sort of Papists and very numerous especially in Italy hold that the Pope alone is Supreme and Infallible in Legislation and Judgment and that Councils are but his Counsellors to prepare Laws to which his Fiat giveth Authority and Infallibility All these indeed are commonly called PAPISTS because that more or less they are Subjects of the Pope But who can give one definition or the same marks of men that are really of so many minds If I describe one sort the other will say this is not our Opinion you do us wrong And so of all the rest And here you may see that when the Question is Whether a Papist may be saved and Whether a Papist be a Heretick or the like that it cannot be well answered till we know of which sort of Papists you speak But because I find that already my Writing is swelled beyond my first intent I will give you the Properties or inadequate conceptions of only one sort of Papists which is the third sort in the last distribution who hold the Soveraignty and Infallibility to be in the Pope and Council conjunct and that by Divine Right Because if I speak of any of the other sorts I find they fly for refuge hither and most Writers go upon this ground and will own nothing as their Religion but what is in Approved General Councils And here I desire the Reader to peruse what I have said in my Full and easie satisfaction c. out of Veron and others as they describe their Faith themselves I. A PAPIST of this sort is one that believeth that the Pope and his Council or Church is Infallible in proposing the will of Christ and believeth in Christ and receiveth the Gospel as true for the Authority and Infallibility of this Pope and Council and hereon layeth all the hopes of his salvation as on the Churches Faith And all this Authority and Infallibility he believeth before he believeth that there is a Pope or a Church of Christ or a Christ indeed or a promise or gift from Christ of any Authority or Infallibility to them Much more before he knoweth who is the true Pope and which are true General Councils or whether ever there were any such or what it is that they have decreed to be believed 1. That they take all their Faith in Christ and the Gospel on the credit of the Church that is the Pope and Council proposing it the moderatest of all this sort profess as out of Veron and others I proved as afore-cited Hence it is that one tells us that the Scripture is so full of seeming Contradictions and Improbabilities that he would no more believe it than Esop's Fables were it not for the Authority of the Church Another said Would I ever believe the Trinity the Incarnation that if you lay a man to dye in a close Chest of Lead or Marble his Soul could get out to Heaven that the Body shall rise again c. were it not for the Authority of the Church 2. They believe this Infallibility and Authority of the Pope before they can believe that there is any Pope at all For to be a Pope is essentially to be Christs Vicar as they describe him And as I said it is impossible to believe that Christ hath a Vicar before they believe that he is Christ As it is to believe a Son without a Parent 3. They believe the Infallibility and Authority of the Church as they profess before they believe that there is any Church For to be a Church is essentially to be a Society of Christians And he that yet believeth not that Christ is truly Christ cannot believe that Christians are truly Christians save de nomine nor that Christ hath a Church For they are Relatives as Wife and Husband 4. They believe the Infallibility and Authority of the Church that is the Pope and Council before they believe that Jesus is the Christ For they profess to believe in him because of the said Churches Authority and Infallibility And the Premises go before the Conclusion 5. They believe the said Infallibility and Authority of the Church before they believe that ever Christ gave them such Authority and Infallibility For they cannot believe that Christ gave it them before they believe that there is a Christ and a Word of gift And now is not here a Riddle hard enough to pose the wisest Which way do all these Believers through all the world come to know that the Pope and Council or Church are authorized and Infallible before they believe that Christ ever gave it them Which way do they think that they came by it Let him unriddle it that can 6. They believe thus in the Pope before they know what a Pope is or who is he that they must thus believe in For alas how can all or any in the world know what is necessary to make a Pope what Election what Ordination what Qualification and whether the man had all these And of divers Pretenders which is he that hath the proofs of a true title 7. They believe thus in Councils when they know not what Councils are true and what not nay whether ever there were any For I have elsewhere fully proved that there never was any nor ever will be that are truly Universal as to all the Christian World 8. Much less do these beginners know certainly what General Councils have decreed to be believed by those that will be saved That which will be said to all this is that It is not necessary that all men receive their Faith from Councils it is sufficient if it be from the Church-real though not from the Representative Ans Very good 1. Else no man was a Christian nor could be before the first General Council which was above 300 years 2. But still this answereth none of the Contradictions about believing in and from the Pope May we all take our Faith from the Church-real without taking it from the Pope or not If yea we may possibly be good friends at last If not all the Contradictions about him are still upheld by you 3. And if you must take it from the Authority and Infallibility of the Church Real still all the Contradictions will follow as if you took it from Councils For can you believe that this Church is Christs Church and hath this power and gift from him before you believe that he is Christ and that ever he made such a gift or promise to them 4. And who or what is this Real Church that must be first known to be thus impowered and infallible Is it some few or many or must it be the most If a few or many you profess that they may be Hereticks and have not that authority or gift If it must be all or the greater part 1. Then the Church of Rome goeth down that is at most but a third part 2. How shall every poor man or any man know which is the judgment of the major part Can he take
Office and Dignity would he never have told the Church of Rome of their Mistris-ship and Infallibility above the rest Would so necessary a Fundamental of Faith have been so much silenced 3. Did the Apostles Evangelists or ancient Fathers use to Convert Infidels by any such Method and telling them that they must believe first the Infallibility of the Bishop of Rome and his Clergie and then believe the Gospel because he saith it is true Had this been the old Method would there not have been more Books necessary and written to prove this first Fundamental the Infallibility of the Roman Bishop and his Councils than to have proved the Gospel it self directly Is it not a wonder that we should have such Volumes as Eusebius his Praeparatio Demonstratio Evangel and so many written by those before and after him to prove the Gospel and none of them hit on this Method nor write at large to make it good The Churches Authority and Unity is ordinarily pleaded against Heresies and Schismes but who ever Converted Infidels by the Authority of the Papal Church either proved or asserted as the necessary Medium of Faith 4. Do you not confess that all other Churches may erre besides the Roman And their plea of Tradition you account invalid Your Book called Considerations on the Council of Trent by R. H. p. 40. saith All Conciliary Definitions are not only Declarations and Testifications of such Apostolical Traditions as were left by them evident and conspicuous in all Christian Churches Planted by them but are many times Determinations of Points deduced from and necessary consequents to such clear Traditionals whether written or unwritten 2. If the Acts of General Councils were only such Declarations of Apostolical Tradition yet it is possible that some particular Church may in time depart from such a Tradition entrusted to them else how can any Church become Heretical against any such Tradition Do you not at this day accuse the Greek Church the Muscovites the Armenians the Jacobites Syrians Copties Abassines the Protestants c. as having departed from or corrupted the first Tradition And how small a part of the Universality of Christians are the Papists And if the greater part of Christians may so forsake the Apostolical Tradition why may not the Pope of Rome and his Council How shall we be sure of their exemption from such danger You tell us over and over of our receiving this and that from our Fathers and Grand-Fathers And is that a certain Proof that it is Apostolical Why is it not so then with all the rest the Abassines the Armenians c. and the Majority of Christians But of this I have spoken in the former Treatise 5. And there I have desired you to tell us whether your Grandfather or his Priest was Infallible If yea how came he by it more than all those Churches If not do you not delude your Relations by drawing them to build their Faith on a fallible man or upon nothing Your Relations were not at the Council of Trent or Florence or Laterane How shall they be sure what the Pope and Council agreed on What Foundation but the words of your Priest or Grandfather have you for your assurance May not one of your Priests lye as well as all the Greek Abassine c. Churches When Pope Coelestine himself falsly urged the Nicene Council for Appeals to Rome contrary to Augustine and the Carthage Council Either tell your Readers plainly that it 's you and such as you that are the Infallible Foundation of their Faith or bid them stay and not go your way till they are certain what the Pope and his Council say and that he is a true Pope and it a true Council and that they are more Infallible than the major part of Christians And our Faith can be no stronger than the weakest necessary medium of it from whence it must arise 6. I have said so much of this in a small Book called The certainty of Christianity without Popery which I intreat you impartially to peruse where I have also shewed the utter uncertainty that Popery would reduce our Christianity to that I will now only tell you that after your talk of Tradition and Church and Fathers and Grandfathers if we had not much more testimony of Tradition for our Religion than you have for Popery we should think our Faith were very lame Compare ours with yours 1. Yours is A pretended Authoritative determination which rests upon a supposed Inspiration of some Persons by virtue of a special Priviledge peculiar to themselves 2. It is the Tradition of the minor part of Christians against the major 3. It rests on the pretended Infallibility of a Pope which great General Councils have said may be a Heretick and have deposed divers as Hereticks and worse And upon the Infallibility of General Councils which by Popes and other Councils are pronounced fallible unless confirmed by a Pope who may be a Heretick 4. It rests upon a Foundation viz. the Popes Divine Right of Primacy and Infallibility which is expresly denyed by two of the first four great General Councils approved to this day viz. that of Calcedon reciting the sense of that of Constantinople against the said Divine right affirming that the Popes Primacy was given him by the Fathers because Rome was the Imperial Seat 5. It rests upon an Authority of Popes and General Councils which being at first but the Clergie of one Empire hath thence claimed the same Power over all the Christian World which they had got in the Dominions of one Prince 6. It rests on a Claim downright contradictory to it self as aforesaid viz. That we must believe that the Pope hath this Power and Infallibility given him and his Councils by Christ and his Gospel before we can believe that there is a Christ and a Gospel authorized and true Now our Tradition is this For all the Essentials of our Religion the Sacramental Covenant and the three expository Symbols we have the currant Tradition both of the Papists and all the rest of the Christian World Yea that every Book that we call Canonical is the true Word of God not only the Papists but almost all the Christian World confess And defacto that these Books came down from the Apostles at least that the Gospel was preached by them we have the Testimony also of Enemies and Persecutors And are not all these more than the Testimony of one Sect alone 2. And in this we have as much to confirm us as you have of the wisdom piety care of the Church to preserve the Gospel and much more too for we have the Piety of all the Churches to plead and not your Sect alone And we undertake to prove such a moral Infallibility as is also Natural viz. That Mans Nature and Interests supposed it is no more possible for so many Persons and Nations of cross Interests to have agreed in their Testimony for the Gospel than for all the
believe as his Church-men believe though he be wholly ignorant of their Belief his Soul is safe enough Answ What is a Man but his Wit The Word wholly craftily put in by your self enableth you also to renounce this Charge For we all confess that your Doctors commonly hold that this one Article must be believed That the Church is to be believed and obeyed and that 's one Particular But I pray tell us if you can 1. Dare your Church say that every word revealed must be believed Explicitely of necessity to Salvation No 2. And have they in any General Council determined what those Particular Articles are that are so necessary since you departed from the sufficiency of the Creed Or do not your Doctors without any Decree of the Church use to debate it as a free opinion 3. And do they not differ among themselves as all in pieces about the Point And do not your chief Learned School-men cited at large by Fr. a Sancta Clara on our Articles hold that the Particular Belief of Christ himself or the supernatural Articles of the Creed are not of necessity And I know not of any one thing that you are agreed to be necessary besides the Belief that the Church that is the Pope and his Council are Infallible or to be believed and obeyed and it is a Learned School Doctor and Jesuite Fran. Albertinus Corol. p. 250. that justifieth a Country-man that should believe a falshood if twenty Bishops tell it him and that the Command of Faith doth oblige to believe falshood it being not per se but per accidens c. And I think the old man is now among you at London Fr. a Sancta Clara who having cited abundance of Doctors against the necessity of believing in Christ or any Supernatural Point or in some cases knowing the Law of Nature and the Decalogue saith p. 20. To speak my sence freely I think that the Common People committing themselves to the instruction of the Pastors trusting their knowledge and goodness if they be deceived it shall be accounted invincible ignorance or probable at least So Herera which excuseth from fault Yea some Doctors give so much to the Instruction of Doctors on whom the care of the Flock lyeth that if they teach hic nunc that God would be hated that a rude Parishioner is bound to believe them See abundance more in him cited Deus Nat. Grat. Probl. 15 and 16. And that you may know that this opinion is not rare he addeth p. 123. It seemeth to be the common opinion of the Schools and Doctors at this day that the Laity erring with their Teachers or Pastors are altogether excused from all fault Yea by erring thus many wayes materially they merit for the Act of Christian Obedience which they owe their Teachers as Valentia saith To. 3. Disp 1. q. 2. p. 5. and others with Angles Vas quez c. And if this be true what Prince Lord or any other Lay-man that would be out of all danger of Sin and Hell would not be a Papist and be sure to chuse a Priest that is ignorant enough to take Perjury Drunkenness Gluttony Adultery Fornication Persecution Opression for no Sin and then he may be sure that it 's none to him but he meriteth by obeying him that will perswade him to it And what if these bid Subjects kill their Kings would it not be sinless and meritorious by this Rule But you 'll say These be but the words of Writers and Books may be misunderstood when they say that this is the common Opinion of the Doctors And perhaps if I talk with you or another you will protest that this is none of your belief But how shall I know that W. H. or his Neighbour or Grandfather know better what is the Faith or Religion of the Papists than the old Queens Confessor and all those famous Doctors whom he citeth and all that I my self have read And remember your Undertaking cited in my Title Page Is it not the most common Opinion of your Doctors that all men are bound to know and believe according to their opportunities and probable instructions But what is commonly necessary your Learned Church-men cannot tell us no not the Pope or Councils And who can tell what other mens capacities and opportunities have been and so whether he be a Believer indeed or not or bound to be so VI. Your next part is He makes Gods of sinful men He maketh less scruple of violating Gods Laws than he doth any Ordinance of the Pope or any Law of his Church Ans That one word any is either the falshood of your Accuser or the craft of the Clark that drew up the Inditement And I think it should not be drawn up of these Laws compared formaliter but materialiter For I cannot think you so unreasonable as to think that the Pope is above God but that when you cast away God's Laws to keep the Pope's it is because you think that the Pope hath power to change and abrogate God's Laws or dispense with them or that you are bound to believe that it is none of Gods Law if the Pope say it 's none For Instance 1. I know that you cast away Christ's Law for receiving his Body and Blood the Cup as well as the Bread in the Sacrament But why you do so I am no Judge 2. I know that you break the Second Commandment and usually leave it out of the Decalogue too But why you do it I am no Judge 3. I know that the Pope and his approved General Council at Laterane make a Law against Gods Law for obedience to the higher powers and this Papists profess to receive as part of their Religion But on what reasons you do it I leave to you You Instance If he commit Fornication it is but a Venial Sin Do You hold that any of your approved Councils have defined it to be a Mortal Sin If so I hope you will take those for Heretical that think it is not always so I refer you to Mr. Clarksons Practical Divinity aforesaid and the Jesuites Morals But doubtless all of you have not the same Judgment either of Fornication or Murder as is there proved for you are not bound to be so far agreed in such little things But your craft put in the saving word next and sprinkling himself with a little Holy Water he is as free from all spot as a new Baptized Infant Answ They say No Man wrongeth himself You may lay a false Charge against your self that you may the easier deny it There must be somewhat more than Holy Water else what need of Attrition and Confession and Penance if it please the Priest or Commutation of Penance what need the Crusado's to have killed so many thousands of the Waldenses and Albigenses to procure the pardon of their sins O dreadful way to pardon What room for Pilgrimages satisfactions or for Purgatory or for Masses to be said for the
ad infernum And as others report him Qui sine poenitentia vivit sine poenitentia moritur ad infernum descendit See Baronius forecited XXVII Though the Pope condemn and unchurch so many yet doth he tolerate in his own Church abundance of differences de fide and abundance of Controversies in Theologie and abundance of Differences and Errours in great and dangerous matters of Morality and abundance of Sects that variously serve God so they will serve him and uphold his Kingdom 1. The holy Scripture is all de fide that is a Divine Revelation to be believed The Popes tolerated Translations that differ in many hundred places or that erred so oft and Commentators that differ in many hundred Texts as to the Exposition yea they tolerate those that deny the immaculate conception of the Virgin after a General Council hath defined it 2. He tolerateth vast Volumes of Theological Differences in the School Doctors 3. He tolerateth all the Moral Doctrines for murdering Kings before mentioned and all those cited by Mr. Clarkson in his Practical Divinity of the Church of Rome and all those mentioned in the Provincial Letters and the Jesuites Morals about Murder Adultery Perjury Lying seldom loving God not loving him intensively above all c. See my Key c. p. 59. 4. He tolerateth abundance of Religious Sects Jesuites Augustinians Franciscans Carthusians c. who differ from each other in their serving God as much as many of the Sects of Protestants who are despised for their discord XXVIII He pretendeth a necessity to the ending of Controversies that he be the Judge and yet will not end them by his Judgment but continueth many hundred undecided If we dispute with a Papist and cite the Scriptures they ask us presently who shall be Judge of the meaning of them As if the Pope would decide all And yet to this day he will neither write any deciding Commentary on the Bible nor on one Book of it nor end the Controversies among his own Commentators Nor will he end any of the fore-mentioned Controversies in Morality of great importance XXIX He sweareth all his Clergie never to take or interpret Scripture but according to the unanimous sense of the Fathers see the Trent Oath when yet the Fathers do not unanimously expound the Scripture nor any one Book of it And few Priests know what the Fathers are unanimous in nor can do unless they read them all which by this Oath they seem obliged to do Was not Greg. Nazianz. one of the Fathers who saith Orat. 18. I would there were no Presidency nor Prerogative of place and tyrannical Priviledges that so we might be known only by Vertue or deserts But now this Right side and Left side and Middle and Lower Degree and Presidency and Concomitancy have begot us many contentions to no purpose and have driven many into the Ditch and have led them away to the Region of Goats Is not this Heresie or worse with you Was not Isidore Pelusiota a Father but a sharp Reprover of proud and wicked Priests and Prelates who saith lib. 3. Epist 223. ad Hieracem And when I have shewed what difference there is between the ancient Ministry and the present Tyranny why do you not crown and praise the lovers of Equality Doth not this deserve a Fagot with you How ordinarily doth Cajetan and others of yours reject deservedly the Expositions of Fathers Bellarmine chargeth Justin Irenaeus c. with error de Beat. SS li. 1. Cap. 6. He saith There is no trust to be given to Tertullian de Rom. Pont. li. 4. c. 8. He saith Eusebius was addicted to Hereticks and that Cypriâ—n seemed to sin mortally de Rom. Pont. li. 4. c. 7. Di. â—â—s Peâ—avius de Trinit citeth the words of most of the ancientest as favouring Arrianism almost like Sondius himself or Philostorgius and is fain to go to the Major Vote of the Nice ne Council as the proof that most of the ancients were not really of the Arrians mind Dallaeus hath told you more of the Fathers differences and unsatisfactory expositions XXX He confesseth all the Scripture to be Gods infallible word yea his Doctors have asserted its sufficiency as a Divine Law and yet his pretense of its Insufficiency without Traditional supplement is one of the Pillars of his Kingdom The second part needs no proof For the first the elder Popes oft assert it And the School-men in their Prologue to the Sentences Scotus Durandus and many others But when Reformers confuted them by Scripture they found that would not serve their turn as Micaiah of Ahab it prophesyed not good of them but evil And since then they cry up the Church and Tradition and depress the sufficiency of Scripture Even Card. Richlieu pag. 38. confesseth As for us we assert no other Rule but Scripture neither of another sort nor total yea we say that it is the whole Rule of our salvation and that on a double account both because it containeth immediately and formally the sum of our salvation that is all the Articles that are necessary to mans salvation by necessity of means and because it mediately containeth what ever we are bound to believe as it sends us to the Church to be instructed by her of whose infallibility it certainly confirmeth us Here the sum of our Religion is granted At the Council of Basil Ragusius's oration Bin. p. 299 saith That Faith and all things necessary to salvation both matters of belief and practice are founded in the literal sense of Scripture and only from that may argumentation be taken for the proving of those things that are matters of Faith and necessary to salvation and not from those passages that are spoken by allegory c. And sup 7. The holy Scripture in the literal sense soundly and well understood is the infallible and most sufficient rule of Faith See more of his oration opened in my Key pag. 93 94 95. The Testimony of Bellarmine Costerus and others I have formerly recited XXXI The Pope teacheth us that we cannot truly believe the Articles of our Faith or the truth of Scripture but because of the Authority and Infallibility of the Pope and his Church declaring them so that we must believe that the Pope is Christs Vicar and authorized by him and made infallible before we can believe that there is a Christ or that he hath given any authority or gifts to any This is not to be denyed And Knot against Chillingworth hath no other shift but to resolve their belief of the Churches infallibility and authority not into any word or donation of Christ but into Miracles wrought by the Church So that no man can be a Believer that is not first certain of the Papists Miracles and how can millions know them when they see them not and in all my life I could never meet with one that saw them And he must next be certain that those miracles prove the infallibility of the Pope when yet
they confess that they prove not the Infallibility of him that doth them Valentine Greatreakâ— hath done and still doth more wonderous cures by touch or stroaking than ever I heard by any credible report that any Papist did and yet he pretendeth to no Infallibility And those Canonized Saints that have been most credibly famed for the greatest Miracles have born their Testimony against Popery and therefore Popery was not confirmed by them For instance St. Martin is by his Disciple and Friend Sulpitius Severus affirmed to have done more Miracles than I have ever credibly read done by any since the Apostles I scarce except Gregory Neocaesar And yet whereas the Papal Councils give high priviledges of pardon c. to those that will take the Cross to kill the Waldenses and compel Princes to it and uphold their Kingdom by such means St. Martin separated to the death from the Synods and Bishops about him for seeking the Magistrates Sword to be drawn against even Priscillian Gnosticks and he professeth that an Angel appeared to him and chastised him sharply for once communicating with the Bishops at the motion of Maximus when he did it only to save mens lives that were condemned as Priscillianists Here are Miracles against the very Pillars of Popery So also the Egyptian Monks were the most famous for Miracles of any People And yet as their Miracles were no confirmation of the errour of the Anthropomorphites which their simplicity and rashness involved them in so they renounced Communion with the Church of Rome and therefore confirmed it not by their Miracles How few Christians be there on Earth if none are such but those that by known Popish miracles believed the Pope to be infallible before they believed that there was a Christ And thus they must believe him to be Infallible not as Pope but somewhat else For to be Pope is to be Christs pretended Vicar And to believe that he is authorized or Infallible as Christs Vicar before they believe there is a Christ is a mad-mans contradiction and impossible What Infallible wight then is it that we must first believe the Pope to be before we believe him to be Pope To what impudence will interest and faction carry men I will again recite the words of an honest Jesuit Joseph Acosta de tempor novis li. 3. c. 3. To all the miracles of Antichrist though he do great ones the Church shall boldly oppose the belief of the Scriptures And by the inexpugnable testimony of this truth shall by most clear light expel all his juglings as Clouds Signs are given to Infidels Scriptures to Believers and therefore the primitive Church abounded with miracles when Infidels were to be called But the last when the faithful are already called shall rest more on the Scripture than on miracles yea I will boldly say that all miracles are vain and empty unless they be approved by the Scripture that is have a Doctrine conform to the Scripture But the Scripture it self is of it self a most firm argument of truth Obj. But he grants that Infidels had miracles Ans He lived long in the West-Indies among them and in his Treat of the Convers Ind. and his Hist Ind. he professeth that the Ignorance Drunkenness and Wickedness of the Roman Priests there was the great hinderance of their Conversion but that Miracles there were none God had not given them there any such gift Once more Did the Miracle which Thyraeus de Daemoniacis p. 76. reciteth out of Prosper that A person possessed by the Devil was cured by drinking the Wine in the Eucharist confirm the Popes Religion who hath cast out the Cup or the Protestants that use it XXXII Though S. Paul say Let every Soul be subject to the higher Powers and give honour to whom honour is due the Pope as far as he is able exempteth all his Clergie from the Government of the Magistrate yea they are forbidden to fall down to Princes or eat at their Tables but Emperours must take them as equals The first part is commonly known Caranz pag. 395. reciteth this Decree of Pope Nicholas that No Lay man must judge a Priest nor examine any thing of his life And no Secular Prince ought to judge the facts of any Bishops or Priests whatsoever The Eighth General Council at Constantinople saith Can. 14. Ministers must not fall down to Princes nor eat at their Tables nor debase themselves to them but Emperours must take them as equals XXXIII The Pope confesseth every word of our Objective Religion to be true for all his killing and damning us as Hereticks Proved before We have not a word of our Objective Religion but the Sacramental Covenant and its Exposition in the Creed Lords Prayer and Decalogue and the Canonical Scripture which we receive And they confess all this to be infallibly true and so justifie all our Positive Religion XXXIV The Popes to this day will not tell the Church so much as what a Christian is and what must make a man a Member of their Church in the Essentials of a Member Of which more anon XXXV While the Decrees of General Councils are made quoad nos the Churches Faith the Pope will never let us know how big our Faith must be nor when we shall have all If every General Council add new Articles or many quoad nos who knoweth when they will have done and whether we have yet half the Christian Faith or not XXXVI The Popes Religion maketh Contradictions necessary to be believed that is impossibilities The Contradictions of Transubstantiation I have opened in my Full Satisfaction Confirmed General Councils they commonly agree do make Decrees which must necessarily be believed And it is notorious that such Decrees are Contradictory The General Council at Constance confirmed by Martin 5. and that at Basil confirmed by Foelix 5. do make it de fide for a Council to be above the Pope Bin. p. 43. 79. 96. Conc. Basil Sess ult they say Not one of the skilful did ever doubt but that the Pope was subject to the judgment of a General Council in matters of Faith and that he cannot without their consent dissolve or remove a General Council yea and that this is an Article of Faith which without destruction of salvation cannot be denyed and that de fide the Council is above the Pope and that he is a Heretick that is against this Eugenius also owned this Council Bin. ib. p. 42. But the Councils of Florence and at the Laterane sub Jul. 2. and sub Leone 10. say the clean contrary The 6. Council at Constant approved by Pope Adrian is now said by them to have many errors XXXVII The Pope arrogateth power to alter the constitutions of the Spirit of God in the holy Scriptures Proved The Council of Constance taking away the Cup saith Though in the Primitive Church this Sacrament was received by Believers under both kinds c. yea though Christ so instituted it yet they altered it I
and ruled by Whores c. Where then is the succession And if it were possible for those at Rome to know that there is a Pope and to know who and which is he yet how should all the rest of the world have any assurance of it You 'll say it is not necessary Possession and common Report must satisfie them in China Congo Abassia and the Phillipines c. Answ No Building can be stronger than its Foundadation nor Conclusion than its Premises How then shall such men have assurance of their Religion when they must take it on the Credit of a Pope as infallible of whom they have no assurance And how shall they be certain that they are of the right Church when they are uncertain who is the Head whom they must be subjects to CHAP. VII What a PAPIST is II. HAving shewed what a Pope is I am next hence to tell you what we Protestants take a Papist to be And first as to the name it is equivocal There are so many sorts that are called commonly by the one name of Papists that it is hard to enumerate and describe them all 1. There are some that believe that the Pope is but a Humane Creature that hath run up his power into Tyranny by abuse and it were well if he were either down or reduced to his first state But they take themselves to be as those that live under other abusive oppressing or tyrannical Governours who must live in Patience and Submission and are not bound to ruine themselves by opposing him in vain and though he impose on them many things which they like not but had rather they were reformed yet it being not in their power and Princes and Magistrates commanding them the same they take Conformity to be orderly and Nonconformity to be unpeaceable and of ill fame And if any of the things commanded them prove sinful they hope God will forgive them for bowing in the house of Rimmon and will lay it on Popes Princes and Prelates and not on them that are not bound to study Controversies and who do what they do but in obedience and for peace pretenses that quiet their Consciences in self-saving Conformity I verily think that the greater part of those called Papists in all the world are of this self-saving sort As we see in all Countries that the greater number are or seem to be of the Religion of those in power be it what it will be And we ordinarily hear that the common people will thus talk against the Popes Doctrines and Practices and yet quiet themselves on such terms of Conformity as I here describe II. Another sort called Papists do believe that the Pope is a meer humane creature also not over all the world but in the Empire and where Princes let him And consequently as men set him up men might take him down But yet that it is an Orderly Institution as Kings and Emperors and that his place is Lawful and that it is the duty of the Church to obey him especially when Princes also do command it And that men have power from God to make as National Provincial and Patriarchal Churches and Rulers so also an Universal Church and Ruler for Order and Unity sake over many Countries and that it is good and desirable to these ends Of these there are two sorts 1. One sort take the Papacie and Patriarchs to be a lawful and laudable institution of Constantine confirmed by other Princes 2. The other sort take them to be laudable Institutions of General Councils or else of particular consenting Bishops before the first General Council whom thy call the Church III. Another sort called Papists do believe the Pope as the former to be a humane Creature viz. of the first or ancient Bishops by mutual consent but that it was a necessary thing which by Gods General Laws and his special Inspiration they did well and were bound to do for the Churches concord and strength and that it is not lawful for the Church now to alter it or any Prince in his Dominions These also are of three sorts 1. Some think that the Roman Seat may be altered and the Church upon just cause may remove the Primacy to another Bishop This seemeth to be the opinion of Cardinal Cusanus afore cited de Concord who saith The Church might make the Bishop of Trent chief 2. Others seem rather to think that God hath by Decree annexed the Supremacy to Rome and yet as R. Smyth the Bishop of Calcedon and Ruler of the English Popish Clergy afore cited think that it is not de fide that the Pope is Peters Successor 3. Others say that they are not sure but God may destroy Rome and remove the Primacy but Men may not do it IV. The whole Greek Church seem yet of the second or third opinion that the Pope had a just Primacy in one Empire which was justly removed to Constantinople But there are some that think the Pope had also a just Primacy in all the Christian World and yet that he hath it but by Humane Institution V. There are other that think the Pope is the Universal Head by Divine Institution even as S. Peter's Successor by derivation of the Power which Christ gave Peter And as about the Foundation so about the Subject and the Measure of Power yea who is the true Chief Ruler over the Uuniversal Church there are these several sorts of Popery I. Some believe that it is General Councils that are the Subject or Possessors of Supreme Church Power and Infallibility and that the Pope is but the first in order of the five Patriarchs in such Councils who hath no necessary right to call them nor no negative Voice in them nor any Government over the other Patriarchs or their Churches but only the first Seat if he be there just as the Patriarch of Alexandria first and of Constantinople after had when the Patriarch of Rome was absent And thus indeed it was in the Empire for a long time But those five Patriarchs ruled not all the World no more than our two Provincial Archbishops do II. Others called Papists do go farther and believe that General Councils indeed have the supreme Legislative Power and the chief Executive while they sit and are the Seat of Infallibility But because they are not to be always or ordinary God hath not left the four Patriarchs and all the World ungoverned in the Intervals but the Roman Pope is the Supreme Governour of the World when there is no General Council Yet so that he must Govern by their Laws or Canons III. Another sort and I think the most numerous among the Learned called Papists hold that Neither the Pope alone nor the Council alone are the Seat or Possessors of the supreme Legislative Power or the Infallibility nor of the supreme judging and executive power sedente concilio but it is both of them agreeing or conjunct And two Fallibles joyning become one Infallible IV. Another
c. XXV They will publickly pray to God and praise him in an unknown Tongue because the Pope will have it so XXVI They think that the far greatest part of the Body of Christ are tormented in the Flames of Purgatory to make satisfaction to Gods Justice for some Sins notwithstanding Christs sufficient satisfaction XXVII Expecting to go to the Flames of Purgatory when they dye they cannot possibly be willing to leave this World and consequently must be worldlings and never truly willing to dye For the basest condition on Earth will seem to them more desirable than Purgatory XXVIII They think that the Flames of Purgatory do perfect mens preparation for Heaven whereas he is readiest for Heaven that is likest to those in Heaven and most holy and that is they that most love God! And they that are angry here with every one that hurteth him and do not think that tormenting men will win their love yet look that the torments of Purgatory should help us to love God better than all the mercies on Earth will do XXIX The generality of Papists believe a fallible Priest or Printer or such other person telling them what is the Faith of the Universal Church and yet think that this is an Infallible Faith XXX A Papist is one that layeth his hopes of salvation upon his belief of and obedience to a Pope which by their own Principles is no Pope and a General Council which is no General Council never was nor never will be and on his Communion with a Catholick Church which is no Catholick Church but a Sect. All which hath been proved already and moreshall be I have told you in part what we take a Papist to be Some things before mentioned in the description of a Pope have been here necessarily repeated CHAP. VIII What the Papists Church is called the Roman Catholick Church WHat their CHURCH is may so easily be gathered from what is said that I shall say but little more of it In General It is a Society called Ecclesiastical constituted of such a Head and such Members as I have described Particularly I. It is a Humane Church as to the Efficient Cause of its Form made by Man as distinct from that Church-form which was instituted by Christ even by the Fathers because that Rome was the Imperial Seat As is proved before II. It is a Humane Church as to the constitutive Head as distinct from the true Universal Church which hath no Head single or collective Pope or Council that is not God III. It is a Sect consisting of about the third part of the Christian world calling themselves the whole Church and condemning all the rest for not subjecting themselves to this Usurping Head IV. It is a new Church in comparison of Christs Universal Church as having a new Humane Original As is proved V. It is a treasonable Church as set up without Christs Authority and challenging his Prerogative and weakning his Kingdom by unchurching the greatest part VI. It is an unholy Church as distinct from the holy Catholick Church and that both in the essential Matter and Form 1. In the Matter its Head which is a constitutive part having been oft a condemned Heretick Infidel Murderer and other flagitious wicked man 2. As to the Form being not of God it is not holy 3. Besides that as to the Head he was long made by the most wicked Whores All this is before proved at large VII It is a Church that hath had its pretended succession interrupted as is proved sometimes by long Vacances sometimes by long Schismes when no one was the Universal Head sometimes by the Incapacity of the Persons being Lay-men or Infidels Simoniaoal condemned deposed Hereticks and therefore no Bishops VIII It is a Schismatical Church that cuts off it self from all the rest of the Christian Church And by making a false Head and Principle and conditions of Unity which the Universal Church never did never will or can unite in is the grand cause of the greatest continued Schism IX It is a trayterous Church against Princes making it their very Religion to force bloody Oaths on them and to excommunicate and depose them and give away their Dominions and that tolerateth its most famous Doctors to maintain that being excommunicate they are no Kings and may be killed and to maintain that the Pope is above them in Temporals and may set up and pull down Kings when he seeth cause All this is expresly proved before X. It is a Church that believeth Contradictions as is proved in their Councils e. g. The Council of Basil Sess ult saying No one of the skilful did ever doubt but that the Pope was subject to the Judgment of a General Council in things that concern Faith c. And others saying the clean contrary As also in divers other things XI It was for above forty years sometimes two sometimes three Churches instead of one For the Head being an essential part two or three Heads make as many Churches XII It is at this day divers Churches really as to the Form that are by the ignorant supposed to be one Two or three Forms and Partes Imperantes being essential make as many Churches though the subjects live mixt The summa Potestas is a constitutive essential part Some called Papists take the Pope for the summa Potestas and some a Council and some both conjunct and some the Church real or diffused through the World XIII It is a Church made up of a tolerated hodge-podge of many Sects some utterly uncapable Members so they do but serve the Pope I have shewed out of many Doctors cited by Sancta Clara that many that believe not in Christ are of their Church He saith himself pag. 113. Deus Nat. Grat. What is clearer than that at this Day the Gospel bindeth not where it is not authentically preached that is that at this Day men may be saved without an explicite belief of Christ For in that sence speaks the Doctor concerning the Jews And verily what ever my illustrious Master hold with his learned Master Herera I think that this was the Opinion of Scotus and the COMMON one citing many that follow it And that men that hold all the different Opinions in the Jesuites Morals and the Schoolmen besides many various Religious Sects make up their Church is not denyed XIV It is a Church that pretendeth to have a Judge and end of Controversies but indeed hath a Judge that for the most part dare not decide them and that can make no end of them when decided For instance the Controversie of the Virgins immaculate conception decided at Basil is never the nearer an end Images were decreed up by some Councils and down by others Even S. Thomas stood not to the second Council of Nice about Image Worship The various Councils that decreed variously for and against a Councils Supremacy never the more ended the strife And indeed it is so hard to know approved from reprobate
XVII Our Religion is for increasing true practical knowledge in all men by all our industry as knowing the Father of Lights saveth us by illumination and therefore we are for all mens reading or hearing the holy Scriptures and worshipping God in a known tongue But yet with the help of the skilfullest Teachers The Prince of darkness leadeth men in the dark to do the works of darkness that they may be cast into outer darkness How the case is with yours I have before shewed XVIII Our Religion is for so much fasting and austerities as is truly necessary to the subduing of Pride Worldliness or fleshly lusts or to express our self-abasement in due times of humiliation prescribed by Authority on publick occasions or discerned by our selves in private and so much as is truly helpful to us in Gods service or our preparations for death But how much you have turned these into unreasonable Ceremony and how much into a pretended satisfaction to Gods Justice by punishing our selves as if our hurt delighted God when it tends not to our healing I shall not now stay to open See Dallaeus de Poenis Indulgentis de Jejuniis of it at large XIX Our Religion teacheth us that all that truly believe in and are heartily devoted to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost as their God and Saviour and Sanctifier forsaking the Devil the World and the Flesh should be taken by Baptismal profession hereof into the Church and shall be saved if they prove not Hypocrites or Apostates And that we must judge men by this their Profession till they plainly or provedly nullifie it supposing every man under God to be the best Judge of his own heart But your Religion teacheth you to hold and say that if men are never so fully perswaded in themselves that they truly love God and holiness and are thus devoted to him yea and if their lives express it yet if they be not Papists they are all deceived and none but Papists so love God And every Papist thus knoweth the hearts of others better than we can know our own XX. Our Religion leaveth us room for Repentance and hope of Pardon if we mistake For we take not our selves to be impeccable or infallible in all that we hold though we are sure that our Rule and Objective Religion is infallible But your Church being founded in the false conceit of the Popes and Councils Infallibility you shut the door against repentance and amendment and when once a false Decree is past you take your selves obliged to defend it lest by Reformation you pluck up your Foundation and all should fall Were it not for this I am perswaded your Church would recant at least the Doctrine of Transubstantiation if not that of deposing Princes and some others And now I humbly present what I have written to W. H. and not without hope if he will but impartially read it of his reduction For the man seemeth to me to sin through Ignorance and to have an honester zeal than many others For my own part 1. I profess to him I write as I think and that after forty years reading I think as many of the Papists Books as of the Protestants 2. And that I would joyfully recant whatever it cost me if I could find that I do erre But I have shewed him that I differ not from them without that which to me appeareth to be constraining Reason 3. And that if he will prove to me that I have in one word of this Book unjustly accused either their POPE PAPISTS RELIGION or CHURCH I shall thankfully receive his conviction and repent And I agree with him wholly in professing my Religion to be The APOSTOLICAL CHRISTIANITY and whatever he proveth to be truly such I will receive The Name of The Protestant Religion I like not because meer Christianity is all our Religion and our Protestation against Popery denominateth not our Religion it self but our Rejection of their Corruptions of it But the Name of The Protestants Religion I approve and own that is APOSTOLICK CHRISTIANITY CLEANSED FROM POPERY Aug. 9. 1676. FINIS THE CONTENTS CHAP. I. WHether Christ hath not left us sure and easie notice what the Christian Religion is what it is and how delivered to us in three degrees 1. The Essentials generally in the Sacramental Covenant 2. The Exposition of the Essentials in three summaries the Creed Lords Prayer and Decalogue 3. The Essentials Integrals and needful Accidentals in the whole Canonical Scripture p. 1 c. Our Confession Articles Books and Sermons are but the expressions of our Subjective Religion or fides mensurata and are not our Objective and fides mensurans in terminis p. 9. The Papists confess every word of our Objective Religion to be Divine and Infallible But we confess not the truth of all theirs They blame us only 1. As not having enough 2. And as not receiving it the right way p. 9. I. Whether the Papists Religion be better than ours as bigger Some Queries of the Antiquity of the belief of the Roman additions viz. the Apocrypha and the Decrees of all the Councils c. p. 10 c. What Implicite Faith we are agreed in and what not p. 12. The Papists confess that their Church hath not kept God's own written word without many hundred errours and so not all that is de fide p. 13. Therefore they must needs distinguish the Essentials of Christianity from other points Of Implicite belief in the Pope and Councils p. 13. c. II. Whether it was or is necessary to receive Christianity as from the Infallibility or Authority of the Pope and Papists or Councils p. 19. c. We have much more and surer Tradition for our Religion than that which the Papists would have us trust to 20. The difference of our Tradition from theirs Whether Rome or a Church there may not cease p. 22. Whether the Seat the Election or what doth prove the Pope to be St. Peter's successour p. 23. Whether Books or oral Tradition by Memory of all Generations be the surer preservative of the Faith p. 24. CHAP. II. THe Puritane is ambiguously named and falsly described p. 25. Of Imputed Righteousness p. 30. Puritanes not against external worship nor all Ceremonies p. 36. Of their Usage ibid. The Puritans judgment about Fasts Holy-days Ceremonies c. p. 38. The Papist writer knoweth not what the Puritans Religion is p. 40. The true Religion of a Puritane described p. 41 42. 1. The writer wrongeth his Relations 2. He declareth that he was before an ungodly perfidious Hypocrite and no true Puritane and therefore no wonder that he turned Papist p. 43. None but such can turn Papists without self Contradiction His slander of the Puritanes that they think Piety Charity Humility and other Christian Virtues not possible and necessary to salvation p. 45. CHAP. III. HIs hard Character of Prelatical Protestants p. 46. Many Nonconformists are Episcopal therefore not dislinguishable by that
name p. 47. What men many Bishops and Conformists have been and are in England p. 48. The Religion which is uppermost right or wrong will be professed usually by the most and therefore by bad men p. 49. It is worse with the Papists who are many very bad even where they differ from superiours and suffer ibid. His accusations of Puritanes and Prelaticks Protestants about imputed Righteousness and inherent confuted A true description of the Protestants judgment of justifying Righteousness p. 51 52 c. His derision of Imputed Righteousness as a Mummery p. 54 55. His gross slander that we are for meer Imputed Holiness p. 55. The true middle way about Indifferent Rituals p. 56. I. Of his charge on Prelatists for silencing Puritanes for not observing Fasts c. which they neglect themselves p. 57. Puritanes and Papists fasting 2. Of wax tapers on the Altar p. 58. 3. Of the Sign of the Cross p. 58 59. 4. Of the real presence p. 60. 5. Of Confession and Absolution p. 61. 6. Of bowing at the Name Jesus and Images p. 62. 7. Of the Surplice Girdle Stole and Casuble p. 63. 8. Of praying for the Dead p. 64. 9. Of the Government of the Pope and Councils p. 65. 1. Whether Gods Wisdom require it 2. Civil and Ecclesiastick Monarchy of the whole world Compared p. 66 67. 3. Is the Pope Universal Apostle or Teacher p. 55. 4. Whether the Pope be Head but in the Vacancy of Councils p. 66. 5. Most of the Christian World by far are no Papists 68. 6. The Pope dissenteth from General Councils and so far from the Universal Church we own them when he doth not 69. 7. The difference between the Kings Headship and the Popes 37. 8. Puritanes are for the Kings supremacie 70. 9. How far they submit their judgment to the Churches p. 70. 10. The Church teacheth us the Faith but may not judge in partem utramlibet viz. that there is no God no Christ no Heaven c. p. 71. II. It 's Schismatical and worse to feign that various habite Gestures Meats c. make various Religions Q. 1. Do variety of Liturgies make various Religions 2. Is not Religion more concerned in the Papists Doctrinal Differences among themselves about Predestination Grace Free-will the immaculate conception and hundreds more in the School Doctors and about the deposing excommunicating and killing Kings and about all the Controversies mentioned by the Jansenists in the Jesuits Morals and by Mr. Clarkson in the Practical Divinity of the Papists than in variety of Clothes Formes or Ceremonies And is it not as laudable for Protestants to hold Union and Communion with them that use not the same words or rites as in the Church of Rome to tolerate without so much as any disowning censure the foresaid Doctrinal Differences about King killing when excommunicate Murder Adultery Fornication Perjury Lying Stealing c. mentioned in the foresaid Books p. 72. CHAP. IV. H. W's ill forming Accusations which he can best answer p. 77. What Grotius meant by Papists p. 79. I. Of Papists Image-worship p. 79. II. Of Popes Pardons p. 80. III. Their praying to the Virgin Mary 83. IV. Latine prayers 84. V. Implicite belief in Teachers 85. VI. Preferring the Churches Laws to Gods 87. VII Obedience 88. CHAP. V. THe true History of the Papacie its original and growth 94. 1. The ancient Church took not the Papacie to be of Gods institution but Mans fully proved p. 99. c. 2. The Roman Primacie was ever but one Empire and not all the Christian People in the world proved p. 103 c. 3. Councils were General only as to the Empire and not the World p. 104. Five exceptions p. 106. Remarks upon the Africans pretended schism Austin being one p. 112. The not able words of Mel. Canus against the Roman Universality 113. The means of the Popes last growth to maturity 119. The doctrines by which they do their work p. 122. 1. Depressing the Scriptures sufficiency and crying up their Traditions which are again conjuted 123. 2. Pretending Antiquity and Universality 125. Both confuted The objection of Heresie and Schism to other Churches answered p. 127. 3. Aggravating our Divisions and boasting of their Unity p. 128. Even the scandalous contending Sects among Protestants have more Unity with each other than the Papists proved 4. Their vile Counsel to men to suspect all Religion and suspend it to make them Papists Boverius to our late King p. 131. CHAP. VI. WHat the Pope is in forty Characters or inadequate conceptions of him p. 134. c. CHAP. VII WHat a Papist is The word PAPIST is equivocal Many sorts are called Papists that differ both in the Foundation and the very Form and the Subject and the Terminus of Church Power and are not formally one Church as is commonly thought pag. 165. A PAPIST of the most learned sort described who placeth the Authority Universal and the Infallibility in the Pope and Council agreeing Thirty Properties or Characters of them The first about the Resolution of their Faith into the Authority or Infallibility of the Church proposing How Protestants resolve their Faith and how they take it from their Teachers p. 169. c. See the rest CHAP. VIII WHat the Papists Church called the Roman Catholick Church is in twenty Characters p. 184. CHAP. IX TWenty Properties of the Protestant's Religion as it differeth from Popery 187. ERRATA PAge 26. line 28. for Turrian read Pisanus p. 76. l. 7. for in r. it p. 97. l. 21. r. Presbyters p. 93. l. 20. r. Roman p. 94. l. 2. for or r. of p. 107. l. 1. for Gothes r. Vandals p. 110. l. 4. dele and. p 115. l. 13. for Com. r. Corn. p. 123. l. 11. r. Libraries p. 156. l. 28. r. Greatreaks Errata in Roman Tradition c. Page 18. l. 1. for most real r. Moral p. 20. l. 5. r. Georgians p. 29. l. 16. r. Sirmium p. 37. l. 5. for sind r. said
you deny them this and make them to be as out of the true Church and state of Life If yea Q. 2. Did all that the Apostles Baptized believe all the Apocrypha and all the Decrees of your Councils and your Oral Traditions Q. 3. Did the ancient Fathers and Catechists teach all those to the Catechumens before they Baptized them Q. 4. And were not those all Christians and in the true Church and in a state of Life whom the Apostles Baptized without the profession of any such Belief Q. 5. What was the Creed the Symbolum fidei used for if not to distinguish the Faith of the Christian Church from Infidelity Heresie and all without And if all the Decrees of Councils be as necessary to be the Symbol of Faith why were they not all made up into a Creed and why is the Creed differenced from them all to this day And why do you not cause the Baptized to recite and profess all these Councils Decrees but only the old Christian Creed Q. 6. Doth not Christ at the Institution of his Sacrament Mat. 28. expresly promise that he that believeth according to Baptism in the Father Son and Holy Ghost shall be saved Q. 7. Is it not a reproach to God and the Christian Religion to tell the World that God hath written us by his Spirit so great a Book as the Bible is and yet there is not in it enough to Salvation but that abundance unnecessary to Salvation is in it and some necessary things left out Q. 8. Have your Oral superadded Traditions more Evidence of Truth than the Bible or more Evidence of Necessity to be believed Not more Evidence of Truth For you confess the certain Truth of all the Bible and that as fully manifest as your Additions If it have more Evidence of Necessity what is it It is not because it is a Divine Revelation For so you confess all the Bible to be And do you pretend to a Tradition that saith You may be saved without most of the Bible though it be of God but not without fasting on Frydays or on the Vigils of Saints-days or other such Traditions But if you will make both the whole Bible and Tradition necessary to be believed it must be either Explicitely or as you call it Implicitely If Explicitely that is as each Point is particularly understood and believed then it 's doubtful whether there be one Man in the World that is a Christian and can be saved If Implicitely that is Virtually as it is in some General Proposition what is that General Is it that All that God revealeth is true Or that All that the Spirit of Christ in his Apostles delivered to the Church as his word is true These we all agree in if this will serve the turn Is it that the Church is the Ministerial Keeper of the Sacred Doctrine as delivered This also we agree in Or is it that the Church de eventu shall never corrupt alter or lose this word or any part of it If you mean it of every particular Church we are agreed of the contrary You confess that many Churches have fallen to Heresie and many Apostatized from the Faith If you speak of the Universal Church we are agreed that the Universal Church shall never Apostatize for if Christ had no Church he were no Head of it And we are agreed that they shall never turn such true Hereticks as hold not truly all the Essentials of Christianity For such also are no Christians because each Essential part is necessary to the Essence But whether the Universal Church much more the Greater part may not make or receive some culpable alteration by Amission Omission or Commission we have reason to question We never heard any Proof that the Negative was necessary to Salvation nor is it held by all your selves and whether by any one man I cannot tell For you take the Bible to be Gods Word and your knowledge of the various Readings of the Hebrew and Greek Copies and the multitude of Errours in the Vulgar Latine corrected by P. Clem. 8. and Sixtus 5. do satisfie all the World that you hold that the Universal Church or the major part even your own may culpably erre or alter the very written Word of God And who would then believe you if you said But the Unwritten Word it cannot alter It 's true indeed the Essentials considered as Written or Unwritten all the true Church nor any one Christian while such cannot deny But sure if many thousand Errours may be found in that Book which you take your selves for the Word of God and this through the fault or failing of such as have had the keeping of it and all Divine Revelations are to be believed and all the Word of God is Divine Revelation it notoriously followeth That your own Church hath not kept all that is matter of Divine Faith from alteration So that though many of your Wranglers will not distinguish the Essentials of Christianity called Fundamentals from the Integrals and Accidentals as if Christianity were nothing and had no determinate Essence yet this sheweth that you must do it whether you will or not or else you must confess that your Church may alter any thing or every thing as it hath done all these fore-mentioned Which we will not confess of the Church Universal But I suppose that we have not yet met with the Faith that you account necessary to salvation It is that the Pope of Rome and a General Council cannot erre in delivering to us the Apostolical Doctrine to be believed And this is an implicite believing of all that is written in Scripture and that is delivered orally from the Apostles If so words and names go very far with you as to mens salvation Is this to believe a thousand things which a man never knew or heard of if he do but believe the Infallibility of your Church What! Believe that which I never once thought of But this is but Implicite Faith A cheating Name for No-belief of those things For by Implicite here you can mean only Virtual and that is no Actual Belief of that thing at all but of something else which would infer more were it known Nay Virtual is too high a Name for it But will this serve the turn to salvation to believe that the Pope and his Council are Infallible What! though the same Person believe not in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost nor any of the Articles of his Creed no not a Life to come If you say Yea Then will you call this Christianity to believe in the Pope and not in Christ Or do you mean that men may be saved without Christianity but not without Popery If so why was not the Popes Name rather than Christs put into Baptism and the Creed or at least with Christs But the insuperable difficulty is How must I believe that the Pope hath this Infallibility From Christ or otherwise If not from Christ tell me
which way and why I must believe it If from Christ can I believe that the Pope hath Power from Christ before I believe that there is a Christ that hath such Power to give And can I believe in Christ and not believe that there is a God that sent him Can I believe that Jesus is the Christ and not believe that he is a Sacrifice for sin or a Mediator between God and Man and came to save his People from their sins And can I believe this and not believe that we are all sinners and that sin deserveth that punishment which Christ came to save us from Is not our Saviour and our Sin and Misery relatives as a Physician or Medicine and a Disease And can we believe that we have sin and desert of Punishment without believing that God is our Governour and gave us that Law which we broke and which obligeth us to Punishment Can we believe in Christ and not believe that he is God and Man that he dyed rose and ascended into Heaven and will judge us at last and that he pardoneth sin reneweth Souls by his Spirit and will give us life hereafter All these are included in believing in Christ as Christ And how must I believe that Christ hath given the Pope this Infallibility or Power By any written word which granteth it or by Oral Tradition If by the written Word then I must believe that that Word is true before I can believe that the Pope is made Pope or Infallible by it If by Oral Tradition whose must that be Then I must believe some bodies Oral Tradition as true and infallible before I believe in the Pope at all If it be the first Hearers of the Apostles then either the Pope was one of those or not If yea and he hath a Negative Voice in the credible report then I must believe him as Infallible before he is proved Infallible in order to my believing that he is Infallible which is a contradiction If Not Then I must believe the Infallibility of other Hearers of the Apostles before I can believe the Pope's And the Question will recur How I shall know them to be Infallible And who they were that were those Infallible Witnesses Whether Pastors only or the People Whether of some one Church or of all the Churches And how I shall prove that they gave such a Testimony So that your pretense of a Necessity of receiving Gods Word or the Christian Faith from the Pope and his Council cometh too late For it seemeth that we must believe it first before it be possible to believe in the Pope and Council as authorised by Christ And if my Implicite Faith be the Belief of this Article Any Church in all the world yea the greater part of all the Churches may err in matters of Faith or Apostatize and only the Pope of Rome and his Council cannot What Proof or whose Tradition doth this rest upon Q. 9. Do not Bellarmine Costerus and many of your Writers profess that the Scriptures contain all things ordinarily necessary to Salvation Yea many Writers that the Creed hath all that is absolutely to be believed Yea some that it hath more than all Yea abundance Cited by Fr. a Sancta Clara that the Belief in Christ is not necessary to all And will you say then that he that believeth Explicitely the whole Bible cannot be saved without believing also your pretended Traditions Q. 10. And do you not hereby instead of the light burden and easie yoak of Christ and his Commands which are not grievous bring Christians under a harder yoak than that which the Jews were not able to bear When it seemed good to the Holy Ghost in the Apostles to impose but a few and necessary things Act. 15. 28. And how large a Law is all the Bible and all your Councils Decrees and Oral Traditions set together Do all your Priests themselves or one of an hundred understand them all or know what they are Q. 11. While you pretend a Necessity of your numerous Ceremonies as Fasting on Frydays and such other named by you do you not lay a snare of perpetual Division in the Churches and do you not make as many inconsistent Churches as there be Societies of Christians that differ and still will differ about any of those Traditions or Ceremonies Q. 12. And do you not lay open your own Church to the accusation of innovation mutability and corruption when it is not to be denyed but in such things as those they have been mutable or innovated Have you not long left the Custom of adoring on the Lords-days without genuflexion though the first great General Council Nic. Can. 20. and the ancient Fathers commonly made it a Tradition and Practice of the whole Church and it was Decreed to be so used by all Abundance of such Instances may be given Q. 13. You do very injuriously to your own Sect and Cause here to pretend Tradition as coming down from the Apostles for such things as your own Doctors plead but your Churches later Institution for It 's fully proved by Daleus de jejuniis that the Lent Fast was long but for a short time before it came to fourty days And it 's an odd thing if you will pretend Tradition from the Apostles for the Holy-days or the Vigil Fasts of those Saints that were born many hundred years after the Apostles death We confess our Faith is not so big as yours We have many score Texts of Scripture that promise Salvation to them that believe much less than the Bible it self containeth Yet we profess our selves ready to believe as much more as you shall ever prove to us to have been delivered by the Apostles to the Church to be believed II. And for the second that we receive not our Faith the way that you do that is from the Authority of the Pope and Papists and from your Tradition We crave your consideration of these Questions 1. When the Apostles and Disciples Act. 8. were scattered and preached the Gospel to many Nations Were they not true Christians and saved that received the Gospel from any one of them or from any Person whatsoever If Aquila or Priscilla Converted a Sinner such a one saved a Soul from Death though Peter did it not nor his Authority was known to such a one 2. Do you believe that if the Roman Bishop or Churches Revelation or Proposal were necessary to true Faith and to Salvation that Christ would never have told Men so Nor any of his Apostles have left it us on Record When there were Heresies and Schismes so wofully troubling the Churches as we find in Paul's Epistles to the Cor. Gal. Col. and in the Rev. 2. and 3. ch should we never have found one word for this speedy way of decision to appeal to the Church of Rome Would Paul have rebuked them for saying I am of Cephas and made him but a Minister by whom they believed without ever mentioning his
contentious Lawyers in the Land to have agreed falsly to inform us that our Statutes were made by such Kings and Parliaments But a domineering Faction alone might easilier have deceived men 3. Yea even as to Christs Promise we can better prove that the Universal Church or Body of Christians shall never lose the Faith than you can prove it of Rome alone or the Papal Sect. Bellarmine himself dare not say that Rome shall not cease to be the feat of the Papacy or shall not be utterly destroyed And then how can there be a Bishop of Rome when there is no Rome But you 'll say that if he dwell at Avignion he may be called Bishop of Rome But if he be called so when he is not so at least when there is no Rome or no Christian Church there sure a false Name is not an Essential part of our Religion If you say that at Avignion or Ravenna or Vienna he may be S. Peter's Successor and so the Universal Monarch still I answer Then it seems that the Council of Calcedon as afore-cited was in the right that Romes Priviledge was given by the Fathers because it was the Imperial Seat And so that the Pope is not S. Peter's Successor eo nomine because he is Bishop of Rome But if the Bishop of Avignion or Vienna might become S. Peter's Successor who never was Bishop there how shall we know that the Bishop of Rome is his Successor now We have hitherto had no better means to prove it and deceive the World than by saying that S. Peter dyed Bishop of Rome where the Pope is Bishop But S. Peter dyed not Bishop of Avignion If the Place prove not the Succession tell us if you can what doth Is it the Election By whom Who are those men that have the Power of chusing S. Peter a Successor You know I suppose that the Pope hath been chosen 1. Sometime by the People witness the blood-shed at the choice of Damasus in the Church 2. Sometime by the People and the Neighbour Ordaining Bishops 3. Sometime by a Synod 4. Sometime by the Emperours 5. And lastly by the Roman Cardinals If any of these may chuse then we may have four or five lawful Popes chosen four or five several ways at once If only one of these have the Power S. Peter had no Successors under all the other Elections So that the Claim will fall rather to Antioch than to Avignion or any other Town because they say it was S. Peter's first Bishoprick from which he removed for a greater If you are driven with poor Mr. Johnson alias Terret to say that Any way will serve which serveth for the truth of an Election of Princes c. then still we may have four Popes at least I doubt you must be forced to say as some that it is the acceptance of the Universal Church which must prove who is the Universal Monarch 1. But some must be Electors before it comes to acceptance And who hath the Power of Electing And 2. what if now the major part of the Church should prefer the Bishop of Constantinople I hope you are not so ignorant of Cosmography as not to know that the Greek Church when they first preferred the Bishop of Const was far greater than the Latine 3. And I suppose you know that it is not near half the Christian World that now accepteth of the Pope as their Governour 4. And I pray you do but get the Pope to suspend his claim till the Church Universal accept him and we shall not be troubled with him For how shall they signifie their acceptance If in a General Council you know how they of Constance Basil and Pisa are reviled by the Pope and those that now go for your Church for pretending to a power to depose and chuse Popes and how Eugenius the fourth prevailed against such a Deposition And if these Councils were not your Universal Church representative where shall we think to find it In sum we have the Tradition of a Church as big as three of the Roman for all our Religion and of all the Roman Church it self besides the Confession of the Enemies of the Church Pagans Infidels Mahometans Jews and Hereticks we have not one word that 's part of our Religion which your selves confess not to be true We believe that the Faith of the Universal Church shall never fail nor the Gates of Hell prevail against it And so you see that we may far better tell how Infallibly we have received our Religion from our Forefathers than you can do of yours But we believe not that this Universal Church hath any Head but Christ no Humane Vicarious Monarch or Governour of all the World We believe that Men must Believe in Christ before they can know that the Pope is his Vicar if it had been true We know as sure as History can tell us that the Pope's first Primacy and the rest of the Patriarchates were but the Humane Ordinances of the Clergie of one Empire and not of the whole Christian World And we know not nor you but Rome and its Church and Bishop may yet all cease together But you make me most admire at you that in this Book also you tell your Relations and other Readers of the uncertainty of notice by Books in Comparison of converse and talk with those of your present Party yea that your own Religion is not to be known by Books as being lyable to be misunderstood so well as by talking with Papists and asking them what is their Faith or Religion Sir I judge by your Stile that you are a man of zeal and conscience in your way and therefore that you write not this fraudulently against your conscience Sure then you must needs be a man of more than ordinary ignorance that can believe what you say 1. Is it your Objective or your Subjective Faith that we are disputing of If it be not the Rule and Object of your Faith every man indeed may tell us what he believeth himself but no man can tell us what another believeth And then you have as many Religions as men for every man hath one of his own and no two men in the world know and believe just all the same things neither more nor less And what shall those of us think of your Religion then who find that one of you affirmeth what another denyeth For instance A worthy Person of your Religion affirmed to me that notwithstanding the Fifth Commandment Honour thy Father and Mother a Mother hath not any Governing Power over a Child nor the Child oweth any obedience to the Mother during the Fathers life because it were confusion were there more Governours in a House than one though subordinate one to the other Is this your common Judgment May I say therefore that this is other mens belief You know that when we alledge the sayings of your most Learned Writers we are ordinarily told that it is not the judgment of
particular Doctors but of the Church in Councils which we must call your Churches Judgment You undertake not to justifie any more And if I talk with any of my Neighbours and ask him what he believeth have I any more than a single Doctors opinion Is his Answer the Faith of your Church But would you have any one past seven years old believe you that writing is of no more use to Memory for conservation of Antiquities when God would not trust his Ten Commandments to the Peoples Memories but would write them in Stone and put them in the Arke which you have so little skill in Antiquity as to say here was the first writing Sure if you will read your Jesuite Euseb Nirembergius de Antiqu. scripturae you will not say that your Grand-Father taught you truly that Opinion as the Tradition of the Church Why do you write to your own Relations if writing be so un-intelligible Could the Bible have been kept as well in Memory as by Writings Why were the Gospels written then Do you go to Tradition or to Books to decide any Controversie now of the various readings Did Pope Clem. 8. and Sixtus 5. reform the vulgar Latine by Memory or by Books Pope Pius's Trent Oath sweareth Men to Interpret Scripture according to the consent of the Fathers Do any of your Doctors know how that is by Memory and Oral Tradition or by Books Did Possevine and Sixtus Senensis and such others Correct Books by Oral Tradition or by Books Did Celestine and the Carthage Council debate the Case of the Nicene Canon a narrow Instance which Memory might have served for out of Mens Memories or out of written Records Why doth 〈◊〉 bring us out new Forged Canons and why do the Copies of many Councils differ in the recital of Canons if Memory and Universal un-written Tradition can reconcile the difference Was the Athenian Philosophy propagated and preserved better by Memory or by Books Why is not the Stoicks and Epicureans and others as fully known now as Aristotles and Plato's if Memory without Books could have done Have you as full notice now of the Acts of James John Matthew Thomas Bartholomew c. without Book as you have of Paul's by the Book Is memory sufficient to have preserved to us the Statures of the Land without Books and Records Yea or the Common-Law without any Records or Book Cases Why are all your Councils written and all the Decretals to say nothing of the Civil Roman Laws Institutes Pandects and Digests Can you decide the Controversies about the Decretals published by Isidore Mercator by Tradition What are all your Libraries for at the Vatican Florence Paris and in each Learned Mans House if Books be so useless and unintelligible If one of your Relations ask you what is in the Council of Trent Florence Laterane and so upward can you tell him fully without Book by Tradition And are not these Councils your very Religion Doth every Papist Neighbour carry them all in his brain more certainly than in Books Or could your Grandfather and Grandmother have told us more certainly what is in them than Crab Surius Binius Baronius Justellus Albaspinaeus Petavius Sirmondus c. could do Or is all left uncertain because it is written Through Gods Mercy our Essentials and somewhat more are delivered certainly down to us by two hands by Oral and Practical Tradition and by the Scripture because they lye in a narrow room But yet if you had the front to tell the World that your immutable Church hath never changed the Creed it self we could not believe you because Books contradict you Tradition from your Great Grandfather cannot assure us that Filioque was in the Creed from the days of the Apostles Nor that the Holy Catholick Church the Communion of Saints and the other words mentioned in Vessius and Usher de Symbolis were in so long Nor that the Greeks added no words to their Creed at Nice nor afterward at Constantinople in General Councils nor that all S. Hilaries outcry against Creeds was in vain Nor can Tradition without Book yet assure us what were the very words of the Creed used commonly by the Greeks immediately before the Nicene Council nor who wrote that ascribed to Athanasius Nor among the various Formula's of that called the Apostles found as aforesaid in Irenaeus Tertullian Epiphanius Ruffinus c. which of them was in constant use or whether liberty of such alteration of words was not then used And no Unwritten Report of your Grandfather can assure us that your Mass-Book or Liturgy was the same in the Apostles days as it is now nor that it was for 600 years the same in all the Churches of one Empire and that every Bishop had not power to use what Liturgy he pleased in his own City or Parochia Nor can your Tradition assure us that what the Father and Grandfather used was used from the Apostles when the Church of Neocaesarea clamoured at S. Basil for his singularity and innovations and S. Basil retorts on them that they at Neocaesarea had scarce left any thing unchanged I hope this is not the less credible because Basil hath written it At least I pray hereafter give over your ill practice of leading simple Readers into a Wood of Church-History to lose them and the Question there among a multitude of Citations of old Books when you know not what else to say as William Johnson did because there the ignorant know nothing themselves but may as well believe the Affirmer as the Denyer and at least the diversion to voluminous Controversies about particular mens words may hide your Errours Do not resolve all the Controversie yea the Faith of your Followers into a multitude of Books of Councils and Fathers which they never saw And do not take so much care to corrupt and alter Books for your interest as instances and your Indices Expurg tell us you have done Resolve without Book the Controversie about your great Laterane Council whether Dr. Taylor Dr. Pierson Dr. Gunning and Bishop Cousins lately that say Innocent 3. made and published the Canons and the Council did not consent to them be in the right or rather they that answered Dr. Pierson and Dr. Gunning and indeed your Church which holds the contrary which Mr. Dodwell seemeth to me lately to have fully proved in his Book about tolerating Papists Nay why may we not expect that you lay by your Book Catechisms your Office Books your Controversie Books and teach your People all without Book But by this Counsel to your Relations you fully shew that you would have them to have no certainty at all either what Christianity is or what Popery is For they shall never speak with the Universal Church or with a General Council while they live And all their Neighbours to whom you send them are fallible Persons I suppose you one of the chief of them and alas how failible you are you have in two Writings grosly
eighth Instance is about praying for the dead But whatever you say of the Rector of S. Martins in Oxford there is no difference between the Puritans and the Prelatick Protestants in that point You mistake the matter It is another passage or two or three at Burial which the Puritan sticks at viz. which pronounceth of every individual person in the Kingdom Atheists Infidels Papists and Impenitent Sinners that we bury except only the Excommunicate Unbaptized and Self-murderers that God of his mercy hath taken to himself the Soul of this our dear Brother out of the miseries of this sinful life c. IX Your last Instance indeed toucheth the quick of our Controversie with Rome You say The Prelatick Protestant wonders at the Puritan's Pride that he will not submit his judgment in matters of Faith to the determination of a Council of all the Reverend Bishops of the Land his Majesty as Supreme Head and Governour presiding yet submit not to the determination of a General Council of all the Learned Bishops of the Christian World his Holiness the Pope as Supreme Pastor presiding and believe as the Universal Church of Christ believeth It 's fitting says the Conformist that for Order sake in Christs Church there should be in every Nation some Supreme Governours to whose Directions in matters of Divine Worship all should submit else we shall have as many Christian Religions and ways of Worship as there are Parishes Families or Persons The Puritan replyeth It seems as rational that Christ should for the same Reasons of conserving union decency and order in his Church appoint one Supreme Pastor over all Christians dispersed in all the Nations of the World whom all should obey in the vacancy of General Councils Ans This desenveth our wakeful Remarks I. So your sacred Cardinal Bertrand in Biblioth Patrum said that God had not been wise else if he had not placed one Supreme as his Vicar over the World And so you can tell what God hath done by your superlative Wit which can tell us what he ought to do God doth all wisely But if he had not made an Universal Head of the World under him he had not done wisely ergo he hath made such an Head c. This is Historical Logick II. But is this Monarch the Head in Civil Government or only in Ecclesiastick Why is your One Church no more One in answering this Question Nay why were poor Barclay Withrington and such others whose Writings Goldastus hath preserved so hardly judged of for pleading for Kings Supremacy in Civil Government And if you are of their mind tell us if you can why God must not be judged as unreasonable and unwise if he have not made One Universal Civil Monarch of all the World I undertake when you will come to a due tryal to prove that Civil Government is such as may as well and far better be done by Officers and Deputies than the Ecclesiastical Government can And I pray who is the Universal Monarch Or who must be he Or how must he be chosen I would have our King have no mortal King set over him at least without a chusing Vote And shall they meet in a General Council of Kings to chuse one By that time the Place and Time be agreed on and the Kings have all left their Kingdoms and be come from the Antipodes and the Terra Australis incognita and all other Kingdoms to that Council to chuse a Monarch of the World they will be too old to return home again Or shall they fight it out till one have Conquered all the rest Alas who shall bear the charge of the Conquest at the Antipodes and who shall answer for all the Blood When one cannot get all Europe at a cheaper rate than will be expressed by many Kingdoms groans and the Soil dunged with mens flesh and blood I have long ago on this subject given in my Key for Catholicks an Answer to Richlieu and to Carol. Boverius who wrote for the Honour of Ecclesiastick Monarchy from the similitude of Civil to have perverted our late King as if he would have made him believe that the World must have one mortal Monarch Contrarily If it be Madness and Hostility to all Kings and States for any one man on earth to claim and seek to be the Monarch of all the World in Civil Government it is madness and hostility to Kings Pastors and People for any one man to claim and seek to be the Monarch of all the World in Ecclesiastick Government But the former is true Ergo so is the latter I am ready to make good the Comparison III. But Sir if the Pope be S. Peter's Successor is not his Apostolick office as Universal as his Monarchy or Ruling office Surely the first part of the Apostles office was to preach and baptize and make Christians and gather Churches and the Governing of them was but the second part And is the Pope the Apostle of all the world Then it seemeth that he is a betrayer of most of the whole earth to the Devil that neither preacheth to them per se vel per alios But S. Peter's Charge was not Vniversal but Indefinite And even as to Government why did he never so much as send his Deputies to govern the Abassins for so many hundred years Nay hence it seemeth to follow that all the preaching and Church-order that hath been for so many hundred years either there or in any other Nation by which millions have been turned to Christianity and edified without the mission or Commission of the Roman Monarch should have been left undone and all was unlawful IV. But must your Pope be obeyed as Supreme but in the Vacancy of General Councils Dare you preach this at Rome 1. How then come the Councils of Constance and Basil for such Doctrine to be unapproved or reprobate Councils How came Pope Eugenius to keep up and continue the succession when so great a General Council had deposed him as Heretical Simoniacal and many ways flagitious 2. And what Have we a Catholick Church with two Heads that are pervices the Vicars of Christ A Pope one year and a Council another Then sure they are two Churches seeing the Pars imperans is the specifying part 3. But the best is it is at the Pope's will whether ever there shall be a General Council more And he knoweth which side his Bread is Buttered on Nay they say no Decree is valid without his approbation And if ever a John or Eugenius of them all will approve of his own Deposition for Heresie Simony Adultery c. he is not the Man that I took him for 4. But if the name General Council be not a Cheat and taken for a Council very far from being General as to the whole Christian World let the Pope set his heart at rest I will undertake to secure him from the danger of such a Council and to prove that such there never ought to be will
be or can be unless Christianity come much nearer to be rooted out of the Earth and the Church brought into a narrower room V. But you have a reflecting Comparison between the Kings presiding and the Popes and between a National Council and the Bishops of the whole Christian World To begin at the later part Alas poor ignorant Man if you believe this your self And alas unfaithful Man if you believe it not and yet dare say it Do you yet know no difference between the orbis Romanus and the orbis universalis Or will you with William Johnson alias Terret prove your Councils to be Universal because such places as Thracia had Bishops there as if Thracia had been without the Empire or because such a name as Johannes Persidis is found at Nice Read all the subscribed names and return to a sounder mind Theodoret knew what he said when he gave the reason why James Bishop of Nisibis in Persia or near it was at the Council of Nice Because Nisibis was then under the Roman Emperour Do you not know that most of the Christian World two to one are not of the Pope's Subjects and are All the Bishops of the Christian World then on your side And do you not know that when Constantine presided at Nice his Dominion was full as large as the Bishop of Rome's was and a little larger VI. But because you shall find us reasonable we will tell you that we consent to General Councils where the Pope consenteth not We consent to what the great Councils at Calcedon and Constantinople before mentioned say of the Humane Institution of his Primacy and the Reason and Mutability of it and so doth not the Pope We consent to the Councils at Constance Basil Pisa that the Pope may be deposed as a Heretick and worse but the Pope doth not Is it not he then that dissenteth from all the Bishops of the World VII And for the Kings presiding we wholly own it He is the Governour of Clergy-men as well as of Physicians and he is to see that they abuse not their Function to the common hurt The difference is here 1. Our King Governeth but his own Dominions But your Pope would Govern all the World 2. Our King hath an undoubted Title Your Pope is an Usurper 3. And as to your name Head he hath given the World full satisfaction that he did never claim to be a Priest-Head or Governour a Constitutive Head of a properly called Church nor to have the power of Word Sacraments and Keys so as to administer them but to be a Civil Head and Governour of Priests and the Churches in his Dominions as he is of Physicians c. VIII And you mistake the Puritans if you think they are not for this Government Why else take they the Oath of Supremacy Yea and if you think that they are not for as much Unity and Concord of all the Churches in a Kingdom as can be had without a greater hurt than the lesser particularities of their concord will do good And they are not against National Synods for such Concord And they hold the King to be the Regular Head or Governour or Principium of that Concord But not principium essentiale ipsius Ecclesiae And therefore the Puritans differ from judicious Ric. Hooker who saith If the King be the Head of the Church he must needs be a Christian For we hold that an Infidel King may be so the Head that is the Rightful Governour of the Christians and Churches in his Dominion or else how should they be obliged to obey him IX And you are mistaken if you think that the Puritans and the Prelatists differ about submitting our Faith to the judgment of the Church We subscribe the same Articles which say that General Councils may erre and have erred even about matters of Faith X. But I must tell you that the Puritans who are accused of disorder and confusion do many of them loath disorder and confusion even in words and doctrine And they distinguish here between the Churches keeping and teaching the Christian Faith and the Churches judging in matters of Faith The first they are wholly for We must receive our Faith from our Teachers and oportet discentem fide humana credere But if by Judging you mean strictly a Decisive judgment in which we must rest which way soever the sentence pass as if the Church might not only teach us the truth of our Religion but judge in partem utramlibet whether it be true or not the Puritans own no such power in the Church nor will so submit their Faith to the judgment of it They believe that Pastors in Councils have power to judge that there is a God Almighty c. a Christ a Holy Ghost that Christ dyed rose c. that the Scripture is true that there is an absolute necessity of Holiness that there is a Resurrection and Life everlasting that Gods Commandments must be kept and sin not committed c. But that no Council hath power to judge that there is no God no Christ or the contrary to any one of these or any other revealed Truth of God XI And I must not let pass your Schismatical inference that else there should be as many Religions and ways of worship as Parishes or persons if some supreme Governour determined not in matters of worship For 1. It was not so when no Supreme Governour determined on earth 2. But either you mean the Substantials of Gods Worship or the Circumstantials In the first as faith is not to be got by force so neither is Godliness but yet Governours should here do their best But as to the other we abhor the Conceit that there are as many Religions as there is difference about vestures gestures days and meats But perhaps you take the word Religion in the Romane sense as you confine it to those that you call the Religious as if you took the people of your Church to be irreligious And so you have indeed too many Religious however they come to make one Church The Religion of the Carthusians is one and of the Benedictines another and of the Franciscans another I cannot name them all One eateth Herbs and Fish and another eateth Flesh seldom another often one weareth one habit and another weareth another one Religion hath one Rule of Life and another hath another But with us there is but one Religion which is the Christian though one man wear cloth and another stuffe one white and another black one eat Flesh and another Fish and another can seldom get either though one wear his Hair long and another short though one be old and another be young yet we are all of one Religion Yea though one preach and pray in English another in Welch another in French and another in Dutch yet we take not these to be so many Religions No nor though one think Free praying fitter for Ministers than an imposed Form and another think an
Corporations never put them to any disgrace but still honour them as renowned Doctors as if the Lives of Kings and the rest of these things were less than a Form of Prayer or a Ceremony yea when your Inquisition torment poor Protestants for smaller matters as reading the Bible or a Protestant Book methinks all this sheweth that Christian Concord is founded on better Principles than yours and that yours is but the Bond of your Clergy interest CHAP. IV. His own false Description of Papists YOUR next work being to give your Relations first the false and then the true description of a Papist it 's most deceitful work that you make in both I. In the false description you do quite pass over the great Constitutive Causes of Popery in which it is that it differs from Apostolical Christianity And you name a few of the superstructures or remoter differences and cite not one Protestant that speaketh those words but only the present Arch-bishop of York and as you say the vulgar conceit And you are ordinarily careful in every Paragraph to put in some one word by the disowning of which you may disown the sentence But 1. Is it not a meer deceiving trick to word your own Accusations so in the Protestants name as you know you can easilyest plead Not Guilty May not one alter some one word in every Verse of any Chapter in the Bible and then protest that not one of all those Verses is in the Bible So if the Printer have some Errata in each Leaf of your Book may you not protest that not one Leaf of it is yours 2. And is it not deceitfully done to appeal to the Vulgar as the Accusers that thus charge you when you know how vain it is to expect that how sound soever their judgments be the Vulgar should state any Controversies so exactly as not to miss it in a word or more when they hit the sense And you knew how hard it is to disprove you For who shall judge what is the opinion of the Vulgar If I should say that few or none of my acquaintance do charge you to speak those very words you may say that you know some that do and I cannot confute you 3. And have you not the Differences between you and us voluminously stated and handled long ago by many whose Books have been received by the Churches and Licensed by Authority when the Vulgar stating of them was never Licensed nor owned Why did you not gather out of Jewel Usher's Answer to the Jesuites Challenge Dr. Challoner Chillingworth Dr. Field Dr. Crakenthorp Dr. Reignolds Dr. John White Bishop Morton Dr. Ames Sadeel Chamier Whitakers or such others what the things are that Protestants charge you with And answer what is there charged on you I my self have enumerated many of the things which we take for Popery and not to be defended in my Key for Catholicks and in my Safe Religion and in One Sheet against Popery almost twenty years ago and since then in my Full and easie satisfaction which is the true Religion and in my Certainty of Christianity without Popery And you have given no answer to any one of them that I ever heard of But you can better dispute it seems with your Relations and with the Women and Country-Labourers or Tradesmen that never use to speak in that stictness of words as shall prevent the Cavils of a studied Sophister 4. As for the A. B. of York I am almost a Stranger to him and more to his Book which I never saw But two things I can say 1. That we are no more obliged to justifie his words than you to justifie the words of any one of your Doctors 2. That no man is so fit to answer for him as he is for himself Because no man knoweth so well in what sense he took the word Papist I suppose you know that Grotius who perswadeth us all to an obedient Union with your Church under the Popes Government according to the Canons owning the Decrees of all the Councils even that of Trent yet for all this doth speak against Papists But he tells you that by Papists he meaneth those Flatterers of the Pope who approve of all that he saith or doth And that it was not the Government or Doctrine of that Church that was to have been reformed but the Opinions of some Schoolmen and the excesses and ill lives of many of the Clergie Now could not Grotius easily have produced such Papists as these as having said as gross things as you recite And how far Bishop Bromhall and the Doctor that lately published him own Grotius I will not tell you but refer you to their own words To which many more might easily be added Now suppose that Dr. Heylin or A. Bishop Bromhall or his Prefacer should say that by Papists they mean such as Grotius did do you think that they could not prove as gross words as any cited by you in some such Flatterers of the Pope And you know I suppose that some of late would not have the Church of Rome called Papists or at least so charged but only the Court of Rome But let us take notice of some of the Particulars I. Your first Article is That Papists are said to Worship Stocks and Stones Medals and Pictures of Jesus Christ as Gods and pray to them and put their whole confidence in them as the ancient Heathens did in their dumb Idols of Jupiter Mars c. Ans 1. Your Doctors are oft charged with maintaining that the Image of Christ and the Cross must be worshipped with latria which is the Worship called Divine And instead of this you put in the word as Gods It is not as reputing these Images to be really Gods but worshipping them as God only should be worshipped contrary to the second Commandment which forbiddeth such Bodily actions as were symbolical of Idol-Worship though the Mind were kept never so free from accounting God to be like Idols or Idols to be Gods 2. Who chargeth you of putting your Whole trust in Images Is not part of it too much 3. How prove you that the Heathens ordinarily did so Or that they took Jupiter c. to be nothing but the Image and not a Coelestial Power 4. But instead of saying any more on this point I again tell you that Dr. Stillingfleet hath in his new Defence against T. G. so fully proved that the generality of the Heathen Nations did worship one Universal Supreme God and worshipped their inferior Gods much like as you do Angels and worshipped their Images not as being Gods themselves but with such a Relation to the Deity as you do your Images and that your Image Worship is such as the ancient Fathers condemned in the Heathens that none of you will ever be able solidly to confute him or defend your Idols any more So dear do you pay for T. G. his temporary triumph II. Your second feigned Charge is That the Pope can give
Souls in Purgatory or for praying to the Virgin Mary and abundance such if Holy Water alone would do all the Business Was not he much overseen or did grosly prevaricate that drew up this Charge Might I but chuse my Adversaries Advocate and agree with him to say nothing but what I can disprove I would certainly have the better and be justified VII The next part is And as for his obedience to Magistrates if they be not of his Religion he owes them no allegiance And if he have by Oath obliged himself he has a holy Father can dispense with him for that or any other Oath for a piece of Money If his Prince persecute him for his Religion let him but have so much desperate courage as to sacrifice his own life to stab or poyson his said Persecutor he shall at Rome be canonized for a Saint Nor can private Persons expect any fidelity from him when he is thus traiterously rebellious against his Liege Lord and Soveraign c. Ans Now I perceive you are over bold and do too hardly blush when you have the face to bring in such an instance and by the inserting of a word or two of your own to dare to wash off from your Religion the blot of Perfidiousness and Rebellion when it is part of the Decrees of your approved General Council The Prevaricator wrongeth you 1. By making not of his Religion to be all that 's necessary to free you from allegiance 2. By putting in or any other Oath for a piece of Money I have not yet found that the Pope undertaketh to dispense with a man that will swear to believe the Roman Church or the rest in Pope Pius his Trent Oath nor yet with the Vow of Baptism if seconded by an Oath 3. By saying only If his Prince persecute him for the Doctors say that he must be first excommunicate or a Heretick at least and some say he must have the Pope's Order before he may kill a King and the Council only speaketh of Deposing and not of killing 4. And the Prevaricator too rashly promised Canonizing He that murdered one of the French Kings was but praised in an Oration by the Pope proved by many but not Canonized Garnet was not every one But because I see you grow so bold and also in what follows return to what you had said before I will instead of following you farther tell you what such as I mean by a Papist and what some other men mean by him CHAP. V. The true History of the Papacy its original and growth THough I reserve the opening of the ambiguities of the word Papist till near the end I shall so far anticipate that as to tell you here also that the word PAPIST is equivocal I. In the sense of Grotius and all our Reverend Country-men that are of his judgment Papists are those that without any difference do approve of all the sayings and doings of Popes for honour or lucre sake as is usual Discus p. 15. If of all then of all the Adulteries Murders Simonie Heresie Infidelity charged on some of them by their own Writers and by Councils I am sorry if this be usual I hope yet that there are few of these Papists in the World and that few Popes themselves will deny that they are sinners But he elsewhere desireth the Reformation 1. Of some bold disputes of the School-men 2. And the ill lives of the Clergie 3. And some Customs which have neither Councils nor Tradition II. Some who are for the Supremacy of General Countils above the Pope do call those Papists that are for the Pope's Supremacy above such Councils or that give him the Legislative as well as the Judicial Power over the Universal Church Though themselves give him the Supreme Judicial Power when there is no General Council III. Protestants call those Papists who hold that the Roman Pope is rightfully the Governour of the Universal Church on Earth either as to Legislative or Judicial-executive Power either with Councils or without Two things are here included in our Judgment 1. That there is no rightful Universal Governour under Christ over all the Church on Earth either as to Legislation or Judgment 2. That the Roman Pope therefore is no such Governour In this third sense now I am to tell you what we Protestants mean by a Papist more particularly And first I must tell you what a POPE is before I can well tell you what a Papist is Which I shall do I. De facto Historically II. De jure as to the Power which he claimeth I. A long time the Bishops of Rome were seldome called Popes and other Bishops were so called as well as they At first the Bishops of Rome were pious persecuted Men and many of them Martyrs and usurped no Power over any Churches but their own which with Alexandria were the two first that brake Ignatius his Test of Unity who saith To every Church there is one Altar and one Bishop with his fellow Presbyter and Deacons But Rome having long called her self the Mistris of the World and being the Seat of the Empire and Senate and of the Governing Power of the orbis Romanus the Christians there grew greater than others and the Bishop as it increased kept it under his Power And when Christians had peace which was under the far greatest part of the Heathen Emperours and for the far longest time the Greatness of Rome giving Greatness to that Church and so to the Bishop and great opportunity to help other Churches because the Governing Power of the Empire was there this Bishop grew to be of greatest wealth and interest And in times of Peace the Strife which Christ once ended was taken up among the Bishops which of them should be the greatest And St. Paul having taught Christians that they should not go voluntarily to Law against each other before Heathens if there were but a wise man among them to be an Arbitrator the Christians supposing that they had none wiser or fitter than their Bishop made him their Common Arbitrator in things Civil as well as Ecclesiastical By which means Custom making it like a Law Bishops became de facto Church-Magistrates But they had no Power to execute any Penal Laws either Jewish or Roman or to make any of their own except as Arbitrators or Doctors to those that would voluntarily receive them And they had no Power of Life and Death nor to dis-member any nor to beat or scourge them nor to Fine them or Confiscate their Estates But being entrusted by Christ as his Ministers with the Power of the Church-Keys and by the People with the Power of Civil Arbitrations they were by this the stated Governours of all Christians who yet obeyed the Roman Heathen Magistrates but brought none of their own differences voluntarily before them And because that Multitudes of Heresies took advantage of the Churches liberty and swarmed among them to their great weakning and disgrace and christ
had commanded his Servants to serve him in as much Unity and Concord as they could duty and necessity drove the Pastors of the Churches to Correspondencies and to meet together on all just occasions and at last to Associations for the ordering of these Meetings In which they agreed in what Compass and in what Place or by whose Call such Meetings should be held and what Bishops in those Meetings should preside or sit highest and first speak and subscribe And usually they thought that to follow the Order of the Civil Government and give precedency to those that were Bishops of such Cities as had precedency in the Civil Government was the most convenient Order And in these Meetings they agreed on such Canons or Orders for all in that Compass to observe as they thought best tended to their ends And having no forcing Power as is aforesaid they formed their Impositions on voluntarily penitents so as might serve instead of the Power of the Sword Even Murderers Incestuous Adulterers they could not punish with Death Stripes or Mulcts and they were loth to disgrace Christianity so much as to accuse such to the Heathen Magistrates and therefore they laid the greater shame upon them forbidding them Communion with Christians for so many years as they thought meet and before they restored them they were humbly to beg the Prayers and Communion of the Church But yet these Synods were small and few and rare and never any dreamt of them as a Council of all the Church on Earth But when God blessed the Rome World with a Christian Emperour after the sharp Persecution of Dioclesian and this Emperour had by Religion and Interest made the Christian Souldiers his chief confidents or strength he studied the utmost increase of the Christians and to that end invited all to Christianity by the favour of the Court and by such Honours Commands Wealth and Dignities as they were capable of and above all he exalted the Christian Bishops whom he found the Rulers of the Christian Societies He gave them Honours and Wealth and Power He made a Law that no Christians should be forced to go to the Civil Heathen Judicatures from their Bishops and gave Power to the Bishops to be the Christians Judges some few hainous Crimes being in time excepted And so the Bishops were by his Law made Civil Magistrates or Arbitrators yet not with any Power of Life or Limbs or Estate So that all that would become Christians and would be subject to the Bishops Canons and Church Discipline were freed from Death Stripes and Mulcts for many Crimes which all others were lyable to and Excommunication and some Penance was instead of all By such means Multitudes of worldly Men and by the Preaching of the Gospel Multitudes that were sound Christians came together into the Churches And Bishopricks being now very desirable for their Power Honour and Wealth Men that most loved Power Honour and Wealth that is Proud Worldly Carnal Men did earnestly seek them and strive for Precedency in them But yet while the People had the choice or a Negative therein and the old Spirit of Christianity remained in many of the Bishops in many places bad ones were kept out and many excellent Men were preferred The Heresie of Arrius and the Alexandrian Contentions thereabout required a remedy for the Churches Peace The Bishops could not end it themselves It spread so far that it was Constantine's great grief to see Christians so quickly disgrace themselves and weaken their Religion in the Eyes of the Heathens Therefore he called a Council of Bishops consisting mostly of those of the Eastern parts where the troubles arose Two Priests of Rome were there but not the Bishop nor but few of the West Where the Emperours open Rebukes and Lamentation for their Contention and his earnest Exhortation to Peace and his burning all the Libells or Accusations which the Bishops brought in against each other and his continual presence and moderating oversight of them brought that meeting at last to that good and peaceable End which else it was never like to have attained It never came into Constantine's mind to call this Council as an Universal Representative of the whole Christian World or as the Governours of the Churches that were out of his Dominions but as a fit expedient to end the strife that was raised in those Parts For as few of the West were there so none of all other Kingdoms were once called For who should call them Constantine that called the Council neither did it nor ever pretended to a power to do it The Pope called not the Council much less did he call the rest of the Christian World Socrates tells us l. 1. c. 15. that St. Thomas had Preached to the Parthians and Bartholomew to the Indians and Matthew to the Ethiopians though the middle India was not Converted till Constantine's days by Frumentius and Edesius and Iberia by a Maid And so Euseb l. 3. c. 3. who saith that St. Andrew Preached to the Scythians and in Vit. Constant l. 4. c. 8. that there were many Churches in Persia And no doubt these Apostles Preached not in vain Scotland and other Countries that were out of the Roman Empire had Churches Yet any Neighbour Bishop that desired it might voluntarily be present When Theodoret in his Life tells us that James Bishop of Nisibis in the borders of Persia was at the Council of Nice For Nisibis was then under the Government of the Roman Empire he plainly intimateth that none but the Subjects of the Empire were called And the names yet visible of the Subscribers prove it Notwithstanding this Councils decisions the Contentions continue and the Major part of the Bishops went that way usually as the Emperours went And so in the Reign of Constantius and Valens they most turned to the Arrians at least in words And many General Councils so called of the Empire the Arrians had in which they prevailed and made Creeds for their turn as they at Nice had done against them and brought Persecution on the Orthodox silencing and ejecting them and scattering their Meetings as prohibited Conventicles the Emperour himself sometime executing their dispersions and restraint And among other Liberius the Bishop of Rome against his Conscience Subscribed to them The Fathers at the Council of Nice did determine of the bounds of the Patriarchs of the Empire which being at first but three Rome Alexandria and Antioch Jerusalem was after added and after that Constantinople For Constantine having now strengthned himself by the Christian Interest and being further out of the danger of mutable Souldiers than his Predecessours did that which none of them was ever able to do by removing the Imperial Seat from Rome to Constantinople and so leaving that Famous City as naked and almost neglected Whereby two great changes befell the Clergie 1. The Bishop of Rome was left more absolute and uncontrouled in the West 2. And the Bishop of Constantinople set up against
words of Reynerius saying that the outer Churches planted by the Apostles were not under the Church of Rome 8. The executive part neither could nor ever was performed upon the Churches without the Empire When did any Patriarch or any Provincial or General Council send for any Bishop or other person out of India Scythia Ethiopia or any other exterior Nation to answer any Accusation or pass any Sentence of Deposition or Suspension against them or put any other into their places 9. General Councils are confessed by Papists to be but a Humane and not a Divine Institution and what Humane Power could settle them in and over the Church Universal If you say It is by Universal Consent prove to us that ever there was such a Consent or that ever there was any meeting or treaty for such Consent of all the Christian World and we will yield it to you Surely if there be any Christians at the Antipodes they were not sent to in those days when Lactantius Augustine and others denyed that there were any Antipodes and derided it nor when the Pope by our Countryman Boniface his Instigation excommunicated Virgilius for holding that there were Antipodes Hear their great disputer Pighius Hierarch Eccles lib. 6. c. 1. fol. 230. General Councils saith he have not a Divine or Supernatural Original but meerly an Humane Original and are the Invention of Constantine a Prince profitable indeed sometimes to find out in Controversie which is the Orthodox and Catholick Truth though to this they are not necessary seeing it is a readier way to advise with the Apostolick Seat So that General Councils are Novel Humane and only of the Empire then 10. But to end all the Controversie the names of the Subscribers are yet to be seen who were not the representatives of the Christian World but of the Empire as is notorious Aeneas Sylvius Epist 288. saith that before the Council of Nice there was little respect had to the Church of Rome And though when he was made Pope Interest caused him to revoke his judgment of the Councils being above the Pope he never revoked such historical narratives Their great Learned Mathematical yet militant Cardinal Cusanus li. de Concord Cathol c. 13. c. saith that the Papacie is but of Positive right and that Priests are jure Divino equal and that it is subjectional Consent which giveth the Pope and Bishops their Majority and that the distinction of Dioceses and that a Bishop be over Presbyters are of Positive Right and that Christ gave no more to Peter than the rest and that if the congregate Church should chuse the Bishop of Trent for their President and Head he should be more properly Peter 's Successor than the Bishop of Rome Object Oh but this Book is disallowed by the Pope Answ No wonder So is all that is against him The Exceptions which we grant are these 1. There were some Cities of the Empire that were near to other Nations where the Princes being Heathens Christians were underlings and few And the Bishops of these Cities extended their care to as many of the Neighbour Countries as would voluntarily submit to them So the Bishop of Tomys was Bishop of many Scythians and so some that were on the Borders of Persia had many Persians and were at Nice 2. There were some Countries that were sometimes under the Roman Power and sometime under the Persian or others as Victory carried it and these when they had been once of the Imperial Church took it when they fell under Heathens to be their Honour Strength and Priviledge to be so accounted still and so would come to their Councils after if they could So it was with the Armenians and the Africans when the 〈◊〉 had conquered them c. 3. There were some Bishops that lived on the Borders of the Empire under Heathens that needed the help of Neighbour Churches and accordingly were oft with them craving their help So it was with the old Britans as to the Bishops of France 4. There were some small Countries adjoining to the Empire who took the Friendship of the Roman Power for their great Honour and safety and therefore were glad to conform in Religion to the Empire and to let their Bishops join with them 5. And there were some Neighbour Countries who were turned to Christianity by the Emissaries of the Bishop of Rome who therefore rejoicing also in so powerful a Patronage were willingly his Subjects But this was long after the first great Councils These two last were the Saxons case in England Accordingly you may sometimes find two or three out of such Countries at some of the General Councils of the Empire Which yet were called General but as to the Empire and not as to the World To proceed in the History When Christians were mostly exempted from the Magistrates Judicatures that were most Heathens though under a Christian Prince and so the Bishops Canons were to them as the Laws of the Land are to us it is no wonder that Councils must then be very frequent and Canons of great esteem and hereupon Bishops by prosperity growing more and more worldly and carnal made use of their Synodical Power as is aforesaid to accomplish their own Wills So that the Synods of Bishops became the great Incendiaries and Troublers of the Empire You need no more to satisfie you of this but to read the Acts of the Councils and the words of Nazianzen called Theologus against Synods and contentious Bishops and the sad Exclamations of Hillary Pictav They that had too little zeal against Ungodliness Unrighteousness Pride and Malice were so zealous against any that withdrew from their Power and contradicted them that they easily stigmatized them for Hereticks and made even godly sober Christians suspected of Heresie for their sakes while notorious Vice was used gently in those that adhered unto them Even holy Augustine saith Drunkenness is a mortal sin si sit assidua if it be daily or constant what not else and that they must not be roughly and sharply dealt with but gently and by fair words Vid. Aquin. 22. q. 150. a. 1. 4. ad 4. a. 2. 1. And their Great Gregory That with leave they must be lest to their own wit or disposition lest they grow worse if they be pulled away from such a Custom as Drunkenness But when it came to such as withdrew from under them they were not so gentle Lucifer Calaritanus is made the Head of a Heresie because he was but too much against the receiving of such as had been Arrians The large Catalogues of Heresies contain many that never erred in Fundamentals They prosecuted the Priscillianists so hotly that if godly men were but given to fasting and strictness of life they were brought into suspicion of Priscillianism And the Vulgar took advantage of the Bishops turbulency and ill disposition to abuse the godly S. Martin therefore separated from the whole Synod of the Bishops about him and
neither would join with them nor have any Communion with them as supposing them proud men that suppressed piety and strengthened the wicked by their intemperate prosecution Whereupon they suspected and accused him also as an unlearned Fellow and a Favourer of the Priscillianists They did not only bring in the use of the Magistrates Sword in Religion against Heresie which Martin could not bear but they owned and flattered an usurping Emperour that they might have the help of his Sword to do their work So that in all those parts of France Germany and the Borders of Italy I find not a Bishop that refused to own the Usurper save S. Ambrose and Martin and one French Bishop And Sulpitius Severus tells us that they were men too bad themselves and that upon his knowledge Ithacius the Leader of them scarce cared what he said or did S. Cyril at Alexandria is noted by Socrates as the first Bishop there that used the Sword and his Kinsman S. Theophilus went beyond him and took upon him even to favour the Errour of the Anthropomorphites that he might have their help against such as he hated and prosecuted Chrysostom till he had procured his ejection which made a rupture in that Church and caused the separation of his Adherents whom the Bishop would have taken for a new Sect and called them Joannites such skill had the domineering sort of Prelates in making and multiplying Heresies and Sects and calling themselves still the Catholick Bishops because they kept the upper hand and major Vote except where the Arrians over-topt them who then claimed the Catholick Title to themselves And by what Arts some of them kept the favour of the Emperours to do their work and keep up their greatness Socrates tells you in the instance of the said S. Theophilus who sent one before the great Battel between Theodosius and Eugenius another Usurper with two Letters and a rich Present and bid him stay till the Battel was over and then give the flattering Letter and the Present to him whoever that got the better But though still since the World came into the Church and the Greatness Power and Honour of Prelacy made that Office a very alluring bait to the desires of the most worldly fleshly men yet God kept up some that maintained their integrity and bare their testimony against the pride and carnality of the rest and though the scandals of the Catholicks turned many to the Novatians and other Sects that profest more strictness yea Salvian makes the Arrians Gothes and Vandals themselves to be men of more honesty and temperance than the Catholick Clergie yet sound Doctrine had still some holy Men that did maintain it But what were the Popes doing all this while Sound Doctrine by the advantage of the soundness of the Western Emperour as is said yet kept out Arrianism Pelagianisme and such other Heresies there but they were still striving to be the Greatest Leo one of the best of them was one of the first that laid claim to an Universal Headship within the Empire I told you how Zosimus and his Followers strove with the Africans to have Appeals made to Rome from the African Bishops and Councils which the Africans stifly opposed as contrary to the Canons to Custom and to the reason of Discipline which required that Cases should be judged and ended where persons and things were known and not by Strangers afar off where Witnesses could not without intolerable charge and trouble be brought beyond Sea to prosecute the suite The words of the African Council translated are â—â—se Let your Holiness as beseemeth you repel the wicked refuges of Presbyters and the Clergie that follow them because this is not taken from the African Church by any definitions of the Fathers and the Nicene Decrees did most plainly commit both the inferior Clergie and the Bishops themselves to the Metropolitans for they did most prudently and most justly provide that all business should be ended in the very places where they began and the Grace of the Holy Ghost will not or should not be wanting to each province which Equity should by the Priests of Christ be prudently observed and most constantly maintained especially because it is granted to every one to appeal to the Councils of their own Province or to an Universal Council if he be offended with the sentence of the Cognitors unless there should be any one that can think that our God can or will inspire a Justice of tryal into any One Man and deny it to innumerable Priests that are Congregated in Council Or how can that sentence that is past beyond Seas be valid to which the necessary persons of the Witnesses could not be brought because of the infirmities of Sexe or Age many other impediments intervening For that any that is Legates should be sent from the side of your Holiness we find not constituted by any Synod of the Fathers it seems they never thought of a Divine right because that which you sent us by our Fellow Bishop Faustinus as done by the Nicene Council they prove was false send not your Clergy Executors or Agitators to potent men Do not yield to it lest we seem to bring the Secular arrogancy into the Church of Christ which preferreth the light of simplicity and day of humility for them that desire to see God For of our Brother Faustinus the Popes Legate we are secure that the saâ—â— Brotherly love in your Holinesses honesty and moderation can suffer him to stay no longer in Africa The Popes took this heinously from the Africans that they should stop them in their ascent to the Universal Monarchy So that Pope Boniface Epist ad Eulal saith Aurelius sometimes Bishop of Carthage with his Colleagues did begin by the Devils instigation to wax proud against the Church of Rome in the days of our Predecessors Boniface and Celestine O how little do proud men instigated by the Devil know themselves when they think that the Diabolical pride is in them that will not serve their pride And Harding against Jewel Art 4. Sect. 19. saith After the whole African Church had persevered in Schism the space of twenty years and had removed themselves from the obedience of the Apostolick Seat being seduced by Aurelius Bishop of Carthage c. Here note 1. That so numerous were the Bishops in Africa that one of their Provincial Councils had far more Bishops than the Council of Trent or divers others called General 2. That they were men of the most eminent learning and piety and that had kept up Discipline above almost any Church in the Empire S. Augustine was one that subscribed the foresaid Letter and were such Men like to be seduced by Aurelius 3. Note with what Impudencie even such men as Harding yet pretend that St Augustine was for their Papal Claim when yet he professeth him to be one of the Schismaticks that cast off obedience to the Seat of Rome 4. Note what good Company we have
in our reproach of the same pretended Schism 5. Note how shamelesly the Papists still tell us of all the Bishops of the Christian World being for them and asking us where was our Church before Luther that is a Society of Christians that obeyed not the Pope when they confess that Augustine and all the African Church for twenty years obeyed him not and alas soon after the Vandals came and conquered them and persecuted and destroyed those famous Bishops that did survive And that you may further know that they had yet more disobedient Resisters than African Bishops you may remember that even the Egyptian Monks so long famous for their great austerity and sanctity had renounced not only obedience but Communion with the Pope and his Adherents Fulgentius was about going to live with them for their holiness but he was told of this and turned his course vid. Vit. Fulgent And how great were all those Churches of Aethiopia Armenia exterior India and the rest which the Apostles converted which Reynerius aforesaid truly saith are not under the Church of Rome Cont. Waldens Catal. in Riblioth Patr. To. 1. p. 773. I have formerly recited the words of Melch. Canus one of their great Bishops saying Loc. Theolog. li. 6. c. 7. fol. 201. Not only the Greeks but almost ALL THE REST OF THE BISHOPS OF THE WHOLE WORLD have vehemently fought to destroy the priviledge of the Church of Rome And indeed they had on their side both the Arms of Emperours and the GREATER NUMBER OF CHURCHES and yet they could never prevail to abrogate the Power of the one Pope of Rome See here their own Confession 1. Where Christians opposing the Pope were before Luther 2. And of what credit their boast of Universality and Catholick Tradition is One while W. H. saith The Bishops of the whole World were for them But when their cause leads them to tell truth they say Almost all the Bishops of the whole World have vehemently fought against the Pope and the Arms of Emperors and the greater number of Churches were against them And indeed if it had been none but the Greeks he might well have said The greater number of Churches For the Contest which begun upon the Emperours removal to Constantinople and at the first General Council increasing more and more till Gregory opposed John's Claim of Universal Bishop as Antichristian at last Phoc as the cruel murderer of Mauritius gave the Title to the Bishop of Rome But that no whit ended the contest following Emperors being contrary minded and the Greeks continuing their Claim the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople excommunicating one another so that by this abominable striving which should be the Chief or Greatest the Churches that were of old in the Empire have been divided and so they continue to this very Day as unreconcileable as ever And when Gregory sent his Emissary hither to Preach to the Saxons they found the Christian Britans and Scots not only averse to the Government Orders and Ceremonies of Rome so that in many Kings Reigns neither words nor force could make them yield but also such as refused their Communion and would not so much as eat and drink with them in the same house No wonder then that Marinarius at the Council of Trent complain that the Church is shut up in the Corners of Europe and that Sonnius Bishop of Antwerp say Demonstr Relig. Christ li. 2. Tract 5. c. 3. I pray you what room hath the Catholick Church now in the habitable World Scarce three Elns long in comparison of the vastness which the Satanical Church doth possess The truth is saith Brierwood Divide the known World and alas how much is unknown into thirty parts and about nineteen are Heathens and six Mahometans and five Christians of all sorts And of these Christians the Papists at this day are as some think about a fifth part some think a fourth part and some think a third part And after the assuming of the Universal Title their Popes more and more degenerated to such odious wickedness at last as we hope few Pagans are guilty of which we speak not as from Enemies but from their own Historians and Flatterers such as Platina Baronius Genebrard c. Nay not so much from them as from Councils General and Provincial which have accused condemned and deposed them Read in my Key for Catholicks pag. 220 221 222. the words of Baronius Genebrard Platina CL. Espensaeus 〈◊〉 Muss Guicciardine c. Nic. Clemangis Bernard Alv. Pelagius say more Let any impartial man but read the Articles on which the Council at Constance condemned and deposed John 23. about 70 in number in which they make him almost as bad as a man out of Hell can be and indeed say he was commonly called The Devil incarnate Read the Articles on which the Council at Basil condemned and deposed Eugenius the Fourth as a perjured Wreteh an obstinate Heretick and all the rest Read the Articles on which another Council deposed John 13. alias 12. And read the Lives of many more in their own Historians And what came the Church to when it had such Heads when Baronius saith ad an 912. that the face of the holy Roman Church was exceeding filthy when the most potent whores did rule at Rome by whose pleasure Seats were changed Bishops were given and which is a thing horrid to be heard and not to be spoken their Lovers were thrust into Peters Chair being false Popes who are not to be written in the Catalogue of the Roman Popes but only for the marking of such times And what kind of Cardinals Priests and Deacons think you we must imagine that these Monsters did chuse when nothing is so rooted in Nature as for every one to beget his like For near 150 years saith Genebrard about fifty Popes were rather Apostatical than Apostolical And where was their uninterrupted Succession all this time Pope Nicolas in his Decretals Caranz p. 393. 395 saith He that by Money or the favour of Men or Popular or Military Tumults is intruded into the Apostolical Seat without the Concordant and Canonical Election of the Cardinals and the following religious Clergy let him not be taken for a Pope nor Apostolical but Apostatical And of the Clorgy he saith Priests that commit Fornication cannot have the honour of Priesthood Yea Let no Man hear Mass of a Priest whom he certainly knoweth to have a Concubine or Woman introduced And shall not Protestants forgive those that will not hear such or as bad Where then was the Papacy under such For above forty years together there were more Popes than one at once and sometimes more than two one dwelling at Rome and another at Avignion or elsewhere One set up and obeyed by one Party and another by another Party each condemning the other as an Usurper And had the Universal Church then any one Head And with what wickedness are they charged one destroying what the other was for see in
Wernerus Fascial and my Key p. 28 29 30. Wernerus and others say that Silvester the second was made Pope by the help of the Devil to whom he did homage that all might go as he would have it but he quickly met with the End that such have that place their hope in deceitful Devils When one Pope cuts another in pieces and casteth his Careass into the Water as unworthy of Christian Burial as you may find in the Lives of Formosus and Sergius must we yet suppose such the Lawful Rulers of the World The fourteenth Schisme saith Wernerus was scandalous and full of confusion between Benedict the Ninth and five others Which Benedict was wholly vitious and therefore being damned appeared in a monstrous and horrid shape his Head and Tail were like an Asses the rest of his Body like a Bear saying I thus appear because I lived like a Beast In this Schisme saith the Author there was no less than six Popes at once 1. Benedict was expulsed 2. Silvester the Third gets in but is cast out again and Benedict restored 3. But being again cast out Gregory the Sixth is put into his place Who because he was ignorant of Letters caused another Pope to be Consecrated with him to perform Church-Offices which was the fourth Which displeased many and therefore a third is chosen instead of the two that were fighting with one another But Henry the Emperour coming in deposed them all and chose Clement the Second who was the sixth of them that were alive at once In my Opinion this Gregory the Sixth shewed himself the honestest Man of them all Who though he could not read himself had the humility by chusing a Partner to confess his ignorance And I am perswaded if the question had come before him which was the truest Translation of the Hebrew or Greek Text or such like the Man would scarce have pretended to Infallibility in judging The nineteenth Schisme was between Innocent the Second and Peter Leonis and Innocent saith the Author got the better because he had more on his side A good Title no doubt and thence a good Succession The twentieth Schisme saith Wernerus was great between Alexander the Third and four others and it lasted seventeen years After Nicolas the Fourth saith he there was no Pope for two years and a half where was the Church then and Celestine the Fifth that succeeded him resigning it Boniface the Eighth entered that stiled himself Lord of the whole World in Spirituals and Temporals of whom it was said he entered as a Fox lived as a Lyon and dyed like a Dog I have as good hope of the salvation of Celestine the Fifth and Felix the Fifth as any two of them because as they were drawn in as simple Men in ignorance so their resignation shewed some hope that they repented The 22. Schisme saith Wernerus ad an 1373. was the worst and most subtil Schisme of all that were before it for it was so perplexed that the most Learned and Conscientious Men were not able to find out to whom they should adhere And it was continued for forty years to the great scandal of the whole Clergie and the great loss of souls because of Heresies and other evils that then sprung up because there was no discipline in the Church against them And therefore from this Urban the Sixth to the time of Martin the Fifth I know not who was Pope Nor I neither nor any one else I think The twenty third Schisme was between Felix the Fifth and Eugenius the Fourth of which saith Wernerus Hence arose great contention among the Writers of this Matter pro contra and they cannot agree to this day For one part saith that a Council is above the Pope the other part on the contrary saith no but the Pope is above the Council God grant his Church Peace c. The Christian World being all in Divisions because of sidings for these several Popes the Emperours were constrained to call General Councils to end the Schismes That at Constance thought they had done the Work but they left Work enough for that at Basil and more than they could do When they found not a fit Man among the Clergy they chose a Lay-man to be Pope the Duke of Savoy a Man noted for honest Simplicity and Piety and called him Felix the Fifth But Eugenius who was cast out by the Council for his wickedness kept the place and made the Duke glad to resign and leave the Popedome Should I stay to tell you after the Barbarous Age 900. what work the Popes made in the World how many thousand they forced to death upon the Wars at Jerusalem how many score thousand Waldenses and Albigenses they Murdered How they forced Kings to kiss their Feet and trod on the Neck of Frederick the Emperour How they divided the Empire by a Rebellious War against the Emperours Henry the Third and Fourth And how they Armed their Subjects and Neighbours against them yea the Emperours Son against his own Father And how the Writers of those times are divided and open the lamentable Divisions of the Ages in which they lived What work they made here against the Kings of England and what passed between Boniface the Eighth and the King of France and the Coin on which he Stamped his Resolution to destroy Babylon c. you would little think that either Holiness or Unity were any Property of the Roman Church Qu. But if most did not favour them how did they ascend to so great power Ans 1. The old Name of the Imperial Rome and the Popes Primacie in the Empire kept up a Veneration for him in the ignorant 2. The Eastern Emperours seated at Constantinople were so taken up with Wars Rebellions and other Difficulties at home that they could not take sufficient care of the West but left the Popes too much advantage to grow great and wickedness also increasing among them though the Princes presence kept their Patriarchs in more order and submission than the Popes that were become masterless provoked God to give them up to be conquered by the Mahometan Turks And by the Ambition of the Popes the Emperours wanted the due assistance of their Western Subjects to resist their Enemies And the Pope took the advantage of the Eastern Emperours weakness to lead the West into a settled Rebellion offering the King of France the Western Empire which he embraced the Pope making his Bargain with him for his own advantage 3. And in the Wars of Christian Princes the Pope used to obtrude his Arbitration in such a manner as tended to his gain so that he shortly got to be a temporal Prince of a great part of Italy and to have Crowns and Kingdoms made feudatary to him 4. And he got Germany to be broken into so many small Republicks and Liberties as that they were not able to unite to resist him 5. And he took great advantage of the religious humours of any that were devout
and allowed them so many and various Societies and with so great Priviledges as obliged them generally to uphold and serve him Though he cruelly persecuted all that were against his Power and Interest yet he allowed almost all the Diversities of such as would but unite in him and serve him 6. And as he so twisted his own and all his Clergies Interest that they were all ready to obey and defend him against their several Princes and thereby had a great power in every Christian State in Europe so keeping all his Clergie unmarryed their wealth still accumulated and flowed into the Church And the Eastern Empire being first weakned and then overthrown and the Western Nations kept weak and in continual Wars against each other there was none well able to resist his Pride but one party still was ready to flatter him partly to keep their own Clergy in Peace and partly to have his help against their Enemies And the grand Cheat by which they were commonly deceived was that they lookt more at his present possession of Primacie than at the reason and right by which he claimed it and so he that had been Prime Patriarch in one Empire set up by the Prince still claimed the right of the same places when the Empire was dissolved as if the Subjects of the Kings of France Spain c. must obey him because they did so when they were the Subjects of Constantine Theodosius Valentinian c. For by little and little he changed his Title mentioned in the Council of Calcedon into a pretended Divine Right and so they that would not have obeyed him as set up by Caesar and his Councils obeyed him as if he had been set up by God For the name of St. Peter and his Chair and Successour was used as the common blind And next to that he did by degrees change his claim of a Primacie in the Empire into a claim of Primacie in all the World and his claim of a meer Primacie into a claim of Soveraignty or Governing Monarchy If you ask me how could he blind Men so far as to make such a change You seem not to know Man-kind nor to observe common experience Do you not consider what power the Clergie had every where got with the People What an advantage possession and St. Peters name were And how lamentably ignorant they kept the People Do we not see that even in our more knowing times yea among Protestants yea with some Divines the evident distinction between their Humane Right and their pretended Divine Right and between an Universal Council or Church of the Empire and of the whole World have not been sufficiently observed in our Disputes against them And the additional Countries of voluntary Subjects in Brittain Hungary Sweden Denmark c. which of later times since his Imperial Primacie have fallen in to him have much helped to blind the people herein and to serve his Claim as by Divine Right For which ends his Emissaries have taken great pains at the East and West Indies in China and Japan and Congo and once they made an attempt in Abassia and among the Greeks and in many other Nations of the World laudably seeking to win some Heathens to Christ that they might win them to the Pope and turbulently seeking to disturb the Greeks and other Christian Churches to draw them to the obedience of the Pope The Doctrines by which they promote their design are more than I may now stay to open I. One of the chief is by depressing the Honour of the sacred Scriptures as insufficient to acquaint us with all Gods will that is necessary to our salvation without supplemental Tradition that so all men might be brought to depend on them as the Keepers of Tradition But 1. Is their Tradition yet written in any of their own Books or not If not where are they kept And who knoweth what they are Is it not strange that so many Doctors in so many Ages all remembring them would none of them ever write them down Are they in the Memory of the Pope only What of those that could not read or that were condemned as Hereticks of Infidels Then all the World must receive them from the Popes Memory If so must it be Word or Writing And had he no Memory of them before he was Pope But if it be in other Mens Memories that your unwritten Traditions are kept in whose is it If in all the Doctors of your Church why did not Luther Melancthon Pet. Martyr and the rest that turned from you know them Or did they suddenly forget them all when they turned Protestants And how vast must your necessary Religion be if yet it must have more in it unwritten than is to be found in all your great Volumes of Councils and your huge Library But I suppose you will say that all your unwritten Traditions are now written If so they are not unwritten And how long have they been written and by whom If Fathers and Sons could keep them unwritten in memory a thousand years why not 1100 and why not 1600 c. If they were written in the beginning where be the Books Are they not such as other Christians can read and understand as well as you or an illiterate Pope If there be a necessity of having them in writing now was there not the same necessity to former Ages 2. I suppose you will send us to your Councils for those Traditions But if the Bishops know them not before they come to the Council how do they begin to know them then Do they go thither for a new miraculous Revelation of an old Tradition left with the whole Church 1. But do not Councils oft determine things confessedly uncertain to the Church before and yet out of utter uncertainty it suddenly becometh an Article of Faith For Instance the great Council at Basil saith Bin. sess 30. p. 80. A hard Question hath been in divers parts and before this Synod about the Conception of the glorious Virgin Mary and the beginning of her Sanctification Some saying that the Virgin and her Soul was for some time or instant of time actually under Original Sin Others on the contrary saying that from the beginning of her Creation God loving her gave her Grace by which preserving and freeing that blessed Person from the Original Spot We having diligently lookt into the Authorities and Reasons which for many years past have in publick relation on both sides been alledged before this holy Synod and having seen many other things about it and weighed them by mature consideration do Define and Declare That the Doctrine affirming That the glorious Virgin Mary the Mother of God by the singular preventing and operating Grace of God was never actually under Original Sin but was ever free from all Original and actual Sin and was holy and immaculate is to be approved held and embraced of all Catholicks as godly and consonant to Church-worship Catholick Faith right Reason
and sacred Scripture and that henceforth it shall be lawful for no Man to Preach or Teach the contrary Where was this Tradition kept before that was so hard a Controversie till now 2. And do not General Councils bring in Novelties I cited formerly the words of Cajetan in his Oration in the Council at the Laterane under Leo 10. charging the Council of Constance Basil and Pisa with Novelty and such Novelty as would have quite defaced the Church and was inconsistent with it And Pighius chargeth them with the like Yea I told you before where he saith that General Councils themselves are a Novelty devised by Constantine 3. Be not General Councils themselves approved or reprobated at the pleasure of the Pope What a number of reprobated Councils were there that yet were as numerous as the approved and as lawfuly called and assembled Bellarmine instanceth in the 2. of Ephesus Constance Basil and many more Of which more before II. Another of their deceits is by pretending to Vinc. Lerinensis Rule quod ab omnibus ubique semper c. as if Antiquity and Universality were on their side I must remember that I have long ago confuted these and the rest of their deceits in my Key for Catholicks Yet I will briefly speak here to these two 1. For Antiquity we willingly stand to it and to the rejecting of all Novelty in Religion But we must have better proof than the word of our Grand-fathers or a Priest 1. Is any of their Books or Traditions elder than the holy Scripture 2. Either the Greeks Armenians Abassines c. have been sure Keepers of Antiquity or not If yea then we may take their Testimony as well as the Church of Romes If not why may not you prove as ill Keepers of it as they 3. But are they not certain Novelties that you would impose on us under the colour of Antiquity Read but Pet. Moulin de Novit Papismi or Mr. Th. Doelittles Discourse in the Morning Lectures against Popery and you shall see the Novelty of your Religion fully proved Take now but these few instances 1. Your very Patriarchate Primacie Claim of Universality General Councils are all proved Novelties before 2. Your own Writers confess that the denying the People Christs Blood or the Cup in the Lords Supper is a Novelty that prevailed by Custom by little and little and was not common long before the Council at Constance Dare you say that it was so from the beginning or of old 3. Can you possibly believe that your forbidding men to read the Scriptures in a known Tongue without a Licence is not a Novelty if ever you read Chrysostom Augustine Jerome or any thing of the Ancients 4. Is it not a Novelty for the publick Prayers of the Church to be ordinarily made in a Tongue not understood by the generality of the People But I must stop 2. And as to Universality I have before proved 1. That by their own Confession most of the Churches and Bishops of the World have been against them 2. That at this day they are not above the third part of Christians Too small an Universal Church for any man of Charity and Consideration to be a member of A Sect that call themselves All the Church Jacob. a Vitr Histor Orient Cap. 77. tells us that the Churches in the Easterly part of Asia alone exceeded in multitude both the Greek and Latine Churches As for their telling us that all these followed Dioscorus a Heretick or were Nestorians and that all the Abassines Armenians Georgians Syrians Coptics Greeks Protestants c. are Hereticks or Schismaticks I have answered it so oft at large that I must not repeat what I have said Only 1. I say that if the Censures and Revilings of Adversaries can un-christen all others and appropriate the Church to them that have least Charity perhaps the Qualiers may shortly have as fair a Title as the Papists If General Councils be not to be believed when they Hereticate Popes I will not believe a Railer when he Hereticates most of the Christian World whom he never saw or spake with Sure that man judgeth persons unheard 2. I repeat the words of Barchardus one of your own that long lived among them and spake what he saw p. 325 326. And is for those that we judge to be damned Hereticks as the Nestorians Jacobites Maronites Georgians and the like I found them to be for the most part good and simple men and living sincerely towards God and Men they are of great abstinence c. And p. 324. he saith that the Syrians Greeks Armenians Georgians Nestorians Nubians Jubeans Chaldeans Maronites Ethiopians Egyptians and many other Nations of Christians there inhabit and that some are Schismaticks not subject to the Pope and others called Hereticks as the Nestorians Jacobites c. but there are many in these Sects that are very simple knowing nothing of Heresies devoted to Christ materating the Flesh with Fastings and clothed with the most simple Garments so that they far excel the very RELIGIOUS of the Church of Rome And p. 323. of the Papists whom he calleth by the Name of Christians as if it were proper to them he saith There are in the Land of Promise men of every Nation under Heaven and every Nation liveth after their own Rites and to speak the very truth to our own great confusion there are none found in it that are worse and more corrupt in Manners than Christians that is Papists 3. If greater Errours and Vices than are among the Armenians the Abassines Syrians c. will allow us to reject men from our Communion how much more cause have we to renounce Communion with Popes and Papists than with these Churches 4. How can any man say that Nations and Countries are to be rejected as Hereticks unless the single persons guilty were tryed and heard when there is no Heresie but what is in individuals and no Law of God or Reason condemneth the innocent for the guilties faults much less all Posterity for their Ancestors III. But they never gain more than by aggravating the Divisions that are among other Christians and boasting of the Unity of their Church And the Contentions that have been among us have given them such advantage as that some in the sense of their former guilt having been Sect-masters themselves have turned Papists as thinking it the state of Union and having found no settlement in those ways which they have tryed because they never rightly understood the true temperament of the Christian Religion which they professed they think to find it in that way that they never tryed as sick men turn from side to side for ease while the cause of their weariness and pain is within them and turneth with them Here let the Reader note 1. That Fools judge of Differences in Religion by the noise that it makes in the World but men of Reason judge of it by the greatness and number of the points of
a promiscuous confused popular multitude that is to raise again Babylon it self subjecting to themselves or the Community of the Church which they falsly pretended that they represented the very Head and Prince of the whole Church and him that is the Vicar of Christ himself in this his Kingdom and this against Order and Nature against the clearest light of Gospel Verity against all Authority of Antiquity and against the undoubted faith and judgment of the Orthodox Church it self And yet our Papists would perswade us that their Grandfathers much less great General Councils cannot bring in Novelties on pretense of Antiquity and mislead them Truly said Lud. Vives in August de Civ Dei l. 20. c. 26 Those are taken by them for Edicts and Councils which make for them the rest they no more regard than a meeting of Women in a Work-house or a Washing-place X. He claimeth a power of Legislation to all the Christian World Kings and States and single Subjects and that no Kings can nullifie his Laws to their own Subjects As also the power of receiving Accusations and Appeals and of judging and executing accordingly This needeth no proof being not denyed XI He claimeth power to Interdict whole Kingdoms that is when they think the Rulers give them Cause to forbid the preaching of the Gospel and publick worship of God to all the People of the Land yea forbidding the Clergie who are Subjects to obey their own Princes who shall command them as the Kings of Israel did the Priests and Levites to do their offices That is If the State or King offend them they will be avenged on God by denying him all Publick Worship and on the souls of millions of innocent people by doing their worst to send them to Hell where the unbelieving ignorant and those that worship not God must go The instances in Germany and the Venetian Interdict and others are too full proof of their Claim and Practice XII The Pope claimeth power even by the Decrees of an approved General Council to oblige all men to believe that all theirs and all other mens senses and perception upon sense are certainly deceived when they think that there is real Bread and Wine after Consecration And this denyal of all mens Common sense he hath made an Article of faith and necessary to salvation XIII He hath by the same Council decreed that all those that do not thus far renounce all their senses shall be exterminated and made uncapable to make any will c. And by other of his Laws that they be all burnt as Hereticks and delivered to that end to the secular power XIV By the same Council he hath decreed that Temporals Lords shall take an Oath to execute this Decree and shall be excommunicated if they exterminate not all such Believers of sense from their dominions And to dishonour Kings by Excommunications whom the fifth Commandment bids us honour is an act of Papal power XV. By the same Council he hath Decreed to depose all temporal Lords that will not thus destroy or exterminate their Subjects and to give their Dominions to Papists that will do it So that the Popes power to depose Princes is become an Article of their Religion And in his Roman Councils Greg. 7 declareth that he hath power to take down and set up Kings and Emperors And in his Letters to the German Clergy And what he said he did practise by bloody and unnatural wars to the great distraction of all the Empire Saith Innocent 3. Serm. 2. To me it is said I have set thee over Nations and Kingdoms to set up and destroy and scatter I am set up as a middle person between God and Man on this side God but beyond Man yea greater than Man who judge all and can be judged of none I am the Bridegroom c. XVI By the same Council he hath power to dispense with the Oaths of all the Subjects of such Princes and to disoblige them how many soever from their Allegiance so that the Popes Power thus to dissolve the obligation of Oaths is also become an Article of their Religion I prove all these together by giving you the words of the Council in English Once again though I have oft cited them c. 1. they say that No man can be saved out of their Universal Church And c. 2. that The Bread and Wine in the Sacrament of the Altar are transubstantiate into the Body and Blood of Christ the appearances remaining And c. 3. We excommunicate and anathematize every Heresie extolling it self against this holy Orthodox Catholick Faith which we have before expounded condemning all Hereticks by what Names soever they be called And being condemned let them be left to the present Secular Power or their Bayliffs to be punished the Clergy being first degraded of their Orders And let the Goods of such condemned ones be confiscate if they be Lay-men but if they be Clergy-men let them be given to the Churches whence they had their Stipends And those that are found to be noted only by suspicion if they do not by congruous purgation demonstrate their innocency according to the considerations of the suspicion and the quality of the person let them be smitten with the Sword of Anathema and avoided by all men till they have given sufficient satisfaction and if they remain a year excommunicate let them be condemned as Hereticks And let the Secular Powers in what Office soever be admonished and perswaded and if it be necessary compelled by Ecclesiastical censure that as they would be reputed and accounted Believers so for the defence of the Faith they take an Oath publickly that they will study in good earnest according to their power to exterminate all that are by the Church denoted Hereticks from the Countries subject to their jurisdiction So that when any one shall be taken into Spiritual or Temporal Power he shall by his Oath make good this Chapter But if the Temporal Lord being admonished by the Church shall neglect to purge his Country of heretical defilement let him by the Metropolitan and other com-Provincial Bishops be tyed by the bond of Excommunication And if he refuse to satisfie within a year let it be signified to the Pope that he may from thenceforth denounce his Vassals absolved from his fidelity and may expose his Country to be seized on by Catholicks who rooting out the Hereticks may possess it without contradiction and may keep it in the purity of Faith saving the Right of the Principal Lord so be it that he himself do make no hindrance hereabout nor oppose any impediment And the same Law is to be observed with them that are not Principal Lords And the Catholicks that taking the Sign of the Cross shall set themselves to the rooting out of the Hereticks shall enjoy the same Indulgences and holy Priviledges which were granted to those that go to the relief of the Holy Land Moreover we decree That the Believers Receivers Defenders
and Favourers of Hereticks shall be Excommunicate firmly decreeing that after any such is noted by Excommunication if he refuse to satisfie within a year he shall from thenceforth be ipso jure infamous and may not be admitted to publick Offices or Councils or to the choice of such or to bear witness And he shall be intestate and not have power to make a will nor may come to a succession of Inheritance And no man shall be forced to answer him in any Cause but he shall be forced to answer others And if he be a Judge his sentence shall be invalid and no Causes shall be brought to his hearing If a Notary or Register the instruments made by him shall be utterly void and damned with the damned Author And so in other like cases we command that it be observed They further command Bishops by themselves or their Archdeacons or other fit persons once or twice a year to search every Parish where any Heretick is found to dwell and to put all the Neighbourhood to their Oathes whether they know of any Hereticks there or of any private meetings or any that in life and manners do differ from the Common Conversation of the faithful c. And the Bishops that neglect this are to be cast out and others put into their places that will do them Here you see that no man must live on Earth for all Kingdoms must be subject to the Pope that will not renounce his humanity and animality or common senses and declare himself below a Beast That all Kings are the Popes Subjects commanded by him and must take a new Oath when they are crowned to destroy all their Subjects that believe their senses That even the suspected are undone if they prove not the Negative That Princes must be a thousand fold worse than hang-men who hang not whole Countries but a few condemned Maleafctors That Popes can and must depose Kings and Lords that will not do such things as these and give their Dominion to others That the sign of the Cross is the Cross Makers sign That all the promises of the pardon and happiness that were made to the invaders of the holy Land are given to those Wretches that when they have lived in filthiness and wickedness will expiate it by murdering the innocent as they did say Historians by above an hundred thousand This is the Roman way to heaven That the very favorers of these men that will not renounce humanity are to be also utterly ruined That as in the Japan persecution of the Christians all the neighbour-hood must be Sworn to detect them And the office of a Bishop is to see all this done And now if you will see you see how the Church of Rome is upheld and propagated And what the Religion called Popery is And consider whether as Angels and Saints are near of Kin or like in disposition it be not so also with Devils and wicked men And whether all Protestants be not Dead men in Law or condemned where the Papal Religion and Laws are received And what will follow hereupon And besides Gregory the first 's Declaration in his Roman Councils before mentioned he saith in Epist 7. l. 4. And for the conspiracy of Hereticks and the King we believe it is not unknown to you that are near them how it may be impugned by the Catholick Bishops and Dukes and many others in the German parts For the faithful of the Church of Rome are come to such a number that unless the King shall come to satisfaction they may openly profess to chuse another King and observing Justice we have promised to favour them and will keep our promise firm c. XVII The Pope though pretending to be the infallible Judge of Controversies doth tolerate his most famous Learned Doctors in great numbers without any Condemnation or disowning to write that excommunicate Kings are no Kings and may lawfully be killed as some say by the Popes consent or direction or as others say without it Henry Fowlis in his Book of Popish Treasons hath so largely proved by citing the express words of their chief Doctors Jesuits Dominicans and others that this is their ordinary assertion that I must remit the Reader thither for full satisfaction beyond all denyal I briefly refer you but to the words of Learned Suarez advers sect Angl. l. 6. Cap. 4. sect 14. and Cap. 6. sect 22. 24. Azorius Instit Mor. part 1. l. 8. c. 13. And Dom. Bannes in Thom. 22. q. 12. a. 2. saith When there is evident knowledg of the Crime Subjects may lawfully exempt themselves from the Power of their Princes before any declaratory sentence of a Judge so they have but strength to do it Hence it followeth that the faithful Papists of England and Saxonie are to be excused that do not free themselves from the Power of their Superiours nor make war against them because commonly they are not strong enough to manage those wars and great dangers hang over them So then the disability of the Papists is all the security we can hope for from them Augustine Triumphus saith de potest Eccl. q. 46. a. 2. There is no doubt but the Pope may depose all Kings when there is reasonable cause for it Part of Suarez words are Defens fid Cath. l. 6. c. 4. § 14. After sentence he is altogether deprived of his Kingdom so that he cannot by just title possess it Therefore from thence-forward he may be handled as a meer Tyrant and consequently any private man may kill him I have elsewhere cited Card. Perrons words out of Bishop Usher professing that if the Pope may not depose Kings it will follow that he is Antichrist who hath so long professed it I grant the consequence XVIII The Pope professeth the fallibility of General Councils but that he is infallible himself The first is proved by his reprobating many For the second saith Leo 10. in Bull. cont Luth. in Bin. p. 655. The holy Popes our predecessours never erred in their Canons and Constitutions XIX They hold this gift of infallibility to be by supernatural Inspiration beyond all natural faculties and means even to men that cannot Read or have no Learning at least none in the Text of Scripture to judge of such Texts the translation and exposition of them That they pretend to be Judges in Controversies de fide I need not prove Nor that some have been Lads and some Men unlearned as I proved before of Greg. 6. Their own Histories agree in this XX. Though the Decrees of General Councils be their very Religion and pretended immutable the Pope pretendeth to a Power to change them And yet they pretend that all is old and from their forefathers Both these foregoing parts are proved by Pope Julius 2. in his General Council at the Laterane with their approbation Monitor cont Prag Sanct. Bin. Vol. 4. p. 560. Though the Institutions of sacred Canons holy Fathers and Popes of Rome and their Decrees
be judged immutable as made by Divine Inspiration yet the Pope of Rome who though of unequal merits holdeth the place of the Eternal King and the Maker of all Things and all Laws on Earth may abrogate these Decrees when they are abused XXI By the same pretended Power he changeth Christs own Instituted Sacrament even in the substance of it denying all the Laity the Cup while they condemn all that will not believe that the Wine is turned into his very Blood And he that eateth not the Flesh of Christ and drinketh not his Blood hath not Life which they expound of the Sacrament Christ said when he had given them the Cup Drink yes all of it Mat. 26. 27. And Paul delivereth it to the Laity from the Lord 1 Cor. 11. 23. 25. 28. This do ye as oft as ye drink it in remembrance of me And as oft as ye eat this Bread and drink this Cup ye shew the Lords death till he come Let a man examine himself and so let him eat of this Bread and drink of this Cup 1 Cor. 10. 21. Ye cannot drink the Cup of the Lord and the Cup of Devils is given to the Laity as a reason against their Idol Communion In relation to the Sacrament it 's said that all were made to drink into one Spirit The reception of the Spirit being likened to that drinking And if the Pope may abrogate one half the Sacrament why not theother XXII The Pope declareth all the World to be damned except his own Subjects See the foresaid first Canon of Innocents Laterane Council Leo 10. Abrog Pragm Sanct. Bul. in the 17. General Council at Laterane saith And seeing it is of necessity to salvation that all the faithful of Christ be subject to the Pope of Rome as we are taught by the Testimony of Divine Scripture and of the holy Fathers and it is declared in the constitution of Pope Boniface the 7. c. Pope Pius 2. was converted from the supremacie of Councils by this Doctrine of a Cardinal which he approveth or by the Popedom Bul. Retract in Bin. Vol. 4. p. 514. I came to the Fountain of truth which the holy Doctors both Greek and Latine shew who with one Voice say that he cannot be saved that holdeth not the Unity of the holy Church of Rome and that all those Virtues are maimed to him that refuseth to obey the Pope of Rome though he lye in Sackcloth and Ashes and fast and pray both Day and Night and seem in the rest or other things to fulfil the Law of God Bellarmine saith de Eccles l. 3. c. 5. that No man though he would can be subject to Christ that is not subject to the Pope And therefore he saith that our Baptism implicitely subjecteth us to the Pope or we are so baptized to him And saith Gonzal Rodericus in Godignus de rebus Abassin l. 2. c. 18. p. 323. to the Emperours Mother I denyed that any one is subject to Christ that is not subject to his Vicar But said the old Woman to him Neither I nor mine do deny obedience to S. Peter We are in the same Faith now that we were in from the beginning If that was not the right why was there no one found in so many Ages and Generations that would warn us of our Errour See here what Tradition is and whether the Papal Church and Charge was Universal The Jesuite answered The Pope of Rome who is Pastor of the whole Church of Christ could not in the years that are by-past send Teachers into Abassia because the Mahometans incompassed all and had left no passage to them but now the Maritime way to Aethiopia is open they can do that which they could not do before So that it seemeth 1. Christ hath made the Pope Governour of Countries that he cannot send to and set the poor man an impossible task 2. He hath made it necessary to salvation to whole Kingdoms to believe in a Pope that they could never hear from nor whether there were such a Man or City in the world 3. Or else their Faith groweth new as the Sea passage is open And wo to them if their new acquaintance with the Pope make all all all his Laws necessary to them which they might have been saved without before How much happier were they when they never heard of his Name See here all you Jesuites one old Woman is able unanswerably to confute you all if she stand but on equal ground with you and be not under your power inquisition or fear XXIII In so doing the Pope damneth and unchurcheth about two or three parts of the Christians upon earth and so would destroy the Body Politick of Christ For the Body is rather to be denominated from the greater part than from the less Else why do Votes in General Councils go for the sense of the Church And I have shewed before that the Abassines Copties in Egypt Syrians Armenians Georgians Greeks Moscovites Protestants and the rest are far more two or three to one than all the Papists in the World Much more when Mahometanism had not drowned so many Countries that were of the Greek Profession was it so And how the Saviour of the World will take it for this Usurper to rob him of the most of his Flock and damn most of his Church and corrupt the rest consider and judge XXIV By so doing the Pope sets a Sect or small divided Parcel of the Church and calleth it the whole Church of Christ Even as some Anabaptists I hope not many and other Sects appropriate Christianity or true Church-Communion to themselves and say We are all the Church so doth the Pope His Universal Church is too small for any understanding Christian to own as such and to be a Member of as such XXV The Pope damneth not only two or three parts of the Christian World but also his own Representative Body or Church called Papists such an Abaddon is he Proved The General Councils at Constance and Basil to say nothing of many others were the Representative Church of the Papists and took it to be de fide that a Council was above the Pope But the Pope hath damned them for this as an error and for their deposing Popes See Concil Later sub Jul. 2. and sub Leone 10. Concil Florent Review the fore-cited Speeches of Cajetan and Pighius against them Many more Councils have they condemned XXVI Yea Popes have damned Popes also and it is most to be feared lest they damn themselves more than others I need not tell of Marcellinus nor of Honorius condemned for an Heretick by divers Popes nor repeat the Schismes and Damnations of each other therein nor the Story of Sergius and Formosus and Stephen c. nor their forementioned wickedness Watson in his Quodlibets tells you of Bellarmines Sentence against Pope Sixtus Quintus Conceptis verbis quantum capio quantum sapio quantum intelligo Dominus noster Papa descendit
elsewhere cited Pope Innocents words By the fulness of our Power we can dispense with the Law being above the Law And the Gloss oft saith The Pope dispenseth against the Apostle against the Old Testament c. The Council of Trent say Sess 21. cap. 1 2. that This power was always in the Church that in dispensing the Sacraments saving the substance of them it may ordain or change things as it should judge most expedient to the profit of the Receiver But is not the Cup of the substance as truly as the Bread Andrad Def. Conc. Trid. li. 2. p. 236. Hence it is plain that they do not erre that say the Popes of Rome may sometimes dispense with Laws made by Paul and the four first Councils And Vasquez saith To. 2. Disp 216. N. 60. Though we grant that this was a Precept of the Apostles yet the Church and Popes might on just causes abrogate it For the power of the Apostles was no greater than the power of the Church and Pope in bringing in Precepts One of Luthers Opinions opposed as Heretical by Leo 10. was this It is certain that it is not in the hand of the Church or Pope to make Articles of Faith See more in my Key p. 243 244. XXXVIII The Pope setteth up a Publick Worship of God in a Tongue not understood by most of the Worshippers and forbiddeth men without Licence to read the Scriptures in a known Tongue Practice and the Trent Council prove both these XXXIX The Pope determineth that the Image of Christ be reverenced with equal honour as the holy Scriptures So it is decreed Concil Constant the eighth General Can. 3. And yet Images are mans work and at the best unnecessary and the holy Scriptures are Gods work by his Spirit and the Law by which we must live and be judged at the last XL. And when all this Power over the whole Earth is thus claimed there is no possible means left for any mortal man much less for the Antipodes to know who is the man that hath this Power and whom on pain of damnation we must obey and believe in before we can believe in Christ Proved If there be any possibility of knowing it it must be either 1. By personal qualifications of mind 2. Or by right of election 3. Or of Ordination 4. Or of Possession 5. Or of Acceptance by the Church after Possession I cannot Imagine any other way But there is no possibility of knowing who is Pope by any of these wayes I. The first is not pretended by them But anon we shall thence prove their Nullity for want of necessary Qualifications II. If Election will tell us then it is either any Election whatsoever or else Election by authorized Persons Not the first else the Turks or the Greeks or the Adversaries of Rome might elect a Pope And an hundred might be elected at once several ways Not the later For if any one way of Election be necessary Popes were no Popes when that way failed Sometime they were elected by the People of Rome and were they the Chusers for all the World Sometimes by the People and the Presbyters Sometimes by the Neighbour Bishops and Ordainers Sometimes by the Emperours And lastly by the Cardinals If one way only be valid the rest were invalid And how shall we prove which If any of these ways are valid then six men or five may be chosen at once by the several ways And where is the proof III. If Ordination be the notifying Title then 1. Those Lay men that were put in full possession unordained were no Popes and where then is the Succession 2. And who is it that hath that ordaining Authority If some Bishops ordain one and some another and so twenty as they long did divers in many years Schism which of these is the true Pope or is it all IV. If Possession were the Title then the Turk may be Pope or he that can get it by the Sword Then there can be no Usurper but the strongest hath best Right Then he that kept at Rome had better title than he that was in Germany or at Avignion V. If it be the Churches after acceptance then 1. He was an Usurper before 2. And what or who is that Accepting Church Sure they that must make a Pope of no Pope by after acceptance should have the antecedent Election Else Popes must all be first Usurpers before they are true Popes But 1. If it must be the major part of the Christian World then there is no Pope because two parts are against him If it must be one Sect of Christians only like the Papists that will but think themselves the Church or better than the rest who is it that can prove their title to this Choice And must it be All of them or but Part If All 1. How shall we ever know it Never such a thing was tryed 2. And then there was no Pope in the 40 or 50 years Schism If it must be Part how shall we ever know which part it must be If the major or the melior how shall it be ever tryed and known in a division None to this day knoweth who had the major or melior part in many a Schism If they say that silent non-opposition is Consent I Answer That 's a known Falshood when most men even a thousand to one have neither Call nor Opportunity to signifie their dissent effectually and when no wise men that love their time and peace will run to Rome by thousands out of all Kingdoms to tell them their dissent 2. But it was no silent submission when several Popes were upheld by several Kingdoms So that there is no way of certain notice who is the true Pope but he must go for the man as Eugenius 4. did after his Deposition who can keep possession which is no title at all 2. Yea I prove certainly according to their own Principles that there is no Pope at Rome nor hath been for many an hundred years For they hold themselves that the Right must be derived by an uninterrupted Succession from S. Peter and call us no Ministers for want of Succession But that they have no such uninterrupted Succession is notorious For 1. An Infidel and Heretick Pope so openly judged can be no Pope Else a Turk might be Pope For he that is no Christian is no Christian Bishop But Popes before mentioned have been judged Infidels Hereticks incarnate Devils 2. A Pope actually deposed as an uncapable wicked Heretick by a General Council was no Pope Yet such was Eugenius 4. who yet kept the place and the rest are his Successors 3. There have been sometimes several years without any Pope at all And if two or three years make no interruption how shall we know how long time doth it 4. Baronius Genebrard and others aforementioned confess that for 50 of them together they were Apostatical and deserve not to be named among the Popes being wicked men made
the Votes of all the Christian World 3. And have all that were converted in the Apostles days and since first known the Major Vote of the Christians or were they converted by the foreknown Infallibility or Authority of the Majority or of the Pope Some will say we see the Madness of this Popery but how then do you say that the faith must be received if not from the Church I answer I have told you at large in a Treatise called The Reasons of the Christian Religion and briefly in a smaller Treatise called The certainty of Christianity without Popery Briefly Judging is one thing and Teaching is another thing Before I submit to the Decision of a Judge I must know his Commission or Authority and I must then stand to his Sentence which way ever he decide the Case Men be not converted to Christianity by such Judges but by Teachers Nor will I believe the Judge if he say there is no Christ no Life to come c. But a Teacher is to make intelligible to his Hearer or Scholar the evidence of truth which is in the matter taught and to draw men to believe by telling them those true reasons upon which he did believe himself And no man takes him for his Teacher that he is perswaded knoweth no more than himself And the greater reputation of Knowledge and Honesty the Teacher hath the easier we apply our minds to learn of him and a humane trust or faith prepareth us to receive that evidence of truth which may beget a Divine Faith by the help of Grace But still the Learner truly believeth no more than he thus learneth And I may hear a stranger tell what he hath to say and be convinced by the evidence that he giveth me of the truth though I know not of any Authority that he hath to teach me much less judicially to decide the Case I little doubt but most that were converted by the Apostles themselves were perswaded to believe in Christ by the evidence of truth proposed the Spirit co-operating before they knew of any Authority of the Apostles much less before they heard what they said in a General Council or what was the Vote of the Universal Church or what any Pope said as Ruler of the rest These things are very plain and sure and they that will be wilfully blinded by faction and prejudice and worldly interest against plain truth have no excuse if they perish in darkness II. A PAPIST of this sort is one that believeth that the Pope of Rome is the rightful Governour of all the world that is that all Christians immediately and all Infidels and Heathens mediately are bound by God to obey him as Christs Vicegerent on Earth And that he with his Council is thus an Universal Lawgiver and Judge to all Kings States and Persons that dwell round about the Earth But a Protestant denyeth this and holdeth that there is no Universal Monarch or Legislator to all the world but God and our Saviour and that he hath made no such Vice-Christ or Vicegerent and that such a Claim is High-Treason as usurping his Prerogative And that if Pride had not in tantum made them mad no men could think themselves thus capable of Governing all the World Protestants believe that there is no such thing on Earth as an Universal Church headed by any mortal Head Pope or Council but that Christ is the only Universal Governour or Head III. This Papist is one that holdeth that the Church of Christ on Earth is no bigger than the Popes Dominion and that it is necessary to salvation to be subject to the Pope and consequently he unchurcheth two or three parts of the Christian world and damneth most of the Body of Christ and robbeth him of the greatest part of his Kingdom as far as denying his Right amounts to And consequently is a notorious Schismatick or Sectary appropriating the Church title only to his Sect. This is proved before from the Masters of their Religion IV. This Papist is one that holdeth that those Councils which were General as to one Empire were General as to all the Christian world And that such General Councils there must be if it please the Pope to call them though they must come from all the Quarters of the Earth and whence they have no Sea passage and out of the Empires of many Princes and many that are Enemies to the Christian Name and perhaps at Wars with Christians and when the Voyage or Journey is such that if the Churches be deprived of a thousand Bishops twenty of them are never like to live to return home to the remotest Nations Nor could they converse as a Council by reason of the number and diversity of Languages if they were equally gathered Or they hold that if a small part of the Christian World assemble as at Trent when the rest cannot come this is an Universal Council of and to all the Christian World V. This Papist is one that holdeth If a fallible Pope and a fallible General Council do but agree their Decrees are infallible As if an unlearned Pope e. g. that understands not the Text of Scripture in the Original and an unlearned Council as to the most should agree their Decrees would be learned e. g. in judging which is the true Translation of a Tongue which they never understood As if ten purblind men if they meet together might produce the Effects of the clearest sight or Fools by conjunction become wise VI. He holdeth that Tradition from Fathers to Children is the sure way of conveying all the matter of Faith and Religion and yet that the greatest General Councils which are the Church representative may erre in matter of Faith and have erred unless a Pope who is fallible approve of their Decrees VII And when he hath trusted to this way of Tradition he denyeth the Judgment and Tradition professed by the greater half or the Christian World VIII He believeth that all men are bound on pain of damnation to believe that the Senses and perception of all men in the World are deceived in apprehending that after Consecration there is true Bread and Wine in the Sacrament And he that will so believe his own and others Senses should suffer as an Heretick and be rooted out of all the Dominions of all Christian Lords on Earth So merciful is he to his Neighbours For an approved General Council hath decreed this and such Councils are his Religion Were it his own Father or Mother Wife or Child that cannot thus renounce all his own and other mens Senses and believe that there is no Bread or Wine in spight of his sight taste touch c. he believeth that they should be burnt as Hereticks or exterminated He may be a good naetur'd man that is loth it should be so or he may be one that is ignorant of his own Religion and doth not know that this is one Article of Popery or he may be an unconscionable man that
will not obey that which he knoweth to be his Religion or he may be unable to execute such Laws But it is his Religion to believe that he ought to do it IX If he be a Temporal Lord of a Protestant Country it is part of his Religion to take himself obliged to root out destroy or burn all his Protestant Subjects and all others that deny Transubstantiation Obj. The King of France and some others do it not Ans No man is bound to do that which he cannot do But if he can do it and he be a Papist by the express words of an Approved General Council he is bound to do it and to believe that it is his duty I speak not of what men do but what their Religion binds them to do Though interest or good nature hinder them X. He believeth that all Temporal Lords that will not first take an Oath thus to root out their Subiects and then do it may be first Excommunicated by the Pope and then deposed if they repent not and their Dominions be given to be seized by another Papist that will do it The words of the Council are before cited XI He believeth that in this case the Pope may absolve all the Subjects of such Temporal Lords from their Oaths and Duties of Allegiance or Fidelity to such Rulers This also is express in the Councils words XII He is one that believeth that the Priviledges of the Roman Church were given it by the Fathers because it was the Imperial Seat and therefore Constantinople had after equal Priviledges For so saith the forecited General Council And yet he believeth the clean contrary even that Rome's Priviledges were given it by S. Peter and Constantinople's are not equal For Popes and Councils also are for this XIII He believeth that it is de fide that General Councils are above Popes and may judge them and depose them if there be cause even as Hereticks or Infidels Adulterers Murderers Simonists c. And yet he believeth that all this is false and the contrary true For the approved General Councils of Basit and Constance say the first and others and those fore-cited at the Laterane and Florence say the latter XIV He maketh uncharitableness and bold damning all others a comfortable mark of the safety of his state and the truth of his Religion and our Charity a mark that ours is worse whereas Christ hath said By this shall all men know that ye are my Disciples if ye love one another It 's usual with them to say You say that a Papist may be saved and we say that a Protestant cannot therefore we are in the safer state As if our case were ever the more dangerous for their condemning us As if a man that doteth in a Fever should say to those about him You say that I may live and I say that all you are mortally sick therefore my case is better than yours God saith Judge not that ye be not judged and who art thou that judgest another mans Servant And these men hope their case is safe because they sin against this Law and damn the most of the Universal Church XV. A Papist thinketh that all the Bible is not big enough or hath not enough in it to save those that believe and practise it or to make us a saving Religion but other Tradition must be received with equal reverence and the Decrees of all the approved General Councils must make it up XVI He confesseth every Article and word of the Religion of the Protestants to be infallibly true and yet holdeth that they are to be burnt and damned as Hereticks For he confesseth every part of the Canonical Scripture to be true and we have no more in our objective positive Religion not a word Our Negations of Popery are not properly our Religion any more than our speaking against Diseases is our Health But as our health containeth our own freedom from an hundred diseases which we never thought of as well as those that we once had or feared so our Faith and Religion is free from Popery and containeth that which is against it XVII A Papist is for swearing men to take Scripture in that sense as the holy Mother Church doth hold and hath held it Whereas 1. Their Church hath given them no Commentary on the Scripture one way or other 2. And their Translations have been altered in many hundred places by Clement 8. and Sixtus 5. so that their Clergy is sworn to take one Translation to to be right one year and a different one to be right the next XVIII They are for swearing men to take or interpret Scripture but according to the unanimous sense of the Fathers and consequently never to interpret the most of it at all XIX A Papist hath a thriving Faith and Religion which groweth bigger and bigger as fast as General Councils add new Decrees so that they know not when they shall have all And yet they cry out against novelty and change and boast of Antiquity XX. He holdeth that Priests or Prelates may not fall down to Princes or eat at their Tables nor debase themselves to them but Emperours must take them as equals Concil Gen. 8. Const Can. 14. XXI He is satisfied that their Church hath a Judge of Controversies though he decide them not And he gloryeth in the Unity and great Concord of their Church whose Doctors differ de fide even in the Exposition of many hundred Texts of Gods Word and where they differ in the Morals before cited about Murder killing excommunicate Kings c. and in Volumes of Controversies And yet he looketh upon far smaller differences among us with great offense as if they were intolerable and were so many different Religions And all because in all their differences they agree in one Pope As if it were not as good an Union to agree in one God one Christ one Spirit one Body or Church of Christ one Faith Creed and Scripture one Baptismal Covenant and one Hope of life eternal Eph. 4. 3 4 5 6. which is the Union that God describeth XXII He believeth that the Pope doth justly take away from the People one half of the substance of Christs own Sacrament and deny them that which they hold to be his very Blood XXIII They believe that they ought not to read the Scripture translated without a Licence So saith Con. Trid. XXIV They believe that the Image of Christ is to be reverenced equally with the holy Scriptures It is a Councils words before cited Yea they must believe the second Council at Nice that Latria is to be given only to God and yet a canonized S. Thomas 3. q. 25. a. 3. 4. maintaineth that Latria or Divine Worship is to be given 1. To the Image of Christ 2. To the Cross that he dyed on 3. And to the Sign of the Cross And how largely Jac. Nauclautus Cabrera and multitudes of the Schoolmen are for it see my Key p. 165
Councils and what parts of them the Pope meant to approve and what not as by Pope Martin 5. his Conciliariter appeareth that there is no certainty and no end XV. It is a Church that hath almost laid by the ancient Discipline of Christs appointment and instead of it hath set up partly Auricular Confession when it should be Publick and partly a tyrannical sort of hostile proclaiming their Adversaries excommunicate without hearing them and forbidding Gods Word and Worship to whole Kingdoms Saith Learned Albaspineus a Bishop Observ 1. pag. 1. If ever any one in this Age was deprived of Communion which I know not whether it ever fell out it was only from the receiving of the Eucharist In the other parts of his life he retained the same familiarity and converse with other Believers which he had before he was excommunicated XVI It is a Church that is upheld by Flames and Blood distrusting the ancient Discipline and the meer Protection of the Magistrate and the proper work of his Office The foresaid 12. General Council at Laterane proveth it besides Inquisitions and bloody Executions XVII It is a Church that cherisheth ignorance in the matters of Salvation Proved 1. By forbidding the reading of the Scriptures translated without Licence 2. Their Prayers in an unknown Tongue 3. The quality of their commonest Members XVIII It is a Church that militateth against Christian Love 1. By their foresaid condemning the most of Christians 2. By the foresaid bloody Religion and Execution XIX It is a Church which hath often damned it self one Pope and Council damning others As is proved XX. It is a Church which indeed is no Church according to their own Rules the Pope indeed being no Pope and the General Councils no General Councils as is proved And if it were one it could not possibly be certainly known to be so because the Pope who is an essentiating part cannot be certainly known As is proved both as to Election Ordination and all that is necessary to a Right and Title As to the Doctrines which they hold contrary to the Scriptures I have named many of them elsewhere in my Key pag. 39. 142 143 c. And others more largely And thus I have told you what I take a Pope a Papist and the Papal Church to be But you must remember that as the same man may be a visible Christian or Member of the true Universal Church as headed by Christ and a visible Papist or Member of the Sectarian Church as headed by the Pope so I judge none of you as in the first respect but allow you the same Charity proportionably as I do other erring Sects And especially to those many thousands who adhere to a Church which they understand not and profess that in gross which in particulars they themselves abhor Of which number I am not hopeless your self W. H. to be one CHAP. IX How our Religion differeth from the Papists AND now out of all this it is easie for you to gather how our Religion differeth from the Papists I shall recite but a few of the Differences leaving you to collect the rest from what is said of theirs I. Our Religion is wholly Divine or made by God For so is the holy Scripture which is all ours But the Papists super additions are made by men Even Popes and Councils under pretence of Declaring Expounding Governing Judging c. II. The Religion of Protestants is no bigger nor no other in the Essentials than the Sacramental Covenant with God the Father Son and Holy Ghost expounded in the Creed Lords Prayer and Decalogue And in the Integrals no bigger nor other than the holy Canonical Scriptures But the Papists is as big as all the Decrees of all General Councils added to all the Bible if not the Popes Decretals also and uncertain Traditions Tell us not of our 39 Articles and other Church Confessions as contrary to this For those Confessions all profess what I here say And you may as well tell us of our other Books and Sermons Our question is not of mens Subjective Religion For so each person hath one of his own And it cannot be known but by knowing what is in each mans mind And our Books and Confessions are as is aforesaid but the Expression of our sense of that which is our Regular Objective Religion And we are ready to confess and amend any misconception but our Objective Religion which is the Rule and Law of our Faith is only Divine III. Our Religion is known even the Sacred Bible But yours is unknown what are approved Councils and what decrees are intended to be de fide and what temporal and what perpetual and how far the Popes Decretals bind and whether all Isidore Mercator's Decretals be the Popes with abundance of the like IV. Our Religion is owned by you and every word confessed to be Divine and Infallible But your added Popery is disowned by us as sinful presumptuous and false V. Our Religion is fixed and unchangeable for so you confess the holy Scriptures to be But yours is still swelling bigger and bigger while Councils will increase it and hath no certain bounds VI. Our Religion is only that ancient one delivered by the Holy Ghost in the Apostles and so is certainly Apostolical your additions are Novelties since brought in VII Our Religion is Infallible Holy Pure your additions are fallible contradictory sinful oft contrary to plain Scripture condemning one another VIII Our Religion is Universal owned by all the Christian World in the Essentials and in the Main in the Integrals that is the Scripture Greeks Papists Armenians Abassines and all other parties that are Christians own it But your additions are some disowned by one part of Cristians and some by another and some by all save your selves IX Our Religion therefore is the true terms of Catholick concord according to Vincent Lerinens Doctrine quod ab omnibus semper ubique receptum est But your additions are the very Engine of the dividing Enemy by which he hath long kept the Christian World distracted by discord with all the calamitous effects and consequents X. Our Religion hath a certain Rule for the ending of all controversies so far as there is hope of ending them in this world All men will rest in the Judgment of God and his word in all such necessary things is plainer than all your General Councils But your Humane Authority is such as fighteth with it self and all the world and which the Universal Church never yet received nor will ever rest in XI Our Religion owneth a certain lawful Government appointed by God which well used may keep just order in the world That is Parents in Families Pastors in such particular Churches as Christ hath instituted as join for personal Communion in holy Doctrine Worship and Conversation which they are indeed capable of Overseeing and Governing by Sacred Doctrine in Christs way And Associations or Correspondencies of these Pastors for concord And
And in the Contest with them the case is commonly pleaded accordingly 4. Gregory Nazianzen would never have wished so earnestly that there were no inequality superiority or priority of Seats if he had taken them to be of Divine Institution Durst he have so opposed the Law and Order of God 5. But to put all out of doubt it is expresly determined by the most famous General Councils even two of the four which are likened to the four Gospels Constantinople and Calcedon that the Primacy was given to Rome by the Fathers so they called Councils because it was the Imperial Seat and therefore they give equal Priviledges to Constantinople because it is the Imperial Seat The words of the Council of Calcedon oft cited are these translated Act. 16. Binii pag. 134. We following always the definitions of the holy Fathers and the Canons and knowing those that have now been read of the 150 Bishops most beloved of God that were congregated under the Emperour of pious memory Theodosius the Greater in the Royal City of Constantinople New Rome have our selves also defined the same things concerning the Priviledges of the same most holy Church of Constantinople New Rome For to the Seat of old Rome because of the Empire of that City the Fathers consequently gave the Priviledges And the 150 Bishops most beloved of God being moved with the same intentions have given equal Priviledges to the most holy Seat of New Rome reasonably judging that the City adorned with the Empire and Senate shall enjoy equal Priviledges with old Regal Rome This Council was called by the Emperour Martian and his Lay-Officers were called the Judges And the Bishops to shew what they thought of Rome cryed out They that contradict it are Nestorians Let them that contradict it walk to Rome Bin. p. 98. If such a General Council be not to be believed farewell all the Papists Infallibility Authority Tradition and Religion If it be to be believed the Pope is a Humane Creature and not a Divine But Binius saith that Rome receiveth not the Canons of this Council of Constantinople which this confirmeth but only their condemnation of Macedonius And he saith That every Council hath just so much strength and authority as the Apostolick See bestoweth on it For saith he unless this be admitted no reason can be given why some Councils of greater numbers of Bishops were reprobated and others of a smaller number confirmed Vol. 2. p. 515. And yet must we hear the noise of all the Christian World and all the Bishops and General Councils and the Tradition of our Fore-fathers c. as against us when all is but the Pope of Rome and such as please him and it is He and his Pleasers that refuse the most General Councils and Tradition Away with this false deceitful talk 6. Once more hear their own Confession Their late English Bishop of Calcedon a fatal name R. Smyth in his Survey against Bishop Bromhall saith cap. 5. To us it sufficeth that the Bishop of Rome is S. Peter 's Successor and this all the Fathers testifie and all the Catholick Church believeth But whether it be jure divino or humano is no point of Faith Ans 1. Is not that a point of your Faith which the General Councils affirm at least of your Religion Who can tell then what is your Faith 2. If an historical point be not to be believed from General Councils why should the History of Peter's being at Rome and Bishop there be believed as from Fathers which Nilas hath said so much against 3. Do not the Fathers as much agree that Peter was first Bishop of Antioch If then you have no more to shew than they where is your Title 4. If your Divine Right of succeeding Peter be no point of Faith then he that believeth it not doth not sin against any point that God would have him believe as from him and therefore is not to be thought erroneous in the Faith 5. And yet upon this which is no point of Faith you build your Faith and Church and would have all Christians do the like on pain of damnation II. And as the Roman Primacy was but of Man's devising so I next prove that it was but over one Empire unless any Neighbours for their own advantage did afterward voluntarily subject themselves 1. Because the Powers that gave him his Primacy extended but to the Empire The Emperour and his Subjects ruled not other Lands 2. Because the four other Patriarchs made by the same Power had no power without the Empire As appeareth by the distribution of their Provinces in the Council of Nice and afterward Pisanus's Canons we regard not that take in Ethiopia Obj. The Abassins now receive their chief Bishop from the Patriarch of Alexandria That proveth not that ever they were under Rome For there is not the least proof that ever they did so till Dioscorus and his Successors separated from Rome being rejected by them as Hereticks and by long and slow degrees enlarged their power over many Neighbour Volunteers 3. Because the General Councils in which the Pope presided were but of the Empire And the Popes never claimed a more general extensive power then than the Councils Who indeed with the Emperours made the Papacy in its first state 4. Because when the Patriarch of Constantinople claimed the Primacy yea called himself Universal Bishop which Gregory sharply reprehendeth as Antichristian yet he never claimed the Government of the whole Christian World but only of the Empire And in all their Contests there is no intimation of any such different Claim of the Competitors as if Rome claimed all the World and Constantinople but the Empire or Roman-World Their Contest was about the same Churches or Circuit who should be Chief 5. The Instances of the several Countries that were never under the Pope do prove it Even the great Empire of Abassia and all the rest fore-named without the Empire Of which and the Exception more under the next III. The General Councils were all so called only in respect to the generality of the Empire and not as of all the Christian World which was never dreamed of Proved 1. Because the Emperours that called them Constantine Martian c. had no power out of the Empire 2. There is no credible History that mentioneth any further call much less of all the Christian World 3. It was the Affairs only of the Empire that the Councils judged of as is to be seen in all their Canons 4. The Names of the Bishops yet to be seen as Subscribers fully prove it 5. It was not a thing probable if possible that the Indians Persians and other Nations should send their Bishops into the Roman Empire which was usually at War with them or dreaded and detested by them 6. Theodoret's foresaid words of James Bishop of Nisibis sheweth it that he was at the Council of Nice for Nisibis was then under the Roman Empire 7. I have oft cited the
with him so but they will have his Body here still and yet a Vice-Christ or visible Monarch also in his stead See their own words which I have cited at large in my Answer to Mr. Johnson V. The pretended ground of this his Claim is that St. Peter received this power from Christ and that St. Peter was Bishop last at Rome and that the Pope succeedeth him in his Bishoprick and Power This is professed commonly by them But 1. It is false that St. Peter received any such Power from Christ as to be the Governour of all the rest of the Apostles and Christians in the World He never exercised or claimed such a Government but in cases of Controversie Act. 15. and Gal. 2 c. He dealeth but on equal terms with the rest And they that said I am of Cephas are as well rebuked as they that said I am of Paul And 1 Cor. 12. 28 29 c. Apostles are said to be but chief Members of the Church and Christ the only Head And when the Disciples strove who should be the greatest Christ giveth it not to Peter but forbideth it to them all And Peter himself as a fellow Elder exhorteth all Elders to oversee and feed the Flock not as Lords over the Heritage c. and never claimeth a Soveraignty to himself No word mentioneth any Power that St. Peter had greater than his Apostleship And Bellarmine professeth that the Pope hath not his power as succeeding him in his Apostleship but as an ordinary Pastor over the whole Church 2. There is no certainty that ever Peter was at Rome as Nilus hath shewed but a humane Testimony of many later Fathers upon the words of uncertain Reporters before them which are to be believed indeed as probable but no more There being as great a number of Papist Writers I think about 60 that tell us there was a Pope Joane and yet it is uncertain if not least probable But if he was at Rome Apostles were no where proper Bishops Bishops were the fixed Elders or Pastors of particular Churches Apostles were moveable and Itinerant having an Indefinite Commission to go preach the Gospel to all the world as far as they were able Though the ancient Fathers used to call them Bishops because pro tempore they Ruled perswasively where they came Though indeed their work was to settle Churches and Bishops and not to be settled Bishops themselves 3. Paul was certainly and long at Rome and liker to be as a Bishop there of the two If Paul was not one Peter was not for there is no more but less proof of his Government there If Paul was one then one City had two contrary to the old Canons 4. There is no proof that Peter's being last at Rome gave his Power to all or any following Bishops of Rome any more than to the Bishops of Antioch who are said to succeed him in his first Bishoprick or any more than Christs dying at Jerusalem the Mother Church did fix the Supremacie there or any more than the other eleven Apostles did leave their power which they had above all ordinary Bishops to the places where they abode either last or first If Peter's dying Bishop at Rome prove such a succession of Universal Monarchy the aforesaid Successions will be proved by the same Reason which yet none affirm Even Alexandria claimed but from St. Mark who was less than thirteen Apostles But no Testament of Peter declaring any conveyance of such a Monarchy is pretended by the Popes which is a wonder Nor any word that ever he used of such importance 5. I have shewed that General Councils Calced and Constant have declared that Romes primacy had a later humane rise Yet would they have exercised no other Government than St. Peter did the world would not have been troubled by them as they have been VI. The Papists seem not resolved themselves whether the Pope have an Universal Apostleship or Teaching office as well as the Universal Monarchy or Government Though Bellarmine say that he succeedeth not Peter as an Apostle but as a Pastor yet most others that I have seen medling with it say otherwise If he succeed not in the Apostleship he is no true Successour of St. Peter at all in any superemience of Power For what he had was as an Apostle If he do then he is bound to go preach himself to the Nations of the world as Peter was To send others to preach and not do it himself was no Apostleship They were sent themselves David and Solomon set up Priests and yet were themselves no Priests Hezekiah and Josiah sent and set up Preachers and yet undertook not that office themselves VII This Pope claimeth the sole Power of calling General Councils of all the Christian world yet never did it And consequently of being the Judge when any shall be called and so whether ever there shall be any or not And though former General Councils voted that they should be every ten years yet he prevaileth to the contrary VIII Also he claimeth the sole power of presiding in such Councils and also of making their Decrees either valid by his approbation or null or invalid by his Reprobation as he please so that nothing that they Decree is of force but as it pleaseth him whence we have distinct Catalogues of Approved and Reprobate Councils Yet no mortal man knoweth oftentimes how much of a Councils Acts and Decrees the Pope approveth When Martin the fifth had consented to all done by the Council of Constance the word Conciliariter acta seemed to the Council to mean all that they did de facto as a Council But the Popes ever since yet reject that Council on pretense that by conciliariter was meant all that de jure as a Council they might do Gregory the first approved of the four first General Councils receiving them as the four Gospels and if his Predecessors did not it was because their consent was not taken to be necessary nor much sought And yet now Bellarmine raileth at the Council of Calcedon and they tell us how much of it they receive and how much not And so of many others And nothing is more evident in such History than that the Emperors and not the Pope were they that called divers of the first Councils IX The Pope accordingly claimeth a supremacy above General Councils that he may dissolve them but they cannot question or depose him though General Councils have decreed the contrary I recited Binnius words before Vol. 2. p. 515. Pighius Gretser's Bellarmine's and multitudes more might soon be produced to the same sense The eighth General Council at Constantinople saith Can. 21. that None must compose any Accusations against the Pope Vid. Bellarm. de concil li. 2. c. 11. Saith Pighius Hier. Eccl. li. 6. The Councils of Constance and Basil went about by a new trick and pernicious example to destroy the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy and instead of it to bring in the domination of