refers to things As to Persons I confess there may be found lively complaints in the writings of the first Reformers against the Abuses of the Court of Rome against the ignorance and negligence of the Prelats against the Scandalous lives of the Clergy against the Tyrannical Government wherewith they ruled the Church I acknowledge also that when they looked upon that Great Body of the Roman Hierarchy its Props its Pretensions its Maxims its Interests its Occupations they could not hinder themselves from speaking of it as an Empire very opposite to that of Jesus Christ but they ought to be so far from laying it to their charge that they said it out of a hatred or an implacable aversion toward the Church of Rome as the Author of the Prejudices does that they ought on the contrary to attribute it to a real compassion which they had for the People of God to see them so ill instructed so ill guided so ill governed and to an ardent desire to procure a good Reformation throughout the whole Body of the Latin Church And the greater their compassion was the more difficult it was to manage that matter without giving some touches to persons in whom the source of all that evil resided and especially in a Time which they saw overspread on all sides with injuries and Calumnies and exposed in diverse places to Rigorous Persecutions 14. Object To that Reproach the Author of the Prejudices adds another which he begins â—o express in these words Although they should have had a right to have drawn away from the bosom of the Church of Rome its Children they had certainly no right to make use of Impostures and Frauds for that purpose and if they did it is a visible conviction that it was the Devil that acted by them and that their pretended Reformation was his work He alleadges in the close a passage of Calvin's wherein he pretends that Calvin calumniated the Church of Rome in laying it to her charge that she had a far greater care of her Traditions then of the Commandments of God and that she reckoned it a lesser sin to be defiled with the debaucheries of the Flesh then not to be confessed or not to have fasted on Friday to have broken all promises then not to have fulfilled a Vow of Pilgrimage and upon this the Author of the Prejudices makes his Exclamation with his usual heat Answ I Answer that Calvin speaks in that Passage not of that which the Roman Church Dogmatically taught but of that which might be seen in the common Practise of his Time and unless they should deny the most clear Truths they cannot deny that the Idea which the Authors themselves of the Church of Rome give us of its deplorable State in the Age of the Reformation does not fully confirm the Testimony of Calvin That which I have set down upon this sad Subject justifies the too little care that the Prelats and other of the Ecclesiasticks took to root out Vices from the midst of their Flocks and settle in their places a True Holiness when they had then a far greater ardour to make mens Traditions to be observed and if we had need to urge this proof further it could be done without doubt with a great deal of ease 15. Object Another kind of Calumny is to lay to the Charge of the Church the Opinions which she either rejects or which she never Authorised as matters of Faith Examples of this may be seen in every Page of the Books of their Ministers as when they reproach the Catholicks with setting up as Articles of Faith the Corruption of the Greek and Hebrew Text the immunity of the Clergy to be of Divine Right the certainty of the Declarations that the Popes make of the Holiness of particular men which they call Canonization the efficacy of Agnus Dei's the Infallibility of the Pope his Temporal Power over Kings his Pre-eminence over Councils the Jurisdiction of the Church over the Souls in Purgatory and many other opinions of that nature that the Church does not prescribe to its Children that she does not insert into the Confession of Faith which she requires of those that return to her and which she never defined by the Voice of her Councils Answ If the Author of the Prejudices would be satisfied about all the Points that he has noted in that Objection he ought to cite those passages of the Ministers against whom he forms his complaints and not to make as he does a Captious heap of divers things wherein he may mix the false and true together Notwithstanding I shall not omit to say by the way something of my own head upon each of those Articles Upon the first I can easily believe that there have been some Ministers who have reproached the Church of Rome with the having Canonized the Corruptions of the Greek and Hebrew Text because that in effect there are a great many such Corruptions in the Vulgar Version which the Council of Trent has Canonized not only in declaring it Authentick and forbidding any to reject upon any pretence whatsoever but also in saying that they ought to be held under the penalty of an Anathema for the Canonical Books of the Bible prout in Ecclesia Catholica legi consueverunt in veteri vulgata Latina editione habentur All the Question therefore may be reduced to this to wit whether we ought to hold under pain of Anathema some ill Translations which are to be found in the Vulgar for the Corruptions of the Greek and Hebrew Text and for us we believe that they cannot rationally contest it As for the Immunity of the Clergy it may be also that some Doctors of the Church of Rome have been reproached for holding it as a matter of Faith because there are some among them that in effect ground it upon the Scripture and every one knows that all that which they hold as out of the Scripture ought to be held as a matter of Faith But they would have said nothing against the Truth when they should have maintained that Pope Leo X. in the Council of Lateran defined That there was none either Divine or humane right that gave the Laity any power over the persons of the Clergy which implies that the Clergy are excepted by Divine right from that general Rule that subjects all the Word to the Higher Powers We all know that our Kings opposed that rash decision but in the end it was a Council that did it which had the Pope for its Head and it belongs to the Author of the Prejudices to tell us whether he believes that that Pope and that Council erred As to the Certainty of Canonizations since there is no body in the Church of Rome that makes any scruple to invocate those Saints which the Pope Canonizes and that moreover they agree in that Maxim of Saint Paul that whatsoever in the matter of Religion is not of Faith
is Sin methinks it is not ill grounded to say either that the Church of Rome Sins when she invocates those Canonized Saints without any certainty of Faith or that she holds it as a matter of Divine Faith that the Pope cannot be deceived The Author of the Prejudices shall chuse which side he pleases if he takes the last he contradicts himself if he takes the former Saint Paul condemns him for he condemns all those who throw away the Acts of their Religion after that manner at all Adventure If the Efficacy of Agnus Dei's has not been established by the Councils that belief may be found at least heretofore so strongly and universally established in the Church of Rome that it may be very well ascribed to her without any fear of mistaking They tell us that Pope Vrban V. sent to John Palcologus the Emperour of the Greeks an Agnus folded up in fine Paper wherein there was written Fine Verses which explained all its properties Those Verses carry with them That the Agnus was made of Balmsanus and Wax with Crisom and that being Consecrated by Mystical words it drove away Thunder and scattered Storms that it gave Women an easy Birth that it prevented one from perishing on the Seas that it took away Sin that it kept back the Devil that it made a man to grow Rich that it secured one against Fire that it hindred one from dying a sudden death that it gave a man Victory over his Enemies and that in Fine a small piece of the Agnus had as much Vertue as the whole As for that which regards the Infallibility of the Popes their Temporal power over Kings and their Pre-eminence over the Councils we do not say that those were Articles of the Faith received throughout the whole Church of Rome There is not one of us that knows not that those pretensions were always opposed by the Sounder part of the French But they cannot deny that they were not at least the Pretences of Rome and that its Popes did not Determine That it was necessary to the Salvation of every Creature to be subject to them They cannot deny that Pope Gregory VII did not decide in a Council That the Church of Rome did never Err and that it would never Err according to the Testimony of the Scripture nor that the opinion of those who believe that the Pope is Infallible in his decisions of Faith is not the more common and general one in the Church of Rome and that those who hold it speak of the other only as an opinion that the Church Tolerates for the present and that they look upon it as an Errour and such a one as approaches even to Heresie for those are the express words of Bellarmine They cannot deny that they generally hold in the Church of Rome that the Pope is by Divine right the Soveraign Monarch of the Church whom all Christians are bound to obey the Soveraign and Universal Vicar of Jesus Christ his Soveraign Pastor to whom Jesus Christ has given a fulness of power which goes not far from ascribing Infalliblity to him They cannot deny that the Popes did not often define that the Church of Rome is the Mother and Mistress of all other Churches and that the Council of Trent has not also declared it in divers places They cannot deny that the Popes did not pretend to be above the Councils that Sixtus IV. did not condemn a certain man called Peter de Osma for having taught that the Pope could not dispence with the Ordinances of the Universal Church nor that Leo X. did not declare in the Council of Lateran with the approbation of the Council That it was evident as well from the Testimony of Scripture as that of the Fathers and of other Bishops of Rome who had gone before and by the Holy Cannons and by the very Confession of the Councils themselves that the Pope alone had a right and power to call Councils together to transfer and dissolve them as having Authority over all Councils They cannot deny that the same Leo did not condemn Luther for having appealed from him the Pope to a Council against the Constitutions says he of Pius II. of Julius II. who ordained that those who made such Appeals should be punished with the same Penalties that were decided against Hereticks nor that the Council of Trent did not submit it self to its Confirmation of the Pope as it may appear by the last Act of that Council And as to the pretences of the Popes over the Temporalties of Kings they cannot deny that Clement V. has not declared in one of his Clemintines as they are called That it ought not not to be Questioned but that he had a Superiority over the Empire and that the Empire being void he sucbeeded in the power of the Emperour nor that Alexander VI. did not give out of his pure Liberality says he of his certain knowledge and fullness of power to the Kings of Castile and Leon all the Lands newly discovered in the Indies as if they had belonged to him nor that Gregory VII did not decide in his Council of Rome That the Pope could depose Emperours and dispence-with the Oaths of Allegiance to their Subjects nor that Innocent III. did not ordain in the Council of Lateran That if any Temporal Prince neglected to purge his Territories of all Heresie the Bishops should Excommunicate him and that if within a Year he gave no Satisfaction they should make it known to the Soveraign Bishop to the end that he should declare his Subjects absolved from their Duty of Fealty and that he should expose his Land to be taken by Catholicks They cannot also deny as to Practice that there are not divers Examples to be found of Popes who undertook effectually to depose Emperours and Kings and to give away their Kingdomes to others In fine as to that which regards their Jurisdiction over Souls in Purgatory no Body is ignorant that the Popes pretended to have Power to draw Souls out of Purgatory at least through the dispensation of the Treasure of the Church which is that which they say is made up of the Super-abundant Satisfactions of Jesus Christ and the Saints It is upon that also that their Indulgences in respect of the Dead are Founded and Leo in his Bull of Excommunication against Luther had wrote That Indulgences were neither necessary nor useful to the Dead Furthermore I cannot forbear taking notice here of the Fallacy that the Author of the Prejudices gives us and which is common to him with a great many other persons He would have us Judge of that Doctrine of the Roman Church but only by that which she has decided in her Councils or by that which is contained in an Act of the Profesion of the Faith which she makes those make who embraue her Communion This I say is a perfect Fallacy 1. Because we ought also to Judge of
her by her common Practice which being open to the Eyes of all the World discovers much more clearly the true Sentiments of that Church when the decisions of the Councils do not and the Act of which the people scarce know any 2. Because the Council of Trent it self and the Act of the Profession of the Faith obliging as they do those who submit themselves to it to receive in general unwritten Traditions and those things which the Church of Rome Observes they engage them by consequence to receive and practise all that which is commonly observed and practised in that Church under a pretence of Tradition and observance although it should not be formally contained either in the decisions of Councils or in that Profession of Faith So that the Conscience of a man who is in that Communion binds him to believe and do all that others believe and do 16. Objection The Third kind of Calumny is not less ordinary in their Ministers nor less unjust in it self It consists in running down as blameable Errors certain Articles of the belief of the Church which not only were no Errors but about which they have been at last constrained to acknowledge that the difference between them and the Church consists more in words then in the thing it self whether they themselves have forsook their first thoughts to take up those of the Catholicks or whether by a blind rashness they had openly condemned them without understanding them To prove this Corruption the Author of the Prejudices lays down the point of Justification which he says the first Reformers took for the chief ground of their Separation and yet nevertheless he adds one of their Professors of Sedan named Ludovicus le Blanc who has made some Theses of Justification after having examined the Doctrine of the Catholicks and that of the Protestants and their principal differences about that matter concludes upon all the Articles that that of the Catholicks is good and that the Protestants are only contrary to them in name Answ I acknowledge that in this Controversy the Church of Rome takes the word Justification in one sence and that we take it in another and I do not deny but that has sometimes produced in that dispute ambiguities and differences or Words This is also that which M. le Blanc had a design to clear in his Theses of Justification which the Author of the Prejudices has abused But besides that in that very thing we have two advantages over the Church of Rome the one that we speak as the Scripture has done and that we take the words after the manner that Jesus Christ that Saint Paul and Saint James have taken them when they have Treated about this Doctrine whereas the Church of Rome gives them another sence and the other that in so taking the words in their true Signification that Idea that we give of Justification is distinct and clear where that of the Church of Rome is embroiled and confused Besides that I say it is certain that we have but too real differences upon that point which no ways consists in words but in the very things themselves and which make very weighty Controversies To Manifest this Truth we need but to cast our Eyes upon the four chief Doctrines that form the Idea of our Justification according as the Scripture has given it us The First is That it is an Act of the Soveraign mercy of God that pardons our sins and which by Vertue of the Satisfaction of Jesus Christ discharges us from the punishment we have deserved by them The Second is That God out of that same mercy in pardoning our sins adopts us for his Children and gives us a right to his Eternal Inheritance by the merit of Jesus Christ his Son The Third That we apply to our selves the satisfaction and merit of Jesus Christ by a lively Faith accompanied with a sincere Repentance and a Holy Recourse to the Divine Mercy and that it is this Faith that puts us into the Communion of our Redeemer And the Fourth That God in pardoning and adopting us imposes this Condition upon us that for the time to come we live Holily according to the Laws which he has given us and that this very thing is a necessary Consequence of that Communion which we have with Jesus Christ as well as of our Faith our Repentance and our Recourse to the Divine mercy There is not any one of these parts of our Justification upon which we have nor very considerable differences with the Church of Rome For in the First we differ 1. Concerning him who Pardons us The Church of Rome would have it not only that it should be God in the Quality of a Soveraign Judge but men also that is to say Priests and Bishops in Quality of inferiour and Subordinate Judges and that their Absolution is a Judiciary Act for so the Council of Trent has defined it to be But we believe that there is none besides God who can pardon our sins under the Quality of a Soveraign Judge and that the Pardon which we receive from the Mouth of his Ministers is a Ministerial Pardon which consists in a Declaration that they make to us of Gods Pardon as the Interpreters of his will revealed in the Gospel 2. We differ about the extent of that Pardon The Church of Rome would have it that God in pardoning the Sin retains the Punishment that is to say that he acquits us from eternal Punishment but that reserves to himself the inflicting of Temporal Punishments and we on the contrary hold that he remits all sorts of Temporal and Eternal punishments and that the Afflictions which he sends us are not the Punishments of his Justice but the Corrections and Chastisements of his Fatherly Discipline 3. From whence there arises a Third difference which consists in this that the Church of Rome believes that those Temporal Punishments wherewith God visits us are true Satisfactions to his Justice for our sins which we deny 4. There arises from thence yet another difference concerning that which they call those penal works which every one imposes upon himself or which their Confessors impose on their Penitents for they would that these should be also satisfactions to the Justice of God which we do not believe 5. The Church of Rome would have it that those satisfactory Punishments should go beyond this Life and it is partly upon this that they ground their Doctrine of Purgatory which we reject 6. It is also upon that very thing that the Indulgences of the Church of Rome are grounded which cannot be taken for meer Relaxations of Canonical Punishments since they extend most frequently very far beyond the life of man and sometimes even unto five and twenty and Thirty thousand Years 7. We may say also that it is a difference which we have with them by which we understand that first Act of the mercy of God that Pardons our sins which comes from the
render it incapable to defend the Truth I pass over in silence a multitude of other things which sensibly shew us the falseness of that pretence of Rome such as are the lapses of Marcellinus and Liberius the Contradictory decisions of divers Popes their inconstancy their capricious humours their interested Judgments and I know not how many other Characters incompatible with a true Rule of Faith It is sufficient to know that that pretence has never been publickly received in France and that our Kings and our Parliaments have always most vehemently opposed it As to the Prelats and the other Ecclesiasticks after the sad Descriptions that we have given of their state in the days of our Fathers and many Ages before them there is no likelyhood that they can yet further with the least shadow of Reason propose them as a Just Rule of Faith which way soever they are considered whether in General or in particular whether separated or assembled together Their Ignorance their negligence in spiritual things their sinking into vices their excessive love of the World and in a word all that which we have have seen in them will not permit us to believe that we should be bound to trust absolutely to their word about the Subject of the Reformation They had given but too many marks that they were subject to Error since the greatest part of those things which were to be reformed came from them or from those who went before them And besides that they were themselves express parties in that affair considering the complaints that they made of them and that they were engaged to uphold the superstitions in which they had held the People we are not Ignorant that they had a servile dependance on the Court of Rome to which they were bound by Oath that they would no stir nor speak nor act but according to her Inspirations and her Orders as experience has Justified it to us in the Council of Trent In fine their Prelats were men and such men as had made the Church to fall into that Lamentable Corruption out of which our Fathers sought to get out and how could they take them for an Infallible Rule As for that which respects the people if the Author of the Prejudices is as is reported the Author of the Treatise of the Perpetuity of the Faith he would it may be fain make them pass with us for Infallible and give them to us to be the Rule of our Faith But we have shewn him often enough already that he is deceived in his opinion What was there more liable to deceive them and more to incline them to abuses and superstitions then the people and above all a people ignorant of the Mysteries of the Gospel such as was for a long time that of the Latin Church How could a people that ought themselves to undo the false prepossessions with which they had been imbued serve for the Rule of a Reformation But some will say if there had been nothing in the Body of the Church capable of being a Rule of Faith why did your Fathers demand a Council to hear their Complaints and give them a remedy I answer that our Fathers demanded a Council not such a one as that of Trent made up of the Creatures of the Pope who waited for the Holy Ghosts coming from Rome in a Cloak-Bag as the Roman Catholicks have reproached them but such a free Council as wherein they might yet have hoped that God would have presided and his word have been heard They demanded it not as the Rule of Faith blindly to submit their Consciences to all that which should be there determined for they well knew that they owed that submission only to God but as a humane Ordinary means in the Church that Christian Charity and the love of Order made them desire to try if they could not by that way re-establish the purity of the Gospel in the West by the way of the Scripture I acknowledge that there had lain a great difficulty in the choice of persons but if yet notwithstanding they would have proceeded sincerely in it and in the fear of God without letting the interests of flesh and blood enter in the difficulties were not unconquerable Passion Contention a Spirit of Division was not as yet generally spread over all they were not as yet so obstinate in Error as they have been since All the Learned men that were then in it acknowledged the necessity of a Reformation and desired it They had therefore a ground to demand a free Council and these who know History are not ignorant that to elude that demand which appeared to all the World to be so Just and Reasonable that the Court of Rome thought it needful to make use of the most deep and imperceptible piece of its Policy But howsoever it be there is a great difference between a Council that should submit it self to and Rule it self by the Word of God and between a Rule of Faith Our Fathers might very well demand the first and expect to obtain it although he state of the Church was then extreamly corrupted for there was yet some good desires which without doubt would have wrought some effect if they had not been stifled or turned aside But it does not follow from thence that they must after what manner soever have taken that Church for the Soveraign and Infallible Rule of their Religion They would not have more reason to say that we ought to turn to the side of Tradition which the Council of Trent has raised to the same Honour and Authority with the Scripture We shall quickly see which ought to have been believed It shall suffice to say here that although the greatest part of the Roman Traditions are new as the Protestants have often demonstrated them to be yet that in the Age of our Fathers which was as it were the sink of the foregoing there was scarce any Error nor any Superstition how gross soever that they did not labour to defend under the pretence of Tradition so that Tradition is so far from being able to serve for a Rule that it ought it self to be corrected and regulated according to that Maxim of Jesus Christ In the beginning it was not so As to the Antient Fathers I confess that their Writings may be of great use to Learned men to furnish them with a great measure of knowledge but they can never have Authority sufficient to serve for a Rule of Faith The Fathers were men subject to Errour to Prejudices and Surprises as well as other men and there appear but too many signs of it in their Writings They have submitted themselves to the Authority of the Scripture They have called it the balance and exact Rule of all things a sure Anchor and Foundation of the Faith They have taken in their Controversies Jesus Christ speaking in his Gospel for their Judge They have Exhorted their Hearers and their Readers to believe them only so far
Infallibility in the Parliament so neither can that of the Apostle do it for the Church for Societies do not always follow their natural appointments we see that they often enough depart from them I confess that the Church does not always wander from its end nor in all things yet it cannot also be imagin'd that she never departs For the wicked are mingled with the good in the same Society the Dignities of the Church are sometimes to be found more possessed by the men of the World then by the truly Faithful the very best men themselves are subject to weaknesses and they sometimes commit faults of that importance that may consequently be dilated by continuance and all that cannot but produce Errors and Corruptions which it will be most necessary to reform Behold all those passages of Scripture upon which they seem to me to found that pretension of the Infallibility of the Latin Church To them they joyn some Arguments 1. If say they it be possible for the Church to err why do we call it holy as we do in the Creed I believe the Holy Catholick Church Such an Assembly that is united in the profession of an error is so far unfit to be called Holy That on the contrary it is Impious since it agrees in a Doctrine that is contrary to the Holy Truths revealed by God I answer That if this Argument were good it would follow not only that the Church should be Infallible as to matters of Faith but also that she should be impeccable in respect of manners for she is called Holy as well from that Holiness that regards good works as from that which regards the Faith The Church is Holy but yet after an imperfect manner while she is here upon Earth and she will never be perfectly so but in Heaven Furthermore they ought to remember that the Title of Holy and generally all other Titles of Honour and Glory that are given to the Church belong to it in truth only in respect of the true Believers and not in respect of the Hypocrites and wicked which are mingled with the good in the same visible Society and that it is but only on the same account of the Good that all that visible Body is called the Church For they are none but those whom God has called to his Salvation who only can be the true mystical Body of Jesus Christ When then it shall come to pass that the number of the wicked prevails in that Visible Society they will fill up the Pulpits they will be Masters of Councils and of Decisions of Faith of the Government and Ministry of the Church and will not fail to introduce Errors and a false Worship but when those persons should introduce and authorise them the Church would not cease to be Holy not in respect of those wicked men who waste it and corrupt it as much as it lyes in their power to do but in regard of the Faithful whom God will keep pure by the illuminations of his Holy Spirit and the methods of his Providence The Church of Israel in the midst of its greatest Idolatries did not cease to keep the Titles of a Holy Nation and a Kingdom of Priests which Moses had given her but she kept them not in respect of her Corruptors and those wretched men that would have seduc't her but in respect of those that were Holy For it is certain that God has always done that which he did in the days of Elias where he reserv'd seven thousand men who had not bowed the Knee unto Baal and it is in those that the Church is preserv'd and always kept Holy 2. But yet further say they If the Church may err and particularly the Church Representative that is to say the Body of Pastors why do the Councils pronounce Anathema's against all those who shall not consent to their Decrees Would it not be very unjust to bind men under so great a penalty to consent to things that are uncertain and which may be false I answer that the force of the Anathema's of those Councils depends altogether on their Justice If those Councils have lawfully decided controversies according to the word of God and if with the Truth they have kept Love and Charity according to the Precept of the Apostle their Anathema is very efficacious and all that they bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven But if they have decided any thing against the Truth or against Charity if they have abused their Places their Anathema's are vain and rash and will fall upon none but their Heads who pronounce them For God has never submitted his Righteousness to the Unrighteousness of any Prelats All the force of those Thunderbolts depends on those very things which have been decided We can do nothing says the Apostle against the Truth We ought not then to imagine that those Anathema's must needs be Infallible we ought not also to believe that they could not be rightly used if they had not that Infallibility Saint Hilary did not pretend to be Infallible and yet nevertheless he pronounc'd an Anathema against Liberius who was a Deceiver Saint Paul did not pretend to make us Infallible and yet notwithstanding he commands us to Anathematise even an Angel from Heaven and himself if he should Preach any other Gospel then that which he has preached unto us Cyril of Alexandria did not aspire after Infallibility and yet he thunders out his Anathema's against all the Errours of Nestorius The second Council of Tours never thought of being Infallible and yet nevertheless it Anathematis'd all those who after the third admonition refus'd to restore the goods of the Church In fine every private Person pronounces an Anathema against all Heresies The Anathema's of the Councils are not the Sentences of the Magistrate the force of which depends on the Authority of him who pronounces them they are only the Denuntiations that men make on Gods side as his Interpreters and his Ministers of the severity of his Judgments against the Unbeleivers the Wicked and the Hereticks And provided that those Denuntiations should be founded on the word of God as far as the light of the Pastors of the Church and their good Consciences could perswade them we ought not to doubt but that they would be just altho' they would not be Infallible For howsoever it be that good and lawful Councils assembled in the Name of Jesus Christ would never pretend that their Anathema's should bind any person any farther then their Decisions and their Canons were just and conformable to the Scripture 3. They add yet if it were possible for the Church to err it were possible for it totally to fall away after that manner that there should not be any longer a Church upon the Earth and yet notwithstanding how many promises have we in the Scripture that denote the Perpetuity of the Church God says in Hosea That he would betroth her unto him for ever
Arms against their Brethren the Catholicks that pernitious Errors against the Orthodox Faith might be observed to increase in all places That the Church of Rome the Mother and Root of the Vniversal Church was every day more and more despised that Luxury reigned in the Clergy and that it was extream among the people That the Patrimony of Saint Peter was wasted That Christian Princes animated with a mortal hatred one against another were just ready to destroy one another and that in fine to make use of the words of Jeremy One desolation called to another which made him to weep over the Church and say to it Daughter of Sion thy Desolation is great as the stretching out of the Sea who is it that will bring thee any Remedy After having represented those things he adds That although the affliction of the Church was exceeding great yet they might notwithstanding mitigate it if laying aside their own passions their Canvassings and their Cabals they would look to nothing else in chusing a Pope but Holiness Learning and Fitness or Capacity That the Eyes of all the Church were upon them to beg of them a Pope who might by the good odor of his Name allure the Faithful people to Salvation He urged that discourse much farther in shewing them the necessity that the Church stood in of a Holy man whose life should be without reproach He added to his Exhortations threatnings on Gods part and passed by nothing that might move the minds of those Cardinals to do some good Will you not say that words so weighty and so pungent ought to have made some Impression on the minds of those Cardinals and that at least for that Time they should have done well They saw the whole Church in disorder the Conquests that the Infidels made Christian Princes in Arms one against another Church-Discipline overthrown the lives of the Clergy profuse Piety violently beat down and Christianity degenerated in all places could any one imagine that such sad representations would not have been considered But be not hasty All the effect that they produced was the Creation of Alexander the sixth That Name alone sufficiently Celebrated in the History of the Popes was enough to make men understand of what disposition those Prelats were and how little they were touched with the wounds of the Latin Church Let us hear nevertheless what Raynaldus says who in these kind of things is an Author that can no ways be suspected The greatest part of the Cardinals says he were very remote from those good Counsels for Authors complain that some corrupted with Money others gained by promises of Benefices and Places and others drawn by the Conformity of a vitious and impure life gave their Voices to Roderic Borgia So that in stead of chusing a chaste man they chose one who was infamous for his uncleannesses and fornications for which he had been reproved by Pius the Second yet was so far from amending under that reproof that he took no care to conceal his impurities For on the contrary he lived with Vacosia a Courtisan of Rome as if she had been his real Wife and he had divers Children by her upon whom he heape'd Riches and Honors as much as it was possible for him to do as if they had been his Legitimate Children Behold what the Court of Rome was then Alexander the Sixth being dead and Pius the Third who succeeded him having lived but thirty days after his Election the Cardinals met again in the Conclave And because the Life and Government of Alexander had given scandal to all the World and that the Cardinals themselves had been but very ill satisfied with it before they proceeded to an Election they drew up some Articles which every one swore to observe upon condition the Nomination should fall upon him and there was one among the rest which carried this with it That the new Pope should call at the end of two years a General Council for the Reformation of the Church in its Head and its Members Julius the Second was chosen but he did not believe himself bound to keep his Oath for seven years past away without any thing being talkt either of a Council or a Reformation And therefore it was that this Pope thought the less of it Nevertheless it fell out that having ill Treated one party of the Colledge of Cardinals and having moreover stired up the Emperor Maximilian and Lewis the Twelfth the King of France against him those two great Princes joyned with the disgraced Cardinals and called a Council at Pisa The Act of that Convocation on the part of the Princes says expresly that it was for the Extirpation of Heresies and Errors which through the negligence of Superiors had sprung up in divers parts of the World and particularly for the Reformation of the manners of the Vniversal Church in the Head and the Members and for the amendment of many great notorious long continued and almost incorrigible crimes which had scandalized the Vniversal Church The Cardinals also alleaged the Oath that the Pope had took just before his promotion in these very words I swear to observe and perform these Articles throughout and in every particular sincerely unfeignedly seriously and in good earnest and under pain of falling under perjury and an Anathema from which I cannot absolve my self nor give power to any other person to absolve me They added to that that by another Article they all and Julius himself had sworn That if he who should be chosen should not perform his promise in good earnest he should be held guilty of perjury to be a breaker of his Vow and of his Faith a disturber of the Church and the cause of Scandal to all Christianity and that then two thirds of the Sacred Colledge should have power to assemble a General Council The Council then being assembled declared openly That there was a most evident necessity of Reforming the Church in the Head and the Members and made a Decree formed in these words The Holy and sacred General Synod of Pisa lawfully called in the name of the Holy Ghost composing a General Council and representing the Catholick Church doth define and declare That that Holy Synod would not nor could not dissolve it self till the Vniversal Church should be Reformed in Faith and Manners as well in the Head as the Members and till the Heresies and Schisms that had sprung up should be Extinguished Behold hitherto the fairest hope in the World It is not necessary for us to inquire whether that Reformation was the true Cause of the Calling of that Assembly together or whether it was only a pretence and according to all appearances it was the latter But whatsoever it might be whether a pretence or not three thing result from it the one That that Reformation was generally judged to be most necessary the other That it was extreamly desired by the people for they would never have contrived to have took up
and the Elders of the People Can they deny that the Christian Emperours did not heretofore call Councils to Order the State of Religion and to provide against disorders in the Church Can they deny that our Kings have not often done the same in their Kingdome But the Senate of Zurich would of it self take Cognizance of the matters of Religion I say that that very thing was its Right for if it be the Duty of every Christian for the Interest of his own Salvation to take Cognizance of those things that the Church-men Teach and not blindly to refer themselves to their Word as I have made it appear to be in the first Part it is not less the Duty of Magistrates to do the same to bind the Church-men to acquit themselves faithfully in their Charges and to Teach men nothing that might not be conformable to the Word of God So that if the Ministers of the Church go astray from that Word and if they corrupt their Ministry by Errors and Superstitions it belongs to the Magistrate to Labour to reduce them to their Duty by the mildest and justest methods he can use Thus the Kings of Judah used it heretofore as it appears from the History of Hezechias Josias and of some others who made use of that lawful Authority that God gave them for the Reforming of their Church by the Word of God We all know that the Antient Emperors took Cognizance either by themselves of their Commissioners of Ecclesiastical Affairs and not only of those that respected the Discipline but of those also which related to the Doctrine and the very Essence of Religion it self to that degree that they frequently published under their Names in the Form of Edicts Decisions of Opinions Condemnations of Heresy and the Interpretations of the Faith which they had caused to be disputed in their Presence in Synodal Assemblies We ought not therefore to imagine that Magistrates ought not to interpose in matters of the Faith under a pretence that they are Lay-men for on the contrary they ought to interpose themselves more in those then in those of Discipline because the Faith respects every man where Discipline relates to the Clergy more peculiarly Therefore it was that Pope Nicholas the First told the Emperour Michael who was present in person in a Council where only the Fact of Ignatius Patriarch of Constantinople was treated of whom that Emperour had deposed That he did not find that the Emperours his Predecessours had been present at Synodal Assemblies unless they might possibly have been in those where matters of the Faith were Treated of which is a common Thing relating Generally to all and which belongs not only to the Clergy but the Laity also and universally to all Christians There was nothing therefore in that Action of the Magistrates of Zurich that was not a Right common to all Soveraign Magistrates within the extent of their Jurisdictions But they will say Was it not to break off the Unity of their Church with the rest to go about so to order the State of Religion within their Canton without the Participation of other Churches and were they not Schismaticks in that very thing I answer That when a Prince or a Soveraign Magistrate is in a condition to call a General Council together to deliberate about the Common Faith he would do better to take that way But when he is not as the Senate of Zurich evidently was not ought he to abandon all care of the Churches of his State They will see in the end of this Treatise that the States of Germany seeing the Oppositions that the Popes made to the calling of a general Council often demanded a National one of the Emperour Charles the Fifth They will see also that that Emperour was sometimes resolved to do it and that he Threatned the Popes to cause divers Colloquies or Conferences of Learned men to be held to labour to decide those Articles that were Controverted They will see that our Kings for the same design have sometimes deliberated about assembling a National Council in France And no body is ignorant of the Conference of Poissy under the Reign of Charles the Ninth There was nothing therefore in the Conduct of that business that did not belong to the Right of Soveraigns and nothing which they can charge with Schism in it For when a Prince or a Senate Assembles a Synod to condemn Heresies or Reform Errors and by that means takes Cognizance of matters of Religion provided that in effect that which it condemns be a Heresy or that which it Reforms be an Error he is so far from breaking Christian Unity that on the contrary he confirms it as much as he can in freeing it from a false and wicked Unity which is that of Error which cannot be other then destructive to the whole Body of the Church and which cannot be too soon broken So that we ought to Judge of their Action more by the Foundation then the Form or Manner For the Foundation being good its Action cannot but be approved When a Man is Sick with divers others as it frequently happens in Epidemical Diseases it would be Injustice in him not to provide for his own particular healing but to stay for a general one and it would be a great absurdity to say that if he did do so he violated the Rights of the Civil Society for the Civil Society does not consist in being a Communion of sickness but in being a Communion of Life On the contrary it ought to be said that in healing himself in particular he established as much as in him lay that Civil Society which he had with his diseased Companions because he encouraged them by his Example to heal themselves with him the better to enjoy in common the advantages of Life It is the same case here where a Church sees it self infected with Error and Superstition with divers other Churches she no ways violates Christian Unity in labouring to reform her self particularly for the Christian Unity does not consist in the Communion of Errors and Abuses it consists in the Communion of that True Faith and Piety It establishes therefore on the contrary that Unity because it gives others a good Example and thereby encourages them to reform themselves as it has done All that which a Prince or Soveraign Magistrate ought to observe in those Seasons is on one side to take heed that he makes a just discerning of good and evil I would say that he reforms nothing which would not be in effect an Error or a Superstition or an Abuse and that he does not give any wound to the True Religion under a pretence of Reformation and on the other side to offer no violence to Mens Consciences but to purify the Publick Ministry as much as he can by the general consent of the People that God has committed to him But this is that which not only the Magistrates of Zurich but those also of other places
the point of the Real presence and about some Questions of the Schools which we cannot yet impute to their whole Body and as for the rest they reject with us the Invocation of Saints Religious Worship of Images humane Satisfactions Indulgences Purgatory worship of Reliques the publick Service in an unknown Tongue the merit of good Works Transubstantiation the sacrifice of the Mass the Monarchy of the Pope the opinion of the Infallibility of the Church and the principle of blind obedience to the decisions of Councils They acknowledge the Scriptures to be the only Rule of Faith they carefully practise the Reading of them they own their sufficiency they believe their Authority independant from that of the Church in regard of men They distinctly explain the Doctrine of Justification and that of the use of the Law and its distinction from the Gospel they do not conceive amiss of the nature of Faith and that of good works and as for popular superstitions we can scarce see any reign among them Would to God the Church of Rome were in that condition and that we could purchase it at the price of our Blood and our Lives But alas We are very far from seeing any likely-hood of success to that wish all those points that I have set down are so many differences which we have with her and in our Judgments there are so many Errors and so many abuses in her and we are so far from any reasonable hope of their Correction that we see on the contrary that they strengthen themselves in them every day and that they discover every day more and more signs of their aversion for or contempt of a Reformation Who therefore can think it strange that upon the business of Religion we place a great difdifference between those of the Roman Church and those who are called Lutherans the one appears to us as a Body spread all over with a great many boils which all together put a stop to the Functions of Life and the others as a Body that has only one or two which do not hinder its Life or its Action In a word we do not believe that those who have imbibed the Tenets of the Roman Church where we differ from them and who practice them are in the way of Salvation as well by reason of the Quality of the greatest part of those Tenets as by reason of their number But as to the Errors which remain yet among the Lutherans we do not pass the same Judgment either as to their Quality or their number I say as to their Quality and the reason that we alledge is is very solid whatsoever endeavors they have used to elude it for although the opinion of the Lutherans about the Real presence be erroneous though we are so far from approving of it that we oppose it as much as possibly we can yet while they shall make a profession as they do to distinguish in the Sacrament the substance of bread from that of the Body of Jesus Christ we cannot say that their Error compels them actually to adore the meer creature of Bread for the same Body of Jesus Christ that is hypostatically united with the word We can very well say that they deceive themselves in imagining that the Body of Jesus Christ is in a place where it is not but we cannot tell them that they take another subject for the Body of Jesus Christ which really and in effect is not so They do not therefore deceive themselves in regard of the Object of their Adoration for they do not take the one for the other I would say they do not take the substance of Bread for the Body of Jesus Christ but they deceive themselves in regard of the place wherein they conceive the Body of Jesus Christ to be for they conceive it to be in the Bread and it is not there But this Error about the place how gross soever it be does not notwithstanding include Idolatry for as I have said they do not take one subject for another the substance of Bread for the Body of Jesus Christ But it is otherwise in the Church of Rome for if she deceives her self she does it not only as to the place wherein she conceives the Body of Jesus Christ but also as to the subject that she takes for the Body of Jesus Christ since it is in effect but the substance of Bread There is actually and really in the Sacrament but one only substance the Church of Rome does not distinguish it from the Object of her Adoration on the contrary she delieves it to be the Body of Jesus Christ and she Adores it under that Quality if she deceives her self it is manifest that in believing she adores the Body of Jesus Christ she adores that which is actually the substance of Bread It is to no purpose therefore that the Author of the Prejudices says That it is false that the Catholicks adore the Sacrament in taking that word for an external Vail That makes nothing to the Question Whether they adore or do not adore the accidents of Bread that is to say its figure colour roundness is a thing by it self whereof we do not now dispute we speak now of the substance which the Priest holds in his hands But it is yet nothing to the purpose what he further adds That although the Bread should remain there as the Lutherans hold yet we could not accuse the Catholicks of adoring it their adoration terminates upon Jesus Christ alone whom they believe to lie hid under those sensible species This is an Ordinary Fallacy of their Missionaries fit only to deceive Children I distinguish We cannot accuse those of the Church of Rome of believing that they adore the Bread or of being willing to adore it or of having an intention to adore the Bread I grant it for they believe that it is no longer Bread they believe that the substance of Bread is changed into that of Jesus Christ so that they can never be accused of believing that they adore or that they are willing to adore or that they have an intention to adore the Bread They defend themselves in that whereof no Body accuses them But if the bread remain in effect no Bread I deny that we cannot accuse them of adoring that which is actually and in the Truth of the thing Bread in believing that it is the Body of Jesus Christ and a man must be of a very bad faith not to see it For if I should imagine for example that a Tree that a Rock that a flower was a God hid under the form of a Tree a Rock a Flower and if I should adore it under that Quality of a God which my imagination gave it it would be past all doubt that I should adore a Tree a Rock a Flower in believing my self to adore God But besides that we are in regard of the Lutherans in very different Terms from those wherein the Church of Rome would
Parishioners of Saint Hilary Montanus But on the contrary in the view of that Ignorance under which they were held For see how they speak Our Lord said I have Compassion on the Multitude for they have nothing to eat and you see the Complaint that the Prophet made The Children ask for Bread and there is none to give unto them It were a small matter if they would content themselves with the not giving them the Bread of the Gospel They will not suffer them to take it and if they take it They snatch it out of their Hands They do not Instruct them and they would hinder them so that they should not Instruct thenselves out of the word of God and that that Prophecy should not be accomplish'd Erunt omnes docibiles Deo and they shall be taught of God I thought my self bound to make these first Reflections to shew the injustice and inequality of these men that we have to do with Nihil est says Cicero quod minus ferendum sit quam rationem vitae ab altero reposcere eum quinon posset suae reddere Notwithstanding after having a little cooled that impetuous motion of the Author of the Prejudices I shall not fail to Justify our Fathers touching the Principle upon which they made their Reformation I say then in the first place That they could not in that State wherein things were take the Church in their days for the Rule of their Faith without renouncing Common sence The Church in their days or to speak better that which they would call the Church was made up of Three sorts of persons The Court of Rome the Prelats and the other Clergy and the People The Court of Rome was the source of all evil it was that that had spread abroad all the Errors and Superstitions in the Latin Church or that had at least fomented and maintained them when they took their rise elsewhere Her Usurpations and the disorder of her Government was one of the complaints of our Fathers They complained of her Principles her Maxims and some decisions of the Faith which she had caused to pass in Councils that were servilely subjected to her will and her interests She was therefore a resolute party in this affair evidently interested and by consequence uncapable of Judging It is True that she called her self the Mother and the Mistress of all Churches and that one of her pretensions was Infallibility in the Faith But that very thing was one of the Errors of which our Fathers required a correction whatever probability she had of ascribing it to her self Adrian the sixth acknowledged a great part of the disorders of that Court in his instructions to his Nuntio whom he sent to the Diet of Nuremberg as we have already seen and the General voice of the whole Church which demanded a long time ago a Reformation in capite membris make it known enough to leave us out of all doubt Moreover the Court of Rome did so loudly and vehemently declare her self against a Reformation that it could not be any further hoped for and why should our Fathers have taken her for the Rule of Faith since not only the Gallican Church who lived in Communion with her maintained that she was not but even the Experience of many years had very evidently shewed that she could not be Does not Tertullian turned Montanist Testify That Eleutherius Bishop of Rome had received the Prophecies of Montanus of Priscilla and Maximilla and that he had already wrote Letters of Communion to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia which were Montanists and that those Letters should have their effect although Praxeas had not made them to be recalled in relating false things concerning those Churches and their Prophets And has not the sixth General Council condemned Pope Honorius as a Monothelite Heretick with Sergius Patriaerch of Constantinople and some others I know that some have said that that Council was deceived in the business of Honorius but without entring upon that Question in which it is certain that they deceive themselves as not long since P. Louis Thomassin Priest of the Oratory in his Dissertation about that sixth Council has acknowledged It is enough that that Council condemned Honorius for an Heretick and that it proscribed his name and his Memory For that Condemnation after what manner soever it hapned is an Authentick Declaration that a General Council has held that Popes may Err and by eonsequence that they are not the Rule of Faith And it is nothing to the purpose to say as P. Thomassin has done that Henorius Erred only in the quality of a private man and not as Pope or to speak more properly That he did not Err but only that he had a mind to make use of a Dispensation for the procuring the peace of the Church which was divided about the Question whether there were two wills and two operations in Jesus Christ or whether there was but one and that he desired that they would be silent about that point Which side soever they chuse it will always follow from that Example of Honorius that the Bishops of Rome are not the Rule of Faith For to make a Rule of Faith it is not enough to be exempt from Error either in quality of Popes or even in the quality of private men it is further necessary that they should be always in a state of not fomenting or entertaining Heresy but of opposing it on the contrary of condemning it when it has made any progress and of maintaining the True Faith But this is that which they cannot say of Honorius in respect of the Heresy of the Monothelites That Heresy had over-ran all the East the Patriarchates of the East were infected with it the Emperour Heraclius had established it by a publick Edict a Council it self held at Constantinople had confirmed it whether therefore they say that Honorius embraced Heresy in quality of a private man or whether they say that by a false Dispensation he would only have imposed silence on the Orthodox which way soever they take it is manifest that he was not in a state under the quality of Pope to put a stop to the course of Heresy nor to succour the true Faith For what likelyhood is there that as Pope he should have condemned himself as a private man or that in quality of Pope or as they speak ex cathedra he should have Published the Truth that ought to be held while his own private opinion was that he should hold his peace about it and suppress it It is therefore a Mockery to make a Rule of Faith of such a Pope who through his own private Heresy or his imprudent Dispensation could not hinder Monothelism from Triumphing And it cannot be a less one if they should pretend that the Church of Rome should be the True Rule of Faith while such Popes are her Head since she can do nothing without them and since they might
as Hereticks or the enemies of the Churches peace Therefore it was that Constance reproached Liberius that he was alone and that he opposed himself to all the world in the defence of Athanasius When so great a part of the world said he to him resides in thy person that thou alone shouldst take the part of a wicked man and dare to break the peace of the whole world I would be alone answered Liberius the cause of the faith is nevertheless weakned For heretofore there were but three found who resisted the Command of a King Liberius himself was banished from which he was not freed till after he subscribed to Arianism And as the West was then less infected with this Heresie than the East the Emperour caused a Council to assemble at Ariminum in which after specious beginnings the end was very unhappy For the Bishops renounced therein the Orthodox Doctrine which made the Son of God of one and the same Essence with his Father To this effect they rejected the word consubstantial which the Council of Nice had inserted into its Creed as a word that was scandalous sacrilegious and unworthy of God which was no where to be found in the Scripture and they banished it from the Church This appears by the Letter of that Synod it self to the Emperour Constance set down by S. Hilary in which they gave the Emperour thanks that he had shewn them what they ought to do to wit to decree that no body should speak any more either of substance or of consubstantial which are names unknown to the Church of God and that they rejoyced because they had acknowledged the very same thing that they had held before They add That the Truth which cannot be overcome has obtained the victory so that that name unworthy of God which was not to be found wrote in the Sacred Laws should not be for the future mentioned by any person and they declare That they intirely hold the same Doctrine with the Oriental Churches and that they have rendred unto them and him a full obedience It was that reason for which Auxentius Bishop of Millan an Arian said in his Letter to Valentinian and Valens Emperours That he ought not to endure that the Vnity of six hundred Bishops should be broken by a small number of contentious persons So that Vincentius Lirinensis makes no scruple to acknowledge That the poyson of Arianism had infected not some small parts only but almost all the world and it was to that sense that Phaebadius a French Bishop who lived in those times said That the subtilty and fraud of the Devil had almost wholly possessed mens minds that it perswaded them to believe Heresie as the right Faith and condemned the true Faith as an Heresie And a little lower having an eye to what had been done at the Council of Ariminum The Bishops saith he made an Edict that no one should mention one only substance that is to say that no one should preach in the Church that the Father and the Son were but one only vertue I might add to these testimonies that of Gregory Nazianzen in the Oration that he made in the praise of S. Athanasius There after having described the furies of George Patriarch of Alexandria and an Arian and the impieties of the Council of Seleucia he adds We may see one sort unjustly banished from their Sees and other put into their places after their having subscribed to the impiety which was required of them as a necessary condition Plotting never ceased on one side nor the Calumniator on the other This is that which has made many among us fall into the snare who were else invincible for although their error did not go so far as to seduce their minds yet they subscrib'd notwithstanding and by that means conspired with the most wicked men and if they were not partakers in their flames they were at least blackned with their smoak This is that which has made me often pour forth rivers of tears beholding wickedness spread abroad so wide and so much every where and that those themselves that ought to have been the defenders of the Word there have become the persecutors of the Orthodox Doctrine For it is certain that the Pastors have been carried away after an insensible manner and to speak with the Scripture divers Pastors have left my Vineyard desolate they have abused and loaded that desirable portion with shame that is to say the Church of God which the sweat and blood of so many Martyrs before and since the coming of jesus Christ had besprinkled and which was consecrated by the sufferings of God himself who dyed for our salvation If you except some few who have either been despised by reason of the obscurity of their names or who have resisted by their vertue for it is very requisite that there should yet have some remained to be as it were a seed and a root to Israel to make it flourish and revive again all were swayed by the Times There was only this difference among them that some were fallen deeper into the snare and others more slowly that some were the chief in wickedness and others held the second place Cardinal Baronius could not avoid making this reflection in setting down this passage So it was that Gregory deplored the ruine of the whole Eastern Church But if we would add the ruine that befell the Western Church which I have just before described we shall easily judge that there has not been any time since wherein the whole Christian World has been more disturbed than it was then since almost all the Preachers of the Churches were fallen into the precipice and that the face of the Catholick Church was never so dreadful But the second Action which we have propounded is not less certain than the former to wit that those among the Orthodox who had any zeal or courage separated themselves from the Body of their ordinary Pastors and would not own them for their Pastors while they remained in Heresie In effect that was the chief cause for which they suffered so many murders and banishments the Arians no wayes tolerating those who refused their Communion The perpetual Accusation wherewith they charged them was That they were the Schismaticks who had violated the Peace and Unity of the Church This is that which Auxentius reproached S. Hilary with and Eusebius of Verceille in the Letter which I have before cited They are said he men condemned and deposed who think of nothing but making of Schisms wheresoever they come for so it was that that false Bishop called the just Separation to which S. Hilary exhorted the faithful by his Writings as we have seen in the preceding Chapter Socrates the Ecclesiastical Historian relates upon this subject that the cruelty of the Arians proceeded to that height that they forced by all sorts of unjust wayes men and women to receive the Sacrament at their hands
for that they had referr'd that business to a National Council in defect of a General one and he maintained that the Authority of the See of Rome was very much wounded in that reference and that a National Council could not deliberate about matters of Religion In fine after a great many disputes which only serv'd more and more to discover the obstinate resolution that the Roman party had taken up not to suffer a Reformation this Diet ended with a Decree of the Emperour which referr'd the whole affair to a General Council or a National one in Germany or to an Imperial Assembly if they could not obtain a Council and that nevertheless the Execution of the Decree of Ausburg should remain suspended All this pass'd in the year 1541. See here what the success of the Conference of Ratisbon was The year following which was 1542. the Pope assign'd the Council to be held at Trent in the Month of November he sent a Bull to the Emperour in Spain and after to the Kings exhorting them to send their Embassadors thither and he himself deputed thither three Cardinals in quality of Legates he sent thither some Bishops also But this Convocation had not then any effect by reason of the War that was carried on about the same time between King Francis the First and the Emperour And this latter seeing himself to have two Wars upon his hands that with France and the other with the Turks made a new Decree at Spire by which he gave peace to the Protestants but more than that he ordain'd that they should make choice of some Learned and well-meaning persons to draw up a Formulary of the Reformation that the Princes should do the same and that all those pieces being referred to the next Diet they should there resolve with a common consent that which they should judge fit to be kept about the matters of Religion till the meeting of a Council This Decree was made in the year 1544. But the Pope was so netled at this that he wrote to the Emperour in a very threatning style complaining above all things of this that he had not referred that which concerned Religion to the decision of the Church of Rome and that he had favoured those who were Rebels to the Apostolick See Some time after King Francis the First and the Emperour made a Peace and one of the Articles of their Agreement was that they should defend the Ancient Religion that they should employ their endeavours for the Union of the Church and the Reformation of the Court of Rome that they should jointly demand of the Pope the calling of a Council and that they should labour to subdue the Protestants This obliged the Pope to prevent them He therefore again assigned the Council to be held at Trent the fifteenth day of March 1545. and dispatched away his Legates thither but at the same time he resolv'd to use all his endeavours to oblige the Emperour to turn his Arms against the Protestants to oppose them at the same time with the Spiritual and Temporal Sword or to say better to the end that the War might serve him for a pretence to elude the Council For that purpose he made use of the Ministry of his Nuntio and afterwards of that Cardinal Farnese whom he sent to the Emperour as his Legate whose chief pretence was the refusals which the Protestants had propounded anew against his pretended Council He made therefore very powerful solicitations to the Emperour by his Legate with offers to aid him with men and money and even to cause him to be assisted by the Princes of Italy and the Emperour who on his side was very glad to take this occasion to subdue Germany to himself readily accepted of this proposition so that a War was concluded between them but the conclusion was kept very secret till the time of Execution Notwithstanding the better to cover this design the Emperour appointed a Conference of Learned Men to be held at Ratisbon upon the subject of Religion according to his last Decree but he did not fail to cite the Arch-Bishop of Cologne to appear before him who had embraced the Reformation and afterwards excommunicated him and deprived him of his Arch-bishoprick And as for the Conference at Ratisbon which gave some jealousie to the Bishops who were already assembled at Trent it was quickly after broken by the unjust conditions that some Monks who were there as the Commissioners of the Emperour would impose on the Protestant Divines The Council was opened the thirteenth of December of the same year 1545. But in fine after a great many artifices and dissimulations able to have lull'd asleep the most vigilant after a great many contrary assurances given to the Protestants the Emperour sent the Cardinal of Trent in Post to Rome to give the Pope notice that he should make his Troops march with all diligence The Treaty which they had made together was published the eight and twentieth of July 1546. bearing this among other things That the Emperour should employ his Arms and open force to make those Germans who should reject the Council return to the ancient Religion and to the obedience of the holy See and the Emperour soon after openly declared himself as well by the Letters which he wrote to divers Cities in Germany to the Elector of Cologne and the Prince of Wirtemburg as by the answers that his Ministers gave to the Embassadors of those Towns who were with him The Pope on his side presently published a Bull dated the fifteenth of July by which he commanded that they should make solemn Processions exhorting all Christians to put up prayers to God for the happy success of the War which the Emperour and himself had undertaken at their common charges against the Germans who should either profess Heresie or protect it Before this he had wrote to the Switzers Letters dated the third of June by which he gave them notice of the Emperours design praying them to send all the succours they could possibly The Emperour would at the beginning cover this War with another pretence than that of Religion but the Pope would never suffer him to do it So that the Emperour having no further way left to disguise himself began with the proscribing of the Duke of Saxony and the Lantgrave of Hessia and moreover he sent his Army into the field The Protestant Princes on their parts took up Arms also for their just defence The success of this War was not so happy for the Protestants all Germany saw it self soon enslav'd under the Arms of the Emperour and according to all humane appearance the Reformation also had been presently destroy'd if God who never utterly forsakes his Church had not provided for it by his Providence It hapned that the Pope and the Emperour quarrell'd about those temporal interests which were far more prevalent in their minds than that of Religion which fell out because the Emperour would not
readily subject Germany to the Council of the Pope and because the Pope used also all his endeavours to stir up new affairs for the Emperour on the side of Italy Moreover a division fell out in the Council for the Pope having transferr'd it from Trent to Bolognia to have it more at his ordering the greatest part of the Bishops yielded to that transferring but many also held themselves firm to Trent and would not obey it which made a great difficulty to arise when the Emperour and the Princes of Germany came to demand as they afterwards did that the Council should be re-established at Trent because those of Bolognia stood upon it as a point of honour not to go back to find those of Trent there King Francis the First dyed in this time and Henry the Eighth King of England being dead also the Reformation was quickly after received in England under the Reign of Edward the Sixth which a little disturb'd the joyes of the Court of Rome They were yet more disturb'd by the Acts of Protestation which the Emperour had made against the Assembly at Bolognia that he had treated it as an unlawful Assembly and a Conventicle insisting that they should return to Trent with threats that if the Pope continued to neglect his duty he would himself out of his own Authority provide for the disorders of the Church They were troubled also at the Interim which the same Emperour published afterwards throughout all Germany This Interim was a certain Formulary of Religion that the Emperour had made to be drawn up to be observed until the holding of a Lawful Council He establish'd therein the whole Body of the Roman Doctrine and allowed only the Marriage of Priests and Communion under both kinds But although this Formulary was neither approved by the one sort nor the other that at Rome the Pope had censured it and the Protestants look'd upon it as the greatest of all their oppressions the Emperour did not fail to use violence to the Protestants to make them receive it And this filled Germany with an infinite number of persecutions such as those that Conquerours when they cruelly abuse their prosperity as Charles the Fifth did are wont to make the vanquished suffer But while he thus satiated himself with these violences and indignities Paul the Third dyed at Rome the tenth of November 1549. The Death of this Pope was follow'd with divers Writings which wounded his Memory in the most bloody manner in the world But letting pass his Manners and the rest of his Government wherein we are not concerned I shall only say that the evils which our Fathers suffered in all places for the Cause of the Reformation during the fifteen years of his Papacy cannot be express'd For under the name of Hereticks or Lutherans they imprisoned them they banished them they deprived them of their Estates they massacred them they burned them and not to speak of our France England Scotland Flanders Holland Brabant Haynalt Artois Spain Savoy Lorrain Poland were as so many Theatres wherein there might be every day seen some of those Tragical Executions and where they spoke of nothing but the extirpation and rooting out of these Hereticks Julius the third succeeded Paul This man freely transferr'd his Council back to Trent to make all opposition between the Emperour and himself cease but in the Bull which he publish'd he declar'd that it belong'd to him to rule and guide the Council that he remitted it to be followed and continued in the same state in which it was when it was broken off and that he would send his Legates thither to preside in his place in case he could not come thither himself in person These clauses netled the Protestants so that seeing themselves press'd by the Emperour to submit themselves to the Council they freely declared to him that they could not do it otherwise than upon these conditions to wit That they should begin to treat of matters all anew without having regard to that which had been already done That their Divines should be received and have a deliberative voice That the Pope should not pretend to preside but that he should submit himself to it and in fine that he should absolve the Bishops from the Oath by which they were ty'd to him and that without that they could not hold that to be a free Council Notwithstanding this Declaration the Emperour made his Decree by which he ordain'd that they should submit themselves to the Council promising on his part that he would give Safe-Conduct to all the World to come thither and to propose there all that they should judge necessary for the good of the Church and salvation of Souls and that he would give order that all things should be treated and determined holily and Christianly according to the holy Scripture and the Doctrine of the Fathers and that the state of the Church should be reformed there and false Doctrines and Errours taken away Thus the Council of Trent was continued whither the Pope sent his Legate and two Nuntio's to preside there in his Name with orders to begin the first Session the first day of May 1555. which was yet nevertheless prorogued to the first of September following The Elector of Saxony and the Duke of Wirtemberg both Protestants with some Imperial Cities resolved to send their Deputies thither and made them demand of the Emperours Embassadour a Letter of Safe-conduct in the same form that the Council of Basil had given it to the Bohemians with an intermission till their Divines should be arrived This demand was not without some difficulty but the Question having been agitated at Rome they thought good to agree that they should have a Safe-conduct in general terms without delaying upon that account the decision of the chief matters and before the expediting of this Safe-conduct they had determined the principal Points touching the Eucharist to wit Transubstantiation the Real Presence the Adoration of the Host the Concomitance the Custom of the Feste Dieu the reservation of the Sacrament and the necessity of Auricular Confession before the Communion They agreed only with the Embassadour of the Emperour that they should delay the decision of these four Questions Whether it was necessary to salvation that all should receive the Sacrament in both kinds Whether he that received in one took less than he that received in both Whether the Church was in an Error when she ordained that the Priests only should receive in both Whether the Eucharist ought also to be given to little children Which was already a meer Fallacy as if the Protestants had nothing to propose but only about those four Questions When the Protestant Deputies were arrived they openly complained of the form of their Safe-conduct and they demanded one in the form of that of Basil to the Bohemians but they refused it They demanded that they might be heard in full Council but they would not and they obtained with great
Rights of that Society were so inseparably joyned to those who opposed the Reformation that that Society could not subsist without them and that separating themselves out of the motives of an ill-grounded Prejudice or in giving a Just ground to others to separate themselves from them they should have carried away all that Society with them This cannot be said For among all those persons who compose the Body of the Visible Church it is certain that there are none to how high Dignities soever they may be raised and whatsoever number of them there may be that are such Essential Parts as without which the Church cannot subsist while there are two or three remaining who may assemble together in the Name of Jesus Christ For Jesus Christ himself restrained himself to that Number When two or three of you are gathered together in my Name I will be in the midst of you Jesus Christ himself alone his Truth his Gospel his Providence and his Spirit are essential to the Church without which she can never subsist but she may without the Pope without the Court of Rome without the Council of Trent without the Bishops and without the people who follow Rome and in a word without that whole Party which refused the Reformation The Christian Society does not depend on their capricious humours nor on their Temporal Interests They are not the Soul of that Body They will be Members of it while they make profession of the True Faith or at the furthest while they do not oppose it but when they shall obstinately remain in Errors incompatible with the Communion of Jesus Christ and when they shall break by unjust Anathema's the bond of that Society We may very well say that the Body of the Visible Church is Lessened but we can never say that their withdrawing leaves the Faithful under a Dispersion The better to understand this Truth we must know That although that External Society be common to the good and the bad to the truly Faithful to Hereticks and the men of the World in a word to all those who are found to be externally mingled in the Body of the Church yet in effect the Right of that Society will not to speak properly belong to any but the truly Faithful For the wicked the Hereticks and those Worldly men who fill up their Assemblies are only associated here while they remain such in dishonouring God by the Contempt they have of his word and the Indignities they offer in receiving his Sacraments Therefore God said to the wicked in Isaiah When you come to appear-before me who has required this at your hands to tread my Courts And in the Fiftieth Psalm David assures us that God has said to the wicked What hast thou to do to Read my Laws and to take my Covenant into thy Mouth Since thou hast hated instruction and hast cast my Words behind thee It is certain then that the right of the External Society resides in the Faithful only who only are the Church of Jesus Christ his Mystical body for which he dyed the Seed which he sowed with his own hand against his harvest As to the rest they are in that Communion only by Accident and are the seed of Tares which the Enemy rising at night has thrown into the Field of the Son of God and which grows with the Wheat until the Time of the Harvest and it is also only by Accident that they are suffered there to wit because most commonly their wickedness is not known or if it be their Conversion may yet be Charitably hoped for or in fine it may fall out that in going about to pull up the Tares one must also pluck up the Wheat with it But being what they are they have not any part in the rights of that Society and of those Assemblies Therefore Jesus Christ has promised his presence to none but such as shall be assembled together in his Name And Saint Austin expresly Teaches that the Power of the Keys and that of binding and loosing was given to the Church of the Just and true Believers in opposition to the wicked to Hereticks and to the men of the World that are mixt with them And it is said of that Church only so considered in that same opposition what Jesus Christ has said in the Gospel If thy Brother sin against thee tell it to the Church and if he refuse to hear the Church let him be unto thee as a Heathen man and a Publican Which lets us see that he gave only the truly Faithful the Right to be in a Society for there those only have a Right to be in a Religious Society who have the power of binding and loosing and of hearing those private complaints to Judge concerning them But according to him the truly Faithful have only that power and it is only to those that Jesus Christ has given it They are then none but those to speak properly in whom the Right of being in an External Society and of making those Assemblies resides That being so laid down who sees not that when it falls out that the Body of that mixed Church is divided into divers parties about those important matters that respect either Faith or Worship or the General Rules of Manners all the Rights of that Christian Society remain in that Party which retains true Doctrine and Piety because it is on that side that the truly Just and Faithful place themselves There it is that the true Church of Jesus Christ is assembled in his Name to which he has promised his presence for as I have before said Error Superstition and Injustice give none a Right to be in a Society nor by consequence any to make those Assemblies But they will say if the Body of the Pastors be found in the other Party if External Splendor Multitude Extent Succession Authority of Councils are found there can any one forbear acknowledging it to be the Body of the Church There are seen amongst them the Pulpits Schools Churches Bishopricks Benefices Revenues Dignities and in a word all those advantages that mark out the Body of the Visible Church A Party that is in that condition cannot suffer that any should put its Rights in Question its Assemblies pass for lawful throughout all the World and the Assemblies only of the other Party are here Treated of who finding themselves spoiled of those advantages cannot be considered otherwise then as a Sect divided from the Body as a Branch separated from the Tree or as a Ray divided from the Sun according to the comparison of the Fathers I answer That those Divisions that fall out in a mixed Church may be of two sorts for sometimes they are founded only upon personal accusations or points of Discipline or light and less important Questions the Foundation of the Orthodox Doctrine and true Worship remaining intire in both Parties Of this sort were the Divisions of the Novatians the Donatists the Luciferians as it has
them and will shed abroad his blessing upon your cares as far as shall be necessary for his own glory and the good of the people in whose favour you labour and he himself will one day give you a reward for all those toilsome Labours Although you do not need to be excited to do good yet I take the confidence to hope that you will be some way encouraged in the Duties of your place by the reading of this Work which will more and more discover to you the Justice of it You will see therein the Conduct of our Fathers justified in regard of their Reformation and Separation from the Church of Rome and by consequence you will therein see not only the Right that we have but the Obligation and indispensable Necessity also wherein we are to live apart and divided from that Church and united among our selves in a Religious and Christian Society till it shall please God to make the Causes of that Division cease and joyn again that which men I would say what the Court of Rome and her Council of Trent have put asunder That Re-Vnion is a Happiness that wee will alwayes beg of God with the most ardent Prayers and which we will receive as one of his highest Favours if his hand should bestow it But it is also a thing which it is impossible for us to promise our selves while we shall not see the same desire of a good and holy Reformation which was almost general in our West in the daies of our Fathers to be again revived in the Church of Rome which yet they knew how to stifle with incredible skill An Authour of those Times who himself contributed as much as any other to clude the good effects of that desire has not failed to own it and which is more to own it to be just I do not deny saies he that many at the beginning were not urged by a motion of Piety earnestly to cry out against some manifest Abuses and I confess that we must attribute the chief cause of that Division that at present rends the Church to those who being puff'd up with a vain pride under a pretence of Ecclesiastical power contemned and haughtily and disdainfully rejected those who admonish'd them with reason and modesty And imediately after that same Author reasoning about the means to re-establish a holy peace between the two parties I do not believe adds he that we ought ever to hope for a firm peace in the Church if those who have been the cause of that dis-union do not begin by themselves that is to say unlesse those who have the Ecclesiastical Government in their hands relaxe a little of that great rigour and contribute something to the peace of the Church and unlesse in hearkning to the ardent prayers and exhortations of the greatest part of good men they apply themselves to reform those manifest abuses by the Rule of the holy Scriptures and of the Antient Church from which they have wandred After this manner a man engaged in the Communion and Interests of the Church of Rome spake even in the Time of the Councill of Trent He would indeed after that have us also whom he accuses to have gone too far in the other extream yield something on our side and that we should return as he speaks to our selves but it ought not to be thought strange that he being such a one as he was would lenify by that corrective the confession that he made before and it is enough for us that he has owned the force of the evil and taken notice of the true and only remedy God who holds the hearts of all in his hand kindle in them the love of the true Religion and give us all the grace to look to the Blood that has ransomed the Church and that first Spirit who consecrated it to one onely Jesus Christ her Lord and Husband For it is he only who can re-unite us without me sates he ye can do nothing and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad I pray that the same God who has given you the knowledge of his Gospell would make you persevere in it to the end that he would confirm his love and fear in the souls of my Lords your children who already so well answer the honour of their birth and the cares you have taken for their Education and lastly that he would more and more shed abroad his blessings over your person and over all your house This is that which I desire from the bottom of my heart and that you would do me the favour to believe that I am My LORD Your Lordships Most Humble and Most Obedient Servant CLAVDE The ATTESTATION WE whose names are underwritten certify that we have read the Answer of Monsieur Claude our most honoured Colleague to a Book Intituled The Prejudices c. in which we have found nothing contrary to the Sentiments of the Religion which we profess Signed at Paris the nine and twentieth of November 1672. DAILLE ' MESNARD The Reader is desired to take notice That the word Historical in the Running-Title was inserted without the Translators knowledge or Consent An HISTORICAL DEFENCE OF THE Reformation Against a Book Intituled Just Prejudices against the CALVINISTS THE FIRST PART Wherein it is shewn that our Ancestours were obliged to Examine by themselves the state of Religion and of the Church in their Days CHAP. I. General Considerations upon this Controversy The Division of this Treatise IT is not difficult to understand why those who were possest of the Government of the Western Church in the days of our Fathers and those who have since succeeded them in the Church of Rome have thought themselves so much concerned to oppose the Reformation It would oblige them to strip themselves of that Soveraign and and absolute Authority which they had Usurped and by which they had disposed the Consciences of men to their wills And it would force them to give an Account of that Publick management which they held in their hands and no person is ignorant that that is a thing of all others in the World most intolerable to those persons who have made a Secular Empire of the Government of the Church As those Interests have made them lay hold of all they could to defend themselves so they have raised a new Controversy touching the Right that our Fathers had to reform themselves They demand of us who our Reformers were from whence they came and what Call they had for so Great a Work They accuse them to have been Rebels and Schismaticks who lifted themselves up against the Authority of their Mother the Church and broke the sacred bond of the Christian Communion They have defamed their persons as much as ever they could and have laid to their charge the most wicked manners to the end they might render them odious In fine they have put forward all that they could believe capable of retaining the people in a blind
to feed the people with their Superstitions for they were such as enslav'd their Souls where true Piety would have ennobled and freed Men from that yoak which they would have imposed on us Further if any would more particularly see how far the Claims of the Roman See went they need but to read what Augustine Steuchus Library-keeper to the Pope has wrote for he ascribes to the Popes the very same Temporal rights in the same Latitude wherein the Old Roman Empire possest them and he proves from the Register of Gregory the Seventh that Spain Hungary England Denmark Russia Croatia Dalmatia Arragon Portugal Bohemia Swedland Norway Dacia did all heretofore belong to the Popes and that all that Pepin Charlemain Henry and other Emperors gave to the Church brought him not any new rights but only set him in the possession of that which the violence of the Barbarians had wrested from him 15. What could our Fathers say to those unjust Usurpations of the Popes over the whole Body of the Church over which they pretended Soveraignly to reign to have Authority to decide matters of Faith to make new Laws to dispence with the Antient Constitutions to call Councils to transfer them from one place to another to Authorise or to condemn them to Judge all the World without being liable to be judged of any in a word of making all things to depend on their power and binding all Churches to submit themselves to its decisions about matters of Faith and Rules of Discipline not only with a bare external obedience but with a real acquiescence of their Consciences By Reason of which they were accustomed as they practise it even at this present in their Bulls to place in the Front the fulness of their Power and to adjoyn this Clause That no man should dare to be so rash as to infringe or go contrary to their Decrees under penalty of incurring the indignation of God and the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul I know there were some that sometimes did very strongly oppose these pretensions of the Court of Rome that some Councils did labour to repress them and that the Church of France has appeared often enough jealous of its Liberty But besides that those oppositions never had that success which might justly have been hoped for on the part of the Popes who almost always eluded them besides that I say they did but serve to confirm the prejudices of our Fathers by dayly discovering to them more and more of the Corruption of the See of Rome 16. What could they Judge of those Dispensations that the Popes gave in the business of Marriages within prohibited degrees against the express words of the Law of God and in the Case of Vows which they themselves held to be lawful and in divers other matters even against that which they call the general State of the Church What do we think we ought to say at present said Gerson of the easiness whereby Dispensations are given by the Pope and by the Prelats to lawful Oaths to reasonnable Vows to a vast Plurality of Benefices against all the minds or as he speaks even to a universal gainsaying of Councils in priviledges and exemptions that destroy common Equity Who can reckon up all the ways whereof they serve themselves to loosen the force of Ecclesiastical Discipline and to oppose and destroy that of the Gospel Who can read without some Commotion that which Innocent the Third has wrote That by the fulness of his Power he had a lawful power to dispence with that that was beyond all Equity And that that the Glossary has subjoyned That the Pope can dispence against an Apostle against the Canons of the Apostles and against the Old Testament in the Case of Tithes It is added that he cannot dispence against the general State of the Church and yet elsewhere the Gloss on the Decree of Gratian assures us that the Pope may sometimes dispense against the General State of the Church and for that alledges the Example of Innocent the Third in the Council of Lateran 17. What could our Fathers Judge of those vast abuses that were committed in dispencing with the Ecclesiastical Functions given most frequently to persons altogether unworthy and uncapable and sometimes to Children to the great scandal of Christianity which complained of it highly a long time ago They prefer said St. Bernard little School-boys and young Children to Church Dignities because of the Nobility of their Birth So that you may see those that are just got from under the Ferula go to command Priests who were yet more fit to escape the Rod then to be employ'd in Government for they are far more sensible of the pleasure of being freed from their Masters then of that of becoming Masters themselves Those are their first thoughts but afterwards growing more bold they very soon learn the Art of appropriating the Altars to themselves and of emptying the purses of those that are under them without going to any other School then that of their Ambition and their Covetousness How few may one find now a days of those who are raised to the Episcopal Grandure said Nicholas de Clemangis who have either read or know how to read the Holy Scripture otherwise then by first beginning to read They have never touched any other part of the Holy Bible then the Cover although in their Installment they swear that they know it all 18. What could our Fathers say to that Simony which was every where openly exercised in the Church of Rome in all things The Court of Rome says Aeneas Sylvius gives nothing without money It sells the very Imposition of hands and the gifts of the Holy Ghost and will give pardon of Sins to none but such who will part with their Money The Church that Jesus Christ has chosen for his Spouse without spot and blemish says Nicholas de Clemangis is in these days a Warehouse of Ambition and Business of Theft and Rapine The Sacraments and all Orders even to that of the Priests are exposed to Sale For Money they bestow Favours Dispensations Licences Offices Benefices They sell pardons of sins Masses and the very Administration of our Lords Body If any one have a mind to a Bishoprick he needs but to get himself furnished with Money yet not a little Sum but a great one must purchase such a great Title He needs but to empty his Purse to obtain the Dignity that he seeks but he may soon after fill it again with advantage by more ways then one If any one desire to be made a Prebendary or a Priest of any Church or to have any other charge it matters not whether his merits or his Life or his Manners be known but it is very requisite it should be known how much Money he has For according as he has that he must have his hopes succeed Such were the Complaints that honest men made in those days and
condemn them to be burnt alive and to Cause that Sentence of their Condemnation to be executed For so that Council violated the publick Faith by a most Solemn and resplendent Action But it was not contented with that unless it did at the same time add a Decree that it expresly made on that Subject bearing this with it that all Letters of safe Conduct granted to Hereticks by any Emperors Kings or Princes ought not to hinder the Judges to whom it should appertain to take Cognisance of their Crimes whether they were Lay-men or Church-men from proceeding against them and punishing them with the greatest severity Aeneas Sylvius relates that that sentence through the force of which they were exposed to the Fire was given in Full Council Lata est says he in concessu Patrum adversus contumaces sententia CREMANDOS esse qui Doctrinam Ecclesiae respuerent prior igitur Joannes combustus est Hieronimus diu postea in vinculis habitus cum resipiscere nollet pari supplicio affectus He adds that those two men suffered that Torment with and admirable Fortitude singing of Hymns in the midst of the Flames This was in that time very astonishing to see a Council gathered in a Body wholly intent upon the causing the death of two Christians since it is certain amongst Christians that the Church has no power over the Temporal Lives of men But that Scandal was yet made greater by the way they carried it on for to come to that they made no difficulty of violating all that was the most sacred and inviolable in humane Society I would say the publick Faith given by the Authentick Authority of the Soveraign Magistrate and given with all the appearances of their own consents as one may collect from the Words of Aeneas Sylvius For he says as that Council was labouring in the affairs of Bohemia Placuit tandem Sigismundo Imperatore suadente Joannem Hieronymuus ad Synodum vocari They thought good through the Entreaties of the Emperor Sigismond that John and Jerome should be called to the Council They then made no scruple of violating that Faith to which they had consented and not only to break it by that Action and in that Practise but framed at the same time a Decree to authorise that breach of Faith and made it a lawful Rule for Posterity to go by Who can deny that our Fathers had not here a just cause to be shaken at that management of affairs which had violently born down all that wise and moderate men since have conceived and that they had not reason to joyn that to all those other things I have mentioned as a most powerful prejudice against a Religion that maintain'd it self by such strange proceedings 11. They might have added also to the rest methinks the establishment of Inquisitions and usage of Croisado's against those who were pretended to be Hereticks For it is most true that such a way of maintaining Religion by Torments and Armies raised by the Clergy as the Popes had used some ages since against the Waldenses the Albigenses the Wicklifists and the Hussites was not at all proper to make it be beloved or to instil into mens minds an extream good opinion of it There where they would introduce the Faith by force they shut up peoples hearts instead of gaining them That course is good no farther then for Temporal Monarchies or Mundane Religions where men are not much concerned whether they reign over the Spirits of men provided they reign over their Bodies But that is not at all the way that Jesus Christ uses who sets up his throne in their Consciences and who knows no other conquests but those which the sword that comes from his mouth gains 12. But besides those cruel ways which they made use of for the upholding their Religion they employed yet others as well as those which tho' they were not so severe did not fail of being as odious and of raising as strong suspitions against that Religion it self I might rank in this place those false Miracles which they invented every day to gain credit to some Doctrines and Devotions which of themselves had no foundation at all in the word of God For every own knows how much these sort of Fables were in use in the days of our Fathers and some Ages before with what care they spread them among the people in Preaching them up with Zeal and defending them with heat and in stuffing their Legends with them and other Books of that nature But every own knows likewise that the greatest part of them were so grosly invented that a very mean understanding could easily detect their falsness We might joyn with those false Miracles those stories of Visions or Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin or some other Saint to the Religious men or women which were so frequent that one can find nothing else in the Books of the Monks of those Ages We might Place here also those so often devised Tales of the returns of Souls out of Purgatory of their Apparitions their Complaints and pitiful Groans of their requests to be eased of their pains by their Masses and Foundations and of the outcries and terrible din that they made upon Mens least neglect to perform what they beg'd of them I do not now examine whether those Doctrines which gave ground to those pretended Miracles to those Visions and Apparitions were Evangelical or not it is enough for me to note that that falseness that appear'd in the greatest part of those gross Inventions which were so often publickly detected rendred that Religion justly suspected not only in respect of those Opinions and Devotions which they pretended to authorise by those frauds but also in general as to all that which came under the name of Traditions 13. Might we not say the same thing of so many forged and supposititious Books the making and use of which had been so frequent in the Ages that preceeded the Reformation not to meddle with what is reported of the Monks that they did not scruple to serve themselves by forged Deeds to enrich their Convents and gain Priviledges to them Without touching upon that there are few Persons that are ignorant of what Character the Decretal Epistles of the Antient Popes are collected under the name of one Isidore Mercator whereof the Court of Rome has made so advantagious a use for the establishing of its Authority and of the pretended donation of Constantine by which that Emperour is said to have given away the Roman Empire and all its rights to the Pope Every own knows also how they had forg'd whole Books and Treatises under the most Antient and Venerable names as the Epistle of the Blessed Virgin to Saint Ignatius the Works of Dionysius the Areopagite the Epistles of Saint Martial the Acts of the Passion of Saint Andrew by the Priests of Achaia the Liturgies of Saint James Saint Peter and of Saint Mark and divers others of the same nature
follows not only that God had the same concern in the preservation of the purity of that Church as of that of the Latin Church but that he had yet a far greater For above this that Church had external help for the Conversation of its purity far greater than the Latin Church ever had For it was shut up in one only people and in one Country only It had one Language only one only Tabernacle one only Temple but one civil Government but one only Political Law and but one King where the Western Church had all those apart in many places And yet notwithstanding all that it could not be kept from Corruptions not only at one but divers times not only in matters of small Consequence but after a strange manner by a heap of depraved Traditions by false glosses on the Law by open Idolatries and by a multitude of other things wherewith their Prophets reproached them Had they not then very great reason to think that the Latin Church which had no peculiar promises that it should be kept from Corruption in being distinguisht from that of Israel was not more happy then that in the Conservation of its Purity 4. To this example of the Church of Israel our Fathers adjoyn'd that of the Greek and other Eastern Churches which God had at first honour'd with Christianity as well as the Latin and that the times had nevertheless so dissigur'd them that they did not any farther appear to be what they were heretofore Indeed into what errours and superstitions did not those Churches fall And in how many points does not the Church of Rome find it self to differ at this day from them Some of them observe Circumcision with Baptism others keep up the sacrificing of living creatures after the manner of the Jews some solemnly every Year Baptize their Rivers and their Horses others believe that the smoke of Incense takes away their sins others hold that the Prayers of the Faithful deliver from the pains of Damnation those Souls that are then in Hell others give Pass-ports in due Form to the dying to carry them to Paradise and a thousand other such-like impertinencies that are found to be establisht among those People Why might it not be possible that the Latin Church should have degenerated as well as those Churches Is it that their Christianity was from the beginning different from that of the Latin's or is it because the Latin Church had some peculiar priviledges beyond all others No certainly their Vocation was equal on one part and on the other and the nature of things being so if those Nations had corrupted themselves those of Rome might corrupt themselves as well as they 5. Our Fathers who were not ignorant of those Examples could not but represent all to themselves also in my judgment the times past wherein errours and corruption had visibly prevail'd over the Truth even then when those very Churches of the East and West were joyn'd together in one Body They knew that that had past in the Council of Antioch in favour of the Macedonians in the Councils of Sirmium of Milan of Ariminum at Selucia and at Constantinople in favour of the Arrians and in a Council at Ephesus in favour of the Eutychians without thinking of that which they said of those two Councils held at Constantinople in favour of the Iconoclastes or abolishers of Images the one under the Emperour Leo Isaurious the other under Constantine Copronimus That very thing was an evident token to them that the Latin Church might be very likely in their times fallen into other corruptions and that errour had triumpht over truth For it was not at all impossible that that which had hapned frequently in respect of some errours might not yet with greater success and longer duration happen in respect of other errours 6. Moreover They observed that Councils of a great name among the Latins as those of Constance and Basil had been rejected and opposed by other Councils and that in the most weighty points of Religion to wit in the Case of the Supreme Authority that ought to govern the Church upon Earth For some rais'd the Authority of the Councils above that of the Pope and others would have it that the Popes should have an absolute and an independent and perfectly Monarchical Rule over the Church what could our Fathers conclude from so manifest a contest if not that it had a vast confusion in it and that it was exceeding necessary to the quiet setling of their Minds and Consciences to enter on an examination of that which those men taught in the business of Religion 7. Our Fathers were confirmed in that design when they set before their eyes those obscure Ages through which the Latin Church had past For who knows not what the ninth tenth and eleventh Centuries were not to speak of those that followed them As for the ninth Baronius is forc't to conclude the History of it with saying That it was an Age of affliction to the Church in general and chiefly to the Church of Rome as well by reason of the complaints it had against the Princes of the West and East and the Schism of Photius as by reason of intestine and implacable Wars which had began then to be formed within the very Bosom of that Church That this Age was the most deplorable and dismal above all the rest because those who ought to have been watchful in the Government of the Church not only slept profoundly but the very same Persons laboured all they could intirely to drown the Apostolick-Ship For the Tenth as there are very few Persons but will acknowledge that it was buried in darkness more gross then that of Aegypt so it will be needless here to produce the proofs The eleventh was scarce happier and Baronius begins the History of it with a remark of so universal a Corruption of manners cheifly among the Church-men that it had made way says he for the common beleif of the near approach of Antichrist and of the end of the world How could it be possible that during such gloomy times Religion Faith and Worship should be preserved without any alteration Saint Paul has joyn'd together Faith and a good Conscience as two things that mutually sustain one another and has taken notice that those who cast off a good Conscience make Shipwrack of the Faith In effect saith Saint Chrysostome then when men lead corrupted Lives it is impossible they should keep themselves from falling into perverse Doctrines 8. To these considerations we might joyn that of the two sorts of Philosophies which successively had reign'd in the Church to wit that of Plato and the other of Aristotle to whose principles they had strove to accomodate the Christian Religion For it is scarce to be conceiv'd but that mixture of Platonic and Peripatetic Opinions with the Doctrines of Jesus Christ should have defaced the Faith and quite alter'd his true Worship It was for this
did not forbear as yet to abide with the rest in the same Communion And it was certainly from thence that as soon as our first Reformers had began to speak openly against such kind of things their voice was heard and their words receiv'd with the applauses of and being follow'd by a great part of Europe For that was from no other reason but because they found all matters ordered so readily and that for a long time they had vehemently breathed after Reformation There is then nothing more ridiculous then when they would send us back to an Infallibility which could never be found there and of which they can give us no marks or sure characters that may be had there Besides which if the Church is not Infallible but only in those things that are generally believed and approved of without all disputes and if it may err in other matters none can blame our Fathers for having entred on an examination of them since it had formal oppositions to one part of the Church in a great many points as in the opposition of the Berengarians the Waldenses the Albigenses the Wicklefists and the Hussites They will say that these were such Hereticks as the Church had condemned But this answer will be but a meer Fallacy For if then when the Church was divided into two Parties and that which was the weaker should have been condemn'd by the stronger Part they would treat all those as Hereticks who should have been condemn'd to elude under that pretence the weight of their opposition and that they might still attribute Infallibility to the stronger Party in respect of those very things that are contested this is but to deceive our selves to say at the same time That the Church is not Infallible but only in regard of those things that all generally hold without Controversie They ought to change their Principle and to say the same of it that they affirm in the case of that Contestation That their Infallibility follows the stronger side and that those who oppress the other by their Intrigues by their Authority by the force of their Arms or otherwise are the truly Infallible since the opposition of the others ought not to be looked on but as the Insurrection of Hereticks and not as just opposition It will always depend on the most powerful to make themselves Infallible by beating down all that oppose themselves for there will need no more for that purpose than to condemn them and they are presently Hereticks excluded from all right in their oppositions either this is that which I call a Fallacy or there never was any such thing in the world 3. But if they will indeed change their Principle and say that that Infallibility is to be placed in the greater number in the Ruling party any one may convince them of the contrary by the example of the Arrians who had made themselves Masters of the Church under the Successors of Constantine The greater part in the Council were for them the Pulpits were for them the people followed them as they were lead either by their own humours or by Constraint and Force they Persecuted the Orthodox which evidently shews the falsness of this Proposition That the greater number or that side that finds it self the stronger can never err Jesus Christ had never had any Defenders if in the days of his flesh all had been persuaded of the Truth of this Maxim 4. This Experience of the Arrians makes it appear more evidently that Infallibility could not be attributed to that which they call the Church representative that is to say to the whole Body of Pastors or as they speak to all the Clergy For it is but too true that the whole Body of Pastors assembled in a very great number at the Council of Ariminum gave way to the Arrian Infidelity by rejecting the word of Consubstantial which signified that the Son of God was of the same Essence with his Father and declared only That he was like to the Father and that he was not a creature as other creatures were which supposed that he was a creature altho different from others They will say that it was not of their own motion that these Bishops made that Arrian Confession but that they were forced to it by the Emperours Ministers That moreover they were deceived by the Arrians not taking notice that that clause that the Son was not a Creature as other Creatures made him always a Creature and in fine that they rejected the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because they did not throughly understand it But all that is not of any advantage to their Cause for if the whole Body of Pastors assembled in Council to decide matters of Faith did determine of Heresie either out of weakness or through surprise or ignorance since they determine of it in effect what does it signifie in what manner or in what respect they determined it Could they call those men Infallible who were capable of making a Wicked and Infidel Confession in an Article so Fundamental as that of the Eternity of the Person of the Son of God is in such a manner and by such Principles as that came to pass We can never commit any faults but that they must have some cause but what cause soever they have our faults are always faults and certain Arguments that we are not Infallible 5. There are some of them that say that Councils are not Infallible but when they are approved by the Popes But that neither has any solid ground for how can an approbation which ordinarily passes after the separation of a Council possibly confer any Infallibility on it has that any Retroactive vertue and can that change the state of a thing already past They will say that the Pope does not confer any Infallibility on it but only acknowledges it and makes it to be acknowledged by others and that his approbation is as the Seal and Impression that denotes that such a Council ought to be held Infallible But if the Pope himself is not Infallible as the sounder part of the Gallican Church holds that he is not what certainty can his approbation give us May he not err in approving those things which he ought not to approve and in taking for Infallible a Council which was really deceived And let not any one say that I produce the opinion of the Gallican Church to the prejudice of all the others for after what manner soever it be it seems to me that one may very well affirm without offending any person that it is not an Article of the Faith of the Church of Rome to believe that the Pope must needs be Infallible for otherwise the Gallican Church would be guilty of Heresie And from that only it follows that one could have no such assurance as one ought to have to settle the Mind and Conscience in quiet if it were possible for him to err in approving a Council and by Consequence his approbation
could not be a certain character of the Infallibility of that Council But why do we use Arguments in a matter in which experience has sufficiently instructed us The Fifth Council assembled at Constantinople on occasion of three Books published the one of Ibas Bishop of Edessa the other of Theodorus of Mopsuesta and the other of Theodoret Bishop of Cyrus was it not held in spight of all the oppositions of Pope Vigilius did not that Council condemn those Writings as Heretical against the express prohibitions that Vigilius had made by a publick Decree to Condemn them and yet notwithstanding was not that very Council in the end approved by the Successours of Vigilius and in fine received throughout all the Church for a True and Holy Oecumenical Council Those Approbations therefore are only a juggle which wholly depend on the capricious humours of the Popes on their different Interests on their good or ill humours One Pope disapproves of a Council and makes it void to advance all that he does by that the Council is remote enough from Infallibility and ought not to be held for Infallible another Pope comes and receives and approves of it and behold on a sudden that Council changes its condition and becomes Infallible Besides that did not Pope Liberius approve an Arian Council held at Sirmium in subscribing an Heretical Confession that had been drawn up and which Saint Hilary calls the Arian perfidiousness the Heresie sprung from Sirmium for which he pronounced an Anathema against Liberius For what else was that Subscription in Consequence of which Liberius embraced the Communion of the Arians but a Ratification and real Approbation of the Act of an Erroneous Council and it signifies nothing to say That Liberius was in Exile when he committed that Error for without alledging here what he himself declared to the Eastern Arian Bishops That he was in Peace and Unanimity with them and all their Provinces in good earnest and that he had received that Catholick Faith with all his heart that he had never in the least contradicted it that he had readily given his consent that he followed and held it his Exile and Concern to get away from them does not hinder but that it should be true That he did approve an Infidel Confession nor by Consequence letting us see that it might very well happen That the Popes did Authorize the Acts of wicked Councils and that it ought not to be pretended that their Approbation makes Councils Infallible nor that it has any certain ground for declaring them to be such 6. That Example of Liberius encounters also all those who ascribe that Infallibility to the Popes for behold one in whom by the Testimony of St. Hilary and St. Jerom that Priviledge had no effect But as that Opinion is not generally received in this Kingdom and we need not to fear objections from any here so it is needless to refute them I shall only say that that Dispute that is in the Church of Rome about those to whom this Infallibility belongs whether to the Pope only or a Council only or to a Council approved by the Pope or to the Pope as the Head of the Council lets us see that that pretence in general has no ground for if in truth the Latine Church had that Priviledge it would never be so uncertain as they have made it but it would have been known a little more clearly where it resided However it be it plainly appears that the Latine Church does not pretend to it as a Law of Nature for she is composed of no different blood from the rest of men nor as a right joyned to the profession of Christianity nor as a meer quality of a Church for in that case the Greek and other Churches would have the same advantage but that she pretends to it as a peculiar priviledge whereby they were distinguished from other Churches as the Greek and Armenian c. It appears that they would not set this Prerogative before us as a first Principle which is evident of it self without needing any proof for in fine it is not so clear that the Latin Church should be Infallible as it is that one and one make two and that the whole is greater than any of its parts It is then certainly but very reasonable to demand that they would give us the proofs and grounds of so important a right I mean other proofs than those that are commonly taken from the same Authority of that Church For it will not be enough to confirm that Infallibility for her only to say I am so every Church may say the same and yet not be believed They ought to produce proofs and proofs that come from Heaven since there is none besides God that can confer so great a Right and they ought to shew them to us to the end we may judge of them and weigh their Cogency and Truth That being so I affirm that our Fathers were bound to use all sorts of Rational methods to examine that Question whether the Church of Rome was Infallible or no And to look to both sides to settle themselves in a good Judgment This is that which in my opinion none will contest But from thence these things will clearly follow 1. That our Fathers had right to examine one of the Tenets of the Latin Church which is that of her Infallibility 2. That they had right to judge of it according to the Nature of those proofs which presented themselves for or against it 3. That they might lawfully reject it as false if in their examination of it it appeared to be false 4. That it is neither absurd nor rash to maintain that every one has right to examine a Tenet of the Church and to judge of it 5. That all those General Objections which they have hitherto made against that Truth are false and frivolous such as these that if one give All that Liberty of examining every one may make a Religion of his own That there is no other way to keep men in the Unity of the Faith That he who examines makes himself a Judg above the Church That it is the ready way to bring in a private Spirit and other such like things all which are refuted by that one Example in the Point of Infallibility 6. That if it is no ways absurd that every one should have right to examine a Tenet of the Church that cannot be proved otherwise than by the Scriptures it is not also absurd to say that that right of searching out the true sence of Scripture belongs to every Christian 7. That it is not absurd to say that a Believer is Master of his own Faith by depending only upon God and independant on men 8. That if every Christian has right to examine one of the chief Articles of Religion it is no ways inconvenient to say that he has right to examine all for there is not less danger nor less
Saint Paul calls her the Body of Jesus Christ But the Body of Jesus Christ is Eternal Jesus Christ promises to be with his even unto the end of the World and says that the Comforter shall abide with them for ever and that the Gates of Hell shall never prevail against his Church But it is no need of heaping up these Proofs of a thing which was never contested God will always keep a Church upon Earth that is to say he will always have a number of true Believers whom he will guide by his Word and by his Spirit and they are those that are betroth'd to him for ever and the Mystical Body of his Son to whom he will grant his gratious presence for ever and an assured Victory against the Gates of Hell There is nothing disputed in that point Our business is only to enquire whether all that Body composed of the good and the wicked that Assembly in which the worldly men and Hypocrites are mixt with the truly Faithful and that which they call the Visible Church can never fall into errour after what manner soever it be Whether it is not possible for that party of the men of the World which may be sometimes the stronger to corrupt the publick Ministry and for the same in respect of some errours and superstitions less Fundamental to infect the Good and to draw them tho' not so far from the Truth as to make them wholly lose the true Form of Piety and Communion with God for if that might happen the Church would be brought to nothing yet after such a manner as that their Faith and their Religion could not be said to be altogether pure But this experience justifies For in the Corruptions of the Church of Isral and in those times wherein they had introduc't the Worship of false Gods into the publick Ministry God had reserv'd seven thousand men who had not bowed their knees to Baal and that which is most considerable is that that very Religion of those seven thousand was not pure for they liv'd in that Schism that Jeroboam made and no more went to render that Worship to God which they were bound to pay at Jerusalem but to Bethel It will signify nothing to them to say that the Church then subsisted in the Tribe of Judah for besides that that would not hinder any from seeing clearly by that example of those seven thousand that God can when he pleases preserve his own in a corrupted Communion and that yet the far greater number might fall into errour and that the publick Ministry might be contaminated it will not follow notwithsanding that that Church was wholly extinct which is only that which we say Besides that I say it is yet manifest that those two Churches that of Israel and that of Judah were often found to depart both together sometimes from the true Worship of God as it appears from that which Jeremiah says That God having given a Bill of Divorce to that of Israel for her Idolatries Judah her Sister feared not but that she also had turned aside from his true Worship It appears also by that which Ezekiel said that Samaria had not committed half the sins of Judah who had justifi'd her Sister in multiplying her Abominations The same History of the Kings of Israel and Judah teaches us concerning Joram the Son of Ahab King of Israel that he clave to the sins of Jeroboam by which he had made Israel to sin and that at the same time Joram the Son of Jehoshaphat and his Son Ahaziah Reigned in Judah and walked after the ways of the Kings of Israel in doing that which displeased the Lord. But without going so far is it not true that when Jesus Christ came into the World he did not find a pure Church upon Earth The Schismatical Samaritans had so confused a Religion that Jesus Christ did not scruple to say that Salvation was of the Jews The Jews on their side had defac'd their Religion by a thousand superstitions and by the false Doctrine of the Pharisees and in fine they had crucifi'd the Lord of Life the only Messoas they expected Notwithstanding which we ought not to believe that the Church was perished from the Earth and that God did not preserve his Children in the midst of those Confusions The same thing happened then when the Arrians had made themselves Masters of the Ministry of the Church and when under the Emperour Theodosius the younger the Eutichians prevailed in the second Council of Ephesus For it would be a very absurd thing to imagine that during the time of the Triumph of those Hereticks there were no more any true Believers in those Churches all whose Pulpits they had fill'd and none in all that Communion but those who obeyed the erronious Councils of Milan of Ariminum and of Ephesus At this very day the most zealous among those of the Church of Rome acknowledge that God saves many persons who live under the Schismatical Ministry of the Greeks and the Muscovites although besides that Schism they accuse them of holding a multitude of errours and superstitions For so Possevin sets it down in one of his Relations of Muscovy We ought not then to make the subsistance of the Church to depend absolutely on that Infallibility whereof we dispute We ought yet far less to abuse the promises of God by pretending under that pretext that they can never do that that is ill The true use of the promises is to encourage us to our Duty and in stead of making us presumptious they ought on the contrary to humble us and to shew us the horrour of our sins when it is contrary to that promise For so the Scripture makes use of it in the second Book of the Kings upon the subject of the Idolatries of Manasseh King of Judah for after having reckoned them over particularly it adds that he set up a graven Image of the Grove that he had made in the House of which the Lord had said to David and to Solomon his Son In this House and in Jerusalem which I have chosen out of all the Tribes of Israel will I put my Name for ever See there the promise employed to its right use not to defend Manasseh in what he had done under a pretence that God had promised that his Name should never depart from the Temple which is the Language they speak in these days but to condemn Manasseh of that that as much as it lay in his power he had nullified that promise of God And so also it is that good men ought to speak to the Corrupters of Religion God has promised us that he would betroth his Church to himself for ever and you have laboured to break off that happy Marriage Jesus Christ has promised us that he will be always with us even unto the end of the world and you have endeavoured to deprive us of his presence He has promised us that his Holy
Spirit shall be always with us and you have greived and drove him away 4. If the Church might err say they yet farther God would then be unjust in commanding us to keep our selves under the Guidance and the Ministry of the Church for that would not be an assured means of obtaining salvation All men know says Monsieur the Cardinal of Richelieu that God could not with any justice bind his creatures to incline to an end without giving them means to come to that end The Church cannot err since if she did err we should not have any means to come to everlasting salvation where God would have us come under the conduct of the Church But the Answer is not difficult God would that we should be saved under the Conduct of the Church that is to say of the Pastors of it not by giving a blind obedience to all that they tell us but by a wise discerning of that which is good from that which is bad and that we may make that discernment he has given us his word to which he will have usbring all that the Pastors teach to examine their Doctrine according to that Rule This is the assured means that he has left us for that If that means is not so agreeable to the men of the world who have other business to mind and wont break their brains with the Reading of the Word of God God will tell them one day that their greatest business was to serve him and to save themselves and that if they have not searched out the true means they ought only to accuse their own neglect and their too great grasping of the things of this world If they yet urge that that means is neither easie nor proper for the meaner sort we need but compare it with that of the pretended Infallibility of the Church and we shall quickly see that this last is infinitely more difficult and far less proper for the simple than the other For without taking notice of the impossibility that there is for them to be assured of this Principle that the Latin Church is Infallible supposing at the same time that it was where should any Woman or Tradesman go to seek that Infallibility to be persuaded that that which they believe and that which they practise is the true Belief and the true Worship of the Church Will they go to seek it in the Practises and Customs of the People But they all agree that the people may fall into those abuses and Superstitions that the Church does not at all approve of Will they look for it then from the voice of their Curate or from that of their Bishop But their Curate and their Bishop may be mistaken shall it be then from the Words of the Pope pronounc'd ex Cathedra But that poor Tradesman and that Woman can neither know where to find the Pope nor what they mean by ex Cathedra shall it be then from the Universal consent of the Church and her common customs But who shall tell them what that Universal Consent is Must those poor people know what they generally hold and prectise in France in Germany in Spain in Italy or that which they generally teach in the Schools It is then necessary for them to learn Greek and Latine But when they shall have learnt that how can they understand the true sence of the Councils since that without going any further the greatest part of the Canons of that of Trent are conceived in general and Ambiguous Terms which may be explained in divers sences and which very thing some say was done with design for the carrying on the different Opinions of the Schools Moreover those general and ambiguous terms somtimes leave the mind undetermined and the Conscience in suspence in matters of practice where they make it necessary to do a thing without shewing them after what manner they should do it For Example the Council of Trent decides That one ought to give to Images that Worship that is due to them this is the Infallible Voice of the Church which binds a man to give some Worship to Images which if he does not he fails in doing his Duty But what that Worship is the Council says nothing to Is it a Negative or a Positive Worship Is it that the same that they give to those they represent should be communicated to the Image as well as the Original or is it meant only of such Relative Worship that the Image should have no part of it or if has any part what is it Is it simply a customary Worship which consists in making use of those representations to excite their Piety by the remembrance of things past To tell that the Council says nothing It says indeed that the Worship which they give to Images relates to those they represent but this is not to define of what nature that Worship is for of what kind soever it is one may always say it has reference to the Original It says indeed yet further that when any Kiss their Images when they Bow to them and Kneel before them they adore Jesus Christ and the Saints but those terms denote only an external Worship without determining any thing of a more internal one and when it should determine of an internal that Council says not a word whether the Image has any part or what part it has Notwithstanding which they ought necessarily to determine it to some internal Worship for of that they treat How shall any man know whether that side which he takes in this matter be good or bad since the voice of the Church has abandoned him and after it has as it were set him in the midst of four ways and commanded him to march on never shews the way that he ought to follow but leaves him in the necessity of placing his Devotion at all adventure They will say that this is to urge things too far as to what relates to Women and Tradesmen For those persons know not what use to make of the Infallibility of the Church but only for certain General Articles which they cannot doubt of that the Church Teaches But not to insist here that those General Articles are themselves subject to form different meanings in the minds of the more simple and that they ought to make their choice with some certainty I say that the Worshiping of Images and other such like things is more used by such sort of persons than others and that many of those Devotions are proper to them about which they cannot have any certainty nor by Consequence practise them with any Faith I place in this Rank the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin which they solenmly celebrate for who can give them any certainty in that point Yet nevertheless it is a piece of Worship it is a matter of Practice or Duty whereof they cannot acquit themselves of a good Conscience without being assured of that which they do 5. In sine
Glory and the Covenants and the giving of the Law and the service of God and the Promises of whom were the Fathers and who had the Oracles of God committed unto them and in whose bosom Christ according to the flesh was born If that Maxim of the Author of Prejudices were good it must necessarily have been good for that Church which had condemned Jesus Christ his Person his Call his Miracles his Doctrine and what right then had his Disciples to hear and follow him We have seen them from Reason and from the Testimony of a very considerable person of our Age and to whom one of the greatest Kings has given the honour of committing the concerns of his Conscience to him that if that Maxim had place that we ought entirely to refer our selves to the Authority of the Church we could not any more regard those Miracles when they were opposite to that Authority Let them tell us then what right the Disciples had to follow Jesus Christ by what right did the first Converts and those who were afterwards Converted by others embrace the Gospel And if they did it without any right and against their duty into what Labyrinths we cast you What would become of the Christian Church what would become of you your selves You form prejudices against us drawn from the faults that have say you appeared in the persons of our first Reformers You tell us of a pretended precipitancy by which the Magistrates of Zurich Reformed themselves you conclude from thence without entring upon the points in dispute that we ought to renounce the Reformation of our Fathers Answer then your selves to the Prejudices that according to your Maxim the Jews may form against the first Disciples of Jesus Christ and to the Consequence that they may draw from thence that without entring any further into a Discussing of the Points of that Religion without examining either the Miracles or the Antient Prophecies or the success of the Preaching of the Gospel or all the other things that we could alledge in our favour we ought to renounce our Christianity You your selves Authorise their Principle by one that is altogether like it which you lay down and which you know not how to make use of against them without overthrowing your selves in a word you draw the same Consequence from it with them shew us then by what secret Art both you and we may get out of that Abyss whereinto you have plunged us If your Fathers say you have Reformed themselves with an ill design you ought without farther examination to renounce their Reformation If the chief Authors of your Religion a Jew will say have adhered to Jesus with an ill design against the obligation which they had to cleave to the Church you ought to renounce their Christianity Answer if you can to those Arguments and set our Consciences in quiet As for us indeed we are not in pain for we know that that Principle which you urge to those unbelievers is false There is not any person who has not right to examine the points of that Religion and to discern by himself the true from the false the good from the bad that which is from God from that which which from men The Authority of the Church never goes so far as to hinder us with any justice from it and so there is nothing to reproach the first Christians 9. But we ought not to give over these reflections without making one upon the state of the Church in the times of the Councils of Sirmium of Milan and of Ariminum whereof I have spoken before There is no person who knows not that the Arrians were then Masters of the Ecclesiastical Ministry which they called the Catholick Church treating the Orthodox as Hereticks and Disturbers of its Peace deposing them and sending them into banishment The Poyson of the Arrians says Vincentius Lirinensis had not only infected one part but almost all the world and almost all the Latin Bishops some by force others by simplicity giving themselves over to be deceived found themselves engaged in the darkness of Error We are in that condition said Phaebadius that if we would be called Catholicks it is necessary that we embrace Heresie and yet nevertheless if we do not reject Heresie we cannot be truly Catholicks God did yet keep to himself notwithstanding some Bishops few in number but great in Courage and that small remnant in the end serv'd for a spark to rekindle the Fire of the Faith in the Church Apply then to them that Maxim which we have before opposed and weigh those Consequences that may be drawn from it against those and against the Faithful who Heard them and Read their Writings The least is that they were Schismaticks and Corruptors of the people who after having themselves broken off that obedience which they owed to the Church sollicited others to do the like They might have very well urged that they had the Scriptures on their side that they had the Council of Nice for them but they would have answered them That it was no longer time to dispute that they ought to submit themselves to and acquiesce in the definitions of the Church Since it was the duty of the Faithful to strip themselves of their own Conduct to rest upon that of the Church Nevertheless they did not fail generously to maintain the Truth to dispute and write for it to address themselves not only to the Bishops but to the people and to defend it against that specious name of a Church which they set before them and the words of Saint Hilary upon this subject are worthy of a particular consideration The Church says he terrified men by Banishments and by Prisons and constrained them to believe what she tells them she that her self had never been believed but by the Exile and Prisons which she suffered She which had been only Consecrated by the Persecution of men Bene a dignatione Communicantium She drives away the Priests forgetting that by the Banishment of her Priests she increased She boasts that she is beloved by the world but she could not belong to Jesus Christ unless the world hated her Haec de comparatione traditae nobis olim Ecclesiae nunc quam de perditae res ipsa que in oculis omnium est at que ore clamavit Can any one be rash enough to maintain that he was bound then to refer himself to the Authority of that Church to see with its Eyes to tread in its Steps and to rest himself upon its Conduct Will any say that that handful of good men who have since re-established Christianity was nothing else but a company of Rebels and of presumptuous minds Will they charge their Writing and their Letters to the people with Forgeries and Subornations Will they justifie their being Deposed their Banishments the Persecutions which they so constantly suffered Will they say that the Faithful that heard them were rash and
of their Alms and he may be seen far oftner in the field with the Souldiers then in his Cloister He ought to be the Father and the Instructer of his Brethren but he is their Seducer and their Tyrant For while he enjoys himself and lives in Pomp and Delights those poor miserable Religious pass away all their days in murmurings and afflictions That Author describes in the same Stile the Lives of the Canons Monks and other Ecclesiasticks and that which he has said does not leave us any more room to doubt that there was in the Church in those days as great and as general a disorder as can be conceived He does not spare the Court of Rome but on the contrary he sets forth livelily enough their excess even to say that that Court is the Seat of the Beast that is to say the Church of the wicked that is the Kingdom of darkness That it is a loathsome pit that devours Riches and is filled by Covetousness That the Law is far from the Priest the Visions of the Prophet and the Councel of the old men That the heads of the Church serve themselves by Simony and Ambition and that in a word the sins of those people are such that they cannot be either concealed or denyed since Rome is become a Gulph of Crimes Where the Pope ought to cry with Jesus Christ Come and you shall find rest for your Souls he cries Come and see me in a far greater Pomp and Pride then ever Solomon was in come to my Court empty your purses there and you shall find destruction for your Souls The disorder of that Court and that of the whole Clergy of those times was a thing so little to be contested that Adrian the sixth did not scruple to acknowledge it in the Memoirs that he gave his Nuntio for the Diet of Nuremberg and which Raynaldus Relates For he gave him an express charge to confess That the Troubles of Germany about the matters of Religion had fallen out by Reason of the sins of Men and particularly of the Priests and Prelats of the Church That the Scripture shewed that the sins of the people came from those of their Priests for which Reason it was as Chrysostome says that when our Saviour would heal Jerusalem he entered first into the Temple to correct the sins of the Priests doing like a wise Physitian who goes to the root of the evil That for many years past abominable things had been committed in the holy See that spiritual things had been abused through the excess of its Injunctions and that all things had been perverted there That the evil had spread it self from the Head to the Members from the Popes to the Inferiour Prelats and that as many as they all were that is to say Prelats and Ecclesiasticks they were come to that pass that for a long Time there had not been any that were good no not so much as one We could produce a multitude of other such Testimonies if we did not hope that unbyass'd persons would agree upon it as not long since an Author in these Times has done in a Book Intituled Motives to a Re-union to the Catholick Church The cause of the Separation says he was the open abuse of Indulgences and the Ignorance Covetousness and the Scandalous lives of the Church-men The Superstition of the meaner sort of people who had not been well instructed the immense riches and riotous profuseness of the Prelats their too great care in Externals in their Magnificence Ornaments and increasing of Ceremonies and little Devotion in the Chief-worship of God the indiscreat zeal of some Brethren who seemed to have cast off all honour for the Master to give it to his Servants The Tyranny that Parents exercised over their Children to imprison them in Cloisters the wickedness of those who contrived false Miracles to draw to themselves the concourse of the People Add to that Politick humane Considerations of some Princes and Kings who had not received from the Pope all possible Satisfaction or who took occasion from thence to cast themselves among a Party of persecuted men the better to Establish their affairs in brief all that which Ignorance Superstition and Covetousness could Contribute served for a pretence to those who would separate themselves to Reform those Disorders The Ground was not only specious but it had been in a manner accompanied with Truth if the Church in those days had been throughout in that miserable condition which we have described and principally so in those places wherein that detestable Separation began Those who separated were aided indirectly by the zeal of some good men who cried out loudly against those disorders abuses and corruptions of manners The people who judged no otherwise then by the appearance suffered themselves to be easily carried away with that Torrent seeing that they did not complain but of those things which they knew were but too true and which the better sort of Catholicks granted Behold then in what a condition the Church was in those days and we may from thence methinks ask all rational persons whither they believe in good earnest that our Fathers ought to have expected a Reformation from the hands of a Clergy which on the one side had so many worldly interests that bound them to oppose it and which on the other found it self so deeply sunk into Ignorance Superstition and Corruption But to urge that matter yet further we need but to set down those just complaints which they had made for a long time touching those disorders and the continual demand that all the World made for a good Reformation at least in respect of manners of Discipline and those most gross abuses without ever being able to obtain it I pass by the complaints of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries which would be but too great if they were compared with those just grounds that all honest men in those days had for them For those two Centuries were famous for wickedness grievous crimes and those who know any thing of History cannot deny it But not to go so far not to say any thing either of the Scandalous Lives of the Popes of that Time or the Wars wherewith they filled all the West or of the Abuses they committed in their Excommunications or of the Baptizing of Bells Wherewith they increased the Ecclesiastical Ceremonies or of the vices which reigned then throughout all the Clergy can they tell us what good effect those smart Censures of Saint Bernard wrought and those of Petrus Cluniensis of Abbot Joachim of Petrus Blesensis of Conrard Abbot of Vrspurg of Honorius of Autun of Bernard Monk of Cluny of Arnoul an English Monk of John Bishop of Salisbury of Matthew Paris of William Durandus Bishop of Mande of Robert Bishop of Lincolne of Francis Petrarch Archdeacon of Parma of John Vitoduram of Dante of Marsilius of Padua and I know not how many others who cried out as loudly
against the abuses of the Court of Rome as those of the rest of the Prelats Can they tell us what effect the complaints of Emperors of Kings of Princes and of the People produced who for so long a Time panted after a Reformation It is a hundred and fifty Years said Arnald du Ferrier the Ambassador of France to the Council of Trent since a Reformation of the Church has been all along in vain demanded in divers Councils at Constance at Basil at Ferrara Let them tell us what good change has hapned since St. Bernard wrote That the Dignities of the Church were managed by a most dishonest bartering and with a Trade of darkness That the saving of Souls was no more sought after but the abundance of Riches That it was for this that they took their Orders that they frequented the Churches and Celebrated Masses and sung Psalms Now a days says he they strive without any shame for Bishopricks for Arch-Deaconries and Abbies and other Dignities to the end they may dissipate the revenues of the Church in Superfluity and Vanity What remains but that the Man of sin the Son of Perdition should be Revealed The Demon not only of the day but of the noon day who transforms himself into an Angel of Light and lifts up himself above all that is called God and worshipped What good change could they see since Cardinal Hugo borrowing the words of Saint Bernard had wrote That those words of David could not be more properly applied to any then to the Clergy They are not in Trouble as other men For every order of men has its Labours and its pleasures but I admire says he the wisdom of our Clergy who have chosen all the pleasures for themselves and rejected the Labour They are as proud as Souldiers they have as great a train of Servants as they and of Horses and Birds and they live as merrily as they They are arrayed like women with skins of great value they have rich Bids Baths and all the Allurements of soft delights But they take great heed least they put on a Breast-plate with the Souldiers or pass away the nights in the Field or to expose themselves to Battels and yet they take less heed to keep Modesty and the Laws of Decency which are proper to women and to labour so much as they do At the Resurrection then when men shall arise every one in his own order what place do you imagine those men will find The Souldier will not own them for they took no part with them in their Labours nor in their dangers The Labourers and Dressers of the Vineyard will not any more for the same Reason What then can they look for But to be driven from and accused by all Orders and to go into those places where there is no Order but where Everlasting horrour Dwels Has it been amended since William Bishop of Mande wrote these words Alas the Churches are reduced to that Condition that when they come to be vacant one can hardly find any persons fit to be chosen to succeed And if sometimes which rarely happens there be found some good Man hid as a Lilly among the Thorns the Number of the wicked and uncapable exceeds so much that they will never let a good man be chosen Prelate but crying up such as themselves they chuse men after their own hearts to the Ruin of the Church and the people that are under them Else if the greater part in the Church were good the Elections would be made by the Majority of voices and they would be good and Canonical for those that would chuse for God would be the far greater number then those who should chuse for the Devil But in these days it is quite the contrary It is the Fashion that there must be more wicked then good so that usually the Elections are rather Diabolical then Canonical and not made by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit but by a Conspiracy or Treacherous Machination All these Complaints were to no purpose the evil was too general and too inveterate to be stopt or remedied In the Council of Constance all those Nations who liv'd under the disorders of a long and obstinate Schisme propounded some Articles to Reform as well the Head as the Members and correct the ill manners of the Church But Martin the Fifth who was then Pope eluded that Proposition with saying That that Council had already lasted four years to the great damage of the Bishops and the Churches That it was needful to turn over that business to another Time and that that Affair deserved to be thought on more leisurely because says he according to St. Jerome every Province has its Maxims and its opinions which cannot be changed without stirring up great Troubles As if Justice Piety Holiness and good Discipline were not the same among all people and in every Countrey The Council of Basil assembled some Time after with a design to proceed to a Reformation of the Head and the Members A Declaration was made very Solemnly that there the very beginning and their first Acts should contain no other thing But when they would have meddled with the Court of Rome and the Popes Soveraign Authority every one knows after what manner Eugenius the Fourth exalted himself against them and what endeavours he used to separate them or at least to render their designs unprofitable That produced new Troubles and new disorders and cast the Latin Church into a new schism For that Council declaring its right deposed Pope Eugenius and chose Amadeus Duke of Savoy but all that came to nothing For Eugenius remained Master Amadeus was at length constrained to renounce the Papacy The Council of Basil and all its good designs were brought to nothing and things remained in the same State in which they were before Which made an Author in those Times say That there could not be any thing expected from those who presided in the Councils on the behalf of the Popes unless that when they saw the affairs of the Council ordered against their Masters and against themselves they should oppose their Decrees either by Dissolving the Council or making Divisions spring up in it So that says he matters come to nothing and return into their old Chaos that is to say into Error and Darkness which no man can be ignorant of at least that has any knowledge of things past and the Tragedy that hapned in our Age at the Council of Basil is a most manifest proof of Some Time after that Pope Innocent the Eighth being dead and all preparations made for a new Nomination Lionel Bishop of Concordia made a long and fine Oration to the Cardinals who were to go into the Conclave to perswade them to make a good Election that might answer the desires of the whole Church he represented to them That Christianity was threatned every day by the Power of the Turk that the Hussites were in
those things for a pretence which did not appear necessary and which were not wisht for and the Third is That a Reformation so necessary and so much desired should extend it self to Faith as well as to Manners even say they 'till the Vniversal Church should be Reformed in Faith and Manners See then what was the success of so weighty a business Julius on his side who according to the general mind of the Popes mortally hated those Propositions of a Reformation display'd all the Authority Force and Artifice that he had to elude that Council and to turn all those projects into Air. And first of all he made void and disanull'd that Convocation that had been called he declared them the Authors of Schisme and Rebellion as Dathan and Abiram and their Council a Conventicle of Schismaticks a Synagogue of Satan and a Church of Malignants he forbad all Prelats to go thither under pain of Anathema and excommunicated all those who should afford them any help or assistance directly or indirectly and in fine he interdicted the Towns and Churches that should receive them But as that way of Authority alone could not produce the effect which he desired since the World did not care always to be frightned with the Papal Thunder so it was necessary for him further to elude that pretence of a Reformation which those of Pisa had taken up He then had recourse to that Ordinary Artifice of the Popes which is that when they cannot longer avoid a Council they labour to make themselves Masters of it to the end that nothing may pass there but what agrees with their Interests and their desires For this Reason he called he called one at Rome it self and to make himself more sure taking up as well as his Adversaries that pretence of the Reformation of the Church the better to colour his Affairs and to strengthen his Party he created some new Cardinals Nevertheless as he would not omit any thing he had recourse to Arms he made a League with Spain against France he assaulted Ferrara that was held by the French he went himself in Person into his Army he filled all Italy with War he drew the Switzers and Venetians to his Interests he gave Battels he Excommunicated the King of France and all his Confederates and after having got off the Emperor Maximilian from them he gave away their Kingdoms to him who should first Conquer them and in fine he set up his Conventicle at Lateran where he and his Successour Leo the Tenth made all things pass that they would have I say he and his Successour Leo the Tenth For Julius dy'd after the fifth Session and Leo not being yet thirty seven years Old was chosen in his place by the Faction of the young Cardinals against the mind of the elder sort by Reason of which Alphonsus Petrucius a young Cardinal having had it given him in charge to declare the new Election to the people he did it in these words We have chosen Leo the Tenth for our Pope Let the young men live Leo then continued that Council in which in favour of some light Reformations which consisted but in words without any effect he more then ever established the Soveraign Authority of his See and confirmed the Abuses of his Court and the disorders of the Latin Church For he there Solemnly made void the Pragmatick Function which was almost the only good thing that remained in the Government of the Latin Church he there made the Council of Basil to be declared a Conventicle and caused it to be determined That the Authority of the Popes is above all Councils which obliged the University of Paris to reject that Decree and to sue forth an appeal made to a Council lawfully called After this I know not whether they can any farther say with any confidence that our Fathers ought to entertain good hopes of the Latin Prelats and that they ought to have expected a good Reformation from their hands All the World desired that there should be a Reformation in the Government of the Church they impatiently demanded it they themselves acknowledged the necessity of it in the Head and the Members the Pope found himself engaged to do it by a Solemn Oath but when it was urged to be put in Execution he chose rather to enflame all Christendome then to deliberate to reform himself and to re-establish Order and he managed his party so well that he found a whole Council disposed blindly to do whatsoever should please him without any regard had either of God or the Church or of themselves Did not all that give a fair hope of a Reformation They will say it may be that Adrian the sixth Successour to Leo after having ingenuously confessed in the Diet of Nuremberg the disorders of the Court of Rome and of all the Prelats as we have seen before promised also to Reform them For he declared That he was resolved as well from his own inclination as from the duty of his place to labour to correct so great an Evil And he would do it in such sort that first of all the Court of Rome whence possibly the evil had grown so extream and so destructive should be reformed and so much the more as he saw that all the World passionately desired it I confess those Historians give a good Testimony enough of the Intentions of that Pope in that respect but we ought also to adjoyn what they add to wit that that Confession and promise of his which he made were very ill taken at Rome and moreover that they generally offended the Prelats that they seemed to be too ignominious for them saying that it rendred them yet more odious to the Seculars and contemptible to the People and that especially they were amazed to see a door opened for the introducing a diminution of their conveniencies or convincing them of an incorrigible obstinacy We ought not also to omit that Adrian dyed soon after the Return of his Nuntio from Germany not without a suspition of being Poisoned as William Lochorst insinuates in a Letter set down by Raynaldus Seu nimio says he Estu laboreque fatigatus seu infesto esu aut potu refectus incidit in Morbum by Reason of which Paulus Jovius relates that immediately after the Death of Adrian some young debauched persons went by night and set up a wreathed Garland on the door of the House of his Physitian with this Inscription Liberatori Patriae S. P. Q. R. We ought not likewise to pass by in silence what the Author of the History of the Council of Trent has told us That Clement the Seventh who succeeded Adrian saw clearly that Pope Adrian having too far abandoned the Ordinary Stile of the wiser Popes had been too facil as in Confessing the Faults of the Court of Rome so in promising a Reformation and that he was too mean spirited in asking the Counsel of Germany how provision might be made
manifest that he did that to extort Money from the People and that those who were employed to do it had bargained for the place of the Court of Rome by Reason of which the thing came to be turned into a publick Scandal chiefly in Germany where the greater part of those Ministers sold them at a cheap rate or gamed away the power of delivering Souls out of Purgatory He adds That which rendred this Affair yet more odious was the Donation that Leo had made of a sum of the Money that should be raised by those Indulgences to his sister Magdalen and the Commission that was given for that to a certain Bishop Archimbald a man unworthy of such an Employment and who behaved himself with an extream Covetousness and Rigour Behold then two things indisputable as it seems to me the one That Luther had right at the Bottom and that the business which gave him occasion to speak and write against it was filthy and scandalous in all respects and the other is That he guided himself after a most prudent and respectful manner and that had nothing in it of any disorder Let us see now after what manner he was Treated The first thing that fell out was that neither the Pope nor the Arch-Bishop of Mayence nor the Bishop of Brandenburg vouchased to take any care to put a stop to those abuses that were committed They know that afterwards the Arch-Bishop of Mayence was himself concerned in a part of those Indulgences and that he got considerable sums by them The second thing was That Luther instantly raised against himself not only that whole swarm of Preachers and Questors but the whole Empire of the Pope that is to say all the Creatures of the Court of Rome spread abroad throughout Europe who stirred up all their Endeavours to ruin him raising against him the Princes and the People by many false imputations Ecc us Doctor of Divinity Silvester Prierias Master of the Sacred Palace at Rome and James Hockstraten Inquisitor wrote against him the last of whom exhorted the Pope to make use of fire and Sword for the Convincing of that Heretick Luther defended himself against this sort of men by Publick Answers wherein he laid open their Absurdities and their false and scandalous Assertions which they had proposed but he did yet always contain himself within the bounds of a great Respect for the Pope and for the Church of Rome holding nevertheless that they were not infallible and that the Authority of a Council lawfully assembled was above that of the Pope in which he said nothing that the Faculty of Paris and Gallican Church does not say likewise It appeared that it was their last interest that urged them to irritate Leo against him and all his Court Who else were not well contented with that which he had undertaken to put a stop to or at least to trouble the course of their exactions Howsoever it was when they set themselves to find out a way to repress those manifest Excesses of the Ministers of Indulgences and those who defended them Luther was cited by the Pope to appear in person at Rome to give an account of his writings and his Conduct in that business before the Judges that Leo had assigned to him who were Jerome Bishop of Ascoli Auditor of the Chamber and Silvester Prierias Master of the sacred Palace Leo wrote at the same time to Cajetan his Legat in Germany a Letter full of Fire and Choler against Luther whom he treated as an Heretick and Seditious person and gave him order to cause him to be seized as an Heretick and conducted safely to Rome commanding all Dukes Marquises Earls Barons and all Universities Communities and Powers under pain of Excommunication with a reserve of the Emperour only to use all their force to seize Luther and to give him up into the hands of his Legat. He wrote also to the same purpose to Frederick the Elector of Saxony Luther seeing so violent a proceeding against him proposed the Reasons that hindred him from obeying that Citation which were taken from the infirmity of his health which would not permit him to expose himself to the wearisome toils of that Journey from his povery to which did not afford him wherewithal to do it from the Tye that he had at the University of Wittenburg from whence it was not in his power to depart without the consent of his Prince but more especially from that evident oppression which he suffered in that he had the same person ordered to he his Judge to wit Sylvester Prierias who was not only of the same Order with the Preachers of Indulgences but the same person who had immediately before wrote a Dialogue against him so that it was visibly to give him up into the hands of his Adversaries and the Parties themselves The University of Wittenberg wrote to Rome in his Favour and the Prince Frederick of Saxony having most earnestly applyed himself to the Legat obtained in the end with a great deal of difficulty that the cause should be tryed in Germany and that for that business Luther should come and appear before the Legat at Auspurg Although Luther could not be further ignorant what Spirit the Court of Rome and all its Ministers were animated with as to himself yet he did not fail notwithstanding to appear before Cajetan but it was after his friends had obtained a safe Conduct for him from the Emperour Maximilian Cajetan was vext with such a prevention that broke all his measures nevertheless he received Luther honestly enough and propounded at first to him on the part of the Pope To Recant and to promise for the future that he would not fall back again into his Errors nor any more disturb the Church Luther answered That his Conscience did not accuse him of any Error that he entreated him to tell him in what he had Erred and that he was ready either to justify himself or yield himself to be instructed Cajetan then objected to him as two great and fundamental Errors That he had wrote That the Merits of Jesus Christ did not belong to the Treasure of Indulgences against the Extravagance of Clement the Sixth and that Faith that is to say a firm belief of ones Justification was necessary to those who came to the Sacrament and those who should appear before the Judgment of God for on the contrary said he it is uncertain whether those who draw near to God shall obtain his grace or not Luther defended his Propositions and the discourse falling upon the Soveraign Authority of the Pope whom Cajetan affirmed to be above a Council above the Scripture and above all that was in the Church Luther formally denyed it to him and maintained on the contrary that the Pope was beneath the Scripture and a Council The next morning Luther presented to him a justification of his Propositions in Writing in which he inserted a great many words full of
wrote to Leo with all the respect imaginable and let him see that the Questors and those who had till that time upheld them had dishonoured his See and his Church that as to himself he found himself very unhappy to see that their Calumnies should have prevailed over his Innocence and he further offered to give over that matter of Indulgences and wholly to be silent in it provided that his Adversaries should do the like But whether it was that all that Negotiation of Miltit was but feigned on his part or that in effect his counsel was not approved by those of his Party as Luther himself insinautes it is certain that from the time that that Letter had been drawn from him George Duke of Saxony a Prince that stuck very close to the Interests of the Pope desired that he would make a publick Disputation at Leipsic upon the matters in controversy the dispute was managed the beginning between Eccius and Carolostad concerning Free-will and Grace but they drew in Luther himself upon the subject of Indulgences of Purgatory and the Power of the Pope And they procured almost at the same time from the Universities of Cologn and Lovain a condemnation of divers Articles drawn out of his Books He defended himself against these new Adversaries and made the World see by his publick writings the truth of his Doctrine and the injustice of those Condemnations But within a little after Pope Leo being unwilling to try any thing further published his terrible Bull of Excommunication against him which they call the Bull Exurge There after having earnestly importuned Jesus Christ Saint Peter and Saint Paul with all the Saints in Paradise to come to the succour of the Church of Rome he sets down in particular one and forty Articles of Luthers Doctrine which he declared to be respectively pestilent destructive scandalous false heretical offending pious Ears seducing Souls and contrary to the Catholick Truth and to the Charity to the respect and obedience that was owing to the Church of Rome which is the Mother of all the Faithful and the Mistriss of the Faith and as such severally he condemned them disproved them rejected them and declared that they ought to be rejected by Christians of both Sexes He forbad all Bishops Patriarchs Metropolitans and generally all Church-men and Kings the Emperour the Electors Princes Dukes Marquesses Earls Barons Captains c. and in a word all sorts of men to hold those Articles or to favour them in any manner what soever under the penalty of Excommunication and being deprived of their Lands and of their Goods and treated as infamous Hereticks favourers of Hereticks and guilty of High Treason And as to Luther he complained of him that he would not come to Rome where he would have let him have seen that he had not done so much evil as he believed and he agravated it as a great rashness in him to have appealed to a Council against the Constitutions of Pius the Second and of Julius the Second who would have those punished as Hereticks that made such appeals That therefore he condemned as Hereticks him and all his Adherents if in the space of fifty days they did not renounce all their Errours he forbad all Christians to have any Commerce or Conversation with them or to yeild them any necessary things and gave his Orders to the Emperour to Kings and Princes c. to seize their Persons and to send them to Rome promising great rewards to those who should do so good a work Luther some time after wrote against that Bull and appealed afresh to a Council lawfully called notwithstanding he justified himself with great solidity about all those condemned Articles And it is pertinent to note that among those Articles that the Pope Anathematized as Heretical or Rash or Scandalous and contrary to the Catholick Truth these following Propositions might be found That that Proverb was most true that said That the best Pennance is a good Life that it would be very well if the Church in a Council should ordain that the Laity should receive the Communion in both kinds That the Treasure of the Church from whence the Pope drew his Indulgences is not the Merits of Jesus Christ and the Saints That the Bishop of Rome the Successour of Saint Peter is not the Vicar of Jesus Christ over all the Churches of the world nor that there was any one established by Jesus Christ himself in the Person of Saint Peter That it is not in the power of the Church or of the Pope to make Articles of Faith nor to establish new Laws for Manners or for good Works That tho' the Pope should hold with a great part of the Church an opinion which should not it self be erronious yet it would not be a sin or an heresy to hold a contrary opinion especially in things not necessary to Salvation until a General Council should have disproved the one and approved of the other that the Ecclesiastical Prelats and Secular Princes did not do ill when they abolished the Order of begging Friers That Purgatory could not be proved by the Holy Canonical Scripture These Propositions are declared to be either pestilent or pernicious or scandalous or heretical without specifying any one in particular for the Pope speaks of them only in the whole that they are such So it was that Leo and all his Court managed those matters To affirm that a true amendment of Life a holy and sincere return from Vice to Vertue is the best of all Pennances appeared to be a detestable crime to them To wish that a General Council might establish the Communion of the Eucharist according to the Institution of Jesus Christ and the Custom of the Primitive Church was such an abomination with them as was thought sufficient to deserve the Flames Not to beleive that the Merits of Jesus Christ and of the Saints made up a certain Treasure which neither Faith nor Holiness nor Repentance could give the Faithful any part of but which were to be dispenced only by the way of Indulgences for money pass'd in their Judgments for a Hellish Heresie To hold that our Faith has nothing else but the Word of God for its object and not that of men also and that God alone can impose moral Laws on the Conscience was in their opinion an astonishing wickedness To believe that one may without Herefy hold an opinion contrary to that of the Pope in matters not necessary to Salvation and not determined by any Council was a pestilent errour To give the least blow to the interests of Monks or the Fire of Purgatory was an horrible sacriledge for which there was not any remission After that condemnation the Pope wrote to John Frederick Elector of Saxony earnestly entreating him not to give any more protection to Luther and he sent Hierome Aleander his Nuntio into Germany to cause that condemnation to be executed But Aleander not being able to obtain of
God lose nothing either of its Truth or its Authority 3. It is a very strange thing that the Author of the Prejudices has not taken any heed in laying down a very bad Argument against us of furnishing us with a very good one against the Church of Rome in that Estate wherein it was in the days of our Fathers For if we ought to Judge of the Doctrine by the Qualities or the Actions of those who Teach it I pray consider what Judgment could our Fathers make of that Religion that the Court of Rome and its Prelats taught and whether they had not all the grounds in the World to reform themselves If there be no likelyhood that God committed the Care of Reforming his Church to persons who were guilty of Scandalous Actions there is far less that God has given Infallibility and a Soveraign Authority over mens Consciences to such persons as the Popes and Prelats in the days of our Fathers were according to the Description which the unsuspected Authors that we have quoted give us of them and divers others that we might here add to them if we so pleased And that which makes these two Arguments differ is that his concludes upon a Principle which we maintain to be false and ill where ours concludes upon a Principle which he himself admits and acknowledges to be good so that in his own Judgment we have a sufficient Fundation whereon to Establish the Justice of our Reformation Let us see nevertheless of what Nature those Actions are wherewith he reproaches our first Reformers I will not says he stay to examine the Accusations wherewith they have been charged by divers Authors I do not pretend to detain my self in any but those publick things that are so manifest and so exposed to the Eyes of all the World I confess he has Reason not to stay upon all that which his Passion has invented against them for who knows not that Calumny has no bounds especially when interest and passion stir it up Our Reformers are not the only persons who have been attacked after that manner The Jews said of John the Baptist that he had a Devil and of Jesus Christ that he was a Blasphemer a Samaritan a glutton and a Wine-bibber a friend of Publicans and sinners If then they have called the Father of the Family Beelzebub what will they not say of his Servants But what then are those things that are so Publick so manifest and so exposed to the Eyes of the whole World which the Author of the Prejudices has found fit to be insisted upon That new Gospel says he was Preached only out of the mouths of those Monks who had quitted their habit and their profession ouly to contract Scandalous Marriages or from the mouths of those Priests who had violated that Vow of Virginity which the Calvinists themselves confess to have been imposed on all Priests and on all Monks in the West by divers Councils and on all the Monks and all the Bishops in the East and the first fruit of this Doctrine was the setting open the Cloisters the taking off the Vails of the Nuns the abolishing of all Austerities and overthrowing of all manner of discipline in the Church This is that that forces him to say That the Reformers struck mens Eyes with a Spectacle that could not but create horrour according to the common Idea's of Piety and Vertue whech the Fathers give us The Author of the Prejudices will not take it ill that in order to our Answering him we must put him in mind what he himself exhorts us to To Transport our selves into another Time then that wherein we are at present and to represent to our selves our Separation in its first rise and during the first years wherein it was made amidst the Switzers and in France Upon his thus placing us in that State which he desires we will declare to him that The general Depravation which reign'd amidst the Monks and the Priests is to our Eyes a Spectacle worthy of horror according to the common Ideas of Piety and Vertue which the holy Scriptures and right Reason give us We will tell him that that which Scandalizes us is to see that for a respect of a purely humane Order they endured for so long a time a disorder that dishonoured the Latin Church that drew upon it God's Judgments and that laid open the Ministry of the Church to an everlasting reproach It is in the detesting of those Infamies and those Impurities that the true zeal of Christians ought to consist and it is to the searching out of a solid remedy for them that one ought to apply the Discipline of the Church and not to keep them up under a pretence of observing rash Vows and a Caelibasy that God never commanded If the Author of the Prejudices is more Scandalized to see Priests and Monks Married then to see them plunged into all the filthyness of Debauchery I cannot hinder my self from telling him that he makes Christianity a Law of Hypocrisy and it may be yet somewhat worse for Hypocrisy does not content it self with meer Names she would have fair appearances without of those things which she really rejects Whereas for him he rejects not only the things but their appearances also suffering patiently the loss of any more seeing either the things or their appearances provided we do not meddle with those empty names of Caelibacy and Virginity But true Moral Christianity inspires other Sentiments she would have us honour that Caelibacy and Virginity as gifts that come from God but she would also have a Contempt and horrour for those specious names when they shall be applyed to those beastlinesses and excesses which both God and Men condemn She would have us in that Case instead of being Scandalized to see a false Caelibacy made void and a vain shadow of Virginity abolished that we should on the contrary be edified to see them got out from those snares of sin and to have recourse to a lawful Marriage that God has allowed unto all and that he has even commanded unto those who have not received the gift of Continency It was in the View of this that our Fathers lookt upon the Marriage of those Priests and Monks as the Abolishing of an unjust Law contrary to the express words of Saint Paul if they cannot contain let them Marry and which moreover had produced such mischeivous effects as it was no longer possible for them to indure But says the Author of Prejudices we do not intend to speak of the Interests of Families of Marriage nor of base and fleshly passions in the lives of those Great Bishops and all those great men of old whom God opposed to the Heresies that rose up against his Church as Saint Cyprian Saint Athanasius Saint Basil Saint Gregory Nazianzen Saint Jerome Saint Epiphanius Saint Chrysostome and Saint Augustine They were all of them eminent in Sanctity in a disingagement
to do and what he should not have done and by that means to raise himself so high as to be a Censor of God's Actions He ought at least to have called it to mind that Jesus Christ made no scruple to chuse married men out of whom to make his Apostles and Evangelists The Scripture mentions the Mother-in-law of Saint Peter that is to say his Wives Mother for that word in Greek can be taken in no other sence but that It speaks also of the four Daughters of Philip the Evangelist The Authour of the Commentaries upon the Epistles of Saint Paul under the name of Saint Ambrose assures us that all the Apostles had Wives except Saint Paul and Saint John and Saint Ignatius and Saint Basil say the same thing without any exception Virginity is not then an inseparable character of the Call of God as the Authour of the Prejudices would perswade us But after that first assault of the Authour of the Prejudices which was made with all the weapons that he first found in his hands he reproaches the Reformers with the little fruit that their Preaching wrought for the Sanctification of those people who followed them Their Ministers themselves says he have been constrained by the Evidence of the Truth to acknowledge That all their pretended Reformation did not produce any Renovation of the spirit of Christianity and that it had rather increased then lessened the disorders of those who embraced it and for that he produces the complaints of some Ministers as of Capito and Calvin himself and of Luther against the Vices of their Age. I acknowledge that if they compare our Fathers manners and ours with the Grace that God has given us in renewing his Gospel in the midst of us they would find but too much reason to make us cover our Faces with confusion that we were unworthy of so great a Favour I confess also that there may be many found among those who at first embraced the Reformation who instead of profiting by it abused it as the best things may be abused But I say that they ought not to insult over that Confession that we make in that regard for besides that a Doctrine is not the less found for not being so carefully observed as it deserves we can yet further say for our selves and say it to the Glory of that God whom we serve that he has poured forth a sufficiently abundant measure of his blessing on our Fathers and that if any compare their manners with those of the other Party who rejected the Reformation they will find reason enough to confess that God was in the midst of us It is true indeed that they might not see there those Pharisaical Devotions of which the hypocrites and superstitious make a vain shew They might not see there those men who publish to all the world their Mortifications and their Fasts who withdraw themselves out of the crowd to make themselves to be more taken notice of and who never enter into their secret retirements but with the greater ease to be able to mix themselves in all that that is common in the World But they may there behold a solid Piety plain and natural without Art and Affection a true fear of offending God with a free and open carriage which never sought to hide it self by distinctions and illusions but in good earnest to follow the dictates of Conscience without saying to hinder them from doing their Duty either what will become of us or what will become of our Brethren or Sisters Because they knew that those Events were in the hand of God and that poor worldly interest ought never to prevail over the love of the Truth As to the Wars that the Author of the Prejudices imputes to the Reformation it had been methinks his prudence not to have turned the Dispute upon a Matter on which he well knows that we have but too many things to say for our Justification If some Princes of Germany took up Arms to defend themselves against the assaults of their Enemies they thought that the Justice and Law of Nations authorised that defence and that being Soveraign in their States they were bound to protect their Subjects and to preserve that Trust that God had put into their hands And as for those Commotions that hapned in France in the times of the Reformation there is no person who is ignorant of their true Causes It is true that the Interest of our Religion had some part in them but it had at least the good fortune to be found joyned with that of the preserving of that great Kingdom to its just possessours against those pernitious designs which made but too great a noise afterwards and whatsoever sad Remembrances the Authour of the Prejudices has awakened by his undeserved reproaches yet we shall not fail to maintain that the blood of our Fathers was very well spent for so good a Cause Luther says he was not afraid of animating his followers to Murders and Blood by those horrible words which are to be found in his first Tome of his Works of Wittingburg Edition If we hang up Robbers on Gibbets if we punish Hereticks and Thieves with the Sword why do not we assault with all our Forces those Cardinals and those Popes and all that scum of the Roman Sodom that ceases not to corrupt the Church of God why do we not embrue our hands in their Blood It is certain that there can scarce be any passage related after a more invenomed and base manner than the Authour of the Prejudices relates that and this will appear if they well but make these following Observations 1. That he separates those words from the sequel of the Discourse to give them quite another Sence than Luther intended by them which is to speak Properly a kind of falsification more dangerous then that of corrupting the words of a Sentance 2. That he would make us imagine that those words are addrest to the followers of Luther to animate them to Blood and Slaughter which is a perfect Calumny 3. That he quotes them not as spoken upon a supposition but as spoken purely and simply which is further contrary to the Truth Behold then what the matter truly was Sylvester Prierias Master of the Sacred Palace at Rome having wrote against Luther's Doctrine concerning the Pope and in particular against his Appeal to a Council had peremptorily maintained That it was not lawful to Appeal from the Pope to a Council because the Pope was a Soveraign Judge and liable to no Appeal and that those who sued out such Appeals were cast out of the Church and Excommunicate That the Pope alone was the Infallible Rule of Truth whose decisions were certain and irrefragable without a Council where those of a Council were nothing without the Pope nor bound any person if they were not authorised by the Pope so that whatsoever should not receive the Doctrine of the Pope as the Infallible Rule
of Faith from whom the Holy Scripture it self heretofore and now derives all its force he is a Heretick and many other Propositions of that nature Upon that Luther writes that All those things were maintained only out of a hatred of a General Council and to hinder any one from being heard who should give any succour to the afflicted Church That the Popes Creatures seeing well that they could not hinder a Council began to seek out ways to elude it by saying that the Pope was above a Council and that without his Authority none could either be called or held in a word that a Council had not any Power but that the Pope alone was the Infallible Rule of Truth That it seemed to him then that if the Fury of those men took place there would not further remain any other Remedy but this That the Emperour the Kings and Princes should make use of their Arms against those publick Posts and that those matters should not be decided by Words but by the Sword In the close of which he adjoyns those words which the Author of the Prejudices has related So that his meaning is not to Animate his Followers to Blood and Slaughter as the Author of the Prejudices interprets it but only to draw an absur'd consequence from his Adversaries Hypothesis which is That if he would also take away the only Remedy that was left to provide against the desolations of the Church in assembling a Free Council he would set the Emperour the Kings and Princes in Arms against the Popes and the Cardinals and all the Court of Rome and would reduce things to the utmost extremity I my self will not say that there may not be somewhat too violent in those kind of expressions but after all his design is not to animate his Followers to Blood and Slaughter but only to let Sylvester see the necessity of a Council that might judge above the Pope from that inconvenience that otherwise there would remain no other course to the Emperour to Kings and Princes to re-establish Order in the Church then to make use of their compelling power And that further appears to be the Sence because he adds immediately after That the Authority of the Bishop of Rome whether it were of Divine Right or whether it were of Human could not be urged but by the Precept Honour thy Father and thy Mother which in granting him to be a Father puts him under the first Table so that if he should do any thing in opposition to them he might be admonished and even accused by the least of the Faithful Which let us see that his meaning was no other than that which I have represented I confess it were to be wished that Luther had observed more of the mean than he did in his manner of writing and that with that great and invincible Courage joyned with that ardent zeal for the Truth and with that unshaken Constancy that he always shewed there might have been discernable more of stayedness and moderation But those faults which most frequently proceed from Temperament do not take away mens esteem of such when besides them they may see a good foundation of Piety in them and Vertues Heroical throughout as they may discern-to have shone in Luther For they cannot cease extolling the zeal of Lucifer Bishop of Cagliari nor admiring the eminent qualities of Saint Jerom although they do acknowledge too much sharpness and passion in their Style And it may be that there was even some particular necessity in the time of the Reformation to use vehemency of expression the more easily to rouse men out of that profound sleep wherein they had lain for so long a time However it be I had rather come to agree that Luther ought to have been more moderate in his expressions and if the Authour of the Prejudices would be coutented with complaining of the sharpness of his Style he should be also contented for every answer to be entreated that hereafter he will not himself any more imitate that which he condemns in another especially in writing against those who having lived in the last Age cannot have given him any personal occasion to be carried away against them with passion after the manner that he has been in many places of his Book If in the Judgment that he passes on them he would not hearken to Charity he ought at least to hearken to Justice and not to have charged them with foul Accusations under the pretences of having mistaken and misunderstood I place in this Rank that which he furthers forms against Luther in these words There never was any one says he but Luther who durst to boast in his Printed Works that he had had a long conference with the Devil that he had been convinced by his reasons that private Masses were an abuse and that that was the motive that had carried him out to abolish them But common Sence adds he has always made all others conclude not only that he was in an excess of extravagance to take the Devil for a Master of Truth and to give himself up to be his Disciple but that all those who had any marks that they were his Ministers and his Instruments and who had not any lawful Authority in the Church to make themselves be heard did not deserve that any should apply themselves to them or that they should so much as examine their Opinions Behold here Luther a Disciple a Minister and Instrument of the Devil if one will believe the Author of the Prejudices To refute that Calumny we need but to represent in a few words what that business was that he there speaks of Luther following the Style of the Monks of those days who were wont by a Figure of Rhetorick to fill their Books with their exploits against the Devil relates that being one time awakened in the midst of a dark night the Devil began to accuse him for having made the people of God Idolatrize and to have been guilty of Idolatry himself for the space of fifteen years wherein he had said private Masses and that the Reason of that Accusation was that he could not have any thing consecrated in those private Masses from whence it followed that he had adored and had made others adore meer Bread and meer Wine and not the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ He adds that that accusation struck him at his heart and that to defend himself he alledged that he was a Priest that he had done nothing but by the Order of his Superiors and that he had always pronounced the words of Consecration very exactly with the best intention in the World from whence he concluded that he could see no reason to have the Crime of Idolatry laid to his Charge That notwithstanding the Tempter did not fail to reply that those excuses would nothing avail him in that the Turks and the Priests of Baal obeyed also the Order of their Superiours with a very good
who laboured in the Reformation of their Churches religiously Observed They constrained no person and they rejected nothing that was not Alien to the Christian Religion But says the Author of the Prejudices Those two hundred Burghers of a Swisse Town were as Learned and ready in matters of Divinity as we may easily Judge Swisse Burghers to be I answer that this is the Objection of the Pharisees This People said the Enemies of Jesus Christ know not the Law But Jesus Christ did not answer them amiss when he said to them Father I thank thee Lord of Heaven and Earth that thou hast bid these things from the Wise and Prudent and revealed them unto Babes Let the Author of the Prejudices if he will be of the number of those wise and prudent ones we shall not envy him his readiness and his Learning and we shall rest satisfied with this that it has pleased God to place us in the same Rank with those mean Swisse Burghers to whom as much Babes as they were God vouschafed to make his Gospel known The true knowledge of Christians does not consist in having a head full of Scholastick Speculations and a Memory loaded with a great many Histories and multitudes of passages of divers Authors or a great many Critical Notions nor in having well-studied Lombard Albertus Magnus Thomas Aquinas Scotus Bonaventure Capreolus Aegidius Romanus Occham Gabriel Biel the Canon Law the Decretals and all those other great Names wherewith they stunned the People in times past Our True knowledge is the Holy Scripture Read with Humility Charity Faith and Piety See here all that those poor Burghers of Zurich knew they were neither Prelats nor Cardinals nor Doctors of Lovain nor of the Sorbonne but they were good men they feared God they studied his Word and for the rest of the State of their understandings and the degree of their light may appear by the Reformation which they made for the Tree may be known by its Fruits 4. Objection The matter which was to have been handled in that pretended Synod cannot be more considerable For they Treated therein about abolishing all at once the Authority of all the Councils that were held in the Church since the Apostles days under a pretence of reducing all to the Scripture Answer Since the True Authority of the Fathers and Councils consists in their Conformity with the Divine writings the way solidly to establish them is to reduce all to the Scripture as they did in that Synod If the Author of the Prejudices pretends to give the Fathers and Councils and Authority quite different from that of the Word of God whereof they ought to be the Ministers and Interpreters we may answer him that he affronts them under a pretence of Honouring them For as it is the greatest real injury that can be done to a Subject to give him the Authority of his Prince So it is the most real injury which they can do to the Fathers to invest them with the Authority of God 5. Objection They medled with the Faith of all the other Christian Churches which the Switzers could not but condemn in embracing a new Faith Answer The Swisses did not embrace a new Faith but they renounced those Errors that it may be might have prevailed for some Ages but which were new in regard of the Christian Religion They did not condemn other Churches in that which they had of good but they condemned that evil which they had in them A sick person who has cured himself condemns the diseases of others but he condemns not that Life which remains in them On the contrary he exhorts them to be healed for fear least remaining in that sick condition they should die 6. Object They treated about all those dangerous Consequences which that Change of Religion would have produced and which were easy to have been foreseen Answ They Treated also about the Glory of God and their own Salvation and all those dangerous Consequences which could not but come from the blindness and passion of those who would hold the People of God under their servitude ought not to have prevailed over two such great interests as that of the Glory of God and Mens Salvation All these Objections are well near the same that the Pagans made against the Primitive Christians and it seems that the Author of the Prejudices has studied them out of Celsus Prophyrie and Julian to make use of them against us 7. Object Moreover they declared that they would have men make use of the Authority of the Scripture only and by that rash and unheard of Prejudice they condemned the procedure of all the foregoing Councils wherein they were wont to produce the opinion of the Fathers to decide the controverted Questions Answ The Scripture is the only Rule of the Faith of Christians and there is no other but that alone whose Authority we ought to admit as Soveraign and decisive of Controversies It is not True that all the foregoing Councils admitted of the Opinions of the Fathers and their Traditions under that Quality The Author of the Prejudice lays it down without Proof and Reason 8. Object The Church being in possession of its Doctrine they ought to have forced Zuinglius to produce his Accusations against that Doctrine and to have made the proofs which he alleadged against it to have been examined But in stead of that they ordered that he should appear in that Disputation in Quality of Defender and that it should be the others part to convince him if Error Answ If the Church of Rome would have the World believe the Doctrine that she Teacheth it is fit she should furnish it with proofs and her pretended possession cannot assure it Those who propound any thing as matter of Faith are naturally bound to prove it and it is absurd to say that Possession discharges that Obligation for the Faith ought to be always founded upon proof and it never stands upon meer possession otherwise the Heathens ought to have kept their Religion which was established on so Antient a Possession 9. Object All that Examination was further grounded upon this ridiculous Principle That if there could not be found any person within the Territory of Zurich that could make the Errors of Zuinglius appear by the Scripture it ought to be concluded that he had none As if the weakness of those who opposed his Doctrine could not be an effect of their Ignorance rather then a default in the cause they defended Answ This Objection is no more to the purpose then the foregoing What could the Senate of Zurich have done more then to have assembled all the Clergy of their States to have called the Bishop of Constance or his Deputies thither to have received all the World and given all liberty of propounding their Arguments and Proofs It belonged to them to propound them if they had any and if they had none they ought to have acknowledged that 'till then
they beheld and upon the Moderation that Saint Paul yet kept towards those persons whom elsewhere he Treated roughly enough that the Spirit of God did not accompany the Christians and that their Doctrine could not proceed from Heaven Will they say that those Infidels ought to have carried themselves after that manner in the time of Constantine when the Bishops that composed the Council of Nice appeared so eager and so divided among themselves that they presented the Emperour with Books of Accusations one against another managing a bloody War while they saw themselves united together in the same Assembly Will they say that they had Reason to be prejudiced against Christanity then when they saw the quarrels that rent the Church upon the Subject of the Consubstantiality of the Son of God or then when they saw those which fell out about the word of Hypostasis between the Orthodox themselves who accused one another to be Hereticks or then when the East and West were divided about the concurrence of Meletius and Paulinus for the Bishoprick of Antioch or when the Two great and Illustrious Reformers of the Church in the Time of the Arrians Eusebius of Verceil and Lucifer of Cagliari were divided upon the Subject of the Arrian Bishops who returned to the Orthodox Faith or when the Catholicks and the Donatists mutually persecuted one another and that in the very Flames of those Persecutions the Catholicks did not cease to call the Donatists always their Brethren although they oftentimes called them also Hereticks Schismaticks Pharisees c. And though they loaded them with injuries and though the Donatists on their part Treated the Catholicks with all the indignities imaginable even to the outragiously rejecting of the name of Brethren which they gave them Those who are well versed in Ecclesiastical History will yield that we might urge those Examples a great deal further if we would but take the pains to do it for there have been very few Ages wherein Christians have not been divided between themselves and that frequently upon grounds trivial enough and wherein there may not have been found in their Conduct that very thing which the Author of the Prejudices believes to be incompatible with the Spirit of God that is to say the heats of Dispute on the one side and on the other some Measures of that which he calls Humane Policy I shall not here mention the disorders which hapned about the business of Nestorius and his Heresy nor those which followed quickly after on the occasion of the Eutychians and Monothelites I shall omit the Schism of the Greeks and Latins and the re-unions which they made up sometimes among themselves out of a Humane Policy I shall say nothing of the confusions wherewith the Latin Church was agitated in those Times which Baronius calls unhappy and wherein he says the Popes made void the Acts of one another Infelicissimo tempora cum alter alterius res gestas intrusus quisque Pontifex aboleret In effect Formosus having accepted of the Papacy against the Oath that John VIII had made him take in deposing him that he would never think of being Bishop Stephen VII his Successour made him to be condemned in open Council and all the Ordinations that he had made to be void and having at last caused his Body to be taken out of his Grave he made the three Fingers wherewith they give their blessing to be cut of and thrown into the River Tiber but John IX Successour to Stephen Assembled another Council at Ravenna wherein he not only made all that Stephen and his Council had done against Formosus to be void but he even made all his Acts to be Canonically burned re-establishing the memory of Formosus and the Ordinances that he had made Some Time after Sergius a great Enemy of Formosus came to the Papacy and he annulled in his turn the Acts of the Council of Ravenna and made void all the Ordinances of Formosus Notwithstanding the Church of Rome reckons all those men among her Popes and acknowledges them all to have been lawful ones And which is further remarkable John IX in the same Act wherein he makes void the Council of Stephen and wherein he condemns it to the Flames he does not fail to call Stephen his Predecessor of Holy Memory Piae recordationis predaecessorem Upon which Baronius exhorts his Readers to Consider that although the Popes have had Predecessors very worthy of blame yet they have been wont notwithstanding to have a great deal of respect for them So that says he although Stephen had been a Detestable Pope who had invaded the Sea and who during his Papacy had committed all sorts of Execrable crimes yet John nevertheless calls him his Predecessor of Holy Memory which may appear at lest as strange as the Moderation of Zuinglius and Calvin in respect of Luther I might add to all that another Example drawn from the Conduct of the Church of Rome upon the occasion of her latter Schisms Every one knows the Divisions of the Fourteenth Century which divided all the West about the concurrence of two Anti-Popes Both Parties were extreamly Animated they look'd upon one another as Excommunicated as Anti-Christs the Enemies of God and his Church they mutually Anathematised one another they took up Arms one against another and made a bloody War Vrban VI. on his side in a Bull that began The Vine of the Lord of Sabaoth that is to say the holy Church of Rome has a great evil in her Womb and sends forth grievous Sighs c. Treats his Anti-Pope and his cardinals as a child of iniquity and Son of Perdition Vipers wicked Wretches animated with the Spirit of the Devil Schismaticks Apostates Conspirators Blasphemers c. He deposed and spoiled them of all their Honours Dignities Prelacies Offices and Benefits he confiscated their goods and declared their persons to be infamous and detestable he Excommunicated all those who believed who received them their Defenders and Favourers and even those who should give them Ecclesiastical burial if they did not pull them out of the Grave again with their own hands he forbad all faithful People of what Quality soever even Kings themselves Queens Emperours to receive them into their Lands to give or to send them either Bread or Wine or Meat or Wood or Money or Merchandise He Excommunicated particularly all those who should hold his competitor for Pope or who should call him Pope or who should receive any Favours Indulgences Dignities or Prelacies from him And as if all that had not been enough he ordained a Holy Croisado against those Shismaticks and those condemned Persons to pursue and root them out under the same Priviledges which are given to those who take up Arms for the Conquest of the Holy Land He absolved also the subjects of those Princes who should acknowledge his Anti-Pope of their Oath of Allegiance and he Excommunicated those subjects
have us that we should be with her For in respect of the Lutherans the business is only about a meer Toleration which we give to those among them who desire it with a Spirit of Charity waiting till it shall please God to dissipate their Error But the Church of Rome that calls it self infallible would have us not only to have a meer Toleration for her but that we should make a profession of believing all that she believes for when she separated her self from us she Anathematised all those who did not believe all that she had decided in her Council of Trent The Matters therefore are not equal between the Roman and the Lutheran Communion in respect of us To put them into an Equality it is necessary that the Roman Church should openly put her self into the state wherein the Lutherans are that she renounce the Invocation of Saints Religious worship of Images humane Satisfactions Indulgences Purgatory the worshipping of Relliques the publick Service in an unknown Tongue the merit of good Works Transubstantiation Adoration of the Sacrament the Sacrifice of the Mess the Papal Monarchy the pretension of Infallibility the blind Obedience that she would have us give to her decisions It is necessary that she should acknowledge the Scriptures to be the only rule of faith and manners that she should carefully recommend the Reading of them to the People that she should confess their sufficiency without the help of tradition that she should believe the Authority of that Scripture independent even in respect of us on that of the Church that she should distinctly lay down the Doctrine of Justification and that of the distinction of the Law and the Gospel that she should form a Just Idea of the Faith and of good works and that she should take care to abolish all the popular Superstitions which we behold among them When she shall have done all that with some other things which the Lutherans have done also although she do retain the point of the Real presence after the same manner that they do we shall not fail to offer her the same Toleration which we yield to the Lutherans and the same conditions which we give to them which is that we should not engage our selves to believe that presence that we should always protest against it as an Error and that they shall do nothing to force us to embrace it When the Church of Rome shall be in that condition which I have set down if we do not make her these offers if we do not even make them with all the ardour imaginable we will be very well contented in that Case that they should accuse us of humane Policy and that they should tell us that we are a sort of men without any Conscience Justice and Charity But 'till then we will take God and men to witness that there is not the least equity in those invectives and that it is to oppress our innocency to ascribe that as the Author of the Prejudices has done to an interested Policy or a capricious humour which is but too well founded upon the things themselves See here what I had to say upon the Twelfth Chapter of the Author of the Prejudices It may now be Judged of what force his Accusations are We should after that pass on to his Thirteenth Chapter But as that Chapter is but a sending us to a Book of Monsieur Arnaud's Intituled The Overthrow of the Morals of Jesus Christ by the Calvinists I shall also content my self with referring my Readers to the Answer which I hope to make him It shall suffice for the present to say That the Doctrine of the Saints Perseverance as the Synod of Dort has laid it down is a Doctrine of the Scripture and that all the pretended Consequences which Monsieur Arnaud would draw from it are of the same nature of those which profane Persons draw from all the Doctrines of Religion when they would abuse them to their Ruin CHAP. VIII That our Fathers in their Design of Reforming themselves were bound to take the Holy Scripture alone for the Rule of their Faith IT it now necessary to Examine by what Principle or upon what Rule our Fathers proceeded in their Reformation But before we go any further we shall do well to weigh what the Author of the Prejudices says who has made an express Chapter upon this matter The Argument of that Chapter is framed in these words That the way which the Calvinists propound to instruct men in the Truth is ridiculous and impossible After having entred upon his subject As the matter is saith he about the promise which they make of discovering divers Truths of the Faith to the Catholicks which are in their Judgments obscured and quite altered in the Church of Rome there will be nothing more Just or more natural then in the first place to inquire into the way which they would take to perform it to the end that we may Judge by the very nature of that way what we may justly expect For if it be found that they would engage us in an infinite way and which could not come to an issue there could not be a more lawful excuse to hinder us from hearkening to them nor a more evident conviction of the rashness of their enterprise Behold here methinks Two Declarations of that Author sufficiently express concerning the means which we propound to instruct men in the Truth the one That it is a ridiculous and impossible way and the other That it is an infinite way c. and which can come to no issue for we may well perceive that that Periphrasis of expression If it be found that they would engage us in an infinite way c. made use of in the beginning of a Disputation means that it will be so found in effect and that it is as much as if it had been positively said they would engage us in an infinite way and which has no end there being no other difference between those two expressions unless that this latter is the more plain and that the other has more of the Air of the Philosophical Method of those Gentlemen After that preamble the Author goes on It is true says he that if we will hear them speak upon this subject without any more deep searehing into that which they say we shall have reason enough to be satisfied For they baldly promise to lead us to the Faith by a short an easy and a clear way without confusion without danger of wandring aside and this way say they is the Examination of the Articles of the Faith by the Scripture which is the only Rule that God has given us for the deciding of the differences of Religion and assuring us of what we ought to believe all others being subject to Error This is the Explication of the way which we propose which is to take the Holy Scripture for the only Rule of our Faith He adds But because in a
learned The one extends its use unto all that is Necessary for Instruction and the Conduct of life and the other in heaping up of general difficulties makes it unprofitable to Instruct us in the least Truths What Judgment can we make of this diversity unless this that the language of these Gentlemen changes according to the difference of Times and Interests as one has said of them elsewhere When the case is about gaining credit to their Translation of the New Testament they speak as advantagiously of the Scripture as it is possible for them to speak and when the business is to oppose a Reformation made according to the Rule of the Scripture but which notwithstanding has not the happiness of their Agreement you see what they say of that same Scripture The Scripture shall then to speak properly be only to be commended by the Intrest of their Translation and as long as that Interest shall remain shall be the Collection of the divine Teachings of our Lord The Testament that assures us of the Inheritance of our Father The mouth of Jesus Christ who although he is in Heaven speaks continually upon earth not only the nourishment of sound Souls and those who are establish'd in grace as the Body of the Son of God but even the Consolation of Sinners the light of the blind the remedy of the Sick and the life of the dead For these are the Titles that the Preface gives it but whenever that Interest shall cease those praises shall do so too and it shall be nothing but a Ridiculous way and impossible for the Instructing of men in the Truth I would therefore very fain know of these Gentlemen whether it were only upon the sight of their Translation that S. Cyprian S. Augustine and S. Gregory wrote that which the Preface relates or whether those Fathers did not consider the Scripture in it self For if it be the first they forgot to tell us that they only spake out of a Prophetick Spirit of that Translation and if it be the Second why have they entertained us with that admirable proportion of the Scripture to great and small to the strong and weak and that easy and intelligible manner wherewith it propounds to us all that is necessary for the Conduct of our life since that without the Translation of Mons it is an Infinite way which has no end a ridiculous way and Impossible to Instruct men in the Truth What can the Author of the Prejudices say to defend himself from this Manifest Contradiction which he discovers between him and his Colleague Will he say that the Scripture is in truth a good means for the Instruction of men but that it is so only with the Interpretations of the Fathers But the Author of that Preface speaks for Scripture alone separated from the Interpretation of the Fathers such as its Translation is for he excuses himself in that he had not made a collection of notes and explanations drawn out of the writings of the holy Fathers and he does not fail to say that in his Translation as plain as it is not only the Souls of the more learned but of the more simple also and unlearned may find that which will be necessary for their Instruction Will he say that he does not mean to exclude the learned from the use of the Scripture but only the more simple for the Instruction of which former he does not deny but that it would be a most proper means But besides that his Brother speaks formally of the Instruction of the more simple why has the Author of the Prejudices made it a ridiculous and Impossible way an infinite way which has no Issue a way which is of so excessive a length that one can never rationally hope to come to the end of it whatsoever diligence one should make Will he say that the Scripture ought to be joined with Tradition and that without Tradition it cannot give a perfect Instruction But the Preface says expresly that they will find in that Translation all that will be necessary for Instruction Will he say that in order to the Scriptures Instructing one the Sence of the Church ought to be added to it But the Preface says that according to Saint Augustine the Scripture lays down all that is necessary for the Conduct of our lives after a most easy and Intelligible manner and that she explains and makes clear her self Will he say that in order to the Scriptures being capable to Instruct us we ought at least to read it with Dependance upon the Church and to take it from her hand But wherefore then would these Gentlemen have the People to read their Translation since they are only private Doctors and not the Church Wherefore when the Prelats rais'd to the highest dignities have forbid the reading of it by their Ordinances have we seen Printed writings maintain on the contrary there was in those Ordinances a Threatning of the Will and Commandment of God who would that we should hear his Son and not that we should suppress his Gospel a Contradiction to the Holy Scripture which was set down in writing for no other end but to be heard and practis'd by all Nations of the world a Contradiction of all the Councils which have always taken the Scripture for the Judge of the belief of the Church and of all the Difficulties and Questions that can arise in the Doctrine of Faith or Manners a Contradiction of all the Holy Fathers who advis'd the Faithful above all things continually to read the word of God Why has one Introduc'd two Lay-men Parishoners Saint Hilary Montanus saying one to another The Bishops cannot take away from us the Gospel that Jesus Christ has given us that God spoke to all his People when he said To day if you will hear my voice harden not your Hearts a Bishop cannot take away our Eyes from us to hinder us from seeing and considering our way we should not see Jesus Christ our Saviour our Pastor and our great Bishop who goes before us in his Gospel That if a Bishop would turn us away from if an Apostle if an Angel from Heaven would stop up this way and would go about to lead and guide us in another we ought not to believe him Why has he made us see those Parishoners holding That there is nothing more contrary to the Gospel then a prohibition to read and have it that bread and nourishment is not more necessary to preserve the life of the Body then the word of God is to maintain Life in our Souls That all Christians have a natural right that cannot be taken from them of Instructing themselves by the word of God and labouring to understand it and that the Holy Scriptures were given to the whole Church and not only to the Bishops who have no right to deprive the Faithful of them That this is say they what the Divel would preach up if he were
as their words should be found confirmed by proofs drawn from the Scripture They have said that they did not care for the Testimony of men but that they would confirm what they said by the Voice of God which was more certain then all Demonstrations or to say better the only Demonstration It is Evident therefore that our Fathers could not take any other Rule of the Faith or Principle of the Reformation then the Holy Scripture In effect the Scripture is the Word of God the Law of our Soveraign Lord according to which we must all be Judged Pastors and People great and small Learned and Ignorant It contains the Foundations of Divine Revelation without which there is neither Faith nor a good Conscience nor peace of mind nor hope of Salvation and if they would consider these things a little more carefully then they ordinarily do I am perswaded they would make no Difference with us about this Article All Christians are agreed that the Word of God is the only source of all the Mysteries that are necessary to our belief in Order to our Salvation and that his will is the only Rule of our Worship This is a Maxim about which there is no dispute between us and those of the Church of Rome for they know with us that Faith comes out of the Word of God and that it is in vain to Honour God when we follow the Commandments of men All our difference consists but in the knowing where that word and that will is we restrain it to the Scripture our Adversaries extend it further for they would have it to be found in Traditions in the writings of the Fathers in the decisions of the Popes in the Determinations of the Councils and in all that which they call the belief of the Church not only while those things are conformable to the Scripture but also while they are besides the Scriptures But as for the decisions of the Popes and Councils our Adversaries themselves consess that God gives them not any new and immediate Revelation that discovers new Objects of Faith to them or new ways of Worship and that since Jesus Christ and his Apostles God has not given the like Revelations to men either in these latter or the proceeding Ages It is certain says Monsieur du Val his words being set down by Monsieur Arnaud in his second Letter That the Holy Ghost does not assist the Pope in the decisions of points of Faith by an immediate and express illumination as well because that Illumination would be miraculous and that there would be no necessity of establishing such a Miracle as because that no Pope ever attempted to prove that when he would decide any matter he should be immediately and expresly inlightned by the Holy Spirit A Council also adds he has not the like illumination or ever had And if ever any had had it it would have been without doubt the first of all which the Apostles held at Jerusalem at a time wherein the Holy Ghost visibly descended upon the Faithful And yet notwithstanding the Apostles in that Council did not determine any point of difference about the Legal Ceremonies by an express and immediate illumination but after a long debate and discussion It is therefore an unquestionable Truth that there is no new and immediate Revelation in the Church and that Revelation ceased in Jesus Christ and his Apostles From whence it evidently follows that all that is to be found either in the decisions of the Popes or in the Definitions of the Councils or in the Writings of the Fathers or the belief of the Church or in that which they call Tradition or in a word in all that proceeds from the Mouth and hands of men whatsoever Denomination they may pass under is the word of God but as far as it may be found conformable to that Revelation of Jesus Christ and his Apostles But that being so as it is without any difficulty how can they be certain of that Conformity but as they refer to and compare things with the Scripture They say that there are certain Articles of that Revelation which the Apostles have delivered down in Trust from their own living voice alone to their Successors and which from hand to hand have came down to us But besides that that very thing is a matter of History about which we cannot have any certainty of Faith and upon which by Consequence we can build nothing firmly what certain sign can they give us to know those pretended Apostolical Traditions by or to discern the True by when they should be mingled with the false From the first Rise of Christianity Hereticks would say as may be seen in Saint Irenaeus to gain credit to their Errors that they had were the secret Mysteries which the Apostles taught not to all in Common but to the perfect in particular Papias himself as Eusebius Testifies had made a Collection of Tables and New Doctrines under the Title of unwritten Traditions which he had Learned from the Mouths of those who had seen the Apostles and conversed familiarly with them Saint Irenaeus speaks of a certain Tradition which had passed for currant in his Time in Asia as immediately coming from the Apostle Saint John to wit That Jesus Christ Taught after his Fortieth Year which is notwithstanding now held to be false by all Chronologers They do not not hold the Opinion of the Mâ—llenaries to be less false which divers Antient Fathers have approved and maintained as a Tradition proceeding from the Apostles The Churches of Asia who have the Feast of Easter Celebrated precisely on the Fourteenth Day of the Moons Age after the Vernal Equinox boast for that purpose of the Tradition of Saint John and Saint Philip and the rest of the Church hold on the contrary by Apostolical Tradition that it ought to be Celebrated on the Sunday of our Lord's Resurrection The Greeks Nestorians Abassines Latins Armenians have their contrary Traditions for Tradition changes its Face and Form according as the Nation changes one sort hold for a Tradition the necessity of three immersions in Baptism and that of the use of Leavened bread in the Sacrament of the Eucharist and the other mock at it and reject it The one sort believe a Purgatory by Tradition the others believe it not The one by Tradition Circumcise their Children the others have that practise in horrour as being a Relique of Judaism The one sort fast by Tradition upon the Saturday the rest have that fasting in Execration One sort by Tradition Sacrifice Lambs at this day after the manner of the Jews the rest detest that custom Who can say Justly in so great a Confusion which this is Apostolical and this is not so Moreover there are a great many Antient Traditions which publick use heretofore Authorised and which Time has so abolished that there remains not the least shadow of them among the Latins as that of not Baptizing
even to the opening of their mouths by force and that those to whom they offered that violence look'd upon it as the most cruel of all punishments that divers made so great a resistance to it that they could not obtain their ends and that in their rage they tore their Breasts to revenge themselves of their refusals He himself testifies that the Horror which the Orthodox had to be found in the same Assemblies with the Arians was so great that having no Churches wherein they could publickly worship God they assembled with the Novatians who had three Churches in that City because these latter were indeed Schismaticks but not Hereticks as the Arians and that if the Novatians had been willing the Catholicks would have made but one only Church with them Sozomen relates also that the Emperour Valens who was an Arian having gone to the City of Edessa and having learned there that the Orthodox that is to say those who persever'd in the faith of the Consubstantiality of the Son made all their Assemblies in a Field near the City because all the Churches were in the hands of the Arians he punished the Governour of the Province who suffered those Assemblies and commanded him to go thither the next day to hinder them with all his force from assembling themselves and to punish those who should oppose themselves that the people having heard that Order did not fail to meet there and the Governour having gone thither and finding in the way a Woman who was running thither with her little Child he asked her if she had not heard what the Emperour had commanded but that the Woman without being moved answered him that she was not ignorant of it and that it was for that very reason that she ran thither to be there with others which made such an impression upon the Spirit of the Governour that he went back to the Emperour and acquainted him with that obstinate resolution and caused him to revoke the Orders he had given I confess that there were many of the Orthodox who had not courage enough to go so far as a Separation and who contented themselves with only groaning under the Arian Tyranny in waiting for better Times But it is also certain that those who had more zeal and courage withdrew themselves from the Communion of those Hereticks and that they believed themselves bound to do it for the making sure of their salvation Therefore it was that Faustinus in his Treatise against the Arians said That if any one did not believe that the Society of the Arians could be rendered culpable under a pretence that he had the testimony of his own conscience which did not accuse him of having violated or renounced the faith there it belonged to such a one to take heed and to examine himself But as for me adds he the cause of God being concerned I judge my self bound to be more pre-cautioned and to have a greater fear than those persons have For it is written a man that is an Heretick after the first and second admonition reject knowing that he who is such is perverted and that he sins being condemned in himself And as to the punishment of dissemblers it is written All flesh shall worship before my face saith the Lord God and the Saints shall come forth and they shall see those who have transgressed against me for the worm of the Hypocrites shall not dye and their fire shall not be quenched The Apostle forbids us also to enter into fellowship with unbelievers And elsewhere after having given a description of sins he condemns not only those who commit such things but those also who consent to those who commit them There are divers other passages in the Scripture which forbid our companying with Hereticks but I would only note these here briefly to the end that you should not think that it is out of a vain superstition that we avoid the Communion of those whom the Divine Justice has condemned Behold then two Actions that I have propounded in my judgement sufficiently justified and by consequence the right of separating our selves from the body of our ordinary Pastors when they teach Doctrines contrary to the true faith which they would constrain the faithful to profess established by an example against which I do not see any thing which they can rationally oppose or hinder it from being like to that of our Fathers For if they say that there were in that party of the Orthodox that separated themselves divers Bishops that authorized that Action besides that we may say the same thing of the Party of the Reformation in which they know that there was a very considerable number of Pious and Learned Prelates and even some who had the courage to suffer death in the defence of that cause Besides that I say it is certain that it is not the Episcopal Dignity that makes the Reformation lawful it is lawful as often as it has causes that are just sufficient and necessary at the foundation and wheresoever those causes are to be found the faithful people have as much right to separate themselves as the Bishops If the people had no right to separate themselves from the Body of their Pastors who should teach them false Doctrine it could not be by reason of the Authority which the Pastors have over the people for the Body of the Pastors has at least as much authority over particular Pastors as it has over the people so that if that reason were not sufficiently valid in regard of particular Bishops they may very well see that it would not be so in regard of the faithful people In effect a Separation founded upon the fear of dishonouring God and prejudicing ones own salvation is a common right and the Laity are not less bound to it than the Bishops since both the one and the other ought according to the precept of the Apostle to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling If they say that the Separation which fell out in time of the Arians was founded upon the Authority of the Nicene Council wherein Arius and his followers had been condemned whereas that of our Fathers is not established by the Authority of any Council since there is not one that has condemned the Doctrines and Customs of the Church of Rome I answer that this difference is yet null and void For not to mention that the Arians of whom we speak called themselves the Catholicks and took it as a great injury when they were called Arians or Followers of Arius and that their Councils had pronounced nothing directly against that of Nice their separation was founded upon the things themselves that is to say upon the necessity of acknowledging the Son of God to be consubstantial with the Father in order to the acknowledging him to be truly God and not upon the bare Authority of the Nicene Council to which they might have opposed that of the Church then in her
there is reason for that or no it is sufficient that he consents that they should not any more have had those for their Pastors which were so before and that they should have withdrawn themselves from their communion and external worship we demand no more at present We ought now to pass on to the second Proposition upon which the Objection is grounded that I have propounded in the beginning of this Chapter and to examine whether the Priviledge of the Church of Rome is such that one ought not upon any pretence whatsoever to separate ones self from her communion All the world knows that this is the pretension of that Church and that it is for that that she makes her self the Mother and the Mistress of all others and that she has also made it to be defined in her Council of Trent It is upon that account that one of her Popes Boniface the Eighth formerly determined That it was necessary to the Salvation of every creature to be subject to the Bishop of Rome But clearly to decide so weighty a Question there seems to me to be only these two wayes The first is to enquire whether that Church can or cannot fall into Error and cease to be the True Church of Jesus Christ for if it be true that she can never fall into Errors nor lose the quality of a true Church we must conclude that we ought alwayes to remain in her Communion But if on the contrary she may erre and cease to be a true Church we must also conclude that we may and ought to separate our selves when there shall be a just occasion there The second way is that laying aside the Question Whether she may err or not we examine whether it be true that God has made her the Mistress of all other Churches as she pretends whether he has established her to be the perpetual and inviolable Center of the Christian Unity with a command to all the faithful not to fly off from her For if it be an Order that God has made we cannot resist it without destroying our selves but if it be only an ill-grounded pretension of that Church her communion is neither more necessary nor more inviolable than that of other particular Churches But as to the first of these wayes I have already shewn that it engages those who will follow it in the examination of the foundation and in effect the proofs that they set before us to establish the Infallibility of the Roman See are neither so clear nor so concluding that it should not be necessary to see whether the Doctrines that the Church of Rome teaches answer that pretension which she makes to be infallible and unable to fall away or to say better those proofs are so weak and so trivial that they themselves bind us to have recourse to the examination of the Doctrines of that Church to judge of her pretension by them These two Arguments are equally good as to their form The Church of Rome cannot err in the Faith therefore the things which she teaches us of Faith are true And the things which the Church of Rome teaches us are not true therefore the Church of Rome may err I do not here examine the question which of these two wayes of reasoning is the more natural I yield if they will that they should chuse the first but when they shall have chose it good sense would also require that if the things which they shall set before us to prove this Proposition The Church of Rome cannot err in the faith do no wayes satisfie the mind if instead of assuring us they plunge us into the greatest uncertainties we must pass over to the other way and by consequence we must enter into the examination of the foundation But to judge of what nature those proofs are which they give for the infallibility of the Church of Rome we need but a naked view of them For they are not the express declarations of the will of God although it should be very necessary that they should have such a one for the establishment of so great and peculiar a priviledge the knowledge of which is so very important to all Christians They are not evident consequences drawn from some passages of Scripture or some actions of the Apostles they are neither clear and convincing reasonings nor even strong presumptions and such as have much likelihood They are strained consequences which they draw as they are able from two or three passages of the Scripture and which a man that should have never heard them speak of that Infallibility with all his circumspection would not have gathered They produce the Testimony that St. Paul gives to the Church of Rome in his dayes That her faith was spoken of through all the world and they consider not that he gives the same testimony to the Thessalonians in far higher terms than to the Romans for he tells them That they were an example to the faithful and that the word of the Lord sounded from them not only in Macedonia and Achaia but in every place also Although they do not conclude the infallibility of the Church of Thessalonica from thence They do not see that he renders well near the same testimony to the Philippians in adding a clause that seems much more express to wit That he is assured of this very thing that he which had begun a good work in them would perform it until the day of Jesus Christ Although they cannot notwithstanding conclude infallibility from thence in the behalf of the Church of Philippi In effect these testimonies only regard the persons who at that time composed those Churches and not those who should come after them and do not found any priviledge on them They produce the passages of the Gospel that relate to S. Peter as this Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it and this I will give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven c. and this I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not when therefore thou art converted strengthen thy brethren and this Feed my sheep But to perceive the weakness of the consequence which they draw from these passages we need but to see that which is between two things of which it is necessary that we should be assured before we can conclude any thing First of all we must be assured that S. Peter was at Rome that he preached and fixed his See there for these actions are not so evident as they imagine they are inveloped with divers difficulties that appear unconquerable and accompanied with many circumstances that have no appearance of truth and which make at least that whole History to be doubted I confess that the Ancients did believe so but they have sometimes readily admitted Fables for truths and after all these
in that of other Bishops Since the Popes were raised to that high Dignity wherein we behold them at this day each Nation has thought that it ought in some manner to participate in their Nomination because the business was about one common interest they would have the Protectors of their Interests in the Colledge of Cardinals and Princes themselves have interpos'd but they can see nothing like that in the Primitive Church Rome alone made her Bishops without the participation of other Churches 2. Victor Bishop of Rome having excommunicated the Churches of Asia who celebrated the Feast of Easter after the manner of the Jews S. Irenaeus with the Bishops of France opposed themselves to that Excommunication and wrote as well to Victor as to the other Bishops and in effect those Churches of Asia did not cease to remain in the Communion of the Catholick Church notwithstanding that action of Victor as it appears from the Testimony of Socrates who formally sayes that those who contended about the business of Easter did not nevertheless refuse communion with one another So that their Bishops were called and received in the Council of Nice without any difficulty for Eusebius notes expresly among those who were called by Constantine the Syrians the Cilicians and the Mesopotamians who were Quartodecumani he sayes that Constantine would conferr pleasantly and familiarly with the Bishops about matters that were in question and that he would bring them all by that means to the same opinion even about the matter of Easter and S. Athanasius testifies that it was to accord that difference that all the World was assembled at the Council of Nice and that the Syrians came to the same opinion with the rest and that they earnestly contended against the Heresie of Arius which shews us that they assisted at the Council without any notice being taken of Victor's Excommunication From whence it is no very hard matter to conclude what Aeneas Sylvius Cardinal of Sienna and afterwards Pope has acknowledged in one of his Letters That before the Council of Nice every one lived according to his own wayes and that men had but a very small regard to the Church of Rome 3. In the sixth Century a great trouble being raised in the Church upon the occasion of three Writings the one of Theodoret Bishop of Cyrus the other of Ibas Bishop of Edessa and the third of Theodoret of Mopsuesta which had been read and approved in the Council of Chalcedon but whom the most judged to be Heretical Pope Vigilius openly took up the desence of those three Writings and vigorously oppos'd himself to the condemnation that the Emperour Justinian and the Eastern Patriarchs had made of them But in the end being drawn to Constantinople he changed his opinion and consented to that condemnation whither he was carried out to it by the complaisance which he had for the Emperour who had a great affection for that business or whether out of some other principle Howsoever it were that action appear'd so criminal in the eyes of a great number of Orthodox Bishops that they separated themselves and their Churches from the Communion of Vigilius and his Party and even the Church of Africa assembled in Council as Victor of Tunis an African Bishop witnesses who lived in those times Synodically excommunicated that Pope leaving him notwithstanding means to re-establish himself by repentance These Actions prove in my judgement very sufficiently that the faithful then did not look upon the Church of Rome as the Mistress of all others nor on the communion or dependance on its See as a thing absolutely necessary to the salvation of Christians There can nothing be said in effect more opposite to the Spirit of the Christian Religion than that Imagination God had heretofore fixed his Communion with that of the Israelites and established in Jerusalem and in its High Priests the center of Ecclesiastical Unity But when Jesus Christ brought his Gospel into the world he changed that order not by transporting the rights of Jerusalem to Rome nor those of the High Priests to the Popes but by abolishing wholly that necessity of Communion to a certain place and that particular dependance on a certain See This is what S. Paul clearly enough teaches in his third Chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians In the new man sayes he there is neither Greek nor Jew neither Circumcision nor Vncircumcision neither Barbarian or Scythian bond or free but Jesus Christ is all and in all He had had no reason to express himself after that manner if that new man whereof he spoke had necessarily been a Roman and depending on the Communion of the Bishop of Rome So also the same Apostle setting that Evangelical Church that Jesus Christ had assembled in opposition to the ancient and earthly Jerusalem makes not that opposition to consist in this that the one is Jerusalem and the other Rome the one the head City of Judaea and the other that of the Empire but he makes it to consist in this that one is earthly and the other heavenly the one below and the other on high the one ty'd to a certain place from whence it cannot go and the other independent on all manner of particular places in the world and having no necessary dependence on any but Heaven For it is to this purpose that he calls the Jerusalem that is above the heavenly Jerusalem the City of the living God the Church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven It is in the view of that that Jesus Christ said to the Samaritan Woman believe me the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father But the hour cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth The Samaritans would establish the center of Religion on the Mountain where Jacob and the twelve Patriarchs had built an Altar to God the Jews on the contrary established it in the City of Jerusalem To all that Jesus Christ opposes not the Capital City as the new Mountain which he had chosen nor Rome as another Jerusalem but the Spirit and the Truth that is to say Faith and Piety alone abstracted from all those relations to particular places and independent on all Cities and Mountains The same thing is justified by the censure that S. Paul passed on the Corinthians in that one said I am of Paul another I am of Apollos and another I am of Cephas that is to say of Peter For we ought not to imagine that those men meant that they were so of Paul or of Apollos or of Peter as to be no more of Jesus Christ or that they would take Paul or Apollos or Cephas for heads equal to Jesus Christ They were Christians and they were not ignorant of the difference they were to make between Jesus Christ and his Apostles No without doubt they were not ignorant
to the Emperour with great submission praying him to mitigate his Decree and not to expose them as he had done to the violence of their Enemies They wrote also to the other Christian Princes as well to inform them of what had pass'd at Ausburg as to justifie themselves against the many false accusations wherewith they were charg'd and to have them demand a General and free Council that should be held in Germany for the Reformation of the Church The Execution of this Decree of Ausburg fill'd for some time Germany with a thousand Persecutions against the Protestants by the Authority of the Imperial Chamber Behold here what the Emperour did to satisfie the desires of the Court of Rome it seems that he could have done nothing more vehemently and yet notwithstanding the Pope was not throughly contented He very much rejoyced to see the Protestants subjected to the most rigorous punishments But that Authority that Charles had taken upon him to appoint those Conferences to labour to bring those differences to an agreement the consent that he had given to the abolition of some Ceremonies and above all the promise of a Council within the prefixed term of a year were things that he could not digest judging them to be too contrary to the Soveraignty of his See And because the Emperour had press'd him about this last Article of a Council and even his Legate wrote to him that it was the general desire of all Germany he returned this Answer That having consulted the Cardinals about it divers of them had not found that a Council was a very fit means for the rooting out of the present Heresies because that those things that had been decided by former Councils or already established by the practice of many Ages ought not to be again called in question That this was a very bad precedent and could not be done without very great scandal and a manifest violation of the Apostolick See That nevertheless if the Emperour judged a Council to be absolutely necessary he might promise the Lutherans one but with this condition that they should presently depart from all their Errors and be obedient to their Holy Mother Church that they should hold her Doctrines and her Rites until it should be otherwise ordain'd by the Council to the Decrees of which they should wholly submit themselves That besides that the calling of a Council would be very scandalous and of exceeding bad example to all posterity That as to the place where it should be held he judg'd it absolutely necessary that it should be in Italy and that he did not see any City more fit for it than Rome it self which was the Seat of the Christian Faith that if notwithstanding Rome did not please him he might chuse one either in Bolognia or Placentia or Mantua The Pope went even so far as to write to the Christian Princes a Circulary Letter by which he advised them in the general of that which had pass'd at Ausburg and that for the intire rooting out of Heresie he was resolved to call a Council Notwithstanding all these Declarations consisted only in words for at the bottom his mind was wholly remote from the holding of a Council in which as Guicciardine sayes he apprehended that they might contest his Papacy with him which he had purchased by canvasings and money and that they would take cognizance of the affairs of the Florentines whom he had subdu'd and subjected to the Family of the Medici by force of Arms or as the Author of the History of the Council of Trent sayes he feared lest they should beat down that excessive Authority which the See of Rome had usurped over all other Bishops and over all Churches However it were he would not have one but he would that they should make use of Fire and Sword And it was for this that he wrote about that same time to Ferdinand the Emperour's Brother exhorting him to go himself in person to Bohemia to root out Heresie there He solicited also the Emperour and the Christian Kings to joyn their Arms with those of the Duke of Savoy against the Switz Cantons who had embraced the Reformation and his Intrigues or those of his creatures were so powerful that they enflamed a bloody War between the Reformed Cantons and the others wherein the Reformed were beaten many times which afforded great matter of joy to the Court of Rome In the year 1532. the Emperour having called the Imperial Diet to Ratisbon for the affairs of Hungary and Germany threatned by the Arms of the Turks the Princes and the other States assembled seeing clearly already that the Pope and his Court sought only to elude the Council by divers pretences solicited the Emperour that he would be pleased to call one himself by his Authority and they represented to him that it was his right in the quality of Roman Emperour that other Emperours had so used it and that he was the Head and Protector of all Christianity especially in case of the negligence and refusal of the Pope The Emperour would not hearken to this Proposition and yet nevertheless being urged by the necessity of his affairs and having a War to maintain with the Turk he granted a Peace to the Protestants who were already seven Princes and four and twenty Imperial Cities This Peace was made at the Mediation of Albert Cardinal and Arch-Bishop of Mayence and Lewis Prince Palatine of the Rhine and the Emperour made his Decree publick bearing in it express prohibitions to trouble or disquiet any person for matters of Religion only till the holding of a General Free and Christian Council which he endeavoured to have called within the term of a year or in case that a Council could not be held till a General Assembly of the States of the Empire wherein they might provide for the affairs of Religion This Decree displeas'd the Pope and all his Court extreamly who would neither have a Peace nor a Council nor any Assembly of the States to treat of Religion as it evidently appeared afterwards For after that the Emperour had set the affairs of Hungary and Austria in order and had been freed from the force of Solyman he went into Italy and having urged the Pope many times upon that subject the Pope alwayes eluded the Proposition as well by the conditions which he required that the Protestants should submit themselves to well knowing that they would not agree to them as by the default of the consent of the Kings of France and England without whom he said it was to be feared that the calling of a Council would create a new Schism in the Church Thus the Papacy of Clement pass'd away who dyed the twenty fifth of September 1534. His Successor who was Paul III. followed the same path of Clement in regard of the Protestants The first step that he made was to let his Nuntio Paulus Vergerius delcare that he was resolved to call a Council but at the
same time he made these three things to be added that he intended it should be held at Mantua and not in Germany that he did not pretend to have any of his rights released and that he would not endure that a National Council should be held in Germany upon which he demanded the answer of the Protestants A little after the Protestants answered to this substance That having already appealed to a Council they ardently wished for it but that as they had often declared they demanded a free Council that should provide against the disorders of the Church and make a good Reformation according to the Word of God and in the terms of Christian Equity and it was a Council so qualified which they had appealed to That the dispute being about matters wherein the See of Rome was visibly interested and about others which the Pope defended not in word only but by those bloody Edicts and extream Cruelties which they exercised against those who did not agree with them there was no colour of reason that the judgement ought to be in their hands nor that the Council could be free if the choice of the place and the persons who should compose it and the form of procedure which they held should depend upon their choice That the Pope having already condemned them and their Doctrine it was against all manner of reason for him to pretend to be the Master of an Assembly who should judge both them and the See of Rome In fine that the business being a common cause it was the right of the Emperour and the Princes in so important an affair to make choice of the most fit persons and those who were most capable of giving glory to God and doing good to the Christian Common-wealth and that as for themselves as they could not abandon the interests of the Truth they should do also all that should lye in their power for the re-establishing of peace and union We may guess that this answer was not very agreeable to the Court of Rome and yet notwithstanding the Pope did not fail to speak alwayes of a Council and to exhort his Cardinals to begin the Reformation by themselves He made divers Orations to them for that purpose and he went so far as to give charge to some of them to examine that which was most necessary to be reform'd in their Court which had already alarm'd them all But at the same time he assur'd them by one of his actions by which they might very well judge of the little sincerity of his words for he created two young men his Base Sons Cardinals the one of fourteen years of age and the other of sixteen and when they represented to him their small age he answered merrily That he would supply that defect by the number of his own having years enough to spare them if it was necessary The Pope's Nuntio having received the Answer of the Protestants departed from Germany and returned to Rome where after having made his relation he concluded that nothing more was to be thought on than to oppress the Protestants by force of Arms. This Nuntio who was Vergerius had had divers private Conferences with them and even with Luther himself whom he had laboured to gain by threats and promises but he could not obtain his design This forced the Pope powerfully to solicite the Emperour who at that time came to Rome openly to declare War against the Protestants and he had in this two great interests the one to busie the Emperour whose power he feared in Italy and the other to confound the Protestants with his greatest force without the confusion of holding a Council The Emperour consented to the desires of the Pope and he was resolved only to give a greater colour to the War that a Council should be first called to let them see that he had tryed fair means before he came to violence but that he should call it under such conditions as that the Authority of the See of Rome should incurr any danger A Bull therefore was drawn up dated June 12. 1536. the Convocation of it was at Mantua on the three and twentieth of May of the year following and the Emperour having solicited the Protestants to go thither they made well near the same answers that they had already done They remonstrated therefore in the first place That the calling of a Council could not of right belong to the Pope alone as well by reason that the disorders and corruptions of which they complain'd and desir'd a reformation came for the most part from the See of Rome and its creatures which for some Ages since had infected Religion with divers errors and superstitions and which moreover had been wholly overthrown in the Government of the Church as because also that that See was already the openly declared Enemy to the Reformation and those who demanded it having condemn'd them for Hereticks and persecuted them in all places by Fire and Sword So that being to give an account of all that to a Council it was against all reason to leave the calling of a Council to the Pope alone which of right ought to belong to the Emperour and the Princes Secondly They noted That the Pope by his Bull pretended to frame the Council out of his creatures who were bound to him by an Oath and to remain also himself the Judge and Master of all the difference which was a manifest fallacy and injustice the firmer to establish his Authority under the pretence of a Council and those abuses the defence of which he had undertaken In the third place they took notice That the Pope in his Bull had said nothing of the manner of proceeding which they ought to use in the Council from whence they concluded that his intent was to make those things which they should treat of there to depend upon the determinations of his See humane Traditions and the Decrees of some later Councils and not upon the Word of God alone That by this means that would be no more a free and Christian Council but a Roman Conventicle which instead of tending to a holy Reformation could on the contrary tend to nothing but the confirmation of those evils which had for so long a time infested the Church As to the place where this pretended Council was called they represented That it was not just that it should be in Italy where they could have no security for themselves nor any liberty of opinion in a good conscience and that the Imperial Assemblies who had demanded it had alwayes demanded that it should be in Germany That they therefore besought the Emperour that he would be pleased to consider their reasons and to endeavour that the Council should be lawful to the end they might happily unite to the glory of God and the peace of Christendom not forgetting what had hapned at the Council of Constance to the Emperour Sigismund who saw his Authority trampled under their feet and his
Letters of Safe-conduct violated in the person of John Husse and Jerom of Prague They caused in the end a Writing to be Printed containing all these reasons and divers others too long to transcribe to justifie themselves against the calumnies of their adversaries and they published it not only in Germany but in other foreign Countries also Some time after the Pope published another Bull by which he prolonged the holding of the Council under a pretence that he could not agree with the Duke of Mantua and a little after he assign'd it at Vicenza Notwithstanding the prosecutions continued alwayes against the Protestants every where where the Pope had any Authority In Germany the Imperial Chamber committed a thousand injustices and outrages against them In France the flames were kindled in all the Provinces and although Henry the Eighth King of England had thrown off the Yoke of Rome yet he did not fail to appear a good Catholick to put to death without mercy all those who had learned the New Religion The same was done in Scotland in Flanders and in all the Countreys of the Duke of Savoy In the year 1539. the Pope published a Bull by which he suspended the Convocation of a Council indefinitely until it should be his good pleasure to have one held And moreover there was held in this same year an Imperial Diet at Franckfort whither the Emperour sent the Arch-Bishop of London as his Commissioner and decreed with him that to labour to put an end to the differences about Religion he should make a friendly Conference between the most Learned and well meaning persons both on the one side and on the other who without the intervention of the Pope should have nothing before their eyes but the glory of God and the good of the Church and that notwithstanding they should let the Protestants have peace for fifteen months under conditions that were yet harsh enough to them But this Resolution so highly offended the Pope that as soon as he had received the news of it he dispatch'd away a Nuntio to the Emperour who was then in Spain with orders to complain and to hinder by all sorts of wayes that he should not authorize it by his consent The Protestants having sent thither on their parts the Emperour would not for that time declare himself but dismiss'd that business to another season After which he went into the Low-Countreys to appease some popular Sedition there and having there put the matter into debate because he was to give some answer Cardinal Farnese who was Legate there before him opposed him with all his might remonstrating the inconveniencies that might arise from such a Conference and that he had far better referr the cause of Religion to a Council and notwithstanding to sortifie the Catholick League to make the Protestants submit by fair means or foul against whom he made a very long Invective This counsel notwithstanding did not then please the Emperour he appointed a Diet to be held in Germany for the Conference and he invited all the Princes to come in person thither promising publick safety to all which oblig'd the Cardinal Legate to retire in great discontent This Cardinal in his return went into France and obtain'd of Francis the First an Edict against those whom he call'd Hereticks and Lutherans which was afterwards publish'd and executed through his whole Kingdom with extream rigour The Conference was first assigned at Haguenaw a little after at Wormes and the Pope who feared the success thought good to send thither his Nuntio Thomas Campeius with Paulus Vergerius in whom he reposed a great deal of confidence But the Policy of the Court of Rome was too averse to an accommodation to suffer that Conference to proceed far the Emperour therefore at the urgent solicitation of the Pope broke it off by express Letters and referred it to a Diet which he would have held some time after at Ratisbon The Protestants saw clearly to what all these delayes tended and yet nevertheless they did not fail to appear at Ratisbon whither the Emperour came in person and whither the Pope had also sent Cardinal Contarenus in the quality of his Legate This was in the year 1541. Moreover the Emperour caused a Book to be presented on his part to the Assembly which chiefly treated of the Articles of Religion and particularly of those which were in controversie and he declar'd that it was his Will that that Book should be examined and that it should serve as the Theme or Subject of the Conference for which he himself named the Collocutors by the consent of both parties who deferr'd that nomination to him In this Conference the Collocutors agreed upon some Articles and could not agree upon some others as upon those of Transubstantiation of the Adoration of the Eucharist the Sacrifice of the Mass the Celibacy of Priests the Communion under one kind the Sacrament of Penance And the Emperour having consulted the Legate about this to know of him what he should do on this occasion the Legate gave him his answer in writing That after having seen as well the Articles agreed upon between the Collocutors as the others which they could not come to agree about it was his judgement that he ought to ordain nothing about the rest but that he ought to refer all to the Holy See which could in a General Council or otherwise do that which it should judge necessary for the good of the Church and in particular for that of Germany The Emperour took this answer as if the Legate had consented that the Articles agreed upon between the Collocutors should immediately be received by both the Parties and he related it to the Assembly after that manner But there sprung up a kind of division between the Bishops of one side and the Roman Catholick Princes on the other For the Princes would that the Articles agreed upon should be received and that the rest should be referred either to a General or National Council or at least to a General Assembly of the States of the Empire and the Bishops on the contrary who saw that this was the beginning of a Reformation were of opinion that they should reject those Articles agreed upon wherein they said that the Catholick Collocutors had too much given way to the Protestants and that they should change nothing either in Religion or its Ceremonies but that they should refer all to a General or a National Council This dispute therefore having so hapned the Legate feared lest they should upon this meddle with the affairs of the Court of Rome so that he openly declared by another publick Writing that he did not mean that they should receive any Articles but that they should absolutely refer all as well the agreed on as the others to his Holiness for him to determine what he should think fit He published yet farther another Writing by which he very much condemned as well the Catholick Princes as the Bishops
difficulty to be heard in a Congregation in the house of the Legate In this Congregation they demanded on the behalf of their Masters 1. That the Article of the Superiority of the Council above the Pope decided in the Councils of Constance and Basil might be laid down for a foundation 2. That the Pope since he was a party in this affair should not preside in the Council but that he should submit to it both himself and his See to be judged there 3. That he should for this effect absolve the Bishops of the Oaths that he had given them 4. That the matters which had been already decided should be judged of again after their Divines had been heard since they could not till then have come to the Council not having had Safe-conduct 5. That they should deferr all judgement till they came 6. That they should judge according to the Word of God and the common belief of all Christian Nations But the Prelates would not hear these Propositions and the Legate who consulted the Pope upon all matters and more especially upon these had already thus vehemently explained himself That they had much rather lose their lives than release any thing of the Authority of the Holy See Some dayes after the Divines of Wirtemberg and those of Strasburg arrived at Trent and presented their Confession demanding that it should be examined and offering themselves to explain and defend it but this was to no purpose for the Pope had expresly forbad his Legate to permit that they should enter upon any publick conference neither vivâ voce or by Writing in the matters of Religion Thus things were carried on in this Council But while affairs were manag'd after this manner the Pope who for some time before had been discontented at the Emperour had made his Treaty with King Henry the Second and the King on his side had also very secretly treated with Maurice the Elector of Saxony for the Liberty of Germany so that matters were all on a sudden ready for a War and the news being come to Trent the Pope presently separated the Assembly giving order to his Nuntio's to give notice of it every where and to suspend the Council till another time This War freed Germany from its slavery under Charles he was forced to set all the Princes at liberty whom he kept Prisoners and in fine to make the Peace which was concluded at Passaw the last day of July 1552. By this Peace it was concluded that the Emperour should call within six Months the General Assembly of the Empire there to provide means for the accommodating of the differences of Religion and that notwithstanding no person should be disquieted upon that occasion and thus the Interim of the Emperour was abolished But if Germany had then any Quiet the Persecutions were enflamed elsewhere against the Reformed Edward the Sixth being dead in England and Mary having succeeded him the Pope sent Cardinal Pool thither in quality of his Legate who negotiated there the re-establishing of the Authority and Religion of the Pope This made the flames to be kindled and their punishments to be renewed after the most cruel manner in the world for in one only year they made an infinite number of the people to be burn'd for the sake of Religion and one hundred seventy and six persons of great quality Elizabeth the Daughter of Henry the Eighth and Sister to Mary was confin'd to a strait Prison On the other side Ferdinand King of Hungary and Bohemia and Arch-Duke of Austria made a rigorous Edict upon the same occasion for all the Lands of his obedience and drove away from Bahemia alone more than two hundred Ministers The Emperour on his part alwayes caused the Laws of the Inquisition to be most rigorously observed in the Low-Countreys The Duke of Savoy did the same thing in his Countreys France every day beheld nothing but these sad Executions and yet nevertheless all these bloody pursuits did but increase in all places the number of those who embraced the Reformation Pope Julius the Third dyed the three and twentieth of March 1555. and Marcellus the Second was chosen in his place who not having held the See more than-two and twenty dayes had for his Successour Paul the Fourth In this same year there was an Imperial Assembly held at Ausburg where the Treaty of Peace made at Passaw was confirmed and the freedom of Religion granted by the Emperour and the King of the Romans in Germany The Decree was presently published But notwithstanding the people of Austria and Bavaria having demanded with very great urgency a Reformation of their Princes it was refused them and they agreed only that they should receive the Communion under both kinds in waiting for a Council This did not fail to give great displeasure to the Pope beholding on one side that all parts of the World were swallow'd up by the Superstitions and Errors of his Church and on the other that even the Roman Catholick Princes of whom he expected an entire obedience undertook without his consent to change something in Religion In this same time Charles the Fifth weary of affairs and having but a weak constitution resolved to quit the World and for this effect having made Philip his Son to come to Brussells he demis'd to him the Soveraignty of the Low-Countreys in his favour and a Month after he yielded to him the Crown of Spain He resigned the Empire to Ferdinand his Brother and reserving to himself the Pension of an hundred thousand Crowns he retired into a Monastery This hapned in the year 1556. and he dyed two years after the one and twentieth of September 1558. Pope Paul the Fourth from the first beginning of his Papacy turn'd all his thoughts to avoid the Council and to make the rigors of the Inquisition to rule in all places saying That this was the only means to destroy Heresie and the only fort of the Apostolick See For this effect he made an Ordinance which he caused all the Cardinals to sign by which he renewed all the censures and punishments denounced by his Predecessors against the Hereticks and declared that all the Prelates Princes Kings and Emperours fallen into Herefie ought to be held fallen from and deprived of all their Benefices Estates Kingdoms or Empires without any other declaration that they could not be re-established by any authority not even by that of the Apostolick See and that their goods should be given to the first possessor He quarrell'd at the same time with Ferdinand maintaining that the Resignation of Charles in his favour could not be done but by his hands and that in that case it belonged to him to make whom he should please Emperour Notwithstanding two things fell out that gave him a great deal of grief the one that Mary Queen of England being dead Elizabeth succeeded her and that the Emperour Ferdinand having propounded to the Protestants in the Diet of Ausburg which was held in
and which the Donatists acknowledg'd to be Orthodox was then actually and in effect spread over the whole Earth that is to say that it had a great extent among the Nations of it whereas that of the Donatists was shut up within one small part of Africk It was upon this that they abused a passage of the Canticles which they read after this manner Tell me O thou whom my soul loveth where thou feedest where thou makest thy flocks to rest in the South explaining this in the South as if he would have noted the place and said in Africa whereas it should be read at noon-day meerly to note the hour of the day when the Shepherd led his flock under some shade for their rest This is that which makes S. Augustine also speak to them sometimes of the Apostolical Churches and those to whom S. John wrote his Apocalypse with whom they had no communion and to reproach them so often for being separated from all the World The third Observation is That that Society which the Donatists acknowledged to be Orthodox and which was in effect spread over many Nations had not cut off the Donatists from its communion nor had separated the former from it if they had not excommunicated them nor pronounced Anathema's against those who should not hold Cecilianus to be innocent or the Traditors to have been good men When any one of them return'd to the Church they did not seek to make them renounce any other thing than their Schism nor to embrace any thing besides peace And even in the judgement of the Synod of Rome Milciades and his brethren offered to hold communion with the Bishops that Majorinus had ordained and in the Conference at Carthage they offered to the Donatist Bishops to own them for Bishops and to preserve their Sees to them without requiring any other condition of them than that of brotherly Unity It was therefore the Donatists who separated themselves wilfully out of a meer spirit of division and the Church was in respect of them in a passive Separation Lastly The fourth Observation is That although the Donatists should have had any just occasion to separate yet they had urged their Separation notwithstanding as far as it could go for they had carried it so far as even to break that general bond which yet in some manner united all those who make an external profession of Christianity good and bad Orthodox and Hereticks which yet in some manner make but one body in opposition to Pagans and other people absolutely Infidels Their Principle was That all the Christians in the World except the party of Donatus being sullied with the contagion of the Traditor Cecilianus all that they had also done became sullied by the uncleanness of their persons and upon this Principle they condemned the Christianity of the Universal Church they rejected her Baptism and her Sacraments although at the bottom they had the same with hers and they look'd upon that Society to be no otherwise than an Assembly of Pagans and Infidels with whom they would have nothing common This is what St. Augustine reproaches them with in divers places in his Writings They say sayes he that they are Christians but they say also that they only are so They make no scruple to say that they know that out of their Sect there are no Christians You hold sayes he to them elsewhere that all Christian Holiness has been abolish'd among the Nations where the Apostles had establish'd it because they have communicated with those whom your Fathers condemned in their Council of Carthage Therefore it was that they thought themselves grievously affronted when the Catholicks called them their Brethren they fled from their Communion they would not so much as sit together with them and they re-baptiz'd all those who had been baptiz'd in the Church when they came over to their Communion neither more or less than if they had come out of Paganism because they maintained that in effect the Church was absolutely perish'd throughout all the Earth except in their Party These are the matters of fact that I have thought my self bound to explain We must now return to the Objection of the Author of the Prejudices and examine it in the meaning of S. Augustine and the African Fathers the proposition of which it is composed The first is That there is a Church from which it is never allow'd any man to separate himself under what pretence soever and from which all those who do so separate themselves are Schismaticks This first Proposition is ambiguous and so confused that we can very hardly comprehend in what sense the Author of the Prejudices has meant it Every one knows that there is in the World a Body of people or of Nations who profess themselves to be Christians and to whom one may yet in some manner give the name of the Church because that all such Christians are yet in some respect within the General Call of the Gospel It is therefore this Church of which he means to speak But what likelihood is there that to accuse us of Schism he should have form'd so vagous an Idea of the Church since he knows very well that we are no more separated from this body than the other communions that compose it are or than the Church of Rome her self in particular is Every one knows that this body of Christians is divided into divers communions or particular Societies that bear the name of Churches as the Greek the Roman the Protestant the Coptick the Jacobite the Nestorian the Armenian Does he mean any one of these Churches But if that be so why does he not distinctly and without any hesitation tell us which it is and if he would that it should be that of Rome what ground is there to believe that he would have it so why did he not explain himself why did he make an end even to say That it should be in our choice whether that Church should be the Greek or the Nestorian or the Jacobites and that he did not pretend to determine it To what purpose are all these goings about Every one knows yet that God alwayes preserves in the world his truly faithful and his Children who are the true Church which he has predestinated to eternal Salvation But the Author of the Prejudices has formerly declared himself against this notion of the Church and he is so very earnest to reject it that we cannot impute it to him without doing him wrong We cannot even believe that he means That we ought not to separate our selves from a Communion when it is Orthodox and when those who separate themselves from it are Schismaticks For he has also declar'd himself against this Notion of the Church because sayes he in taking this way the examination of Schism would be remitted to that of the Opinions and that we must alwayes know whether the Communion that they forsake is Orthodox
shall be shaken because many in whom grace seem'd to be resplendent shall yield to the persecutors and some of the most firm among the faithful shall be troubled The Church sayes he shall not appear Ecclesia non apparebit She will not therefore have then that visible extension which the Author of the Prejudices would have to be her perpetual mark for all Ages He further acknowledges the same thing in his Epistle to Vincentius where he treats of the state of the Church under the Arians There he teaches in express terms That the Church is sometimes obscured and covered with clouds through the great number of offences that she is then only eminent in her most firm defenders while the multitude of the weak and carnal is overwhelmed with the floods of temptation That under the reign of the Arians the simple suffered themselves to be deceiv'd that others yielding through fear dissembled and in appearance consented to Arianism That indeed some of the most firm escaped the snares of those Hereticks but that they were but few in number in comparison of the rest That nevertheless some of them generously suffer'd banishment and some others lay hid here and there throughout the Earth I pray tell me what visible extension could the Orthodox communion have then which subsisted only in a small number of the firm of whom even the greatest part had suffered exile or lay hid here and there throughout all the Earth I confess that History notes that there were yet some small flocks in some places of the East and of the West who set up their Assemblies apart as at Edessa at Nazianzen at Antioch and in some Provinces of France and Germany but what was this in comparison of the Arian communion which had fill'd the Churches and held Councils as we have so often proved We must therefore seriously profess that this visible extension is a vain and deceitful mark when they would make it perpetual to the true Church as the Author of the Prejudices would make it and that no one could abuse with greater injustice the Authority of S. Augustine than he has done We must profess also that a small handful of the Faithful a little party have right to separate themselves from the whole multitude I mean from a communion spread over all the world which has on its side the Ministry the Pulpits the Councils the Schools Titles Dignities and all that retinue of temporal splendour when it has not the true Faith For the rest that which I have handled in this Chapter about the two former Propositions of the Author of the Prejudices already sufficiently lets us see the falseness of his argument For if he would take the pains to read this Chapter with never so little application he will see all these following Propositions well establish'd there 1. That in General this Author has not compris'd the true Hypothesis of S. Augustine nor the state of his dispute against the Donatists 2. That he can draw no advantage from the divers wayes in which that Father conceived the word Church 3. That the separation which that Father judg'd to be fit to be condemned and wicked under what pretence soever it should be made is wholly different from that which is between the Church of Rome and us 4. That there is not any Christian Society from which one may not lawfully separate ones self in a certain case and manner 5. That that which is disputed between the Church of Rome and us being of this number they must consider the causes and circumstances of it rightly to judge of it and not pretend to convince us of Schism without entring upon any other discussion 6. That according to the principles of S. Augustine the Church of Rome is Schismatical in respect of us supposing that she is in error because it is she that has broken Christian Unity and that we are in respect of her in a passive separation 7. That it is absurd to make that visible extension a perpetual mark of the true Church which way soever they take it 8. That this pretended mark is contrary to the experience of our Age and does not properly agree to any one of these Societies that at this day divide Christianity 9. That it is contrary to the experience of the Ages past and to the Doctrine of the Fathers 10. That it is rejected in the sense of the Author of the Prejudices by the famous Doctors of the Roman communion 11. That it has no foundation in the dispute of S. Augustine against the Donatists 12. That it is even directly opposite to the Doctrine of that Father These are the just and natural consequences that are drawn from the things which I have handled in this Chapter I will examine in the following the other Propositions of the Author of the Prejudices CHAP. V. A further Examination of the Reasoning of the Author of the Prejudices upon the subject of our Separation THe Third Proposition of the Author of the Prejudices is already sufficiently confuted by what I have said He sayes that since our Society is not visibly extended throughout all Nations therefore it cannot be the True Church But we have shewn him that we cannot at this day rationally attribute that visible extension throughout all Nations to any of the Societies that divide Christianity and by consequence that it is a chimerical mark by which we may conclude that there is no true Church in the world since there is none which is not visibly excluded from many Nations We have shewn him also that his pretended mark does not agree either with the experience of the Ages past nor with the doctrine of the Fathers nor even with that of the Doctors of the Roman Church and that instead of having any foundation in the Doctrine of S. Augustine it is evidently contrary to him So that we have nothing to do at present but to go on to the Examination of the Fourth and Fifth Proposition They bear this sense That the Calvinists urge the principle of the Donatists far higher than ever those Schismaticks did For as for them they did not say that there was any time wherein the whole Church had fallen into Apostasy and they excepted the Communion of Donatus whereas the Calvinists would have it that there have been whole Ages wherein all the Earth had generally apostatized and lost the faith and treasure of salvation That the Societies of the Berengarians the Waldenses and Albigenses c. in which he sayes that some of us include the Church could not be that Catholick Church whereof S. Augustine speaks To establish that which he layes to our Charge concerning the entire extinction of the Church he first produces the testimony of Calvin This is sayes he that which Calvin has distinctly declared in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans where after having pretended that the threatning that S. Paul uses against those who do not remain in
bad conduct of their Pastors Heaven and Hell would be very miserably dispensed while the time of those disorders lasted For our adversaries themselves are constrained to confess that this quarrell that made so great a noise that produced so many Excommunications so many Separations so many acts of violence and so many banishments and which ended by the dishonour of the Council of Chalcedon was founded upon nothing but a personal animosity sayes Baronius or as Sirmundus sayes upon an indifferent controversie which concerned nothing the doctrine of the faith on which side soever it had been decided If we must therefore judge according to the relation of these two Authors all that we can say is that both the parties were equally Schismatical who violated the peace and unity of the Church without any just reason and who mutually excommunicated one another for nothing and if we add that rigorous judgement against the Schifmatical Societies without any exception or distinction we must say that there was then no longer a true Church upon the Earth nor any hope of salvation But to go yet further If all those who live in the communion of Schismaticks are out of the Church in a state of Damnation I would fain have them satisfie me about some difficulties that I find in the History of the same Vigilius For the two first years of his Papacy it was he that was called a false Pope a Schismatick an Usurper of the Bishoprick of Sylverius whom the Hereticks had banished to set up this man who had promised them to communicate with them And in effect Liberatus and Victor of Tunis relate that after he was in possession of the Papacy he wrote to the Hereticks as having the same faith with them and Bellarmine declares that at this time Vigilius was an Anti-Pope and a Schismatick because that Sylverius the lawful Pope was yet living and there could not be two lawful Popes at the same time Baronius and Petavius say the same thing Notwithstanding it is true that during these two years of Schism Vigilius was peaceably acknowledged to be the Bishop of Rome both by the Church of Rome and by all Christendom No Church refused to live in his communion no Bishop withdrew himself from him as a Schismatick He performed without any opposition all the Functions of his Bishoprick he received the honours and had the profits of it All the Earth was then Schismatical with him and by consequence there was no further either a Church or Salvation in the World if it was only in the person of Sylverius and some Bishops who had subscribed to the Sentence of the Deposition and Anathema that Sylverius being in Exile pronounced against Vigilius and against all those who should adhere to him After this I would fain have them tell me how Vigilius could pass from the state of a Schismatick to that of a true Pope It was say Baronius and Bellarmine by the consent of the Clergy and People of Rome who assembled together and chose him lawfully after the death of Silverius But besides that this new Ordination of Vigilius and this Assembly of the People and Clergy is an effect of the invention of Baronius which is grounded upon nothing but one word of Anastasius the Popes Library-keeper who lived above three hundred years after besides this I say that the People of Rome and that Clergy had not they themselves lost through Schism the form of the true Church how was it restored to them how could they re-establish themselves Who gave that right to a company of Schismaticks cut off from the communion and the covenant of Jesus Christ to make a Rebell a Schismatick an excommunicated person a man that by the sentence of Sylverius could not perform any Sacerdotal Function to make such a one I say a lawful Pope See here already some inconveniencies considerable enough that flow from that rigorous sentiment but if we would go yet further we may find it may be others that are not less severe For what will they say to the Schisms that fell out so frequently in the Latin Church through the concurrence of Anti-Popes Will they dare roundly to pronounce all those people who have lived and dyed under the obedience of those false Popes and who by consequence having been engaged in a true Schism have been totally cut off from the Christian Communion and deprived of salvation Let the Author of the Prejudices who has taken such pains to damn the World without any mercy take the pains if he pleases to examine one matter of fact that I will set before him and which should be enough methinks to decide this Question at least in regard of him It is this that during the great Schism of two Anti-Popes which was ended at the Council of Constance there were Saints that the Church of Rome has canonized and whom it prayes to who lived and dyed under two contrary obediences and who by consequence dyed both the one sort and the others in a true Schism For in the year 1380. S. Catherine of Siena dyed under the obedience of Vrban the Sixth in the year 1381. S. Catharine of Swedeland the Daughter of S. Bridget dyed under the same obedience In the year 1395. S. Margaret of Pisa dyed under the obedience of Boniface the Ninth in the year 1399. S. Dorothy of Prussia dyed under the obedience of the same Pope and in the year 1405. S. William the Hermite of Sicily dyed under the obedience of Innocent the Seventh On the other side in the year 1382. S. Peter of Luxemburg dyed under the obedience of Clement who was the Anti-Pope of Vrban and some time after S. Vincent of Ferrara lived and wrought Miracles in the party of Benoist the Anti-Pope of Gregory the Twelfth Behold here Saints of both sides and yet one or the others must of necessity have been Schismaticks From whence it appears that the Church of Rome her self is concerned to oblige the Author of the Prejudices to moderate his style and not to take as it seems he has done that which the Fathers have said in disputing against the Schismaticks in its utmost latitude But although all that I have said should have no place the holy Scripture distinctly decides this difficulty For if he would but read the History of the Ten Tribes of Israel after they were separated from that of Judah at the instigation of Jeroboam he will find that they were in a real Schism since they had forsaken the Worship at Jerusalem and had built new Altars against the express commandment of God and yet nevertheless that did not hinder God from preserving his truly faithful and elect even in the midst of them For there were those seven thousand who in the time of Elias had not bowed the knee to Baal and whom S. Paul calls the remnant of the Election of Grace were not these Israelites engaged in a bad party Had
not God his Prophets and his Altars yet among them Lord said Elias they have killed thy Prophets and thrown down thy Altars And the hundred Prophets of God that Obadiah hid in two Caves to withdraw them from the persecution of the Idolatress Jezabel the Altar of God that Elias repaired in Carmel to sacrifice there by the miraculous fire that fell down from Heaven to consume the victim the calling of Elisha and Micaiah and in a word the whole History of those schismatical Ten Tribes does it not evidently note that God looked on them as his true Church in which there was yet a means to be saved We must not therefore abuse that which the Fathers have wrote against Schismaticks in intending to aggravate their crime and to draw them from it nor must we take their expressions in the whole rigour of the letter Their meaning is not that all those generally who are found engaged in a Schismatical Communion even down to Tradesmen and Labourers who remain there with an upright heart and through the prejudice of their consciences are out of the Church and eternally damned but that the Authors and Defenders of Schism who run into it through their personal interests or out of a spirit of fierceness pride and an hatred incompatible with the Spirit of Jesus Christ commit a horrible crime and that while they are in that state they remain deprived of all hopes of salvation That if the Fathers have said any thing more generally and which cannot be thus restrained it is just to understand it in a comparative sense that is to say that setting that Schismatical party of the Church in opposition to that which is not so the hope of salvation appears evidently in this which it does not in the other where it is obscured by that Schism The End of the Third Part. An HISTORICAL DEFENCE OF THE Reformation Against a Book Intituled Just Prejudices against the CALVINISTS THE FOURTH PART Of the Right that our Fathers had to hold a Christian Society among themselves by Publick Assemblies and the Exercise of the Ministry CHAP. I. That our Fathers had a Right to have their Church-Assemblies separate from those of the Church of Rome on the supposition that they were right in the Foundation THE Order of the Matters of this Treatise requires that we now go on to that Separation which the Author of the Prejudices calls Positive and that after having confirmed the Right that our Fathers had to Examine the State of Religion and the Church in their days after our having shewed the indispensable necessity that lay upon them to forsake the Assemblies of the Church of Rome and to live apart from her Communion that we also establish the Right that they had to set up a Christian Society among themselves notwithstanding their going off from the other Party who were not for a Reformation and to make up alone and apart a Body of the Church or an External and visible Communion This is that which I pretend to establish in this Fourth and last Part and to that end I shall here Treat of two things The first shall respect the Right of those Publick Assemblies and the Second shall be concerning that of the Gospel Ministry wherein our Function lies Howsoever these two things have a dependance one upon another it will yet be well to Treat of them with some distinction To make the First clear I shall first lay it down as an indisputable Truth That the Right of Religious Assemblies naturally follows that of Societies I mean That as far as a Religious Society is Just and Lawful so far the Assemblies that are therein made are Just and Lawful and that on the contrary as far as a Society is unjust and wicked so far its Assemblies are so too This Principle is evident to common sence and it is for that Reason that we condemn the Assemblies of the Heathens Jews and Mahometans as Unlawful and Criminal because their Societies are impious and wicked and that having no right to be united to believe and practice those Errors which they believe and practice they have also no right to Assemble themselves together in order to make a Publick Profession It is for the same Reason that we hold on the contrary the Christian Assemblies to be not only Just and Allowable but to be necessary and commanded by Divine Right because the Christian Society that is to say the Church is it self also of Divine Right It is then True that the Right of Assemblies follows that of Societies But we must further suppose as another evident and certain Truth That our Fathers before the Reformation were Latin Christians living in the Communion of the Latin Church in which they made as considerable a party as the rest of the Latins and that from Father to Son throughout a long succession Time out of mind they enjoyed with the others the rights of that Society That they were equally in possession of it with the other common Assemblies of that Religion having a part in the Ministry in the Churches in the Sacraments in the publick Prayers in the Reading and Preaching of the Word and that as far as the communion of the Latin Church was lawful so far the part that our Fathers had in it was lawful also That it was not a company of Strangers or unknown persons come from the utmost parts of America or the Southern Lands nor a sort of People dropt down from the Clouds who were newly joyned together with them in the same Society but Persons and whole Families setled a long time ago who were joyned together with them in the Profession of the Christian Religion many Ages before and who by consequence were in possession of the Rights of that Society Although had they been Strangers Americans and Barbarians on whom God should have suddenly bestowed the Favour of Calling them to the True Faith and the True Holiness of Christanity yet we could believe that by that thing alone they would have been invested in all the Rights of that Society as much as if they had had it by a long possession time out of mind But howsoever it be they were Christians from Father to Son and neither their blood nor their birth did distinguish them from the others We are now concerned only to search out whether that which hapned to our Fathers that is to say their Reformation their Condemnation by the Popes and by their Council of Trent and their Separation from the Church of Rome can be able to spoil them of all their Rights For if it be True that they were fallen off either by their own ill Carriage or by the meer Authority of the Church of Rome we must yield that our Assemblies are Unlawful and Criminal but if on the contrary they were not so fallen off if that which hapned to them did nothing else but confirm their Right and render it more pure more just and more indisputable they ought also
been noted in the Third Part. But sometimes the ground of those Divisions is taken from Doctrine or Worship or the general Rules of Manners and consists in those things that are acknowledged by both sides to be weighty and essential and in this Rank we may place those Divisions which arose in the Antient Church by reason of the Samosatenians the Arrians the Macedonians Nestorians and Eutychians I acknowledge that when the Question is only about Divisions of the former sort we cannot rationally hinder our selves from acknowledging that Party to be the Body of the Church which has the advantages before spoken of and looking by consequence on the other Party as a Sect cut from it The one is the Tree and the other the cut-off Branch the one is the Sun and the other a separated Ray. And the Reason that makes that Prejudice Just is not that the greater party cannot have done wrong at the bottom or that it cannot erre For it frequently happens that Prejudice Passion Interest Cabals prevail among those who have the Ecclesiastical Authority in their hands which makes them give unjust Judgments and it may be the Author of the Prejudices would not maintain all the decisions and Excommunications of the Church of Rome to be Just But the Reason of that Prejudice is that though even the greater Part should have done wrong in the Foundation yet the matter treated on is not of such importance as that it can take away from a Society the Quality of the true Church of Jesus Christ while sound Doctrine intirely subsists there and Worship remains pure From whence it follows that there being there no sufficient cause of Separation the lesser Party can't be looked upon otherwise then as Schismatical because it is cut off from the Greater without necessity and supposing at the same time that it should have Reason in the Foundation yet its Separation would not cease to be criminal It is in this Case that Saint Augustin would have those whom violence or as he says carnal Sedition has driven from the Christian Assemblies to suffer patiently the injury done to them without throwing themselves either into Heresy or Schism and without setting up of Assemblies apart but that they should maintain and defend even to the death the Faith which they know Preached in the Church Sine ulla says he Conventiculorum segregatione usque ad mortem defendentes Testimonio juvantes eam fidem quam in Ecclesia Catholica praedicari sciunt But it is otherwise when the Division is about matters of the Second sort those I mean that are founded upon the weighty points of Doctrine or Worship For then the true Church ought alone to be sought for where the true Faith is where it is goes neither by extent of places nor by number nor by the Body of Pastors or Prelates nor by the Walls of Temples nor by Councils that we ought to Judge of it but by the true Doctrine and where that is to be found there without doubt is a Right to be in a Society and to gather Assemblies The Reason is evident because we cannot say in that Case that although the more numerous Party more extended and which has the Body of Pastors of its side should be wrong in the Foundation yet that it would not always keep the quality of a true Church as it may be said in the former Case For a Society that Teaches Error and practises a false Worship and that will receive none into its Communion but those who believe all that it believes and practise all that it practises cannot be a True Church whatsoever advantages it have otherwise so that finding it opposite to another pure Society there is no need to hesitate in ones Choice In the first Case the lesser Party cannot be other then Schismatical because whatsoever Reason it may have at the bottom it would be better to yield then to Separate ones self but it is not so in the Second for it would be better to separate ones self then to yield since in yielding one should fall into Fundamental Errors and Superstitions contrary to true Piety In a word in the former Case the Number Dignity Extent of place the Body of the Pastors Multitude ought to prevail over Reason in a particular Injustice because a Church may be in some respect unjust without hazarding the Salvation of its Children but in the Second Reason drawn from Injustice Error false Doctrine false Worship is a thousand times more considerable then all those advantages which I have noted because we cannot renounce the true Doctrine and the true Worship of God in things of great moment in which our Salvation would not be absolutely concerned It is this difference that causes us to take notice of two different ways in the Fathers which appear so opposite and contrary one to another that at first sight trouble our minds For when they wrote against the Novatians or against the Donatists or against the Luciferians who separated themselves out of frivolous Reasons that is to say upon points of Discipline and personal accusations but who otherwise acknowledged the Church they had quitted to be Orthodox they set before the people that Multitude Extension the Body of the Pastors Succession and other advantages of that Nature as things that shewed of what side the Church was and then they held that the lesser Party cut off from the greater was as a Member divided from the Body a Branch cut off from the Tree or as a Ray Separated from the Sun But when they were engag'd against the Arrians who taught false Doctrine they did not care to make use of those sorts of Arguments on the contrary they restrain'd themselves to look for the Church where the True Doctrine and Faith was and they had no Consideration either of the Body of the Pastors or of the Multitude or Pulpits or Councils when the Arrians made use of them to the Prejudice of the true Doctrine as I have shewn in the Third Part. But that very thing evidently discovers the Ordinary Cheat that their Missionaries are guilty of and the other petty Writers of Controversy of the Church of Rome and into which the Author of the Prejudices himself falls Which is that in stead of following with respect to us the way of Writing that the Fathers took when they wrote against the Arrians from whom they differed in points of Doctrine since the Cause is like they follow on the contrary that that the same Fathers took against the Novations the Donatists and Luciferians with whom they did not quarrel about matters of Doctrine which is a meer Sophism where they confound two altogether different Questions in referring to one Case that which cannot have any place but in the other But they will say Are not you your self guilty of Fallacy in perpetually supposing as you do in this dispute that you have Right at the Bottom For that is the thing that is most
receive the Sacraments from their hands They cannot say that the Church would then be dispersed nor that the greater number of the Pastors had carried away with them all the Rights of the Society but they ought on the contrary to say that being obstinate in Error and abandoning the Purity of the Faith they themselves in that respect lost the Right of being in the Society and making up a Body of an External Communion For that Principle remains always unshaken that Error Superstition and falshood do not give the least Right to any men to Assemble and that a Society is Just only in proportion to that that it has of true Doctrine and Evangelical Worship So that the greater number of the Pastors is not a Party absolutely necessary to the Body of the Church for its subsistence and this appears evidently from the Example of the Orthodox in the Time of the Arrians for as I have said before their External Communion did not cease to subsist in divers places separated from the Body of the Pastors they met together they prayed to God in Common they heard his word they received his Sacraments in a word they performed all the actions of Religion under the Ministry of those few persons that remained This is precisely the Case wherein our Fore-Fathers found themselves in the Time of the Reformation as I have before shewn and it will not signify any thing to say that that small number of Pastors that our Fathers followed had themselves according to us corrupted their Ministry by the Errors and Superstitions of the other Pastors and that they received their Call from their hands for I affirm that their return to the true Doctrine rectified their Call and freed it from all the impurity or ill it could have had after the same manner that Felix Bishop of Rome and Meletius Bishop of Antioch who being ordained by the Arrians rectified their Ministry by Preaching the Truth and opposing of Heresy and as Liberius and a great number of the other Bishops who had subscribed to Arrianism purified their Call in returning to the True Faith which they had forsaken It is certain therefore that the greater number of the Pastors is not a party of the Body of the Church absolutely necessary for the subsistence of the External Communion and that it is an Error to imagine that the bond of the Society depends on them or that there can be no Assemblies made of those who shall be separated from them but such as are Unlawful and Schismatical But in the Second place I affirm that it is not even absolutely necessary and in all respects to the making that External Society to subsist among the Faithful that it should have Pastors For as it is nature alone that makes man a Sociable living Creature that is to say that renders him capable of Civil Society and gives him also a right to it so also it is Grace which makes a Christian a sociable man which renders him I would say capable of a Religious Society and gives him a right to it Ten Men that should meet one another hy Chance in an uninhabited Desart would they not have a Right to joyn themselves actually together to assemble and to take all the joynt deliberations in publick that they should Judge necessary for their own preservation And would it not be an extravagance to demand of them what Magistrate had assembled them what publick Authority had called them together who had given them a right to speak among themselves and to consult for their common interests Then when there are lawful Magistrates their intervention is necessary for the calling and Authorising of Civil Assemblies and if any undertake to assemble together without their Authority or without their consent their Assemblies are rash and unlawful but it does not follow from thence that Magistrates should be so absolutely necessary to a Society that when there should be none men could not any more speak or act together nor assemble themselves nor take common Consultations It is the same thing in Religion if Ten Laymen of the Faithful should meet together casually or to speak better if the sole Providence of God should make them meet one another in a Desart Island or in the farthest part of America and engage them all their days in a strange Land and if they should come to acknowledge each other for true Faithful Christians can any believe that 〈◊〉 ought to remain so dispersed that they could never lawâ—â—â—â—â— commune together concerning the Christian Faith and Pieâ—â— nor meet together to provide for the preservation of their Religion This is that which I hold to be not only unable to be maintained but impious For as Nature alone assembles men when they have no Magistrates and cannot have any so Grace alone assembles Christians when they have no Pastors and cannot have any She will not suffer them to remain in an intire dispersion while there remains yet any means to assemble them it is she alone that convokes or calls them together and her instinct forms an unanimous consent in them that consent alone renders their Assembly as lawful as it can be made by the Convocation of Pastors Thus also divers Parties who divided the Latin Church in the Time of the Great Schism of the Anti Popes protested That they met together at the Council of Constance when they no more acknowledged the Pope nor by consequence held any more a Head that could lawfully call them together for they declared that they called one another together and that they assembled themselves sub Capite Christo under Jesus Christ their common Head that is to say by his instinct and under his Authority which suplied the want of a Pope Quatenus say they in illo quiest verus Ecclesiae sponsus congregati in unum simul matrem Ecclesiam divisam uniamus In respect of an Assembly in the Body of a Council each Bishop each Prelate was but a meer private man as much as every Believer is in respect of an Assembly in the Body of the Church and yet notwithstanding they assembled they reunited themselves they deposed a false Pope who troubled them even then and they created another A mutual Convocation then which is nothing else but an unanimous consent is sufficient to make an Assembly lawful when there is no Publick Authority that can call them together This is that which justifies the Conduct of our Fathers in some places of this Kingdom at the beginning of the Reformation for they Assembled sometimes without any Pastors to pray to God together and to Read the Holy Scriptures their Consciences could not any more allow them to be present at the Assemblies of the Roman Communion and not having further any Pastor who might Assemble them after the Ordinary manner the Spirit of Christianity Assembled them under the Soveraign Pastor and Bishop of Souls which is Jesus Christ and their mutual consent without doubt made their Society and their
the Form of her Government we cannot deny that in that respect she has not under-went divers changes I do not mention the Introduction of the Episcopal Order for that is a Question but I speak of those changes that have befel her through the Usurpations and Contests of the first See's and chiefly by the Usurpations of that of Rome which the greatest part of the World will own to have been very considerable Her Discipline and her Liturgies have also undergone many Changes and they cannot in that regard ascribe any Uniformity to the Church either in respect of Times or Places In fine she has sometimes beheld the Body of her Ordinary Pastors turned against her self she has seen a great part of her true Children scattered and dispersed here and there without being able to perform any Acts of an External Society and she has seen some of her Flocks deprived of their Pastors and forced to set up some among themselves in the room of those who had abandoned them For all that fell out in the days of the Arrians the Councils determined Heresy the greatest part of the Orthodox who opposed themselves to their Impiety were either banished or forced to fly into the Desarts and according to the Testimony of St. Epiphanius divers People who saw that their Bishops were turned Arrians in the Council of Seleucia looked on them as the miserable Desertors of their Ministry and set up themselves other Bishops The greatest part of those Changes that fall out in the Church come from two sources the one That she is mixed with the Worldly and Profane in the band of the same External Profession and the other That the Truly Faithful themselves who only are the Church of Jesus Christ as truly Faithful as they are fail not to have a great many other imperfections their knowledge is obscure their Righteousness is accompanied with its faults their Inclinations are not all right and even their most just Inclinations do not fail to have some farther irregularity These two Fountains produce an heap of evils and disorders the Worldly on their part bring thither Covetousness Ambition Pride Opinionativeness contempt of God his Mysteries and Worship Politick Designs Worldly Interests a Spirit of Grandeur Luxury Superstitions Heresies Love of Dominion Presumption Opinion of Infallibility Forgeries and all other Perversities of the heart of Man The Faithful they bring thither on their side their Ignorance their Negligence their Fearfulness their Simplicity and sometimes their Passions their Personal Interests and Vices From all which a Chaos is made up of darkness and Confusion a Mystery of Iniquity a Spiritual Babylon that perpetually makes war against the Church which reduces her sometimes into very strange Extreamities and which would without doubt destroy her if her Eternal Head did not keep her up above all I acknowledge that the Spirit of God fights against that Babylon on the Churches side and that he presides over that Chaos to expel those Confusions and to hinder the Churches Perishing But it must not be imagined under a pretence of that presence of the Spirit of God that there never happens any disorder in it He indeed always preserves the Essence of the Church but he frequently permits her State to be altered This is the Effect that that heap of Crimes Vices and Imperfections may produce which I have mentioned as well on the side of the Truly Faithful as on that of the Worldly They never go so far as to destroy her intirely but they go so far sometimes as to spoil her of her Ornaments of her External Advantages and even of her very Health if I may so speak and therefore Jesus Christ told his Disciples In the World you shall have Tribulation but be of good cheer I have overcome the World God has always preserved and he will preserve to the end of all Ages a Body of many persons united together in the Communion of his Son Jesus Christ This Body can never perish it can never cease to be nor lose any thing that is absolutely necessary to its subsistence but it may be deprived of its large Extent Temporal Splendor Worldly Glory Peace Rest and Visibility It may see its Ministry Corrupted in as much as it is in the hands of men it may see its External Worship dishonoured and Error and Superstition fill its Pulpits Possess its Schooles and diffuse it self over its Councils its true Members may be hindred from making external Assemblies and a Body of a Visible Communion and it may be abandoned by its Pastors and reduced to a Necessity of Creating others See here what the State of the Church is Upon all these Illustrations it will be no difficult matter to decide the Question concerning the Novelty and Antiquity of our Church For if we have made a Society essentially different from that which Jesus Christ and his Apostles formed at the first and which has all a long subsisted down from his Birth to this present if we cannot justly say That we are a Body of many Persons united together in the Communion of one only true God under one only Jesus Christ our Head and Mediatour if they can with any ground contest with us the Unity of the True Christian Faith Piety and Holiness in one word if we want any thing that is necessary to the Constitution of the Church and its subsistence or if there be any thing in us that hinders that that good which we have does not produce its effect to give us the Form and Nature of a True Church it is certain that we have made a new Church and by a Consequence a false and an Adulterous Church But if we can truly and justly glorify God for all that which makes up the Essence of a True Church if our Faith is sound if our Piety is pure if our Charity is sincere if we can upon good grounds maintain that God preserves and upholds in the External Communion of that Body which we compose the Truly Faithful and Just persons who only as I have said often are the Church it is certain also that there is nothing more unjust then that Accusation of a New Church which they charge us with There never was in the World any other Church of God then that of his truly just and Faithful Ones that Body only is in the Communion of the Father and of his Son Jesus Christ that alone is intrusted with the Truth that alone is animated by the Holy Spirit that alone is God's Inheritance his People his Vine his enclosed Garden his House and Mystical Family as the Scripture calls it that alone in fine has all the Rights of the Ecclesiastical Society the Right of External Assemblies that of the Ministry Sacraments Government and Discipline Let the Author of the Prejudices and his Brethren stir themselves as much as they please let them animate one another let them cry out write Prejudices and invectives never so much against us let
any Relation to that Religion was not of the Essence of the Church but its State the mixture of Errors and Abuses with the sound Doctrine the Corruptions of Worship the Vices of the Ministry the Superstitious Ceremonies the form of Government the Religious as they speak that is to say the divers Orders of Monks the different degrees of the Hierarchy Feasts Processions Fasts and in a Word all that which has been noted in the Objection and in which that Church was then different from the Protestant All that I say belonged to the condition of the Church then and could by consequence be changed without making either the one or the other a new Church That the Faithful found themselves insensibly overpowred by almost an infinite number of the Worldly who mingled themselves with them as Tares with the Wheat That those worldly made themselves Masters of the Pulpits the Ministry the Councils that they brought in Errors Superstitions and Abuses that they changed the form of the Government of the Church and that of the Publick Worship all that does not respect the Essence of the Church which consists only in the True Faith but its Condition so that when our Fathers Reformed those things we may well say they Changed the State of the Church in their days but not that they changed the Church nor that they made a new one and their Church will not cease notwithstanding that Change to be joyned by a true Succession of Times and Persons to that which was before A Town full of Strangers who make themselves more powerful there left desolate by those popular diseases which those Strangers brought thither and filled with those disorders which they caused does not cease to be the same Town by a True Succession of Times and Persons when those Strangers should quit it and its good Citizens be established in their Just and Lawful State as heretofore Rome sackt by the Goths did not cease to be the same Rome when it was freed from them and a River swelling with the Waters of the neighbouring Brooks that make it overflow the Fields and break over its Banks is yet the same River when those Waters go back and retire into their Ordinary Channel CHAP. III. That the Ministry Exercised in the Communion of the Protestants is Lawful and that the Call of their Ministers is so also WE come now to Justify the Right that we have to the Gospel-Ministry and to defend our Call not only against the Ordinary Objections of those of the Church of Rome but also against the Accusations of the Author of the Prejudices in Particular For that Author who thinks it meritorious to go beyond others especially in his Passions is not contented meerly to say that we are Pastors without Mission and Ministers without a Call but by a heat of Zeal obstinately adhering to him he call us Thieves and Robbers Tyrants Rebells false Pastors and Sacrilegious Vsurpers of the Authority of Jesus Christ Nevertheless as those injuries are nothing else but the Effect of his ill humour it will be no hard matter to shew him that all the Conditions that we can rationally require to make a Ministry Just and Lawful are to be found in that of the Protestant Ministers and that Thanks be to God they can reproach them with nothing on that occasion This is that which I design to shew in this Chapter and to this Effect I shall first propound some Observations which I Judge necessary for the unfolding of that Question I say then in the First place That we do not here dispute about the Call that our Fathers had for a Reformation but only of that which they had and which we have after them for the Ordinary Ministry of the Gospel For we ought to take great heed least we confound as the Author of the Prejudices has done those two sorts of Calls that we acknowledge our Fathers to have had and which the Church of Rome disputes with them For That which they had to Reform themselves that is to say to reject that which we call their Errors and Superstitions that were brought into the Latin Church and that which regards the Ordinary Preaching of the word of the Gospel the Administration of the Sacraments and the Exercise of Discipline These two Calls are wholly different The one which is that of the Reformation is of Right common to all Christians there being no one who is not Lawfully called by his Baptism to destroy Errors contrary to the Nature or Purity of the true Faith and to exhort his Neighbours to do the same thing for the Interest of his own Salvation and that of the Glory of God as I have already shewn in my Second part From whence it follows That in that Respect they can have nothing to say against our Fathers and much less against those whom they call the first Reformers since being as they were in publick Offices they had more of a Call for that then was necessary The other which is that which respects the Ordinary Preaching of the Word of the Gospel the Administration of the Sacraments and the exercise of Discipline is not common to every private man On the contrary no one ought on his own head to thrust himself in without being otherwise Lawfully called The Reason of this Difference is that the Reformation consisted in the meer Acts of Faith and Charity which are those Particular Acts that none can dispence with because no one can say that it does not belong to him to be of the true Faith or to be Charitable but the Preaching of the Word the Administration of the Sacraments and the exercise of Discipline are those Acts of Authority that no one can do in his own name but in the name of another that is to say in the Name of God or in the Name of the whole Church so that he ought to be Lawfully Authoriz'd to do them It is then this latter Call that we are concerned about in this Question 2. In the Second place we must note that we do not here any more dispute about that Extraordinary Ministry which Jesus Christ himself immediately Communicated to his Apostles to give men the first Call to the Christian Faith and to Assemble them in a Society For our Fathers did not make any new Convocation nor any new Society nor any new Church as I have shewn in the Two Foregoing Chapters They did not preach a new Testament or a new Covenant differing from that which the Apostles preached They were not qualified either as new Apostles or new Prophets or new Evangelists they did not bring with them any new Revelation to the World but they Purged and Reformed the Corrupted State of Religion and the Church by the same Scriptures that the Apostles left us they laboured to Reduce things into their Antient and Natural State and for the rest they Preached the same Gopel and Administred the same Sacraments that the Apostles left and
the Magistrates receive their Jurisdiction from it He adds afterwards That it is the same in the Keys of the Church that Jesus Christ gave them to the whole Church in the person of Saint Peter And that it is the Church that Communicates them to the Prelats but which notwithstanding Communicates them without depriving it self of them so that says he the Church has them and the Prelats have them but in a different manner for the Church has them in respect of Origine and Vertue and the Prelats have them only in respect of Vse The Church has them vertually because she can give them to a Prelate by Election and she has them Originally also For the Power of a Prelate does not take its origine from it self but from the Church by means of the Eelction that it makes of him The Church that chose him gives him that Jurisdiction but as for the Church it receives it from no Body after its having once received it from Jesus Christ The Church therefore has the Keys Originally and Virtually and whenever she gives them to a Prelate she does not give them to him after the manner that she has them to wit Originally and Virtually but she gives them him only as to Vse To this we may add that some Councils of these latter Ages as those of Constance and Basil seem to have acted themselves upon this Principle when they gave themselves the Title of Representing the whole Universal Church Vniversalem Ecclesiam Representans For to what end did they take that specious Title if they would not acknowledge that the Origine of the Authority of the Prelats or the Pastors is in the Body of the whole Society and that it is from thence that it is transmitted to them to exercise it in the name of the whole Body But that which is most considerable is That it appears from the Testimony of the Holy Scripture that the Body of the Church that is to say the faithful people in opposition to the Pastors has taken part from the beginning in the Acts of its proper Government and particularly in the Calls of Ministers which evidently notes that it is a natural Right that belongs to it For that when after the Apostacy and Tragical Death of Judas they were to substitute another Apostle in his place Jesus Christ not having done it immediately by himself before his Ascention the History of the Acts relates that the whole Church which then only Consisted in an hundred and twenty Persons was Assembled and that upon the Proposal that Saint Peter made to them they appointed two upon whom the Lot having been cast and falling upon Matthias with a common consent he was put into the number of the Apostles They were there about the Call of an Apostle that is to say of a Minister who ought to come immediately from God and therefore it was that they cast the Lot but because the Church was then formed and that Jesus Christ being no more corporally present upon Earth those Calls could not be made wholly and immediately by him men took some part in them for by their Election they limited the Lot to two persons and in the end declared by their acquiesence that they look'd upon the Declaration of the Lot as if it had been the very voice of Jesus Christ This is all the part that men could take there but it was not only the Apostles who did those two things it was the whole Body of the Church The History notes that the Assembly was about an hundred and twenty persons that Saint Peter made a Proposal to them that upon that Proposal of Saint Peter they presented Two Joseph and Matthias and that the Lot falling upon Matthias he was numbred with the Eleven Apostles by common Agreement that is to say by the common consent of all That evidently shews us that the Body of the Faithful and not meerly the Body of the Pastors is the Right source of Calls The same things appear in the Call of the Seven Deacons for the Story expresly notes that the murmuring of the Greeks against the Hebrews falling out and giving occasion to the Apostles to think of that Call they called the multitude of the Disciples and that when they had made a Proposal to them the Assembly approved of it and that in the end they chose seven persons whom they presented to the Apostles who after having prayed to God laid their hands on them But that further le ts us see from whence a Lawful Call proceeds to wit from the Body of the Faithful and not meerly from the Body of the Pastors for it was the whole Assembly that approved of the Proposal of the Apostles and that chose and not the Apostles alone who did nothing else but propose and lay their hands on them This is further justified by the Practice of the Apostles which would readily admit the people in the most weighty Affairs that respected the Government of the Church into their deliberations and Acts when that might be done without Confusion So in the First Council of Jerusalem the Question being ventilated whether the Observation of the Ceremonies of the Law was necessary to the Gentiles it is said that it pleased the Apostles and Elders or Presbyters for it is the same thing with the whole Church to send to Antioch and write to the Church there That Letter was in effect written in the name of all and sent to all indifferently The Apostles and Elders and Brethren unto the Brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Cyria and Cilicia and it is expreslynoted that when Jude and Silas who were the bearers of that Letter were arrived at Antioch they Assembled the multitude that is to say the people and there acquitted themselves of their Commission which distinctly shews that the people then took cognizance of the matters of Religion and that they interven'd in publick Deliberations So when Saint Paul would Excommunicate the Incestuous person of Corinth he calls the Church to that Action In the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ when ye are gathered together and my Spirit let such a man be delivered unto Satan for the Destruction of the Flesh that the Body may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus which notes the same thing Those who have read the writings of Saint Cyprian Bishop of Carthage cannot be ignorant that that great Saint governed his Church by the common Suffrages not only of his whole Clergy but of all his people also and that he consulted with them in the most weighty Affairs since he has declared it himself in divers places of his writings I could not saies he in one of his Epistles to his Clergy answer to that which our Brethren Donatus Fortunatus Novatus and Gordius have wrote to me because I am alone for from the first entrance into my Bishoprick I purposed to do nothing of my self without your Counsel and the Consent
of my people So that when the Favour of God shall have joyned me again to you we shall treat of all things in common according to what our mutual honour requires of us In his Tenth Epistle he complains of some Priests who without ever consulting others had received those into Communion who in time of Persecution had abjured Christianity and he order'd that they should be deprived of their Functons for says he they must give an account of their Actions before us and before the Confessors and before all the people when God shall give us the Favour to let us meet together again In the Twelfth he writes to the People of his Church Fratribus in plebe consistentibus he notes concerning those who had fell in time of Persecution and who desired ro be restored to the peace of the Church That when God should have sent Peace again to his Flock and that they should again recover their Assemblies that Affair should be examined in the presence of the people and that they should judge of it among themselves Tunc says he Examinabuntur singula presentibus judicantibus vobis In the 28th Epistle answering his Clergy who had consulted together concerning some Priests who had abandoned their Flocks I could not saies he make my self the sole Judge of business Which ought to be exactly managed not only with my Collegues but with the whole Body of the people also non tantum cum Collegis meis sed et cum plebe universa In the 68th Epistle answering as well in his own name as in the name of divers other Bishops of Affrica Assembled in Council to the Churches of Leon and Astorga on the matter of Basilides and Martial Bishops who had been deposed for their Crimes The People says he who obey the Commandments of the Lord and who fear God ought to separate themselves from a wicked Pastor and not to take any part in the Sacrifices of a Sacrilegious Priest Since it is the people who have chiefly the power to Elect those who are worthy and to reject those who are unworthy The Divine Authority it self has established this Law that the Priest should be chosen in the Presence of the People before the eyes of all to the end he should be approved as worthy of the Ministry by a publick Judgment and Testimony Therefore it is that God said to Moses in the Book of Numbers Thou shalt take Aaron thy Brother and his Son Eleazar and thou shalt make them come upon the Mountain in the presence of all the Assembly thou shalt take off Aarons Vestment and put it upon Eleazar for Aaron shall dye there He ordained that the Priest should be established in the presence of the whole Assembly to teach us that the Ordination of Priests ought not to be performed without the Knowledge of the people assisting to the end that in their presence the Crimes of the wicked and the Deserts of the good should be discovered and that so the Ordination should be good and lawful when it should be examined by the Suffrages and Judgments of all We find in the Book of the Acts that the same thing was practiced when they were to ordain another Bishop in the place of Judas Peter stood up in the midst of the Disciples and all the Multitude Assembled together into one place And that was observ'd not only in the Ordination of the Bishops and Priests but it was observ'd also in that of the Deacons as it appears from the same Book of the Acts where it is said that the Twelve Apostles called together the whole multitude of the Disciples Therefore according to Divine Tradition and the observation of the Apostles that Order ought to be diligently preserved and held which is also observ'd among us and almost in all Provinces that in Order to the making of lawful Ordinations the nearest Bishops of a Province should Assemble with the people who ought to ordain a Prelate and the Bishop should be chosen in the presence of the people who may perfectly know the Life and Conversation of every one And this is what was done amongst you in the Ordination of Sabinus our Colleague for by the Suffrages of all the Brethren and by the Judgment of the Bishops who came themselves to you after you had wrote they conferred the Order of Episcopacy on him and laid their hands on him in the Room of Basilides See here the first Question decided The second consists in knowing whether we can say with any Reason that altho' those Calls ought naturally to proceed from the whole Body of the Church as we have just before shewn yet that the Church has lost that Right and that it is now lawfully deprived of it That which gives ground for this Difficulty is that although in the Civil Society the Right of Creating of Magistrates seems naturally to belong to the whole Body of the Society yet it fell out that the Order of Nature has been interrupted for in Monarchical States it is not the people but the Prince only that confers Offices and that Right is so lawfully in him that there is no Office that does not depend upon his Nomination They may therefore pretend that the same thing falls out in the Religious Society from whence it will follow That it is no more the whole Body of the Church that ought to confer those Calls but the Body of the Prelates or if you will the Soveraign Monarch of the Church who is as they pretend the Pope But I maintain that that cannot be any ways said It is not so in respect of the Religious Society as it is in that of the Civil In the Civil the people may be lawfully deprived of the Right that Nature has given them to Create their Magistrates and to provide for its Government whether they be done by a voluntary Transmission which they themselves have made to a certain Family or to a certain Person to whose Rule they submit themselves or whether it come to pass by a just Conquest But these ways have no place in the Church she can neither create nor acknowledge a Soveraign Monarch in whose favour she should deprive her self of her Rights in that regard to make him an Absolute Master For being concerned for her own Salvation which she finds interested in the Functions of the Ministry and moreover having no assurance as I have already noted that he or those in whose Favour she should strip her self of her Rights should themselves be faithful it would be visibly to expose her self to give her self over into the hands of the Palpably Prophane the Unbelievers or Hypocrites to make her Enemies her Lords and it would be palpably to hazard her Faith and Conscience which she could never do without a Criminal negligence of which she never ought to incur the Guilt In the Civil Society where the matter is only about Interests and not about those that concern ones Salvation nothing hinders but
the Churches and not those private mens who Communicated it they were bound to refer theirs to the greatest Glory of God and the Edification of his Church and not to the Wills and Interests of the Court of Rome and its Prelates altho' ir was through their Channel that they had received it They did well therefore to make use of that which they had of good in their Call to purify that which was bad in it and they also did well to make use of it against the ill intention of those who had given it them for an ill end even as those who have received Baptism from an Heretical or Schismatical Society are bound by that same Baptism which they have received from them to oppose themselves as much as possibly they can to that Heresy or Schism and to make use of their very Baptism for it altho' it should be against the intention of those who gave it to them I acknowledge also that there were some few who received their Call immediately from the Churches hand I would say the Body of the faithful people and we may say of those that their Call was extraordinary in the sense that we call unusual things Extraordinary which happen very rarely and which are done against Custom and ordinary practice For howsoever that those Calls were not unlawfully made and without Right as I have proved in the foregoing Chapter it is notwithstanding True that it is not nor ought to be the Common Practice and that it has no place but in a case of absolute Necessity So also in the Church of Rome the Call of Martin V. may be said to be Extraordinary who was called to the Papacy immediately by the whole Body of the Latin Prelates assembled in the Council of Constance and not by the Colledge of Cardinals as it is ordinarily done As to those Ministers who succeeded them and who received their Ordination from the hands of the first Reformers their Call was without doubt Ordinary and conformable to the practice of the Antient Church according to the Idea that the Scripture gives us of it and all that it can have of Extraordinary consists in this that in the distinction of Bishops and Presbyters they have not followed them and it is the Presbytery and not the Bishop who gives the Ordination but in that very thing they did nothing remote from that which was practised in the Apostolick Church acording to the Idea of it that the Scripture furnishes us with since Saint Paul saith in express terms concerning Timothy That he had received it by the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery I do not here enter upon the Question whether that Distinction is of Divine or only of Humane Right I will say something to that in the close I do not so much as blame those who observe it as a thing very Antient and I would not have it made a matter of difference in those places wherein it is established but I say where that Distinction is not observed as it is not nor can be amongst the Protestants of this Kingdom their Call will not cease to be lawful since besides the Case of absolute necessity which sufficiently dispences with that Form besides that neither the Bishop nor the Presbyter are of themselves any more than Executors of the Will of the Church in that Regard and not the Masters of that Call besides that I say there is a Formal Text of the Apostle that justifies the Right that the Church has to give the Imposition of hands by the Presbytery which alone is sufficient to stop the mouth of all Contradiction whatsoever That being so explained we may easily see what we ought to answer to all those petty Objections of which the Author of the Prejudices has composed his fourth and fifth Chapters Some says he were called to the Ministry and made Pastors only by Lay-men others were ordained by Priests only and those who had been Ordained by Bishops lifted themselves up against their Ordainers and that Church which had given them their Mission I have shewn in the foregoing Chapter that those who were called by Lay-men that is to say by the whole Body of the Church had a sufficient Call That which I have also said concerning those who received their Ordination from the Presbytery does not leave any more difficulty and as to those who resisted their own Ordainers I have shewn that they did nothing in all that whereunto their very Office did not bind them We may see saith he yet further by the thirty first Article of their Confession of Faith that it was upon this supposition of a power given immediately by God to these men Extraordinarily sent to Order the Church a new that all their pretended Reformation is founded That Article of our Confession of Faith says not that the Church had absolutely perished nor that the Ministry was intirely extinguished but that the Church was fallen into Ruine and Desolation and that its State was interrupted which only shews that she as well as the Ministry under which she was were both in the greatest Corruption and this is that which we also hold It says not that God had given an immediate Mission to the Reformers but that God had raised them up after an extraordinary manner to order the Church a new That signifies that God by his Providence gave them Extaordinary Gifts to undertake so great a Work as that of the Reformation was and that he accompanied them with his Blessing All that includes neither a new Revelation nor a new immediate Mission and hinders not that the Right which they had to employ themselves in it should not be annexed to their Charge and that it should not be common not only to all the Pastors but even to all Christians as I have shewn in my Second part Their Discipline adds he Ordains that the Priests of the Roman Church who upon turning of Calvinists should be Elected to the Office of Ministers should receive a new Imposition of hands which shews that they suppose their precedent Mission to be Null and so that that which Luther and Zuinglius Received from the Church of Rome signify'd nothing whence it follows that that which they ascribe to them can be no other than Extraordinary There is a great Difference between the Call which was given before the Reformation and that which is at this day given in the Roman Church since those Two Communions are separated The Former was indeed very much corrupted but yet nevertheless it supposes the consent of the whole Latin Church and it was not given by a Party so confirmed in Errour where the second supposes no other than the consent of a Party so confirmed in those Errours which we believe to be most contrary to the Purity of the Gospel which makes the matter so that our Society can no more look upon it as a Lawfull Call in regard of it and its Service Besides that when
respect to the Pope to the Church of Rome and to the Legat himself in particular But Cajetan without being willing to hear him speak of his justification shut up all with this That it was his pleasure that he should revoke his Errors under pain of incurring the Censures with which he had received Orders to punish him adding That if he would not recant he had nothing to do but to withdraw himself and to come no more before him Luther withdrew from the Legats House and having been advertised some days after that they endeavoured to imprison him notwithstanding the safe Conduct of the Emperour he withdrew himself from Auspurg not being ignorant of what had befell John Hus and Jerome of Prague in the Council of Constance Before his departure he wrote to Cajetan two very submissive Letters in one of which he acknowledged that he had not in treating of that business of the Indulgences preserved all that respect which he ought to have had for the name of the Pope and that howsoever he had been urged by the carriage of his Adversaries he confest that nevertheless he ought to have handled that matter with more modesty humility and respect that if he had any ways displeased him he beg'd his pardon offering to publish it himself and to use civiller Terms for the Future He offered likewise not to speak any more from thence forward of Indulgences provided he imposed silence on the Questors also or obliged them to observe the same measures in their discourses And as to the Recantation which they required of him he protested that he had done it in good earnest if his Conscience had allowed him to have done it but that there was no command nor Counsel nor Consideration of any person in the World that could make him say or do any thing against his Conscience In the second Letter observing all along the same submissive and respectful Stile he declared to him That he had withdrawn himself from Auspurg and beg'd that he would not think the worse of him if he appealed from him to the Pope and at the same Time he sent him his Act of Appeal That Appeal was founded 1. Upon this That he had not determined any thing upon the point of Indulgences but that he had only proposed some Theses to be disputed on according to the Custom of the Schools 2. That the Opinions of the Doctors as well Canonists as Divines being very different and there being nothing defined for certain in the Church upon that subject he had had right to chuse one side to chuse one side to maintain in the dispute much more when he was urg'd to it by the indiscretion of the Questors who under a pretence of those Indulgences had dishonoured the Church of Rome and the power of the Keys by their detestable covetousness and scandalous Conduct seducing the People unto new opinions and selling Justifying Grace for Money 3. That he had not only submitted his Disputation to the Judgment of the Church but even to the Judgment of every man more Learned then himself and in particular to Pope Leo. From whence he concludes that he had had no just Cause to Cite him That nevertheless he had offered to his Legat to refer himself to the judgment of the Church of Rome and of the Universities of Basil of Friburg of Lovain and of Paris which his Legat would not accept That he would not let him see wherein his Error lay but that he had only pressed him meerly to recant threatning him if he did not or if he did not go to Rome he would Excommunicate him and all who adhered to him howsoever that he had always protested that he had not any opinion but what was founded on the Scripture on the Fathers and the Canons That therefore finding himself oppressed by that whole proceeding he appeal'd from the Legat and from all that the Pope through ill Information had done against him to the Pope himself better Informed Notwithstanding he withdrew himself from Auspurg and by his retreat rendred vain and ineffectual all the Conspiracies they had contrived against his person to make him a Prisoner Cajetan having failed of his intent Wrote to Frederick Duke of Saxony against Luther accusing him as guilty of a heinous Crime in that he would not Recant and further exhorted and required that Prince either to send him to Rome or to drive him out of his Territories Luther very solidly justified himself before his Prince and made him see the oppression and most evident Tyranny that they used against him And because that the Cardinal had formally declared in his Letter to Frederick that so weighty and Pestilentious an affair could not remain a long Time in that Condition and that the Cause should be carried on at Rome That menace obliged Luther to make an Act of Appeal from the Pope and from all his proceedings against him to a Council lawfully called At the same Time almost Leo sent a Bull into Germany confirming his Indulgences and the Doctrine upon which they were grounded That Doctrine was That by the Power of the Keys given to Saint Peter and to his Successors The Bishop of Rome had a right to pardon to the Faithful all the guilt and punishments of their Actual Sins to wit the guilt by means of the Sacrament of Penance and the temporal Punishment by means of Indulgences whether in this Life or in Purgatory and that by those Indulgences he could apply to the Living and the Dead the superabundance of the merits of Jesus Christ and the Saints either by way of Absolution or by way of Suffrage so that the Living and the Dead participating of those Indulgences were delivered from the Punishment that the Divine Justice would inslict on them for their actual sins He commanded therein all under pain of Excommunication from which they could not be absolved till the point of Death to believe it also and to the end no person might alledge ignorance he gave Order to all Arch-Bishops and Bishops by vertue of their Holy Obedience to cause his Bull to be published in all their Churches giving nevertheless power to his Legat to proceed against the disobedient and to punish them as he should think fit Behold here the true History of the first Quarrel of Rome with Luther Let them judge now whether our Fathers under whose eyes all that business past could any more hope for a Reformation either from the Popes hand or his Prelats Instead of making a Holy and Christian Reflexion upon the just complaints of this man how mean and contemptible soever he might appear to them they thought of nothing but keeping up that evil which they did then in publishing their Indulgences which they knew had not any Foundation either in the Word of God or in the Practise of the Primitive Church They thought of nothing but how to protect them and indirectly to forbid those scandalous and wicked excesses of their