Church Where first I would ask the Doctor in which of these words he places most force in Their Consecration by their own Suffragans and by no other What difficulty in this As if the Pope could not be Head of the Church but he must needs consecrate all the Bishops in the World yet more then once the Doctor hath bob'd us with this Or is it in these words Nullâ penitus c. No profession c As little follows hence for the custom of making a profession or exhibiting subjection to the See of Rome when the Bishops were consecrated exprest in those words facere subjectionem was not then in use and though it were not now it would not at all prejudice the amplitude of the Popes Jurisdiction as Head of the Church Besides the words being Alteri Ecclesiae To another Church not specifying Rome in particular it affords nothing express for the Doctors purpose but may well bear the interpretation of the Bishop of St. Davids being independent of any within that Continent or as before was said of Cyprus of any private Patriarch With which as is evident may well consist a subjection to the Pope as the Churches chief and Universal Pastor To what follows in the fifth Section of the Abbot of Bangors answer who flatly denied subjection to the Pope of Rome First we reply It matters not much what the old Abbot said for every one who hath read those Histories knows the ill-will of the Britains was so extreme against the Saxons at St. Austins coming thâ— apprehension of their tyrannous usurping their Country and driving them out of their own being then â—lagrant and fresh in their memories That they refused to joyn with St Austin for the salvation of their Souls And they might probably be afraid lest admitting and coming under Saint Augustins Jurisdiction they might open a gap for the further encroachment of their late cruel persecutors Neither was it hard to imagin seeing the Britains ever since Aetius came to assist them by reason of the turmoils of the Empire and several incursions of barbarous Nations had little or no commerce with Rome A remote Abbot whose office is to look to his own private Monastery should be ignorant of what was due to the chief Pastor of the Church especially other as great errors being crept in among that Nation But what 's all this to us unless the Doctor can prove that whereas the whole Christian world held the then Pope Gregory the Great Head of the Church as appears by his Epistles to all Churches This Abbot did well in denying that Authority which all else granted and submitted to or that this Abbot communicated with them who admitted and acknowledged it For we do not undertake to defend that there could not be at any time two three or more persons who either out of disgust ambition interest or ignorance might speak or act against the Popes Authority but that it was the profession of the then Catholick Church The words therefore of this Abbot can make nothing against us unless the Doctor will undertake to vindicate him from ignorance and interest and that out of settled and imprejudiced Reason he in so saying pronounced the sence of the whole Catholick Church Yet I have not done with this story of the Abbot thus I alleage moreover that it is either absolutely faâ—ulous or else both all ancient Histories and which is more Doctor Hammond himself is mistaken and therefore however it may possibly be true yet can claim no credit if it be once taken in a lie It makes the Abbot in the close of his blunt Speech affirm Nos sumus c. We are under the rule of the Bishop of Caerlegion upon Usk who is to overlook and govern us under God Whereas it is manifest there was no such Bishoprick at that time it being translated in King Arthurs days which was fifty years before this from Caerusk to St. Davids as the Doctor himself grants in the foregoing Paragraph But for a more full and perfect answer to this upstart instance of that ancient Nation if what I have said suffice not I desire the Readers perusal of the ingenuous and solid Appendix to that excellent Manual of Controversies lately composed by the Learned H. T. where I believe he will finde this new piece of Antiquity irrecoverably confuted What follows in the sixth Paragraph is onely a conclusion out of what he hath said That the whole Iland is not Schismatical because St. Augustine converted not the whole Where first he onely proves the Welshmen no Schismaticks but still leaves himself and his Fellow-Englishmen whom he ought to have cleared first in the suds Nay though the Britains were not then Schismaticks upon that account not being converted by St. Augustine yet now being subjected to the English Bishops and incorporated into their Church if this Church be proved Schismatical The Welshmen who are Sons Subjects depending on and a part of her must needs incur the same censure Besides his premises being all invalidated and his grounds wrongly laid his conclusion must needs be weak and ruinous For we do not accuse him of the substance of Schism for refusing obedience to the Pope as his Successor who sent to convert England but as Successor to him who had the Primacy by the Donation of Christs own mouth However the former may render the rupture more enormous seeing that part of Christs Seamless-coat was close knit to the whole by such a near and firm obligation SECT 4. His continuance of the same Fundamental Error and some mistaking Proofs That Kings can erect Patriarchates BY this time the Doctor through Gods assistance and his Readers Christian patience is come to the second part of his Text which is that even this part of the Iland which was converted by St. Austin cannot entitle the Pope to Supremacy over them Where to omit that his whole grounds are erroneous as I have before manifested in supposing that to be our Plea sor the Popes Primacy let us see at least how consequently he handles it To prove his position he tells us The Nations converted by St. Paul were not to be ever subject to that Chair where St. Paul sate Good Mr. Doctor inform us what you intend by the Chair where Saint Paul sate Whether in the Church of Antioch or Rome or the like say you But first it is meerly a fiction that St. Paul ever sate in any Chair or was fixt Bishop in any place but at Rome onely with St. Peter and to demand whether all Countreys converted by him ought to be subject to his Successor there that is to the Pope who succeeded both him and St. Peter is onely in another phrase to ask over again the Question of the whole Book and is the same as if he should ask whether the Pope be Head of the Church Next you tell us That Timothy and Titus were supreme in their Provinces and independent from any
other See This indeed the Doctor says and we must believe him though he brings not a word of proof for it which the second part of his Assertion concerning their independency did necessarily require onely he says the contrary hath no degree of truth in it which he makes account will carry the business without bringing the least degree of probability for it As for the first part I would ask the Doctor whether St. Paul were supreme over them in his life time or no if he were as I suppose both his Epistles to them and the Doctors former large Testimony from the monosyllable COME will manifest then their being supreme in their own Provinces consisting still with the superiority of St. Paul may for any thing deducible from that reason alone admit the Supremacy of the Head of the Church and their subjection to him And the obligation lies yet upon the Doctor to prove positively That Timothy and Titus were totally exempt from St. Peters Jurisdiction for which Negative proofs are insufficient or indeed for any thing else Yet the Doctors Quiver is full of such blunt shafts and it is an evidence with him to argue thus I have not read it or it is not exprest in this Testimony therefore there is no such thing or therefore it is false As hath been often discovered in the process of this Answer That which follows That it is the nature of Primates or Patriarchs to have no Superior to exercise Iurisdiction over them is onely his own saying and so with like facility denied as asfirmed The Ordination of them by others I have already shewn not to prejudice the Universal Authority of the Head of the Church whose duty it is not to descend to otherwise suppliable actions about particular Members of that Body but from the top of his Primacy to govern and overlook the whole and to be conversant about that more Universal sort of actions reserved and proper to his larger power to the managing of which the short-handed Jurisdictions of particular Patriarchs were not able to reach But now comes the most dangerous blow of all The Doctor did but take his aym all this while now he is fetching the fatal stroke and me thinks I see the Ax even now falling upon the neck of Rome He threatens in his ninth Section To put the whole matter out of controversie And how think you he tells us That Kings could ever erect and translate Patriachates in their own Dominions and therefore that the Kings of England may freely remove that power from Rome to Canterbury and subject all this Iland to that independent Archbishop or Primate There is a trick now for the Pope which he never dream'd of Where first you see Mr Hammond supposes as granted That the Popes power is but meerly Patriarchal which is the chief if not onely thing in question between us So as his method to put the whole matter out of Controversie is to beg the supposal of the whole matter in Controversie This supposal laid for a ground he repeats again for his first instance those two late answered Acts of Iustinian erecting Iustiniana Prima and Carthage two Arch-Bishopricks or Primacies Though himself acknowledges That Carthage was not originally dignified but onely restored to its Primacy by the said Emperor after the Wandals were driven our which being onely an Act of preserving the former Canons of the Church inviolate every good Christian Emperor and Prince not onely may but also ought to do it and when he does it it is by the power of the Canons of the Church As for the first instance concerning Iustiniana Prima the Dr. thinks perhaps good man that he doth well but put the proof in form and he will I am confident be ashamed of the consequence Iustinian erected Patriarchates saith the History therefore Kings have power to do such acts of themselves infers the Doctor where the force of the illation is the same as if one should say The late Parliament took away Bishops therefore Parliaments have a power to take them away That a particular matter of fact may conclude a self-and-proper power in him that did it you must first prove that power to be originally his own and not delegated to him by another pretending to it himself who in our case is the Pope Next you must prove That if he did it without that delegation yet his action was lawful These if you first prove your instances will come to something otherwise they are senceless and infer less then nothing wanting both the crutches which may enable them to advance forwards to a conclusion Your next instance is That the Emperor Valentinian did by his Rescript constitute Ravenna a Patriarchal Seat where you quote no Author but Anno Dom. 432. And indeed you did well for the Rescript is accounted spurious and to have been foisted into the Monuments of that Church in the time of their Schism Had you told us how invalid the Authority of it was and how not onely for that but for many other things it lay under just exceptions you had been put to the puzzling task of defending its authentickness The exceptions against it are these First It begins in a different manner from the constant tenor of all other Rescripts Next the decree is singular and consequently to be suspected in this that all the other Rescripts made in the reign of the two Emperors though constituted by one of them onely yet were ever authorized by both their names whereas the name and Authority of the Emperor Theodosius is wanting to this Thirdly the Inscription of Imperator Major is new and unheard of all the rest entitling Valentinian Imperator Maximus Fourthly the Bishops of Rhegium Placentia and Brixillis are in the Rescript named as under the Archbishop of Ravenna which is a plain forgery since not long afte◠Pope Leo commanding Eusebius Archbishop of Millain to gather a Provincial Council of the Bishops subject to him those three Bishops met there and subscribed to that Council as appears by the Synodal Epistle yet extant Fiftly The same Rescript which gives them Archiepiscopatum an Arch-Bishoprick which you make a Patriarchate granted them also the use of the Pall which was never accustomed to be given by the Emperors but by the Popes onely as appears by the Epistles of Gregory the Great to the then Archbishops of Ravenna This last rub so puzzled Hieronymus Rubens to smooth it who out of a preposterous love of his Countrey cited this Rescript for its priviledge that he was forced to explicate that Pall to be Caesarum Paludamentum such an Imperial Robe as the Cesars used to wear whereas besides the unlikeliness of the action it is plainly contrary to the Rescript it self which grants them such a Pall Sicut Caeteri sub nostrâ Christianissimâ potestate saepe degentes fruuntur Metropolitae As the rest of the Metropolitans in his Dominions often wore Which every one who hath but tasted
not onely overthrown ours but all Religion not onely acquitted your self of Schism but also quite taken away all possibility of being a Schismatick since no Authority can with any face or conscience oblige to a belief of which her self is not certain But I doubt not you make your self sure of the conquest not apprehending any but Saints and Angels in Heaven and God himself to be infallible To which you adde of your own invention impeccable as your custom is never to speak of our Tenet without the disgraceful addition of some forged calumny or other imposed upon us But that none else should be infallible except those you mention I much wonder I thought the Apostles had been also infallibly assisted when they pen'd the sacred Writ and peach'd the Gospel I thought also our Saviour when he sent them to teach and promised them his assistance had said He would remain with them always even till the end of the world that is with the succeeding Church I thought there had been some means to be infallibly-certain that such and such Books were Gods Word and genuine Scripture without an Angel Saint or Christs coming from Heaven or the Doctors private-spirited opinion which he will call God Neither do I doubt but the Doctor himself will grant it impossible That all the Protestants in England should be fallible or mistake in witnessing whether twenty years ago there were Protestant Bishops or no and that such was the Tenet and Government of their Church at that time Yet a thousand timeâ— greater evidence have we of the indefectibility of the Churches Faith and her infallibility As you may to your amazement see if you will but open your eyes in that incomparable Treatise of Rushworth's Dialogues vindicated from all possible confute by that excellent Apology for it writ by the learned Pen of Mr. Thomâ—â— White in his Friends behalf whose Dialogues he set forth enlarged and defended against your acute Friends Faulkland and Digby Persons who did not use to treat Controversies iâ— such a dreaming shallow way as it hath been your misfortune to do here nor stand Preaching to their adversary when they should Dispute To these Dialogues and their Apology I refer you that you may know what to do if you confute them solidly and demonstrate plainly That our Church is liable to Error you will eternally silence us and clear your selves But take heed you bring not whimpering probable may-be's and onely-self-granted suppositions for proofs These might serve your turn in your first Book which might hope for the good fortune to scape without answering but in your second and after you are told of it it will fall short of satisfactory Remember Mr. Hammond that you granted â— cheerful obedience and submission of your judgments and practices to your Superiors under penalty oâ— not being deemed true Disciples of Christ. If this be real as I wish it were then what easier condescension and deference to the judgment of Superiors can be imagined then to submit oneâ— private judgment when he has onely probability to the contrary Evidence therefore demonstrable evidence you must give in of the Churches erring ere your pretence that you were obliged by her to subscribe to Errors can take place and so excuse you from Schism But as your profession of the obligation you have to submit your judgment to the Church renders your probable Reasons insufficient to fall to judge her so God be praised your own self acknowledged fallibility will secure us from the least fear of your Demonstrations Yet unless you do this you undo your cause for if the Church could not erre she could need no reforming So that your Preaching of Reformation is vain your Faith vain and by consequence your selves Schismaticks and an Ace more SECT 4. Concerning the ground of Unity groundlesness of Schism and of Dr. Hammonds manner of arguing to clear himself of the later ALl that is material in the Doctors second Chapter is sum'd up in these two heads that the Church does ill in obliging men to subscribe against their present perswasion and That the Church which they left was erroneous and so obliged them to the subscription of Errors Upon these two notes as on a base-ground he runs division all along this Chapter repeating them so often in each Paragraph that I was forced to omit my intended method at present not making a Countet-sermon to each in order but bringing together his dispersed Doctrine into Heads and then confuting them not doubting but the Leaves and Branches which counterfeit some small flourish of devotion will quickly fade into Hypocrisie when the sapless roots are pluckt up from their rotten ground The former of them hath been discovered in the former Section to be worse then weak his manner of arguing from the second shall be laid open in this But because I perceive Mr. Hammond very much unacquainted with our grounds why our Church obliges her sons to rest in her belief and continue in her Communion thinking her doubtless very discourteous that will not leâ— her subjects in civility as the modest and moderate Church of England does hold and do what they list I will at present undeceive him somewhat in that point having a better occasion to do it more largely hereafter First The Doctor stumbles much and as Ignorance iâ— ever the Mother of admiration thinks Master Knot 's Inference very strange that the Church iâ— infallible otherwise men might forsake her Communion Whereas on the contrary I not onely think it strange to infer otherwise but as great an absuâ—dity as can be imagined for why may not meâ— forsake the Communion of the Church if they may forsake her Doctrine since it is impossible to preserve the former if he renounce the latter and why may they not forsake her Doctrine if she have no Power nor Authority â—o tie them to the belief of it and how can she have any Authority to binde them to the belief of it if she her self knows not certainly whether it be true oâ— no that is be not infallible Or what man living who hath so much wit as to raise or understand the difficulty can possibly so degenerate from Reason which is his nature as to submit it in believing things above his Reason and which concern his eternal Salvation upon such an Authority as may perhaps lie and so damn him for believing her since Without true Faith it is impossible to please God Hence follows by an inevitable consequence that since the Church pretends and hath ever pretended to have a Promise from Christ of a perpetual assistance from Error if Christ have made good that promise that is if she be infallible then her obliging her sons to rest in her Faith is most plainly evidenced to be charitable just and necessary because in that case it were both mens obligation and also their greatest good to believe so qualified a Mistress Whereas on the other side any other Congregation
his own private interpretation of Scripture nor the Church he is in is infallible or secured from Error by any promise of Christ. The denying this Infallibility therefore Mr. Doctor is the greatest crime we charge you with but you free of your Suppositions suppose it your chief virtue and put it for the ground of all your excuse In this Infallibility is founded all the power of the Church obliging to belief the inviolableness of her Government the unjustifiableness of any Schism the firm security that Faith is certain and lastly whatever in the Church is sacred The Doctor therefore in clearing himself by denying the Infallibility of the Church does the self-same as if some discontented subject having first out-lawed himself by denying the Laws and rejecting the Government of England and afterwards becoming obnoxious to those Laws by Robbing Murthering c. should endeavot to plead Not guilty by alledging That though indeed the English Subjects who accept the Laws and allow the Government of England are liable to punishment if they offend against them Yet I saith he who suppose this Government Tyrannical and these Laws unjust especially having a present perswasion and thinking in my Conscience they are so cannot be obliged to keep them and therefore must not be accounted a factious man nor be liable to punishment if I break them What will become of this malefactor Master Doctor your Logick clears him But the Reader and I am perswaded wiser judgments will think him more highly deserving the Gallows for refusing subjection to the Laws and Government and you more deeply meriting Excommunication for rejecting the Churches Infallibility the onely ground of her Authority then for all the rest of your particular faults which issue from that false principle But it is pretty to observe how the Doctor never clears himself from Schism upon any other grounds then those which if admitted would prove all the Malefactors in the World innocent and make it lawful nay an obligation in Conscience to dissolve the whole Fabrick of the Worlds Government So true it is That the very position of a Fallibility of Faith first lays and in time hatches the Cockatrice Eggs of both Atheism and Anarchy SECT 5. Containing some Observations upon Mr. Hammonds third Chapter of the Division of Schism WHen I had perused his third Chapter with intent to see what it might contain worth the answering finding scarce any thing which made either against us or for him I thought I had mistaken the Title of his Book but looking back I found it to have indeed this Inscription OF SCHISM A DEFENCE OF THE CHVRCH OF ENGLAND AGAINST THE EXCEPTIONS OF THE ROMANISTS BY H. HAMMOND D. D. So that now I remain'd satisfied what was the Title but much more unsatisfied to find my expectation so totally deluded and that in a large Chapter containing thirty six pages almost a full quarter of the Book not five words were found which touched the question directly nor could in any way be a preparative to it So as we have here 66 pages of 182. well towards half the Book premised by the Doctor to introduce the Question like the Mindian Gate too large an entrance for so narrow a Corporation Frivolous then had been the long Preamble of this Chapter had it been to the purpose and tended to the Question but if it be found nothing at all to the Question but to wave and conceal the main and indeed sole matter which concerns it nay more to have prevaricated from the very scope for which he would seem to intend it then I will leave it to the Reader to imagin what commendations this Chapter and its Author doth deserve Our Question is of Schism In this Chapter he undertakes to shew the several sorts of it which therefore he divides into Schism against Fraternal Charity and Schism against some one particular Governor as in the People against a Priest or Deacon in those against a Bishop in Bishops against their Arch-Bishops in Arch-Bishops against their Primate or Patriarch and there he stops lest if he had ascended a step higher to the Authority of the Pope he should have said more truth then will serve his turn For you must know he has a deep design against Antichrist and is resolved that half a score odd stories or some few words and unwarrantable practices of discontented persons especially being cited in Greek shall utterly overthrow him in despite of manifest practice of Antiquity clouds of testimonies from Fathers and the Doctrine of the Catholick Church of whose fallibility he is far from even pretending to any infallible Evidence But that we may manifest what we laid to his charge that all this long Chapter is but waste-paper the Reader may please to take notice that the Schism we charge the Protestants with is not of the peoples Schism against a Deacon or Presbyter nor of a Deacon or Presbyters Schism against a Bishop nor any link in that chain of Schisms which he there enumerates but we accuse them and their Fore-Fathers the first Reformers First of a Breach or Schism from the whole Catholick Church This is without controversie the Schism of Schisms and which in the first hearing of the word Schism objects it self to our understanding as being simply properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such whereas the other are nothing but particular refractory disoâ—â—diences in comparison of this and may well consist with your obedience to the Universal Church This this I say is the chief and main Schism we impute to his fellow Protestants yet the Doctor in his present Book entituled Their Defence from Schism takes no notice of the chief thing he ought to clear them of will not have it come into play nor allow it a place in his Division as if it were either none at all or else such a slight one as was not worth taking notice of Strange that he could use such prolixity in trifling Schisms impertinent to the present discourse and not afford the least mention to the greatest Schism of all when the scope and aim of his Chapter necessarily required it and the Question forcibly exacted it Strange that he could remember even the peoples Schism against a Deacon or Presbyter and forget that which breaks from the whole body of the Universal Church But the Doctor is more carefull to preserve his own Copy-hold then the Churches Free hold for according to his division and Doctrine in this Chapter his Parishoners would be Schismaticks for disobeying him or a puny Deacon but neither he nor the Deacon Schismaticks at all for disobeying the whole Church And thus the Dr. has established his own Authority to be more inviolable then the Popes and by this one Division has quite conquered and got the upper-hand of Antichrist Secondly What is become of General Councils all this while Have not they as great an Authority as any private Patriarch Primate Arch-Bishop Bishop Dr. Hammond or a Deacon Far grâ—â—ter
sure if I be not mistaken Doubtless then a Schismatical rejecting their Decrees and Authority is more hainous grievous and more worthy to be ranked amongst his fellow-Schisms then any of the others Yet of this in this Chapter where he expresly undertakes and prosesses to enumerate all the several sorts of Schism we hear not a syllable Thirdly What is become of Schism against the Head of the Church Is not the Papal Authority greater then the Authority of any Patriarch Primate Arch-Bishop Bishop Dr. Hammond or a Deacon Surely all imagin so but Dr. Hammond and his fellows why is this over-slipt then as if it were a matter of nothing But Dr. Hammond will answer That the Popes is not indeed an Authority but an Usurpation and therefore there can be no Schism against it To which I reply That I expect not that he should grant it here but since he knows very well and grants that the Papal Authority was in a long possession of this Island held and acknowledged then and still pretended to be sacred and of divine institution nay more since it is confessed by them that they rejected this Authority and that this rejection of it is objected to them by us as a far greater Schism than any of the other he mentious he ought at least have taken notice of it and shown in what degree of Schism the casting off such an Authority was to be reputed as being Chief and instituted by Christ unless he could manifest the pretended Authority of the Hope to be null and an Usurpation Moreover since it is the use of the multitude which makes words signifie and that three parts of four of those who bear the name of Christians if taken in the double extent or space both of time and place have acknowledged and called it a main Schism and greater then any the Doctor here reckons up to reject the Supream Authority of the Bishop of Rome the Doctor could not in reason avoid the mention of this so-commonly-called Schism unless he had first manifested that it was none Again to state the matter indifferently to both sides let us take the word Head of the Church as abstracted from an Ecclesiastical or Secular Governor that is from both Pope and Emperor or King nay if he pleases let us take it only in the later sence which is his I desire to know since the Emperor or King is according to him Supreme in Ecclesiastical affairs Head of the Church or Churches in his Dominions above Patriarchs and Primates c. why is not the denying this Authority a greater Schism even in his own grounds than a Schism against a Patriarch Deacon c. For the Authority of the Head rejected what means possible remain to reconcile and unite the members In omitting this therefore the Doctor hath neither been true to our Question nor his own Grounds In sum So wise a Logician is this Doctor of Divinity That whereas the Members of the division should adequately comprehend all the several sorts of the thing divided he has onely omitted the three principal Schisms against Government and those not onely principal in themselves but also solely importing the present Controversie and onely mentioned those which were not objected and so nothing at all concerning our Question Where I desire the Doctor to remember That all those Testimonies he hath huddled here together out of the Fathers against Petty-Schismaticks will light far heavier upon him and his fellows if they be found to have separated from the incomparably greater Authority of the whole Church and that not onely by a bare Schism but also which you here acknowledge to adde very much to the guilt of the former by an open and most manifest Sedition The rest of your Chapter is taken up is things which tend not at all to the Matter you purposed to handle that is To defend your Church against the Schisms we object which makes you also so ample and large in handling them You show therefore with a great deal of pains the particular dignities of Deacons Priests Bishops Arch-bishops Primates Patriarchs you tell us many things of the Seven Churches of Asia c. I will onely glean what may seem worth Animadversion treating it briefly because you speak it as you say by the way in passing and the question is not much concerned in it and omiting those Testimonies which are slightly objected here and come over and over again afterwards First then you affirm That the Roman Patriarchy extended not it self to all Italy which though a known untruth and which I have heard learned and unpassionate men of your own side acknowledge yet you will needs evince out of the obscure Testimony of one Ruffinus a discontented â—illy and barbarons Writer and if you blame me for excepting against him one of your late most extolled Writers Monsieur Daille shall defend me who characters Ruffinus to be An arrant Wooden statue a pitiful thing one that had scarce any reason in what he said and yet much less dexterity in defending himself yet you account here his Testimony very competent But how small soever the Popes Patriarchy be what is this to his Papal Authority since even we our selves acknowledge him a Private Bishop of Rome which yet prejudices not his Publick Authority as the Churches Universal Governor Your Testimony alleaged out of the Council of Chalcedon shall be answered hereafter when we come to discuss the Question of the Popes Authority as also your other out of the Council of Ephesus in its proper place where it is repeated Your other claw against the Pope is That these was none antiently above the Patriarchs but the Emperor which you think to evince because the Emperor made use of his secular Authority in gathering Councils And who denies but however the intention and ordering that great Affair belonged to the Popes yet the Emperors as being Lords of the world were fittest to command the execution of it But ere you can conclude hence against the Popes Authority over the Church you must first evince That the Emperors and the like may be said of Kings did this without the Popes signifying such their desires to them Next That if they did it sometimes against the Popes will or pretending it their proper power such an action or pretence of theirs was lawful And thirdly had it belonged to the Emperors which yet none grants you yet how will your consequence hold good That therefore the Pope hath no Authority over the Universal Church As if there were no other acts of an Universal Authority but to gather Councils which is all one as to say That the Kings of England could have no Universal Temporal Command or Jurisdiction in England but onely to call a Parliament All your Marginal Testimonies therefore which you here bring signifying no more to us But that the Emperor executed that business are far from making good the Position you alleage them for to wit
heard off to infer an exclusive distinction and limitation of Authority from terms plainly promiscuous and from which a confusion of jurisdiction might more properly be deduced So as not a letter of the question is found in the testimony but what Mr. Hammond with a blinde Id est addes of his own Insomuch as it is left a drawn match whether his ID EST or WE KNOW be the better Testimony However this is certain that in the Doctors apprehension they are both of them most absolute EVIDENCES because it is most evident he says them both without either Authority or Reason He labors in the next place to found a distinction of the Iewish and Gentile Church at Antioch which though it be not a jot to his purpose had he demonstrated it yet it is pity to see what shifts he is put to in proving it Necessity makes many a man forfeit his honesty aâ— this Doctor hath also done too plainly here Where he abuses most grosly St. Peter with his Jewish Proselytes and the sacred Scripture too citing Gal. 2. 11. That they withdrew from all communion and society with the Gentile Christians Whereas in the Text there is no such word as ALL in which alone he can found the distinction of the Jewish and Gentile Church Neither as the place alleaged manifests did they any otherwise withdraw from them thaâ— in refusing onely to eat the Gentile diet yet this he calls withdrawing from ALL COMMUNION as if the Doctor made account there were no other Communion but in eating and drinking Moreover since to withdraw from all Communion with another Church is against fraternal Charity and according to his formerlylaid grounds a Schism a sin inexcusable by such light trifles as were then between them it follows most necessarily that while he goes about to prove a perfect distinction of the two Churches at Antioch he hath consequently made the Iewish Church for withdrawing from all Communion with the Gentiles Schismatical and blessed St. Peter himself a Schismatick nay a ring-leader of Schismaticks But God be praised the place is proved to be falsified and so good St. Peter is vindicated His fourth Testimony or EVIDENCE of the mutually-exclusive Jurisdictions of these two Apostles is taken from the writer of the Apostolical Constitutions who as the Doctor saith pag. 75. ACCORDINGLY tells us that Evodius and Ignatius at the same time sate Bishops of Antioch one succeeding St. Peter the other St. Paul one in the Iewish the other in the Gentile Congregation Whereas the place alledged in the Author which I will put down because he slubberingly omits it is onely this Lib. 7. cap. 46. Antiochiae Evodius ordinatus est à me Petro Ignatius à Paulo At Antioch Evodius was ordained by me Peter Ignatius by Paul This is all there being neither before nor after a syllable more concerning that matter Where besides that the Doctor will I am sure acknowledge the Book of no sound Authority you see the Testimony produced expresseth onely their Ordination by the Apostles but saith nothing of their sitting together nor succeeding the Apostles much less talks of the distinction of the Iewish or Gentile Congregation least of all of any mutual Exclusiveness of St. Peter and St. Pauls Jurisdiction there but all these which are indeed all that is to the purpose are either voluntarily added by the Doctor or groundlesly supposed or else must be pretended as deducible thence by Mr. Hammonds all-proving ID EST. However the story goes for it matters not much whether it be true or no it is manifest first that the Doctor hath not brought a syllable of a proof to serve his turn were it granted Next that the Testimonies by himself alleaged here out of Eusebius and Origen calling Ignatius the second and out of St. Ierom calling him the third make much against the sitting of two together Neither will he finde St. Paul was ever accounted a Parcel-Bishop in Antioch with St. Peter that he should have a properly-call'd Successor there However he might perhaps ordain some Bishop to assist there after his departure Lastly ere he sees what he does he blindly sweeps down all his own laborious Cobweb-work with a Testimony out of Theodoret which affirms that Ignatius received the Archisacerdotal honor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from the hand of that great Apostle St. Peter where the Doctor leaves out the word Great Iest St. Peter should have too much Now then The Apostolical Constitutions being a Book which is excepted against by all sides and Theodoret being an Author beyond exception we have far more reason to judg by these Testimonies that Great St. Peter ordained Ignatius also rather then Euodius onely so as the Doctor is far from gaining nay even comes off with no small loss from his own Testimonies notwithstanding the faithful endeavors of his ID EST to the contrary His fifth Testimony is out of St. Irenaeus which affirms that the Apostles founded and built the Church at Rome The sixth which the Doctor praises for more express is of St. Epiphanius who testifies That Peter and Paul were Apostles and Bishops in Rome The seventh from Eusebius who tells us That the Inscriptions on the Apostles Tombs mentions them as Founders of that Church The eighth is from Gaius an ancient writer who calls their Monuments The Monuments of them that founded that Church The ninth is out of Dionysius of Corinth who affirms both of the Church of Rome and Corinth That each of them was the foundation of Peter and Paul The tenth out of St. Prosper who witnesseth That Peter and Paul the Apostles consecrated or constituted a Church in the City of Rome These are six Testimonies of his which I have put down in order as they lay and fully as he cited them not omitting a syllable And now tell me I beseech thee good Reader for it may be thou hast better eyes then I canst thou discern any the least word in any of these six Testimonies which even seems afar off to limit St. Peters authority to the Jews and St. Pauls to the Gentiles which is the point in question Is there any thing spoken here more than in a general and promiscuous sense That they builded founded a Church were Bishops c. Do they â—ound any distinction or exclusiveness of Jurisdiction When thou hast well examin'd thiâ— next please to consider that to evidence by Testimonies cannot be done otherwise than by expressing the thing to be evidenced Which thing in our present case being the restriction limitation exception and exclusion of St. Peters jurisdiction which as given to our Saviour to him and the other Apostles was without controversie Universal this cannot be expressed nor consequently evidenced by Testimonies otherwise then by restrictive limitative exceptive and exclusive terms such as are Onely solely alone to none else c. This once understood and apply'd to the present occasion and the Doctors manner of proceeding whosoever thou art that
readest this Answer whether thou be'st Catholick Protestant Puritan nay even the Doctor himself it is impossible but thou shouldst manifestly see that the Doctor hath not said one syllable to the purpose there being neither in any of the former nor following Testimonies either out of Scriptures Fathers or Histories any the least restrictive or exclusive sentence particle or syllable for him To say nothing that all both Scriptures Fathers and ancient Histories are most expresly against him What a most unfortunate man is this Doctor to vent these for EVIDENCES and how unfortunate they who hazard the eternal loss of their Souls upon such mens writings But to return to our six Testimonies By what means think you does he make them speak to his purpose Not by torturing and screwing the words to confess what they never intended that were impossible in such stubborn allegations and perfectly-silent in what concerns him Nor by intermingling words of his own to prompt them and make them speak out which is the old and often-discover'd trick of his fellows nor by criticizing his former unsuccessful art but by pinning a Paper of his own forging to the Testimony alleaged and gulling the Reader to his face that the Author sayes it So as the device is the same onely the method altered for the said necessary Paper-which he used to pin behinde the Testimony now he pastes before it beginning the ninth Paragraph which introduces the formerly-recited Testimonies thus The same is as EVIDENT at Rome where these two great Apostles met again and each of them erected and managed a Church St. Peter of Iews and St. Paul of Gentiles Hold Doctor the Testimonies should have told us that why do you forestal them And then as in the eight Section after his own bare WE KNOW he used the transition of ACCORDINGLY to bring in his Authors So now after he had straw'd the way with his own evident as he pleased himself he ushers in the modest Testimonies with so many Soe 's So Irenaeus so Epiphanius so the Inscription so Gaius whereas indeed the following Testimonies are no more So or like his Preface to them and to the question they are produced for then as the Proverb says the running of the Wheel-barrow is to the owing of six pence The Doctor shall put the Similitude in form and the Reader shall judge Just as I say saith the Doctor That St. Peter and St. Paul each of them erected and managed a Church one of Iews the other of Gentiles with exclusion of St. Pauls authority over St. Peters and St. Peters over St. Pauls Congregation Even SO St. Irenaeus says That they built the Church there St. Epiphanius That they were Apostles and Bishops there c. The Reader may perceive the fitness of the rest by applying them at his leasure Onely ere I take my leave of these Testimonies I would gladly learn of the Doctor why in his preamble to them he maintains a distinction of Churches belonging to St. Peter and St. Paul and then brings in St. Prosper with a So to witness it whereas himself in the nineteenth Section of this very Chapter makes the same St. Prosper testifie the quite contrary and a promiscuous Jurisdiction over the Gentiles saying expresly That Peter and Paul at Rome Gentium Ecclesiam Sacrârunt consecrated the Church of the Gentiles Were ever such mistakes incident to any other man as are natural to this Doctor But it seems he wants a good memory a necessary qualification for him that says any thing at random without ground authority or reason to maintain a false cause or rather indeed foreseeing the danger he made the Testimony whisper softly in English lest it might be taken notice of translating Ecclesia Gentium The Church of the Nations because the word Gentiles would be too much reflected on being that which throughout this whole Chapter he hath absolutely interdicted St. Peter to have any thing to do with Alas poor man SECT 11 The Examination of Dr. Hammonds Irrefragable Evidence and other silent Testimonies produced by him BUt now we are come to his EVIDENCE of EVIDENCES the Seals of the Popes which the Doctor here calls an IRREFRAGABLE EVIDENCE I know the Reader will expect some most express and unavoidable Testimony out of some ancient Writer beyond all exception and of the first Class witnessing as the Faith of that Age the contradistinction and contralimitation of St. Peter and St. Pauls Jurisdiction The Testimony is out of Matthew Paris which I will transcribe word by word together with the Doctors Comment upon it In the Bull of the Pope stands the Image of St. Paul on the right hand of the Cross which is graven in the midst of the Seal and the Image of St. Peter on the left And this onely account saith the Doctor given for St. Pauls having the nobler place Quia c. because he believed in Christ without seeing him Here on Earth addes the Doctor in a Parenthesis Here is all that belongs to this Testimony transcribed to a word without any more either Explication or Application to the matter before or after than is here put down And now for Gods sake Reader tell me what canst thou discern here of St. Peters being Apostle of the Iews onely and exclusively to the Gentiles which may deserve it should be called an IRREFRAGABLE EVIDENCE My eyes are dazel'd it seems with striving to see a thing at such an unproportionable distance for I can espie nothing at all in it Had the Question between us been Whether St. Paul believed on Christ without seeing him or no it might have served to some purpose but to our case it hath no imaginable relation Yet this Eagle-ey'd Doctor in the bare pictures of St. Peter and St. Paul on a Seal can discern clearly an IRREFRAGABLE EVIDENCE that their Authorities are exclusively-limited St. Peters to the Iews St. Pauls to the Gentiles which none living could see without his colour'd and insincere spectacles to wit blackest hatred and rancor against the Pope While he looks through these any thing appears an IRREFRAGABLE EVIDENCE which may seem possible in his perverse imagination to be detorted to the Popes prejudice and to wound him though through the sides of St. Peter After this Testimony or IRREFRAGABLE EVIDENCE follows immediately in the Doctor And all this very agreeable to Scripture which onely sets down St. Peter to be the Apostle of Circumcision and of his being so at Rome saith he we make no question What means his All this For neither in any Testimony nor yet in the Popes Seal is there any the least expression of St. Peters being onely the Apostle of the Circumcision save in his own words onely yet he says that all this is in that point agreeable to Scripture it is then of his own words he means which how disconformable and totally repugnant they are to Scripture hath already been shewn Nor are they less dissonant in this
the fourth and yet was ordain'd by St. Peter refused the Office till the successive death of Linus and Cletus to which solution recur S. Epiphanius Ruffinus c. but none ever dream'd of Dr. Hammonds facile all-solving Scholion That Linus was the first Bishop of the Gentile-Christians after S. Paul Clemens the first of the Iewish after St. Peter which had been very obvious to those that lived so neer those times but the reason why they did not is evident because they never dream'd of a distinction of Iewish and Gentile Church and Bishops whereas the Doctor dreams of nothing else The Fathers and ancient Writers were alas in a great mistake imagining that all the endeavors of the Apostles as far as they could without scandalizing either part tended to reduce both the Iews and Gentiles to Unity and Uniformity in one Church and to unite them in him whom they taught and preacht to be the Head Cornerstone Christ Iesus in whom is no distinction of Iews and Gentiles till one Mr. Hammond a Protestant Minister came with his Scholions and Id ests to teach them contrary doctrine In the beginning of the thirteenth Section he affirms stoutly That for another great part of the world it is manifest that St. Peter had never to do either mediately or immediately in the planting and governing of it If it be so manifest Master Hammond it had been easier for you to make it manifest to us and was requisite you should it being your proper task otherwise to cry it is manifest and yet bring nothing to prove it is as much as to say It is manifest because I fancy it so But as before you brought the invincible Testimonies of WE KNOW and WE MAKE NO QUESTION for EVIDENCES so now onely with an authentick IT IS MANIFEST you think the deed done and your cause evinced In his fourteenth Section he tells us That St. John had the dignity of place before all others in Christs life time even before St. Peter himself This he proves plainly he says from his style of beloved Disciple and leaning on Christs brest at Supper As if because Iacob loved Ioseph more then all his other Brethren and therefore out of particular favor might have let him lean on his brest at Supper it must needs mean plainly that yong Ioseph was the highest of his Brethren in dignity had due to him the birth-right and inheritance c. And who sees not that the posture of leaning on Christs brest at Supper was not an orderly and ordinary manner of sitting but onely a peculiar grace and familiarity used towards him by his Lord yet the Doctor is certain of it and for more security gives us a gallant instance That leaning on Christs brest signifies the first place next to Christ as being in Abrahams bosom plainly signifies saith this All-explaining Doctor being in dignity of place next to the Father of the Faithful From which instance of his if true it follows that Lazarus who was in Abrahams bosom was above all the Patriarchs and Prophets except Abraham as also that none was in Abrahams bosom except Lazarus onely since there can be no more NEXTS but one But it is no wonder to see the Doctor trip now who hath stumbled nay faln down flat on all-four so often In the rest of this Paragraph he tells us That the Jews in the Lydian Asia were St. Iohns peculiar Province in the next that the Gentiles there were St. Pauls and when he hath done destroyes both the one and the other with a Testimony out of St. Chrysostom concerning St. Paul which says that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A whole entire Nation that of Asia was entrusted to him To which joyn what is manifest all over in the Acts that St. Paul preached to the Jews in Asia it is palpable that this Testimony affirms St. Paul to have had Jurisdiction over all in Asia both Jews and Gentiles Again since the Doctors groundâ— make the Jurisdictions of the Apostles exclusive to one another and this place tells us that the whole entire Nation of Asia was under St. Paul it must follow out of his doctrine of Exclusive Iurisdiction that poor St. Iohn had not so much as the place of a Parish-Priest allow'd him of his own but what he was beholding to St. Paul for What an unpardonable blindness was this to prove St. Paul over the Gentiles onely by a Testimony which entitles him to the whole entire Nation SECT 12. Another dumb show of Dr. Hammonds Testimonies to prove St. Peter over the Iews onely AFter such invincible Testimonies alleaged the Doctor begins to triumph and tells us That we cannot say any thing in any degree probable for St. Peters Universal Pastorship over the Churches in the Lydian Asia And the reason he gives is because they were so early famous as that Christ honored them with an Epistle in the Revelations It must be a wonderful acuteness in Logick which can make this conclude Christ wrote an Epistle to those Churches therefore St. Peter had nothing to do with them As if the same reason did not as well exclude all the rest of the Apostles as St. Peter from their Jurisdiction But the Doctor says they were early famous I ask him were they earlier than our Saviours chusing twelve Apostles and Simon Peter the first if not their earliness will not hurt us nor help you His next two demands concerning St. Iohns and St. Pauls Jurisdiction there are already answer'd out of his own Testimony from St. Chrysostom It follows Doth not â—t Paul give him meaning Timothy full instructions and such as no other Apostle could countermand or interpose in them leaving no other Appeal nor place of Application for farther directions save Onely to himself when he shall come to him And then to make the Reader believe that all this is Scripture he quotes for it immediately 1 Tim. 3. 14 15. Doctor Doctor play fair above board In the place you quote there is not one word of all this long rabble but the bare word Come as is evident even in your own translation where I finde it thus These things write I unto thee hoping to come unto thee shortly But if I tarry long that thou maist know how thou oughtest to behave thy self in the House of God the pillar and ground of truth Where in the fifteenth Verse there is nothing at all of this rambling story which the Doctor talks of in the fourteenth Verse onely the word Come So as out of this seemingly-barren Monosyllable Come the Doctor hath miraculously caused a fruitful harvest of Testimonies arise for his purpose to wit That St. Paul gave him such instructions as NO OTHER APOSTLE COULD COUNTERMAND OR INTERPOSE IN THEM that he left NO APPEAL or place of Application for further directions save ONELY TO HIMSELF c. Where are all those quarrelling and exceptive terms But the Doctor seems willing not onely to limit the Apostles
Since the giving the Keys is particularly applied to St. Peter and that those Keys are a token of an Oeconomy or Stewardship in Christs house it follows the Apostles being a part of Christs house or his Church that Saint Peter was constituted Ecclesiastical Steward over them Fourthly The Doctors inference from the particular Application of these words to St. Peter That the Stewardship belongs to single persons and not to Consistories and Assemblies If he intend to deduce hence a power in all the rest of the Apostles and all other Prelates superior to their Assemblies or Consistories is something scrued and far-fetch'd whereas if the words be applied to infer That one was made Steward or Superior in the Consistory or Assembly of the Apostles they are plain and obvious the present circumstances making that Explication natural Lastly Saint Peter being thus constituted Steward in Christs house all that follows in the Doctor though otherwise meant runs on very currantly and upon his grounds to wit That whatsoever St. Peter acted by virtue of Christs power thus promised he should be fully able to act himself without the conjunction of any other and that what he thus did clave non errante no one or more men on Earth could rescind without him Thus hath Doctor Hammond while he disputes against his Brother Presbyters faln into a sudden fit of Popery and at unawares laid grounds for a greater Authority in the Pope then many Papists will grant him But it is onely a fit he will recover I doubt not speedâ—ly as soon he begins to combate us afresh But now as I said the Scene is chang'd The Presbyterian being routed by our weapons that the words were spoken particularly to St. Peter he throws them away affirming here pag. 88. most shamelesly and expresly against Scripture alleaged by himself which named St. Peter in particular and no other in particular That this power was as distinctly promised to each single Apostle as to St. Peter alleages for his first Evidence the words of Scripture Matth. 18. 18. which he says are most clear for that purpose But looking into the Text I finde it onely spoken in common and general to all the Apostles not a word particularizing each single Apostle and distinctly as the Doctor would have it which yet was done to Saint Peter Matth. 16. 19. His second most clear proof is introduced with the old ACCORDINGLY thus And ACCORDINGLY Matth. 19. the promise is again made of twelve Thrones for each to sit on to judge ID EST saith the Doctor to rule or preside in the Church Well done Doctor give you but your own proper weapon of ID EST in weilding which you have a marvellous dexterity and I 'll lay an hundred crowns on your head against the best disputant in Christendom All the world as far as I ever heard except this Doctor understands the place as meant of our Saviours coming to judgment at the Resurrection and the Apostles sitting with him to judge But the Doctor with the help of an ID EST hath made the day of Judgment come in the Apostles time turned judge into preside and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Throne or Iudgment seat into Cathedra an Episcepal Chair or See His third proof is a dumb Negative That the Holy Ghost descended on all the Apostles in fire without any peculiar mark allowed to St. Peter Which reduced into form mutters out thus much That St. Peter had no peculiar mark of fire Ergo concludes the Doctor He was not head of the Apostles Where first I would ask the Doctor how he knows there was no peculiar mark allowed St. Peter He was not there I suppose to see and there is no History either sacred or prophane that expresses the contrary Next if we may judge by exterior actions and may believe That out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks then perhaps the Doctor may receive some satisfaction in this point also that St. Peter had in a more peculiar manner the Holy Ghost For it was he that first burst out into that Heavenly Sermon which converted three thousand But nothing will serve the Doctors curiosity except a greater tongue of fire if he have not that it is most clear he is no head of the Apostles What a wise man is he to think St. Peter could not be chief Pastor of the Church but God must needs be bound to watch all occasions to manifest it by a particular miracle His fourth is from these words And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost In the name of Wonder what can be deduced from this place against St. Peters Primacy The Doctor will manifest it plainly And so saith he the promise of the spirit EQUALLY performed to all Suppose it were equally what follows thence Therefore St. Peter not chief of the Apostles As if none could be higher in dignity but he must necessarily have more of the Holy Ghost in him This Reason then you see is so shallow that even a childe may foard it but his consequence is still shallower inferring from their being full of the Holy Ghost that they had it equally As if each could not be full according to their diverse capacities and yet receive it in a very unequal degree Our Saviour Luke 4. 1 is said to be full of the Holy Ghost so is Barnabas Acts 11. 24. yet as I hope the Doctor will not say Barnabas had the Holy Ghost equally with our Saviour So all the Saints in Heaven are full of Glory yet differ as one Star from another in the degrees of that Glory distributed to them according to the measure of their several capacities Which puts me in minde of a story of a Plough-man who dining with his fellowrusticks when his companions strove to get the bigger Eggs he indifferently chose the lesser affirming That all were equal For which when he was laught at he defended himself with this as he thought serious Reason That the little Eggs had as much meat in them as they could hold and the great ones had no more and therefore there was no difference between them Surely the Doctor heard this dispute stole the Argument and now infers here from all being full of the Holy Ghost that all had it equally The Testimonies you alleage out of the Fathers That the power of the Keys was conforred on all the Apostles that from the giving St. Peter tho Keys the continual successions of Bishops flows that the Church is built upon the Bishops c. We allow of to a tittle and charge it upon you at either a pittiful ignorance or a malicious calumny to pretend by objecting those that we build not the Church upon Bishops in the plural nor allow any authority to them but to the Pope onely whereas you cannot but know how great Authority we give to Councils consisting of Bishops insomuch as it is a School-dispute amongst our Writers Whether the Pope or the Council be of higher
Authority Neither do the Testimonies of Bishops in the plural in the least manner touch us there being not one word in them excluding the Pope Nay rather they make for us for the Church being founded on Apostles and Bishops prejudices not St. Peter and his Successors to be the chiefest And if so then the Church is built most chiefly and especially on St. Peter and his Successors which is all we Catholicks say and not on them onely which he first calumniates us with and then dreamingly impugns ending his two and twentieth Paragraph with a Testimony out of St. Basil who calls Episcopacy The Presidency of the Apostles the very same adds the Doctor That Christ bestowed upon all and not onely on one of them as if we held there were but one Apostle or else that those Bishops who succeeded the rest of the Apostles and were constituted by them were not truly and properly Bishops It follows in the next Section By all which that is by your omitting our best proof from Scripture and answering the weakest by supposing a calumny by your mistake of twelve Thrones by St. Peters having no greater a tongue of fire and all the Apostles being full of the Holy Ghost by the Testimonies of Fathers naming Bishops and Apostles in the plural our of which meer plurality he infers an equality of Authority By all this the Doctor says it is evident again That the Power which Christs Commission instated on St. Peter was in like manner entrusted to every other single Apostle as well as to him c. Whereas he hath not produced one syllable expressing any singularity used to any other single Apostle as was to St. Peter nor one equalizing term of as well equally c. but what he addes himself Though these be the onely expressions can serve him and which he pretends to here as already produced and by producing them to have made the matter Evident But the Doctor being by this time pump'd dry of his own Evidences betakes himself to his former method of answering our Arguments or as he calls it to evacuate them And what Argument think you will he chuse to evacuate but that which is drawn from the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and how will he evacuate it but first from Homers Iliads next from the Revelations But indeed he puts our Argument so weakly or rather not at all that is he swallows our proof so glibly and yet evacuates it so groaningly that it were charity in some good body to ease him in this his greatest extremity The sum of his solution of I cannot tell what for he urges no Argument of ours but onely puts down the bare word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seems to be this That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and therefore signifies vulgarly a Stone and in Homers Iliads is applied to denote an huge loggerly Stone like a Mill-stone 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Next this Stone by the Scripture must needs be a foundation Stone and there being Twelve foundation-stones named in the Apocalypse called there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it must follow that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which before was a vulgar-stone is now advanced to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a precious stone Now follows his first inference as well as I can gather it That all the twelve Apostles being in like manner and not St. Peter onely and above the rest styled Foundation-stones it is consequent hence that all were equal Where first the Argument is again onely Negative to wit that no distinction is there put therefore there was none To make which inference good he must first shew that if there were any distinction it must necessarily be exprest upon all occasions Next it is a most pitiful peece of reason to perswade the Reader from onely a plurality and naming twelve Apostles that all were equal As if out of the very naming in the plural twelve Signs Shires Cities or Magistrates it must necessarily follow out of the bare common name of Sign Magistrate c. given to each of them that all were equal Again the Doctor hath quite overthrown his cause by arguing That not onely St. Peter but the rest also were called Foundation-stones and therefore they were all equal Since granting as he does that a Foundation-stone and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being the same and onely St. Peter having the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it follows in the Doctors grounds That he onely and in good reason that he more particularly should be a Rock or Foundation-stone Where note that the Doctor would have all the Apostles call Peter for the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being given St. Peter by our Saviour for no other end but to signifie he was a Rock or as the Doctor will have it a Foundation-stone and every Apostle being according to Master Hammond equally such it follows That they have all as good title to be called Peter as that Apostle who alone till Master Hammond writ had that appellation It follows to strengthen his former weak reason And it being there in vision APPARENT that the wall of the City Id est of the Church being measured exactly and found to be an hundred forty four Id est saith he Twelve times twelve cubits It is evident That that mensuration assigns an equal proportion whether of Power or Province to all and every of the Apostles which is again a prejudice to the Universal Pastorship of any one of them Thus the Doctor intends for an up-shot-Argument to evidence an equality in all the Apostles by the equal division of this Wall But I crave leave to ask the Doctor whether he be certain that none of those precious Stones which equally made up this Wall is richer then the rest For the richness in things of this nature being more considerable and more enhancing their value then the bulk and quantity it follows That the greater preciousness and lustre which manifests it self in one above another may better claim a signification That that Apostle who is represented by it had an authority above the rest then the equal measure of the Wall can infer an equality nay more if there be an equality in the bigness and an inequality in the worth there is no evasion but it must resemble a worthier person In order to which there comes a congruous Argument to my minde such as if it were on the Doctors side and he had the managing of it I know he would make it a MOST IRREFRAGABLE and UNQUESTIONABLE EVIDENCE And though Catholicks who understand the grounds of their Faith â—light such poor supports as a self-fancied Explication of the obscurest part of Scripture in which chiefly consists the Doctors talent in evidencing yet because perhaps he may fancy it stronger then twenty demonstrations and so it may come to do him much good he shall have it very willingly Amongst these twelve pretious Foundation-stones denoting the twelve
Apostles the Doctor will not deny the first to signifie St. Peter to whom he and his fellows are content at least to grant from our Saviours words a priority of Order This first foundation then shadowing to us St. Peter is here Chap. 21. 19. said to be a Iasper the self-same Stone whose lustre shined in our Saviour Apoc. 4. 3. and also in his Church Apoc. 21. 11. Whence follows would the Doctor triumphantly cry out as an IRREFRAGABLE EVIDENCE that St. Peter onely having the same lustre with our Saviour is like him in representation and so onely he resembles him as his Vicegerent or Vicar As also that being the same Stone the Church is made of and the first of all the rest it is unquestionably true would he say that he is the first part of the Church that is her Head Under what luckless Constellation was Mr. Hammond born to meddle with the Foundation-stones in the Apocalypse and not fore see this dangerous rub which makes him so far from evidencing against us thence that the very place objected happens to be an Evidence against himself I mean such a kinde of proof as he would call an Evidence And thus he concludes his fourth Chapter containing the first substantial part of his Book In which as I sincerely profess I have not found one word to the purpose that is not one restrictive word of St. Peters Universal Pastorship nor one express equalizing term of his power of the Keys to the rest of the Apostles so I must confess withal that I have both wearied my own patience in laying open such a gallimaufry of shallow impertinences and I fear my Reader also who may think his time ill-employ'd in perusing the confutation of so weak a Writer The Second Part. Comprehending the Answers of the Fifth Sixth and Seventh Chapters SECT 1. Of the pretended Primogeniture of Antioch and the Doctors mistake of the Council of Chalcedon THis Champion of Schism having as he thought empal'd the Universal Jurisdiction of St. Peter to the dispersed Iews onely proceeds laying first his own mistakes for his grounds in this fifth Chapter to depose the Pope which he entitles thus The Evidences from the Bishop of Romes succeeding Saint Peter examined as he did the fore-going Chapter The pretended Evidences of the Romanists c. Where first he would perswade many good honest Readers that he had urged our Evidences home and afterwards salved them whereas indeed he onely puts down a word or two of our bare tenet and that not even as we explicate it much less as we evidence it Secondly He would seem to intimate again that it belongs to us to evidence Let the Doctor know the Churches Evidence is her long-and-quietly enjoy'd possession of the belief of Infallibility in which she was actually found when his upstart and disobedient Forefathers the first Reformers went out from her-Communion POSSIDEO QUIA POSSIDEO OLIM POSSIDEO PRIOR POSSIDEO is all the Evidence and all the reason she is bound to give to her rebel-sons and out-lawed Subjects So as it is your part to evidence hers to hold and possess her own till you sufficiently that is demonstrably evidence her title to be unjust Thirdly The Doctor is here also as indeed generally every where contrary to himself inscribing the Chapters as answers to our Evidences yet spending almost the whole Chapters in producing pretended Evidences of his own so performing the quite contrary to what he promised But this is nothing with him His first Paragraph sayes onely That St. Peter having no Primacy the Bishop of Rome his Successor could consequently have none But because his Antecedent hath already been dash'd in peeces by my Answer to his former Chapter no Consequence can be built upon it till he have repaired his ground-work by a stronger Reply Yet Mr. Hammond is so self-conceitedly confident of the invincibleness of his former Chapter that he accounts this a work of Supererogation Whereas if to prove his first Evidence he hath produced any one express Testimony That St. Peters Iurisdiction was limited to the Iews onely which onely was the thing in question or if to prove his second EVIDENCE he hath produced any one express place to prove That the Keys though given to all yet were not more particularly given to St. Peter which onely is there the thing in question I will quit the field and yeeld though not my cause yet my own particular conquer'd But if he have not what a vanity is it to brag when he had said nothing at all to the Controversie that he hath said all that is necessary nay even supererogated and said more then needs In this second Paragraph the Doctor would evidence That the Priviledges attending St. Peters succession belong rather to the Bishop of Antioch then of Rome And this he endeavors by asking three Questions to which I shall answer in order First he asks Whether St. Peter did not as truly plant a Church of Iewish believers at Antioch and leave a Successor Bishop there as at Rome he is supposed to have done I answer If you mean he planted a Church there of Iewish believers onely so as he had no power over the Gentiles also I absolutely deny it and in your last Chapter your proper place to prove it in you had not one word to bless your self with but what you added of your own That he left a Successor Bishop there If you mean such an improperly call'd Successor as both himself and St. Paul left in many other places that is made some one a Bishop and left him to overlook and govern that Church I easily grant but if you mean such a Successor as should succeed in the amplitude of Saint Peters authority so as St. Peter should devest himself of his Primacy and give it him not carrying it along with him to Rome I deny he left there any such kinde of Successor neither can there be the least shadow of Reason why he should nor is there any Testimony or Ground that he did Your second Quere is Whether this were not done by him before ever he came to Rome I answer in the manner I have declared doubtless he did Your third Quere is Whether these two Concessions do not devolve all power and jurisdiction on the Bishop of Antioch St. Peters Successor there which by that tenure and claim of Succession from St. Peter can be pretended to by the Bishop of Rome I answer the first is not a Concession unless first distinguished as I shewed before and the distinction given intercepts the passage to his Conclusion To manifest which the better we may distinguish in St. Peter resident at Antioch two diverse qualities of dignity First his particular care of that Church as private Bishop in that See Secondly his publick office of Head of the Church in which consists his Primacy Now when he left that City and went to Rome he devested himself of the private care of
refused to subscribe The Act it self not numbred amongst the Acts of the Council till ambition which at first receiving such a check from so grave Authority was modest growing more impudent when the reprehending and curbing power was absent legitimated that bastard-issue and pin'd it to the end of the Council as Dr. Hammond does his own sayings to the end of his Testimonies Yet the Doctor tells us He could vindicate the validity of this Canon but that he means not to go out of his way Is it out of your way Mr. Doctor to vindicate that Testimony to be valid which you object for a strong proof against us and we reject as of insufficient Authority and illegitimate In my poor judgment it lies so directly in your way that you cannot possibly do your cause better service then to clear this point else why did you produce a Testimony lying under a just Exception unless you would stick to it and maintain it It lay in your way it seems to put that large-senc'd monosyllable ALL into the Testimony that was just in your way but to make good your own weak Allegation was quite out of your way Yet you were something excusable from under-propping your Testimony if you had been better employ'd in the mean time but I finde the whole fifth Paragraph in which you wave it from the beginning to the end made up onely of your own sayings and some of those too false upon which as upon grounds you proceed with an unresistable career So as your proofs are perfect Cobwebs both the ground and the work upon it being spun out of your own bowels But instead of vindicating it you first quarrel with us for strange dealing in not admitting any Testimony against us but wherein we have given our own suffrage which you call A method of security beyond all amulets c. Thus the Doctor plausibly indeed if his Readers were fools otherwise nothing can sound more unconsonantly For either the Pope is head of the Church or no If he suppose negatively then he plainly begs the Question which hangs yet in dispute and then upon this supposition I will grant it is not onely strange dealing but injustice usurpation tyranny impiety or whatever he will or else the Pope was and is Head of the Church and then the Doctors words may be objected as well to any Governor or any man living as to the Pope and it is not strange dealling but very good reason That he should refuse to subscribe to an Act endamaging the Canons of the Church it being his duty and obligation to keep them inviolate And if Pope Leo could in reason reject it then when one siding and self-interessed part of the Council had voted it we can with as good reason reject it now when Dr. Hammond alleages it SECT 2. THe Doctors next EVIDENCE that the Pope is not Head of the Church is from a Canon in the Council of Ephesus where saith Mr. Hammond the independency of Cyprus not onely from the Patriarch of Antioch but from all others whomsoever was contested then as from the Apostles times c. Thus the Doctor desirous to make the Reader believe that Cyprus had no kinde of Dependency on any one whomsoever Though the Testimony it self contests no more but that from the Apostles time they could never show That the Bishop of Antioch was there Et ordinaverit vel communicaverit unquam Insulae ordination is gratiam neque alius quisquam that is And ordain'd or conferred the grace of Ordination upon that Iâ—and nor any other The Testimony speaks onely That neither the Patriarch nor any other ordained there the Doctor interprets it That Cyprus was independent on the Patriarch of Antioch or any one whomsoever Which is not ingenuously done for there may be a dependency of subjection to the Jurisdiction of another though they never received from that other their Ordination Thus you see the Doctor seldom brings us an account of any Testimony but less or more he will be sure to enflame the reckoning But the Council exempted Cyprus from the peculiar subjection to a private Patriarch in particular True but is there any thing exprest there That either Cyprus or the Patriarch of Antioch himself were exempted from the Obedience or Jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome as Publick Head of the Church or was the Popes Primacy there called in question This should have been exprest to make good your inference But of this we have not so much as a syllable nor any thing that can deduce it since the I le of Cyprus might well have been exempted from the obedience of any particular Patriarch and yet both it and the Patriarchs themselves subjected to one Chief or Head of the Church As there may be some free State or City in Europe independent of any particular Kingdom or Province and yet both that State and all the Kingdoms and Provinces in Europe dependent or subject to the Universal Rule of an Emperor who is Lord of the whole Yet the Doctor hath not done with us thus he hath another fling at us out of this Council of Ephesus which determined saith the Doctor That no Bishop shall encroach upon anothers Province or usurp a power where from the Apostles times he had not enjoyed it Which how directly adds the Doctor it prejudgeth the pretensions of Rome is so manifest that it cannot need farther demonstrating This therefore being Dr. Hammonds PRIMUM PRINCIPIUM first Principle which is so evident by the light of nature and cannot need farther demonstrating it were not amiss if we put it in a Syllogism to let the Reader see how unavoidably the Doctor deduces a break-neck conclusion to the cause of Rome out of it The Argument then stands thus The Canon of Ephesus constitutes That nâ—… Bishop shall encroach upon anothers Province oâ—… usurp a power where from the Apostles time hâ—… had not enjoyed it But the Pope must Dr. Hammond subsume hath encroacht upon anothers Province and usurpt a power where from the Apostles times he had not enjoyed it Therefore his pretensions are prejudiced by this Canon of Ephesus Where as every childe may see nothing follows out of the words of the Council against the Pope which are the Major until the Doctor makes good his Minor That the Pope hath thus encroached c. Yet this being all that belongs to him to prove he either supposes as a first principle though it be the onely thing in controversie or else begs of us to grant him gratis and then tells us the Conclusion is so manifest it cannot need farther demonstrating Surely he was afraid here also to go out of his way and with good reason for had he gone about to evidence his Minor he would never have arrived at his Conclusion After this most palpable and evident demonstration he gives us two instances of the same alloy One of the Archbishop of Carthage whom the Emperor Iustinian made equal in
deny but sometimes to be subject for Ordination was sign of subjection but not always The Bishop of Ostia hath the priviledge to consecrate the Pope yet the Pope is not to be his subject The Council of Sardica ordains That the next Province shall give Bishops to a Province that wants yet makes not that Province subject to it The Patriarch of Alexandria gave the Indians Bishops yet claimed no jurisdiction over them and consecrated the Patriarch of Constantinople yet was not Constantinople in his Territories Therefore this is no rule of Subjection and if it were the Doctor must say this Primate was subject to his own Suffragans Neither did ever Popes or Patriarchs in ancient times demand the Ordination of all the Bishops in their Patriarchates nor does the Pope at this day demand it in other Patriarchates though he claim jurisdiction over them But now who can tell us what the Doctor means when he says the Emperor did all this onely by making it a Primates or chief Metropolitans See and that Carthages being the prime Metropolis of Africk is expressed by having the same priviledges with Prima Iustiniana Can any man think he intendeth other then to mock his Auditory For as far as I understand these words signifie that the Emperor said onely Be thou a chief Metropolis and in so saying gave all these Priviledges Whereas all the Doctors labor hitherto and the Texts by him cited wherein every priviledge is set down so particularly make it manifest there were none or not eminent examples of any such Cities or Bishopricks and therefore so many particularities were necessary to be expressed and it be made an example to others Yet upon this relieth the Doctors main evidence and demonstration Though if you will believe him The conclusion of it self is most certain and might otherwise be testified by innumerable Evidences which we ought to suppose the Doctor omits for brevities sake and contents himself with this riff-raff and his Readers with bold promises and solemn affirmations In his tenth Section immediately following he draws out of his so strong discourse a consequence able to make any sensible man understand the former discourses were all vain and wicked For says he If from the Apostles time there hath been an independent power vested in each Primate or chief Metropolitan then how can it be necessary to the being of a Member of the Catholick Church to be subject to that one Primate Worthy Doctor your inference is very strong and good But I pray consider what is the consequent Surely this If there be no Catholick Church the obedience to the Pope is not necessary to be a member of it A very learned conclusion and worthy of so long a discourse to introduce it yet see whether it be yours or no. You say every chief Metropolitan was independent from all others they made therefore so many absolute Churches therefore made not any one Church Where then is the Catholick Church of which we ought to be members Many houses to be one house is as fairly contradictory as many men or horses to be one horse and so of many Churches to be one Church A Church saith St. Cyprian is a people united to their Bishop If then there be a Catholick Church there must be a Catholick Bishop and taking away the obedience to one Bishop you cannot save one Church I know you can talk like a Saint That Christ is the Head in which all Churches are united But the Church is a Government upon Earth and as an Army with its General or a Commonwealth with its chief Magistrate in Heaven were no Army nor Commonwealth So without subjection to a visible supreme Pastor there will be no Church on Earth left us whereof we ought to be Members which is the true Protestant Tenet whatsoever they may shuffle in words an art wherein they are the most eminent of all Modern Hereticks Therefore he had reason to enlarge himself no farther but conclude with the Authority of his Convocation An. 1537. To which I confess my self unable to answer for it is a pregnant and unavoidable Testimony Onely I may remember our old English Proverb Ask my fellow whether I am a Thief or ask Caiphas whether Pilates sentence against our Saviour was not just You know it was a Convocation of Bishops who for fear renounced their Oaths taken in their Consecration and therefore men of no credit upon their pure words in this case Now their Arguments are no other then what are already discussed that is meer Cobwebs woven out of a tainted heart Besides those who supervived that wicked King for the most part with hearty penance washed away that crime and with their tears blotted out as far as in them lay the black Indentures of that dismal Contract SECT 3. A Discovery of Dr. Hammonds Fundamental Error which runs through this Chapter and his ingratitude for our Countreys Conversion THe Doctor proceeding in his own mistaking method which is to produce faintly and then impugn our Pleas in stead of pleading for himself who stands accused of Schism entitles his sixth Chapter THEIR THIRD PLEA FROM THE BISHOP OF ROMES HAVING PLANTED CHRISTIANITY AMONG US As if we pretended the Conversion of this Nation to have been the reason why the Pope challenged here the Supremacy or That his being Head of the Universal Church depended upon his private Apostleship performed towards this Nation This is the ground of all his ensuing Chapter which being absolutely false and forged upon us it had been sufficient to have past it over with this civil reproof Doctor you mistake For what Catholick Author ever affirmed the Pope is beholden to his Ancestors care in bringing England to Christs Faith for his supreme jurisdiction there or that his title of Primacy had not been equal in this Countrey in case it had hapned Constantinople or Alexandria had sent to convert it We will therefore free the Doctor from any obligation of Subjection to the Popes Primacy which he causlesly fears may come by this title so he will acquit himself and the Church of England of another which lies heavy on them and makes up the full measure of their Schism unless they retract it For if greatest benefits draw on greatest engagements and no benefit be so great as that which rescues us from the Devils tyranny the the bonds of Infidelity and brings us by enlarging our hearts by Faith into the glorious liberty of the Sons of God Sure no Obligation can be conceived so indispensably-binding as that which is due to those who were Authors to us of so inestimable a good This consideration should make the enjoyers of that benefit while they were sons to such a Mother more humble and obedient in an especial manner and by consequence in an high measure aggravate the horrid sin of Schism in not onely rebelliously but most ingratefully abandoning the communion of so tenderly beneficial a Parent This should make them after the breach made
of the study of ancient History knows to have been another manner of thing then the Emperors Robe We cannot then in reason think other but that either the Rescript is false and because no new Bishop of Ravenna could use the Pall without a new Concession from the Pope as appears in St. Greg. Lib. 5. Epist. 8. forged in the time of the Schism that they might have some pretence to retain still the use of the Pall which they accounted honorable Or at least it cannot be imagined to have been made without the Popes consent since the Pope in the very next year after the making of this presumed Rescript appointed and constituted even those of Ravenna at first being unwilling St. Peter Chrysologus to succeed in that See after the decease of Iohn as the same Monuments affirm Whence the Doctor but from a manifestly corrupted part of them pickt out this Testimony That the after-Bishops of Ravenna were sometimes Schismaticks all the world knows none excusing them much less bringing that action of theirs for a Testimony or example till such as Mr. Hammond arose who were involved in the same crime But that from Valentiâ—â—ans time Ravenna held the Patriarchate till the time of Constantinus Pogonatus without dependence on the Bishop of Rome as the Doctor tells us is an intolerable mistake as any one meanly versed in History knows and as is manifest by Pope Gregories Letters to the Bishops of that place who was made Pope in the year Five hundred and ninety whereas Pogonatus began his reign in the year Six hundred sixty and eight Their sact then Master Doctor can onely stead or excuse you thus far to shew that others have been Schismaticks as well as your selves and therefore you are not the first nor onely men that have faln into a such a lapse And thus far indeed we grant your consequence but it will not serve to shew that you are faultless because they were faulty You should have manifested first the justifiableness of their fact and then proceed by applying it to justifie your own Or rather indeed it infers you are Schismaticks because you cling to none but those whom all the world esteemed to be such But me thinks I hear the Doctor gravely complain That I call all those Schismaticks whom he alleages as Testimonies against me and that this also is A method of security beyond all AMULETS I answer let it neither be as he nor I say but what the whole Christian World both then and ever since held none contradicting but those who were accused of the same fault Let us therefore make plain Reason our Judge in this present Controversie The Popes at the breach of the Ravennates from their subjection made head against them and stood upon their Authority as Universal Pastors of the Church as the Doctor will grant Which therefore in all likelihood would have been looked on by the rest of the Catholick Bishops as a proud usurpation and being against their common interest to let the Pope pretend to an Universal Pastorship ought in all reason to have engaged them in the Ravennates quarrel Is there any news of such an Universal siding Not a word By which one may at least conjecture That they thought the Popes pretence to the Primacy lawful How did the Ravennates behave themselves in the business Did they stick close to and constantly claim their non subjection to the Pope from Canons or Scripture Nothing less They recanted often and acknowledged subjection as the Doctor grants and says they did it sometimes out of fear of other enemies sometimes out of friendship or despite to their own Clergy yet the people adds the Doctor thought themselves injured Well but what said the Governors of the world all this while to whom it appertained to see Justice rightly administred How did the Emperor Iustinian the then Head of the Church as the Doctor will have it decide the Controversie when he came to conclude it He vindicated the Pope and punished most severely the people of Ravenna banished the Bishop and in a judiciary manner put the ringleaders of the Schism to death at Constantinople whither they were carried bound What a pitiful Controvertist then is this Doctor to alleage the bare fact of a turbulent rebellious never-quiet City against the justly-presumed acknowledgment and the unanimous belief both of the then-present and future Christian World Lastly against the decision of those who were their Temporal Lords and lawful Judges and according to the Doctors grounds against the verdict of the Head of the Church to whom the rightful power in those matters legally pertained His fourth Instance is out of Balsamon an enemy to the See of Rome and a writer for the Greeks against it who says That some Arch-Bishopricks had from the Emperors Charter that priviledge not to be subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople Where first if we may trust Balsamon who seems in this very place and Treatise to plead for the Greeks against the Bishop of Rome then Mr. Doctor you know your double task necessary to make good your premises ere you can conclude any thing to wit that the Emperors did it with order from the Church or in case they did not that it was done lawfully Next does the Testimony say That the Emperor priviledged them from subjection to the Pope as Head of the Church if not there is no hurt at all done to our question if it did there had not been much since an enemies saying is no slander His fifth instance is That under Phocas the Patriarchate of Grado in Italy was erected Where first it seems The Testimony says not it was done by him but under him or while he reigned and then for any thing you can conclude from hence The Pope did it in Phocas his reign Secondly since it was not indeed of new erected but translated thither from Aquileia burned not long before by the Longobards it was no sign of a presumed Jurisdiction but rather of a pious generosity whether in Phocas or Charls the Great to bestow a new seat on the destitute Patriarch To omit that in the Council of Grado was read the Epistle of Pope Felagius the second granting to Elias of Gradâ— the place of the Patriarch of Aquileia The Doctor did wisely then to put under Phocas in stead of by Phocas that so he might seem to intimate by ambiguity what he durst not speak out for want of evidence SECT 5. The Doctors Testimonies from Councils and Histories found to be partly against himself partly frivolous and to no purpose AFter his Evidence from a forged Rescript and a tumultuous rable That the right of erecting Patriarchates belongs to the Secular Power and that this in the Western part of Christianity was an ordinary custom he proceeds to shew That this was a frequent usage in the East also citing for it no less authority then that highest one of General Councils Sacred Witnesses Whom to
an indulgence or priviledge granted and given him by the Church in her Canons Which last is our tenet and most evidently visible in the very Testimonies alleaged against us His second Testimony for the two last were onely his over-sights or observations begins after the old strain thus And ACCORDINGLY the same Balsamon on Conc. Carthag Can. 16. doth upon that Canon professedly found the Authority of Princes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to advance an Episcopal See into a Metropolis and a new to constitute Bishops and Metropolitans Thus far the Doctor Where he is over head and ears again in a grievous mistake for neither doth Balsamon found the Authority of Princes to execute such Acts as of their own power on that Canon there being not a word in it to that purpose Neither doth he PROFESSEDLY say any thing as of himself but that you are PROFESSEDLY mistaken And had he said it I conceive it no such strong Argument That a professed Adversary should speak so professedly against one But indeed neither he nor the Canon say any such matter The Canon not so much as names either Episcopal or Metropolical Seâ—s but the main business there treated is That Bishops and Priests should not live upon base occupations nor employ themselves in secular businesses Which Balsamon in his Scholion or Comment more elucidates from like prohibitions of other Patriarchs adding in the end out of other mens opinions and not his own profession these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But some say these Canons or Constitutions take place when any one who hath taken holy Orders shall exercise a secular Ministery without the command of the Emperor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. And they adde saith Balsamon that the King is neither under Laws nor Canons and therefore he may securely make a Bishoprick a Metropolis c. and anew constitute Bishops and Metropolitans Where the Reader may see he introduces this as a deduction of others and that from no other grounds then this A King is neither bound by Canons nor Laws that is his Will is his Law or he may do lawfully what he lists and then indeed these grounds supposed I blame not the inference that he should erect transplant nâ—y pull down not only Bishops and Patriarchs but the whole Hierarchy it self your present lot consequent to these your grounds Thus at length we have found the bottom-stone of the Doctors grounds Why Kings may erect Patriarchates by their proper power not to be Councils as he pretended but their own all-lawful inerrableness to do what they please let Councils Canons Parliaments and Laws say what they will to the contrary A foundation fitting indeed to build the Doctors Assertion upon but in all other respects able to ruine and overthrow both Laws Commonwealths Canons and Church In his fifteenth Section persisting still in his seigned supposal That the Popes power is onely Patriarchal he goes on to prove that the antiquity of translating Patriarchs and Bishops belongs to Kings as well as of erecting Of which he gives some instances in our Countrey of England By which what he means to prove I cannot easily conjecture If he intends that Kings did oft do such things I wonder who denies it but if they did it by their proper right without the order or consent either of the Apostolical See or the Ecclesiastical State of his own Bishops he brings not one word in proof but rather expresly manifests the contrary from the carriage of St. Anselm then Archbishop of Canterbury as learned and pious a Prelate as that age produced who as the Doctor confesses when the King would have cut off as much from the Diocess of Lincoln as would make a new Bishoprick at Ely Anselm wrote to Pope Paschalis desiring his consent to it assuring him he would not give his consent but salvâ authoritate Papae the authority of the Pope being secured Where you see plainly the Archbishops consent was necessary and that without it the Kings desire seemed controleable Next that the Archbishop himself even with the Kings authority to back him would not venture on it till the Pope's consent was asked Here then Mr. Doctor you have a positive Testimony of the gravest Prelate our Countrey hath ever been honored with refusing the sufficiency of the Kings sole authority to conclude such businesses without his and the Popes consent which therefore more justly challenges audience in the Court of Reason then all your dumb Negatives though they were a thousand more To conclude in what your Testimonies were Positive to wit that such things were done de facto so far we yeeld to them in what they are Negative tacitly inferring that because they were done and no mans right named therefore they were done de jure by the proper right of him that did them So far we allow them no credit at all First Because they might have been performed by the secular Authorities either with consent of the Bishops or some indulgent grant of the Church to pious Princes or by order from the Pope or else Concession of some former Council an example of which we had lately in the Council of Chalcedon Next because Histories intending onely to relate matters of fact mention rather those that put things in execution and more visibly appear in the transacting them such as are Secular Magistrates and stand not scanning or debating much by whose right things were done which belongs to Lawyers and would be but a by-discourse hindering the orderly process of their Narrative strain Thirdly because every one who hath the least smack of Logick knows A Negative Argument proves nothing such as are all yours here alleaged For this is the tenor of them Historians say Some Kings translated some Patriarchates and it is not mentioned they did it by the Churches power therefore they did it by their own which will be found in good Logick to fall very far short of concluding Lastly because the Church ever challenged as her own proper right asserted to her by the Canons the jurisdiction and power to intermeddle in businesses purely Ecclesiastical In his seventeenth Paragraph he proposes two other Objections of the same nature with the rest The first in common that the King could exempt from Episcopal Jurisdiction which he says is largely asserted and exemplified in Coudrayes case 5 Report 14. And truly the Doctor is to be commended for his fair and sincere expression For it is indeed meerly asserted and exemplified without the least shadow of proof In the first example there alleaged King Kenulphus is said to have exempted a Monastery Consilio consensis Episcoporum Senatorum Gentis suae which was no instance of power in him unless it was also in the Bishops and Nobles That he could not or would not do it without their agreement The exemption of Reading Abbey by Henry the First argues no authority he being the Founder of it and not bound to give his goods to the Church
to proceed from the Temporal part then from the Spiritual as humane actions more apparently spring from the Body then from the Soul But if the Doctor would have proved sincerely That Kings indeed had that pretended power he should not have stood piddling with half a dozen fag ends of History to prove such a thing was sometimes done de facto but recurred to the Apostolical and Ecclesiastical Canons where such things are purposely treated and there he should have found another story But he is wiser then to confine himself within the proper lists of any question he had rather be in the open field where his little fayeryreason may hop and skip from bough to bryar and weary his adversary not to combate but to catch him SECT 6. The Examination of the Testimonies produced by Mr. Hammond to prove his fundamental Position that Kings are supreme in spiritual matters THe endeavours of Mr. Hammond in the foregoing part of this Chapter was first to suppose the Pope onely a private Patriarch next that the King can erect and translate Patriarchates after which though other men of reason use to put their grounds ere they deduce any thing from them he lays the grounds in this 19 Paragraph of his formerly built discourse saying that the Reason of all is the supreme power of Kings even in Ecclesiastical matters Where to omit how he has mangled that one poor Paragraph with ten parenthesisses no more he so intermingles and shuffles together in an equal tenor truths with falshoods things dubious and unprov'd with things acknowledged and that need no proof things to the purpose with things to no purpose that it would loath any well-order'd Reason to see in so little a room so perfect a map of disorderly confusion But ere we come to answer that his marginal testimonies which he huddles together briefly of all sorts would seem neglected if we should not allow them a cursory reflection First what he objects out of Chomatenus though his Author were of any Authority yet it makes nothing at all to his purpose since the very words he cites that the King is as it were the common Director and Ruler of the Church signifies rather he was not so then was so unless he can prove that quasi as it were can bear the sence of revera indeed or in reality And then how handsomely think you would these words hang together that the King is IN REALITY AS IT WERE the Ruler of the Church Nay rather the words alledged plainly signifie the contrary For if there be a common Ruler of the Church and the King be onely as it were that Ruler it is plain there is some other not as it were but truly and properly such The second is yet much more absurd for never was there Testimony nor can be imagined in so little room more expresly witnessing that Kings have nothing to do with Ecclesiastical affairs then this of Constantine which the Doctor brings to prove the contrary I mean if we take the words as the Doctor cites them in Greek without his canâ—ing translation of them The words are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In English thus as neer word by word as it can possibly be render'd You truly speaking to the Bishops are constituted Overseers or Bishops of those affairs which are within the Church but I am constituted under God Overseer of those affairs which are without the Church But the Doctor seems willing to take there the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Church for a material Church of stone and so renders 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those things which are celebrated within it Yet is pittifully puzled notwithstanding rendering 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies things without the Church external things because the right words would have excluded the Emperors power over Ecclesiastical affairs and yet even so it will not serve his turn for unless he can make his own words external things signifie spiritual things to which they will be very unwilling the Testimony is still expresly against him Besides it is pretty sport to observe how sillily insincere the Doctor is telling us that Constantine the Great spake those words in an Assembly of Bishops by which and the Doctors wrong Translation the simple Reader would judge that Constantine had told a General Council of Bishops to their face that he was Head of the Church but when I came to finde out the Author and the place both which the Doctor had prudently omitted I found it was onely spoken when he was at dinner with some Bishops The Author is Eusebius de vita Constantini l. 4 c. 24. The title of the Chapter is this as I finde it in the Translator for I had not the Greek Quod externarum rerum quasi Episcopum se quendam professus est That he professed himself as it were a kinde of a Bishop over external things Then follows the Chapter in these words Ex quo etiam factum est ut cum Episcopos nonnullos convivio excepisset ipse se nobis audientibus Episcopum appellaret his ferè verbis Vos inquit intra Ecclesiam ego extra Ecclesiam à Deo Episcopus constitutus sum Itaque cùm quae loquebatur eadem secum mente cogitaret animum in omnes qui ejus suberant imperio intentum habuit hortatus pro virili utpiam omnes vitam excolerent Whence it came to pass that when he had entertained some Bishops at a feast or Banquet he in our hearing called himself a Bishop in those words You saith he are constituted Bishops within the Church I without the Church Wherefore since his thought went along with his words he apply'd his mind to those who were under his Empire exhorting them to his power that they should all lead a pious life Where besides what I formerly found the Doctor faulty in we see that the Author of this Testimony who was present when the Emperor spake these words and so could best judge of his meaning by the circumstances deduced no more out of them then that he called himself Bishop because it belonged to his Calling to exhort all his subjects to lead a pious life and administer rightly those things of which they were Overseers by God His third Testimony to prove the King Head of Ecclesiastical as well as civil affairs is that irreprehended saying of Leo Isaurus who said to the Pope 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I am a King and a Priest which was indeed a saying worthy an Anti-heretick as Isaurus was being a ring leader of the Iconoclasts A wise man would wonder what the Doctor intended by producing such a saying which himself must acknowledge extravagant since none of the late Kings of England ever assum'd to themselves the title of a Priest as did this infatuated Emperor who gave more credit to Sooth-sayers and fortune-tellers then to God and his Church The third is from Socrates who says the affairs of the Church depended on the Emperors And
not from the Tribunal of the Jews much less their Synagogue representing their Church as the Doctor would perswade us but from the Tribunal of Portius Festus a Roman Governor under Caesar to Caesar himself I will onely put down the words as I finde them in their own Translation and so leave the Doctor to the Readers Judgement either to be accused for willfully abusing or ignorantly mistaking them But Festus willing to do the Iews a pleasure answered Paul and said wilt thou go up to Ierusalem and there be judged of these things before me Then said Paul I stand at Caesars judgement-seat where I ought to be judged c. Act. 25. 9 10 c. And now is not this Doctor think you the fittest man among all the sons of the Church of England to have a Pension for writing Annotations in folio on the Bible His last proof is that Iustinians third Book is made up of Constitutions de Episcopis Clericis Laicis Bishops Priests Laymen First we answer and the same may be said of the Theodosian Code that all the Laws found there must not necessarily be Iustinians since the Keepers of the Laws use not onely to put in their Law-books those Constitutions themselves made but also those they are to see observed among which are the Canons and Laws of the Church made before by Councils and other Ecclesiastical Powers Secondly We grant Iustinian may make Constitutions of his own concerning Bishops and Clergymen in what relates to temporal affairs or as they are parts of the civil Commonwealth And lastly If he shall be found to have made any Laws concerning them and without the Authority of the Church entrenching upon Ecclesiastical businesses let the Doctor prove he had power to make such and he will in so doing clear him in that part from that note of Tyranny which is objected against him What you say concerning the Canons of Councils that they have been mostly set out by the Emperors It is very certain you might if you had pleased instead of your Mostly have put Always the causing them to be promulgated belonging to the Office of the supreme secular Powers whose obligation it is to see that the Churches decrees be received and put in execution What you clap in within a Parenthesis as your custom is to intermingle truth with falshood that Canons of Councils received their Authority by the Emperor In the sence you take it is a great error For never was it heard that an Emperor claimed a negative voice in making a Canon of a Council valid which concerned matters purely Spiritual nay nor disaccepted them decreed unanimously by the Fathers but all the world lookt upon him as an unjust and tyrannical incroacher They receive indeed Authority from the Emperor in this sense that his subscription and command to proclaim them makes them have a more powerful reception and secures them from the obstacles of turbulent and rebellious spirits But this will not content you your aym is that they should not have the Authority or validity of a Canon without the last-life-giving-hand of the Emperors vote which is onely a strain of your own liberality to him or rather of your envy towards the Church without any ground of his rightful claim to any such Jurisdiction over Councils SECT 7. Other empty Proofs of this pretended Right confuted THese rubs being removed it will be our next sport to address an answer to his nineteenth Section it self where omitting his ten Parenthesisses which contain nothing but either sayings of his own or Greek out of Strabo's Geography That the Romans kept their assizes at divers places or Testimonies from the Council of Chalcedon already answered omitting these I say I will briefly resume the whole sence of the Paragraph as well as I can gather it out of the some-thing-more Lucid intervals of his mad Parenthesisses And this I take to be the sum of it That Kings should according to emergent conveniences change their Seats of Iudicature and that the same reasons may require a removal of Ecclesiastical Seats wherefore there being nothing to the contrary constituted either by Christ or his Apostles it follows That Kings may when they please erect and consequently remove Primacies and Metropolitans I answer That Secular Courts may be removed upon good occasions is so evident to every Fool that it needs neither Greek nor Strabo to prove it That Ecclesiastical Seats for greater conveniences of the Church be also subject to removal is likewise evident and constituted by the Council of Chalcedon Can. 17. But his inference That it belongs to the right of Kings to erect and transfer them is weaker then water nor has the Doctor infused into it the least grain of Reason to strengthen it Yet first to prove it he says Nothing is found either by Christ or his Apostles ordered to the contrary Which is a most pitiful Negative proof as indeed the greatest part of his Book iâ— and supposes to make it good That neither Christ nor his Apostles said did or ordered any thing but what is exprest in Scripture which is both expresly contrary to Scripture it self and to common reason also Besides this wise proof is both most unjust towards us and silly in him to expect unjust towards us ingaging us to prove out of Scripture That Kings cannot erect Primacies and Patriarchates whereas there is no such word there as either Primate or Patriarchate which he would have us shew thence not subject to Kings Nor is it less silly in him to expect That the Scripture should make mention of the erection or not erection of Primacies and Patriarchates by Secular Powers since the Secular Powers when the Scripture was written being most bloody Tyrants and Persecutors of the Church were more likely to hang up all Primates and Patriarchs then either erect or remove their Seats to a more convenient place Yet if you would see something to the contrary why Kings should not use Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction I can produce you the sence of the Catholick Church the best Testimony that can be alleaged for the meaning of Gods Spirit but because this weighs little with you I shew you next the Testimony of common sence and reason which tells you Faber fabrilia tractet and that those whose education institute of life particular designment to and total dependence on any course of life makes them more strongly addict all their thoughts to perfect themselves knowingly and magisterially in that their proper profession are fitter by far for such an employment then those whose diversly-distracted studies render them half-knowing or half-careful in such performances How much then is it more convenient that Ecclesiastical persons should manage the affairs of the Church then Secular Princes whom partly their necessary Temporal occasions partly voluntary Recreations Court attendances and entertainments so quite take up that they can have but saint and weak reflections either of knowledge or care in comparison of the others upon
the most concerning business imaginable the ordering Gods Church The Doctors Conclusion then which he says is both rational and evident is both irrational and very dim-coloured to any eye but his own who supposes as he tells us here for our farther confirmation That he hath made it already clear from the refutation of our Plea for St. Peters Universal Pastorship whereas it hath been manifested he had not one express word of proof to make good his pretended confutation insomuch as I promise him a general pardon and acquittance for the frivolousness of all the rest if he can shew me in his Answer that any one place expresly testified that which he pretended to evidence by Testimonies What he adds That it was appointed by the Council of Chalcedon de jure that the King may erect a Primacy when he pleases I dare be bold to call a forgery and that it needs an ID EST of the seventeens to make the Councils words sound to his purpose What he tells us next as a thing certain That King Ethelbert at the time of Austins planting the Faith did erect a Primacy at Canterbury the seat of his Kingdom Imperii sui totius Metropolis saith Bede c. is such a childish piece of insincerity that it craves as much pity as it deserves anger For Bede onely tells us there How the King answered them that he could not assent to their new doctrine yet because they were strangers and desired to communicate to him what they believed to be true he would not trouble them but rather kindly entertain them c. Then follows the Doctors Testimony Dedit ergo eis manfionem in Civitate Dovernensi quae Imperii sui totius erat Metropolis Eisque ut promiserat cum administratione victus temporalis c. Wherefore he gave them a dwelling place in the City of Canterbury the Mother-City of his whole Dominions and with administration of Temporal food he hindred them not from Preaching So that the giving them an House in Canterbury to dwell in and meat to eat is a clear evidence with Master Hammond That the King yet a Heathen erected a Primacy when certainly he knew not then what a Primacy meant Lastly To convince absolutely That Kings were Heads of the Church and translated and erected Primacies at pleasure he concludes That had it not been for this there is no reason assignable why this Nation being in Constantine's time under three Metropolitans there should be an addition of two Provinces or that the Metropolitical power should be so removed As if it could not be done at all unless the King did it What an Argument is here to bring for an up-shot of his proofs That the King is Head of the Church We both acknowledge that some removals of Ecclesiastical Seats have been in England but the Question is Whether it belongs to the Kings or the Popes to cause these removals he undertakes to prove it the Kings right we deny it The Doctor produces his Sacra Anchora or last proof That there is no reason assignable why these Sees were removed had it not been that the King had power We answer We can tell how to remove them without the Kings power to wit by the Popes which is the question he professes to make head against But proceeds not farther then onely to say it must needs be the King and that we cannot assign the Pope and that the thing was done and therefore the King must necessarily be the doer of it Thus you see the Doctor is constant to his Principles in putting his strongest Arguments in the rear What man living is able to withstand so potent and cunning an Adversary Besides suppose there had been neither Pope nor King was there any impossibility that consent of Bishops might remove the Primacy to another See especially the Bishops being anciently of such Authority in England That no weighty affairs were transacted but they had a share in the managing of them You see then Mr. Doctor there are two reasons assignable for the fact which you prove to be the Kings power because he did it and then prove he did it because otherwise it could not have been done After he hath thus convinc't Kings to have power also over Ecclesiastical affairs he proceeds to prove that this power of theirs taken away by the Laws is resumable and although his supposition being shown to be groundless there needs no answer to what he builds upon it yet we will not be so discourteous as to slight his mistakes by affording them no Reply Under Pope Melchiades in Constantines time was made a Decree that if the Donatist Bishops in Africk would return to the Unity of the Church they should be allowed either to keep the Bishopricks they had or be provided of others their obstinacy permitted not this to be executed and therefore it was recalled Neer a hundred years after under Pope Anastasius a National Council in Africa ordained a request to Him and other Bishops of Italy by whose predecessors the revocation had been made that the Donatist Bishops might retain their places if they would return to the Catholike Church the cunning Balsamon puts the provision it self for a Canon of this Council and it had been a foul offence in the Doctor to have taken notice of the request though he must needs have read it in Baronius whom he cites in the very place Therefore he concludes that Laws made at Rome do not take away the liberty of another National Council to make contrary Laws thereunto Although as far as can be drawn out of the fact and Council it argues the direct contrary and that it was not lawful for their National Council to infringe what had been done at Rome so unlucky is the Doctor in bringing Arguments so restiff and kicking that they cast their rider out of his inteâ—t He tells next that a Law though made by a General Council and with the consent of all Christian Princes yet if it have respect to a civil right may in this or that Nation be repealed quoting one Roger Widrington and Suarez the latter of them gives this reason because such a Law made at a general meeting of Princes is intrinsically a civil Law But what the Doctor will do with this after he hath produced it I cannot certainly say onely I see he must be very fruitful in unprov'd suppositions ere it will be able to do him or his cause any good First he must suppose that the title of the Head of the Church is a thing not Ecclesiastical but belonging to a civil right next that that same title is denyed their Kings only upon pretence of a Canon of a Council and not upon Christs donation of it to St. Peter these two unproved ând ungranted positions I say he must suppose gratis Otherwise to what end does he argue that the Canons of Councils are repealable and the Kings right by consequence resumeable What follows next
in the 23 Section that this is affirmed and intended by Balsamon to all Canons in general as the judgement of learned men in his notes on the sixteenth Canon of the Council of Carthage hath already been answered and shown that it is not Balsamon who affirms it but other men neither doth he call them learned men as the Doctor here imposes on him but onely says that some men say the Emperor can do such and such things And he adds that those persons proceed upon this ground that the Emperor may do lawfully whatever he lists His last Paragraph for which as his former custom was he reserves the best of his strength proves that this right of Kings to be head in Ecclesiastical affairs cannot be alienated by prescription The testimony he introduces is of one Sayr a late Monk who wrote his Book at Rome a man likely to speak much in the Doctors behalf whose opinion in case he should say any thing against us being but of a private Casuist may with the like facility be rejected as alleadg'd But what says honest Sayr he tells us that when prescription is neither of the Law of Nature nor the divine Law nor the Law of Nations but onely the civil and Canon Law there it extends no farther then every supreme Prince in his Realm by his Law is supposed to will that it shall be extended and therefore that no subject can prescribe exemption from making appeal to his King or that his Prince may not punish him when Reason and Iustice requires Let the testimony it self be what it will what was the Doctor dreaming on when he produced it Marry he dreamt two things First that the Pope had heretofore prescribed against the Kings of England in their pretended right of being head in Ecclesiastical matters next this prescription of the Pope hath not its force from any thing but a Canon or Civil Law These two points the Doctor dreamingly supposes to be certain principles and it is discourtesie in us not to grant them gratis for fear we should spoil his learned Conclusion What a shame is this for a Doctor of Divinity whereas every boy that hath been but two years at Cambridge knows he is first to establish his premises firmly ere he can claim any certainty of truth in his Conclusion to suppose his premises true and upon that grant kindly made by himself to himself conclude at pleasure what he lists And what an unconscionable piece of affected ignorance is this to bring a Testimony which could not possibly be applyed to his purpose without proving the two former self-made suppositions and yet to neglect that necessary task and conclude in these vain words It were easie to apply this distinctly to the confirming of all that hath been said but I shall not expatiate It is now become an old excuse with the Doctor to cry he is out of his way when he comes to a passage he cannot get over but all-to-be-labours things frivolous and which his self-laid grounds once supposed would be out of question Thus you see an end of his sixth Chapter which was totally built upon this ground that the Authority of Head of the Church was no more then Patriarchal and consequently needed in rigour of dispute no other reply but onely to deny the supposition and bid him prove it What has been answered to each particular was onely to let the Reader see how inconsequently and weakly he builds even upon his own foundations SECT 8. A Reply to Doctor Hammonds Narrative Confession of his Schism THe Doctor having laid his tottering grounds for the Kings Supremacy in Ecclesiastical affairs by alleadging some Testimonies expresly against himself and his cause and not one expresly for them but what his fellow-schismaticks afforded him Next having supposed upon his own strongly-dreaming imagination without one direct place of any Authentick writer against clouds of most plain Testimonies from Fathers and Councils frequent in our Controvertists and not touched by him in way of answer against the most visible practice and universal belief of the whole Catholick world that the Pope is onely a private Patriarch and hath no right of Jurisdiction over the universal Church And lastly out of a few Testimonies witnessing de facto that Kings did erect and remove Patriarchates without any word excluding the Churches precedent orders having concluded that such a power belonged de jure to Kings and was annext to a Crown These three things most gravely supposed he goes about to clear the Church of England from the imputation of casting off obedience to the Bishop of Rome at the Reformation which is the intent of this Chapter But first he lays down at large the whole history of Schism ommitting onely the main things that might disgrace it and by what degrees or steps this miserable Kingdom and Church came to renounce the obedience to those Ecclesiastical superiors who had by their own confession for eight or nine hundred years steered that-then-secure Barque in a calm unity of Faith and which Authority all the then present world except King Henry's now friend but late Antagonist Luther acknowledged and submitted to First he tells us this was done by the Clergy in a Synod recognizing the King to be supreme Head of the Church of England Secondly By their submitting themselves to the King and thirdly the definition of the Universities and Monasteries after debate that the Pope had nothing to do more in England then any other extern Bishop that is nothing at all And all this in this sort concluded subscribed and confirmed by their corporal oaths which word corporal was well put in for their Souls and Consciences never went along with it was afterwards turn'd into Acts of Parliament in which it was resolved upon the question to defie the Pope and all his works In answer to which though a bare narration how a Schism was made deserve none yet to devoid it of al excuse it may pretend to I object first that it did not originally spring from Conscience no not even an erroneous one but from manifest malice and viciousness Next that the Kingdoms assent to this il originiz'd breach was not free And thirdly that though both these were granted yet this act of theirs so largely laid out by Doctor Hammond is truly and properly a Schism and entitles them schismaticks nay the more the Doctor dilates upon it the more schismatical he makes the breach of which the two latter himself though never so loath must acknowledge unless he will deny his own words To begin with the first all the world knows that till King Henry violenced the breach all England both Clergy and Laity were as equally and as peaceably conjoyned to the Catholike Church under the government of her supreme Pastour the Bishop of Rome as either France or Spain are now neither did they ever express any scrupulosity that they had remained under such a Government ever since the Conversion of their first
Communion of the Faithful This Rule therefore broken or rejected dissolves all positive Communion amongst Christians both in Faith and Sacraments For what tie could they possibly have to communicate in any thing consequent to Faith as Sacraments Government or any good work unless they first communicate in faith the rule and ground of those Sacraments Government and good works and how can they communicate in faith if there be no Infallibility to binde them to an Unity in it The denying therefore of this Infallibility is the reason of all Schism and even of Heresie too nay it selfe is the Heresie of Heresies opening a liberty for every man to embrace his owne new-fangled opinions and introducing principles of incertitude and at best probability in Religion whose natural course is to wander at last into a Civil kind of Atheism Nor can there be any rational pretence to oblige mens consciences to a Religion whose conâ—est uncertainty must needs infer an absolute abolishment of all Church discipline and content it selfe with a meer voluntary obedience that is legitimaâ—e all Schism by taking away the very possibility of Schismatizing Another reason may be given why the denying this infallibility perverts quite overthrows all unity in Church-government For the preservation of the Churches unity in government being essential to Religion that is to the Art of breeding up mankind to know and love God it cannot possibly be conceived to be of humane but divâ—ne institution and therefore being taught and instituted by Christ belongs to Faith and so requires to be recommended by the same never-eâ—ring Rule which teaches us the rest of his Doctrine He therefore that denies this Infallibility hath no sufficient reason to beleeve the Article of the Churches Government and consequently will easily finde evasion to excuse his obedience to her commands The Unity of the Church being thus clearly delivered there needs no new task to shew what Schism is it being nothing else but the unknitting and dissolving these several manners of this Unity and Communion and in breaking aâ—under that tye and obligation by which these Unions of the several members with one another and of all with the Head are firm'd and made inviolable What remaines to be done is onely to shew that this Anatomy of Schism is the perfect picture nay the very Sceleton of the carkasse-Church of England and that they have infring'd the lawes of Unity in all the aforesaid manners And as for the first which is the Unity of all the Members under one Head or Chief Bishop and Pastour of the Church in whom at the time of the breach all the Hierarchical Order was summed up as in the highest top of that Heaven-reaching Climax you confesse here Sect. 5. that you cast it out of this Island The Authority I say of the chief Pastourship of the Bishop of Rome to which you and the whole Church you were then in were subject acknowledged by you not Patriarchal onely but a large step higher to wit universally extended over all Patriarchs and the whole Church was that which you cast out and subtracted your selfe from its obdiencee If then you will hold to your former grounds so largely to your disadvantage laid in your third Chapter that it is Schism in a Deacon or Priest to disobey a Bishop in a Bishop to refuse subjection to his Aroh-Bishop c. How will you excuse your selves from Schism in rejecting the Authority of the Head of the Church unless you can evidence that Authority null that is that Doctrine false to which you had been subject ever since your first Conversion as to a more superiour Governour than either Bishop Arch-Bishop Primate or Patriarch In vaine then was your long frivolous digression that Kings may erect and translate Patriarchates since a greater Authority than a Patriarch was rejected by you and cast out of this Island which no King ever pretended to erect and remove at pleasure In vain do you think to shelter your Schism under the wings of the Regal power since your King being at that time actually under the Pope as far as concerned Ecclesiastical matters and acknowledging his supreme Pastourship lies himself as deeply obnoxious to the charge of Schism as you his subjects and followers or rather much more as being the Ringleader of the breach So as no plea is so unwarrantable as to bring him for your excuse who is the person accounted most guilty and who needs a plea himself for his own far more inexcusable Schism and disobedience But what excuse you bring or not bring concerns us not at present onely this remains certain and acknowledg'd that you cast out of the Island that Supreme Authority in which at that time the Faithful of the Church you were in communicated and in which chiefly consisted the Unity of the Hierarchical Government arising orderly and knit np peaceably in acknowledgment of and subjection to that One Head Whether you did this justly or no belongs to the formal part of Schism and shall be discussed in the following Section Next for what concerns the Unity of one Member-Church with another it is no lesse evident you have broke asunder all positive Communion not in Government onely as hath been shewn but in Faith and Sacraments with all Churches which communicated with the See of Rome whom before your Schism you 〈◊〉 the onely and sole true Members of Christs mystical Body That you broke from their Communion in Government hath been already manifested from your rejecting her Supreme Governour in the subjection to whom they all communicated Nor is it less evident that you have broke from their Faith as appeares from the irreconcileable diversity of the points of Faith between us and the large difference between your 39. Articles and our Council of Trent Nor has the Unity you and those Churches had in Sacraments escaped better Five of them being par'd away as unnecessary the sixth transelementated from the sacred price of our Redemption into the egena elementa of bread and wine and the seventh onely that is Baptism with much adoe remaining inviolate lest you should forfeit the name of Christians also together with the reality If the denial of these and your styling the best act of our Religion to wit the the oblation of the Unbloudy Sacrifice in your 31. Article a blasphemous fiction and pernicious imposture and lastly if your persecuting us to death be signes of a positive communion with us then killing may be called kindness and railing votes against us may perhaps be styled Communicatory letters with us All Communication then both positive and negative with the Church you were in formerly was by you renounced yet at least some pretence of excuse had been producible if departing out of that Church you had either kept or renew'd Communion with some other which was acknowledged by all the World or at least by your selves before the breach to have been a true one But you can pretend no such thing as
Communication with any Church either true or even fals For first at your dawning or rather twilight in King Henry's dayes for your progress hath not been to noon-day-light but to midnight you had nothing at all to doe with any other Church in Christendom Since that time though you have indeed a kinde of Communication with some few of your fellow Schismaticks yet if well examin'd it is negative onely Faction against Rome initiates you into so much friendship as to converse with the Calvinists sometimes to call them Brethren somtimes to be merry with your doublejug Companions in the Synod of Dort of whose drunken and beastly behaviour wallowing worse then swine in their own vomits I have heard a Pillar of your own Church scandalously complain having too much spirit of draff forced by them into his queaâ—ier stomach Though I say you may thus communicate with them in eating and drinking in which acts * before you made All Communion consist yet any other positive tie and obligation either with them or any others to conserve you in Communion so as you may be said to make up one Ecclesiastically-politick Body united by some inviolable Order such an obligation I say could never be discover'd between you and any other Church good or bad true or fals The Greek Church holding almost all that we doe and scarce two points with you which are against us as your friend Alexander Rosse hath particularly told you The Lutherans hold much more with us in opposition to you than with you in opposition to us The Calâ—inists are excluded by the most understanding Protestants from their Church since they admit not the Government of Bishops held by the others to be of Divine Right nor the Protestants Fundamental or as the Doctor calls it The Bottome of the Foundation of the Reformation to wit that the King is Head of the Church The 39. Articles which as the Kings Supremacy is the Imprimis so these are all the Items of the Protestants Faith obtain not a total admission from any Church but themselves nor amongst themselves neither their great Champion Mr. Chillingworth rejecting them at his pleasure Nor is there any visible form of Government uniting them all together but they are forced to fly sencelesly to an invisible one either of onely Christ in Heaven or onely Charity pretences to gull the easie vulgar not to satisfie prudent men who know that the Church though it be a spiritual Common-wealth breeding up Soules to a state of a future Eternity yet while it is here on earth it is a Common-wealth of Christians visibly comporting or discomporting themselves in order to Christs laws of which the Church is the Keeper and Conserver and therefore it must have visible Governours without expecting a miraculous recourse to Christ in Heaven to resolve emergent difficulties or to cherish and punish her weldemeaned or misdemeaned subjects But for a more full demonstration that the Church of England has no perfect Communion with the Greek Lutheran Calvinist or any other Church I refer the Reader to the learned Exomologâ—sis or Motives c. of Mr. Cressy a late Protestant Dean but now Religious of the ancient and holy Order of St. Benet where the Doctor may also read among other controversies excellently treated the charge of Schism sufficiently prov'd against his Church Perhaps the Doctor will alledge that their positive Communion with other reformed Churches consists in the acknowledgment of Gods Word and the holding to it But I would ask him whether he means they agree in the Name of Gods Word or in the Thing or Sence of it If in the Name onely then all that have the title of Christians that is all Hereticks and Schismaticks in the World are of one Communion nothing being more rife in their mouths and pens than wrong alledged testimonies out of the Bible the bare name then is not sufficient it must be the Thing that is the sence and meaning of Gods Word in which he must make their positive Communion consist but since they have no one certain known and commonly acknowledged Rule by which to interpret Gods word and fetch out the true inward sence lurking in the imperspicuous bark of the letter it followes they have no positive way or meanes to communicate in the same sence and therefore no positive unity can be grounded on that pretence And it would be as sencelesse to object that they communicate at least in fundamentals found in Gods word since the Scripture not telling them they cannot tell certainly themselves which points are fundamentals which not all being there with equal authority and like tenour delivered and proposed to them And if we should goe to reason to know what are fundamentals surely reason would give it that the rules of Faith and Government are more fundamental than all the rest No positive communion therefore have they with our Church as little with their fellow schismaticks it being the nature of boughs separated not to grow together into one tree after they have once lost connection with the root Where they are cut off there they lie and though for a short time they retain some verdure and some little moystning sap counterfeiting life that is as much Religion as serves them to talk of God and Christ yet after a while they wither roâ— and molder away into an hundred atomes of dust or else if they chance to be gathered up or taken away sooner they serve for nothing but to be thrown into the fire SECT 10. That the reforming Protestants were and are guilty of the formal part of Schism THat you have made then a material breach or schism is as evident as fact and reason can make the most manifest thing to the clearest understanding The formality of schism comes next to be enquired into which consists in its injustifiablenesse or doing it without just causes or motives which consequently unlesse you can shew you must unavoidably be concluded formal schismaticks And though the testimonies of the Fathers which you formerly produced affirming that there can be no just cause given of schism render all further proof unnecessary yet to make this matter stil more manifest I desire Mr. Hammond in the Churches behalfe that he would give me leave to summon him to the Bar of Reason that we may see what he can answer for himselfe and his friends whose defence here he undertakes Cath. Do not you know that the Church in whose bowels your ancestors til K. Henry began the breach were bred had no other form of Government then that which now is of the Bishop of Rome held chiefe Pastour of the universal Church and supreme in Ecclesiastical matters and that til the breach was made you held as sacred and were under that government Dr. I pretend not to deny it for this is the very authority I told you in my 7. c. 5. sect we cast out of this Island Besides Kings can erect and remove Patriarchates at
be rendred that the Government was injust ' which as you see could not Irrational therefore was that present perswasion of theirs and if so not sprung from reason therefore from unreasonable passion that is from vice therefore sinful and obnoxious to punishment as all other like perswasions are which make men think and act against their duties and obligations Besides all the Logick we have hitherto heard assures us nothing can convince the understanding but evidence and therefore men take so much paines about the moods and figures that the discourse may prove evident wherefore whatsoever assent comes not out of Evidence must come from our will and wilfulnesse and by consequence cannot be free from desert of punishment if it happen to be wrong and wrongfull Neither availes it to pretend invincible ignorance since no man living if free from a proud spirit can be so sottish as not to know that it is his obligation to obey his Superiors so long setled in the possession of their command till most open and undeniable Evidences and not seeming ones onely should discover that Authority null And if the obligation be of belief he must condemn the Churches judgment in not seeing the falsity of her doctrine and prefer his own before millions more learned who liv'd and dy'd in that faith which savours too strong of a self-conceited pride or else imagin so little sincerity left in the Church that all see and wilfully adhere to a known falshood but himselfe which is a plain sign of a rash and Pharisaical presumption And are not those punishable yet the Doctor would stroke such a fellow on the head and give him sugar plums for following his present perswasion and self-conceit which he nicknames conscience Nay he highly applauds his first Reformers whose conscience no doubt was tainted with the same leaven The Material Schism then which was manifestly your fact is made formal by your want of evidence that the doctrine was erroneous and consequently her Government violable Both which joyn'd together give you in plain termes your own name of flat proper and formal Schismaticks and entitle you to all the bed-roll of vices and curses which you hoarded up for your self and your friends in your first Chapter SECT 11. The Doctors argument that the Popes power in England was deriv'd under the Kings Concession refuted BUt it is now high time to returne to overlook the work who after the declaration of the matter of fact confesses no great hold can be taken from the freeness of the Clergy's determination and therefore the whole difficulty devolves to this one enquiry whether the Bishop of Rome were Supreme Head or Governour of the Church of England in the reign of King Henry the eighth That is we are come about again to the beginning of the Book But I am mistaken he tells us he hath largely disproved in his Chap. 4 5 6. all pretensions from St. Peters Supremacy and from Englands Conversion to whose particular answers I refer the Reader for full satisfaction and he has now invented a new ground of the Popes Supremacy in England to wit the voluntary Concession of our Kings What the Doctor meanes I cannot imagine Some particular priviledges and as I may say pious curtesies have out of a special respect been granted by our Kings to that See to whom they owe their first knowledge of Christ and his Law but these are not the thing in debate The right of Supreme Authority is our question now who ever held this to come from the Concession of our Kings Yet this ayr-beating Champion of Schism first fancies this to be our tenet and then beats it all to dirt He is as valiant as Sir Iohn Falstaff let him tell his own story and hee 'l make you beleeve he has kill'd eleven Enemies when but one opposed him We onely found the Popes Primacy upon his Succession to St. Peter This is the onely adversary-point the Doctor is to combate which he hath most weakly opposed with grosse mistakes palpable contradictions to Scripture and pinning all the words that made for his purpose to every testimony as hath been shew'd But to counterfeit a triumph he makes every trivial thing done either by or about the Pope to be the very ground of his Primacy and then falls to work and impugnes them as really as if he thought we held them The Pope cannot doe any good action or convert a Nation but that must be the ground of his Universal Pastorship over us and be impugned accordingly A beggerly penny cannot be given to the Pope by our Kings for pious uses and out of a gratefull obligation but the poore Peter-pence and such like petty grants must presently be the Popes Universal Authority given him by the Concession of our Kings and that as such must be impugned The Kings of England France c. cannot be said by G de Heimburgh to be free from swearing obedience to the Pope at their instalment an obligation peculiar to the Empire of Germany but presently the Doctor concludes hence an absolute power in our Princes I suppose he means in Ecclesiastical matters for in temporal none denies it so as now the very ceremony of swearing obedience to the Pope is become the very granting of the formal universal Pastorship and they that doe it not are concluded to be free from the Popes Jurisdiction though he knows well enough that the King of France who as he confesses performes no such ceremonious courtesie towards him acknowledg'd notwithstanding himselfe subject to him as the Head of Gods Church Lastly which he touches here againe he cannot read in some Authors that Kings de facto executed the erecting and removing of Patriarchates though the testimony doe not exclude the Churches fore ordering it but presently the Popes Universal Power must be supposed to be transdignifi'd into a private Patriarchate and as a Patriarchate impugned Thus nothing can come amiss to the Doctor Every argument he undertakes to manage is equally strong and unresistable A pot gun will serve him to batter downe the walls of Rome He was borne a Controvertist and it is an even wager whether hee be better in the gift of Use and Applicatioon or in the Art of Dispute and Consutation Next comes another Dilemma or forked Argument which though proceeding on the former false supposition needs no answer yet for the Readers recreation we will afford a glance First it is observable that he never brings this bug-bear Argument upon the stage but when he has made a Prologue for it of some forg'd supposition of his own and then the Thing in vertue of that acts and talkes through the vizard of a mistake and yet ere it comes to a Conclusion the Doctors weak reason cracks to make both ends meet The summe of it is this that The Authority of the Pope was either originally in our Kings so as they could lawfully grant it to the Pope or not if not then the grant
no doubt bid God give his foes a rap Then then it was that that second Solomon Robert Wisedom inspired questionless from Heaven warbled out that melodious and exquisit hymn which with a sweet twang closes up the book of Psalmes Preserve us Lord by thy dear word From Turk and Pope defend us Lord. And the rest of that devout piece able to ravish any Christian heart to hear it These and such other rarities of Reformation were then added as harmonious Epithalamiums to this under-age Bride-Church to celebrate her espousals or marriage with her Infant-Head After this the Dr. treates of the Reformation made under Queen Elizabeth in his 15. Paragraph consisting of five or six lines on either side a long Parenthesis which Parenthesis tells us partly strange news that Queens as well as Kings have according to our Laws Regal Power partly open fictions that this plenitude of power is as well in Sacred as Civil affairs and that they have this by the Constitution of our Monarchy Whereas he cannot but know there had been many a Monarch in England ere their Schismatical Laws were made which first allowed the King a plenitude of power in sacred matters In the next place he touches the ordination of their new created Bishops evidenced as he saith out of the records to have been performed according to the ancient Canons by the imposition of the hands of the Bishops Yet this modest evidencing Record durst never shew its head for about fifty years notwithstanding the outcries made by Catholicks against the pretended ordinations of Protestant Bishops and strong presumptions to the contrary till at length when the memory of that present age was past which might discountenance that pretence and argue it of impudence out steps a new old Record assuring us that they were regularly ordained And this is the firmest Basis the Protestant Ministry or Bishops have to witnesse that they have any more Authority to preach then an Anabaptistical Zelot whose profession is perhaps a Weaver his Calling his own Intrusion his Pulpit a Tub and his Diocesse a Conventicle But suppose you had a material Mission from the hands of Catholick Bishops and that Mr. Mason had vindicated you in this point yet can either Mr. Mason or any else even pretend to manifest that those Catholick Bishops gave you a Mission that is sent and Authorised you to preach Protestant Doctrines or could do it in case they would having no such power from the Church from whom they have all their power Unlesse you evidence this both Mr. Mason and Dr. Hammond may as well say nothing For since they gave you no such authority as you make use of that is to preach against the formerly received Faith nor sent you any such errand as you now declare and preach it follows that whatever you do to prejudice and extinguish that doctrine to propagate which they meant your Mission is done onely upon your own head without any authority but your own selfe-assumed licentiousnesse to talk and say what you list not derived from the consecrated hands of your Catholick Ordainers but from your own unhallowed schismatical hearts But Mr. Dr. is always afraid where no fear is answering at large here a supposed objection of ours against Q. Elizabeth for unchairing some Bishops and installing others But alas I am more courteous to the Queen than the Doctor imagines and think no worse of her but onely that in that fact she did after kind for supposing her once the Head of Schisinaticks and Chief-Bishopesse of their Church I see no reason but she should depose Bishops Catholikely affected and install heretical ones and in a word she and her Bishops voâ—e and act whatever they thought good and I cannot tell what should hinder them since the now rejected Authority of Gods Church could not All the superstructures of the Reformation then which the Doctor so often and so largely in this Chapter hath shown to be done regularly I grant him to have been done as regularly as his own heart could wish or mans wit imagine for the Authority of the Church being schismatically renounced and the infallible rule of Faith which could onely oblige men to an unanimous beleefe being broken and rejected these grounds I say being layed I yeeld that the superstructure not onely of their heresie but even of Lutheranism Zuinglianism Calvinism Arminianism Puritanism Brownism Socinianism Presbyterianism Anabaptism with those of Quakers and Adamites but even of Turcism and Atheism were all very regular orderly rational and connatural superstructures upon the forelaid foundations The ruine of all Faith must needs accompany the renouncing of Certainty Yet I had forgot to let the Reader see how the Doctor excuses the Queen for devesting some Bishops of their dignity and his excuse is because those Bishops refused to take the oath of Supremacy concluding that therefore she dealt justly in devesting those Bishops which thus refused to secure her Government or to approve their fidelity to their lawfull Soveraign By which one may see the Doctor knowes not the difference between the oath of Allegiance and the oath of Supremacy The oath of Allegiance or fidelity was instituted expresly for that purpose what needed she then presse them to take the oath of Supremacy to approvâ— their Fidelity or Allegiance cannot one be a true subject to his King by acknowledging him his Liege Soveraign unless he will take his oath he is Head of the Church As if neither any of the former Kings of England nor any of the Catholike Princes that now are or ever have been had so much as one true subject because none of them takes the Oath of Supremacy What followes is onely a narration how the Schism went on and the rent was made worse At length he shuts up this Chapter by pronouncing an absolute Negative of their guiltiness of Schism from this one evidence that all was done by those to whom and to whom onely the rightful power legally pertained to wit the King and Bishops of this Nation So as the King must be Head of the Church that 's concluded hoagh all the world say and swear the contrary though himselfe have not brought one express word to prove it Nay more he hath EVIDENCE it is no Schism because the King and the Bishops voted it as if whatsoever the King and Bishops vote let it be what schismatical doctrine it will though Socianism and Turcism it must not be schismatical so blind is prejudice that it can neither see without its own spectacles nor beyond its own narrow limits The Doctor discourses all this Chapter long as if he made account all the world were comprised in one poor corner of it England like the home-bred fellow that thought the Sun set at the next town if a King or Queen here with a few Bishops partly out of feare partly out of favour some out of malice and contradicted by others decree any thing it makes the case irrefragable
Christ to be the Head of all Christian Unity or that Church to be the conservatory for ever of all Christian Truth more than any other Bishop or Church of the Apostles ordaining or planting Where I find almost as many absurdities hudled together as words For first what signifies the Bp. of Rome was not appointed by Christ Christ was not on earth when St. Peters Successors in the See of Rome sate there and when he ordained St. Peter chief of the Apostles Saint Peter was not yet Bishop of Rome Next if he meanes that St. Peter was not appointed by our Saviour as the Head of Christian Unity St. Hierom's testimony I suppose will be as good as the Doctors word who tels us Inter duodecim c. Amongst the twelve one was chosen that A HEAD being constituted the OCCASION OF SCHISM MIGHT BE TAKEN AWAY Where we see expresly Saint Peter the Popes Predecessor was advanced to be HEAD and this to take away occasion of Schism that is to be HEAD OF CHRISTIAN UNITY Thirdly hence also follows that Christian Unity is conserved by him more than by any other Bishop contrary to the Doctors assertion Fourthly he equivocates in the word Roman Church and takes in it a sence which he knowes we never mean't Our acception of it being of the Universal Church communicating with the Mother Church of Rome his of the private Diocess of Rome it selfe Fifthly it is groundless to affirm even of this private Church of Rome it selfe that she is not the conservatory of Christian Truth more than any other since the Doctor cannot but know the Fathers are of a contrary beleefe holding that the two chief Apostles dying there bequeathed to that Church as a sacred Legacy a greater vigour of Christian Tradition Again Histories and Fathers witnessing so unanimously her firm persistance above the rest objections often urged by our Authors to that purpose the Doctor might at least have afforded us one testimony of the contrary besides his own bare saying Lastly what is the Doctors intent in saying Christ did not appoint the Church of Rome conservatory for ever of all Christian truth What meanes this canting Parenthesis for ever As if Christ might perhaps appoint her to conserve truth for a while but meant after some time to discharge her of that office But this Parenthesis the Doctor reserved for a starting-hole that he might at pleasure cry out she had erred when he had found out some odd testimony which with the help of an id-est-clause might overthrow the Authority of the whole World His second Defence for relinquishing the means to preserve Unity of Faith which we charge them with is this that The way provided by Christ and his Apostles for preserving the Unity of Faith c. is fully acknowledged by their Reformation Which way sayes the Doctor is made up of two Acts of Apostolical Providence First their resolving upon some few heads of efficacy to the planting of Christian life through the world and preaching and depositing them in every Church Secondly their establishing an excellent subordination of Church-officers c. As for the first of these Acts as he calls them of Apostolical Providence if these two Heads he speaks of as thus deposited be indeed sufficient to form a Christian life in order to the attainment of Eternal bliss and that they came down certainly to us by this depository way at first in the Churches and so derived successively age by age Dr. Hammond is suddenly become a Proselyte and a plain Papist For we neither say we have any point of Faith superfluous for the Community of the Faithful nor that those we have came to us by any other meanes than seruando depositum by preserving uncorrupted those necessary doctrines thus deposited But I fear much when the matter comes to scanning Mr. Hammond in this his doctrine neither goes to Church nor stayes at home but halts very lamely in the mid-way He stayes not at home for his Church of England is so far from holding the points deposited by the Apostles in Churches a certain way to preserve Unity of Faith that nothing is more abominable to her than the name of Tradition This appeares by the sixth Article or Canon of Queen Elizabeth's female-headed General Council where the Scripture is made the sole ground of Faith and nothing affirmed as necessary to Salvation but what is built upon it whereas the Doctor here builds points necessary to salvation for sure those few heads of special efficacy to the planting a Christian life can be no lesse upon their preaching and depositing them in the Churches nay more the Unity of Faith that is Faith it self for Faith if not one is none upon this way of depositing Yet for all this he will not goe to Church neither though he stay not at home For ask him are those few Heads all that are necessary he will tell you nâ— yet which be those necessary Heads how many and why no more were thus delivered since this he sayes is A WAY TO PRESERVE UNITY IN FAITH and on the other side he sees what multiplicity is bred by the diverse interpretations of Scripture ask him I say these questions and no particular account can he give you only he had a mind to say somthing in geneneral lest he might be thought to have utterly contemned all Traditions Again these Churches in which were deposited those few Heads of such special eefficacy to plant Christian life were they infallible that is such as we may certainly trust to in their preserving that depositum if they were they might as well be infallible in other necessary points also and so the Doctor hath slipt by good hap into our Rule of Faith and though hoodwink't goes to Church again But if they be not infallible that is connot certainly tell us that they delivered us the right depositum and the same they received then the Drremaines as he is and hath brought nothing to his purpose For since Unity of Faith cannot be preserved without some efficacious meanes of bringing it down to us inerrably true unless this depositing was such as must upon necessity continue for ever which is that we call Infallibility or Indefectibility of the Church the providence of the Apostles had been very sleight and nothing at all to the Doctors purpose that is it had been no efficacious way to preserve Unity of Faith He addes afterwards And all this is asserted and acknowledged by every true son of the Church of England as zealously as is pretended by any Romanist Here again the Doctor seemes to step forwards towards the Church and to draw a great troup of backward unwilling Protestants after him For if they hold as I conceive he meanes by these words the doctrines deposited in the Church as zealously as the Romanists they must hold them as of Faith for so farre our well-grounded zeal carries us and that the depositary is so trusty as
it cannot deceive us Now you see the Doctor is got as farre as the Church-door But when he heares them within the Church talk that a company of men can be Infallible he leaps you back at one jump as far as the Sceptick Schooles of the Heathen Academicks But how could Mr. Hammond imagine this pretence sufficient to acquit him from Scism in renouncing the way to preserue Unity of Faith or to prove that he and his fellowes still fully acknowledged it The way to preserve Unity of Faith held by all the Christian world before their breach was the beleefe of the Churches Infallibility and we think mans wit cannot invent a better for that End Either then this must be the way to preserve Unity in Faith or some other if this you manifestly broke and rejected it as hath been shewn and as the 19th Article of Queen Elizabeths new Creed professedly declares if some other whatever it is it must needs include a fallibility and uncertainty in the Church of the doctrine she teaches Wherefore either evidence to us that a professed and beleeved fallibility can be a better way to preserve Unity in Faith than a beleefe of Infallibility or else grant that renouncing the latter you renounced the best and most efficacious way to conserve such an Unity The second way to preserve Unity in Faith here mentioned by the Doctor as fully and zealously acknowledged by him his fellows is the establishment by our Saviour and his Apostles of an excellent subordination of all inferiour Officers of the Church to the Bishop in every City of the Bishops in every province to their Metropolitans of the Metropolitans in every region or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to Patriarchs or Primates allowing also amongst them such a primacy of Order or Dignity a◠might be proportionable to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c Thus the Doctor In answer to which w◠will examine a while whether this way thu◠laid out be indeed the way to preserve Unity i◠Faith For if notwithstanding this subordination no Priest is bound to beleeve his Bishop nor Bishop his Metropolitan nor Metropolitan his Patriarch how can this conduce to the Unity of Faith But peradventure he will say this subordination in obedience is a great help to keep out errours and then if this be so we must take into consideration how this point relates to Unity of Government as it is a means to conserve Truth the breaking of which Unity is called Schism So the question in that case is reduced to the examine how his subordination provides against Schism Let us admit then that all the world were made up of Churches governed in this Order as the Doctor hath put them I would ask if in the time of the Arian Heresie a Priest had dissented from his Bishop an Arian but yet consented with his Metropolitan had it been schism in so doing The Doctor must answer No for the Metropolitan being of higher Authority than the Bishop the adherence to him would more secure the Priest from schism than the relinquishing the Bishop could endanger him Next if a Bishop dissent from an heretical Metropolitan but consents with a Catholick Patriarch is it yet Schism Surely no since the same reason clears him that cleared the Priest before Again if the Metropolitan dissent from his own Primate or Patriarch but agree with all the rest is it yet schism Certainly no for the collection of all the rest being of greater Authority than any one in particular can by consequence more excuse him than the other can condemn him Hitherto then we have found none of the Doctors Amulets against Shism Let us proceed If a Patriarch dissent from the first from the Doctors 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but yet concedes to all the rest is it yet schism The Doctor answers no For in regard he owed the other onely something more of a civil respect as a younger brother does an Elder without any inferiority to him in Command or Jurisdiction it cannot be a Schism Forwards still Suppose some Nation or some Patriarch dissent from a General Council is it yet Schism still the Dr. answers No for in his third Chapter which branch't Schism into all its Species he put no such schism as that against a General Council How then hath Mr. Hammond by this new way provided against Schism if according to this Subordination all the Church may fall together by the eares and all may find lawful excuses to secure them from being Scismaticks since the oeconomy of that distracted Family is so order'd that neither any one in particular nor any in common have any tie to hold them to the rest without which ty of consent in matters of faith this imagin'd subordination can no way be a meanes to preserve Unity of Faith and conquently the Drs. Church government without some stronger obligation to knit up all this Order in an Unity is not an Act of Providence either worthy our Saviour or his Apostles But what is become of the King or Emperour all this while is he no body now who before was the Chief It seemes the Apostles made no reckoning of him in all their Providence It is wonderful Mr. Hammond should so forget himself and proceed so inconsonantly to his own grounds that whereas before the King was Chief Governour Head of the Church Supreme in Ecclesiastical matters over and above both Metropolitans and Patriarchs c. Now in treating the Government of the Church instituted to preserve the Unity of Faith he thinks the Head of the Church whom he had formerly exalted above all that is called HOLY not worth the mentioning Does he think the Unity of such a Head conduces nothing to the preservation of Unity in Faith which yet he grants to a far more inferiour Bishop or accounts he it a small sin for a Patriarch to dissent from so Sacred a Head of his Church and his lawful Superiour nay Supreme in Ecclestastical matters and to whom the rightful power as the Doctor told us in those things legally pertaines Yet Mr. Hammond had good reason to omit it For though he may talk of and advance that doctrine in common so to escape the Supremacy of the Pope for you must conceive that he had rather have even a Bramble rule over their Church than that all o're spreading Cedar the Bishop of Rome yet he declines it as handsomely as he can when he should apply that doctrine to particulars as is seen in our present case For indeed who would not laugh at him if he had told us as he must had he introduced the King that it was the heighth of Schism to dissent in a point of Faith from a Thing which neither the Catholikes nor yet Protestants as you here see acknowledge but a kind of a Lay-Elder an Office which were it not three dayes older might seem borrowed from their dearly beloved brethren the Presbyterians Yet the Doctor is grown kind and allows
that the Scripture grants to S. Peter some Primacy of Order or Dignity If so Mr. Hammond then for any thing you know it may be a Primacy of Iurisdiction And it stands onely upon the certainty of your and our interpretation of Scripture whether it signifie such a Primacy or no. Neither indeed could it be any other if any hold may be taken from your words For S. Peter as you grant and as the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Simon the first of the Apostles plainly evidence had some kind of Primacy then given him and if it were then given him he then had it that is he had it in our Saviours life time but you told us before that S. Iohn had the dignity of place which is the same with Primacy of Order before all others in Christs life time even before S. Peter himself The Primacy then which S. Peter had in Christs life time must be some other Primacy and what Primacy could this be but the Primacy of Iurisdiction Again if by this Primacy he allows S. Peter he means such a precedency as hath any effect or efficacity in the Church according to the nature and degree of a Primacy this is all the substance of the Popes Authority and all that is held by us as of Faith but if he means by Primacy there a meerely inefficacious and dry Presidency and Precedency of Order such as is with us the walking on the right hand or sitting first at a Table without any superiority more than a courteous deference of the rest then the Doctor must imagine our Blessed Saviour had no better thing to do when he made S. Peter the first but to take order for feare the good Apostles should fall to complement who should sit go or speak in the first place and consequently this tenet being an Act of our Saviours register'd in Scripture must bee a courteous point of Faith obliging all the Apostles under pain of damnation to be civil and make a leg to S. Peter In the next paragraph the Doctor is full of feares and jealousies and makes a great doubt that the subjection of this Church to the Authority of the Bishop of Rome will never be likely to tend to the Unity of the whole And why think you so Mr. Doctor doe you not find evidently that the Church before Luther and K Henry renounced the said Authority enjoy'd most perfect peace and tranquillity as those who are under that government doe most blessedly now and on the contrary that after that Authority was rejected nothing has succeeded the rejecters but perpetual turmoiles schisms divisions and subdivisions into Sects and daily mutations in Faith and Government as far as the temporal sword did not hinder them Is not this as evident as all History and even our very eyes can witnesse a truth Lastly doe not the present distractions you now groan under awake you to see that the source of all your misery springs from the leaking Cistern of Schism you have digg'd for your selves Did your Ancestours find so little Unity under the Government of the Roman Catholike Church or have you found such a constant Unity since you left it that you can presume the re-admitting that Government is never likely to tend to Unity Yet you cannot think otherwise unlesse all other Churches of Christians paid that subjection too Do you your obligation why should their backwardnes in their duties make you deny yours Besides whom doe you call Christians all that cry Lord Lord that is professe the name of Christ but deny the onely certain Rule to come to the knowledge of his Law such as were the Gnosticks Carpocratians Donatists Socinians and all the heresies that ever arose since the infancy of the Church or doe you mean by the word Christians onely those qui faciunt voluntatem Patris doe the will of our heavenly Father that is all that hear the Church or have a certain and common Rule to know what Christs Law is if so all these acknowledge subjection to the head-Head-Bishop of Rome never denied by any but those who at the same time they denied it cast themselves out of the Church refusing to hear her You say the Eastern Churches had not acknowledg'd it ere your departure Admit they had not can their pattern warrant you more than it can warrant the Arrians Nestorians Eutychians c. unless you be certain they did well in it They rejected it indeed and for their reward were by all the Christian world till you falling into the same fault began to call them Brothers and by all your Ancestours justly held and called Schismaticks Yet when they were in their right mood they admitted it as much as any Roman-Catholike as appeares in the Acts of the Florentine Council to which they subscribed nay even when they were disgusted and refused Unity they acknowledged the power of the Bishop of Rome as appeares by a testimony of Gerson cited by your friend Bishop Bramhall against himselfe in his just vindication of the Church of England p. 101. which witnesses that the Greeks departed from the then-Pope with these words Wee acknowledge thy power we cannot satisfie your covetousness live by your selves His second doubt is that the Bishop of Rome is not able to administer that vast Province I wonder how he did of old and why he may not do the same again as well as formerly But the Dr. calls it a politick probleme whether hee can or no and would have it judged by those who are by God entrusted with the Flock Id est saith he by the Princes the nursing Fathers in every Church It is indeed a politick probleme that is a question concerning Government but since it concernes Government Ecclesiastical it falls not under the scanning of temporal Politicians The Christian Common-wealth would be brought to a pretty pass if the Government of Gods Church so long acknowledged as left by Christ and continued in the Church 300. yeares by their own confession ere there were any Christian Princes should anew be call'd into question by humane policy But these two words of Scripture Nursing Fathers make it plain to the Doctor satisfy'd with any thing himself fancies that the Government and Jurisdiction over the Church belongs to Kings as if to nurse cherish and foster were to rule order govern and command or as if Ioseph who was Foster-father to our Saviour was as good as or the same with God Almighty who was his true Father And I wonder where this Doctor ever read that our Saviour entrusted the Government of his Church and Ecclesiastical affaires to any but the Apostles Ecclesiastical persons or that any held Nero the Heathen Emperour to have right and title o be Head of the Church Again if our Saviour left that authority with his Apostles I would gladly know by what new Orders from Christ it came to be transfer'd from their Successors into the hands of secular Princes But the Doctor has
Sacraments Government nor any thing though never so sacred left by our Saviour hath found any security SECT 3. An examination of some common notes produced by Dr. Hammond to particularize his Clients to bee no Schismaticks HIs 9th Ch. undertakes to clear his Church from the 2d sort of his Schism against mutual â—â—arity to wit from that Schism which is against extern Peace or Communion Ecclesiastical And first he alledges for his plea that they have retain'd the right form of Government c. So that now Schism against Subordination or Government for they are all one which was the first general Head of Schism and also comprehended under the first species of the second Head as appeares C. 8. S. 2. is by the Doctors accurate method come to be under the second species also of the same second General Head Which is all one as if dividing vivens into Sensitive and Insensitive and then subdividing the Genus of Sensitive into the two Species of Rational and Irrational or Man and Beast he should first treat of Insensitive the first Genus and that done fall in hand with Sensitive the second and then under each Species of that returne to treat professedly of Insensitive again that is to speak of Trees Shrubs and Herbs when he should speak of men and creatures endued with sence Surely Doctor Hammond is more methodical in his Sermons otherwise the World must needs look upon him as another S. Iohn Baptist because hee preaches in a Wilderness But let us follow him through all his Mazes distinguish't by no orderly path but what his own inconstant and desultorious track makes First then he tells us that they retaiâ— the Form of Government in and under which the Apostles â—ounded Ecclesiastical Assemblies or Communion viz. that of the Bishop and his inferioâ— Officers in every Church As if the Arian Hereticks who denied Christ to be God and almost all heresies that ever broke from Gods Church did not retain afterwards the Authority of their own Bishops But what availed it either them or you but to the greater danger of damnation if you adhered to those Bishops who had rejected the Authority of their former Superiours and taught you doctrines contrary to the Order of Gods Church without whose order much lesse against it they had no Authority to teach at all Again you tell us of one piece of your Government that of Bishops constituted indeed by the Apostles but you tell us not of the main hinge of your Churches Government which is of the King being its Head and Supreme in Ecclesiastical matters This is the sum and top of your Churches Government put us not off with an odd end of it This is that for substituting which in stead of the Ecclesiastical Head you rejected wee charge you of Schism and breach of Communion Ecclesiastical for in so doing you cut Gods Church into as many single headed and consequently diverse-bodied and disparate Congregations as there are Kingdoms in Christendome Shew us that this your Novelty in Government was practised by the Apostles in their Assemblies or instituted by them or their Blessed Master and then you will say something to the point Remember your purest times of the first 300. yeares shew us that all that time the Church was ordered by the Emperours Presidency or that this Government was instituted by Christ and his Apostles If you cannot then tell us how comes it to be held now as a chief point of Faith You may not in reason think to uphold your self your by testimonies out of the following ages unles you wil disavow your own grounds for those ages were as you say all impure Lay your hand then on your heart Mr. Hammond and tell us in good sadness if you be not gravell'd in your own doctrine while you maintain this new Lay Ecclesiastical Government His second plea is that as they maintain the Order of Bishops so they submit to the exercise of it acknowledging the Authority of those Governors In answer to which no new thing is to be said this being the very same with the former only First changed into Secondly For the obeying submitting to and acknowledging the due Authority of Governours is the very formal maintaining and accepting the Government which was his first branch So as this is another orderly production of the Drs. methodical Head which vents it selfe in first secondly thirdly c. upon all occasions though both his first second and third bee the selfe-same formal thing His third plea is that they observe the circumstances necessary to the assembling themselves for publick worship First that of place Churches Secondly that of time the Lords day primitive Festivals As if all Schismaticks in the World doe not meet at some set times and in some appointed and set places Thirdly Formes of prayer and praises almost all out of our Mass and Breviary Celebration of Sacraments onely five of them being quite abolish't and three quarters of the sixth Sacramentals Copes and Surplisses which you might by the same principles call rags of Rome Preaching against Christ and his Church such doctrine as none ever sent you or your first Fore-fathers to preach Cathechising infecting and imbuing tender and easie minds with your tainted doctrine Fourthly that of Ceremonies such as the practice of the Primitive Church hath sent down recommended to us Pray by whom did she send them down and recommend them to you Examine wel and you shall find that the same authority recommended to you many more as from her though you only accepted of what you thought convenient Lastly that of discipline to binde all to these performances Doubtlesse all Sects in the world impose some obligation upon their subjects to keep them together else they could not bee a Sect. Yet that your tie either to that or any thing else concerning Government is as slack as may be is manifest out of the slender provision made against Schism according to the Protestant grounds See Part 3. Sect. 1. as I have shewn in my answer to the fore-going Chapter Neither are you beholding to your doctrine for any discipline sufficient to hold you together in Unity a professed fallibility is too weak for that but to the secular Power the threat of whose sword held you in awe for a while but as soon as that Power was dissolv'd your slack-sinew'd Church which no tie either in Reason or Conscience held together bewrayed its composition and like the statue seen by Nabuchadonosor fell all to pieces It were not amiss ere I leave these three pleas already mentioned to take a second survey of them that the Reader may visibly perceive how less than nothing this Doctor hath said either to his or indeed any purpose To make this discovery sincere we must mark his intent and scope in this Chapter which is to free or clear their Church from the breach of Commmunion Ecclesiastical which he makes to consist in such and such things Now
a man that goes about to clear another of an imputed fault should as I conceive propose the objected fault with the presumptions of the defendants guiltiness and then diluere objecta wipe off the stain of the accusations and clear his innocencie What does the Dr he takes no notice of what is objected but in stead of that onely reckons up some few indifferent things which their Church hath not rejected and sure it were a hard case if they had rejected all which their Forefathers taught them and then thinks the deed done In particular he tells us first that they retain the Government of Bishops but why they have innovated a new Church-government making the King Head in Ecclesiastical matters or why they obey those Bishops who can derive their mission of doctrine from no former Church or Authority which only are the things objected to them as schism of these two points hee sayes nothing That they now obey their Bishops he tells us but why they obey'd not him or why they cast out his Authority whom they held before to bee the chief-Chief-Bishop that 's a matter not worth clearing The Pope's Antichrist and ther 's an end Then he clears his side from Schism because they assemble in Churches but he never considers that wee charge them with plain Sacriledge for meeting there and deatining those places anciently ours and built by us out of the true owners hands and applying them to prophane uses All that with him is very laudable and needs no clearing either from injustice or sacriledge He clears their Church of Schism because they observe yet some Festivals and the like may bee said of Sacramentals and Ceremonies but considers not that the schism consists in this that they at their own voluntary pleasure refusing some and admitting others denied consequently obedience to that Authority which recommended both unto them and which disobedience their own grounds condemnes as shall presently bee shewed He cleares his Church of Schism by alledging they observe some form of Prayer but never takes notice that the crime wee object to them is this that they ruin'd Religious houses to build dwelling Halls so they mangled our Holy and ancient Service-books to patch up their reformed piece of the book of Common-prayer leaving out all the most sacred parts of it to wit Canon Missae and what ever concerned the Heaven-propitiating Sacrifice that highest and soul-elevating Act of Religion and onely taking out of it those sleighter things which might satisfie the lowersiz'd devotion of their reformed spirits and was enough to serve them to cry Lord Lord. He brings as a proofe of their innocencie from schism that they have celebration of Sacraments Preaching and Catechizing c. But thinks it not worth clearing that of seven Sacraments they have retain'd onely the substance of one and the shadow of another Nor ever considers whether their doctrine be true or false All is one for that with the Doctor if they doe but preach pray and catechise let it be what it will it is a certain note that they are no schismaticks Lastly hee puts as an argument to cleare them from schism that they have some Discipline to bind to these performances c. that is they use some little wit or meanes to maintain their schism and hold their tribe together but he waves that for which onely we accuse them of Schism to wit that they utterly renounced all the discipline and even all ground of it in that Church of which theirs was once a member and fancied to themselves a new one without any ground of Authority and with direct opposition and contempt of the former discipline Nor hath he onely in this present endeavour to clear his Church of Schism omitted the very mentioning those matters which were to be cleared but even the things he alledges as whose retaining hee makes account frees their Church from schism are such pitifull ordinary businesses so indifferent to all or most schismaticks and hereticks that they can no way particularize them to be none or exempt them from the common crue of their fellowes For what schism ever arose but had some kind of government or discipline had their meetings in some set places at some set times pray'd in their own new way preach't taught and catechiz'd their own doctrine So as the Doctor might with â—ar better Logick have concluded the Protestants no schismaticks because they have all noses on their faces this being common to Catholikes as well as Schismaticks and so might seem partly to excuse them whereas the other of admitting such points and no more which are the Doctors notes of his Church are disclaimed by all Catholikes and common to almost all Schismaticks Nay some schismaticks and hereticks have retained much more of what their Ancestors taught them as Lutherans some almost all points as the Greeks and the old Arians the latter of which excepting their one heresie against Christs divinity had twenty times more markes of a Church in all other things than the Drs could ever pretend to Fourthly hee assures us that the Popes Authority is an usurpation and the use of more ceremonies and Festivals an imposition of the Romanists How so Mr. Doctor if the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome was brought in 900. yeares agoe when Pope Gregory sent to convert our Forefathers to Christs faith as your selfe and your followers grant then how is it an usurpation of the present Romanists Were wee who now live alive 900. yeares agoe or are they who lived 900. years ago alive now But in regard you onely say it and bring no proof I shall not trouble my self in vouchsasing you an answer As for the imposition of more ceremonies which you say the present Romanists used towards you without any authority from the Primitive Church it is so silly so contrary both to our grounds and your own also that you make your selfe ridiculous to any man that understands either one or the other For since the institution of Ceremonies is one of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or things indifferent left to the ordering of Gods Church as both the 20th Article of the new English Creed expressely determines and all moderate Protestants hold I wonder why our Church should not when she saw convenient ordain new Ceremonies and the like may bee said of new Festivals which are things indiferent also and recommend the observation and practice of them to you who were then members of that Church her subjects and children Most lawfully then did our Church even in your own grounds in imposing new Ceremonies on you her then-subjects and if so as unlawfully did you in spurning against her Ordinances Neither consequently can those few you retain upon your own head and not her Authority excuse you from Schism Equally absurd is your zealous profession of conforming your selves in ceremonies to the Primitive times for if the Church hath Authority upon emergent conveniences and difficulties to institute new Ceremonies and
in Bishops and Presbyters rightly ordained and multitudes rightly baptized none of which have fallen off from their profession Where the last words are most certainly true if he means that none of those who yet stand have as yet fallen off which I conceive is his meaning for all these who have not stood have fal'n off which are enow to shew of what mettal their Church was made and whether more have fal'n or stood let the Doctor judge But as for the rest of his selfe-congratulation it is a miserable piece of self flattery and which his own grounds quite discountenance For if a Church be a Congregation of the Faithful and Faith as S. Paul argues comes by hearing hearing from preaching preaching from mission or being sent which mission is an Act of Iurisdiction it follows that if their Bishops and Presbyters have now no Iurisdiction then the Protestants have neither lawful mission preaching hearing faith nor consequently Church Now that they can claim no Iurisdiction followes out of their own grounds for when we urge them upon what Authority they cast off the former Ecclesiastical Superior governing Gods Church in chief they run for their defence to the secular Power to which they attribute supreme Iurisdiction in matters Ecclesiastical within this Island It is acknowledg'd saith the Dr. C. 7. S. 2. that the Papal Power in Ecclesiastical Affaires was both by Acts of Convocation of the Clergy and of Parliament cast out of this Kingdome Thus you see he recurs to a power meerly secular in the Parliament for renouncing and abolishing a spiritual power and Jurisdiction held before greater than ever the Protestant Prelacy was imagin'd Meerly secular I say for the Doctor confesses here that it is easie to believe that nothing but the apprehension of dangers which hung over them could probably have inclined the Clergy to that their first Act And how great influence this apprehension of danger might have over the secular part of the Parliament is easie to be determined since they saw the gravest Patriot in the Kingdome in danger of death for holding against the Kings new pretended Title and many others for the same respect most cruelly persecuted A Parliament therefore meerly of Seculars and those such as can in no wise be presum'd free was held by you of sufficient Authority to renounce a Jurisdiction deemed formerly much higher and known to bee almost ten times longer setled in possession than your Prelacy I see not therefore why a secular power should not bee in your grounds sufficient to abolish a jurisdiction which onely leaned and relied on a secular support But what was done in King Henry's dayes being disannul'd again by both the spiritual and secular power in Queen Maries Reign must necessarily bee held of you invalid if you will goe consequently to your own grounds Let us then examine the resurrection of your Church by a Parliament held in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth In which Parliament to omit the small title the Queen had to the Crown being born of a second bedfellow whilst King Henry's former Wife was yet alive and declared illegitimate both by the whole Parliament and her own Fathers Act were wanting the spiritual Lords the Bishops who were for their Religion kept at that time in prison For which reason when a Quere was raised about the beginning of the late long Parliament whether Acts made without Bishops were valid it is said to have been resolved affirmatively upon this ground because otherwise the Protestant Religion voted by a Parliament in which was no Bishops would be invalid also I see not then what great advantages could be in that Parliament to Vote out the greater Authority of the Pope or give your new-made Bishops ordained God knowes how Iurisdiction but the same may be pretended by a succeeding Parliament to deprive them and set up a new Form of their own Certain it is that you acknowledge the Secular Power for the Source and first Fountain of your Iurisdiction Since then the present Secular Power has put a stop to your father Ordination and disannul'd your former Iurisdiction your own grounds conclude you de facto no Church for if you have no Iurisdiction you can have no influence of power over the Layity and so no spiritual Common wealth made up of Bishop as Head and Pastour and of the Layity as body and flock And as for the present this general suspension should we say no more of your Ecclesiastical power makes you de facto no Church so in time the very inward right it selfe which you pretend may be justly extinguish't For since your Jurisdiction confessedly depends on the secular Authority it followes if this be suspended or abolish't that must needs share in the same fate Now all the world agrees that not onely the possession of a secular power may be interrupted by force but the Right it selfe in time be absolutely lost and the new Government however at first introduc't be at length purged of its original blemishes into a clear and unquestionable Title In which case certainly your Church would be no more visible in England than it is now at Geneva Which sufficiently differences your condition from that of the Primitive Christians or the present English Catholikes they claiming a Jurisdiction underived from the secular power In vain therefore would it be to tell us their Character remains and therfore they are stil Bishops and Presbyters since the character can only entitle them to a name the thing being gone to wit their power of Iurisdiction and consequently their Mission For if they have no Authority to teach and preach more than the Layity they are level'd into an equal pitch with them so as now they cannot bee said to bee a body but a company of mutually distracted parts not an orderly Church or Congregation but a rude and indigested Chaos of Confusion It is not then Mr. Doctor your serving God in private Families which wee object to you for being an invisible Church which you run upon in your 5. Sect. but that which your self confesse here that Now all Order Form Bishops and Liturgy is thrown out of your Church together It is your want of Pastoral and Episcopal Authority which makes us conclude you no Church Yet so good is your Logick that in the next paragraph you think though Bishops be abolish't yet in case this come not through your fault it cannot be charged against you so as though all Prelacy and Superiority be taken away that is though there be none that have power to preach and teach and all be reduc'd into an equally-level'd Anarchy yet as long as it happens not through your fault yen are still a Church As if Doctor Hammond should say though his body were cut into millions of incoherent Atomes yet as long as this happens not through his fault it is still a well-ordered Body ID EST it is still Hammond The parts of Gods Church are compacted into a
Whole by Order and as much depend upon Spiritual Superiours having power to teach and preach Christs Law as the Common-wealth doth on Secular Magistrates to preserve their temporal Lawes and govern according to them without this order the Whole is dissolved the Body is lost the Church is gone Doubtless Mr. Doctor it is not the fault or choice of the present Protestants that they are thus bassled and persecuted which yet you have spent this whole Chapter except onely the first Paragraph to prove so needs no such great and large disproose to manifest that that which is so much against mens wills should bee their Choice and Crime Yet wee may justly impute your Churches ruine to the sandiness of her foundation which being the Authority of the secular Governors must render her liable to change as often as the unconstant wind of temporal circumstances shall alter the former Government or as oft as the former Government yet remaining shall see it necessary for the present peace or conveniences of the Common wealth to introduce or admit the more prevailing sway of a new Religion But I foresee that the Doctor to avoid this objection will cling in with us and call the Antichristian and Idolatrous Romanists their dear Brethren and tell them they acknowledge their Iurisdiction and Mission to come from them desiring them not to reject them now in their greatest necessity but let them seem to have an Authority deriv'd from the Apostles by their meanes proffering that they in courteons recompence will acknowledge Rome to bee a true Church This indeed is ordinary with them but yet as frivolous still as the former For the Authority which our Church could give you was onely to teach and preach Catholike Doctrine and ordain others to doe the same to govern the Catholike flock and to preserve them in the anciently received Unity of Faith The Authority to doe these could come indeed from us and so if any who pretend to have received Iurisdiction from us continue to execute and govern themselves by that Commission so far they are warranted by the former Authorization but if they went beyond their Commission nay more acted quite contrary to their Commission I wonder what Iurisdiction or Mission they can pretend as derived from us Our question then is of such a power as your Bishops pretend to and exercised that is of bearing the Ensign of a Squadron of the Churches Enemies Preaching an opposite Doctrine to the Church which you pretend to have impower'd you and ordaining others to doe the same Evident it is that the Roman Catholike Church which is the only spiritual power you can think to have any Iurisdiction or Mission from never gave you this Authority wherefore it must come to you from the meer secular Power on this Power therfore is built all the Authority you have to act as Protestants or in order to the Protestant Church and consequently the whole building of your Church was erected onely and solely upon this uncertain and sandy foundation This made Mr. Hooker one of the best and perhaps the most prudent Writer of all that profession affirm of their Church that it was not likely to continue more than fourscore years nor could he judge otherwise seeing it bear evidently the Principles of corruption and mutability in its very constitution to wit the materia prima of a secular Basis which continually exposed it to a mortality as the formes of Government should have their ever-limited period and discovering the professors and Governours of it to bee none of those to whom our Saviour promised his perpetual assistance to the end of the world How much happier then would you be if leaving this fleeting and unbodied shadow you would return and unite your selves to the Catholike Church Which enjoying this promise from our Saviour of an indefectible perpetuity not onely experiences the certain faithfulness of that promise in a large continuance of 1600. yeares but also sees with Evidence perhaps more than scientifical that the walls of this Hierusalem are built upon such strong foundations that the Church and the Authority and Jurisdiction of her Governours can never fail or decay since they rely not on the slippery and weak prop of the temporal power for their Authority but on those who received it from the eternal never-altering Fountain of all power with Commission to delegate and transmit it with an uninterrupted succession to the future Governours of the Church till wee all meet in the Unity of Glory Nor is the means of transmitting this Heavenfounded Jurisdiction to Posterity less certain than is the law of grace written in the hearts of the faithful in indelible characters that inviolable Rule of Faith a Rock too adamantine to be undermin'd by human policy Let then her enemies though even Princes rage as much as they please nay even bandy and conspire together to subdue this free-born Kings Daughter to their prophane yoke her Jurisdiction as it ever hath so will it ever remaine secure and inviolate being independent of them and by reason of the state of Eternity her end and aym of a superiour order to their Authority which was instituted only for the rightly dispencing the transitory goods of this world Your parallel of the Jews suffering under the Zelot's fury or the old Roman yoke which you make account is so evident that the Reader will supercede all necessity of making it up I conceive to aym very little or nothing at your purpose For though they intruded unfit men into the Priestly dignity yet they did not actually neither could they possibly take away the Jurisdiction of the High Priest because this Jurisdiction was not given them by those secular powers but by God himself the contrary of all which happens in your case as has been shewn For the Jurisdiction of your Bishops may be taken away by the same Parliamentary power that set it up That it was not their guilt nor yours neither wee willingly grant and I wonder you could imagine us so unwise as to object that to be your voluntary Crime which you cannot but know we hold to bee your involuntary punishment Your wishes and prayers for peace and communion among all who are called Christians are no less ours and this not in words only but in efficacious endeavours and in several Nations with daily labours and extreamest hazards to reduce the straying flock to their safely-guarded fold Nay this Communion is so vehemently desired and thirsted after by us that we are ready to buy it at any rate except the forfeiture of the Certainty of Faith and its Rule the forfeiture of which is the loss of our own Communion also If Mr. Hammond can perswade himself and his friends to return to this Rule of Faith the Churches Infallibility which onely can unite us in the same stedfast belief of Christs Doctrine and to acknowledg the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome in the acknowledgment of which consists the constant
unity of Church-government then not onely we but all the Angels and Saints in heaven who rejoyce at the conversion of sinners shall joyn in exalting Jubilees for the Blessed and long wish't for return of òur wandring and self-disinherited Brethren The former of these if Mr. Hammond will not beleeve it I have told him where he may see it as visibly as is possible any thing should be made to the eye of Reason The latter to wit the Popes Supremacy is defin'd in the Florentine Council subscribed to both by the Greek and Latine Churches where what the fourth General Council held at Chalcedon wrote to Pope Leo that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he was over the members of the Church as their Head is more plainly exprest in these words Wee define that the holy Apostolical See and the Bishop of Rome have the primacy over all the world and that the Bishop of Rome is Successour to S. Peter the Prince of the Apostles and truly Christs Vicar and Head of the whole Church and the Father and Teacher of all Christians and that there was given him in S. Peter from Christ a full power to feed direct and govern the Catholike Church To these two points if the Protestant will subscribe that is secure inviolate that which touches the root and most vital and intrinsecal part of the Chruch to wit the Rule of Faith she will not stick to open her outward rind that is offer some violence to her uniformity in indifferent and more extrinsecal practises to re-ingraft their dry and sapless branch which now lies withering into her ever-flourishing body To which if these poor endeavours of mine may in the least contribute I shall for the future not reprehend but congratulate Dr. Hammond for his fortunate Errours and honour his ill grounded reasons as of richest value which by stirring up others to detest them and shew what weak pleas are producible for Schism became the happy occasion of his own and others salvation and of Embosoming the Daughter-Church of England in a Charitable Communion with her dearest Mother by whose painful throwes she was first born to Christ her Spouse at whose breasts shee suck'd the first milk of his Doctrine and from whose arms and ever-cherishing embraces first by the malignity of an ill-govern'd passion next by humane policy shee has been so long separated FINIS DOWN-DERRY OR Bishop BRAMHAL'S Iust Vindication of the Church of England refuted MY choice at first directed me rather to answer Mr. Hammond than my Lord of Derry having observ'd his Book not only to bear a greater vogue in the world but to be inwardly furnished with Arguments more suitable to the profession of a Divine But after I had advanc'd past the mid-way of my journey I met some Protestant friends who though formerly they had still cry'd up the Doctor yet soon as I told them in confidence that an Answer to his Schism would instantly bee ready for the the Press they immediately began to extol the Bishop and demand either a present Reply to him or else they should not spare to conclude the Victory their own When I had exprest how weak and unreasonable their discourse was which if admitted would always judg him to have the right cause that speaks the last word I parted with a promise if in stead of that sport which he far more than the other tempts a wit-at leasure to make with him they would accept of a short Refutation of the substantial passages I should not fail to endeavour their satisfaction which thus I perform Reading with some diligence the Bishops Book I find that as there is much commendable in it for industry so is it expos'd to an unavoidable Check of being Patron to an ill Cause whence it may bee a pattern of wit and labour but little assistance to the truth further than by shewing how weak Errour is But not to spend time and paper in vain let us state the controversie clearly that it may be seen how strongly and pertinently his Discourse proceeds Not that I intend minutely to examine his whole Work whereof the far greater part is little or nothing to our controversie as will appear by the bare stating the Question but onely to say enough for him whom the substance can content without engaging into unnecessary and circumstantial disputes He begins his Book telling us nothing can be objected with more colour of truth against the Church of England than that they have withdrawn themselves from obedience to the Vicar of Christ and separated from the Communion of the Catholike Church And that this crime is justly charg'd upon his Church not onely with colour but with undeniable evidence of fact will appear by the very position of the Case and the nature of his Exceptions As for the first it is unquestionably certain and universally assented to by all Protestants who understand any thing that at the beginning of Henry the eighths Reign nay at his first courting his Protestant Mistress the Church of England agreed with that of Rome and all the rest of her Communion in two Points which were then and are still the Bonds of Unity betwixt all her Members One concerning Faith the other Government For Faith her Rule was that the Doctrines which had been inherited from their Forefathers as the Legacies of Christ and his Apostles were solely to bee acknowledg'd for obligatory and nothing in them to bee changed For Government her Principle was that Christ had made St. Peter First or Chief or Prince of his Apostles who was to be the first Mover under him in the Church after his departure out of this world and to whom all others in difficulties concerning matters belonging to the universal either Faith or Government should have recourse And that the Bishops of Rome as Successors of St. Peter inherited from him this priviledge in respect of the Successors of the rest of the Apostles and actually exercised this power in all those countries which kept Communion with the Church of Rome that very year wherein this unhappy separation began It is no lesse evident that in the dayes of Edward the sixth Queen Elizabeth and her Successors neither the former Rule of Unity of Faith nor this second of Unity of Government which is held by the first have had any power in that Congregation which the Protestants call the English Church This is our chief objection against you As for us our Tenet is That those Churchs who continue in Communion with the Roman are the onely Churches which in vertue of the first Principle above mentioned have the true Doctrine and in vertue of the second the right Government and in vertue of both the unity and incorporation into the Church of Christ necessary for salvation And by consequence Wee hold them onely to make the entire Catholike or Universal Church of Christians all others by misbelief or Schism being excluded Now because no understanding man can deny this to be
all that is in the Britannick World belongs to us and is derived to us Yet is this also false For nothing in History is more evident than that the British Churches admitted appellations to Rome at the Council of Sardica And as much as we have Records in our Histories of the Pope Eleutherius so much appeares the Popes Authority in that time And out of St. Prosper contra Collatorem in Chron. Wee have that the Pope Celestinus by his care and sending St. German Vice sua in his own stead freed the Britans from Pelagianism and converted the Scots by Palladius though Venerable Bede as far as I remember does not touch that circumstance But that which is mainly to the purpose is that since the Priviledge wee pretend was one that descends upon the Pope in quality of Successor to St. Peter how far it was executed may be unknown but that it was due none can bee ignorant And here our late Bishop begins to shuffle from the priviledge of St. Peter to the Patriarchal Jurisdiction of the Pope which is another an historical a mutable power and so concernes not our present debate Two objections he makes seem to deserve an answer First That the Welsh or Britans sided with the Eastern Churches against the Roman in the observation of Easter To which I answer 't is true they observ'd not Easter right yet never so much as cited the Eastern Churches in abetment of their practise but onely the custome of their own Ancestors Neither was there any cause of siding wee not hearing it was ever pressed by the Church of Rome after Victor's time to any height The Council of Nice and the Emperour Constantine exhorted the Christian World to it but without any coercitive force And if the Britans resisted or rather neglected them I think wee ought not to say they sided against them but onely did not execute their desires St. Irenâ—us was of the French Church yet testifies this question was no matter of division so that it cannot bee guess'd by this what influence the Roman Church had or had not upon the British It seemes certain also that St. Lupus and Germanus neglected this Point that is thought it not necessary to be corrected however St. Austin seem'd more rigorous And though Palladius sent from Celestinus converted the Scots yet we find some of them in the same practise The second Objection is out of a piece of a worn Welsh Manuscript hoped by the Protestants to bee a Copy of some ancienter Original which though it has already been proved a manifest forgery counterfeited by all likelyhood in Q. Elizabeths time when the English Protestants sought to corrupt the Welsh by Catechisms and other Writings printed and not printed Yet if their great Antiquaries can shew that in St. Gregories time this name Papa or Pope taken by it self without other addition as Papa Urbis Romae c. was put as in later ages for the Bishop of Rome I shall confesse my selfe much surpriz'd If they cannot these very words sufficiently convince the Manuscript to bee a meer Imposture Another suspition against the legitimatnes of this paper naturally arises from this that Sr. Henry Spelman one so diligent in wiâ—ing off the dust from old writings found no other Antiquity in it worth the mention which shrewdly implies the Book was made for this alone And so this demonstrative proof of the Bishop is a conviction of the forgery of some counterfeit Knaue and the easiness of assent in Mr. Mosten and the Knight In his 6th Chapter he pretends three things 1. That the King and Church of England had sufficient Authority to withdraw their obedience from Rome 2ly That they had sufficient grounds for it and 3ly That they did it with due moderation I doubt not but the intelligent Reader understands by the first point that the Bishop meanes to shuffle away the true difficulty and whereas the Question is of the Priviledge given by Christ to Saint Peter and from him descended to the Popes his Successors spend his time about a Patriarchal Authority which wee also acknowledge to be of humane institution And here I must confesse that generally when no body opposes him his Lordship carries it clearly and gives his empty Reader full satisfaction Hee tells you out of Catholike Authors that Princes may resist the oppressions of Ecclesiasticks and themselves have priviledge to exercise Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction That Popes have been convented and deposed That Emperors have changed Patriarchs and that the Kings of England have as much power as Emperors And all this to handle the Question which is not in hand since our dispute is not what can be done in respect of the Popes Patriarchal Authority which the good Bishop himself professes the Pope has renounced these 600. years No doubt but th' other two points will follow the former in missing the Question For admitting the Popes Authority to bee derived from Christ what grounds can there bee for renouncing it or what moderation is the rejjecting it capable of Nay even if it were of humane institution many things there are which cannot bee rejected unless it appear the abuses are not otherwise remediable Suppose then the Christian World had chosen themselves one Head for the preservation oâ—â—o precious a Jewel as Unity in Religion how great absurdities must that Head commit what wrongâ— must it doe to cause it selfe to bee justly deposed and not onely the Person deposed but the very Government abolish't Suppose again that this alteration should â—ee made by some one party of the Christian Common-â—ealth which must separate it selfe from the assistance and communication of the â—â—st of Christianity ought not far weightier causes bee expected or greater abuses committed Suppose thirdly that by setting aside this Supreme Head eternal dissentions will inevibly follow in the whole Church of Christ to the utter ruine of faith and good life which our Saviour thought worth the comming down from Heaven to plant among us and then tell mee whether the refusal to comply with the humours of a lustful Prince be ground enough â—o renounce so necessary an Authority Let the Bishop bee now asked whether Kings deserve to bee deposed and Monarchy it selfâ— rejected for such abuses as hee gathers against the Pope or whether there may not easily bee made a collection of as many an I great misgovernments against the Court of England or any other Country Let him remember whether like abuses were not alledged against his own Parliamentary-Prelacy when it was put down Will hee justifie that if the mâ—â—demeanours pretended against them had been true the extirpation of Prelacy had been lawfull Surely hee would find out many remedies which hee would think necessary to bee first tryed and Sâ—â—ggin should as soon haue chosen a tree to bee hanged on as â—hee have ended the number of expedients to be â—â—yed before hee would give his assent to the extirpation of Episcopacy It is then of little concern to
examine whether his complaints bee true or false since he does not shew there was no other remedy but division and much more since it is known if the authority be of Christs institution no just cause can possibly be given for its abolishment but most because all other Catholick Countries might have made the same exception which England pretends yet they remain still in communion with the Church of Rome whose Authority you cry out against as intolerable nay the former Ages of our Countrey which your selfe cite had the same cause to cast the Popes supremacy out of the land yet rather preferred to continue in the peace of the Church then attempt so destructive an innovation as Schism draws after it Neither nâ—w after we have broke the ice do our neighbour Nations think it reasonable to follow our example and drown their unity in the waters of Contradiction Lastly the pretences on which the English Schism was originally made were far different from those you now take up to defend it there was then no talk of imposing new Creeds as the conditions of Communion no mention of the abominations of Idolatry and Superstition which now fill your Pulpits nor indeed any other original quarrel but the Popes proceeding according to the known Lawes of the Church which unfortunately happen'd to bee contrary to the tyrannical humour of the King The other point of due moderation is a very pleasant Topick had I a mind to answer at large his Book The first part of moderation is the separating themselves from their Errours not their Churches this signifies to declare them Idolaters superstitious wicked and neverthelesse communicate with them reconciling thus light to darkness and making Christ and Antichrist to be of the same society I confesse this a very good moderation for him that has no Religion in his heart or acknowledges his own the worst there being no danger for him to fear seducing by communication with others But whoever is confident of his own by this very fact implicitely disapproves others I cannot say mine is true but I must say the opposite is false mine is good but the opposite I must say is naught mine necessary but I must judge that which is inconsistent carries to damnation though I am bound both to pity and love the person that disâ—ents Therefore who does not censure a contrary Religion holds not his own certain that is hath none The second part of moderation hee places in their inward charity which if hee had manifested by their external works we might have had occasion to beleeve him Our Saviour telling us the tree is known by the fruit it bears The third part therefore hee is pleased to think may bee found in that they onely take away Points of Religion and adde none Wherein is a double Errour For first to take away goodnesse is the greatest evil that can be done What more mischievous than to abrogate good lawes good practises Let them look on the Scotch Reformation who have taken the memory of Christ from our eyes by pulling down Pictures and Crosses the memory of His principal actions by abolishing Holydayes the esteem of vertue by vilifying his Saints and left him onely in the mouths of babling Preachers that disfigure him to the people as themselves please What if they took away the New Testament too and even solemn Preaching and left all to the will of a frantick Teacher were not this a great moderation because they added nothing The second abuse is that he who positively denies ever adds the contrary to what hee takes away Hee that makes it an Article there is no Purgatory no Mass no prayer to Saints has as many Articles as he who holds the contrary Therefore this kind of moderano is a purefolly The last Point hee deems to be a preparation of mind to beleeve and practise whatever the Universal Church beleeves and practises â— and this is the greatest mock-fool Proposition of all the rest First they will say there is no Universal Church or if any indeterminate that is no man knowes which it is and then with a false and hypocritical heart professe a great readiness to beleeve and obey it Poor Protestants who are led by the nose after such silly Teachers and Doctrines who following the steps of our old mother Eve are flatter'd with the promses of knowledge like the knowledge of God but paid onely with the pure experience of evil In his seventh Chapter hee professes that all Princes and Republicks of the Roman Communion doe in effect the same things which the Protestants doe when they have occasion or at least plead for it What non sense will not an ill cause bring a desperate man to All this while hee would perswade the World that Papists are most injurious to Princes prejudicing their Crowns and subjecting their Dominions to the will of the Pope Hee has scarce done saying so but with a contrary blast drives as far back again confessing all hee said to be false and that the same Papists hold the very doctrine of the Protestants in effect and the difference is onely in words So that this Chapter seems expresly made to justifie the Papists and to shew that though the Popes sometimes personally exceed yet when their passion is over or the present interest ceases then they acknowledge for Catholikes and Orthodox those who before oppos'd them as also that the Catholike Divines who teach the doctrine of resisting the Pope in such occasions are not for that cast out of Communion which is as much as to say it is not our Religion or any publick Tenet in our Church that binds any to those rigorous assertions which the Protestants condemn If this be so what can justifie your bloody Lawes and bloodier Execution for the fourscore years you were in power Why were the poor Priests who had offended no farther than to receive from a Bishops hands the power of consecrating the body of Christ condemned to die a Traitors death Why the Lay-man that harboured any such person made liable to the same forseiture of estate and life Why were Baptisms Churchings Burials Marriages all punished Why were men forced to goe to your Synagogues under great penalties Seldom any lawful conviction exacted but proceeding upon meer surmises A Priest arrested upon the least suspition and hurried before the Magistrate was not permitted to refer his cause to witnesses but compelled to be his own Accuser and without any shadow of proof so much as enquir'd after if he deny'd not himselfe immediatly sent to prison as a Traitor A Priest comming to his Trial before the Judges was never permitted to require proof of his being a Priest It sufficed that having said Mass or heard a Confession he could not prove himselfe a knave What shall I say of the setting up of Pursuivants to hare poor Catholikes in all places and times I have seen when generally they kept their houses close-shut and if any knock't there was a sudden
pang and sollicitude before they durst open their doors They could neither eat nor sleep in any other security than that which a good Conscience gave them But the cruelst part of all was to defame us of Treason First you make a Law that to acknowledge the Successor of S. Peter had a common superintendency over the Church was Treason and then brand us for Traitors Should a Presbyterian or Independent Power make it Treason to acknowledge Prelacy would you think it reasonable presently to conclude all the older-fashion'd Protestants Traitors Nor can I perswade my selfe I offer any violence to Charity if I plainly and roundly charge you that in all this you proceeded flatly against your Consciences it being impossible you should really judge the bare receiving Orders beyond Sea to be Treason which is abundantly convinc't by your very offer of pardon nay sometimes preferment if hee whom you made the people beleeve was a dangerous and bloody Traitor would but go to Church with you For what Priest dyed for being a Priest but hee might have rescu'd himselfe at the last hour by such submission What Priest was so bad whom you were not ready to entertain with honour if hee would take party with you So unlucky is his Lordship in this Chapter that whatever his intention is he absolves us or at least condemns himselfe if he would be understood as the Letter of his Exceptions sounds he absolutely clears our Religion of a calumny which the Protestants most injuriously charge upon us that our vassalage to the Pope destroyes our subjection to our Prince citing so many instances where Catholikes remaining such have disobey'd the Pope If he on purpose layes his sense to bee ambiguous of which I have some jealousie because hee uses that jugling phrase in effect then hee absolutely proves himselfe a Deceiver In short if he mean honestly he justifies us if otherwise every honest man will condemn him But whatever his inward meaning is the Case open'd will declare it self Christ being to build his spiritual Kingdom upon the Basis not onely of the Roman Monarchy then flourishing but of a multitude of Kingdomes either bred out of the destruction of that or originally independent and distinct from it which in process of time should embrace his Faith saw it necessary to make such a band of Unity betwixt the Churches of which his spiritual Empire was to be integrated that it neither should be offensive to temporal Princes nor yet unprovided of meanes to keep the Church in such amity as to be able to work like the Congregation of Hierusalem which had Cor unum animam unam For this reason he gave the principality among his Apostles to S. Peter and consequently to his Successors among theirs The effect of this Principality was that when publick meetings of Bishops were necessary all emulation who should have recourse to the other was taken away since it was known all were to defer to him meet as and where was most fitting for him Again if any inconvenience fel among Christians there wanted not one who was by office to look to it though in the place where it fell out there were no superior Authority to curb the offenders This one Seat might by the ordinary providence of Almighty God keep a continuance of Succession from S. Peter to the end of the World whereas the vicissitude of humane nature permitted not the like to be done to all the Sees where all the rest of the Apostles had signed their Faith by their precious death Hence 't is the See of Rome is invested with the special priviledge of Mother and Mistress of the Church But not to dive into all or the questionable consequences of this Primacy this onely I intend to insist upon that it is the hinge upon which all the common government and unity in Faith Sacraments Ceremonies and communication of spiritual Fraternity depends which being removed the Church vanishes into a pure Anarchy no one Province or Country having the least obligation to any other to repair to it to obey it to make Meetings and common Ordinances with it So that the whole frame of the Church will be utterly dissolv'd ceasing to be a Church and becomming a ruinous heap of stones precious indeed in themselves but without order shape or connexion By this it clearly followes whatever is the truth of those Questions which our Bishop reckons up to have been disputed between other Christian Countries and the Papacy that as long as this Principality wee speak of is acknowledged so long there is an Unity in the Christian Church all particular Churches being by this subordination perfectly one both with their Head and among themselves This is the bridle our Saviour put in the mouth of his Church to wield it sweetly which way he pleased No dissention in Faith or Discipline nay not any war among Christian Princes could annoy the World if this Authority were duly preserved and governed Many excellent effects we have seen of it and more the world is likely to enjoy when the admirable conveniences of it shall bee unpassionately understood What Christian Prince can chuse but be glad to have an Arbitrator so prudent so pious so disinteressed as a good Pope should be to reconcile differences and to hinder bloodshed either in his own people or between his neighbours And who sees not that the Popes office and condition among those who reverence him is perfectly proper for such an effect beyond the hopes of wisedom that had not known th'exprience of it What a desperate attempt then is it to bite at this bridle and strive to put the whole Christian World in confusion This is your crime in this consists your Schism in this your impiety and wickedness Agreeing then that this is the substance of the Papacy temporal preheminences and wealth being but accidental to it wee shall presently see all those arrows which the Bishop shoots against us fall directly on his own head For if the Papacy stand firm and strong in all those Countries that have resisted the Pope when they conceived hee encroach'd on their ' liberties it is evident notwithstanding all such disputes the Being and Nature of one Church is entirely conserved they all governing themselves in an Unity of Faith and Sacraments and Correspondence like one Body as is visible to any that will but open his eyes and so are Members of one Christian Community Whereas the Reform as they call it has cut off England from all this communication and correspondence and made it no part of any Church greater than it self and by consequence that can pretend to Universality and Catholicism but a headless Synagogue without Brotherhood or Order if joyned with any other it is not in a common head but with the tayles of opposition to the Roman Catholike No more can the several Protestant Churches be allow'd to compose one Body than all the ancient Hereticks did nay than Turks and Iewes and
Christians may be now said to doe since the sole root of unity Protestants can pretend is onely their agreement in certain general Points which most of the old Hereticks profess'd and even Turks and Iewes beleeve some part of the Christian Faith As for the Protestant distinction that all are of one Communion who agree in fundamentals 't is no better than a meer shift til they exhibit a list of such Points and prove them obligingly and satisfactorily to all the rational people of the World that they and they onely are essential to Christian Communion His eighth Chapter would fain be thought to prove the Pope and Court of Rome guilty of Schism First because shee takes upon her to bee Mistress where shee is but Sister to other Churches It is their saying and our denying it till they have proved what they affirm The second Argument is a meeâ— calumny that shee obtrudes new Creeds and unjustly excommuicates those who will not receive them At the third blow hee layes the Axe as he sayes to the root of Schism but if I understand his words it is to his own legs The Papacy sayes â—ee qua talis which hee interprets as it is maintain'd by many Good-night my Lord of London-Derry for certainly your wits are in the dark If you once begin to say as it is maintain'd by many you imply it is not maintain'd by all and therefore not the Papacy qua talis for so Catholikes have not the least difference amongst them If you will dispute against private Opinions cite your Authors and argue against them not the Church whose beleefe is contain'd in the Decrees of Councils and universal consent of Fathers and Doctors His fourth Charge is that the Popes hold themselves to bee Bishops of every particular See which is a more gross and false imputation than any of the rest Other two branches he offers at but confesses them not to be decided in our Church and therefore can make nothing for him His ninth Chapter pretends to solve the Romanists Arguments and first that grand one of Schism which hee maintaines to be so clearly unimputable to Protestants that he sayes they hold Communion with thrice as many Christians as wee doe And truly if by Christians he meanes those who lay claim to the name of Christ I neither deny his answer nor envy him his multitude For Mâ—â—ichees Gnosticks Carpocratians Arians Nestorians Euâ—yâ—hians c. without number all â—surp to themselves the honour of this Title and I most faithfully protest I do not think his Lordship has any solid reason to refuse Communion to the worst of them But if he meanes by Christians those who never changed the doctrine which their Fathers taught them as received from the Apostles so let him shew me one who is not in communion with the Roman Church and I also shall be of that one's Communion The second Argument hee undertakes is That Protestants admit not the Council of Trent To which hee replies it was not General because the Heretical Patriarchs were not called many Bishops were absent too many Italians there fewer Bishops present at the determination of weightiest Points than the King of England could assemble in a moneth What trivial stuff is this Is not a Parliament the General Representative of the Nation unless every Lord though a known and condemn'd Rebel be summon'd or unless every Member that has a right to sit there bee present Who is so impertinent as to quarrel at the generalness of a Parliament if some Court Lords bee admitted to their Voices or if the number of Voters in some Parliaments bee fewer than in others What 's this to the purpose if none that have a true right be excluded Yet these are the grand Exceptions only in some words wherein hee expresses his anger Passion made him quite forget they might possibly be retorted upon his own condition else what a blindness is it to call the Bishops of Italy hungry parasitical Pensioners It seemes my Lord you keep a good Table speak the truth boldly and have great Revenues independent of any As for the instance of the French Churches non-admittance of the Council of Trent your selfe confesses it is there received for matters of doctrine and I confesse that for other Canons the execution of them may be omitted unlesse the true Superiours presse their observance Secondly he sayes it was not free A false and injurious calumny taken out of Sleidan accounted by our part a frank lyar and forger Thirdly he seigns an Objection to himself their breaking from the Patriarchat which already wee have clear'd is not the question and himself though weakly and sillily endeavours to prove cannot stand with the claim of Papal Authority from Christ. After these he descends to consider such of our Arguments as hee is pleas'd to think of lesser importance As first That Protestants have no Clergy because no Priests For the notion of a Priest is to bee a Sacrificer and their Reform renounces all truly called Sacrifice This he hides in obscure and common terms of matter and form and shuffles likewise certain common words in Answer Secondly because their Ministers whom they term Priests were made by no Bishops The Controversie is largely treated by Doctor Champney against Mason Hee answers it with childish and impudent words Father Oldcorn whom he cites was known to be a weak and timorous man who might bee easily surprised I could never hear that any Catholike esteemed judicious was ever admitted to a free perusal of their Registers but know wel that the Contemporaries protested against any lawful Ordination of their first Bishops and were answer'd by silence He sayes they hold no spiritual Jurisdiction from the Crown But the Statutes of the Nation and their own Oaths say the contrary Let him dispute it with the Lawyers The tenth Chapter containes what he expects to be the result of his Book Hee first complaines of hard usage and thinks the very Turk not so cruel as those who now persecute Protestants in England Truly no good man I beleeve wishes his Party harm But mee thinks he might remember they suffer not so much as themselves have done in their Reign against those who in respect of them were Aborigines whose possession was the same that Christian Religion had among us And would to God they could even now be quiet and friendly when they are in eadem damnatione Prelacy as well as Popery being voted damnable Heresie by the late Parliament 'T is true their Religion as consider'd including Episcopacy is cast out of the Land but then how comes Episcopacy to be essential to their Religion Have not the Bishops alwayes profess'd themselves of the same Communion with the Huguenots of France the Zuinglians of Switzerland c. who hold Episcopacy abominable The persons of such Bishops as reside in England and are accus'd of nothing but Episcopacy live free and secure enjoy their whole Estates except what belonged to their Dignity and
though they cannot yet so overcome their proper-will and proper-judgment as to return at least candidly to acknowledge the benefits received from her and to bear her a due respect however not to revile and reproach her But against all History and onely out of a few obscure and unauthentick sayings to disacknowledge your highest obligation to her in stead of grateful courtesie to slight and contemn her to naturalize in the hearts of your poor Auditors an hatred against the very name of Rome and the Pope to which Rome and its Pope you and they are beholding next and immediately under God for all the knowledge you have of Christ or his holy Word Lastly To revile that Church which till you broke from her had ever the most sacred title of Christs onely Spouse with your scolding Sermon-invectives grateful elegancies to your applauding hearers of Idolatrous Antichristian Strumpet Whore of Babylon and all the venemous spiteful expressions that ever were vomited from a malice-imposthum'd heart These things I say are they which brand you beyond infamy in the judgment of prudent men and double Dy the dark-coloured sin of Schism with the deepest tincture of the blackest ingratitude Of this ingratitude Master Doctor clear your selves first in breaking next in your carriage and comportment ever since and we will without much difficulty disoblige you from any other duty which you seem afraid you ow us upon onely that score of Conversion Yet you will needs have us hold whether we will or no That the Pope is Head of the Church because his Predecessor converted England And this ground laid in the air of your own fancy you impugn as inconsequently butting at us most formidably with a Dilemma or cornuted Syllogism and telling us That the Popes Primacy in this Iland is either from the Donation of Christ or Conversion by Austin the Monk If the latter then England was not subject to the Pope before Austin ' s coming If the former then is that other title of the Conversion by Austin a fallacious pretence A NON CAUSA PRO CAUSA c. This is the sum of his Dilemma In answer to which I confess indeed the latter title is A fallacious pretence A NON CAUSA PRO CAUSA but the fallacy is on the Doctors side who feigns us to pretend what we never thought on to wit That the Popes supremacy is grounded on any such title One of the horns then of his Dilemma is a false one and so the danger of being catcht between them easily avoided Nor is his Dilemma it self more solidly founded were both the particular pretences true for it wholly insists and leans upon this Position That no man can claim a possession upon two titles On which ground to let us see he is a Lawyer as well as a Divine he descants in these words He that claims a reward as of his own labor and travail must be supposed to disclaim Donation which is antecedent to and exclusive of the former as the title of descent is of that of conquest Thus this Doctor of Law Whereas what more ordinary then to plead two titles at Law as for example birth-right and a formerly-given judgment for the same thing Or what more unreasonable then to affirm That Iacob who wrought other seven years for Rachel could not claim her as a reward of his service for that time unless he renounce his right to her due at the former years end Do not we see daily That those who have palpable right to their estate when they cannot quietly enjoy it otherwise by reason of the injustice of a wrangling adversary are forced to compound for and buy their own without â—isclaiming their former title Neither is his last instance more solid then its fellows That the title of descent is exclusive to that of conquest since the titles of Donation and Conquest are as opposite as those he mentions and yet it is well known That William the Conqueror pretended a right to the Kingdom upon both these titles and Henry the Seventh if I mistake not upon three But the thing is so clear that it requires no further proof save onely to advertise the Reader That Dr. Hammond is the first Lawyer I ever heard of who denied a possibility of a double title to the same thing Yet I am glad to see by the Doctors perfect ignorance and utter unacquaintance in Law that he is at least a good honest quiet sober soul not used much to trouble himself with Law nor wrangle with his Neighbors which is a very great commendation and better beseeming his innocent Nature which was never shaped to be a Controvertist Next proceeding still on his own false grounds he goes about first ingratefully to deny that St. Austin the Monk converted our Forefathers Secondly After some acknowledgment to prove very unmannerly and uncivilly no thanks due As for the first he tells us That this Iland was converted to the Faith of Christ long before Augustines Preaching to the Saxons citing many Authors for it Where if by the word Iland he mean the Ilanders as I suppose he must I would then ask him though the former Ilanders were before converted by the Missionaries of Pope Eleutherius yet whether those that St. Augustin was sent to convert that is the Saxons were reduced before that time to Christianity or no if they were not as I am sure he must and will acknowledge all the ancient Inhabitants the Britains being driven by them into Wales then what a perversness and want of ingenuity is it in Master Hammond to wave so ungratefully that incomparable benefit which we Englishmen received in our Ancestors by the Popes fatherly care first converted to Christs Faith and what a pitiful shift it is to shew a willingness to put it off by quibbling in the words this Iland as if they did not signifie these Ilanders or the Ilanders of the same race but these Trees Woods and Mountains The next page goes on very currantly and without any rub proving That the formerlyplanted Faith of Christ in this Iland was not totally extinguished by the ancient persecutions so to infer a less beholdingness of us Englishmen to Rome and Pope Gregory the Great for our Conversion but all in vain For unless he proves that they who had formerly embraced and retained that Faith propagated it to the after-comers the Saxons who were Ancestors to us Englishmen or that St. Austin was not the first that preached to these which he will never do all the evidence he can bring from hence is to prove himself ungrateful Then he ends this Paragraph with a Testimony out of the old obscure Annals of Gisburn and brought to light by one of his own side in which it is said That the Bishop of St. Davids was consecrated by the Suffragan Bishops oâ— that Province Nulla penitus professione vel subjectione factâ alteri Ecclesiae No profession or subjection at all being made to another
Fore-fathers nor were scandalized at the then received Doctrine of the Church holding as a point of Faith that the Pope was its Head but abominated the contrary as sacrilegious and schismatical The first urger of the breach then was the King as is also acknowledged let us see then what or who urg'd him that so we may trace the schism to its first original and shew the new-born brat its right Parent As for the King while his blood was yet in due temper and not over-heated with passion that is while his Conscience was uncorrupted it is well known he was as humble a son to the Church and her supreme Pastour the Bishop of Rome as any King in Christendom is at this present admitting appeals thither and his jurisdiction here nay indeed more officiously obedient then any King now-adays can pretend writing or else causing to be set out in his name a Book against Luther in defence of the Roman-Catholick Faith and the Popes Authority which that Apostate rejected for which work also he received in recompence from the Pope the title of Defender of the Faith inherited by the succeeding Kings though they have forfeited the claim to it by disavowing the fact which deserved it What was King Henries judgment of the Popes Universal Authority till he fell into passion is easie to be seen in his own Book where he strongly and rationally proves it in these words Negare Lutherus non potest quin omnis Ecclesia fidelium Sacro-Sanctam sedem Romanam velut Matrem Primatemque recognoscat ac veneretur quaecunque saltem neque locorum distantiâ neque periculis interjacentibus prohibetur accessu Quamquam si vera dicunt qui ex India quoque veniunt huc Indi etiam ipsi tot terrarum tot marium tot solitudinum plagis disjuncti Romano tamen Pontifici se submittunt Ergo si tantam tam latè fusam potestatem neque Dei jussu Pontifex neque hominum voluntate consecutus est sed quâ sibi vi vendicavit dicat velim Lutherus quando in tantae ditionis erupit professionem Num potest obscurum esse initium tam immensae potentiae praesertim si intra hominum memoriam nata sit Quod si rem dixerit unam fortasse aut duas aetates superare in memoriam vobis redigat ex Historiis Alioqui si tam vetusta sit ut rei etiam tantae obliteratae sit origo Legibus omnino cautum esse cognoscat ut cujus jus omnium hominum memoriam ita supergreditur ut sciri non possit cujusmodi habuerit initium censeatur habuisse legitimum Vetitumque esse constat omnium consensu Gentium ne quae di◠manserunt immota moveantur Luther cannot deny but all the Church of the faithful acknowledges and venerates the See of Rome as their Mother and Chief at least whatsoever Church is not hindred from coming thither by distance of place or dangers in the way Although if credit may be given to those who come from the Indies even the very Indians separated by such vast Lands Seas and Wildernesses submit themselves to the Bishop of Rome Wherefore if the Pope hath obtained so great and far-spread an Authority neither by the command of God nor the will of men but hath arrogated it to himself by some violence I would know of Luther when and at what time the Pope broke forth into the profession of so ample a Iurisdiction Can the beginning of such a vast power be obscure Especially if it were born within the memory of man But if he shall say this power exceeds one or two ages let him bring it into our memory by histories Otherwise if it be so ancient that the original of a matter even of so great importance be worn out of memory then let him know it is expresly provided for by the Laws that his right and title which so transcends all memory of man as it cannot be known how it began is judged to have had a lawful original and it is manifest that the consent of all Nations forbid those things should be moved which have long remained setled and firm Thus was King Henry affected and in this affection continued till he found an itching I conceive not too conscientious to his darling Anne Bullen she being too crafty to forgoe the glittering offer of a Crown made unto her by the love-besotted King he grew straight perplext in minde for his former marriage began to think it unlawful though till now neither he nor any in the world ever scrupled it The devotion he bore to his Saint Anne Bullen put a new heat of Religion into his tender heart his restless Conscience alas perswaded him that his marriage with Katherine although confirmed by two and twenty yeers continuance and sealed with the endearing pledge of issue must needs be disanuld The Pope was urged to dispence with his second marriage though his former wife lived King Henry wooed intreated bribed then grew into choller and at last plainly threatned a Schisme unless the Pope would grant and justifie his unlawful desire Here now if the Romish Religion were made up onely of Policy as those think whose eys her prudent and heaven-ordered Government dazles into a blind envy of her priviledges the Pope should rather have sought pretences to yeeld to this unwarrantable request then have denyed it with the loss of a Kingdom from his Jurisdiction but the common Father of the Church more considered unless we will give way to the suspicious Reports of enemies what detriment and scandal to the whole world was likely to result from such an impious example in so eminent a person then consulted with flesh and blood how to second his desire or cloak his grant with the outside of a dangerous necessity He first counselled friendly then reprehended him Fatherly at last refused his consent absolutely Upon this King Henry grew furious put away his most pious and vertuous Lady Queen Katherine whose Angelical Sanctity and Dove like patience he always continued to honour when as he beheaded her assumed Rival Her disenthronement was Anna Bullens enstalment The marriage was celebrated with a divorce of our poor Country from the Church Appeals to Rome denied under pain of death The Popes Authority which had remained inviolable ever since we English were by its means converted utterly rejected nay the very name of Pope rased out of all the Books in England Monasteries and Religious Houses pulled down or robbed their Revenues given by their devout Founders to pious uses confiscare and consecrared to the Kings riotous Lust. Subscriptions forced to a new and till that time unheard of Church-Government a Secular Head of an Ecclesiastical Body they that would not subscribe disgraced or put to death Thus the Reformation was first set on foot and this lust of King Henry was so fruitful that it at once begot Tyranny Rapine the Reformation Adultery Protestancy at least the embrio of it Sacriledge Queen Elizabeth
in the Doctors judgment Not considering which yet any prudent man would that the whole world whom before they accounted onely Catholick and in which had been hundreds of Kings Queens and Bishops nay perhaps thousands for one of theirs had ever condemned by their contrary beliefe these Votes and Acts to bee scismatical and heretical Besides this King before the breach acknowledging himselfe subject to that Authority in Ecclesiastical matters as all Catholick Kings now doe and as all his Ancestor-Kings ever since Englands conversion had done it must be as I have told you often most apparent evidence and such as greater cannot be imagin'd which may warrant him to exalâ— himselfe above the Popes Authority so long setled in possession and that in those very things in which before he was acknowledgedly under him especially the contrary verdict of such an universality as I have before mention'd with its weight not to be counterpois'd preponderating and mightily prejudicing any pretence of Evidence Again if the thing were evident how happened it that no Christian King till the time of King Henry the eighth and in his time none but he should discern this clear evidence unless perhaps though they say love is blind yet his desire to Anna Bullen did open his eyes in such miraculous manner that he saw by the heavenly light of her bright star-like eyes that the Pope was Antichrist his Authority unlawful and himselfe who was then found under it in Ecclesiastical matters to be indeed above it in case the Popes spiritual power should cross his carnal pleasure To conclude my answer to this Chapter I would ask two things of Mr. Doctor one is in case a King should have broke from the Church and brought in Schism into his Country whether it could probably be perform'd in any other manner than the very method by which their Reformation was introduced The other is whether the Reformation be yet perfectly compleat or rather that Queen Elizabeth swept the Church indeed but left the dust sluttishly behind the door if it be not yet compleat I would gladly know how far this Reformation and Receding from Rome may proceed and what be the certain stints and limits of this rowling Sea which it may not pass For I see no reason in the Doctors grounds but if the secular powers think it convenient they may reform still end wayes as they please nay even if they list deny Christ to be God an acute Socinian will solve very plausibly all the objections out of Scripture and produce allegations which I doubt not he will make far stronger than the Doctor doth his against the Pope nor will there want some obscure testimonies out of Antiquity and express ones from the Arrian Hereticks to evince the Tenet if this then were voted by a King some of his Bishops and a Parliament the Doctor must not disobey and hold Christs Divinity since the thing was done by them to whom as the Doctor sayes rightfull power legally pertain'd They having no infallibility then may happen to vote such a thing and the Doctor having no infallible certainty to the contrary ought not recede from his lawful Superiours so as upon these grounds all religion may be reformed into Atheism and the infallibility of the Church once denied the temporal Power hath no reason to have his rightful authority stinted but at pleasure to make Reformation upon Reformation from generation to generation per omnia saecula saeculorum THE THIRD PART Containing the answers to the foure last Chapters of Dr. Hammonds Schism SECT 1. Doctor Hammonds second sort of Schism and his pretence that they retain the way to preserve Unity in Faith refuted MAster Hammond hath at length finish't his greatest task and done preaching of the first species of Schism as it is an offence against the subordination which Christ hath by himselfe and his Apostles setled in the Church and is now arrived to the second sort as it signifies an offence against the mutual unity peace and charity which Christ left among his Disciples This Schism against Charity for methods sake as he tells us he divides into three species The first is a Schism in the Doctrine or Traditions a departure from the unity of the Faith once delivered to the Saints from the institutions of Christ of the Apostles and of the Universal Church of the first and purest times whether in Government or practises c. Where first this methodical Dr. makes Faith and Charity all one putting his Schism against Faith for the first species of his Schism against mutual Charity Next he ranks also the rejecting Christs Institution of Government under this second species of Schism against Charity which most evidently was the first General Head of Schism hitherto treated of that is of the Offence against Subordination setled by Christ in the Church For Christ could not settle such a subordination in the Church but he must at the same time institute the Government of the Church since there can be neither subordination without Government nor Government without subordination So as now the Schism against Government is come to be one of the Schisms against mutual Charity and to mend the matter comprehended under the same Head with Schism against Faith Was ever such a confusion heard of And yet all this is done saith the Doctor for methods sake But to proceed the second species of his Schism against mutual Charity is an offence against external peace and Communion Ecclesiastical Where I find as much blundering as formerly For these words must either signifie an Offence against Superiors and Governors of the Church and then it is again co-incident both with the first general Head of Schism which dissolves the subordination of the Churches subjects and also with the first particular species of Schism against mutual Charity which according to the Doctors method included a breach from the Government instituted by Christ. Or else they must signifie an Offence against the mutually and equally-due correspondence and Charity which one fellow-member ought to have to another and then it falls to be the same with his third and last species which he calls The want of that Charity which is due from every Christian to every Christian. So that if the jumbling all the Bells together in a confused disorder may be called musical then the Doctors division may be styled methodical After this he subdivides this first species to wit Schism against Faith into A departure from those Rules appointed by Christ for the founding and upholding truth in the Church and into The asserting particular doctrins contrary to Christs and the Apostolical pure Churches establishment But first he cleares himselfe of the former of these by answering our suggestion as he calls it that in casting out the Authority of the Bishop of Rome they have cast off the Head of all Unity To which he tells us the answer is obvious First that the Bishop of Rome was never appointed by