not at this day abhor the reading of the Office So that here is all invented new by Gregory which was hardly received in Spain and yet that changed since Arg. 9. If the Generality of Christians in the first ages and many if not most in the later ages have been free from the Essentials of the Papists faith â—hen their faith hath had no successive Visible Church professing it in all ages but the Christians that are against it have been Visible But the Antecedent is true as I prove in some instances 1. It is an Article of their faith determined in a General Council at Laterane and Florence that the Pope is above a Council But that this hath not been successively received the Council of Basil and Constance witness making it a new Heresie 2. It is an Article of their faith that a Generall Council is above the Pope for it is so determined at Basil and Constance But that this hath had no successive duration the Council of Laterane and Florence witness 3. It is an Article of their faith that the Pope may depose Princes for denying Transubstantiation and such like Heresies and also such as will not exterminate such Hereticks from their dominions and may give their dominions to others and discharge their Subjects from their oaths and fidelity For it is determined so in a Council at Laterane But this hath not been so from the beginning Not when the 13. Chapter to the Romans was written Not till the dayes of Constantine Not till the dayes of Gregory that spake in contrary language to Princes And Goldastus his three Volumes of Antiquities shew you that there hath been many Churches still against it 4. It is an Article of their faith that the Body and Blood together with the Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ is truly really and substantially in the Eucharist and that there is a Change made of the whole substance of Bread into the body and of the whole substance of Wine into the blood which they call Transubstantiation So the Council of Trent But the Catholick Church hath been of a contrary judgement from age to age as among many others Edm. Albertinus de Eucharist hath plainly evinced though a quarreller hath denyed it and little more And it s proved in that successively they judged sense and Reason by it a competent discerner of Bread and Wine 5. It is now de fide that the true Sacrament is rightly taken under one kind without the cup as the Councils of Constance and Trent shew But the Catholick Church hath practised and the Apostles and the Church taught otherwise as the Council of Constance and their Writers ordinarily confess 6. It is an Article of their faith as appears in the Trent Oath that we must never take and interpret Scripture but according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers But the Catholick Church before these Fathers could not be of that mind and the Fathers themselves are of a contrary mind and so are many learned Papists 7. It is an Article of their faith that there is a Purgatory and that the souls there detained are holpen by the suffrages of the faithful But the latter was strange to all the old Catholick Church as Bishop Vsher and others have proved and the very being of Purgatory was but a new doubtfull indifferent opinion of some very few men about Augustines time 8. It is now an Article of their faith that the holy Catholick Church of Rome is the mother and mistris of all Churches But I have shewed here and elsewhere that the Catholick Church judged otherwise and so doth for the most part to this day 9. It is now an Article of their faith that their Traditions are to be received with equall pious affection and reverence as the holy Scripture But the Catholick Church did never so believe 10. The Council of Basil made it de fide that the Virgin Mary was conceived without Originall sin But the Catholick Church never judged so 11. It s determined by a Council now that the people may not read the Scripture in a known tongue without the Popes License But the Catholick Church never so thought as I have proved Disp. 3. of the safe Religion 12. The Books of Maccabees and others are now taken into the Canon of faith which the Catholick Church received not as such as Dr. Cosin and Dr. Reignolds have fully proved To this I might add the Novelty of their Worship and Discipline but it would be too tedious and I have said enough of these in other writings See Dr. Challoner pag. 88 89. In 16. points Dr. Challoner proveth your Novelty from your Confessions Indeed his Book de Eccles. Cath. though small is a full answer to your main Question Arg. 10. If Multitudes yea the far greatest part of Christians in all ages have been ignorant of Popery but not of Christianity then hath there been a succession of Visible Professors of Christianity that were no Papists but the antecedent is true therefore so is the consequent In this age it is an apparent thing that the far greatest part are ignorant of formal Popery 1. They confess themselves that the common people and most of the nobility of Habassia Armenia Greece Russia and most other Eastern Churches that are not Papists are ignorant of the Controversie 2. They use to tell us here among Protestants that there is not one of many that know what a Papist is 3. We know that of those that go under the name of Papists there is not one of a multitude knoweth We hear it from the mouths of those we speak with I have not met with one of ten of the poorer sort of them even here among us that knoweth what a Papist or Popery is but they are taught to follow their Priests and to say that theirs is the true Church and old Religion and to use their Ceremonious worship and to forbear coming to our Churches c. and this is their Religion And in Ireland they are yet far more ignorant And it s well known to be so in other parts Their Priests they know and the Pope they hear of as some person of eminent Power in the Church But whether he be the Universal Vicar of Christ and be over all others as well as them whether this be of Gods institution or by the grant of Emperours or Councils c. they know not And no wonder when the Papists think that the Council of Chalcedon spoke falsly of the humane Originall of the Primacy in the Imperiall territories And when the Councils of Basil and Constance knew not whether Pope or Council was the Head And that the people were as ignorant and much more in former ages they testifie themselves And before Gregories dayes they must needs be ignorant of that which was not then risen in the world Yea Dr. Field hath largely proved Append lib. 3. that even the many particular points in which the Papists now differ
only to conclude absolutely as you here do that all have been against us for many hundred years In your Num. 5. You name Ethiopia and India as having been without the limits of the Roman Empire whom you deny to have acknowledged any supremacy of power and authority above all other Bishops You might have done well to have cited at least one antient Author for this Assertion Were those primitive Christians of another kind of Church-order and Government then were those under the Roman Empire When the Roman Emperors were yet Heathens had not the Bishop of Rome the Supremacy over all other Bishops through the whole Church and did those Heathen Emperors give it him How came St. Cyprian in time of the Heathen Empire to request Stephen the Pope to punish and depose the Bishop of Arles as we shall see hereafter Had he that authority think you from an Heathen Emperour See now how little your Allegations are to the purpose where you nominate any determinate Congregations to satisfie my demand I had no reason to demand of you different congregations of all sorts and Sects opposing the Supremacy to have been shewn visible in all ages I was not so ignorant as not to know that the Nicolaitans Valentinians Gnosticks Manichees Montanists Arians Donatists Nestorians Eutychians Pelagians Iconoclasts Berengarians Waldensians Albigenses Wicleffists Hussits Lutherans Calvinists c. each following others had some kind of visibility divided and distracted each to his own respective age from our time to the Apostles in joyning their heads and hands together against the Popes Supremacy But because these could not be called one successive Congregation of Christians being all together by the ears amongst themselves I should not have thought it a demand beseeming a Scholar to have required such a visibility as this Seeing therefore all you determinately nominate are as much different as these pardon me if I take it not for any satisfaction at all to my demand or acquittance of your obligation Bring me a visible succession of any one Congregation of Christians of the same belief profession and communion for the designed time opposing that Supremacy and you will have satisfied but till that be done I leave it to any equal judgement whether my demand be satisfied or no. You answer to this That all those who are nominated by you are parts of the Catholike Church and so one Congregation But Sir give me leave to tell you that in your principles you put both the Church of Rome and your selves to be parts of the Catholike Church and yet sure you account them not one Congregation of Christians seeing by separation one from another they are made two or if you account them one why did you separate your selves and still remain separate from communion with the Roman Church why possessed you your selves of the Bishopricks and Cures of your own Prelates and Pastors they yet living in Queen Elizabeths time and drew both your selves and their other subjects from all subjection to them and communion with them Is this disunion think you fit to make one and the same Congregation of you and them is not charity subordination and obedience to the same state and government required as well to make one Congregation of Christians as it is required to make one Congregation of Common-wealths men Though therefore you do account them all parts of the Catholike Church yet you cannot make them in your principles one Congregation of Christians Secondly your position is not true the particulars named by you neither are nor can be parts of the Catholike Church unless you make Arians and Pelagians and Donatists parts of the Catholike Church which were either to deny them to be Hereticks and Schismaticks or to affirm that Hereticks and Schismaticks separating themselves from the communion of the Catholike Church notwithstanding that separation do continue parts of the Catholike Church For who knows not that the Ethiopians to this day are Eutychian Hereticks And a great part of those Greeks and Armenians who deny the Popes Supremacy are infected with the Heresie of Nestorius and all of them profess generally all those points of faith with us against you wherein you differ from us and deny to communicate with you or to esteem you other then Hereticks and Schismaticks unless you both agree with them in those differences of faith and subject your selves to the obedience of the Patriarch of Constantinople as to the chief Head and Governour of all Christian Churches next under Christ and consequently as much a vice-Christ in your account as the Pope can be conceived to be See if you please Hieremias Patriarch of Constantinople his Answer to the Lutherans especially in the beginning and end of the book Acta Theologorum Wittebergensium c. and Sir Edwyn Sands of this subject in his Survey p. 232 233 242 c. Either therefore you must make the Eutychians and Nestorians no Hereticks and so contradict the Oecumenical Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon which condemned them as such and the consent of all Orthodox Christians who ever since esteemed them no others or you must make condemned Hereticks parts of the Catholick Church against all antiquity and Christianity And for those Greeks neer Constantinople who are not infected with Nestorianism and Eutychianism yet in the Procession of the Holy Ghost against both us and you they must be thought to maintain manifest Heresie it being a point in a fundamental matter of faith the Trinity and the difference betwixt those Greeks and the Western Church now for many hundred of years and in many General Councils esteemed and defined to be real and great yea so great that the Greeks left the Communion of the Roman Church upon that difference alone and ever esteemed the Bishop of Rome and his party to have fallen from the true faith and lost his ancient authority by that sole pretended error and the Latins alwaies esteemed the Greeks to be in a damnable error in maintaining the contrary to the doctrine of the Western or Roman Church in that particular And yet sure they understood what they held and how far they differed one from another much better then some Novel writers of yours who prest by force of Argument have no other way left them to maintain a perpetual visibility then by extenuating that difference of Procession betwixt the Greek and Latin Church which so many ages before Protestancy sprung up was esteemed a main fundamental error by both parts caused the Greeks to abandon all subjection and Communion to the Bishops of Rome made them so divided the one from the other that they held each other Hereticks Schismaticks and desertors of the true faith as they continue still to do to this day and yet you will have them both to be parts of the Catholike Church But when you have made the best you can of these Greeks Armenians Ethiopians Protestants whom you first name you neither have deduced nor can deduce
Pope have made it an Article of their faith that the whole substance of the Bread and Wine is turned into the Body and Blood of Christ so that there is left no Bread or Wine but only that colour quantity and tast that before belonged to it And if you know not Bread when you eat it or Wine when you drink it and when the senses of all the sound men in the world concur with yours is it not vain for me or any man to dispute with you Can you have any thing brought to a surer judgement then to all your senses And yet no doubt but your seducers can say something to prove that Bread is not Bread when you see and eat it No wonder then if they can confute me But do they indeed believe themselves how is it possible there is no exercise of reason and belief that supposeth not the certainty of sense If I cannot know Bread and Wine when I see touch â—ast them then cannot I know the Pope the Councils the Scripture the Priest or any thing else If you think to let go this point of Popery and hold the rest you know not what Popery is for a Pope and Council having determined it you are damned by them for denying the faith and if you depart from the infallibility of their Rule and judge in points of faith or at least from the obligation of it in one thing they will confess to you that you may as well do it in more False in this and certain in nothing is their own conclusion Sir I have not been unwilling to know the truth having a soul to save or lose as well as you and having as much reason to be loth to perish If you have so far forfeited the Grace of God as meerly to follow the pride of a pretended Vice-Christ that hath turned doctrine into error worship into superstition and dead formality light into darkness discipline into confusion mixt with tyranny if meerly to set up one Tyrant over the consciences and bodies too of all believers in the world you can fall into a Sect deny Scripture Reason the Judgement and Tradition of most of the Church and your own and all mens eye-sight tast and other senses the Lord have mercy on you if you be not past it I have done with you yet remaining An unfeigned desirer of your welfare and lamenter of the Apostacies and giddiness of these times Richard Baxter May. 18. 1659. Did you know what it is by loose and false allegations to be put to read so many Volumes in great part in folio to try whether the alledger say true or false you would not expect that I should return an answer and read so much of so many folios in any less then ten or eleven daies which I think hath been all that I have had to write and read so much The Reader must take notice that I wrote the former Letter to the person that sent Mr. Johnsons Letters with a charitable jealousie that if he were himself in doubt he might be resolved But in his return he fully disclaimed Popery and assured me that it is for the sake of some friends that he desired my labour and not for his own R. B. The Reply to Mr. Johnsons second PAPER Sir THE multitude and urgency of my employments gave me not leave till this day May 2. so much as to read over all your Papers But I shall be as loth to break off our Disputation as you can be though perhaps necessity may sometime cause some weeks delay And again I profess my indignation against the Hypocrital Jugling of this age doth provoke me to welcome so ingenuous and candid a disputant as your self with great content But I must confess also that I was the less hasty in sending you this Reply because I desired you might have leisure to peruse a Book which I published since your last A Key for Catholikes seeing that I have there answered you already and that more largely then I am like to do in this Reply For the sharpness of that I must crave your patience the persons and cause I thought required it Ad 1m. What explications were made to your Friend of your Thesis I could not take notice of who had nothing but your writing to Answer 2. If you will not be precise in Arguing you had little reason to expect much less so strictly to exact a precise Answer which cannot be made as you prescribed to an Argument not precise 3. I therefore expect accordingly that the unlearned be not made the Judges of a dispute which they are not fit to judge of seeing you desire us to avoid their road 4. Again I say if you will not be precise in arguing I can hardly be so in answering And by a Congregation of Christians you may mean Christians politically related to one Head whether Christ or the Pope But the word Assemblies expresseth their actuall Assembling together and so excludeth all Christians that are or were Members of no particular assemblies from having Relation as Members of Christ our Head or the Pope your Head and so from being of the Congregation as you Call The Church universall 5. I had great reason to avoid the snare of an equivocation or ambiguity of which you gave me cause of jealousie by your whatsoever as I told you as seeming to intimate a false supposition To your Like I answer it is unlike and still more intimates the false supposition Whatsoever Congregation of men is the Common-wealth of England is a phrase that importeth that There is a Congregation of men which is not the Common-wealth of England Which is true there being more men in the world So whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church doth seem to import that you suppose there is a Congregation of Christians univocally so called that are not the true Church which you would distinguish from the other Which I only let you know at the entrance that I deny that you may not think it granted Yet I must tell you that nothing is more ordinary then for the Body to be said to do that which a part of it only doth As that the Church administreth Sacraments Discipline Teatheth c. the Church is assembled in such a Council c. when yet it is but a small part of the Church that doth these things And when Bellarmine Gretser c. say the Church is the infallible judge of Controversies of faith they mean not the whole Church which containeth every Christian when they tell you that It is the Pope they mean and therefore I had reason to enquire into your sense unless I would willfully be over-reacht You now satisfie me that you mean it universally viz. â—ll that Congregation or Church of Christians which is now the true Church of Christ doth acknowledge c. which I told you I deny 6. To my following distinction you say that all the world knows that whatsoever is acknowledged
difference is now found to be but in words or little more To what you say of their disclaiming us unless we take the Patriarch of Constantinople for the Vice-Christ you many waies mistake 1. If this were true that they rejected us it were no proof that we are not of one universal Church 2. They do not claim to be Vice Christi the universal Governours of the Church the title of universal Patriarch they extended but to the then Roman Empire and that not to an universal Government but Primacy And many of them have been of brotherly charity to our Churches of late Cyril I need not name to you whom your party procured Murdered for being a Protestant Meletius first Patriarch of Alexandria and then of Constantinople was highly offended with the fiction of a submission of the Alexandrian Church to Rome under a counterfeit Patriarch Gabriels name and wrote thus of the Pope in his Letters to Sigismund King of Poland An. 1600. Perspiceret Majestas tua nos cum majoribus nostris non ignorare quem precaris ut agnoscamus Pontificem scilicet Romanum veluti Constantinopolitanum Pontificem Pontificem Constant. Caeterosque Apostolicarum sedium Pontifices Qui non unus omnium sed inter omnes ipse unus Vnum universale Caput quod sit D. N. Iesus Christus alius esse non possit nisi biceps aliquod sit corpus aut potius monstrum corporis Perspiceres Rex serenissime ut interim de Concilio illo Florentino veluti de re silentio digna taceam non Nos è Patria tum Orientalium tum Occidentalium dogmatibus traditionibusque quae per septem universalia concilia nobis consignarunt atque obsignarunt egressos Illos egressos qui novitatibus in dies delectantur in the same Letters he commendeth Cyril And what can a Protestant say more against the Vice-Christship and your novelties And for Ieremias his predecessor whom you mention though they that disputed with him by Letters Stephanus Gerlochius Martinus Crusius did not agree in all things with him yet he still professed his desire of unity and concord with us and in the beginning of his second answer rejoyceth that we agreed with them in so many things And Iohan. Zygomalas in his Letters to Crusius 1576. May 15. saith Perspicuum tibi omnibus futurum est quod in continuis causam fidei praecipue continentibus articulis consentiamus quae autem videntur consensum inter vos nos impedire talia sunt si velit quis ut facile ea corrigere possit Gaudium in caelo super terram erit si coibit in unitatem utraque Ecclesia idem sentiemus simul vivemus in omni concordia pace secundum Deum in sincerae charitatis vinculo But as it is not the Patriarch that is the whole Greek Church so it is not their errors in some lesser or tolerable points that prove us of two Churches or Religions Whereas you say It is against all Antiquity and Christianity to admit condemned Hereticks into the Church I Reply 1. I hate their condemnation rather then reverence it that even being non judices dare condemn whole Nations without hearing one man of them speak for himself or hearing one witness that ever heard them defend Heresie and this meerly because some few Bishops have in the daies of old maintained Heresie and perhaps some may do so still or rather differ from you in words while you misunderstand each other Did I find such errors with them as with you yet I durst charge them on no one man that I had not reason to hold guilty of them I dare not accuse whole Nations of your errors But of all these things and of Sandys words which you cite I have spoken already in two Books and in the latter fully proved that you differ in many points of faith and greater things then you call Heresies in others among your selves even your Popes Saints and Councils and yet neither part is judged by you to be out of the Church See my Key p. 124 125 127 128 129. p. 52. ad 62. When you say so much to prove the Greeks guilty of manifest Heresie and pretend that it is but some novel writers of ours that deny it as forced by your arguments I must say that you prove but your own uncharitableness instead of their Heresie and you shew your self a stranger to your own writers who frequently excuse the Greeks from Heresie and say the difference at the Council of Florence was found to be more about words then faith Thomas a Iesu de Convers. omn. gentium lib. 6. cap. 8. p. 281. saith His tamen non obstantibus alii opinantur Graecos tantum esse schismaticos Ita ex junioribus docet Pater Azorius 1. primae Institut Moral lib. 8. cap. 20. q. 10. Quare merito ab Ecclesia Catholica non haeretici sed schismatici censentur appellantur Ita apert insinuat D. Bernardus no Novel Protestant in Epist. ad Eugenium lib. 3. Ego addo inquit de pertinacia Graecorum qui nobiscum sunt non sunt juncti fide pace divisi quanquam in fide ipsa claudicaverint à rectis semitis Idem aperte tenet D. Thomas Opuscul 2. ubi docet patres Graecos in Catholico sensu esse exponendos Ratio hujus Opinionis est quoniam ut praedictus author docet in praedictis fidei articulis de quibus Graeci accusantur ab aliquibus ut haeretici potius Nomine quam Re ab Ecclesia Romana dissident Inprimis inficiantur illi Spiritum Sanctum à Patre Filioque procedere ut in Bulla Vnionis Eugenii 4. dicitur existimantes Latinos sentire à Patre Filioque procedere tanquam à duobus principiis cum tamen Latina doceat Ecclesia procedere à duabus personis tanquam ab uno principio spiratore quare Graeci ut unum principium significent dicunt Spiritum Sanctum à Patre per Filium procedere ab omni aeternitate Your Paulus Veridicus Paul Harris Dean of your Academy lately in Dublin in his Confutation of Bishop Vshers Sermon saith that the Greeks Doctrine about the Procession of the Holy Ghost à Patre per Filium and not à Patre Filioque was such that When they had explicated it they were found to believe very Orthodoxly and Catholikely in the same matter and for such were admitted and that He findeth not any substantial point that they differ from you in but the Primacy So the Armenians were received in the same Council of Florence Many more I have read of your own writers that all vindicate the Greeks and others that disown you from Heresie I think more then I have read of Protestants that do it And do you think now that it is not a disgrace to your cause that man of your learning and one that I hear hath the confidence to draw others to your opinions should yet be so
all men judge that then only is any thing proved Theologically when they prove it from the words of the holy Scripture This is more then the former say For to extend the sufficiency and necessity of Scripture to all that 's Theologicall is more then to extend it to matter of faith No Protestant goeth higher then this that I know of And note that he makes this the very common conception and judgement of all men See then where our Religion and Church was before Luther even among all Christians Yet more fully he proceeds ibid. Hence it further appeareth that Principles of Theology thus taken that is which is acquired by Theologicall discourse are the very Truths themselves of the holy Canon because the ultimate Resolution of all Theologicall discourse doth stand or belong to them and all Theologicall conclusions are deduced first from them But distinguishing the Conclusions Theologicall from the Principles I say that all truths are not in themselves formally contained in the holy Scripture but of necessity following from those that are contained in them and this whether they are Articles of faith or not N B and whether they are knowable or known by another science or not and whether they are determined by the Church or not But of other Truths to wit not following from the words of the holy Scripture I say there is no Theologicall conclusion This is proved c. When I read over the Schoolmen and Divines of all sorts that wrote before the Reformers fell so closely upon the Pope and find how generally even the Papists themselves maintained the sufficiency of the holy Scripture just as the Protestants now do I am convinced 1. of the succession of the Protestants Religion in the Universal Visible Church and 2. that it was the Reformers Arguments from Scripture that forced the Papists to oppose this holy Rule as to its sufficiency and to invent the new doctrine of supplementall Tradition for conservative Ministeriall Tradition of the holy Scriptures we are for as much at least as they The words of Guil. Parisieâ—sis too large to be recited in extolling the fulness and perfection of the Scripture even for all sorts of men you may read de Legibus cap. 16. pag. 46. Bellarmine de Verbo Dei lib. 3. cap. 10. ad Arg. 15. saith We must know that a Proposition of faith is concluded in such a syllogism Whatsoever God hath revealed in Scripture is true But this God hath revealed in Scripture Therefore it is true Though he require another word of God by the Pope or Council to prove that this is revealed in Scripture But if so then Scripture containeth all that 's true in points of faith 2. And that all things that are revealed and which we ought to believe are not Essentiall to the Christian faith and therefore that all are of the Church that hold these Essentialls and that such a distinction must be maintained the Papists have still confessed till lately that disputing hath encreased their novelties and errours Bellarmines and Costerus confession I recited even now Guliel Parisiensis in Operum pag. 9 10 11 12. de fide industriously proveth the necessity of distinguishing the fundamentalls or essentialls from the rest of the points of faith and it is they that constitute the Catholick faith which he saith is therefore called Catholick or Universal because it is the common faith or the common foundation of Religion And he proves that hence it is that the Catholick faith is but One and found in all Catholicks these fundamentalls being found in all By many arguments he proveth this And that there are some points even these common Articles necessary to be known of all necessitati medii the Schoolmen commonly grant as Aquin. 22. q. 2. a. 5. c. Bannes in 22. q. 2. a. 8. c. Of these saith Espencaeus in 2. Ti. c. 3. dig 17. which are the objects of faith per se and not the secondary objects the adult must have an explicite faith and the Colliers faith at this time decantate by the Catholicks will not serve the turn And we have both the Scripture sufficiency to all points of faith even the lowest and also the foresaid distinction given us together by Tho. Aquinas 22. q. art 5. c. We must say that the object of faith per se is that by which man is made blessed But by accident and secondarily all things are the object of faith which are contained in the holy Scripture See the judgement of Occham Canus Tolet and many more cited by Dr. Potter and yet more for the sufficiency of the Symbole or Creed as the test of Christianity pag. 89 90 91 92 93. Where you have the sense of the Ancients upon the point and p. 102 103. I conclude therefore with the Jesuite Azorius par 1. lib. 8. c. 6. The substance of the Article in which we believe One holy Catholick Church is that no man can be saved out of the Congregation of men professing the reception of the faith and Religion of Christ and that salvation may be obtained within this same Congregation of godly and faithfull men And as to the Essence of the Christian faith and Church we say with Tertullian of the Symbole Fides in Regula posita est habes legem salutem ex observatione legis exercitatio autem in curiositate consistit habens gloriam solam ex peritiae studio Cedat curiositas fidei Cedat gloria saluti Corte aut non obstrepant aut quiescant adversus regulam Nihil ultra scire est omnia scire That is Faith lieth in the Rule Here you have the Law and salvation in the observation of that Law but it is exercise that consisteth in curiosity having only a name or glory by the study of skill Let curiosity give place to faith Let glory give place to salvation Let them not prate or let them be quiet against the Rule To know nothing further is to know all things De Praescript cap. 13 14. So cap. 8. Nobis curiositate opus non est post Christum Iesum nec inquisitione post Evangelium Cum credimus nihil desideramus ultra credere hoc enim prius credimus non esse quod ultra credere debeamus That is As for us we need not curiosity after Jesus Christ nor inquisition after the Gospel When we believe we need to believe no further For we first believe this that there is nothing further that we ought to believe And here on the by for the right understanding of Tertullians Book de Praescript note 1. That the Rule of Essentialls extracted from the whole Scripture is the Churches ancient Creed 2. That the compleat Rule of all points of faith is the whole Scripture And that Tertullian had to do with Hereticks that denied the Essentials and desired the whole Scripture to dispute their case from both because they had questioned or rejected much of it and because it was a larger field to exercise their
from us were but the opinions of a faction among them before Luther and that the Western Church before Luther was Protestant even in those particular Controversies though this is a thing that we need not prove And as Dr. Potter tells them pag. 68. The Roman Doctors do not fully and absolutely agree in any one point among themselves but only in such points wherein they agree with us In the other disputed between us they differ one from another as much almost as they differ from us He appeals for this to Bellarmines Tomes Though I cannot undertake to make this good in every point yet that proper Popery was held but by a Faction in the Western Church even at its height before Luther is easily made good He that readeth but the Writers before Luther and in History noteth the desires of Emperours Kings and Universities and Bishops for Reformation of the things that we have reformed may soon see this to be very true It was Avitas Leges consuetudines Angliae as Rog. Hovedâ—n and Matth. Paris in H. 2. shew that the Pope here damned and anathematized all that favoured and observed them O tender Father even to Kings O enemy of Novelties The German History collected by Reuberus Pistorus Freherus and Goldastus shews it as pâ—ain as day light that a Papal Faction by fury and turbulency kept under the far greater part of the Church by force that indeed dissented from them even from Hildebrands dayes till Luthers or near Saith the Apologia Henrici 4. Imperat. in M. Frâ—heri Tom. 1. p. 178. Behold Pope Hildebrands Bishops when doubtless they are murderers of Souls and bodies such as deservedly are called the Synagogue of Satan yet they write that on his and on their side or party is the holy Mother Church When the Catholick that is the Universal Church is not in the Schism of any side or parties but in the Universality of the faithfull agreeing together by the spirit of Peace and Charity And p. 179. See how this Minister of the Devil is beside himself and would draw us with him into the ditch of perdition that writeth that Gods holy Priesthood is with only 13. or few more Bishops of Hildebrands and that the Priesthood of all the rest through the world are separated from the Church of God when certainly not only the testimony of Gregory and Innocent but the judgement of all the holy Fathers agree with that of Cyprian that he is an Alien prophane an enemy that he cannot have God for his Father that holdeth not the Unity of the Church which he after describeth to have one Priesthood Et p. 181. But some that go out from us say and write that they defend the party of their Gregory not the Whole which is Christs which is the Catholick Church of Christ. And p. 180. But our Adversaries that went from us not we from them use thus to commend themselves We are the Catholicks we are in the Unity of the Church So the Writer calls them Catholicks and us that hold the faith of the holy Fathers that consent with all good men that love peace and brotherhood us he calls Schismaticks and Hereticks and Excommunicate because we resist not the King And p. 181. Isidore saith Etym. l. 8. The Church is called Catholick because it is not as the conventicles of Hereticks confined in certain countries but diffused through the whole world therefore they have not the Catholick faith that are in a part and not in the Whole which Christ hath redeemed and must reign with Christ. They that confess in the Creed that they believe the holy Catholick Church and being divided into parties hold not the Unity of the Church which Unity believers being of one heart and one soul properly belongs to the Catholick Church So this Apol. One Objection I must here remove which is all and nâ—thing viz. That the Armenians Greeks Georgians Abassines and many others here named differ from Protestants in many points of faith and therefore they cannot be of the same Church Ans. 1. They differ in nothing Essentiall to our Church or Religion nor near the Essence 2. Protestants differ in some lesser points and yet you call them all Protestants your selves 3. I prove undeniably from your own pens that men differing in matters of faith are all taken to be of your Church and so of one Church and therefore you contradict your selves in making all points of faith to be Essentials of the Christian Religion or Church 1. The Council of Basil and Constance differed de fide with the Popâ— and the Council of Laterane and Florence They expresly affirm their doctrine to be de fide that the Council is above the Pope and may depose him c. and the contrary Heresie And Pighius Hierarch Eccles. lib. 6. saith that these Councils went against the undoubted faith and judgement of the Orthodox Church it self 2. Their Saint Tho. Aquinas and most of their Doctors with him differ from the second Council of Nice in holding the Cross and Image of Christ to be worshipped with Latria which that Council determined against See more Arguments in my Key for Cath. p. 127 128. and after I will now add a Testimony sufficient to silence Papists in this point and that is The Determination of the Theological faculty of Paris under their great Seal against one Iohan. de Montesono ordinis Praedic as you may find it after the rest of the Errors rejected by that University in the end of Lombard printed at Paris 1557. pag. 426. Their 3. Conclusion is that Saint Thom. Aquin. doctrine is not so approved by the Church as that we must believe that it is in no part of it erroneous de fide in matter of faith or hereticall They prove it because it hath many contradictions even in matter of faith and therefore they ought not to believe it not hereticall Here fol. 426 427. they give six examples of his contradictions and therefore they conclude that though he were no Heretick because not pertinacious yet they ought not to believe that his doctrine was in no part hereticall or erroneous in the faith They further argue thus If we must believe his doctrine not hereticall c. this should be chiefly because it is approved by the Church But there is some doctrine much more approved by the Church then the doctrine of S. Tho. which yet is in some part of it hereticall or erroneous in the faith therefore The Minor they prove by many examples The first is of Peters doctrine Gal. 2. I own not this by citing it The second is of Cyprian The third of Hierom and they add that the same may be said of Augustine and many more approved Doctors The fourth example is Lombard himself who they say hath somewhat erroneous in the faith The fifth is Gratian who had he pertinaciously adhered to his doctrine they say had been a manifest Heretick And say they some say the
guideth or inspireth him This is at once to believe a Humane and Divine Veracity If any of this be your meaning the last questions remain still to be resolved by you A man may believe that God is true and that his Prophets or inspired messengers are true and yet not understand a word of the message so that still if this will serve a man may be of your Church that knoweth not that ever there was such a person as Jesus Christ or that ever he died for our sins or rose again or that we shall rise And are Infidels of your Church while you are arguing us out But if there be some truths besides the Veracity of God and his Messengers that must be believed you must shew what it is or your Church-members cannot be known Tell me therefore without tergiversation what are the revealed truths that must actually be believed or what is the faith materially in unity whereof all members of the Catholike Church do live I pray fly not but plainly tell me And if again you fly to uncertain points because of the diversity of means of information and say It must be so much to every man as he had means to know I again answer you 1. If a man had no means to know that there is a Christ it seems then he is one of your Church 2. You still damn all your own there being not a man that knoweth all that he had means to know because all have culpably neglected means And so you have no Church 3. Still you make your Church invisible if you had any For no man can tell as I said who knoweth in full proportion to his helps and means Do you not see now whither your Implicite faith hath brought you R. B. Qu. 3. Is it any lawful Pastors or All that must necessarily be depended on by every member and who are these Pastors Mr. J. Answ. Of all respectively to each subject that is that the authority of none of them mediate or immediate be rejected or contemned by him that is a true member of the Church R. B. Reply Ad Qu. 3. R. Reply 1. Here still you tell me that your descriptions signified nothing You told me that the members must live in dependance on their lawful Pastors And now you tell me that their authority must not be rejected or contemned And indeed is dependance and non-rejection all one The millions of heathens that never heard of the Pope or any of your Pastors reject them not nor contemn them Are they therefore fit matter for your Church 2. If you say that you mean it of such only as have a sufficient Revelation of the Authority of these Pastors I further reply 1. It seems then it is not only the Pope but every Priest respectively that is an essential member of your Church or to whom each member must be subject necessarily ad esse If so then every man that by falling out or prejudice doth culpably reject the authority of any one Pastor or Priest among a swarm is damned or none of the Church though he believe in the Pope and in twenty thousand Priests besides 2. And then have we not cause to pray God to bless us from the company of your Priests or at least that we may not have too many when among a multitude we may be in danger of rejecting some one and then we are cast out of the Church What if a Gentleman should find some such as Watson or Montaltus describe in bed with his wife or a Prince find a Garnet a Campion or a Parsons in a Treason and by such a temptation should be so weak as to contemn or reject the authority of that single Priest while he honoureth all the rest Is it certain that such a man is none of the Catholike Church for that How hard is it in France and Italy then to be a Catholike where Priests are so numerous that its ten to one but among the crowd the authority of some one may be rejected 3. But is it all the Priests that we never knew or knew not to be Priests that we must depend on or is it only those whose authority is manifested to us by sufficient evidence Doubtless you will confine our dependance to these only or else no man could be a Christian And if so you know we are never the nearer a resolution for your answer till you yet tell us how we must know our Pastors to have authority indeed What if they shew me the Bishops orders and I know that many have had forged Orders am I bound to believe in his authority what if I be utterly ignorant whether he that ordained him were himself ordained or had intentionem ordinandi how shall I then be sure of his authority that is ordained And how can the people be acquainted with the passages in Election and Ordination that are necessary to the knowledge of their authority especially of the Popes and prelates And what if you tell me your own opinion of the sufficient means by which I must be convinced of the Popes and Priests authority how shall I know that you are not deceived and that these are the sufficient means indeed unless a General Council have defined them to be sufficient And if they have if it were not as an Article of faith you 'l say I am not bound of necessity to believe their definition And what if I have sufficient means to know the authority of a thousand Priests but am culpably ignorant of it in some few through my neglect Doth it follow that therefore I am out of the Church Is my obedience to each Priest as necessary as my belief of every Article of my faith If so I know not whether your multiplying Articles or multiplying Priests doth fill hell faster if men must be judged by your laws But it is our Allegiance to our Soveraign that is the character of a Subject in the Common-wealth and not our Allegiance or duty to every inferiour Magistrate the rejection of one of them may stand with subjection though not with innocency It is not treason to reject a Constable why then should more be necessary to our Church-membership and salvation But still you make your Church invisible For as no man can know that liveth in the remote parts of the world whether your Popes themselves are truly Popes as being duly qualified and elected nor which is the true Pope when you have oft had more then one at once so you can never know concerning your members whether their dependance on their Pastors be extensively proportionate to the means that discovered their authority and whether their disobedience unchurch them or no I earnestly crave your answer to the thirty uncertainties which I have mentioned in my Safe Religion p. 93 to 104. And tell us how all our Pastours may be known And whether every particular sin unchurch men and if not why the contempt or rejection of a drunken Priest doth it while
terms of unity then these shall never attain it but raise up a new Sect and encrease our wounds I am as much for unity as ever was Cassander Erasmus Grotius or any of the Reconcilers But I am certain that to subscribe to the Trent Decrees and Creed and to turn Papist or Semi-Papist or participate of any sin for peace is not the way Let some plead for all the Greek corruptions and some for the Popes supremacy regulated by Canons and some for his meer Primacy as principium unitatis and his Government of all the West as Patriark let them digladiate about a Pope and Council as wisely as Greece and Troy did fight ten years for a beautiful whore I am sure that none of these are the way to the Churches Unity and Peace as I have opened in my description of the true Catholike Church Nor will their design be more successeful that would so discordantly agree us all with the first three hundred years as to deny the first hundred or two hundred to be our pattern and to make all the forms and ceremonies to be necessary to our concord which the third or fourth Century used but as things indifferent with diversity and mutation and mutual forbearance But of the terms of Catholike Vnity I have spoken as in the forecited papers so in a Pacificatory Letter of the Worcestershire Ministers to Mr. J. Dury and if God will shall do it yet more â—ully And of the evils in Popery that move me to distast it having given a Breviate in an Epistle before another mans Book which I perceive is seen of very few I shall here annex so much of that Epistle as is pertinent to the present business Readers WEre not the Iudgements of God so dreadfull and infatuation so lamentable in matters of everlasting consequence and sin so odious and the calamities of the Church the dishonour of God and the Damnation of Souls such deplorable things as tolerate not a laughter in the standers by it would seem one of the most ridiculous things in the World that a man of seeming wisdom should be a Papist and that so many Princes and learned men with the vulgar multitude should be able so far to renounce or intoxicate their Reason while they are awake And a Papist would be described to be one that sets up his understanding to be the laughing-stock of the sober rational World There are abundance of Controversies among Physitians that concern mens lives and yet I have heard of none so vain as to step forth and challenge the Authority of being the universal Decider of them or to charge God with solly or oversight if he have not appointed some such universal Iudge in the World to end all Controversies in matters of such weight But if in Physick's Law or any of the Sciences the Controversies should be never so many or so great if yet you could resolve them into sense it self and bring all to the judgement of mens eyes and ears and taste and feeling who would not laugh or hiss at him that would still make them the matters of serious doubts The Papists finding that man is 〈◊〉 perfect and knoweth but in part and 〈◊〉 the Scripture there are some things are hard to be understood and that Earth hath not so much Light as Heaven imagine that hereby they have a fair advantage to plead for an universal terrestrial Iudge and to reproach God if he have appointed none such and next to plead that their Pope or his approved Councils must needs have this Authority And when they come to the Decision they are not ashamed to see after so many hundred years pretentions that the World is but basfled with the empty name of a Judge of Controversies and that Difficulties are no less Difficulties still and Controversies are nowhere so voluminous as with them But this is a small matter with them Their Iudge sâ—â—ms much wiser when he is silent then when he speaks When he comes to a Decision and formeth up thereby the Hodge-podge of Popery they seem not to smile at nor be ashamed of the Picture which they have drawn which is of an Harlot shewing her nakedness and committing her lewdness in the open Assemblies in the sight of the Sún They openly proclaim their shame against the light of all the acknowledged Principles in the World their own or others and in opposition to all or almost all that is commendable among men The charge seems high but in a few words take the proof 1. They confess the Scripture to be the Word of God and yet when we would appeal to that as the Rule of Faith and Life or as a divine Revelation in our Disputes they fly off and tell us of its obscurity and the necessity of a Iudge If they meet with a Hoc est corpus meum they seem for a while to be zealous for the Scripture But tell them that Paul in 1 Cor. 11.26 27 28. doth call it Bread after the Consecration no less than three times in the three next Verses and then Scripture is non-sense to them till the Pope make sense of it It is one of their principal labours against us to argue against the Scriptures sufficiency to this use By no means can we prevail with them to stand to the Decision of the Scripture 2. They excessively cry up the Church and appeal to its Decision and therefore we might hope that here if anywhere we might have some hold of them But when it comes to the Point they not only disown the judgement of the Church but impudently call Christ's Spouse a Strumpet and cut off in their uncharitable imagination two or three parts of the universal Church as Hereticks or Schismaticks The judgement of the Churches in Armenia Ethiopia Egypt Syria the Greeks and many more besides the Reformed Churches in the West is against their Popes universal Vicarship or Soveraignty and many of their Errours that depend thereon And yet their judgement is not regarded by this Faction And if a third or fourth part such as it is of the Universal Church may cry up themselves as the Church to be appealed to and condemn the far greater part why may not a tenth or a twentieth part do the like Why may not the Donatists the Novatians or the Greeks much more do so as well as Papists 3. They cry up Tradition And when we ask them How we shall know it and where it is to be found they tell us principally in the profession and practice of the present Church And yet when two or three parts of the universal Church profess that Tradition is against the Papal Monarchy and other Points depending on it they cast Tradition behind their backs 4. They cry up the Fathers and when we bring their judgements against the substance of Popery they sometime vilifie or accuse them as erroneous and sometime tell us that Fathers as well as Scripture must be no otherwise understood than their Church
expoundeth them 5. They plead for an appeal to Councils and though we easily prove that none of them were universal yet such as they were they call them all Reprobate which were not approved by their Pope let the number of Bishops there be never so great And those that were approved if they speak against them they reject also either with lying shifts denying the approbation or saying the acts are not de fide or not conciliariter facta or the sense must be given by their present Church or one such contemptible shift or other 6. At least one would think they should stand to the judgement of the Pope which yet they will not for shame forbids them to own the Doctrine of those Popes that were Hereticks or Infidels and by Councils so judged And others they are forced to disown because they contradict their Predecessors And at Rome the Cardinals are the Pope while he that hath the name is oft made light of And how infallible he is judged by the French and the Venetians how Sixtus the fifth was valued by the Spaniards and by Bellarmine is commonly known 7. But all this is nothing to their renunciation of humanity even of the common senses and reason of the world When the matter is brought to the Decision of their eyes and taste and feeling whether Bread be Bread and Wine be Wine and yet all Italy Spain Austria Bravaria c. cannot resolve it yea generally unless some latent Protestant do pass their judgement against their senses the senses of all sound men in the World that not in a matter beyond the reach of sense as whether Christ be there spiritually but in a matter belonging to sense if any thing belong to it as whether Bread be Bread c. Kings and Nobles Prelates and Priests do all give their judgement that all their senses are deceived And is it possible for these men then to know any thing or any controversie between us and them to be decided If we say that the Sun is light or that the Pope is a man and Scripture legible or that there are the Writings of Councils and Fathers extant in the World they may as well concur in a denyal of all this or any thing else that sense should judge of If they tell us that Scripture requireth them to contradict all their senses in this point I answer 1. Not that Scripture before mentioned that calleth it Bread after the Consecration thrice in the three next Verses 2. And how know they that there is such a Scripture if all their senses be so fallible If the certainty of sense be not supposed a little learning or wit might satisfie them that Faith can have no certainty But is it not a most dreadful judgement of God that Princes and Nations Learned men and some that in their way are conscientious should be given over to so much inhumanity and to make a Religion of this brutishness and worse and to persecute those with Fire and Sword that are not so far forsaken by God and by their reason and that they should so solicitously labour the perversion of States and Kingdoms for the promoting of stupidity or stark madness 8. And if we go from their Principles to their Ends or Wayes we shall soon see that they are also against the Unity of the Church while they pretend this as their chiefest Argugument to draw men to their way They set up a corrupted Faction and condemn the far greater part of the Church and will have no unity with any but those of their own Faction and Subjection and fix this as an essential part of their Religion creating thereby an impossibility of universal concord 9. They also contradict the Experience of many thousand Saints asserting that they are all void of the Love of God and saving Grace till they become subject to the Pope of Rome when as the Souls of these Believers have Experience of the Love of God within them and feel that Grace that proveth their Iustification I wonder what kind of thing it is that is called Love or Holiness in a Papist which Protestants and other Christians have not and what is the difference 10. They are most notorious Enemies to Charity condemning most of the Christian world to Hell for being out of their subjection 11. They are notorious Enemies to Knowledge under pretence of Obedience and Unity and avoiding Heresie They celebrate their Worship in a Language not understood by the vulgar Worshippers They hinder the People from Reading the holy Scriptures which the ancient Fathers exhorted men and women to as an ordinary thing The quality of their Priests and People testifies this 12. They oppose the Purity of divine Worship setting up a multitude of humane Inventions instead thereof and idolatrously for no less can be said of it adoring a piece of conserated Bread as their God 13. They are Opposers of Holiness both by the foresaid enmity to Knowledge Charity and purity of Worship and by many unholy Doctrines and by deluding Souls with an outside histrionicall way of Religion never required by the Lord consisting in a multitude of Ceremonies and worshipping of Angels and the Souls of Saints and Images and Crosses c. Let experience speak how much the Life of Holiness is promoted by them 14. They are Enemies to common Honesty teaching the Doctrines of Equivocations and Mental Reservations and making many hainous sins venial and many of the most odious sins to be Duties as killing Kings that are excommunicated by the Pope taking Oaths with the foresaid Reservations and breaking them c. For the Jesuits Doctrine Montaltus the Jansenist and many of the French Clergy have pretty well opened it And the Pope himself hath lately been fain to publish a condemnation of their Apology And yet the power and interest of the Jesuites and their followers among them is not altogether unknown to the World 15. They are Enemies to Civil Peace and Government if there be any such in the World as their Doctrine and Practice of killing and deposing excommunicate Princes breaking Oaths c. shews Bellarmine that will go a middle way gives the Pope power in ordine ad spiritualia and indirectly to dispose of Kingdoms and tells us that it is unlawfull to tolerate Heretical Kings that propagate their Heresie that is the ancient Faith How well Doctor Heylin hath vindicated their Council of Laterane in this whose Decrees stand as a Monument of the horrid treasonable Doctrine of the Papists I shall if God will hereafter manifest In the mean time let any man read the words of the Council and Iudge And now whether a Religion that is at such open enmity with 1. Scripture 2. The Church 3. Tradition 4. Fathers 5. Councils 6. Some Popes 7. The common senses and Reason of all the World even their own 8. Vnity of Christians 9. Knowledge 10. Experience of Believers 11. Charity 12. Purity of Worship 13. Holiness 14. Common Honesty
15. and to Civil Government and Peace which might all easily be fully proved though here but touched I say whether such a Religion should be embraced and advanced with such diligence and violence and mens souls laid upon it is the controversie before us And whether is should be tolerated even the propagation of it to the damnation of the peoples souls is now the Question which the juggling Papists have set a foot among those that have made themselves our Rulers and there are found men among us that call themselves Protestants and godly that plead for the said Toleration and consequently for the delivering up of these Nations to Popery if not to Spanish or other forreign Powers which if they effect and after their contrary Professions prove such Traitors to Christ his Gospel and their posterity as they leave the Land of their Nativity in misery they shall leave their stinking names for a reproach and curse to future Generations and on such Pillars shall be written This pride self-seeking uncharitableness and schism hath done This was written and printed under the late Usurpers Postscript Reader THough the Papists have seemed to be the most discountenanced party under the late Usurpers and to have no interest or power yet I have still found that those sped worst from men that were most against them and that I never wrote any book against them but it brought a sharper storm upon me then any thing that I wrote against any other Sect that was more visibly in power And yet it was not openly professed to be for my opposition to Popery but on some other account and though the fountain by the taste of the waters might be known yet it self and secret conducts were all underground and undiscernable The Jesuits that are the spring of these and greater things then these are latent and their motion is not seen while we see the motions which are caused by their secret force So that by this means its only those few inquisitive discerning persons that can see a cause in its effect that find them out and those few are unable to make full proof even of the things they know and thereby are prohibited from appearing openly in the cause lest coming short in legal proof they leave the guilty triumphing over the innocent as calumniators For the last book that I wrote against them My Key for Catholikes the Parliament-house it self and all the land did ring of my accusations and the menaces were so high that my intended ruine was the common talk And I know their indignation is not abated My crime is that their zeal to proselyte me hath acquainted me with some of their secrets and let me know what the Jesuits are doing and how great a party that are masked under the name of Seekers Familists c. they have in the land I have therefore Reader this double request to thee First arm thy self diligently against Popery if thou would'st preserve thy Religion and thy soul. Whatever Sects assault thee openly suspect and avoid the disease that is endeavouring with greatest advantages to be Epidemical To this end be well studied in the writings that have opened their vanity and shame I hope what I have written on that subject will not be useless to them that are not at leisure to read the larger volumes Read Dr. Challoners Credo sanctam Ecclesiaâ— Catholicam Peter Moulins Answer to Cottons Questions And for larger Volumes Vsher Chillingworth Field Whittakers especially de Pontif. Roman may be numbered with the most solid judicious and useful And Dr. Mouline of the Novelty of Popery now in the press with River and Chamier to add no more And if ever thou fall in company with Seekers or Familists that are questioning all things and endeavouring to disparage the holy Scriptures and the Ministry and Church and Ordinances though but in a questioning way look then to thy Religion and suspect a Papist Secondly because experience hath taught me to expect that my renewed assault of Popery should raise some storm and renew my dangers though I know not which way it will come and expect it should be upon pretence of something that is no kin to the real cause let him that hath been so exceedingly beholden to the servants of Christ for prayers have thy prayers in particular for this that he may be satisfied in Gods approbation and count it a small matter to be censured by man or to suffer those soft and harmless stroaks that the impotent arm of flesh can inflict and may live and dye in the Army of believers described Heb. 11 and 12. and be so far preserved from the contrivances of malice as is needful to his appointed work in which it is the top of his ambition to be found A faithful though unworthy servant of Christ for his Church Rich. Baxter Sâ—p 3. 1660. The CONTENTS The first Part. Mr. Johnsons Argument prosecuted to pag. 6 My Answer 7 to 26 Mr. Johnsons second Paper 27 His attempt to prove the succession of the Roman Soveraignty 49 to the end My letter to the sender of his 68 My Reply to the second Paper 77 On which of us the Proof is incumbent 87 Of the Eastern and Southern Churches 94 95 c. Whether we are one Church with them of Rome 107 c. Of our separation 107 Whether the Armenians Ethiopians Syrians c. are excluded as Hereticks 113 The instance of an Appeal of John of Antioch refuted 127 The instance of Flavianus Appeal refuted 129 Of Leo's pretended restoring Theodoret upon Appeal 132 Of Cyprians desire that Stephen would depose Martian Bishop of Arles 133 A pretended Decree of the Council of Sardis examined 135 Basils words Epist. 74. examined 138 Chrysostoms words to Innocent 140 A pretended Proof from the Council of Ephesus confuted 141 Of the addresses to Pope Julius by Athanasius and the Arrians 143 Chamiers words hereabout 146 Of Chrysostoms case 147 Of Theodosius and the Concil Ephes. 152 Of the Council of Calcedon 154 Of Pope Agapet deposing Anthymius of Constantinople 159 Of Gregories words 160 Of Cyril and Celestine against Nestorius 161 Of Juvenals words 163 Of Valentinians and Theodosius words 164 Of Vincentius Lirinensis words 169 Of Philip and Arcadius at Concil Ephesus 170 The nullity of all these pretended Proofs 174 Whether Papists give and Popes accept the Title of Vice-Christ Monarch c. 175 to 188 Of the Contest of Councils for the Rule 188 Mr. Johnsons work to which his cause engageth him 191 The Contents of the second Part. Qu. WHether the Church of which the Protestants are members have been visible ever since the daies of Christ on earth Aff. The Church what 197 Protestants what 198 Of Membership and Visibility 201 The first Argument to prove the successive Visibility 204 The second Argument 209 Papists Testimonies for the sufficiency of Scripture as the Rule 219 Some of the Fathers of the same 221 Where was our Church 225 The true Catholike
Church how described by Augustine 227 Optatus 231 Tertullian 232 The third Argument 238 The fourth Argument 241 242 Arguments proving the Visibility of a Church without the Papacy since Christ. Argument first from the Council of Calcedon 242 Argument 2. From the silence of the Ancients in cases where the allegation of the Papal power would have been most pertinent and necessary 244 Argument 3. From the Tradition and Testimony of the greatest part of the Church 248 Argument 4. From the Churches without the verge of the Empire not subject to the Pope 249 Argument 5. From the Eastern Churches within the Empire not subjects of the Pope 251 Argument 6. From the full Testimony of Greâ—ory the first p. 252 c. defended against Bellarmine Argument 7. From the Confession of â—â—ieâ— Papists 〈◊〉 Sylvius Melchioâ— Câ—nus Reynerius 267 Argument 8. From Historical Testimony about the Original of Vniversal Hâ—â—dship 269 Argument 9. The generality of Christians in the first ages and most in the latter free from owning the Papacy 271 Argument 10. Most Christians in all ages ignorant of Popery 275 Object The Armenians Greeks c. differ from Protestants Answered 280 Misceâ—â—any considerable Testimonies 288 Mr. Johnsons exception 292 My Answer to his exception shewing in what sense Hereticks are or are not in the Church applyed to the Eastern and Southern Churches 293 c. Mr. Johnsons Explication of the most used terms with my Quere's thereupon and his Answer and my Reply 1. Of the Church 311 2. Of Heresie 324 c. 3. Of the Pope 330 c. 4. Of Bishops 337 5. Of Tradition 342 Of General Councils 345 6. Of Schism 350 An Appendix about successive Ordination 355 Letters between me and T. S. a Papist with a Narrative of the success written by his friend 363 ERRATA PAge 176. l. 24. for it r. that p. 179. l. 14. r. Freheri p. 217. l. 26. r. necessitate p. 271. l. 6. r. Ecclesia Romana p. 355. l. 2. for here r. hear Mr. Iohnsons first PAPER THe Church of Christ wherein only Salvation is to be had never was nor is any other then those Assemblies of Christians who were united in communion and obedience to S. Peter in the beginning since the Ascension of Christ. And ever since to his lawful successors the Bishops of Rome as to their chief Pastor Proof Whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ acknowledges S. Peter and his lawful successors the Bishops of Rome ever since the Ascension of Christ to have been and now to be by the Institution of Christ their chief Head and Governour on earth in matters belonging to the soul next under Christ. But there is no salvation to be had out of that Congregation of Christians which is now the true Church of Christ. Ergo there is no salvation to be had out of that Congregation of Christians which acknowledges S. Peter and his lawful successors the Bishops of Rome ever to have been since the Ascension of Christ and now to be by the Institution of Christ their chief Head and Governour on earth in matters belonging to the soul next under Christ. The Minor is clear For all Christians agree in this that to be saved it is necessary to be in the true Church of Christ that only being his mystical Body Spouse and Mother of the faithful to which must belong all those who ever have been are or shall be saved The Major I prove thus Whatsoever Congregation of Christians as now the true Church of Christ hath been alwaies visible since the time of Christ either under persecution or in peace and flourishing But no Congregation of Christians hath been alwaies visible since the time of Christ either under persecution or in peace and flourishing save that only which acknowledges S. Peter and his lawful successors the Bishops of Rome ever to have been since the Ascension of Christ and now to be by Christs Institution their chief Head and Governour on earth in matters belonging to the soul next under Christ. Ergo whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ acknowledges St. Peter and his lawful successors the Bishops of Rome ever to have been since the Ascension of Christ and now to be by Christs Institution their chief Head and Governour on earth in matters belonging to the soul next under Christ. The Major is proved thus Whatsoever Congregation of Christians hath alwaies had visible Pastors and People united hath alwaies been visible either under persecution or in peace and flourishing But whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ hath alwaies had visible Pastors and People united Ergo whatsoever Congregation of Christians is now the true Church of Christ hath alwaies been visible either under persecution or in peace and flourishing The Major of this last Sylogism is evident for seeing a visible Church is nothing but a visible Pastor and people united where there have alwaies been visible Pastors and people united there hath alwaies been a visible Church The Minor I prove from Ephesians cap. 4. ver 10 11 12 13 14 c. Where S. Paul saies that Christ had Instituted that there should be Pastors and Teachers in the Church for the work of the Ministry and preserving the people under their respective charges from being carried away with every wind of doctrine c. which evidently shews those Pastors must be visible seeing the work of the Ministry which Preaching and Administration of Sacraments and Governing their flocks are all external and visible actions And this shews likewise that those Pastors and People must be alwaies visible because they are to continue from Christs Ascension untill we all meet together in the unity of faith c. which cannot be before the day of judgement Neither can it be said as some say that this promise of Christ is only conditional since to put it to be so without evident Reason giveth scope to every one at his pleasure to make every other promise of Christ to be conditional And so we shall be certain of nothing that Christ hath promised neither that shall alwaies be a visible or invisible Church nor any Church at all no nor of Judgement nor of Eternal life or of the Resurrection of the dead c. for one may say with as much ground as this is said that some conditions were included in all those promises which being not fulfilled hinders the execution of them There remains only to prove the Minor of the second Sylogism viz. That no Congregation of Christians hath been alwaies visible c. save that which acknowledges S. Peter and his lawful successors c. to be their chief Head and Governour c. next under Christ. This Minor I prove by obliging the answerers to nominate any Congregation of Christians which alwaies till this present time since Christ hath been visible either under persecution or in peace and flourishing save that only which acknowledges S.
many or rather many more For more be saln off the Tenduè Nubia and other parts then the Protestants that came in 4. About the year 600. there were many more incomparably and I think then but at least of 400. years after Christ I never yet saw valid proof of one Papist in all the world that is one that was for the Popes Universal Monarchy or Vice-Christ-ship So that most of the Catholike Church about three parts to one hath been against you to this day and all against you for many hundred years Could I name but a Nation against you I should think I had done nothing much less if I cited a few men in an age 5. And all those of Ethiopia India c. that are without the verge and awe of the Ancient Roman Empire never so much as gave the Pope that Primacy of dignity which those within the Empire gave him when he was chief as the Earl of Arundel is of the Earls of England that governeth none of them and as the Lord Chancellor may be the chief judge that hath no power in alieno foro or as the Eldest Justice is chief in the County and on the bâ—nch that ruleth not the rest Mistake not this Primacy for Monarchy nor the Romane Empire for the world and you can say nothing At present ad hominem I give you sufficient proof of this succession As you use to say that the present Church best knew the Judgement of the former age and so on to the heâ—d and so Tradition beareth you out I turn this unresistibly against you The far greatest part of Christians in the world that now are in possession of the doctrine contrary to your Monarchy tell us that they had it from their Fathers and so on And as in Councils so with the Church Real the Major part three to one is more to be credited then the Minor part especially when it is a visible self-advancement that the Minor part insisteth on 6. And were not this enough I might add that your western Church it self in its Representative Body at Constance and Basil hath determined that not the Pope but a General Council is the chief Governor under Christ and that this haâ—h been still the judgement of the Church and that its Heresie in whoever that hold the Contrary 7. And no man can prove that one half or tenth part of your people caâ—â—ed Papists are of your opinion For they are not called to profess it by words and their obedience is partly forced and partly upon other principles some obeying the Pope as their western Patriarch of chief dignity and some and most doing all for their own peace and safety Their outward acts will prove no more And now Sir I have told you what Church of which we are members hath been visible yea and what part of it hath opposed the Vice-Christ of Rome This I delayed not an hour after I received yours because you desired speed Accordingly I crave your speedy return and intreat you to advise with the most learned men whether Jesuites or others of your party in London that think it worth their thoughts and time not that I have any thoughts of being their Equal in learning but partly because the case seemeth to me so exceeding palpable that I think it will suffice me to supply all my defects against the ablest men on earth or all of them together of your way and principally because I would see your strength and know the most that can be said that I may be rectified if Jerr which I suspect not or confirmed the more if you cannot evince it and so may be true to Gods Truth and my own soul. Rich. Baxter Mr. Iohnsons second PAPER Sir IT was my happiness to have this Argument transmitted into your learned and quiet hands which gratefully returns as fair a measure as it received from you that Animosities on both sides seposed Truth may appear in its full splendour and seat it self in the Center of both our hearts To your first Exception My Thesis was sufficiently made cleer to my friend who was concerned in it and needed no explication in its address to the learned To your second Exception My Propositions were long that my Argument as was required might be very short and not exceed the quantity of half a sheet which enforced me to penetrate many Syllogisms into one and by that means in the first not to be so precise in form as otherwise I should have been To your third Exception Seeing I required nothing but Logicall form in Answering I conceive that regard was more to be had amongst the learned to that then to the errours of the vulgar that whilest ignorance attends to most words learning might attend to most reason To your fourth Exception My Argument contains not precisely the terms of my Thesis because when I was called upon to hasten my Arguâ—ent I had not then at hand my Thesis Had I put more in my Thesis then I prove in my Argument I had been faulty but proving more then my Thesis contained as I cleerly do no body hath reason to find fault with me save my self The reall difference betwixt Assemblies of Christians and Congregation of Christians and betwixt Salvation is only to be had in those Assemblies and Salvation is not to be had out of that Congregation I understand not seeing all particular assemblies of true Christians must make one Congregation To your Answer to my first Syllogism He who distinguishes Logically the terms of any proposition must not apply his distinction to some one part of the term only but to the whole term as it stands in the proposition distinguished Now in my proposition I affirm that the Congregation of Christians I speak of there is such a Congregation that it is the true Church of Christ that is as all know the whole Catholike Church and you distinguish thus That I either mean by Congregation the whole Catholike Church or only some part of it as if one should say Whatsoever Congregation of men is the Common-wealth of England and another in answer to it should distinguish either by Congregation of men you mean the whole Common-wealth or some part of it when all men know that by the Common-wealth of England must be meant the whole Common-wealth for no part of it is the Common-wealth of England Again you distinguish that some things are Essentials or Necessaries and others Accidents which are acknowledged or practised in the Church Now to apply this distinction to my Proposition you must distinguish that which I say is acknowledged to have been ever in the Church by the Institution of Christ either to be meant of an Essential or an Accident when all the world knows that whatsoever is acknowledged to have have been ever in the Church by Christs Institution cannot be meant of any Accidental thing but of a necessary unchangeable and Essential thing in Christs true Church If one should advance this
them successively in all ages till Christ as a different Congregation of Christians from that which holds the Popes Supremacy which was my proposition For in the year 1500. those who became the first Protestants were not a Congregation different from those who held that supremacy nor in the year 500. were the Greeks a visible Congregation different from it nor in the year 300. were the Nestorians nor in the year 200. the Eutychians a different Congregation from those who held the said Supremacy But in those respective years those who first begun those Heresies were involved within that Congregation which held it as a part of it and assenting therein with it who after in their several ages and beginnings fell off from it as dead branches from the tree that still remaining what it ever was and only continuing in a perpetuall visibility of succession Though therefore you profess never to have seen convincing proof of this in the first 400 years labour to infringe it in the next ages yet I will make an essay to give you a taste of those innumerable proofs of this visible Consent in the Bishop of Rome's Supremacy not of Order only but of Power Authority Iurisdiction over all other Bishops in the ensuing instances which happened within the first 400 or 500 or 600 years Iohn Bishop of Antioch makes an Appeal to Pope Simplicius And Flavianus Bishop of Constantinople being deposed in the false Councill of Ephesus immediately appeals to the Pope as to his judge Theodoret was by Pope Leo restored and that by an appeal unto a just judgement Saint Cyprian desirâ—â— Pope Stephen to depose Marcian Bishop of Arles that another might be substituted in his place And to evince the supream Authority of the Bishops of Rome it is determined in the Council of Sardis That no Bishop deposed by other neighbouring Bishops pretending to be heard again was to have any successour appointed until the case were defined by the Pope Eustathius Bishop of Sebast in Armenia was restored by Pope Liberius his Letters read and received in the Council of Tyana and Saint Chrysostome expresly desires Pope Innocent not to punish his Adversaries if they do repent Which evinces that Saint Chrysostome thought that the Pope had power to punish them And the like is written to the Pope by the Council of Ephesus in the case of Iohn Bishop of Antioch The Bishops of the Greek or Eastern Church who sided with Arius before they declared themselves to be Arians sent their Legates to Iulius Bishop of Rome to have their cause heard before him against Saint Athanasius the same did Saint Athanasius to defend himself against them which Arian Bishops having understood from Iulius that their Accusations against Saint Athanasius upon due examination of both parties were found groundless and false required rather fraudulently then seriously to have a fuller Tryal before a General Council at Rome which to take away all shew of excuse from them Pope Iulius assembled Saint Athanasius was summoned by the Pope to appear before him and the Councill in Judgement which he presently did and many other Eastern Bishops unjustly accused by the Arians aforesaid had recourse to Rome with him and expected there a year and a half All which time his Accusers though also summoned appeared not fearing they should be condemned by the Pope and his Councill Yet they pretended not as Protestants have done in these last ages of the Kings of England That Constantius the Arian Emperour of the East was Head or chief Governour over their Church in all Causes Ecclesiasticalâ— and consequently that the Pope had nothing to do with them but only pretended certain frivolous excuses to delay their appearance from one time to another Where it is worth the noting that Iulius reprehending the said Arian Bishops before they published their Heresie and so taking them to be Catholikes for condemning Saint Athanasius in an Eastern Councill gathered by them before they had acquainted the Bishop of Rome with so important a cause useth these words An ignari â—stis hanc consuetudinâ—m esse ut primum nobis scribatur ut â—inc quod justum est à â—finiri possit c. Are you ignorant saith he that this is the custome to write to us first That hence that which is just may be defined c. where most cleerly it appears that it belonged particularly to the Bishop of Rome to pass a definitive sentence even against the Bishops of the Eastern or Greek Church which yet is more confirmed by the proceedings of Pope Innocent the first about 12. hundred years since in the Case of Saint Chrysostome Where first Saint Chrysostome appears to Innocentius from the Councill assembled at Constantinople wherein he was condemned Secondly Innocentius annulls this condemnation and declares him innocent Thridly he Excommunicates Atticus Bishop of Constantinople and Theophilus Bishop of Alexandria for persecuting Saint Chrysostome Fourthly after Saint Chrysostome was dead in Banishment Pope Innocentius Excommunicates Arcadius the Emperour of the East and Eudoxia his wife Fifthly the Emperour and Empress humble themselves crave pardon of him and were obsolved by him The same is evident in those matters which passed about the year 450. where Theodosius the Emperour of the East having too much favoured the Eutychian Hereticks by the instigation of Chrysaphius the Eunuch and Pulcheria his Empress and so intermedled too far in Ecclesiasticall causes yet he ever bore that respect to the See of Rome which doubtless in those circumstances he would not have done had he not believed it an Obligation that he would not permit the Eutychian Council at Ephesus to be assembled without the knowledge and Authority of the Roman Bishop Leo the first and so wrote to him to have his presence in it who sent his Legats unto them And though both Leo's letters were dissembled and his Legats affronted and himself excommunicated by wicked Dioscorus Patriarch of Alexandria and president of that Coventicle who also was the chief upholder of the Eutychians yet Theodosius repented before his death banished his wife Pulcheria and Chrysaphius the Eunuch the chief favourers of the Eutychians and reconciled himself to the Chruch with great evidences of Sorrow and Pennance Presently after Anno. 451. follows the Fourth General Council of Chalcedon concerning which these particulars occur to our present purpose First Martianus the Eastern Emperour wrote to Pope Leo That by the Popes Authority a General Council might be gathered in what City of the Eastern Church he should please to chuse Secondly both Anatolius Patriarch of Constantinople and the rest of the Eastern Bishops sent to the legats of Pope Leo by his order the profession of their Faith Thirdly the Popes Legats sate in the first place of the Council before all the Patriarchs Fourthly they prohibited by his order given them That Dioscorus Patriarch of Alexandria and chief upholder of
the Eutychians should sit in the Councill but be presented as a guilty person to be judged becuase he had celebrated a Councill in the Eastern Church without the consent of the Bishop of Rome which said the Legats never was done before nor could be done lawfully This order of Pope Leo was presently put in execution by consent of the whole Councill and Dioscorus was judged and condemned his condemnation and deposition being pronounced by the Popes Legats and after subscribred by the Councill Fifthly the Popes Legats pronounced the Church of Rome to be Caput omnium Ecclesiarum the Head of all Churches before the whole Council and none contradicted them Sixthly all the Fathers assembled in that Holy Councill in their Letter to Pope Leo acknowledged themselves to be his children and wrote to him as to their Father Seventhly they humbly begged of him that he would grant that the Patriarch of Constantinople might have the first place among the Patriarchs after that of Rome which notwithstanding that the Councill had consented to as had also the Third General Councill of Ephesus done before yet they esteemed their grants to be of no sufficient force untill they were confirmed by the Pope And Leo thought not fit to yield to their petition against the express ordination of the First Councill of Nice where Alexandria had the preheminence as also Antioch and Hierusalem before that of Constantinople Saint Cyril of Alexandria though he wholly disallowed Nestorius his doctrine yet he would not break off Communion with him till Celestinus the Pope had condemned him whose Censure he required and expected Nestorius also wrote to Celestine acknowledging his Authority and expecting from him the Censure of his doctrine Celestinus condemned Nestorius and gave him the space of ten daies to repent after he had received his condemnation All which had effect in the Eastern Church where Nestorius was Patriarch of Constantinople After this Saint Cyrill having received Pope Leo's Letters wherein he gave power to Saint Cyrill to execute his condemnation against Nestorius and to send his condemnatory letters to him gathered a Council of his next Bishops and sent Letters and Articles to be subscribed with the Letters of Celestine to Nestorius which when Nestorius had received he was so far from repentance that he accused St. Cyril in those Articles to be guilty of the Heresie of Apollinaris so that St. Cyril being also accused of Heresie was barred from pronouncing sentence against Nestorius so long as he stood charged with that Accusation Theodosius the Emperour seeing the Eastern Church embroyled in these difficulties writes to Pope Celestine about the assembling of a general Council at Ephesus by Petronius afterwards Bishop of Bononia as is manifest in his life written by Sigonius Pope Celestine in his Letters to Theodosius not only professeth his consent to the calling of that Council but also prescribeth in what form it was to be celebrated as Firmus Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia testified in the Council of Ephesus Hereupon Theodosius sent his Letters to assemble the Bishops both of the East and West to that Council And Celestine sent his Legats thither with order not to examine again in the Council the cause of Nestorius but rather to put Celestines condemnation of him given the year before into execution St. Cyril Bishop of Alexandria being constituted by Celestine his chief Legate ordinary in the East by reason of that preheminency and primacy of his See after that of Rome presided in the Council yet so that Philip who was only a Priest and no Bishop by reason that he was sent Legatus à Latere from Celestine and so supplied his place as he was chief Bishop of the Church subscribed the first even before St. Cyril and all the other Legats and Patriarchs In the sixth Action of this holy Council Iuvenalis Patriarch of Hierusalem having understood the contempt which Iohn Patriarch of Antioch who was cited before the Council shewed of the Bishops and the Popes Legats there assembled expressed himself against him in these words Quod Apostolica ordinatione Antiqua Traditione which were no way opposed by the Fathers there present Antiochena sedes perpetuo à Romana dirigeretur judicareturque That by Apostolical ordination and ancient Tradition the See of Antioch was perpetually directed and judged by the See of Rome which words not only evidence the precedency of place as Dr. Hammond would have it but of power and judicature in the Bishop of Rome over a Patriarch of the Eastern Church and that derived from the time and ordination of the Apostles The Council therefore sent their decrees with their condemnation of Nestorius to Pope Celestine who presently ratified and confirmed them Not long after this in the year 445. Valentinian the Emperour makes this manifesto of the most high Ecclesiastical authority of the See of Rome in these words Seeing that the merit of St. Peter who is the Prince of the Episcopal Crown and the Dignity of the City of Rome and no less the authority of the holy Synod hath established the primacy of the Apostolical See lest presumption should attempt any unlawful thing against the authority of that See for then finally will the peace of the Churches be preserved every where if the whole universality acknowledge their Governour when these things had been hitherto inviolably observed c. Where he makes the succession from St. Peter to be the first foundation of the Roman Churches primacy and his authority to be not only in place but in power and Government over the whole visible Church And adds presently that the definitive sentence of the Bishop of Rome given against any French Bishop was to be of force through France even without the Emperours Letters Pattents For what shall not be lawful for the authority of so great a Bishop to exercise upon the Churches And then adds his Imperial precept in these words But this occasion hath provoked also our command that hereafter it shall not be lawful neither for Hilarius whom to be still entituled a Bishop the sole humanity of the meek Prelate id est the Bishop of Rome permits neither for any other to mingle arms with Ecclesiastical matters or to resist the commands of the Bishop of Rome c. We define by this our perpetual decree that it shall neither be lawful for the French Bishops nor for those of other Provinces against the ancient custom to attempt any thing without the authority of the venerable Pope of the eternal City But let it be for a law to them and to all whatsoever the authority of the Apostolick See hath determined or shall determine So that what Bishop soever being called to the Tribunal of the Roman Bishop shall neglect to come is to be compelled by the Governour of the same Province to present himself before him Which evidently proves that the highest Universal Ecclesiastical Judge and Governour was and ever is to be the
Bishop of Rome which the Council of Chalcedon before mentioned plainly owned when writing to Pope Leo they say Thou Governest us as the head doth the members contributing thy good will by those which hold thy place Behold a Primacy not only of Precedency but of Government and Authority which Lerinensis confirms contr Haeres cap. 9. where speaking of Stephen Pope he saies Dignum ut opinor existimans si reliquos omnes tantum fidei devotione quantum locī authoritate superabat esteeming it as I think a thing worthy of himself if he overcame all others as much in the devotion of faith as he did in the Authority of his place And to confirm what this universal Authority was he affirms that he sent a Law Decree or Command into Africa Sanxit That in matter of rebaptization or Hereticks nothing should be innovated which was a manifest argument of his Spiritual Authority over those of Africa and à paritate rationis over all others I will shut up all with that which was publickly pronounced and no way contradicted and consequently assented to in the Council of Ephesus one of the four first general Councils in this matter Tom. 2. Concil pag. 327. Act. 1. where Philip Priest and Legate of Pope Celestine sayes thus Gratias agimus sanctae venerandaeque synodo quod literis sancti beatique Papae nostri vobis recitatis sanctas chartas sanctis vestris vocibus sancto capiti vestro sanctis vestris exclamationibus exhibueritis Non enim ignorat vestra beatitudo totius fidei vel etiam Apostolorum caput esse beatum Apostolum Petrum And the same Philip Act. 3. p. 330. proceeds in this manner Nulli dubium imo saeculis omnibus notum est quod sanctus beatissimusque Petrus Apostolorum Princeps caput Fideique columna Ecclesiae Catholicae Fundamentum à Domino nostro Jesu Christo Salvatore generis humani ac redemptore nostro claves regni accepit solvendique ac ligandi peccata potestas ipsi data est qui ad hoc usque tempus ac semper in suis successoribus vivit judicium exercet Hujus itaque secundum ordinem successor locum-tenens sanctus beatissimusque Papa noster Celestinus nos ipsius praesentiam supplentes huc misit And Arcadius another of the Popes Legats enveighing against the Heretick Nestorius accuses him though he was Patriarch of Constantinople which this Council requires to be next in dignity after Rome as of a great crime that he contemned the command of the Apostolick See that is of Pope Celestine Now had Pope Celestine had no power to command him and by the like reason to command all other Bishops he had committed no fault in transgressing and contemning his command By these testimonies it will appear that what you are pleased to say That the most part of the Catholike Church hath been against us to this day and all for many hundred of years is far from truth seeing in the time of the holy Oecumenical Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon the universal consent of the whole Catholike Church was for us in this point As to what you say of Congregation of Christians in the beginning I answer I took the word Christians in a large sense comprehending in it all those as it is vulgarly taken who are Baptized and profess to believe in Christ and are distinguished from Jews Mahumetans and Heathens under the denomination of Christians What you often say of an universal Monarch c. if you take Monarch for an Imperious sole Commander as temporal Kings are we acknowledge no such Monarch in the Church if only for one who hath received power from Christ in meekness charity and humility to govern all the rest for their own eternal good as brethren or children we grant it What also you often repeat of a Vice-Christ we much dislike that title as proud and insolent and utterly disclaim from it neither was it ever given by any sufficient Authority to our Popes or did they ever accept of it As to the Council of Constance they never questioned the Supremacy of the Pope as ordinary chief Governour of all Bishops and people in the whole Church nay they expresly give it to Martinus Quintus when he was chosen But in extraordinary cases especially when it is doubtful who is true Pope as it was in the beginning of this Council till Martinus Quintus was chosen Whether any extraordinary power be in a general Council above that ordinary power of the Pope which is a question disputed by some amongst our selves but touches not the matter in hand which proceeds only of the ordinary and constant Supream Pastor of all Christians abstracting from extraordinary tribunals and powers which are seldom found in the Church and collected only occasionally and upon extraordinary accidents Thus honoured Sir I have as much as my occasions would permit me hastened a reply to your answer and if more be requisite it shall not be denyed Only please to give me leave to tell you that I cannot conceive my Argument yet answered by all you have said to it William Iohnson Feb. 3. 1658. Sir It was the 21. of January before your Answer came to my hands and though my Reply was made ready by me the third instant yet I have found so great difficulties to get it transcribed that it was not possible to transmit it to you before now But I hope hereafter I shall find Scribes more at leasure I must desire you to excuse what errors you find in the Copy which I send As also that being unwilling to make a farther delay I am enforced to send a Copy which hath in it more interlineations then would otherwise become me to send to a person of your worth Yet I cannot doubt but your Candor will pass by all things of this nature I am Sir Your very humble servant William Iohnson Feb. 15. 1658. Worthy Sir I have now expected neer three moneths for your rejoynder to the Reply which I made to that answer which you were pleased to send and return to my Argument concerning the Church of Christ but as yet nothing hath appeared I must confess I have wondered at it considering the earnestness which appeared in you at the first to proceed with speed in a business of this nature what the impediment hath been I am only left to guess but certainly truth is strong and it will not be found an easie thing to oppose her while we keep close to form I am now necessitated to go out of London so that if your Papers come in my absence I shall hope you will have the patience to expect untill they can be sent from London to me and my Answers returned by the way of London but I do engage not to make a delay longer then the circumstances of the place and times shall enforce Sir I do highly honour and esteem your parts and person and shall be very glad to bring that business to an handsome
profess it to be their Tradition that the Pope was never their Governour 3. No history or authority of the least regard is brought by your own writers to prove these Churches under your jurisdiction no not by Baronius himself that is so copious and so skilful in making much of nothing No credible witnesses mention your Acts of jurisdiction over them or their Acts of subjection which Church history must needs have contained if it had been true that they were your subjects 4. Their absence from general Councils and no invitation of them thereunto that was ever proved or is shewed by you is sufficient evidence 5. Their Liturgies even the most ancient bear no footsteps of any subjection to you Though your forgeries have corrupted them as I shall here digressively give one instance of The Ethiopick Liturgy because of a Hoc est corpus meum which we also use is urged to prove that they are for the corporal presence or Transubstantiation But saith Vsher de success Eccles. In Ethiopicarum Ecclesiarum universali Canone descriptum habebatur Hic panis est corpus meum In Latina translatione contra fidem Ethiopic Exemplarium ut in prima operis editione confirmat Pontificius ipse Scholiastes expunctum est nomen Panis 6. Constantines Letters of request to the King of Persia for the Churches there which Euseb. in vit Constant. mentioneth do intimate that then the Roman Bishop ruled not there 7. Even at home the Scots and Brittains obeyed not the Pope nor conformed about the Easter observation even in the daies of Gregory but resisted his changes and refused communion with his Ministers 8. I have already elsewhere given you the testimony of some of your own writers as Reynerius contra Waldens Catal. in Biblioth Patr. Tom. 4. p. 773. saying The Churches of the Armenians and Ethiopians and Indians and the rest which the Apostles converted are not under the Church of Rome 9. I have proved from the Council of Chalcedon that it was the Fathers that is the Councils that gave Rome its preheminence But those Councils gave the Pope no preheminence over the extra-imperial Nations For 1. Those Nations being not called to the Council could not be bound by it 2. The Emperours called and enforced the Councils who had no power out of their Empire 3. The Diocess are described and expresly confined within the verge of the Empire see both the description and full proof in Blondel de Primatu in Ecclesia Gall. And 10. The Emperours themselves did sometime giveing power to the Councils Acts make Rome the chief and sometime as the Councils did also give Constantinople equal priviledge and sometime set Constantinople highest as I have shewed in my Key p. 174 175. But the Emperours had no power to do thus with respect to those without the Empire But what say you now to the contrary Why 1. You ask Were those Primitive Christians of another kind of Church order and Government then were those under the Roman Empire Answ. When the whole body of Church history satisfieth us that they were not subject to the Pope which is the thing in question is it any weakening of such evidence in a matter of such publick fact to put such a question as this Whether they were under another kind of Government 1. We know that they were under Bishops or Pastors of their own and so far their Government was of the same kind 2. If any of them or all did suit their Church associations to the several Commonwealths in which they lived and so held National Councils and for order sake made one among them the Bishop primae sedis then was that Government of the same kind with that of the Imperial Churches and not of another kind The Roman Government was no other but One thus Ordered in one Empire And if there were also One so ordered in England one in Scotland one in Ethiopia c. this was of the same kind with the Roman Every Church suited to the form of the Common-wealth is even as to that humane mode of the same kind if a humane mode must be called a Kind It may be of that same kind and mode without being part of the same Individual But 2. You say that How far from truth this is appeareth from St. Leo in his Sermons de Natali suo where he sayes Sedes Roma Perri quicquid non possidet armis Religione tenet Reply If you take your Religion on trust as you do your authorities that are made your ground of it and bring others to it when you are deceived your selves how will you look Christ in the the face when you must answer for such temerity Leo hath no Sermons de Natali suo but only one Sermon affixed to his Sermons lately found in an oid book of Nicol. Fabers And in that Sermon there is no such words as you here alledge Neither doth he Poetize in his Sermons nor there hath any such words which might occasion your mistake and therefore doubtless you believed some body for this that told you an untruth and yet ventured to make it the ground of charging my words with untruth Yet let me tell you that I will take Pope Leo for no competent judge or witness though you call him a Saint as long as we know what past between him and the Council of Chalcedon and that he was one of the first tumified Bishops of Rome he shall not be judge in his own cause 3. But you add that The Abassines of Ethiopia were under the Patriarch of Alexandria anciently and he under the authority of the Roman Bishop Reply 1. Your bare word without proof shall not perswade us that the Abassines were under the Patriarch of Alexandria for above three hundred if not four hundred years after Christ. Prove it and then your words are regardable 2. At the Council of Nice the contrary is manifest by the sixth Can. Mos antiquus perdurat in Aegypto vel Lybia Pentapoli ut Alexandrinus Episcopus horum omnium habeat potestatem c. And the common descriptions of the Alexandrian Patriarchate in those times confine it to the Empire and leave out Aethiopia Pisanus new inventions we regard not 3. I deny that the Patriarch of Alexandria was under the Government of the Bishop of Rome any more then the Jury are under the Foremen or the junior Justices on the bench are under the senior or York is under London or the other Earls of England are under the Earl of Arundel 4. But if both these were proved that Ethiopia was under Alexandria and Alexandria under Rome I deny the consequence that Ethiopia was under Rome for Alexandria was under Rome but secundum quid and so far as it was within the Empire and therefore those without the Empire that were under Alexandria were not therefore under Rome 5. And if it could as it never can be proved of Abassia what is that to all the other Churches in India Persia and the
rest of the world Sir If you have impartially read the ancient Church history and yet can believe that all these Churches were then under the Pope despair not of bringing your self to believe any thing imaginable that you would have to be true 3. Your next question is When the Roman Emperours were yet Heathens had not the Bishops of Rome the supremacy over all other Bishops through the whole Church Answ. No they had not nor in the Empire neither Prove it I beseech you better then by questioning If you askt Whether men rule not Angels your Question proves not the Affirmative 4. But you ask again Did those Heathen Emperours give it him Answ. 1. Power over all Churches none ever gave him till titularly his own Parasites of late 2. Primacy of meer degree in the Empire for the dignity and many advantages of the Emperial seat the Bishops of the Empire gave him by consent Blondel de primatu gives you the proof and reason at large yet so as that small regard was had to the Church of Rome before the Nicene Council as saith your Aeneas Sylvius Pope Pius the second 5. Whether the Bishop of Rome had power over the Bishop of Arles by Heathen Emperours is a frivolous question Arles was in the Roman Patriarchate and not out of the Empire The Churches in the Empire might by consent dispose themselves into the Patriarchal orders without the Emperours and yet not meddle out of the Empire Yet indeed Cyprians words intimate no power Rome had over Arles more then Arles had over Rome that is to reject communion with each other upon dissent Nay it more confuteth you that even under Heathen Emperours when Church associations were by voluntary consent of Pastors only and so if they had thought it necessary they might have extended them to other Principalities yet de facto they did not do it as all history of the Church declareth mentioning their Councils and associations without these taken in See now how little your objections are worth and how groundlesly you bid me See now how little my allegations are to the purpose As for the rabble of Hereticks which you reckon up as you esteem them some of them are no Christians univocally so called and those cannot be of the Christian Church Others of them were better Christians then the Romanists and so were of the same Church with us And it is not many reproachfull names put on them by malice that makes them no Christians or of many Churches or Religions If an arrogant usurper will put nick-names on all that will not bow to him as the Vice-Christ and call them Iconoclasts Berengarians Waldensians Albigenses Wicklefifts Hussites Lutherans Calvinists you may as well give them a thousand more names this makes them not of various Religions nor blots out their names from the book of life I have in my most retired thoughts perused the History of those mens lives and of the lives of many of your Popes together with their severall doctrines and with death and judgement in my eyes as before the great God of Heaven I humbly beg of him that I may rather have my everlasting portion with those holy men whom you burned as Waldenses Albigenses Hussites c. then with the Popes that burned them or those that follow them in that cruelty unless reconciling grace have given them repentance unto life The Religion of all these men was one and they were all of one universall Church Where you again call for One Congregation I tell you again that we know no Vnity essentiall from whence the Church can be called one but either Christ or the Vice-Christ the former only is asserted by us and the latter also by you which we deny And therefore we cannot call the universall Church One in any other formal respects but as it is Christian and so One in Christ. Yet have I herewith satisfied your demand but shewed you the unreasonableness of it beyond all reasonable contradiction You next enquire whether we account Rome and us One Congregation of Christians I answer the Roman Church hath two Heads and ours but one and that 's the difference They are Christians and so One Church as united in Christ with us and all other true Christians If any so hold their Papacy and other errours as effectively and practically to destroy their Christianity those are not Christians and so not of the same Church as we But those that do not so but are so Papists as yet to be truly and practically Christians are and shall be of the same Church with us whether they will or not And your modest stile makes me hope that you and I are of one Church though you never so much renounce it As Papall we are not of your Church that 's a new Church form But as Christian we are and will be of it even when you are condemning torturing and burning us if such persecution can stand with your Christianity But you aske Why did you then separate your selves and remain still separate from the Communion of the Roman Church Answ. 1. We never separated from you as you are Christians We still remain of that Church as Christian and we know or will know no other form because that Scripture and primitive Churches knew no other Either you have by Popery separated from the Church as Christian or not If you have it s you that are the damnable Separatists If you have not then we are not separated from you in respect of the form of the Christian Church And for your other form the Papacy 1. Neither I nor my Grand-father or great grand-father did separate from it because they never entertained it 2. Those that did so did but Repent of their sin and that 's no sin We still remain separated from you as Papists even as we are separate from such as we are commanded to avoid for impenitency in some corrupting doctrine or scandalous sin Whether such mens sins or their professed Christianity be most predominant at the heart we know not but till they shew Repentance we must avoid them yet admonishing them as brethren and not taking them as men of another Church but as finding them unfit for our Communion But O sir what manner of dealing have we from you must we be imprisoned rackt hang'd or burn'd if we will not believe that bread wine are not bread and wine contrary to our own and all mens senses and if we will not worship them with Divine worship and will not obey the Pope of Rome in all such matters contrary to our Consciences and then must we be chidden for separating from you if we 〈◊〉 a while escape the strappado and the 〈◊〉 What! will you blame us for not believing that all mens senses are deceived and the greater part of Christians and their Traditions against you are false when we read and study and suspect our selves and pray for light and are willing to hear any of your reasons but
unacquainted with the opinions of your own Divines and upon this mistake so confidently feign that it is our Novel writers forced to it by your arguments that have been so charitable to these Churches against antiquity that knew better If the Greeks and Latins tear the Church of Christ by their Condemnations of each other they may both be schismatical as guilty of making divisions in the Church though not as dividing from the Church And if they pretend the denyal of the Christian faith against each other as the cause you shall not draw us into the guilt of the uncharitableness by telling us that they know better then we If wise men fall out and fight I will not justifie either side because they are wise and therefore likelier then I to know the cause But what need we more to open your strange mistake and unjust dealing then the authority of your so much approved Council of Florence that received both Greeks and Armenians and the very words of the Popes Bull of the union which declare that the Greeks and Latins were found to mean Orthodoxly both the words are these Convenientes Latini Graeci in hac sacrosancta Oecumenica synodo magno studio invicem usi sunt ut inter alia articulus etiam ille de Divina Spiritus Sancti processione summa cum diligentia assidua inquisitione discuteretur Prolatis vero testimoniis ex Divinis Scripturis plurimisque authoritatibus sanctorum doctorum orientalium occidentelium aliquibus quidem ex Patre Filio quibusdam vero ex Patre per Filium procedere dicentibus Spiritū Sanctum ad eandem intelligentiam aspicientibus omnibus sub diversis vocabulis Graeci quidem asseruerunt quod id quod dicunt Spiritum Sanctum ex Patre procedere non hac mente proferrent ut excludant Filiū sed quia eis videbatur ut aiunt Latinos asserere spiritum Sanctum ex Patre Filioque procedere tanquam ex duobus principiis duabus Spirationibus ideo abstinuerunt à dicendo quod Spiritus Sanctus ex Patre procedat Filio Latini vero affirmaverunt non se hac mente dicere Spiritum Sanctum ex Filioque procedere ut excludant Patrem quin sit fons ac principium totius Deitatis Filii scilicet Spiritus Sancti aut quod id quod Spiritus Sanctu procedat ex Filio Filius à Patre non habeat sive quod duo ponant esse principia seu duas spirationes sed ut unum tantum asserunt esse principium unicamque spirationem Spiritus Sancti prout hactenus asseruerunt cum ex his omnibus unus idem eliciatur veritatis sensus tandem c. I pray you now tell it to no more that it is same Novel writers of ours prest by force of argument that have been the authors of this extenuation May heart even trembleth to think that there should be a thing called Religion among you that can so far extinguish both Charity and Humanity as to cause you to pass so direful a doom without authority or tryal on so great a part of the Christian world for such a word as this about so exceeding high a mysterie when your Pope and Council have pronounced a union of meanings And what mean you in your Margin to refer me to Nilus as if he asserted That the Greeks left the Communion of the Roman Church upon that difference alone Verily Sir in the high matters of God this dealing is scarce fair pardon this plainness consider of it your self The substance of Nilus book is about the Primacy of the Pope The very contents prefixed to the first book are these Oratio demonstrans non aliam c. An Oration demonstrating that there is no other cause of the dissension between the Latin and Greek Churches then that the Pope refuseth to defer the cognisance and iudgement of that which is controverted to a general Council but he will sit the sole Master and Iudge of the Controversie and will have the rest as Disciples to be hearers of or obey his word which is a thing aliene from the Laws and actions of the Apostles and Fathers And he begins his Book after a few words thus Causa itaque hujus dissidii c. The cause therefore of this difference as I judge is not the sublimity of the point exceeding mans capacity For other matters that have divers times troubled the Church have been of the same kind This therefore is not the cause of the dissention much less is it the speech of the Scripture it self which as being concise doth pronounce nothing openly of that which is controverted For to accuse the Scripture is as much as to accuse God himself But God is without all fault But who the fault is in any one may easily tell that is well in his wits He next shews that it is not for want of learned men on both sides nor is it because the Greeks do claim the Primacy and then concludeth it as before He maintaineth that your Pope succeedeth Peter only as a Bishop ordained by him as many other Bishops that originally were ordained by him in like manner do succeed him and that his Primacy is no Governing power nor given him by Peter but by Princes and Councils for order sale and this he proves at large and makes this the main difference Bellarmines answering his so many Arguments might have told you this if you had never read Nilus himself If you say that This point was the first cause I deny it but if it were true yet was it not the only or chief cause afterward The Munner of bringing in the filioque by Papal authority without a general Council was it that greatly offended the Greeks from the beginning But you say that when I have made the best of these Greeks Armenians Ethiopians Protestants I cannot deduce them successively in all ages till Christ as a different Congregation of Christians from that which holds the Popes supremacy which was your proposition Reply I have oft told you we own no universal informing Head but Christ. In respect to him I have proved to you that is not my interest or design to prove us or them a different Congregation from you as you are Christians Nor shall you tempt me to be so uncharitable as to damn or unchristen all Papists as far as you do others incomparably safer and better then your selves But as you are Papal and set up a new informing head I have proved that you differ from all the antient Churches but yet that my cause requireth me not to make this proof but to call you to prove your own universal succession You add your Reason because these beforenamed were at first involved in your Congregation and then fell off as dead branches Reply This is but an untruth in a most publick matter of fact All the truth is this 1. Those Indians Ethiopians Persians c. without the Empire never fell
from you as to subjection as never being your subjects Prove that they were and you have done a greater wonder then Baronius in all his Annals 2 The Greeks and all the rest within the Empire without the Roman Patriarchate are fallen from your Communion if renouncing it be a fall but not from your subjection having given you but a Primacy as Nilus shews and not a Governing pewer over them The withering therefore was in the Roman branches if the corruptions of either part may be called a withering You that are the lesser part of the Church may easily call your selves the Tree and the greater part two to one the Branches but these beggings do but proclaim your necessities In good time you come to give me here at last some proof of an ancient Papacy as you think But first you quite forget or worse that it is not a man or two in the whole world in an age but the universal Church whose judgement and form we are now enquiring after You are to prove That all the Church in every age was for the Papal universal Government and so that none can be saved that is not 2. But instead of this which you should prove you prove not that those very single persons named by you had any opinion of the Papal Soveraignty 1. Your first Testimony is from Liberatus c. 16. John Bishop of Antioch makes an appeal to Pope Simplicius Reply 1. I see you are deceived by going upon trust But its pitty so to deceive others There was no such man as Iohn Bishop of Antioch in Simplicus raign Iohn of Antioch was he that made the stirs and divisions for Nestorius against Cyril and called the Schismatical Council at Ephesus and dyed Anno 436. having raigned thirteen years as Baronius saith and eighteen as Nicephorus He dyed in Sixtus the fifths time But it s said indeed that John Bishop of Alexandria made some address to Simplicius of which Baronius citeth Liberatus words not c. 16. but c. 18. ad An. D. 483. that John being expelled by the Emperour Zeno's command went first to Calendion Bishop of Antioch and so to Rome to Simplicius if Baronius were to be believed as his judge Liberatus saith that he took from Calendion Bishop of Antioch Letters to Simplicius to whom he appealed as Athanasius had done and perswaded him to write for him to Acacius Bishop of Constantinople which Simplicius did But Acacius upon the receipt of Simplicius Letters writ flatly to him that he knew no John Bishop of Alexandria but had taken Petrus Mogus as Bishop of Alexandria into his Communion and that without Simplicius for the Churches unity at the Emperours command Here you see how little regard Acacius made of your Pope and that the appeal was but to procure his Letters to Acacius which did him no good 2. But do you in good earnest think that all such addresses or appeals are ad superiorem judicem What more common then to appeal or make such addresses to any that have advantage of interest for the relief of the oppressed Young men appeal to the aged in Controversies and the less learned to the more learned and the poor to the rich or to the favorites of such as can relieve them Iohns going first to Antioch was no acknowledgement of superiority 3. But of this I must refer you to a full answer of Blondel against Perron de Primatu in Eccles. cap. 25. sect 76. where you may be satisfied of the vanity of your instance Whereas therefore you infer or you say nothing that because this Iohn thus appealed to Rome therefore he appealed thither as to the Vniversal Ruler of the Church The story derideth your consequence Much more that therefore the Vniversall Church held the Pope then to be the Vniversall Head or Governour Here 's nothing of Government but intreaty and that but within the Empire and that but upon the seeking of one distressed man that would be apt to go to those of most interest that might relieve him and all this rejected by Acacius and the Emperour A fair proof 2. Your 2. instance is that Flavianus appeals to the Pope as to his Iudge Epist. praeambul Concil Chalced. Reply I have perused all the Council of Chalcedon as it is in Binnius purposely to find the words you mention of Flavians appeal and I find not any such words In Flavianus own Epistle to Leo there are no such words nor any other that I can find but the word appeal once in one of the Emperours Epistles as I remember but without mentioning any Judge I will not use to turn over Volumes thus in vain for your citations while I see you take them on trust and do not tell me in any narrow compasse of cap. sect or pag. where to find them But had you found such words 1. An appeal is oft made from a partiall to an impartiall Judge though of equal power 2. He might appeal to the Bishop of Rome as one of his Judges in the Council where he was to be tried and not as alone And it is evident in the History that it was not the Pope but the Council that was his Iudge 3. The greatnesse of Rome and Primacy of Order not of Jurisdiction made that Bishop of speciall interest in the Empire and distressed persecuted men will appeal to those that may any whit relieve them But this proves no Governing power nor so much as any Interest without the Empire It being the custome of the Churches in the Empire to make the Votes of the Patriarchs necessary in their general Councils no wonder if appellations be made from those Councils that wanted the Patriarchs consent to other Councils where they consâ—nted in which as they gave Constantinâ—ple the second place without any pretence of a Divine Right and frequent appeals were made to that Seat so also they gave Rome the first Seat Of this whole matter Perron is fully answered already by Blondell de primatu cap. 25. sect 63. to which I refer you it being as easie to read it in Print as Writing Adding this only that as Flavian in his necessity seeking help from the Bishop of the prime Seat in the Empire did acknowledge no more but his Primacy of Order by the Laws of the Empire and the Councils thereof so the Empire was not all the world nor Flavian all the Church nor any more then one man and therefore if he had held as you will never prove he did the Universall Government of the Pope if you would thence argue that it was held by all the Church your consequence must needs be marvelled at by them that believe that One man is not the Catholick Church no more then seeking of help was an acknowledging an Universal Headship or Governing power And it is undeniably evident that the Church of Constantinople and all the Greek Churches did believe that Universal Primacy which in the Empire was set up to be of humane right and new
and changeable as I prove not only by the expresse testimony of the Council of Chalcedon but by the stating of the Primacy at last in Gregories dayes on Constantinople it self whose pretence neither was nor could be any other then a humane late institution And if the Greek Churches judged so of it in Gregories daies and at the Council of Chalcedon in Leo's daies we have no reason to think that they ever judged otherwise at least not in Flavians dayes that were the same as Leo's and the businesse done about 449. This Argument I here set against all your instances at once and it is unanswerable 3. Your next instance is of Pope Leo's restoring Theodoret upon an appeal to just judgement Reply 1. Every Bishop hath a power to discern who is fit for his own Communion and so Leo and the Bishops of the West perceiving Theodoret to be Orthodox received him as a Catholick into their Communion and so might the Bishop of Constantinople have done But when this was done the Council did not hereupon receive him and restore him to his Bishoprick no nor would hear him read the passages between Pope Leo and him no nor make a Confession of his faith but cried out against him as a Nestorian till he had expresly Anathematized Nestorius and Eutiches before the Council and then they received and restored him so that the finall judgement was not by Leo but by the Council But if in his distresse he appealed as you say to a just judgement from an unjust or sought to make Leo his friend no wonder but this is no grant of an Universall Soveraignty in Leo and if it had granted it in the Empire that 's nothing to the Churches in other Empires Or if he had granted it as to all the world he was but one man of the world and not the Catholick Church The Council expresly take on them the determination after Leo and they slight the Legates of the Pope and pronounce him a creature of the Fathers and give Constantinople equall priviledges though his Legates refuse to consent But of the frivolousnesse of this your instance see Dr. Field of the Church lib. 5. cap. 35. pag. 537 538. and more fully Blondell de primatu ubi sup cap. 25. sect 63 65. 4. Your next instance is of Cyprians desire that Stephen would depose Martian Bishop of Arles Reply 1. That Epistle cannot be proved to be Cyprians for the Reasons I refer you to M. de Lanny on that subject and Rivets Critica Sacra only adding that there are eight copies of Cyprian ancient M. S. S. in the English Universities that have none of them this Epistle to Stephen of which see Ierem. Stephens Edition of Cyprian de unitate Ecclesiae 2. Could you prove this Epistle to be Cyprians it makes against you more then for you Not for you for the distance of Cyprian the nearnesse of Stephen might make it a matter more concerning him and fitter for him to transact And it was within his Patriarchate and therefore no wonder if he were minded of it And yet Cyprian only writes to him to write to the Bishops of France to restrain Martian § 2. Quapropter facere te oportet plenissimas literas ad coepiscopos nostros in Gallia constitutos ne ultra Maertianum pervicacem superbum divinae pietatis ac fraternae salutis inimicum collegio nostro insultare patiantur Cyprian did as much to Stephen as he desired Stephen to do to the Bishops of France This therefore is against you if any thing to the purpose Had you found but such words of a Pope to another Bishop as Cyprian useth to your Pope you would have taken it as an evidence of his superiority § 3. Dirigantur in provinciam plebem in Arelate câ—â—xistentem à te literae c. Let thy Letters be directed to the Province and people at Arles c. And it s plainly an act of non-Communion common to all Bishops towards those unfit for their Communion that Cyprian speaks of § 3. Idcirco enim frater charissime copiosum corpus est sacerdotum concordiae mutuae glutino atque unitatis vinculo copulatum ut siquis ex collegio nostro haeresim facere gregem Christi lacerare vastare tentaverit subveniant caeteri quasi pastores utiles misericordes oves dominicas in gregem colligant You see it is a common duty of brotherhood and not an act of jurisdiction that Cyprian speaks of 5. Your next instance is that the Council of Sardis determined that no Bishop deposed by other neighbouring Bishops pretending to be heard again was to have any successor appointed till the case were defined by the Pope Conc. Sard. cap. 4. cited by Athanas. Apol. 2. pag. 753. Reply It seems you are well acquainted with the Council that know not of what place it was It was the Council at Sardica and not at Sardis that you would mean Sardis was a City of Lydia apud Tmolum montem olim Regio Craesi inter Thiatiram Philadelphiam But this Sardica was a City of Thrace in the confines of the higher Mysia inter Naissum Myssiae Philippopolim Thraciae As to the instance 1. This Council was by Augustine rejected as hereticall though I defend not his opinion 2. It was of so little note and authority that it was not known to the Council of Carthage to have the next antecedent Canons which you would not have omitted if you had read them its like in which your writers glory as their chiefest strength and which Bellarmine thinks Pope Zosimus call'd the Nicene Canon or rather is it not suspicious that this Canon is but forged when those Carthage Fathers plainly say In nullo Patrum concilio decretum invenimus mentioning that antecedent Canon proposed by Hosius to which this mentioned by you proposed by Gaudentius is but an addition or supplement And it is not like that all these Africane Fathers could be ignorant of those Canons of Sardica when such abundance of Africane Bishops were at the Council and that but about 50 years before you may see in Binnius how hard a strait he is put to to give any tolerable reason of this and only saith that its like some how the Canons were lost sure Tradition was then grown untrusty Your Cardinal Cusanus de Concord Cath. l. 2. c. 25. makes a doubt whether the Canon of appeals be indeed a Canon of this Council 3. But grant it be yet take these observations and you shall find small cause of confidence in that Canon 1. It was made in a Case of the distresse of Athanasius and other Orthodox Orientall Bishops meerly in that strait to save them and the Churrhes from the Arrians The Arrians withdrew from the Council being the minor part and excommunicated Iulius with Athanasius and other Occidentals and the Occidental Bishops excommunicated the Oriental Athanasius himself was a chief man in the Council and had before been rescued by
the help of Iulius and therefore no wonder if they desired this safety to their Churches 2. Note that this is a thing newly granted now by this Canon and not any ancient thing 3. Note that therefore it was of Humane Right and not of Divine 4. Note that yet this Canon was not received or practised in the Church but after this the contrary maintained by Councils and practised as I shall anon prove 5. That it is not any antecedent Governing Power that the Canon acknowledgeth in the Pope but in honour of the Memory of S. Peter as they say yet more for their present security they give this much to Rome it being the vulgar opinion that Peter had been there Bishop 6. That it is not a Power of judging alone that they give but of causing the re-examination of Causes by the Council and adding his assistants in the judgement and so to have the putting of another into the place forborn till it be done 7. And I hope still you will remember that at this Council were no Bishops without the Empire and that the Roman world was narrower then the Christian world and therefore if these Bishops in a part of the Empire had now given not a Ruling but a saving Power to the Pope so far as is there expressed this had been far from proving that he had a Ruling Power as the Vice-Christ over all the world and that by Divine right Blame me not to call on you to prove this consequence 8. There is as much for Appeals to Constantinople that never claimed a Vice-Christship as Iure divino 6. Your sixth instance out of Basils 74. Epistle I imagine you would have suppressed if ever you had read that Epistle and had thought that any others would be induced by your words to read it I have given you out of this and other Epistles of Basil a sufficient proof of his enmity to Popery in my Key cap. 26. pag. 170 171 172. and cap. 27. pag. 177. that very Epistle of Basils was written to the Western Bishops and not to the Bishop of Rome only nor so much as naming him The help that he desireth is either a Visit or perswasive Letters never mentioning the least Power that the Pope had more then other Bishops but only the interest of Credit that the Western Bishops had more then Basil and his Companions saith he For what we say is suspected by many as if for certain private contentions we would strike a fear and pusillanimity into their minds But for you the further you dwell from them so much the more credit you have with the common people to which this is added that the grace of God is a help to you to care for the oppressed And if many of you unanimously decree the same things it is manifest that the Multitude of you decreeing the same things will cause an undoubted reception of your opinion with all You see here upon what terms Liberius his Letters might bestead Eustathius He having received him into his own Communion and Eustathius being Orthodox in words no wonder that the Synod of Tiana receive him upon an Orthodox confession and their fellow-Bishops reception and Letters No doubt but the Letters of many another Bishop might have perswaded them to his reception though he had more advantages from Rome Is it not now a fair Argument that you offer Liberius sometime an Arrian Pope of Rome by his Letters prevailed with a Synod at Tyana to restore Eustathius an Arrian that dissembled an Orthodox confession What then Ergo the Pope of Rome is the Vice-Christ or was then the Governour of all the Christian world Soft and fair 1. Basil gives you other reasons of his interest 2. He never mentioneth his universall Government when he had the greatest need to be helped by it if he had known of such a thing 3. The Empire is not all the world If Basil knew the Roman Soveraignty I am certain he was a wilfull Rebel against it 7. Your seventh proof is from Chrysostome who you say expresly desireth Pope Innocent not to punish his adversaries if they do repent Chrys. Epist. 2. ad Innoc. Reply You much wrong your soul in taking your Religion thus on trust some Book hath told you this untruth and you believe it and its like will perswade others of it as you would do me There is no such word in the Epist. of Chrysostome to Innocent nor any thing like it 8. Your eighth proof is this The like is written to the Pope by the Council of Ephesus in the Case of Iohn of Antioch Concil Ephes. p. 2. Act. 5. Reply 1. The first Council at Ephesus which no doubt you mean is in Binnius enough to make a considerable Volume and divided into six Tomes and each of those into Chapters and not into Acts And if you expect that I should exactly read six Tomes in Folio before I can answer your severall sentences or shreds you will put me on a twelve-moneths work to answer a few sheets of Paper If you mean by p. 3. Tom. 2. and by Act. 5. Cap. 5. then I must tell you there is not a word of that you say nor like it Only there is reference to Celestines and Cyrils Epistles and Celestine in his Epistle recited Tom. 1. cap. 17. threatens Nestorius that if he repent not he will excommunicate him and they will have no more communion with him which others did as well as he but not a word of Iohn Bishop of Antioch there Nor can I find any such thing in the 4. Tome where Iohn's cause is handled Indeed the Notes of your Historian divide the Council into Sessions But in his fifth Session there is nothing of Iohn but of Nestorius And in the 4. Sess. Iohn and his Party excommunicate Cyril Memnon and theirs And it was the Council that suspended first and after excommunicated Iohn And it is the Emperour to whom he appeals Indeed your Annotator in Sess. 6. mentions some words of Iuvenals that he should at least have regarded the Roman Legates it being the custome that his Church be directed by that But I see no proof he brings of those words and it is known that Cyril of Alexandria did preside and subscribed before the Roman Legates even to the severall Letters of the Synod as you may see in Tom. 2. cap. 23. passim 2. But if your words were there to be found what are they to your purpose The Pope can punish the Bishop of Antioch But how Why by excommunicating him True if he deserve it that is by pronouncing him unfit for Christian Communion and requiring his flock and exhorting all others to avoid him And thus may another Bishop do and thus did Iohn by Cyril of Alexandria though he was himself of the inferiour Seat and thus hath the Bishop of Constantinople done by the Bishop of Rome and so may others 9. Your ninth proof is from the applications that the Arrians and Athanasius
made to Iulius Ex Athan. ad solit Epist. Iulius in Lit. ad Arian apud Athan. Apol. 1. p. 753. Theodoret. lib. 2. c. 4. Athan. Apol. 2. Zozom l. 3. c. 7. Reply I marvel you urge such rancid instances to which you have been so fully and so often answered I refer you to Blondell de Primatu cap. 25. sect 14 15. Whittaker de Roman Pontif. p. 150. passim Dr. Field of the Ch. l. 5. c. 35 c. Briefly this may shew the vanity of your proof 1. Sozomen in that place saith that though he alone wrote for them yet he wrote in the Name and by the consent of all the Bishops of the West 2. The advantages of Rome by its reputation and greatness and the number and quality of the Western Bishops made their Judgement and Communion valuable to others Basil before cited tells you on what grounds when Churches disagree those that are distant are supposed to be impartiall especially when numerous To which is added which Basil intimates that some hope of help from the Secular powers by the interposition of the Western Bishops made them the more sought to 3. And the Primacy of Rome though it had no Soveraignty made it seem irregular that a Patriarch should be deposed without the knowledge and judgment of the Patriarchs of the precedent Seats This was the custome that Iulius spoke of and the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria might have said as much if the Patriarch of Ierusalem or Antioch had been deposed without them 4. Every Patriarch might absolve the Innocent and hold communion with them in his own Patriarchate and if any be against it as the Arrians here were and sent false accusations against Athanasius to Iulius he may require them to prove their accusations if they will have him moved by them Our own Communion with men is to be directed by the judgment of our own well informed consciences Iulius desired not any more then to be one with a Council that should decide the case Councils then had the Rule and Patriarchs were the most honourable Members of those Councils but no Rulers of them 5. Yet Sozomen and others tell you that Iulius when he had done his best to befriend Athanasius and Paulus could do no good nor prevail with the Bishops of the East till the Emperors commands prevailed yea the Eastern Bishops tell him that he should not meddle with their proceedings no more then they did with his when he dealt with the Novatians seeing the greatness of Cities maketh not the power of one Bishop greater then another and so they took it ill that he interposed though but to call the matter to a Synod when a Patriarch was deposed Any Bishop might have attempted to relieve the oppressed as far as Iulius did especially if he had such advantages as aforesaid to encourage him All your consequences here therefore are denied 1. It is denied that because Iulius made this attempt that therefore he was Universal Ruler in the Empire 2. It is denied that it will thence follow if he were so that it had been by Divine Right any more then Constantinople had equall priviledges by Divine Right 3. It is denied that it hence followeth that either by Divine or humane right he had any Power to govern the rest of the world without the Empire Had you all that you would rack these testimonies to speak it is but that he was made by Councils and Emperours the chief Bishop or Patriarch in a Nationall Church I mean a Church in one Princes Dominion as the Archbishop of Canterbury was in England But a Nationall or Imperiall Church is not the Universall And withall oppressed men will seek relief from any that may help them In your Margin you adde that Concerning S. Athanasius being judged and rightly by P. Julius Chamier acknowledgeth the matter of fact to be so but against all antiquity pretends that judgment to have been unjust Reply Take it not ill Sir I beseech you if I awake your conscience to tell me how you dare write so many untruths which you knew or might know I could quickly manifest Both parts of your saying of Chamier p. 497 are untrue 1. The matter of fact is it that he denieth He proveth to you from Sozomens words that Athanasius did make no appeal to a Judge but only fled for help to a friend He shews you that Iulius did not play the Judge but the helper of the spoiled and that it was not an act of Judgement 2. He therefore accuseth him not of wrong judgeing but only mentioneth his not hearing the accused to shew that he did not play the part of a Judge but a friend as Chrysostome did by some that fled to him I pray answer his reasons And for what you say again in your Margin of Theodoret I say again that he appealeth to the Bishop of Rome for help as a person who with the Western Bishops might sway much against his adversaries but not as to an Universal Governour or Judge no not as to the Universal Judge of the Church Imperiall much less of all the Catholick Churches 10. Your tenth proof is from Chrysostomes Case where you say some things untrue and some impertinent 1. That Chrysostome appeals to Innocent from the Council of Constantinople is untrue if you mean it of an Appeal to a superiour Court or Judge much more if as to an Universal Judge But indeed in his banishment when all other help failed he wrote to him to interpose and help him as far as he could I need no other proof of the Negative then 1. That there is no proof of the Affirmative that ever he made any such appeal 2. In his first Epistle to Innocent he tells him over and over that he appealed to a Synod and required Iudgement and that he was cast into a ship for banishment because he appealed to a Synod and a righteous judgement never mentioning a word of any such appeal to the Pope Yea he urgeth the Pope to befriend and help him by that argument that he was still ready to stand to uncorrupted Judges never mentioning the Pope as Judge By all which it appears it was but the assistance of his intercession that he requireth and withall perhaps the excommunicating of the wicked which another Bishop might have done Yea and it seems it was not to Innocent only but to others with him that he wrote for he would scarce else have used the terms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But what need we more then his own words to know his request saith he Let those that are found to have done so wickedly be subject to the penalty of the Ecclesiasticall Laws but for us that are not convicted nor found guilty grant us to enjoy your Letters and your charity and all others whose society we did formerly enjoy The Ecclesiastical Laws enabled each Patriarch and Bishop to sentence in his own Diocess though the person sentenced lived out of
their Diocess yet they might renounce all communion with him Churches that have no power over one another may have communion with one another and that communion they may hold and renounce as there is cause Now if a neighbour Patriarch with so many Bishops of the West had renounc'd Communion with Chrysostomes enemies and also written their Letters on his behalf and taken him still as in their Communion this he hoped would much further his restauration which yet he doubted as he had cause For in his second Epistle he thanks him for doing his part though it did no good or did not avail And it is to be noted that your Author Nicephorus tells you lib. 13. cap. 31. that Chrysostomes Letters and his fellow-Bishops also and the Clergies of Constantinople were all written both to the Emperour Honorius and to Innocent And therefore you may see by that on what account it was and what help they did expect The Emperour was not to excommunicate but his Letters might do much Well but you alledge Niceph. l. 13. c. 34. to prove 1. Chrysostomes appeal But you have better or worse eyes then I for I can find there no such thing but a seeking for help as aforesaid 2. You say Innocentius nulls his condemnation and declares him innocent Ans. So might another Bishop have declared him But how far it should be regarded was not in his power 3. You say he excommunicates Atticus and Theopilus and 4. Arcadius the Emperor also and Eudoxia Reply 1. If he did so and did well another Bishop might as well have done it Mennas excommunicated Vigilius of Rome Excommunicating is not alwayes an act of Jurisdiction but a renouncing of Communion with a Ministeriall binding which any Pastor on a just occasion may exercise even on those that are not of his Diocess examples in Church-history are common 2. But I would have you answer Dr. Whittakers Reasons by which he proves that Nicephorus is a fabler in this relation and that that Epistle is not Innocents which cap. 34. he reciteth Lib. de pontif Rom. Contr. 4. Qu. 4. pag. 454 455. 1. Neither Socrates Theodoret or Sozomen make any mention of this excommunication who yet write much of the Case of Chrysostome and Arcadius And would these men that lived so near that time have all silenced so great and rare a thing as the excommunication of the Emperour and Empress which would have made so great a noise and stir that yet mention Ambrose his censure of Theodosius 2. This Bull of Innocents as Nicephorus would have us believe it hath such falshoods contrary to more credible history as bewray the forgery For Socrates lib. 6. c. 19. writeth that Eudoxia died the same year that Chrysostome was banished and that Chrysostome died the third year of his banishment And Sozomen saith l. 8. c. 28. that Chrysostome was in banishment three years after the death of Eudoxia But if Nicephorus were to be believed Eudoxia was alive and excommunicated by Innocent after Chrysostomes death Nor can it be said that Innocent knew not of her death for his Legats were sent to Constantinople in Atticus time who succeeded Arsacius who outlived Eudoxia This is the summe of Dr. Whittakers confutation of Nicephorus And withall who knows not how full of fictions Nicephorus is In your Margin you pretend to confute Chamier p. 498. as saying That other Bishops restored those wrongfully deposed as well as the Pope to which you say that never single Bishop restored any who were out of their respective Diocess c. whereas the Bishop of Rome by his sole and single authority restored Bishops wrongfully deposed all the Church over Reply 1. It seems you took Chamiers words on trust peruse that page and see his words 2. Single Bishops have censured and therefore might as well remit their own censures Ambrose censured Theodosius who was no fixed Member of his charge and he remitted the Censure Epiphanius presumed even at Constantinople to excommunicate Dioscorus and his Brethren Socrat. lib. 6. c. 14. And many instances may be brought both of excommunicating and again receiving to communion by particular Bishops even as to those that were not of their charge And if the fact were not proved yet the forbearance proveth not the want of power 3. I deny your unproved assertion that the Bishop of Rome singly restored all the Church over It is a meer fiction How many restored he out of the Empire Or in the Empire out of his Patriarchate but suasorily or Synodically Your next instance of Theodosius his not permitting the Council at Ephesus to be assembled and his reconciling himself to the Church is meerly impertinent We know that he and other Princes usually wrote to Rome Constantinople Alexandria c. or spoke or sent to more then one of the Patriarchs before they called a Council You cannot but know that Councils have been called without the Pope and that neither this nor an Emperours forsaking his errour is a sign of the Popes Universal Government That Emperour gave sufficient testimony and so did the Bishops that adhered to Dioscorus that in those dayes the Pope was taken for fallible and controlable when they excommunicated him But when you cite out of any Author the words that you build on I shall take more particular notice of them Till then this is enough with this addition that the Emperours subjection if he had been subject not to an Ambrose or other Bishop but only to Rome would have been no proof that any without the Empire were his subjects No more then the King of Englands subjection to the Archbishop of Canterbury would have proved that the King of France was subject to him 12. Your twelfth proof from the Council of Chalcedon is from a witness alone sufficient to overthrow your cause as I have proved to you This Synod expresly determineth that your Primacy is a novel humane invention that it was given you by the Fathers because Rome was the Imperial Seat If you believe this Synod the Controversie is at end If you do not why do you cite it and why pretend you to believe Generall Councils But what have you from this Council against this Council Why 1. You say Martian wrote to Leo that by the Popes Authority a generall Council might be gathered in what City of the Eastern Church he should please to choose Reply 1. Whereas for this you cite Act. Concil Chalcedon 1. You tell me not in what Author whether Crabbe Binnius Surius Nicolinus or where I must seek it I have perused the Act. 1. in Binnius which is 63 pages in Folio such tasks your citations set me and find no such thing and therefore take it to be your mistake But in the preambul Epist I find that Valentinian and Martian desire Leo's prayers and contrary to your words that they say Hoc ipsum nobis propriis liter is tua sanctitas manifestet quatenus in omnem Orientem in ipsam Thraciam
Acacius of Caesarea and his party depose not only Eleusius Basilius and many others but with them also Macedonius Bishop of Constantinople Socrat. lib. 2. c. 33. vel 42. Did this prove Acacius the Vice-Christ What should I instance in Theophilus actions against Chrysostome or Cyrils against Iohan. Antiochen and many such like 4. Still you suppose one Empire to be all the Christian world We must grant you that in all your instances 14. For what you alledge from Gregory I shall give you enough of him anon for your satisfaction if you will be indifferent As to your citation what can I say A years time were little enough to search after your citations if you should thus write but many more sheets If a man had so much time and so little wit as to attend you You turn me to Greg. cap. 7. ep 63. but what Book or what Indiction you tell me not But whatever it be false it must needs be there being no one Book of his Epistles according to all the Editions that I have seen where c. 7. and ep 63. do agree or meet together But at last I found the words in lib. 7. c. 63. ep 63. To which I say that either your great Gregory by subject meant that the Bishop of Constantinople was of an inferiour Order as the Patriarch of Alexandria and Antioch were to Constantinople that yet had no Government of them or else he could say and unsay But I doubt not but this was all his sense But if it had been otherwise Constantinople and the Empire was not all the Christian world Your next citation is lib. 7. ep 37. But it s falsly cited There is no such word and you are in so much haste for an answer that I will not read over all Gregories Epistles 15. You say Cyril would not break off Communion with Nestorius till Celestine had condemned him of this you give us no proof But what if it be true Did you think that it proved the Pope to be the Vice-Christ Prudence might well make Cyril cautelous in excommunicating a Patriarch And we still grant you that the Order of the Empire had given the Roman Bishop the Primacy therein and therefore no wonder if his consent were expected But that Nestorius was condemned by a Council needs no proof And what if Celestine began and first condemned him I she therefore the Universal Bishop But it was not Celestine alone but a Synod of the Western Bishops And yet Cyril did not hereupon reject him without further warning And what was it that he threatned but to hold no Communion with him Vid. Concil Ephes. 1. Tom. 1. cap. 14. And though Pride made excommunication an Engine to advance one Bishop above others I can easily prove that if I had then lived it had been my duty to avoid Communion with a notorious Heretick though he had been Pope The long story that you next tell is but to fill up Paper that Cyril received the Popes Letters that Nestorius repented not that he accused Cyril that Theodosius wrote to Celestine about a Council and many such impertinent words But the proof is that Cyril was the Popes chief Legate Ordinary Forsooth because in his absence he was the chief Patriarch therefore he is said Celestini locum tenere which he desired Well let your Pope sit highest seeing he so troubles all the world for it Christ will shortly bid him come down lower when he humbleth them that exalt themselves That Cyril subscribed before Philip you may see Tom. 2. cap. 23. but where I may find that Philip subscribed first you tell me not But what if the Archbishop of Canterbury sate highest and subscribed first in England Doth it follow that he was Governour of all the world no nor of York it self neither 16. And here you tell us of Iuvenal Act. 6. Repl. 1. The Council is not divided into Acts in Binnius but many Tomes and Chapters but your words are in the Notes added by your historian but how to prove them Iuvenals words I know noâ— nor find in him or you 2. But why were not the antecedent words of the Bishop of Antioch and his Clergy as valid to the contrary as Iuvenals for this 3. If these words were spoken they only import a Iudgeing in Council as a chief member of it and not of himself And his apostolica ordinatione is expresly contrary to the â—orecited Canon of the Council of Chalcedon and therefore not to be believed Yet some called things done Ordinatione apostolica which were ordained by the Seats which were held Apostolike 4. But still you resolve to forget that Antioch or the Empire extended not to the Antipodes nor contained all the Catholick Church 17. You next tell me of Valentinians words A. D. 445. Reply It is the most plausible of all your testimonies but worth nothing to your end For 1. Though Theodosius name pro forma were at it yet it was only Valentinians act and done at Rome where Leo prevailed with a raw unexperienced Prince to word the Epistle as he desired so that it is rather Leo's then the Emperours originally And Leo was the first that attempted the excessive advancement of his Seat above the rest of the Patriarchs 2. It is known that the Emperours sometime gave the Primacy to Rome and sometime to Constantinople as they were pleased or displeased by each of them So did Iustinian who A. D. 530. Lampadio Oreste Coss. C. de Episcopis lib. 1. lege 24. saith Constantinopolitana Ecclesia omnium aliarum est Caput The Church of Constantinople is the Head of all other 3. It is your fiction and not the words of Valentinian or Leo that the succession from Peter was the foundation of Romes Primacy It was then believed that Antioch and other Churches had a succession from Peter It is the Merit of Peter and the Dignity of the City of Rome and the Authority of the Synod joyntly that he ascribeth it to The Merit of Peter was nothing but the Motive upon which Leo would have men believe the Synod gave the Primacy to Rome And Hosius in the Council of Sardica indeed useth that as his motive Let us for the honour of Peter c. They had a conceit that where Peter last preached and was martyred and buried and his relicts lay there he should be most honoured 4. Here is not the least intimation that this Primacy was by Gods appointment or the Apostles but the Synods Nor that it had continued so from Peters dayes but that joyntly for Peters Merits and honour and the Cities dignity it was given by the Synod 5. And it was but Leo's fraud to perswade the raw Emperour of the authority of a Synod which he would not name because the Synod of Sardica was in little or no authority in those daies The rest of the reasons were fraudulent also which though they prevailed with this Emperour yet they took not in the East And Leo himself it
seems durst not pretend to a Divine Right and Institution nor to a succession of Primacy from the Apostles 6. But nothing is more false then your assertion that he extendeth the power over the whole visible Church The word Vniversitas is all that you translate in your comment the whole visible Church As if you knew not that there was a Roman Vniversality that Roman Councils were called Vniversall when no Bishops out of that one Common-wealth were present and that the Church in the Empire is oft called the whole Church Yea the Roman world was not an unusuall phrase And I pray you tell me what power Valentinian had out of the Empire who yet interposâ—th his authority there Nequid praeter authoritatem sedis istiusilliâ—itum c. ut pâ—x ubique servetur And in the end it is All the Provinces that is the Vniversity that he extends his precepts to 7. And for that annexed that without the Emperours Letters his authority was to be of force through France for what shall not be lawfull c. I Ans. No wonder â—or France was part of his Patriarchaâ—e and the Laws of the Empire had confirmed his Patriarchal power and those Laws might seem with the reverence of Synods without new Letters to do much But yet it seems that the rising power needed this extraordinary secular help Hilary it seems with his Bishops thought that even to his Patriarch he owed no such obedience as Leo here by force exacteth So that your highest witness Leo by the mouth of Valentinian is for no more then a Primacy with a swelled power in the Roman Universality but they never medled with the rest of the Christian world It seems by all their writings and attempts this never came into their thoughts And it s no credit to your cause that this Hilary was by Baronius confession a man of extraordinary holiness and knowledge and is Sainted among you and hath his Day in your Calendar And yet Valentinian had great provocation to interpose if Leo told him no untruths for his own advantage For it was no less then laying siege to Cities to force Bishops on them without their consent that he is accused of which shews to what odious pride and usurpation prosperity even then had raised the Clergy fitter to be lamented with floods of tears then to be defended by any honest Christian Leo himself may be the principal instance 18. You next return to the Council of Chalcedon Act. 1. seq where 1. You refer me to that Act. 1. where is no such matter but you add seq that I may have an hundred and ninety pages in Folio to peruse and then you call for a speedy answer But the Epistle to Leo is in the end of Act. 16. pag. Bin. 139. 2. And there you do but falsly thrust in the word thou governst us and so you have made your self a witness because you could find none The words are Quibus tu quidem sicut membris caput praeeras in his qui tuum tenebant ordinem benevolentiam praeferens Imperatores vero adornandum decentissime praesidebant Now to go before with you must be to Govern If so then Aurelius at the Council of Carthage and others in Councils that presided did govern them It was but benevolentiam praetulisse that they acknowledged And that the Magistrates not only presided indeed but did the work of Judges and Governours is express in the Acts it s after wrote in that Epistle Haec sunt quae tecum qui spiritu praesens eras complacere tanquam fratribus deliberasti qui pene per tuorum vicariorum sapientiam videbaris à nobis effecimus And haec à tua sanctitate fuerint inchoata and yet Qui enim locum vestrae sanctitatis obtinent iis ita constitutis vehementer resistere tentaverunt From all which it appeareth that he only is acknowledged to lead the way and to please them as his brethren and to help them by the wisdome of his substitutes and yet that the Council would not yield to their vehement resistance of one particular But I have told you oft enough that the Council shall be judge not in a complementall Epistle but in Can. 28. where your Primacy is acknowledged but 1. As a gift of the Fathers 2. And therefore as new 3. For the Cities dignity 4. And it can be of no further extent then the Empire the Givers and this Council being but the Members of that one Commonwealth So that all is but a novel Imperial Primacy 19. And for the words of Vincentius Lirinensis c. 9. what are they to your purpose quantum loci authoritate signifieth no more then we confess viz. that in those times the greatness of Rome and humane Ordination thereupon had given them that precedency by which their loci authoritas had the advantage of any other Seat Or else they had never swelled to their impious Usurpation I have plainly proved to you in the End of my safe Religion that Vincentius was no Papist But you draw an argument from the word sanxit As if you were ignorant that bigger words then that are applied to them that have no governing power Quantum in se sanxit he charged them that they should not innovate And what is it P. Stephen that is the Law-giver of the Law against unjust innovation Did not Cyprian believe that this was a Law of Christ before Stephen medled in that business What Stephens authority was in those dayes we need no other witnesses then Firmilian Cyprian and a Council of Carthage who slighted the Pope as much as I do I pray answer Cyprians testimony and arguments against Popery cited by me in the Disp. 3. of my safe Religion 20. You say you will conclude with the saying of your priest Philip and Arcadius at Ephesus And 1. You take it for granted that all consented to what they contradicted not But your word is all the proof of the consequence Nothing more common then in Senates and Synods to say nothing to many passages in speeches not consented to If no word not consented to in any mans speech must pass without contradiction Senates and Synods would be no wiser Societies then Billingsgate affords nor more harmonious then a Fair or vulgar rout What confusion would contradictions make among them 2. You turn me to Tom. 2. pag. 327. Act. 1. I began to hope of some expedition here But you tell me not at all what Author you use And in Binnius which I use the Tomes are not divided into Acts but Chapters and pâ—g 327. is long bâ—fore this Councâ—l So â—hat I must believe you or search paper enough for a weeks reading to disprove you This once I will believe you to save me that labour and supposing all rightly cited I reply 1. Philip was not the Council You bear witness to your selves therefore your witness is not credible Yet I have given you instances in my Key which I would
transcribe if I thought that you could not as well read Print as M. S. of higher expressions then Caput and fundamentum given to Andrew by Isychius and equal expressions to others as well as Rome and Peter And who is ignorant that knoweâ—h any thing of Church-history that others were called successours of Peter as well as the Bishop of Rome And that the Claves regni were given to him is no proof that they were not given also to all the rest of the Apostles And where you say Arcadius condemneth Nestorius for contemning the command of the Apostolick Sea You tell me not where to find it I answer you still that its long since your Sea begun to swell and rage but if you must have us grant you all these consequences Celestine commanded therefore he justly commanded therefore another might not as well have commanded him as one Pastor may do another though equall in the name of Christ and therefore he had power to command without the Empire even over all the Catholick Church and therefore the Council was of this mind yea therefore the universal Church was of this mind that the Pope was its universal head You still are guilty of sporting about serious things and moving pity instead of offering the least proof Yet fear you not to say that in the time of the holy Oecumenical Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon the universal consent of the whole Catholick Church was for you in this point The Lord keep our consciences from being the servants of our opinions or interests 1. Was the Popes Legate the whole Catholick Church 2. Was there one man at either of these Councils but within the Empire yea a piece of the Empire So that they were but such as we now call National Councils that is consisting only of the subjects of one Republick 3. Did the Council speak a word for your power without the Empire 4. Do they not determine it so expresly to be of humane right that Bellarmine hath nothing regardable to say against it Can. 28. Conc. Chalced. but that they spoke falsly And yet your opinion or interest hath tempted you to appeal viz. to the Sun that there is no such thing as light 21. After the conclusion you have a supernumerary in your Margin from Greg. lib. 10. Epist. 30. But there is no such word in that Epistle nor is it of any such subject But is the 31. Epistle its like that your leader meant And there 's no more but that a Bishop not named person or place having fallen into Schism voluntarily swore never more to depart from the Unity of the Catholick Church or the sea of Rome But 1. So may a Bishop of the Roman Province do or Patriarchate without believing Rome to be the Universal Head So might one in any other Province have done And yet it follows not that he ought to do so because he did so You see now what all your proofs are come to and how shamefully naked you have left your cause In summ of all the testimonies produced 1. You have not named one man that was a Papist Pope Leo was the nearest of any man nor one testimony that ever a Pope of Rome had the Government of all the Church without the verge of the Roman Empire but only that he was to the Roman Church as the Archbishop of Canterbury to the English Church And as between Canterbury and York so between Rome and Constantinople there have been contentions for preheminency But if I can prove Canterbury to be before York or Rome before Constantinople that will prove neither of them to be Ruler at the Antipodes or of all the Christian world 2. Much less have you proved that ever any Church was of this opinion that the Pope was by Divine Right the Governour of all the world when you cannot prove one man of that opinion 3. Much less have you proved a succession of such a Church from the Apostles having said as much as nothing concerning the first 300 years 4. And yet much less have you proved that the whole Catholick Church was of this opinion 5. And least of all have you proved that the whole Church took this Primacy of Rome to be of necessity to the very Being of the Church and to our salvation and not only ad melius esse as a point of Order So that you have left your Cause in shameful nakedness as if you had confessed that you can prove nothing In the end you return to terms To what you say about the word Christians I only say that it s but equivocally applied to any that profess not all the Essentialls of Christianity of which Popery is none any more then Pride is About the word Monarch in good sadness do you deny the Pope to be an imperious sole Commander Which of these is it that you deny not that he is a Commander not that he is imperious not that he is sole in his Soveraignty I would either you or we knew what you hold or deny But perhaps the next words shew the difference as Temporal Kings But this saith not a word wherein they differ from Temporal Kings sure your following words shew not the difference 1. Kings may receive power from Christ. 2. Kings must rule in meekness charity and humility But I think the meekness charity and humility of Popes hath been far below even wicked Kings if cruel murdering Christians for Religion and setting the world on fire may be witness as your own Histories assure us 3. The Government of Kings also is for mens eternal good however Papists would make them but their executioners in such things 4. Brethren as such are no subjects and therefore if the Pope Rule men but as Brethren he rules them not by Governing authority at all 5. Children to him we are not You must mean it but Metaphorically And what mean you then Is it that he must do it in Love for their good So also must Kings So that you have yet exprest no difference at all But our Question is not new nor in unusuall terms What Soveraignty you claim you know or should know Are you ignorant that Bellarmine Boverius and ordinarily your Writers labour to prove that the Government of the Church is Monarchicall and that the Pope is the Monarch the supream Head and Ruler which in English is the Soveraign Are you ashamed of the very Cause or Title of it which you will have necessary to our salvation Next you say that you very much dislike the Title of Vice-Christ as proud and insolent and utterly disclaim from it neither was it ever given by any sufficient authority to your Popes or did they ever accept of it Reply Now blessed be God that makes sin a shame to it self that the Patrons of it dare scarce own it without some paint or vizard 1. Is not the very life of the Cause between you and us whether the Pope be the Universal Head of the Church vice Christi
istius non potuisse statuere prout statuit haeretiâ—um censeatur So that by your Law we must believe the power of your Lord God the Pope or be hereticks If you meet with any Impressions that leave out Deum take Rivets note haberi in editione formata jussu Greg. 12. â— corectoribus Pontificiis nec in censuris Glâ—ssae jâ—ssu Pii 5. editis quae in expurgatorio indice habintur nomen Dei erasum fuisse Pope Nicolas 3. de Elâ—ct cap. fundamenta in 6. saith that Peter was â—ssumed into the Society of the individuall Trinity Angelus Polit. in Orat. ad Alex. 6. Pontificem ad Divinitatem ipsam sublâ—tum asserit He saith the Pope was taken up to the Godhead it self At the foresaid Council at Laterane Antonius Puccius in an Oration before Leo the tenth in the Council and after published by his favour said Divinae tuae Majestatis conspectus rutilante cujus fulgore imbecilles oculimei caligant His eyes were darkened with beholding the Popes Divine Majesty None contradicted this In the same Council Simon Bâ—gnius Modrusiensis Episcopus in an Oâ—acion Sâ—ss 6. calls Leo The Lion of the Tribe of Juda the root of Jesse him whom they had looked for as the Saviour In the same Council Sâ—ss 10 Stephanus Patracensis Archiop saith Reges in compedibus magnitudinis magni Regis liga nobiles in manicis ferreis censurarum constringe quoniam tibi data est omnis potestas in coelo in terra and before qui totum dicit nihil excludit So that all Power in heaven and earth is given to the Pope Paulus Aemilius de gestis Francorum lib. 7. saith that the Sicilian Embassadours lay prostrate at the Popes feet and thrice repeated Thou that takest away the sins of the world have mercy on us And prove to me that ever any such man was reprehended for these things by the Popes of late August Triumphus in Praefat. sum ad Ioan. 22. saith That the Popes power is infinite for great is the Lord and great is his power and of his greatness there is no end And qu. 36. ad 6. he saith that the Pope influenceth or giveth the Motion of direction and the sense of cognition into all the Members of the Church for in him we live and move and have our being And a little after he saith The will of God and consequently of the Pope who is his Vicar is the first and highest cause of all corporal and spiritual motions Would you have any more witness of the falshood of your words saith Zabarella I.C. lib. de schism Innocent 7. Bened. pag. 20. For this long time past and even to this day those that would please the Popes perswaded them that they could do all things and so that they might do what they pleased even things unlawfull and so more than God Antonius parte 3. tit 21. cap. 5. § 4. saith The Pope receiveth from the faithfull adorations prostrations and kisses of his feet which Peter permitted not from Cornelius nor the Angel from John the Evangelist Cardinalis Bertrandus Tract de origin jurisd q. 4. num 4. in Glos. extrag com l. 1. fol. 12. saith Because Iesus Christ the son of God while he was in this world and even from eternity was a Naturall Lord and by Naturall right could pronounce the sentence of deposition on Emperours or any others and the sentence of damnation and any other as upon the Persons which he had created and endowed with naturall and free gifts and also did conserve it is his will that on his account his Vicar may do the same things For the Lord should not seem discreet that I may speak with his reverence unless he had left behind him one Vicar that can do all these things Tell me now whether you said true in the Paragraph about the Title Vice-Christ yea whether it be not much more that hath been given and accepted But what name else is it that you agree on as proper to express the power which is controverted I know no name so fitted to the reall controversie And therefore in disclaiming the Name for ought I know you disclaim your Cause and confess the shame of Popery If he that seeks to be King of England should say he disclaimeth the Title of King as insolent and proud doth he not allow me to conclude the like of the thing which he concludeth of the proper name The name Papa Pope you know its like was usually by the ancients given to other Bishops as well as to him of Rome and therefore that cannot distinguish him from other men The same I may say of the Titles Dominus Pater sanctissimus beatissimus Dei amantissimus and many such like And for summus Pontifex Baronius tells you Martyrol Rom. April 9. that it was the ancient custome of the Church to call all Bishops not only Pontifices Popes but the Highest or Chief Popes citing Hierom. Ep. 99. And for the word Head of the Church or of all Bishops it hath been given to Constantinople that yet claimeth not as Nilus tells you neither a precedency to Rome nor an Universall Government much less as the Vice-Christ And that the Bishop of Constantinople was called the Apostolick Vniversal Bishop Baronius testifieth from an old Vaticane monument which on the other side calls Agapetus Episcoporum Princeps The Title Apostolick was usually given to others Hierusalem was called the mother of the Churches A Council gave Constantinople the Title of Vniversal Patriarch which though Gregory pronounced so in pious and intolerable for any to use yet the following Popâ—s made an agreement with Constantinople that their Patriarch should keep his Title of Vniversal Patriarch and the Bishop of Rome be called the Vniversal Pope which can signifie nothing proper to him the name Pope being common more then Vniversal Patriarch doth The Foundations and Pillars of the Church and the Apostles successors yea Peters successors were Titles given to others as well as him and more then these It being therefore the point in controversie between us whether the Bishop of Rome be in the place of Christ or as his Vicar the Head Monarch or Governour of the Church universal and the terms Vice Christi Vicarius Christi being those that Popes and Papists choose to signifie their claim what other should I use As to what you say of the Council of Constance which you must say also of Basil and of the French Church Venetians c. you pretend the doubt to be only between Ordinary and extraordinary Governours But 1. of old the Councils called Generall indeed but of one Principality were more ordinary then now the Pope hath brought them to be and I blame him not if he will hold his greatness to take heed of them 2. The way not to have been extraordinary if the Council of Constâ—nce had been infallible or of sufficient power who decreed that there should be one every ten years 3. The Councils that continue
so many years as that at Trent did are then become an Ordinary Government 4. What is given to the Church Representative is by many of you given to the Church reall or essentiall as you call it which is ordinarily existent only not capable of exerting the power it hath The singulis major at universis minor is no rare doctrine with you 5. But let it be as extraordinary as you please if while these Councils sit the Pope lose his Headship your Church is then two Churches specifically distinct and the form of it changeth when a Council sitteth which is a two-headed mutable Church not like the Spouse of Jesus Christ. 6. As your Popes are said to live in their constitutions and Laws when the person dyeth and your Church is not thought by you to die with them so why may not Councils do The Laws of Councils live when they sit not and the French think that these Laws are above the Pope though I shewed you even now that Iulius 2. in Conc. Later concluded otherwise of Decrees and the Council of the Popes power 7. If a Nation be Governed by Trienniall and so Decenniall Parliaments as the highest power and Councils of State in the intervalls who shall be accountable to Parliaments will you say that these Parliaments are extraordinary and not the ordinary Soveraign No doubt they are And the Council of State is not the Soveraign but the chief Officer or Magistrate for execution in the intervals Having begun this Reply May 2. I was again taken off it about May 5. or 6. And about May 11. I received a Letter from you wherein you tell me of a quarter of a years expectation Be patient good Sir These matters concern Eternity Believe it I have somewhat else to do of greater hast and moment Even some of your own friends find me more work What if ten of you write to me at once is it fair for each one of you to call for an answer as hastily as if I had but one in hand This is not my case but it is more then thus Fear not lest I give you over till you first prove the deserter and turn your back if God enable me Only I must tell you that I take it for a flight already and a forsaking of your Cause that you turn to these rambling impertinent citations and discourses in stead of a Syllogisticall arguing the case and that when you had spoken so much for it I have here that you may have no cause of exception nor pretence of cause in this Paper replyed to your last and in another proved the Visibility of our Church syllogistically and as overplus also disproved yours and proved it to be an upstart the sprout of Pride upon occasion of the greatness of the City of Rome and of the forming the Church to the Civil State in that one Empire If now you will deny to do the like I shall conclude you fly and forsake your Cause Besides your Rejoinder to this Reply I principally expect that you syllogistically in close and faithfull Arguing do prove to us the Affirmative of these Questions following Qu. Whether the Church of which the subjects of the Pope are Members hath been visible ever since the dayes of Christ on earth In which these three Questions are involved which you have to prove 1. Whether the Papacy that is the Vniversal Monarchy or Soveraign Government or Vice-Christship of the Pope take which term you like hath continued from Christs dayes till now 2 Whether all the Catholick Church did still submit to it and were subjects of the Pope 3. Whether those that did submit to it did take it to be necessary to the Being of the Church and the salvation of all believers or only to the more peaceable and better being If you call for Catalogues or proof of Visible succession and pretend so high to it your selves and yet will give us none when we importune you to it you tell us that you seek not to reveal the truth and Church but to hide them I urge you the harder though it may seem immodest because as the Cause doth lie upon your proof here so I know you cannot do it Pardon my confidence I know you can do no more then Baronius Bellarmine Bullinger c. set together have done and therefore I say I know you cannot do it I know your Vice-Christ I doubt the Antichrist is of humane introduction springing out of a Nationall I mean Imperiall Primacy which also was of humane invention It was but one Civil Government or Commonwealth in which your Bishop had his Primacy and that long without a Governing power And this National Primacy because of the greatness of the Empire was at last called Universal And even this was long after the dayes of Christ some hundreds of years a stranger in the Church unless as the Greatness of the Church of Rome and advantages of the place did give that Church such authority as ariseth from magnitude splendour honour and accidental advantages from the populousness wealth and glory of the City of Rome The carnall Church is led by the Vice-Christ the earthly Prince of Pride contending in the world for command and superiority and prosecuting his Cause with Strappados fire sword and gunpowder when Christ gave no Pastor a Coercive power to touch mens bodies or estates The true spirituall Church is Headed and commanded by Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace and knoweth no other Universal Head because no other hath either Capacity or Authority It obeyeth his Laws and learneth of him to be charitable patient meek and lowly and wonders not at errours and divisions on earth nor therefore accuseth the providence of God but knoweth by faith that the Universal Judge of Controversies is at the door and that it is but a very little while and we shall see that the Church had an Universal Head that was alone sufficient for his work for he that cometh will come and will not tarry Amen Even so come Lord Jesus Sir I desire you presently to send me word whether you will by close Syllogisticall arguing prove the successive visibility of your Church as Papal or not that I may know what to expect And once more I pray you take the help of the ablest of your party both that I may not be so troubled with wrong or impertinent allegations and that I may be sure that your insufficient arguings are not from any imperfection of the person but of the Cause If you meet in these Papers with any passages which you think too confident and earnest I beseech you charge them not with uncharitableness or passion for I hope it proceeded not from either but I confess I am inclined to speak confidently where I am certain and to speak seriously about the things of God which are of everlasting consequence May 18. 1659. For Mr. William Iohnson THE SECOND PART Wherein the successive Visibility of the Church of which the
Protestants are chief Members is clearly proved And the Papists exceptions against it confuted LONDON Printed in the year 1660. Qu. Whether the Church of which the Protestants are Members have been Visible ever since the dayes of Christ on earth Aff. THe terms explained 1. The Church sometime signifieth a particular Congregation actually met or associated for such personal meeting for Communion in Gods worship 2. Sometime it signifieth an Association of Churches and that either of sewer or of more as they have opportunity of Communion or correspondency by their Pastors and also the Assemblies of the Pastors of the particular Churches so associated Scripture useth it in the first sense and Later custome whether Scripture also I omit in the later 3. Both Scripture and Custome have used the word to signifie the Church Universal of which all particular Churches are Members This is the Church that we speak of in the Question Defin. The Universal Church of which the Protestants profess themselves Members is The Kingdome of Iesus Christ or The whole company of Believers or true Christians upon earth subjected to Iesus Christ their Head The constitutive parts or the Relate and Correlate are as in every Politick Body the Pars Imperans and Pars subdita which is Christ and Christians The form consisteth in the mutuall Relation The End is the common good of the Church and the glory of the Head and the accomplishment of the will of God 2. The Protestants Defin. Protestants are Christians protesting against or disowning Popery The word Protestant expresseth not the essence of our Religion And therefore it must not denominate the Universal Church of which we are Members we are not to call it A Protestant Universal Church Nor doth it signifie an inseparable proper accident For when the Catholick Church had no Popery there was none to protest against and therefore there could be no Protestants And Ethiopia India and other Nations that never had Popery or those Nations that never heard of it have no occasion to protest against it Nor doth it signifie any Positive part directly of our Religion but only the Negation or Rejection of Popery Even as when a man is called Homo purgatus sanatus liberatus à leprâ peste tabe c. a man purged healed freed from the leprosie plague consumption c. it is no positive part nor inseparable proper accident much less any essential part of the man that is signified by the word Healed Purged c. Nor is it necessary in order to the proving him a man or a healthfull man to prove that he was ever a purged or healed man We undertake not therefore to prove that there have been alwayes Protestants that is men Protesting against Popery Nor have we any need in order to the proof of our Thesis to prove that the Catholick Church hath all been free from Popery in all ages or in any age since the Apostles no more then that it hath been free from Pride Ambition or Contention But yet we shall do it ex abundanti The Religion then of a Protestant is Christianity and he knoweth and owneth no other Which is called the Protestant Religion as cleansed from Popery Members that is true integral parts Of which are By Profession We profess our selves to be of no other Church And before men a man is to be taken to be of that Religion and Church of which he professeth himself to be till he be proved false in that Profession If a Papist affirm himself a member of the Roman Church in disputing with him we will take it for granted that he is so every man being best acquainted with his own mind and fittest to describe the Religion which he owns So that two things I here include 1. It is only such a Catholick Church that hath been still visible that Protestants own 2. And only such that really they are of their Profession being valid Note also that it is not directly the inexistency by internal invisible faith that is in question among us or that I mean but the inexistency by external Visible Profession Bellarmine thinks the bare Professors that are wicked are best termed Dead members and the true Professors Living members we will not stick needlesly on words We take the Living members only to be in strict propriety members but Sincerity and Hypocrisie being known only to God and the possessors we speak of Professors as Professors abstractively from their Sincerity or Hypocrisie Hath been Visible 1. Not visible to man in its Internal faith but in its external Profession 2. Not Visible at once to any one man for no man can see all the Christian world at once But Visible in its parts both in Congregations and individual persons 3. Not Visible in the soundness of its professed faith unto Infidels and Hereticks For they cannot see that faith to be sound which they take to be fabulous and false But Visible in the soundness of its professed faith to themselves that know the soundness of faith 4. Not Visible in the excellent degree of soundness in the better parts unto the corrupter or infirmer parts For though de facto they may know what Doctrine the better part do hold as Infidels know what Doctrine the Church holdeth yet they know it not to be true and sound in the points wherein they differ And note again that it is not the Visibility of every accident of the Church nor of every Truth or duty that is but of the Integrity of Religion and necessary only ad melius esse Ecclesiae to the Better being of the Church but it is the Visibility of the Church that we speak of Lastly it is the Body and not the Head whose Visibility is in Question by us Though the Head also is truly Visible in Heaven and Visus or seen to the most excellent Triumphant part of his Body who are fittest to be his Courtiers and in his presence and as much seen on earth as the Pope is to most of the Church which is not at all Ever since the dayes of Christ on earth 1. But not still in one and the same place on earth It might be in one age much of it in Iudea at Ephesus Sardis Laodicaea Colosse Philippi and other parts of Asia and in other ages removed thence either wholly or for the most part It might be in one age in Tenduâ— Nâ—bia and other great Kingdoms where it shall afâ—er cease to be But in some part or other of the earth it hath been still 2. Not equally visible in all Times and Places of the earth In some Times as in the Arrians prevalency it was so oppressed and obscured that the world groaned to find it self turn'd Arrian and the Arrians in General Councils and number of Bishops to whom the true Christians were very few did seem to carry away the Name and glory of the Catholick Church so that in their eyes and in the eyes of slanders by that were of neither
account then had not Rome those priviledges from the Apostles and consequently the whole Catholike Church was without them But the Antecedent is affirmed by that fourth great approved Council In Act. 16. Bin. p. 134. We everywhere following the definitions of the holy Fathers and the Canon and the things that have been now read of the hundred and fifty Bishops most beloved to God that were congregate under the Emperour Theodosius the great of pious memory in the Royal City of Constantinople new Rome we also knowing them have defined the same things concerning the priviledges of the same most holy Church of Constantinople new Rome For to the seat of old Rome because of the Empire of that City the Fathers consequently gave the priviledges And the hundred and fifty Bishops most beloved of God being moved with the same intention have given equal priviledges to the most holy seat of new Rome reasonably judging that the City adorned with the Empire and Senate shall enjoy equal priviledges with old Regal Rome Here we have the Testimony of one of the greatest general Councils of the humane original of Romes priviledges Bellarmine hath nothing to say but that they spoke falsly and that this clause was not confirmed by the Pope which are fully answered by me elsewhere But this is nothing to our present business It is a matter of fact that I use their Testimony for And if all the Bishops in two of the most approved general Councils called the Representative Catholike Church were not competent witnesses in such a case to tell us what was done and what was not done in those times then we have none The Papists can pretend to no higher testimony on their part The Church it self therefore hath here decided the controversie And yet note that even these priviledges of Rome were none of his pretended universal Government It s in vain to talk of the Testimonies of particular Doctors if the most renowned general Councils cannot be believed Yet I will add an Argument from them as conjunct Arg. 2. Had the Roman universal Soveraignty as essential to the Catholike Church been known in the daies of Tertullian Cyprian Athanasius Nazianzen Nyssen Basil Optatus Augustine and the other Doctors that confounded the Heresies or Schisms of those times e. g. the Novatians Donatists Arrians c. the said Doctors would have plainly and frequently insisted on it for the conviction of those Hereticks and Schismaticks But this they do not therefore it was not known in those times The consequence of the Major is evident hence The Doctors of the Church were men at least of common wit and prudence in the matters which they did debate therefore they would have insisted on this argument if then it had been known The reason of the consequence is because it had been most obvious easie and potent to dispatch their controversies 1. When the Arrians and many other Hereticks denied Christs eternal Godhead had it not been the shortest expeditious course to have cited them to the barr of the Judge of controversies the infallible Soveraign Head of the Church and convinced them that they were to stand to his judgement 2. Had not this Argument been at hand to have confounded all Heresies at once That which agreeth not with the Belief of the Roman Pope and Church is false But such is your opinion therefore 2. So for the Donatists when they disputed for so many years against the Catholikes which was the true Church had it not been Augustins shortest surest way to have argued thus That only is the true Church that is subject to the Pope of Rome and adhereth to him But so do not you therefore Either the Arrians Donatists and such others did believe the Papal Soveraignty and Vicarship or not If they did 1. How is it possible they should actually reject both the Doctrine and Communion of the Pope and Roman Church 2. And why did not the Fathers rebuke them for sinning against conscience and their own profession herein But if they did not believe the Papal Soveraignty then 2. How came it to pass that the Fathers did labour no more to convince them of that now supposed fundamentall Errour when 1. It is supposed as hainous a sin as many of the rest 2. And was the maintainer of the rest Had they but first demonstrated to them that the Pope was their Governour and Judge and that his Headship being essentiall to the Church it must needs be of his faith all Heresies might have been confuted the people satisfied and the controversies dispatched in a few words 3. Either Arrians Donatists Novatians and such like were before their defection acquainted with the Roman Soveraignty or not If they were not then it is a sign it was not commonly then received in the Church and that there were multitudes of Christians that were no Papists If they were then why did not the Fathers 1. Urge them with this as a granted truth till they had renounced it 2. And then why did they not charge this defection from the Pope upon them among their hainous crimes why did they not tell them that they were subjected to him as soon as they were made Christians and therefore they should not perfidiously revolt from him How is it that we find not this point disputed by them on both sides yea and as copiously as the rest when it would have ended all And for the Minor that the Fathers have not thus dealt with Hereticks the whole Books of Tertullian Nazianzen Nyssen Basil Optatus Hierom Augustine and others are open certain witnesses They use no such Argument but fill their Books with others most imprudently and vainly if they had known of this and had believed it Otherwise the Papists would never have been put to gather up a few impertinent scraps to make a shew with We see by experience here among us that this point is Voluminously debated and if we differ in other matters the Papists call us to the Roman bar and bring in this as the principall difference And why would it not have been so then between the Fathers and the Donatists Arrians and such like if the Fathers had believed this It s clear hence that the Papall Vicarship was then unknown to the Church of Christ. Arg. 3. The Tradition witnessed by the greater part of the Universal Church saith that the Papal Vicarship or Soveraignty is an innovation and usurpation and that the Catholick Church was many hundred years without it Therefore there was then no such Papal Church This is not a single testimony nor of ten thousand or ten millions but of the Major Vote of the whole Church and in Councils the Major Vote stands for the whole If this witness therefore be refused we cannot expect that the words of a few Doctors should be credited Nor may they expect that we credit any witness of theirs that is not more credible And that the Antecedent is true is known to the world as
we know that the Turks believe in Mahomet by the common consent of history and travellers Part of the Churches anathematize the Romans and part more modestly disown them and the generality that subject not themselves do profess that Popery is an usurpation and that in the ancient Church it was not so and this they have by Tradition from generation to generation And if the Roman pretended Tradition be with them of value the Tradition of the far greater part of the Church is with us to be of more We must despair of satisfying them with witness if most of the Christian world be rejected and the Tradition of the greatest part of the Church be taken to be false in a matter of publick notorious fact Arg. 4. Many Churches without the verge of the Roman Empire never subjected themselves to Rome and many not of many hundred years after Christ therefore there were visible Christian Churches from the beginning to this day that were not for the Roman Vicarship That abundance of Churches were planted by the Apostles without the reach of the Roman Empire is plentifully testified by the ancients and the Papists commonly confess it That these were under the Papal Government all the Papists in the world cannot prove The contrary is confessed by them and proved by us 1. They came not so much as to Generall Councils 2. They had no Bishops ordained by the Pope or any impowred by him 3. They never appealed to him 4. They never had any causes judged by him 5. They performed no obedience to him nor lived under his Laws nor scarce had any communion with him more then the common communion that is held in Charity and common faith and ordinances with all Such were the Indians the Persians the further Armenia and Parthia the Habassines and many more And of long time the English and the Scots that refused so much as to eat and drink in the same Inn with the Roman Legates much less would obey him so much as in the change of Easter day we challenge them to shew us any appearance of subjection to the Pope in the generality of the Churches without the Empire But you say that the Habassines were under the Patriarch of Alexandria and he under the Pope Ans. 1. If that were true yet what 's that to all the rest 2. Give us your proof that the Abassines were under the Patriarch of Alexandria before that Patriarch broke off his communion with Rome The Canons of Pisanus of yesterdayes invention we regard not Surely the true Canons of Nice Can. 6. measure out no more to the Patriarch of Alexandria but Aegypt Lybia and Pentapolis There 's no mention of Ethiopia And it s not like that the greatest part of his Province would have been left out 3. If it had been so yet we utterly deny that ever the Pope had the Government of the Alexandrian Patriarch Only for a little while he had a precedency in honorary Title and in Councils as the City of London is preferred before York but doth not Govern it at all Here therefore without the Roman Empire you may see those Churches that have successively been visible and yet no Papists This your Raynerius confesseth contr Waldens Catalog in Bibliothec. Patr. Tom. 4. pag. 773. saying Armeniorum Ecclesiae Aethiopum Indorum caeterae quaâ— Apostoli converterunt non subsunt Romanae Ecclesiae See Godignus de Rebus Abassinorum of their Antiquity Arg. 5. The Eastern Churches within the Empire were never subjects of the Pope therefore there have been and are Churches Visible that neither were nor are his subjects The Antecedent I have proved in my Key for Catholicks from the Council of Carthage's Letters to Pope Coelestine after their resistance of Zosimus and divers testimonies from Basil and others And they can give us themselves no plausible appearance of a proof of that subjection which they assert no more then the younger Justices on the Bench are subject to the elder or the Jury to the foreman or a Master of Arts in a Colledge to a Batchelor in Divinity or then the Mayor of Bristoll is to the Mayor of York 1. The Pope never chose the Patriarchs of Alexandria Antioch c. 2. It did not belong to him to ordain them nor did he authorize any other to do it nor did they receive or hold their power from him 3. They receive no Laws of his to Rule by 4. They were not commanded or Judged by him 5. The Patriarch of Constantinople had equall Priviledges with him So that here is nothing like to Soveraignty and subjection nor any acknowledgement of an universal Vicar of Christ. Communion indeed they held with Rome as they did with one another till pride divided them but Communion is one thing and Subjection is another The Greek Church never gave them this Arg. 6. My next Argument to prove the Novelty of their Church as Papal and consequently that the Universal Church was void of Popery and therefore of the same Religion with Protestants shall be from the testimony of their own most magnified Bishops Gregory 1. Epist. Regist. l. 4. c. 80. speaking against the Patriarch of Constantinople for usurping the Title of Oecumenicall Patriarch or Universal Bishop saith fol. 181 182. Edit Paris 1551. Sicut enim veneranda vestra sanctitas novit mihi per sanctam Chalcedonensem Synodum Pontifici sedis Apostolicae cui Deo disponente deservio hoc Vniversalitatis nomen oblatum est sed Nullus unquam decessorum meorum hoc tam prophano vocabulo uti consensit Quia viz si Vnus Patriarcha Vniversalis dicitur Patriarcharum nomen Caeteris derogatur Sed absit hoc absit à Christiana mente id sibi velle quempiam arripere unde fratrum suorum honorem imminuere ex quantulacunque parte videatur Cum ergo nos hunc honorem nolumus oblatum suscipere pensate quam ignâ—miniosum sit hunc sibi quempiam violenter usurpare voluisse Propterea sunctitas vestra in suis Epistâ—lis neminem Universalem nominet ne sibi debitum detrahat cum alteri honorem offert indebitum 1. Here he affirmeth that the Title of Vniversal was never used by any of his predecessors nor received 2. That it is a prophane Title 3. That it is an injury to other Patriarchs 4. That its unbeseeming a Christian mind to assume it 5. That its undue 6. He perswaded the Bishops of Alexandria and Antioch to give it to no man whosoever Obj. But he saith that the Council of Chalcedon offered it him Ans. 1. If he renounce it as undue and prophane and say that de facto none of his predecessors took it this is as much as we desire 2. That at the Council of Chalcedon near 150. years before this two Deacons that they say have no Votes call'd Theodorus and Ischirion did superscribe their Libels to Leo Vniversal Archbishop I find but no more And this is it that Gregory here brags of And what 's
Council of Nice that many Princes were subjected to the Church of Rome by Ecclesiastical custom and no other right the Synod should do the greatest injury to the Bishop of Rome if it should attribute those things to him only from custom which were his due by Divine Right This Citation I take from Bishop Bromhall having not seen the Book my self The Popish Bishop of Calcedâ—n Survey cap. 5. To us it sufficeth that the Bishop of Rome is Saint Peters successour and this all the Fathers testifie and all the Catholick Church believeth but whether it be jure divino or humano is no point of Faith An ingenuous Confession destroying Popery See Aubert Miraeus notitia Episcopat where in the antient Notit and Leunclavius record of Leo Philos. Impera There are none of the Abassine or other extramperial Nations under the old Patriarcks Cassander Epist. 37. D. Ximenio operum p. 1132. saith of that learned pious Bishop of Valentia Monlucius so highly commended by Thuanus and other learned men that he said Si sibi permittatur in his tribus capitibus viz. forma publicarum precum de ritibus Baptismi de formâ Eucharistiae sive Missae Christianam formam ad normam priscae Ecclesiae Institutam legi conâ—idere se quod ex quinquaginta mill quos habet in suâ Dioecesi à praesenti disciplina Ecclesiae diversos quaùraginta millia ad Ecclesiasticam uniâ—nâ—m sit reducturus That is If he had but leave in these three heads the form of publick Prayers of the rites of Baptism and the form of the Eucharist or the Mass to follow the Christian form Instituted according to the rule of the Antient Church he was confident that of fifty thousand that he had in his Diocess that differed from the present discipline of the Church he should reduce forty thousand to Ecclesiastical union By this testimony it is plain that the Church of Rome hath forsaken the antient Discipline and Worship of the Church by Innovation and that the Protestants desire the restitution of it and would be satisfied therewith but cannot obtain it at the Papists hands So Cassâ—nder himself Epist. 42 p. 1138. I would not despair of moderation if they that hold the Church possessions would remove some intolerable abuses and would restore at tolerable form of the Church according to the prescript of the Word of God and of the antient Church especially that which flourished for some ages after Constantine when liberty was restored which if they will not do and that betime there is danger they may in many places be cast out of their possessions Still you see Rome is the Innovator and it is Restitution of the antient Church-form that would have quieted the Protestans which could never be obtained So again more plainly Epist. 45. p. 1141. Whether Hereticks are in the Church When I came to London I enquired after Mr. Iohnson to know whether I might at all expect any Answer to the foregoing Papers or not And at last instead of an Answer I received only these ensuing lines PAg. 5. part 1. You say I reply first had not you despaired of making good your cause you should have gone by argumentation till you had forced me to contradict some common principle Now I have by Argumentation forced you to this if you will maintain what after you seem to assert in divers passages viz. That Hereticks are true parts of Christs Catholick Church for thus you write p. 11. Some are called Hereticks for denying points essential to Christianity those are no Christians and so not in the Church but many also are called Hereticks by you and by the Fathers for lesser Errours consistent with Christianity And these may be in the Church And p. 12. you answer thus to your adversary Whereas you say it is against all antiquity and Christianity to admit condemned Hereticks into the Church I reply first I hate their condemnation rather then reverence it where you saying nothing against their admittance into the Church seem to grant it I therefore humbly entreate you to declare your opinion more fully in this question Whether any professed Hereticks properly so called are true parts of the universal visible Church of Christ so that they compose one universal Church with the other visible parts of it Iunii 6 to William Johnson The Answer ANsw. My words are plain and distinctly answer your question so that I know not what more is needful for the explication of my sense Unless you would call us back from the Thing to the meer Name by your properly so called you are answered already But I would speak as plainly as I can and if it be possible for me to be understood by you I shall do my part 1. It is supposed that you and I are not agreed What the Vniversal visible Church it self is while you take the Pope or any meer humane Head to be an essential part which is an assertion that with much abhorrence I deny You think each member of that Church must necessarily ad esse be a subject of the Pope and I think it enough that he be a subject of Christ and to his orderly and well-being that he hold local Communion with the parts within the reach of his capacity and be subject to the Pastors that are set over him maintaining due association with and charity to the rest of the more distinct members as he is capable of communion with them at that distance So that when I have proved a person to be a member of the Catholick Church it is not your Catholick Church that I mean No â—ound Christian is a member of yours it is Hereticks in the softer sense that are its matter It s necessary therefore that we first agree of the Definition of the Catholick Church before we dispute who is in it 2. Your word Properly so called is ambiguous referring either to the Etymologie or to some definition in an authentick Canon or to custom and common speech Of the first we have no reason now to enter controversie For the second I know no such stablisht Definition that we are agreed on For the third custom is so variable here not agreeing with it self that what is to be denominated Proper or Improper from it is not to be well conjectured However all this is but de nomine and What is the proper and What the improper use of the word Heretick is no Article of Faith nor necessary for our debate Therefore again you must accept of my distinguishing and give me leave to fly confusion 1. The word Heretick is either spoken of one that corrupteth the Doctrine of Faith as such or of one that upon some difference of Opinion or some personal quarrels withdraweth from the Communion of those particular Churches that before he held communion with and gathereth a separated party such are most usually called Schismaticks but of oâ—d the name Hereticks was oft applyed unto such 2. The word Heretick in the
â—irst sense is either spoken of one that professing the rest denyeth some one or more essential Articles of the Faith or parts of Christianity or one that only denyeth not what is necessary to the Being but to the Integrality or sober and better-being of a Christian. 3. Hereticks are either convict and condemned or such as never were tryed and judged 4. Hereticks condemned are either condemned by their proper Pastors or by others 5. If by others either by Usurpers or by meer equal neighbour consociate Pastors 6. They are condemned either jâ—stly clâ—ve non errante or unjustly clave errante 7. They are either judged to be materially as to the quality of their errour Hereticks or also formally as obstinate impenitent and habitually stated Hereticks Upon these necessary distinctions I answer your Question in these Propositions Prop. 1. As the word Hereticks signifieth Schismaticks as such so Hereticks with drawing from some parts of the universal Church only may yet be parts of the whoâ—e even with those parts from which they separate If they say You are no parts and therefore we disown you and will have no Communion with you this maketh neither cease to be parts and while both own the Head and the Body as such they have an union in tertio and so a communion in the principal respects while they peevishly disclaim it in other respects Besides that the local or particular Communion is it that is proper to members of a particular Church and therefore the renouncing it only separates him from that Church But it is the general Communion that belongs to us as members of the Church Universal which may be still continued But should any renounce the Body of Christ as such and separate not from this or that Church but from the whole or from the Church Universal as such this man would be no member of the Church Prop. 2. As the word Heretick is taken for one that denyeth any thing essential to Christianity so an Heretick if latent is out of the Church Deo judice as to the invisible part or soul of the Church as Bellarmine calls it as a latent Infidel is but he may be if latent in the outward communion or as Bellarmine calls him a dead member that properly is none as the straw and chaffe are in the corn-field Prop. 3. Such an Heretick convict and judged by the Pastors of that particular Church of which he is a subject-member is accordingly to be avoided and in foro illius Ecclesiae is so far cast out of that Church as the sentence importeth Prop. 4. Such an Heretick if he be a Pastor of one Church and be convict and condemned by the consociate co-equal Pastors of the neighbour Churches is accordingly cast out from communion of all the Churches of which they are Pastors Prop. 5. So far as any Christians through the world have sufficient proof or cognisance of the said conviction and condemnation they are all bound accordingly to esteem the condemned Heretick and avoid him Prop 6. If Heresie be taken for the obstinate impenitent resisting or rejecting of any point of Faith that is of Divine Revelation which is made so plain to the person that nothing but a wicked will could cause such resistance or rejection such persons being justly convicted and condemned as aforesaid are to be taken as persons condemned for obstinacy and impenitency in any other sin and are out of the Church as far as a man condemned for impenitency in drunkenness or fornication is Prop. 7. Heresie taken in this softer sense for the denyal of a truth of Divine revelation not essential to the Christian Religion or necessary to the Being of a Christian excludeth no man from the Church of it self unless they are legally convict of wicked Impenitency and obstinacy in defending it Prop. 8. A sentence passed in alieno foro by an Usurper that hath no true Authority thereto proveth no man an Heretick Prop. 9. A sentence passed by an Authorized Pastor or by many if it be notoriously unjust clave errante proveth no man an Heretick or out of the Universal Church Prop. 10. A sentence passed by one Church or many consociate binds none to take the condemned person to be an Heretick and out of the Universal Church but those that have sufficient notice of the Authority of the Judges and validity of the Evidence or a ground of violent presumption as it s called that the sentence is just Prop. 11. He that is sentenced an Heretick or Impenitent by the Pastors of some Churches and acquit by the equally-authorized Pastors of other Churches is not eo nomine to be condemned or acquit by a third Church but used as the evidence requireth Prop. 12. There is an actual excommunication pro medelâ and pro tempore due for an actual willful defence of error or for other willful sin which statedly puts not a man out of the Church as there is an excommunication à statu Relatione which is due for stated habitual or obstinate impenitency in that or other great or known sin Having thus distinctly told you my judgement how far Hereticks are or are not in or out of the universal Church I add in order to the application 1. That this whole debate is nothing to the great difference between you and us it being not de fide in your own account but a dogma theologicum which you differ about among your selves Bellarmine tells you Alphonsus a Castro maintaineth that Hereticks are in the Church de Eccles. l. 3. c. 4. And he himself saith that haeretici pertinent ad Ecclesiam ut oves ad ovile unde confugerunt ibid. c. 4. so that they are oves still and if it be but ovile particulare veluti Romanum that they fly from and not the Vniversal that proves them not out of the Vniversal Church And Bellarmine saith of the Catechumen Excommunicatis that they are de anima et si non de corpore Ecclesiae ib. c. 2. and may be saved cap. 6. And the anima Ecclesiae is not incorporated in the world without All that have that soul are of that Church which Christ that animateth his members is the head of Which made Melchior Canus fatente Bellarmino de Eccl. l. 3. c. 3. confess the being of that which indeed is the true Catholike Church saying of the Vnbaptized Believers that sunt de Ecclesia quae comprehendit omnes fideles ab Abel usque ad consummationem mundi 2. Many Popes have been condemned for Hereticks even by General Councils as not only Henorius by two or three but Eugenius by the Council of Basil when yet he kept his place and the rest come in as his successors And your writers frequently confess that a Pope may be an Heretick as Pope Adrian himself affirmeth Now if these are not of the Church then they are not Heads of the Church and then being essential parts of your Church it followeth that your Church is heretical
and unchurched with them But if these Popes may be in the Church and Heads of yours while Hereticks then so may others 3. It s commonly said by others of yours as well as Bellarmine that the Councils were misinformed about Honorius and the Popes that consented to those Councils and so that he was not a Heretick nor out of the Church Also that a Pope may erre in matter of fact and unjustly excommunicate If so a Pope and Council may erre about another as well as about Honorius or other Popes and therefore their sentence be no proof that such are out of the Church no more then that he and Eugenius were out 4. As the Pope and his Synods condemn the Greeke so the Greeks condemn and excommunicate you as formerly the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Pope have excommunicated each other I am therefore no more bound to take them for excommunicate persons than you they having as much authority over you as you over them and their witness being to us as credible as yours 5. The Abassines Armenians Greeks c. are not proved to deny any essential point of the Christian Religion or which is necessary to the Being of a Christian or Church 6. Nor are they proved to be willful obstinate and impenitent in defending any errors with a wicked mind and so to be formally Hereticks in your own sense 7. They are large Nations and millions of souls and their Pastours numerous so that its impossible they should be all legally by you convicted They never spake for themselves nor were witnesses heard against them Noxa caput sequitur Guilt of Heresie is to be proved of each individual whom you condemn If a few Bishops were Hereticks or a Prince were such that proves not that the rest and all the Pastors or people even to many millâ—ons are such Or if half had been such in former ages that proves not that half or any are such now Christ never appointed the excommunicating of millions for the sakes of a few of their Rulers nor of whole Nations unheard but of single persons upon a just and equal tryal If therefore your Pope or any of his Councils which you falsly call General do excommunicate or condemn Habassia Armenia Georgia Syria and other Naâ—ions as Hereticks it is so far from unchurching them or proving them such as that it is one of the greatest sins that can be committed by the sons of men with inhumane injustice cruelty pride and arrogancy presuming to pass a damning sentence on so many millions of souls whose faces you never saw nor were ever called to a legal tryal 8. Your own writers ordinarily acquit the Greeks from Heresie and those of them that have travelled to other Countries as Syria c. acquit most of them as I have proved in former writings out of their own words not needful therefore here to be recited when you may see any writings 9. Your Pope and Bishops is none of their authorized Pastor and therefore hath no power as such to judge them And as neighbour Churches they have as much to do to judge you as you to judge them Therefore they are never the more out of the Church for your judgement any more than you for theirs 10. There are as many and as great errors proved by them to be in your Church as is by you to be in theirs so that in sum your cause being much worse and your censure of them proving you guilty of such inhumane cruelty injustice arrogancy usurpation c. by condemning them you go much nearer to prove your selves no Christians and no Church than them 11. And yet I think the far greatest part of them many thousands to one are not actually excommunicated or condemned by any pretended sentence of your own whatever your writers may say of them and whatever one Council might say of some few in some one age 12. Lastly It can be no matter of certainty to you your self or any of you that these Nations or Churches are Hereticks both because it is a thing that none of your approved Councils have determined of as to any person now living nor to any considerable number comparatively in other ages and also because you confess your Pope and Councils fallible in these cases of fact and personal application You cannot therefore build upon such acknowledged uncertainties BUt Sir having thus answered your demand I must ask you what 's all this to the Answer of my last Papers which I have now near a year expected from you I suspected some such â—ergiversation when I took the boldness to urge you so hard to the tasks that you were reasonably engaged to perform viz. 1. To prove by close Argumentation the nullity of our Churches as you begun in your first Argument 2. To answer my proofs of our successive visibility 3. To prove your own successive visibility in all ages since Christ as I have proved ours I do therefore once more urge you speedily to do this assuring you that else I must take it for an open deserting of your Cause But yet I must add that if you will please to dispute the main cause in difference between us upon equal terms we have yet other Questions in which we differ that are lower then these and nearer the foundation Besides the forementioned work therefore I desire that you will dispute the main Cause in two distinct disputations in one of which be you the Opponent and bring your strongest Arguments against the Reformed Churches and Religion and in the other I will be Opponent and argue against Popery in the beginning agreeing upon the sense of those terms that we are like to have greatest use of through our disputation If you will but let us meet and state our sense of such terms before I return into the Country that we may the better manage it after at a distance it will be worth our labour And for verbal dispute I shall at any fit time and place most cheerfully entertain it if so many doubting persons may be present as that it may be worth our labour In the mean time I pray pardon it if the roughness of any passages discover the frailty of Your Servant R. Baxter Iune 7. 1660. Mr. Iohnsons EXPLICATION OF Some of the most used TERMS WITH QUERIES Thereupon And his ANSWER And my REPLY LONDON Printed 1660. AFter the writing of the foregoing Paper I again urged Mr. Johnson to the speedy answering my Papers Of which when he gave me no hope I committed them to the Press But afterward he seemed more inclinable both to that and to a Verbal conference And in order to both if we had opportunity I desired him first that we might agree on the sense of those terms that are like to be most used in the substance of our Controversie promising him that I will give him my sense of any term when he shall desire it and accordingly he explained his sense of many of them as
Reply If so then all those were no Popes that were Hereticks or denied essential points of faith as Iohan. 23. and so were no Christians and all those that wanted the necessary abilities to the essentials of their work And so your Church hath oft been headless and your succession interrupted Councils having censured many Popes to be thus unqualified And the dispositio materiae being of it self necessary to the reception of the form it must needs follow that such were no Popes even before the Councils charged them with incapacity or Heresie because they had it before they were accused of it And Simony then made many uncapable R. B. Qu. 2. When and how must the institution of Christ be found Mr. J. Answ. In the revealed Word of God written or unwritten R. B. Reply Qu. 2. Reply 1. You never gave the world assurance how they may truly know the measure of your unwritten Word nor where to find it so as to know what it is 2. Till you prove Christs Institution which you have never done you free us from believing in the Pope R. B. Qu. 3. Will any ones election prove one to be Pope or who must elect him ad esse Mr. J. Answ. Such as by approved custome are esteemed by those to whom it belongs fit for that charge and with whose election the Church is satisfied R. B. Reply Qu. 3. Reply Here you are fain to hide your self instead of answering and shew indeed that a Pope that 's made an essential part of the Church subjection to whom is made of necessity to salvation is indeed but a meer name or a thing unknown and so can be certainly believed or acknowledged by none For either Election of him by some body is necessary or not If not then you or another man unchosen may be Pope for ought I know or any man else If yea then it is either any bodies Election of him that will serve turn or not If it will then you may be Pope if your Scholars choose you and then you have had three true Popes at once for so many were Elected But if it will not then it must be known who hath the Power of Election before it can be known who is indeed the Pope But you are forced here by your answer to intimate to us that the Power of Election cannot be known and therefore the Pope cannot be known For 1. Here are no determinate Electors mentioned and therefore it seems none known to you And no wonder for if you confine it to the people or to the Cardinals or to the Emperours or to Councils you cut off all your Popes that were chosen by the other waies 2. Nor do you determine of any particular discernable note by which the Electors and power of election may be known to the Church But all these patches make up your description 1. It must be those that are esteemed fit for the charge 2. And that by those to whom it belongs 3. And that by custome 4. And that approved 5. And the Church must be satisfied with the election O miserable body then that hath been so oft headless as Rome hath been 1. Will esteeming them fit serve turn though they be unfit then it is not the fitness that is necessary but the estimation true or false 2. But why did you not tell us to whom it is that it belongs to esteem the Choosers fit Here you were at a streight But is not this to say nothing while you pretend to speak and to hide what you pretend to open 3. And who knows what custome and of what continuance you mean Primitive custom went one way and afterward custom went another way and later custom hath varied from both and hath the power of Election changed so oft 4. And who is it that must approve this custom and what approbation must there be All these are meer hiding and not resolving of the doubt and tell us that a Pope is a thing invisible or unknown 5. And your last assureth us that your succession was interrupted through many usurpations yea indeed that you never had a Pope For the Church was unsatisfied with the election of abundance of your Popes when Whores and Simony and Murder and power set them up And most of the Church through the world is unsatisfied with them still to this day And you have no way to know whether the greater part of the Church is satisfied or not for non-resistance is no sign of satisfaction where men have not opportunity or power to resist And when one part of Europe was for one Pope and another for another through so many Schisms who knows which had the approbation of that which may be called the Church R. B. Qu. 4. Is Consecration necessary and by whom ad esse Mr. J. Answ. It is not absolutely necessary ad esse R. B. Reply Qu. 4. Reply If consecration be not necessary to the Papacy then it is not necessary that this or that man consecrate him more then another And then it is not necessary to a Bishop And then the want of it makes no interruption in succession in any Church any more then in yours R. B. Qu. 5. What 〈◊〉 or proof is necessary to your Subjects Mr. J. Answ. So much as is necessary to oblige them to accept of other Elected Princes to be their Soveraigns R. B. Reply Qu. 5. Reply When you have answered to the forementioned thirty doubts we shall know what that general signifieth Mr. J. Bishops I mean by Bishop such a Christian Pastor as hath power and jurisdiction to govern the inferior Pastors Clergy and people within his Diocesse and to confer holy orders to such as are subject to him R. B. Of Bishops Qu. 1. Do you mean that he must have this jure divino or humano and if jure divino whether mediately or immediately Mr. J. Answ. The definition abstracts from particulars and subsists without determining that question R. B. Reply Of Bishops Qu. 1. Repl. 1. You before seem to yeild that the Papacy is but jure humano and therefore sure of no necessity to salvation For if man can change the power of election and the foundation be humane it s like the relation is but humane And therefore if Bishops must be jure divino they are more excellent and necessary then the Pope 2. How gross a subterfuge is this either the Bishop in question is a divine creature or a humane If a divine as you may manifest it or express it at least so you ought it being no indifferent thing to turn a divine office and Church into an humane If he be not Divine he is not of necessity to a divine Church nor to salvation And yet thus your R. Smith Bishop of Calcedon ubi supra confesseth it to be no point of your faith that the Pope is St. Peters successor jure divino And if you leave it indifferent to be believed or not that both your Pope and Bishops are
jure divino you confess you are but a humane policy or society and therefore that no man need to fear the loss of his salvation by renouncing you R. B. Qu. 2. How shall we know who hath this power what Election or Consecration is necessary thereto If I know not who hath it I am never the better Mr. J. Answ. As you know who hath Temporal Power by an universal or most common consent of the people The Election is different according to different times places and other circumstances Episcopal Consecration is not absolutely necessary R. B. Reply Qu. 2. Repl. 1. How now Are all the mysteries of your succession and mission resolved into Popular Consent Is no one way of Election necessary Do you leave that to be varied as a thing indifferent And is Episcopal Consecration also unnecessary I pray you here again remember then that none of our Churches are disabled from the plea of a continued succession for want of Episcopal Consecration or any way of Election If our Pastors have had the peoples consent they have been true Pastors according to this reckoning And if they have now their consent they are true Pastors But we have more 2. By this rule we cannot know of one Bishop of an hundred whether he be a Bishop or no for we cannot know that he hath the Common consent of the people yea we know that abundance of your Bishops have no such consent yea we know that your Pope hath none of the Consent of most of the Christians in the world nor for ought you or any man knows of most in Europe It s few of your own party that know who is Pope much less are called to Consent till after he is settled in possession 3. According to this rule your successions have been frequently interrupted when against the will of general Councils and of the far greatest part of Christians your Popes have kept the seat by force 4. In temporals your rule is not universally true What if the people be engaged to one Prince and afterward break their vow and consent to a Usurper Though in this ease a particular person may be obliged to submission and obedience in judicial administrations yet the usurper cannot thereby defend his Right and justifie his possession nor the people justifie their adhesion to him while they lye under an obligation to disclaim him because of their preengagement to another Though some part of the truth be found in your assertion R. B. Qu. 3. Will any Diocess serve ad esse what if it be but in particular Assemblies Mr. J. Answ. It must be more then a Parish or then one single Congregation which hath not different inferiour Pastors and one who is their superior R. B. Reply Qu. 3. Repl. This is but your naked affirmation I have proved the contrary from Scriptures Fathers and Councils in my disputation of Episcopacy viz. that a Bishop may be and of old ordinarily was over the Presbyters only of one Parish or single Congregation or a people no more numerous then our Parishes You must shew us some Scripture or general Council for the contrary before we can be sure you here speak truth Was Gregory Thaumaturgus no Bishop because when he came first to Neocaesarea he had but seventeen souls in his charge The like I may say of many more Mr. J. Tradition I understand by Tradition the visible delivery from hand to hand in all ages of the revealed Word of God either written or unwritten R. B. Of Tradition Qu. 1. But all the doubt is by whom this Tradition that 's valid must be By your Pastors or people or both By Pope or Councils or Bishops disjunct By the Major part of the Church or Bishops or Presbyters or the Minor and by how many Mr. J. Answ. By such and so many proportionably as suffice in a Kingdom to certifie the people which are the Ancient universally received customs in that Kingdom which is to be morally considered R. B. Reply Of Tradition Qu. 1. Repl. I consent to this general But then 1. How certainly is Tradition against you when most of the Christian world yea all except an interessed party do deny your Soveraignty and plead Tradition against it And how lame is your Tradition when it s carried on your private affirmations and is nothing but the unproved sayings of a Sect R. B. Qu. 2. What proof or notice of it must satisfie me in particular that it so past Mr. J. Answ. Such as with proportion is a sufficient proof or notice of the Laws and customs of temporal Kingdoms R. B. Reply Qu. 2. Repl. But is it necessary for every Christian to be able to weigh the credit of contradicting parties when one half of the world faith one thing and the other another thing what opportunity have ordinary Christians to compare them and discern the moral advantages on each side As in the case of the Popes Soveraignty when two or three parts of the Christian world is against it and the rest for it can private Christians try which party is the more credible Or is it necessary to their salvation If so they are cast upon unavoidable despair If not must they all take the words of their present Teachers Then most of the world must believe against you because most of the Teachers are against you And then it seems mens faith is resolved into the authority of the Parish-Priest or their Confessors The Laws of a Kingdom may be easier known then Christian doctrines can be known especially such as are controverted among us by meer unwritten Tradition Kingdoms are of narrower compass then the world And though the sense of Laws is oft in question yet the being of them is seldom matter of controversie because men conversing constantly and familiarly with each other may plainly and fully reveal their minds when God that condescendeth not to such a familiarity hath delivered his mind by inspired persons long ago with much less sensible advantages because it is a life of faith that he directeth us to live Mr. J. General Council A general Council I take to be an assembly of Bishops and other chief Prelates called convened and confirmed by those who have sufficient Spiritual authority to call convene and confirme R. B. Of a General Council Qu. 1. Who is it ad esse that must call convene confirm it till I know that I am never the nearer knowing what a Council is and which is one indeed Mr. J. Answ. Definitions abstract from inferior subdivisions For your satisfaction I affirm it belongs to the Bishop of Rome R. B. Reply Qu. 1. Repl. 1. If it be necessary to the being or validity of a Council that it be called or confirmed by the Pope then your definition signifieth nothing if you abstract from that which is so necessary an ingredient unless it were presupposed to be understood 2. If it belong to the Bishop of Rome to call a Council as necessary to its being
then the first great General Council and others following were none it being certain that they were not called by him And as certain that he hath never proved any such authority to call them or confirm them R. B. Qu 2. Must it not represent all the Catholike Church Doth not your Definition agree to a Provincial or the smallest Council Mr. J. Answ. Yes my Definition speaks specifically of Bishops and chief Prelates as contradistinct from inferiour Pastors and Clergy and thereby comprises all the Individuums contained in the Species and consequently makes a distinction from National or particular Councils where some Bishops only are convened not all that being only some part and not the whole Species or specifical Notion applied to Bishops of every age And yet I said not all Bishops but Bishops and chief Prelates because though all are to be called yet it is not necessary that all should come Whence appears what I am to answer to the next two Questions R. B. Reply Qu. 2. Repl. 1. Then you have had no General Councils much less can have any more For you have none to represent the greatest part of the Church unless by a mock representation 2. If all must be called your Councils have not been General that call'd not a great part of the Church 3. If most are necessarily detained as by distance the prohibition of Princes c. the call made it not their duty to be there and so makes it not a General Council which is so called from the generality of the meeting and representation and not of the invitation no more then a Call would make it a true Council if none came R. B. Qu. 3. How many Bishops and from what parts must ad esse make such a Council Mr. J. Answ. The number is morally to be considered more or fewer according to the difficulties of times distances of place and other circumstances as is also the parts from whence they are to come R. B. Reply Qu. 3. Repl. This is a put-off for want of an Answer Is it a Council if difficulties keep away all If not it can be no General Council when difficulties keep away the most Much less when such a petty confederacy as met at Trent shall pretend to represent the Christian world You thus leave us uncertain when a Council is General and when not How can the people tell when you cannot tell your self when the Bishops are so many as make a Council General R. B. Qu. 4. May none but Bishops and chief Prelates be members as you intimate Mr. J. Answ. No others unless such inferiours as are sent to supply the places and as Deputies of those Bishops or Prelates are such members of the Council as have Decisive votes in framing Decrees and Definitions R. B. Reply Qu. 4. Repl. This is but your private opinion No Council hath defined it unless they are contradictory For I suppose you know that Basil and many Councils before it had Presbyters in them Mr. J. Schism I understand by Schism a willfull separation or division of ones self from the whole visible Church of Christ. R. B. Of Schism Qu. 1. Is it no Schism to separate from a particular Church unless from the whole Mr. J. Answ. No it is no Schism as Schism is taken in the Holy Fathers for that great and capital crime so severely censured by them in which sense only I take it here R. B. Reply Of Schism Qu. 1. Repl. Though I take Schism more comprehensively and I think aptly my self yet hence I observe your justification of the Protestants from the charge of Schism seeing they separate not from the Catholike or whole Church For they separate not from the Armenian Ethiopian Greek c. nor from you as Christians but as scandalous offenders whom we are commanded to avoid We separate not from any but as they separate from Christ. R. B. Qu. 2. Or is it no Schism unless willfull Mr. J. Answ. No it is not Schism unless the separation be willfull on his part who makes it R. B. Reply Qu. 2. Repl. Again you further justifie us from Schism If it be willfull it must be against knowledge But we are so far from separating willfully or knowingly from the whole Church that we abhor the thought of such a thing as impious and damnable R. B. Qu. 3. Is it none if you make a Division in the Church and not from the Church Mr. J. Answ. Not as we here understand Schism and as the Fathers treat it For the Church of Christ being perfectly one cannot admit of any proper Schism within it self for that would divide it into two which it cannot be R. B. Reply Qu. 3. Repl. Though I am sure Paul calls it Schism when men make divisions in the Church though not from it not making it two Churches but dislocating some members and abating charity and causing contentions where there should be peace yet I accept your continued justification of us who if we should be tempted to be dividers in the Church should yet hate to be dividers from it as believing that he that is separated from the whole body is also separated from the Head Mr. J. Sir The want of a Scribe hath forced me to fail a little in point of time but I hope you will excuse him who desires to serve you W. J. Iune 22. 1660. R. B. Sir Vrgent unavoidable business constrained me to delay my return to your solutions or explications of your definitions till this June 29. 1660. When you desire me to answer any such Questions or explain any doubtful passages of mine I shall willingly do it In the mean time you may see while your terms are still unexplained and your Explications or Definitions so insignificant how unfit we are to proceed any further in dispute till we better understand each other as to our terms and subject which when you have done your part to I shall gladly if God enable me go on with you till we come if it may be to our desired issue But still I crave your performance of the double task you are engaged in Richard Baxter Appendix THe most that I here said against the successive Visibility of our Church is reduced by them to the point of Ordination They say We can have no Church without Pastors no Pastors without Ordination and no Ordination but from the Church of Rome therefore when we broak off from the Church of Rome we interrupted our succession which cannot be repaired but by a return to them This is the sum of most of their discourses in what shape soever they appear To which I answer 1. As a Church is taken for a Community of Christians which are really members of the Church universal so it may ad esse be without Pastors But the Catholike Church can never be without them nor yet any true Political organized particular Church 2. It is contrary to the Papists own opinion that Ordination of their particular Pastors is
judgement is in order to Ecclesiastical Communion or Excommunication And so it belongs to those with whom the person is in Communion in their several capacities The members of a particular Church are to be judged Authoritatively by the Pastors of that Church and by the people by a Private judgement of Discerning Pastors should associate for Communion of Churches and so in order to that Communion of Association it belongs to the several Associations to judge of the Members of the Society which yet is not by a publike Governing judgement For in Councils or Associations the Major Vote are not properly the Governors of the lesser part But those that are out of capacity of Communion have nothing to do to judge of the Aptitude of Pastors or Churches in order to Communion or non-Communion And for the Pope he hath nothing to do with us at such a distance whose persons and cases are wholly unknown to him he being neither our Governour nor our Associate But if we and our case were known to him he may judge of us so far as we may judge of him And other judgement what ever men may say to deceive there is none to decide our controversies but the final judgement of the Vniversal Iudge who is at the door A LETTER Written to Thomas Smith A Papist Concerning the Church of Rome LONDON Printed 1660. Reverend Sir THe noted sanctity admirable integrity and extraordinary charity so eminently appearing in your pious actions and as I have some cause to think the indelible characters of your sacred function hath animated me to make choice of your self rather then any of your coat to this present address hoping your candour and tenderness will bear with what may be by others less sensible of the value of immortal souls slighted interpreted according to the candid and true sense of your supplicant by you It hath pleased the great and terrible Iudge of heaven and earth to put me upon some thoughts more seriously then ordinary of my eternal estate and to be somewhat doubtful in the midst of external perturbations of those internal grounds which I have formerly relyed upon And truely Sir with all cordialness my desire is clearly to know the mind of my God which were I truely satisfied in I should soon wave all other interests to entertain and assuring my self according to what I have seen and read the Church of Rome to which I have long cleaved and adhered to be the pillar and ground of truth and that Catholike Church which the ancient Creed testifies we are to believe in My desire is to be as soon satisfied as may be of your thoughts whether it ever were a true Church which I suppose you will not deny when you consider the first verse of the Epistle to the Romans and if so when it made its defection The reason of my urging this is because I think all other questions to be but going about the bush and the true Church being proved all arguments else easily are answered I have heard Protestants aver the ancient maxime viz. Extra Ecclesiam non est salus Therefore I suppose it the only thing pertinent to my purpose and necessary to salvation to enquire after My occasions will suddenly draw me from these parts unless I hear from you speedily and doubt not Sir but I am one who freely will resign my self to hear truth impartially Therefore I beseech you to send something to me by way of satisfaction the next Saturday after which you shall be more particularly sensible who the person is that applies himself to you and in the interim subscribes himself Sir A thirsty troubled soul and yours to his power Tho. Smith Feb. 11. 1656. Direct your Letter to me if you please to Mr. John Smiths house next door to the sign of the Crown in the broad street Worcester Good Sir be private for the present otherwise it may be prejudicial to some temporal affairs agitating at this time Sir THat you can have such charitable thoughts of one that is not of the Roman subjection and of my function being not received from the Pope is so extraordinary yea and contrary to the judgement of your writers that I must needs entertain it with the more gratitude and some admiration And that you are so impartially willing to entertain the truth as you profess though it be no more then the truth deserves of you and your own wellfare doth require yet is the more aimiable in you by how much the more rare in those of your Profession so far as my acquaintance can inform me for most of them that I have met with understand not well their own Religion nor think themselves much concerned to understand it but refer me to others for a Reason of their hope For my part I do the more gladly entertain the occasion of this entercourse with you though unknown that I may learn what I know not and may be true to my own conscience in the use of all means that may conduce to my better information And therefore I shall plainly answer your Questions according to the measure of my understanding most solemnly professing to you that I will say nothing which comes not from my heart in plain simplicity and that I will with exceeding gladness and a thousand thanks come over to your way if I can finde by any thing that you shall make known to me that it is the mind of God that I should so do And therefore I am desirous that if what I write to you shall seem unsound you would not only afford me your own advice for the correction of it but also the advice of the most learned of your mind to whom you shall your self think meet to communicate it But on these conditions 1. That it be a person of a tender conscience that dare speak nothing but what he verily believes 2. That he will argue closly and not fly abroad or dilate Rhetorically And for any divulging of it to your danger or hurt you need not fear it For these two grounds of my following answers I shall here promise 1. That I am so far from persecuting bloody desires against those of your way that their own bloody principles and practices where they have power in Italy Spain c. hath done much to confirm me that the cause is not of God that must be so upheld and carried on 2. And I am so far from cruel uncharitable censures of any that unfeignedly love the Lord Jesus and his truth that it is the greatest motive to me of all other to dislike your Profession because it is so notoriously against Christian charity restraining the Catholike Church to your selves and outing and condemning the far greatest part of Christians in the world and that because they believe not in the Pope though they believe in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and all that the Primitive Church believed I am so Catholike that according to my present judgement I cannot
are Eutychians and Jacobites and confesses that their Patriarch is in subjection to the Patriarch of Alexandria c. See more of the Chofti Jacobites Maronites c. p. 493 494. where he confesses that many of them are now subject to the Pope and have renounced their old errors See Nilus on this subject (a) (a) Liberatus in Brev. c. 16. (b (b Epist. praeambula Concil Chalcedon (c) (c) Concil Chalcedon Act. 1. (d) (d) Concil Chalcedon Act. 8. (e) (e) St. Cyprian Epist. 67. (f) (f) Concil Sard. cap. 4. cited by St. Athan. Apol. 2. pag. 753. (g) (g) St. Basil. Epist. 74. (h) (h) St. Chrysost. Epist. 2. ad Innocent (i) (i) Concil Ephes. p. 2. Act. 5. (k) (k) St. Athanas ad Solit. Epist. Julius in lit ad Arian ap Athan Apolog 1. pag. 753. Theodoret. lib. 2. cap. 4. Athanas Apol. 2. Zozom lib. 3. cap. 7. The Appeal of Theodoret from that Council as to his judge is so undeniable that Chamier is forced to acknowledge it Tom. 2. l. 13. c. g. p. 498. and the whole Council of Calcedon acknowledged the right of that Appeal restoring Theodoret to his Bishoprick by force of an order given upon that Appeal by Leo Pope to restore him Concerning Saint Athanasius being judged and righted by Iulius Pope Chamier cit p. 497. acknowledges the matter of fact to be so but against all antiquity pretends that judgment to have been unjust Which had it been so yet it shews a true power of judging in the Pope though then unduly executed otherwise Saint Athanasius would never have made use of it neither can it be condemned of injustice unless Saint Athanasius be also condemed as unjust in consenting to it Niceph. lib. 13. cap. 34. Chamier cit p. 498. sayes other Bishops restored those who were wrongfully deposed as well as the Pope Which though it were so yet never was there any single Bishop save the Pope who restored any who were out of their respective Diocess or Patriarchates but always collected together in a Synod by common voice and that in regard only of their neighbouring Bishops whereas the Bishop of Rome his sole and single authority restored Bishops wrongfully deposed all the Church over (m) (m) Concil Chalced. Action 1. (n) (n) Concil Chalced. Action 3. * * Which could not be by reason of the Sanctity and truth which was then in it for the Church of Milan and many others in France Africa and Greece were also then pure and holy and yet none have this title save the Church of Rome In the time of Iustinian the Emperour Agapet Pope even in Constantinople against the will both of the Emperour and Empress deposed Anthymus and ordained Mennas in his place Liberaâ— in Breviario cap. 21. Marcellinus Comes in Chronico Concil Constantin sub Menna act 4. And the same St. Greg. C. 7. Ep. 63. declares that both thâ— Emperour and Bishop of Constantinople acknowledged that the Church of Constantinople was subject to the See of Rome And l. 7. Ep. 37. Et alibi pronounces that in case of falling into offences he knew no Bishop which was not subject to the Bishop of Rome (o) (o) St. Augustin Tom 1 Epist. Rom. Pontif. post Epist. 2. ad Celestinum Epist. Concil ad I. con Pap. Act. 1. sequ For the age 600. See St. Gregory Pope l. 10. ep 30. where Hereticks and Shismaticks repenting were received then into the Church upon solemn promise and publike protestation that they would never any more separate from but alwaies remain in the unity of the Catholike Church and communion in all things with the Bishop of Rome
Apostles and this is but to know their doctrine delivered in that first age which we appeal to And after he expresly saith Ad hanc it aque formam provocabantur ab illis Ecclesiis quae licet nullum ex Apostolis vel Apostâ—licus auctorem suum proferant ut multo posteriores quae denique quotidie institutum tamen in eadem fidem conspirantes non minus Apostolicae deputantur pro consanguinitate doctrinae The Apostles doctrine will prove an Apostolical Church when ever planted And c. 38. he draws them from disputing from the Scripture because they owned not the true Scripture but corrupted it and charged the Catholikes with corruption Sicut illis non potuit succedere corruptela doctrinae sine corruptela instrumentorum ejus Ita nobis integritaes doctrina non competisset sine integritate eorum not by real tradition alone per quae doctrina tractatur Etenim quid contrarium nobis in nostris quid de proprio intulimus ut aliquid contrarium ei in Scripturis deprehensum detractione vel adjectione vel transumtatione remediaremus Quod sumus hoc sunt Ab initio suo ex illis sumus antequam nihil aliter fuit quam sumus And cap. 36. He sends them by name to the particular Apostolical Churches and begins with Corinth then to Philippi Thessalonica Ephesus and then to Rome of whose Soveraignty he never speaks a syllable So more plainly l. 4. contr Marcion c. 5. because Marcion denied the true Scriptures he sends them to the Apostolike Churches for the true Scriptures first to the Corinthians then to the Galatians then to the Philippians Thessalonians Ephesians and last of all to Rome But it would be tedious to cite the rest of the Ancients that commonly describe the Church as we and such as we all own as members of it Arg. 3. If the Roman Church as Christian though not as Papal hath been visible ever since the daies of the Apostles then the Church of which the Protestants are members hath been visible ever since the daies of the Apostles But the Antecedent is their own therefore they may not deny the consequent The consequence also is past denyal 1. Because the Roman as Christian is part of the universal Christian Church 2. Because they profess to believe the same holy Scriptures and Creed as we do So that though they add more and so make a new form to their Church yet do they not deny our Church which is the Christian Church as such nor our Test and Rule of faith nor any Article that we account Essential to our Religion So that themselves are our sufficient witnesses Well! but this will not satisfie the Papists unless we shew a succession of our Church as Protestant 1. This we need not any more then a sound man lately cured of the Plague doth need to prove that he hath ever been not only sanus but sanatus a cured man before he was sick How could there be a Church protesting against an universal Vicar of Christ before any claimed that Vicarship 2. And when the Vicarship was usurped those millions abroad and even within the Roman territories that let the pretended Vicar talk and followed their own business and never consented to his usurpation were of the very same Religion with those that openly protested against him And so were those that never heard of his usurpation Object But at least say they you must prove a Church that hath been without the universal Vicar negatively though not against him positively Answ. 1. In all reason he that affirmeth must prove It is not incumbent on us to prove the negative that the Church had not such a Roman head but they must prove that it had Object But they have possession and therefore you that would dispossess them must disprove their title Ans. 1. This is nothing to most of the Catholike Church where they have no possession therefore with them they confess themselves obliged to the proof 2. This is a meer fallacious diversion for we are not now upon the question of their Title but the matter of fact and history we make good the negative that they have no Title from the Laws of Christ himself and so will not dispossess them without disproving their pretended Title But when the question is de facto whether they have ever had that possession from the Apostles daies they that affirm must prove when we have disabled their title from the Law 2. But what must we prove that all the Church hath been guiltless of the Papal usurpation or only some in every age of all its no more necessary to us then to prove that there have been no Heresies since the Apostles If a piece of the Church may turn Hereticks or but Schismaticks as the Novatians and African Donatists why may not another piece turn Papists 3. What will you say to a man that knoweth not a Protestant nor a Papist or believeth only Christianity it self and meddleth not with the Pope any further then to say I believe not in him Jesus I know and the Apostles and Scripture and Christianity I know but the Pope I know not and suppose he never subscribed to the Augustane English or any such confession but only to the Scripture and the Apostles and Nicene and other ancient Creeds By what shew of Justice can you require this man to prove that there hath been no Pope in every age 4. The foundation of all our controversie is doctrinal whether the Papal Soveraignty be Essential to the Church or necessary to our membership we deny it you affirm it If it be not Essential it is enough to us to prove that which is Essential to have been successive we be not bound in order to the proof of our Church it self to prove the succession of every thing that maketh but to its better being Yet professing that we do it not as necessary to our main cause we shall ex abundanti prove the negative that the Catholike Church hath not alwaies owned the Papal Soveraignty and so that there have been men that were not only Christians but as we Christians without Popery and against it and so shall both prove our Thesis and overthrow theirs Arg. 4. If there have been since the daies of Christ a Christian Church that was not subject to the Roman Pope as the Vicar of Christ and universal Head and Governour of the Church then the Church of which the Protestants are members hath been visible both in its being and its freedom from Popery But the Antecedent is true therefore so is the consequent I shall prove the Antecedent and therein the visibility of our Church and the non-existence in those times of the Papacy Arg. 1. My first Argument shall be from the general Council of Chalcedon If the priviledges of the Roman Sea were given to it by the Bishops consequently because of the Empire of that City and therefore equal priviledges after given to Constantinople on the same