken the pains to have read ten or twelve lines higher he had found that S. Augustine had strongly establish'd the necessity of separating our selves from Hereticks S. Paul sayes that Father writing to the Galatians manifestly forbids them to hear those who did not preach Iesus Christ but a falshood and a lye If any one should preach another Gospel to you than what you have received let him be Anathema He would that we should pronounce an Anathema against those who preach to us any thing beyond what we have received He would elsewhere that there can be no just necessity of breaking of unity Who sees not that he must make a distinction and that according to him there is a separation that is good just and necessary and another unjust unlawful and schismatical Although this Distinction is unquestionable yet I shall not fail to produce here a Canon that establishes it out of the very Doctrine of S. Augustine as clearly as we can desire it It is in the Decree of Gratian under the name of Pope Vrban in these terms Some men say that when we excommunicate persons who have deserv'd to be excommunicated we go against the Parable of the Gospel where our Lord forbids us to pluck up the tares out of his field They say also that this contrary to S. Augustine who assures us that we ought not to divide its unity and that we must tolerate the wicked and not reject them But first of all we answer that if we ought not to excommunicate the Hereticks and the wicked S. Augustine would have done ill to have joyn'd himself to the Legates of the Holy Church of Rome and to the other Holy Bishops to excommunicate Pelagius and Celestinus and to separate
them from the Church because they brought in a new Heresie into it But why also did the same S. Augustine with the whole Church of God hold the Donatists to be justly excommunicated against whom these things are written and why did not they receive them into their communion but only after signs of repentance and the imposition of hands Jesus Christ who propounded the Parable of the Tares did not he clearly ordain excommunication elsewhere saying that if our brother would not obey the Church correcting him we ought to reckon him as a Heathen and a Publican That which manifestly shews us that it is one thing to excommunicate and another to pluck up the Discipline of the Church excommunicates but it does not pluck up See here precisely that which S. Augustine himself said non estis ad eradicandum sed ad corrigendum From whence the truth of that which I have said appears that according to this Father there is a bad separation and that is schismatical in its own nature and another that is not so and that although it is never permitted us to make the former yet it does not follow that we may not make the latter provided we do it upon just causes and observe the rules of Prudence and Charity in it We must therefore lay it down as a certain truth that S. Augustine thought that we might sometimes break the communion of the Sacraments and Assemblies we are only concerned to know in what case he thought that that separation should be made To make this point clear I shall say in the Sixth place that when S. Augustine considered the Church in the meer mixture with the wicked that is to say in the mixture with those whose manners are vicious and criminal he taught that those who are in office in the Church may proceed to the excommunication of impenitent sinners when those sinners are few in number and when there is ground to believe that they may disturb the peace of the Church but if the crime includes a whole multitude and that the Body in general is infected then he would that the good should content themselves to preserve their own righteousness without partaking of the sins of the wicked he would that they should groan under it and pray to God but he would not that they should separate themselves When the evil sayes he has seized the greater number nothing remains for the good to do but to groan and lament And a little lower If the contagion of sin has invaded the multitude then it is necessary that Discipline should be used with mercy for the counsels of Separation are vain pernicious and sacrilegious But when he considers the Church not only as a mixture of good and wicked but also as a mixture of the truly faithful and Hereticks I maintain that he has formally acknowledg'd the justice and necessity of a separation not only in regard of some particular persons but in regard even of entire Societies provided they go not so far as that which he calls Eradication We have already noted that he would that we should according to S. Paul pronounce an Anathema against those who preach another Gospel than that which he has preached But this very thing gives the faithful a right to reject the communion of Heretical Societies and to separate themselves from their Assemblies In his Book of the True Religion he aggravates it as a very strange thing and very much deserving to be condemn'd that the Heathen Philosophers who had other sentiments concerning Divinity than the people should partake in the worship of the people In their Schools sayes he they had sentiments differing from those of the people and yet notwithstanding they had Temples common with the people The people and their Priests were not ignorant that these Philosophers had opinions contrary to theirs touching the nature of the Gods since every Philosopher was not afraid of publishing his opinions and of labouring at the same time to perswade them and others and yet nevertheless with that diversity of sentiments they did not fail to assist at the publick worship without being hindred by any body A man that speaks after this manner would not think it ill that any should separate themselves from Heretical communions But he yet further explains himself more clearly afterwards For he sayes That if the Christian Religion should do nothing else but correct that vice it would deserve infinite praises And he adds immediately after That it appears by the example of so many Heresies that have deviated from the rule of Christianity that they would not admit to the communion of the Sacraments those who taught concerning God the Father his Wisdom and his Grace otherwise than the truth would allow them and who would perswade men to receive their false Doctrine But that is not only to be found true in regard of the Manichees and of some others who have other Sacraments than we but also in regard of those who having the same Sacraments have sentiments differing from us in other things and errors which they obstinately defend for they are shut out from the Catholick communion and the participation of those same Sacraments which they have common with us From whence comes it to pass therefore you will say that S. Augustine seems sometimes to ascribe to the Orthodox the right only of a passive separation in regard of Heretical Societies that is to say that he would not that we should separate from them even then when they separate themselves For he sayes in some place that though the Traditors should have openly maintain'd in the Church that their Action was good and holy that is to say that they ought to have delivered up their Bibles to the Pagans for them to burn them and that though they should even have wrote on that subject provided they had not set up their Assemblies apart nor separated themselves yet we ought not to have abandoned for them the good wheat which signifies this to us that we ought not to separate our selves from those though their Doctrine whereof he had spoken was detestable contrary to the faith conscience and good manners In effect he speaks almost alwayes of the Heretical Societies of his time as of those who were themselves cut off from the communion of the Church and whom the Church had not rejected I answer that S. Augustine would have us suffer the communion of Hereticks in certain cases but that he would have us also in other cases to separate our selves from them While we are in no danger of partaking with their errors neither in effect nor in appearance but that we may preserve the profession of our faith pure without consenting to impiety or seeming to consent to it and that there should not be on the part of the Hereticks that obstinacy of opinion he would have us suffer their communion For it is the manifest Doctrine of this Father that in the Society of the