Divine power should be of the nature of Substance but such confusion and havock in nature to bring in an unnatural Dogm is no ways to be admitted not out of any defect in the Divine Power but an incapacity of the Creature to be so order'd against its nature And as this Condition of Species subsisting or existing separately of themselves is contrary to their nature So the significativeness of these Species is contrary to Christs Intention and Institution which were to make a representation of his death and passion by Bread and Wine and not by the Similitudes of Bread and Wine And this is to be noted That when the Ancient Fathers both Greek and Latin do affirm that Christs Body or Blood are present under the Species and Forms of Bread and Wine they do not mean such Species as the Schools of Aristotle have introduced for I find not that they took any notice of them distinct from the subject to which they relate but they took them in a more plain sense for the thing it self so affected and formed and Under the Species signified with them as much as Under the Kinds of Bread and Wine Christs Body was present And they never destroyed the Sacrament it self to give an extraordinary Being to the Body of Christ therein CHAP. XLIII The principal Reasons for Transubstantiation answered AND If this be once made good That there is a Proper Sacrament remaining after Consecration it will be much less difficulty to agree upon the manner of Christs presence in the Sacrament For the doubt will not be so much about the Concomitance and co-existence of it with the Sacramental Signs as Whether that which we See with our eys and touch and taste be properly and not denominatively and Figuratively only the Body of Christ And in effect Whether it be the very Sacrament it self or whether only in the Sacrament The Doctrine of the Church of Rome determines not only that There it is but directly and expresly This it is and this we deny as that which indeed must include such a Transubstantiation as is by them affirmed and the chiefest grounds whereof we are now to examine And First from Scripture they are wont to argue and that from the Old Bellarm Lib. 1. Cap. 3. De Sacram. Eucharist Testament where are recorded many Types and Figures of Christ and particularly his Passion which were no less if not much more clear than the representations in the Eucharist if Christ himself be not there otherwise than Figuratively For the Paschal Lamb slain seems to represent Christs Passion more Lively and expresly than the Sacramental Elements Therefore if that the Sacraments of the Gospel might exceed them of the Law it is necessary that what was done there Figuratively only should be properly and really performed in our Sacraments Answ But first supposing Transubstantiation is Christ more clearly in the Sacrament than if there were no such thing Or can the Sacrament of the Gospel be said to be more clear for this when in truth it is more Mystical and abstrufe But though it be not more clear to the sense or Reason yet it is in it self more really present For otherwise the Legal Sacrament must have been only a Figure of this Figure of Christs Body and not of the Bertramus Body it self But the answer of Bertram to this about eight hundred years ago is sufficient to this purpose that both the Paschal Lamb and the Sacramental Elements both Figured and represented Christs body The former Christs Body future and its Passion and the other Instant as at the Institution or Part and compleated So that in truth a great preheminence there is in the Sacraments of the New Testament above them of the Old which is the thing contended for But Christ was really received in both The next Argument taken from Christs words in the sixth of John where he saith amongst many other things I am the Bread of Life And again Verily Joh. 6. 48. 53. 54. Verily Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood ye have no life in you For my Flesh is meat indeed and my Blood is drink indeed Is answer'd two ways First from a consent on both sides by some of the Learnedest That Christ spake not of a Sacramental Eating and Drinking of him but Ordinary in receiving him by Faith preached But because as many on both sides affirm that he pointed at the Eucharist in these words therefore I think it most reasonable and equal to take in both senses and that Christ intended the receiving of him by Faith in the word preached and in the Eucharist too And though Christs Flesh be meat indeed and his Blood drink indeed it doth not follow at all that it is properly so For things Metaphorically such are really though not Properly And Christ doth not say Caro mea est verus cibus or Sanguis meus verus est potus i. e. My Flesh is true meat or Proper My Blood is true Drink but My Flesh is Meat indeed and my Blood is drink indeed that is verily and really And besides the difference before intimated between these expressions and that at the Celebration of the Eucharist when he calls the Bread his Body is very great especially with the precise stickers to the Letter For according to these Christ Transubstantiated Bread into his Body but here according to the same Rule of interpretation he should convert his Body into Bread the words being alike operative But if Christ did at no time make a Transubstantiation of his Flesh or body into bread though he affirmed his Body to be bread What reason is there we should believe upon no better grounds than he affirming bread to be his Body should thereby change it into his proper Body A Third principal Argument is taken from the words of Christ at the Celebration viz This is my Body and This is my Blood And upon the proper acceptation of these words they make no doubt to put to silence all seeming oppositions and contradictions and impossibilities in nature For be it say they how it will Christ saying it who is truth it self no doubt is to be made of it For as they teach the vulgar to speak If Christ should say that this stone were his Body we ought to believe it All which is granted But we must distinguish as all sober men do between Loquela and Sermo He that rehearses a certain number of Articulate words doth Loqui or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but he only who doth deliver the word conceived in his mind which is his meaning at his mouth doth Sermocinari or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Now if it can be proved by any certain Circumstance that Christ meant these words in a proper sense and not improper in which he delivered no small part of his doctrine in the Gospel we have done the Controversy is at an end we are to lay our hands on our mouths and
not say to extenuate I know not what unkindness or perhaps incivility we were driven out from such communion and went not out of our selves but may declare Franckly We voluntarily chose to relinquish such communion so condition'd Now such errours we may well charge the Church of Rome with even while we hold it to be a true Church in the sense above expressed viz. Essentially true but not Integrally For so a Monstrous man may beget a truly natural son and out of the Loyns of the Corrupt Church of Rome may proceed a Perfect Church And he that holds that a man may even now when it is much more definitive and express in its errours then itwas about sevenscore years ago when it met first with that Opposition which it could never master as yet be saved in the Church of Rome may hold there are many damnable errours in it which in their nature do damn yet do not alwayes actually damn as is said And this doth altogether vindicate such Churches as directly leave them provided they leave such their errours only and not extravagantly hurry themselves into contrary errours out of detestation to theirs And this doth lay a necessity upon such as communicate with them to desert them and a much greater upon such as are at present alienated from them to preserve themselves from such imminent dangers though not infallibly destroying the soul Now if it be here demanded as I know necessarily it must and will be that to make this high charge probable we give some instances of such their errours and Schismaticalness though I might well decline that so great and Schismaticalness though I might well decline that so great and copious a subject in this transient and compendious discourse referring them to what hath been sufficiently written though some have I confess Est sâ—lus in Orle 〈◊〉 Chaâ—actâ—â—â—s Episcâ—â—us suique â—â—dimis pâ—incipium â—â—nis Anasiatius Germonius D Indultis Apesiolicis Praefat. §. Episeopus Vide etiam â—etrum Gregorium Syntagm L. 15. C. 3. quid tribuitur Popâ— supra Conciliis â—rincipilus weakely and inconsiderately over-acted to this purpose yet I shall not absolutely without this general touch leave the matter so reducing their Errours to these two Heads Schismatical Doctrines and Heretical And this alone I look on as a most Schismatical dogm next to heresie and which alone suffices to justifie the separation of all other Churches from that of Rome viz. That they maintain if not in express termes which somedo who perhaps will not be acknowledged when they are pinched hard to speak the sense of the Church in reallity That the Pope or See of Rome hath arbitrary power of himself to Judge and Censure all Churches and to institute or Cassate Lawes for the universal Church and that he cannot be a Schismatick There is nothing more fundamental in the Lawes and Traditions of the Catholick Church than that no one of the Patriarchs should presume to form or oblige the Catholick Church by their single and private Canons and Decrees without the consent and concurrence of his Brethren neither can any meeting deserve the name of a General Council wherein their sentence is not heard or received But there is nothing more notorious than the Bishop of Rome's invasion of a sole Right to Govern the whole Church of which he hath been often soundly charged by the eminentest of the Later of the Greek Bishops Nilus Thessalo nicensis though their complaint hath generally been received no otherwise than with a deafear or an insolent stomach and contempt of the Sacred Canons of the Church as might be made appear by several instances were this a proper opportunity so to do Neither do I know how they of Rome can exempt themselves from apparent Schisme upon the account which Balsome urgeth against them viz. That the Popes have separated and are divided Balsam Resp 1. Jurts Graeco Rom. L. 6. pag. 370. from the Four other Patriarchs Will they say they are Schismaticks and Hereticks It is no more then they will pay them with again And 't is no harder matter to prove one than the other But if Four of the Patriarchs of the Church may be Hereticks and Schismaticks and so continue for many hundered years together What becomes of that argument for the true Church taken from the Universality of its Profession For putting the Case that those of the Roman Communion were equal yea Superior in extent of Ground and number of professers which is hardly to be granted yet being apparently inferiour in the number of Patriarchs they cannot pretend universality unless they beg the question as too often and importunately they do that the Roman See is the only Standard to weigh and Conclude all Ecclesiastical controversies and quarrels This is as we said such a fundamental Errour in the outward Politie and Discipline of the Church that it alone might justifie a Separation from such a Monster I shall give but one instance and that of one Man expressing the sense of Vid. Aus Barbossam de Officio Potestate Episc Par. 3. Allegat 57. num 3 4 5 6 7. the Church of Rome though some will have it called The Court of Rome only concerning the Popes Power He the Pope is the Universal Bishop of the Church He hath the whole World for his Diocess He is the Bishop of Bishops The Ordinarie of Ordinaries In things concerning Benesices he hath free and absolute power All Benesices in respect of this Holy Prelate are manual and he may use absolute power in them But to this adding such to us manifest errours and corruptions in Faith and practise as have been introduced into that Church there can be no just Scruple made of Separating and to profess so much without mincing the matter by certain fine evasions which strictly enquired into will no more satisfie than down-right dealing which chargeth them with such heretical-Dogmes which contrary to Charity as well as Verity require Separation Of the many of which that of Transubstantiation may claim the first place together with its long Train of Gross abuses and Errours following upon and flowing from it For though I know diverse Learned men of our Church do look upon it as a very absurd falsity in matter of Fact rather then of Faith yet if it be considered as reduced to Propositions invented and strenuously asserted to maintain that Errour in fact it putteth on the nature of Heresie too To say that Christ had but one hand is not an Heresie of it self but a notorious non-truth in matter of Fact But so to defend this opinion as thereby to deny Christ to have been of the same nature with us amounts to Heresie Granting likewise that not only Christs Natural Body is in that Sacrament but it is that very thing which after Consecration appeares though not as it appears to our senses is but a fowl absurdity and errour in point of Fact Yet when it
Negatively not to believe them and Privatively or contrarily to believe The state of Nature and of the Jews might be such before Christ as not to have the true and clear notion of Christ as the Son of God and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Chrysost ad Judaizantes Serm. 27. Tom. 6. pag. 369. of the Trinity and yet not to oppose or directly deny it as Jews and Turks at this day For they have now a contrary Faith unto these and therefore how they can be excused from Idolatry according to the favorablest staters of Idolaters here now mentioned I cannot see For they who worship God as he is not but as he is framed by such mens wits are a kind of Idolaters But Christian Faith teaches us that to God it is essential to be Three in One and One in Three which is by all but Christians I mean Turks and Jews absolutely denyed And therefore Chrysostom denyes the Jews worship God This likewise prosecuted gives us no small help towards the resolution of that doubt and reconciling of that contrariety which seemeth to have been the main motive to the entertaining a new notion of Idolatry and clearing thereby the Church of Rome from that foul and mortal Imputation For it being generally granted that the Church of Rome is a true Church it must of force be denied that it is Idolatrous because Idolatry is inconsistent with the Nature of a true Church and destroyeth the Faith in the very foundation To which argument very pressing I confess I offer this Reply First calling to mind the distinction heretofore laid down of a true Church either in the Integral Parts of Christian Doctrine or Essential We deny the Romane Church to hold all the Integral Parts of the body of Faith and so not a true Church We hold also that it retaineth the Essentials and so may be termed a true Church Again of Essential or Fundamental points of Faith we distinguish the Abstract sense and the Concrete sense And affirm that although in the Abstract sense or Proposition the Church of Rome is in many points free from Idolatry yet taking their doctrines concretely with their practise interpreting them they are certainly Idolatrous But a Church is chiefly to be judged by the article in iâ— self and not in the unnatural sense appearing in particular practises The Church of Rome holds That the true God alone is to be worshipped But if the Sons of that Church notwithstanding worship somewhat besides God this is a corruption in Fact and not in Faith And perhaps the Church being an Abstract Body from single Persons and the Faith from single Practise the particular errors which are committed there not flowing necessarily from that general Principle may not be charged but in a vulgar sense upon the Church But yet be it so that the Churches determinations should not oblige men necessarily to Idolatry the Idolatrous Practises of so many in the worshiping of the Host Agnus Dei Images and Saints and Angels permitted and countenanced in that Church were sufficient ground of separation from that Church without Schismaticalness But secondly we are bound here to distinguish of Idolatry which as may appear by what is said admitteth of diverse senses and acceptations and degrees For there is an Idolatry which hath quite another object both real and formal from the true divine object of worship and that cannot stand with Christianity And there may be an Idolatry which errs only in the real Object but retaineth the Formal Object of Worship The real Object is the thing Qui ad Idol latriam develvitm non plené nec integâ—è prophams officitur misi negaverit Chrisâ—um Ruffin Invectivá 2. in Hieron Christians in their Apostafie neither did nor were to make an absolute Apostasie from God the Father and Christ but in outward profession still to acknowledg them and to be called Christians c. Med Apost p. 66 67. Gen. 20. 1 Tim. 1. 13. it self to which an Act is directed The Formal Object is the thing under such a Form or Consideration Now though the romanists do err as certainly they do in the real Object of worship they profess they own and retain the true formal reason of Worship in that they designall to the honor of the true God and Christ and lay that down as a Reason of their worshiping that Object For if that be true which Ruffinus and Mr. Mede affirm as I conceive it is That those Christians who in Persecution fell away to Gentile Idolatry became not thereby wholly prophane unless at the same time they denyed Christ much more is it true that they who profess and intend as they say ultimately the honor of Christ in their outward Idolatry are to be looked upon as belonging Radically to Christs Church The sum therefore of our opinion is this That we really believe the Romane Church to be Idolatrous but not to cease thereby to be Christian unless it declared against Christ And we believe that more refined sense of Idolatry to be damnable in it self but whether by general deprecation of all Sins known and unknown as also that they as they profess do it with Abimelech in the integrity of their heart and with St. Paul fighting against Christ Ignorantly they may not find mercy is hard to determine but t is easie to determine them to be in the way of damnation who shall fall wilfully after better education and information into those heinous practises But if they should urge this argument so strongly to me that I must be forced to that which as yet I am not sensible or viz. either to deny the Romane Church to be a true Church or to deny it to be guilty of Idolatry I should soon choose to deny the Church of Rome to be a true Church of Christ especially since the late corrupt decisions of what was ambiguous before and capable of a fair interpretation for the worst than Ego hoc arbitror quòd non pallut nomen Domini nist ille qui visus est homini ejus credere quomedo tollit membra Christi facit membra meretricis qui prius Christo credit sie ille poliuit nomen Domini qui prius nominis ejus fidem susceperit Hieron in c. 43. Ezech. deny that to be Idolatry which the principal of their Doctors have taught and the generality of the People do constantly practise For what doth it avail them to confront those foul and notorious dogmes alledged cut of their prime Writers making for plain Idolatry or the instances of gross practises with showing some tolerable sense quite antiquated which such Facts may be done in Whenas first they can give not so much reason why the moderate and favourable construction made should be the sense of their Church as may be given why it is Secondly if it were not so that some remained in that Church to buoy up in some manner the sinking Faith and stand up for the
A Course of Divinity OR AN INTRODUCTION To the Knowledge of the True Catholick Religion Especially as Professed by the CHURCH OF ENGLAND In two Parts The one containing The Doctrine of Faith The other The Form of Worship By MATTHEW SCRIVENER LONDON Printed by Tho. Roycroft for Robert Clavil in Little Brittain MDCLXXIV THE ENTRANCE FOR the better conceiving and judging of this ensuing Treatise I have held it necessary Christian Reader to premise and propound to thy consideration these two things principally viz. The Occasions me thereunto moving and the manner of proceeding in it One Occasion given me was the multitude and variety of the like Books set forth by other Churches whereby not only the persons under them were trained up in the Knowledge and Faith professed there but the minds of many of our Church were prepossessed and their manners swayed by such Doctrines which seemed to me as forreign in nature as place to those of our Church and the Ancient I could have here given the Reader the names of above fourty Tractates of this nature many of which have been translated into the English Tongue to the corrupting of weaker judgments And not so much as the Christians of New-England have been wanting to the Interest of their Religion so far as to â—mit so advantagious a Work but by John Norton Teacher as he calls himself of the Church at Ipswich in New-England have collected certain Principal Heads of Divinity into a Body called The Orthodox Evangelist And as the great number of forreign Books have incited me so the Paucity of the like in and from our Church hath no less emboldened me to undertake this I am prevented by Industrious Mr. Baxter in giving any account of such who have made attempts this way and what hath been done by them without bringing their design to desired issue Only that excellently Learned Person Mr. Thorndyck passed over by him in his declining years hath given greater demonstrations of his zeal and learning in behalf of the English Church than any extant before him in one continued Body purposing a Review in the Latin Tongue wherein he intended to have more clearly expressed his meaning in some things of which it might be said as of St. Pauls writings they were hard to be understood and he himself saw to be wrested to evil ends and senses but his declining body and years would not suffer him to accomplish so good a Work What Mr. Baxer himself hath performed in his late large Volume I shall not give my censure but how well he is qualified for such a Work I may presume to give the Reader in the words of Esâ— Baxterus câ—â—is desiinatis sententiâ—s minimè omnium hominun addictus ut qui non plus faveat Presbyteriants quam Independentibus nec est infensus Hierarchicis sed medius dubiusque partibus nisi in causa Dei sanctitatis vitae Ludovicus Molinaeus Patroni p. 12. a great admirer of him Baxter saith he is of all men least addicted to any resolute opinions being one that favoureth not more the Presbyterians than the Independents neither is he sharp against the Episcopal Party but between them and doubtful what side to take except in the cause of God and holiness of Life The greatest part of which Character is but too true being as much with me as if he had said He were of no Religion at all For however Beza and Cartwrights opinions of a certain and definite Discipline Essentially requisite to a Church as a Church is to Christian Religion be by Puritans laid aside for the present and like embers buried up in the Ash-heap till they shall rise again next day and kindle a new fire and now nothing but Get Christ Purity of Ordinances is notorious amongst them to the Vulgar yet when people are deceived by that they call Pure and Powerful Preaching of Christ into new Societies of their own Manufacture then presently doth most apparent Reason and inevitable Necessity constrain them to invent and impose new Covenants and Bonds to conserve them in their new Fraternities contrary altogether to that General Liberty before propounded and promised them No more than doth the charm of Christian Liberty sound in their ears No more of the free use of Indifferent things so contrary to the Decrees and Practise of a Church but then come into credit again such sayings as these There must be Order There must be Government There must be unity in the Church dealing herein with poor simple Christians as men do with their horse they would take up carrying in one hand provender which they show him and make a great noise with and behind them in the other hand a bridle to hold him fast to them and ride him as they please And if Mr. Baxter be of no regulated determinate Society or Church adheres to no particular Communion submits to no Government nor Governours in special but to all or any as it should seem be must bear it as well as he can when he bears himself not out of passion or envie at his new and singular device of going to heaven but justice and reason censur'd for a man of no Religion at all or if any of his own making which teaches him to persevere in that fond and haughty design he once had when he took upon him to top his Brethren of the Ministery in the Western Parts and to frame Grounds and Aphorisms for both Civil and Ecclesiastical Politie of his own with as little judgment and humility as safety to the Church and State as if he had aim'd at nothing so much as to be according to forreign Phrase and Presidents an Extraordinary Pastor without any Original or Rule but from himself but failing of this he now thinks it best to become an Extraordinary Sheep of all and no fold writing Books as uncertain and contrary as himself on all sides and for all Palates as if he had found out the Universal Character for Religions like to that of Languages in which all men doing as he wou'd have them shou'd agree in going to Heaven And now all that lately and most officious and serviceable method of mounting our selves and crushing and trampling on the necks of others and them our Governours by most unjust and cruel acts most false and bitter language must be laid aside and thrown overboard as the Turks did their Cemiters when they lost the day at the battle of Lepanto not because they liked them not but because they could do them no more service and least they should come into the Christians hands and be used against them So indeed Sectaries now-a-dayes call for modesty and moderation on all hands casting away that unchristian language which stood them in so much stead against them they resolved to destroy not without horrible Success And yet we see while they call so charitably for moderation and would have no revilings of them that differ in opinions only their churlish nature and
to P. 14â— which they have no just title themselves being out of Christ This is gross enough and dangerous 19. In the Article of our Creed Sitting at the right hand P. 174. of God signifieth the inferiority of the Mediator in respect of the Father This wants a lusty grain of Salt 20. The vow of single Life is a snare or as the noose in the On Gal. 1. v. 7. haltar to strangle the Soul 21. The third Succession is of Doctrine alone and thus our Ministers succeed the Apostles and this is sufficient It is sufficient for the Peoples not Gods Ministers 22. If in Turkie or America or elsewhere the Gospel should be Id Gal p. 196 197. received by the counsel and perswasion of private persons they shall not need to send into Europe for Consecrated Ministers but they have power to choose their own Ministers from within themselves Because where God giveth the word he giveth the power also 23. The Child of God falling into persecution and denying Id. Gal. 1. v. 22. Christ is not guilty to condemnation because c. 24. If as Eusebius saith in his Chronicle Peter sate Bishop of Rome twenty five years then Peter lived in breach of the express commandment of God for so long time because the Jews were his special charge Absurd and untrue 25. We are born Christians if our Parents believe and not P. 235. made so in Baptism 26. The Sacraments are said to apply Christ in that P. 242. they serve to confirm Faith whose office it is to apply c. 27. All the works of Regenerate men are sinful and in the P. 381. rigor of justice deserve damnation Well therefore may he say this of unregenerate men but neither is it true so far of one or other but the not doing of such good works is much more damnable It is true properly that they do not of themselves save but not so that they damn 28. There be three parts of Penance Contrition of heart Id. Papist cannot go beyond a reprobate p. 396. Confession of the mouth Satisfaction in the deed All these three Judas performed 29. As long as a man hath his Conscience to accuse him of Ibid. sin before God he is in a state of Damnation as St. John saith 1 Ep. 2. 10. St. John saith not so 30. The Church of Rome teacheth that Original Sin is done Ib. p. 397. Advertisement to the Roman Church p. 622. Vol. 1. away in Baptism This is called a damnable Error as if only the Ch. of Rome held so and it were not unanimously held by the Fathers 31. That we believe the Catholick Church it follows that the Catholick Church is invisible 32. We esteem of Repentance only as a fruit of Faith and Reform Catholick p. 615. the effect or efficacy of it is to testifie the Remission of our sins and our reconciliation before God 33. There is a twofold conversion Passive and Active Ib. p. 613. 614. Passive is an Action of God whereby he converteth man being yet unconverted These are the Heterodox Dogmes which Mr. Perkins suckt in from Calvins Divinity upon whose sleeve he seem'd to have pin'd his faith notwithstanding Scripture is so vehemently pretended which will warrant none of them And by these credulously assented to and preached contrary to the mind of our Church by vulgar and lazie Divines who would take no care or pains to look into the Scriptures or the Doctrine of the Ancient Church but through such mens Spectacles have diversity of opinions been bred in the common peoples mind to their dislike of their Governours and at last such a rupture as hath wasted and almost consumed us But here I am to give the curious Reader notice least I may seem to mis-report any thing quoted out of Mr. Perkins according to the pages that upon examining them and comparing them on this occasion I find what I took no notice of at first reading of his Works that I followed two several Editions of his Works in Folio the one of the year 1626 and the other of the year 1631 which not having by me I could not rectifie but doubt not but they are to be found in one of them And now because I perceive the Papists triumph when they can find such blemishes in our Church and charge it with all these and such like which they may find among dissenters I shall set down likewise their principal accusations as I find them collected and summ'd up by Fitz-Simons Henricus Fitzsimon Brittannomachia minist l. 2 c. 3. and the rather because he professes to have taken them out of a much more wise and learned Adversary to us then himself Alanus Copus otherwise called Nicolas Harpsfield and they are these following 1. The first Error he layes to our charge is that we hold There are only two Sacraments This we stand to as commonly explained by our Church 2. Infants belong to the people of God before they are Baptized This indeed is the opinion of Sectaries which Perkins before cited might have led them into but not of our Church nor the Ancient Church as may appear most evidently from the testimony of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theod. Haerer Fab. l. 5. c. 28. Theodoret who in the behalf of the Catholick Church absolutely disowns unbaptized persons as Sons of God though they believed and embraced the Catholick Doctrine telling us that the Church would by no means suffer such to say the Lords Prayer accounting it an horrible thing for any to call God Father before he was baptized speaking thus This Prayer we teach not such who are not initiated but such as are partakers of that Mystery For none that are not initiated into that Mystery dares say Our Father which art in Heaven c. not having received that Grace of Adoption 3. The true Body of Christ is not in the Eucharist nor any thing but the substance of Bread Sure this fierce Accuser forgets himself Do we not also hold the substance of Wine remains in the Eucharist as well as that of bread Nay do we not profess * Christs Church Câ—techism Body and Bloud are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lords Supper And can they there be received unless they be there but the art of such rampant ignorant and malicious Factors for the Roman Church ever consisted principally in wilful bungling and by false stating of the differences between us and them to beguile the weak and unwary 4. That the Communion under both kinds is necessary It is as necessary under both as under one The contrary is the Sacrilegious Error of the Romanists 5. A Priest may not communicate alone Another grievous Error that we cannot indure Non-sense nor to see Christs institution bafled by such a ridiculous Communion unknown to Antiquity 6. It is unlawful to reserve or elevate the Eucharist Not simply as the Ancient Church did
Church hath not denyed that Liberty and where they have made no Vow to the contrary bereaving themselves of that Liberty 33. There is no Purgatory 'T is little less then Heretical to Artic. Chur Eng. 22. affirm there is in the Roman sense 34. There is no external Sacrifice Most true in a strict proper sense 35. Devils cannot be driven away by Holy Water and the Sign of the Cross By these alone we have few or none Instances in the Ancient Church that Devils were cast out of the Possessed But many we find and those most authentique and undeniable whereby it appears that the ancient Christians even to St. Chrysostoms dayes did exorcise or cast out Devils by Prayers and Humiliation with which were used the sign of the Cross but not so ancient was Holy Water to that purpose And though we look on this as the Gift of Miracles formerly more general and effectual then now-a-days it is any where honestly to be found yet neither do we deny such power absolutely nor hold such unnecessary Rites utterly unlawful to be used 36. It is unlawful and an horrible wickedness for a man to erect the Image of Christ in Christian Temples No such matter The wickedness consists in giving it the accustomed Worship in the Church of Rome And thus have I given certain Instances of the injurious dealings of both extreams against us as by themselves stated it being my design in the ensuing Treatise to state rather then largely dispute matters more equally and thereby to discover the frauds and falsities current against us I shall now requite their pains in collecting falsly and fraudulently the opinions of our Church by a sincere and faithful proposing of the Heretical and pestilent Dogmes of the Roman Church as I find them laid down and maintain'd by Bellarmine that so even common reason if not sense of indifferent Christians may judge which Church holds most contrary Doctrines to Gods and Mans Laws 1. The Books by us called Apocryphal and so proved by Bellarm. De Verho Dei l. 1. c. 7. the general Consent of the Church in all Ages are Canonical and properly Divine 2. It is neither convenient nor profitable that the Scriptures L. 2. c. 15. 16. or Prayers of the Church should be in the Vulgar Tongue 3. All things necessary to Faith and Holy Life are not contain'd L. 4. c. 3. in the Scriptures but Traditions also 4. Scriptures without Tradition are not simply necessary C. 4. nor sufficient 5. The Apostles applyed not their minds to write by God's C. 4. command but as they were constrained by a certain necessity 6. Scriptures are not Rules of Faith but as a certain C. 12. Monitorie to conserve and nourish the Doctrine received 7. Hereticks deny but Catholicks affirm Peter to be the De Rom. Pontif. l. 1. c. 2. Head of the Universal Church and made a Prince in Christs stead 8. When Christ said Simon son of John so the Vulgar L. 4. c. 1. Translation in Bellarmine corruptly for Jonas Feed my Sheep he spake only to Peter and gave him his Sheep to feed not exempting the Apostles 9. Whether the Pope may be an Heretick or not it is to be L. 4. c. 2. believed of the whole Church that he can no ways determine that which is Heretical 10. Neither the Pope nor the particular Roman Church C. 4. can erre in Faith 11. The Pope cannot only not erre in Faith but neither C. 5. in Precepts of Manners which are prescribed the whole Church and which are concerning things necessary to Salvation or things in themselves good or evil 12. The Pope alone hath his Jurisdiction immediately from C. 24. Christ but all other Bishops their ordinary Jurisdiction immediately from the Pope 13. The Pope hath Supream power indirectly in all Temporal L. 5. c. 1. 6. matters by reason of his Spiritual power This is the opinion of all Catholick Divines 14. The Pope as Pope may not ordinarily depose Temporal Ibid c. 6. Princes though there be just cause as he may Bishops yet he may change Kingdoms and take them away and give them to another as the highest Spiritual Prince if it be needful to the Salvation of Souls 15. As to Lawes the Pope as Pope cannot ordinarily make a Ibid. Civil Law or establish or make void Lawes of Princes because he is not the Political Prince of the Church yet he may do all these if any Civil Law be necessary to the Salvation of Souls and Kings will not make them and so if Laws be pernicious to Souls and Kings will not abolish them 16. Though the Pope translated the Empire and gave a De Translat Imp. l. 3 c 4. Right to choose a Prince yet he transferred not nor gave that power Supream and most ample which himself had of Christ over all the Church And therefore as when the Cause of the Church required he could translate the Empire from the Greeks to the Germans in like manner might he translate it from the Germans to another Nation upon the like reason c. 17. No obedience is due to a Prince from the Church Câ—â— Berâ—â—â— c. 31. Tom. 7. when he is excommunicated by publick Authority The Pope and his Predecessors never forbad Subjects to obey their Princes for being once deposed by them they were no longer lawful Princes This is it we teach 18. To call General Councils belongs properly to the Tom. 2. de Concil l. 1. c. 12. Pope yet so that the Emperor may do it with his consent 19. Particular Councils confirmed by the Pope cannot erre L. 2. c 5. in Faith and Manners 20. The Pope is simply and absolutely above the whole C. 17. Church and above a General Council so that he may not acknowledge any Judicature on earth above him 21. The Church is a Company of men professing the L. 3. c. 2. same Christian Faith joyned together in the Communion of the same Sacraments under the Government of lawful Pastors and especially One Vicar of Christ on earth the Bishop of Rome 22. Purgatory may be proved out of the Old and New De Purgaâ— 1. c. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. Testament 23. Purgatory is a Doctrine of Faith so that he who believeth Cap. 15. not Purgatory shall never come there but shall be tormented in Hell in everlasting burning 24. Invocation of Saints may be proved from Scripture De Sanct. Beaâ—â—â—d l. 1. c. 19. 25. It 's lawful to make the Image of God the Father in De Reliq c. 8. the form of an Old Man and of the Holy Spirit in the form of a Dove 26. The Images of Christ and of Saints are to be worshipped L. 2. c. 21. De Imag. not only by accident and improperly but also by themselves properly so that they may terminate Worship as considered in themselves and not only as they
bear the place of the Example 27. It may be granted that Images may be worshipped C. 23. improperly and by accident with the same kind of worship C. 24. with which the Exemplar but not for their own sakes and properly and therefore Latria is not properly and for themselves to be given for them 28. A Vow is an Act of Religion due to God only like L. 3. c. 9. De cultu sanctor as an Oath and Sacrifice as appears from the Scriptures whose Vowes are constantly said to be made to God Yet it is most certain that in some manner Vowes may be made to Saints 29. It is not probable that Christ in these words this is De Eucharist l. 1. c. 9. my Body would speak figuratively 30. One Body may be in divers places at once L. 3. c. 3. 31. That the Elements in the Eucharist are turned into L. 3. per. tot Christs Body 32. It is a truth necessary to be believed that whole L. 4. c. 21. 22. Christ is in the kind of Bread and whole Christ is in the kind of Wine 33. No more Grace is contain'd in one kind then in C. 23. both 34. Worshipping the Host excuses from Idolatry because C. 29. they believe there is no Bread remaining and no Catholick holds that Divine Worship is to be given to Bread 35. Our Sacrifice is truly and properly called a Sacrifice L. 2. de missa c. 2. no less than the ancient Sacrifices as is shown in the former Book 36. The Rite of Reconciling Sinners after Baptism which De Paenit lib. consists of Repentance discovered by external signs and the word of Absolution Catholicks affirm to be a true and proper Sacrament 37. There is a treasure of superfluous Merits in the Church De Indulg l. c. 2 3 11. which may by the Pope be applyed to the benefit of other persons by Indulgences 38. The Catholick Church doth openly affirm Extream Unction De Extrem Unct. c. 1. to be truly and properly a Sacrament 39. Orders are a Sacrament truly and properly so called De Ord. c. 1. 40. Matrimony of Believers is a proper Sacrament De Matrim c. 1. To these innumerable other might be added of strange nature to the Word of God and belief and practise of the ancient Church but these are more then sufficient to confront those vainly objected to us by them whereof some are most false others most true others false or true as they may be taken And now the manner of proceeding in this Discourse being propounded to be touched in the second place here must not be forgotten In which I confess I have not a little varied from my first intention and resolution which were in a plain compendious way to set down the Principal Doctrine of Faith and Worship agreeable to God's Holy Word and to the mind of the best Ancient Churches as well as our Own and that without Passion or particular Reflexions on any Party or Person by name knowing that of Synesius to be most true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Synes Ep 57. That Soul which would be a Vessel to receive God must be void of all Passions But finding some things both approved and disproved by me would scarce be credited without such instances I held my self obliged to forsake that resolution in the process of my Discourse and a little in the beginning where I was forced by ill Paper and Ink to write somewhat over the second time to make it legible Otherwise I determined to avoid Names and Testimonies of Authors after the manner of them who before me have written Institutions and Sums of this nature Yet have I not taken upon me in an imperious way to multiply Canons and Axioms and impose them with expectation of greater faith in them then such men will allow to the Decrees of the Holy Councils so called And this with a perswasion I know not how or why wrought into credulous persons that now-a-dayes only Scripture is understood and they only speak Scripture but others humane Inventions Which most bold demand 't is a wonder how many prone naturally to superstitious novelties do without the least suspicion of vanity and falsity readily receive for a most certain and fundamental Truth but is indeed a fundamental Error and the root of all Heresie towards the Faith and of all Schism towards the Church I remember how some years since enquiring of one very near to me what Divinity his Tutor grounded him in he answered me Wollebius And farther inquiring what Wollebius said of a certain point he replyed as he there found it against which when I put in my exception he wondered at me and indeavored to silence me by telling me It was a Canon I have not here proceeded so Canonically as others nor yet so Polemically but considering according to St. Johns distinction that there are Children in Christ 1 John 2. 13. and Young men and Old men commonly call'd Incipientes Prosicientes and perfecti i. e. Beginners Proficients and Perfect men I have here pitched upon the mean sort of these to whom to direct my Labors knowing there were but too many Catechises amongst us for the former and too few Treatises or none for the second And that to write Polemically for the satisfaction of the third required another more proper language and a more Scholastical Person and much more large Volumes then this one though this Book hath increased under my hands well nigh thrice as much as I at first intended And in truth it is to be lamented and blushed at that none of the Learned men of our Church have yet appeared in so noble and necessary a Work as the fuller and more entire managing of the Elenctical part of Divinity to the preventing daily mischiefs arising from the necessity of repairing to our Enemies of both sides to perfect Theological Studies without the due ballance on our side to prevent prejudice I hope God will stir up the spirits of some to set their hands to and enable them to go through so good a Work Voetius of Utrecht than whom I think none of this Age hath Certum autorem ejus qui solidè compendiosè accommodatè ad nestra tempora hee â—gat hâ—ctenus non vidi expectandum est ergo c. Voetius Bibl. l. 2. c. 5. been acquainted with more modern Authors much complains for want of some compendious Body of Elenctical Divinitie which to that day he had not seen And therefore expected that long defired Piece of Famous Altingius should at length come forth which was only in the hands of his Scholars in writing Yet I find this Work of Henricus Altingius to have been published the same year with Voetius his Bibliotheca viz. Anno 1654. and called Theologia Elenctica Nova viz. New Elenctical Divinitie which in truth hath not its name New for nothing in that manner of handling Divinity as none before
of Christ and his Members The Church of Christ taken specially for the Elect who shall infallibly be saved never visible But taken for true Professours of the Faith must alwayes be visible though not conspicuous in comparison of other Religions or Heresies Chap. XXVIII Of the outward and visible Form of Christs Church Christ ordained One particularly What that was in the Apostles dayes and immediately after The vanity of such places of Scripture as are pretended against the Paternal Government of the Church Chap. XXIX Of the necessity of holding visible communion with Christs Church Knowledge of that visible Church necessary to that communion Of the Notes to discern the true Church how far necessary Of the nature or condition of such Notes in general Chap. XXX Of the Notes of the true Church in particular Of Antiquity Succession Unity Universality Sanctity How far they are Notes of the true Church Chap. XXXI Of the Power and Acts of the Church Where they are properly posited Of the fountain of the Power derived to the Church Neither Prince nor People Author of the Churches Power But Christ the true Head of the Church The manner how Christs Church was founded Four Conclusions upon the Premisses 1. That there was alwayes distinction of persons in the Church of Christ 2. The Church was alwayes administer'd principally by the Clergy 3. The Rites generally received in the Church necessary to the conferring Clerical power and office 4. All are Usurpers of Ecclesiastical power who have not thus received it In what sense Kings may be said to be Heads of the Church Chap. XXXII Of the exercise of political power of the Church in Excommunication The Grounds and Reasons of Excommunication More things than what is of Faith matter sufficient of Excommunication Two Objections answered Obedience due to commands not concerning Faith immediately Lay-men though Princes cannot Excommunicate Mr. Selden refuted Chap. XXXIII Of the second branch of Ecclesiastical Power which is Mystical or Sacramental Hence of the Nature of Sacraments in general Of the vertue of the Sacraments Of the sign and thing signified That they are alwayes necessarily distinct Intention how necessary to a Sacrament Sacraments effectual to Grace Chap. XXXIV Of the distinction of Sacraments into Legal and Evangelical Of the Covenants necessary to Sacraments The true difference between the Old and New Covenant The Agreement between Christ and Moses The Agreements and Differences between the Law and the Gospel Chap. XXXV Considerations on the Sacraments of the Law of Moses Of Circumcision Of the Reason Nature and Ends of it Of the Passover the Reason why it was instituted It s use Chap. XXXVI Of the Evangelical Sacraments Of the various application of the name Sacrament Two Sacraments univocally so called under the Gospel only The others equivocally Five conditions of a Sacrament Of the reputed Sacraments of Orders Matrimony and Extream Unction in particular Chap. XXXVII Of Confirmation What it is The Reasons of it The proper Minister of it Of Unction threefold in Confirmation Of Sacramental Repentance and Penance The effects thereof Chap. XXXVIII Of the proper Affections of Repentance Compunction Attrition and Contrition Attrition is an Evangelical Grace as well as Contrition Of Confession its Nature Grounds and Uses How it is abused The Reasons against it answered Chap. XXXIX Of Satisfaction an act of Repentance Several kinds of Satisfaction How Satisfaction upon Repentance agrees with Christs Satisfaction for us How Satisfaction of injuries necessary Against Indulgences and Purgatory Chap. XL. Of Baptism The Authour Form Matter and Manner of Administration of it The general necessity of it The efficacie in five things Of Rebaptization that it is a prophanation but no evacuation of the former Of the Character in Baptism Chap. XLI Of the second principal Sacrament of the Gospel the Eucharist Its names Its parts Internal and External It s Matter Eread and Wine and the necessity of them Of Leavened and Unleavened Bread Of breaking the Bread in the Sacrament Chap. XLII Of the things signified in the Sacrament of the Eucharist the Body and Bloud of Christ How they are present in the Eucharist How they are received by Communicants Sacramentally present a vain invention All Presence either Corporal or Spiritual Of the real Presence of the signs and things signified The real Presence of the signs necessarily infer the Presence of the Substance of Bread and Wine Signs and things signified alwayes distinct Chap. XLIII The principal Reasons for Transubstantiation answered Chap. XLIV Of the Sacrifice of the Altar What is a Sacrifice Conditions necessary to a Sacrament How and in what sense there is a Sacrifice in the Eucharist Chap. XLV Of the form of consecrating the Elements Wherein it consisteth Whether only Recitative or Supplicatory Chap. XLVI Of the participation of this Sacrament in both kinds The vanity of Papists allegations to the contrary No Sacramental receiving of Christ in one kind only How Antiquity is to be understood mentioning the receiving of one Element only The pretended inconveniences of partaking in both kinds insufficient Of adoration of the Eucharist Chap. XLVII The Conclusion of the Treatise of the subject of Christian Faith the Church by the treating of Schism contrary to the visible Church Departure from the Faith real Schism not formally as to the outward Form Of the state of Separation or Schism Of Separation of Persons Co-ordinate and Subordinate Of Formal and Virtual Schism All Heresie virtually Schism not formally Separation from an Heretical Society no Schism From Societies not heretical Schism Heretical Doctrine or Discipline justifie Separation How Separation from a true Church is Schism and how not In what sense we call the Roman Church a true Church Some Instances of heretical Errors in the Roman Church Of the guilt of Schism Of the notorious guilt of English Sectaries The folly of their vindications That th Case of them and us is altogether different from that of us and the Church of Rome Not lawful to separate from the Universal Church The Contents of the Second Book of the First Part. Chap. 1. OF the formal Object of Christian Faith Christ An Entrance to the treating of the Objects of Faith in particular Chap. II. Of the special consideration of God as the object of Christian Faith in the Unity of the Divine Nature and Trinity of Persons in that Chap. III. Of the Unity of the Divine Nature as to the simplicity of it And how the Attributes of God are consistent with that simplicity Chap. IV. Of the Unity of the Divine Nature as to number and how the Trinity of Persons may consist with the Unity and Simplicity of the Deity Of the proper notions pertaining to the Mystery of the Trinity viz. Essence Substance Nature Person The distinction of the Persons in the Trinity Four enquiries moved How far the Gentiles and Jews understood the Trinity The Proof of the Doctrine of the Trinity from the New Testament and the explication of
Traditions It is as seldome found That a tale should be reported in the very same phrase or words it was at first told as it is that things transcribed with any common honesty or diligence should fail considerably so much as in the Letter And if they say in Tradition forms of words are not so much to be stood upon doth it not altogether hold as good when this Tradition is written How then do not men blush to argue so boldly and at the same time so weakly There is therefore a twofold Infallibility to be distinguished as well in Relation to unwritten Doctrines as written the one consisting in the Matter delivered the other in the manner so delivering And truly as to this later it cannot be said without some strong Presumption to the contrary the written Traditions which are the Scriptures have been so preciseâ—y and absolutely defended from either the common injuries of time or special miscarriages incident to humane frailty or perhaps as some conjecture the studious mischiefs of sacrilegious hands laid on them as not one title one word one period should not have been damnified thereby The Providence of God granting some such minuter defections from the Original Copies hath been singular in preserving them in that degree of perfection and entireness we now enjoy them So that infinite is the disparity in this case between them and unwritten Traditions which none have been so audacious positively to affirm though indeed their large and loose reasons seem to tend that way that any one unwritten doctrine hath been conserved unto us in the same form of words it was at first delivered to the Church And the like though not so great advantage is to be acknowledged on the Scriptures part compared with the pretended unwritten word of God in reference to the matter and that in these three respects 1. The Evidence 2. The Importance and 3. The Influence that the doctrine of the Scriptures have and ought to have over all Traditions And for the first It is impossible taking traditions as they are distinguished from Scripture that the like grounds of Faith should be offered to us as we have above shown are to be found proving the Scriptures to be the word of God For are all or some only Gods word All cannot be because Traditions in several Places of the world have been diverse and even contrary Because some are acknowledged to have been the Constitutions of Men or the Church since the Apostolical Age. Because many are acknowledged to have been quite lost Because many have been confessed to be changed of them which remain Now if the Church hath failed in the due Custodie of such treasures committed to her How can any man be assured sufficiently of the integrity of the remainer How can the Church be esteemed an Infallible Witness of traditions And who can but admire the Confidence of such Patrons of the Churches fidelity or rather felicity for I would not nor need I call in question its good will and Honesty in her Office of Preserving the Monuments of our Religion untouch'd by errors who by reasons would demonstrate that that cannot be which we see done before our eyes For at other times the same Party if not the same persons stick not to profess that divers Antienter Traditions are perished and more modern have succeeded them They say that some Traditions are as 〈◊〉 as sense can make them The Tradition that there were such famous Cities as Nineve and Babylon and are such as Constantinople and Rome requires the same Faith as the beholding them with our Eyes But first It should have been said in the argument They are as evident as those things we are informed of by our senses but this is far from truth All the testimonies of Past and present persons affirming that to be so which I have no sense of immediately being abundantly sufficient to beget a belief but not equalling in evidence the testimonie of any mans well-disposed senses For does not this so general testimonie it self depend upon a mans senses receiving the same Or can any man be so well assured upon the Credit of any persons whatever that the Apostles delivered such things to be believed and observed by the Church as if he himself immediately received the same from them If it be said that the case of Ecclesiastical Tradition is far different from humane in that the Church is divinely assisted to such ends supposing this at present still we are no less intregued then before For as is said The truth of a thing and the Evidence whereby it appears to be true are very much different And here it will be no less difficult to make such a supposed Assistance appear then the tradition it self which it commends to the World upon such pretences And therefore they who have sifted this matter more narrowly and stated it most rationally have thought it best to forsake such topicks at present as Extraordinarie Assistances and Hen. Holdeni Analysis Fid. tell us plainly that what the Church doth in this case she doth it not as divinely directed but as so many Men delivering their testimonie which is true but then what becomes of Infallibility all men singly and conjointly as men being fallible Well therefore they proved to tell us That to a jugde of Controversies Credible Testimonie or moral infallibilitie may suffice and to this I agree in the main though the term Moral Certainty and Moral Infallibilitie seems to me as vain and improper as it is modern it upon enquirie amounting to no more then the old Probabilitie well and reasonably grounded The next thing in Holy Writ is the much greater importance the things therein contained are of above unwritten doctrines For who of all the Ancients but such as are by tradition stigmatized for Heretiques for such their Basil Ma. de spiritu sancto 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 opinions did constitute any rule of Faith distinct from the Scriptures or bring any to stand in competition therewith Some 't is true have distinguished between Dogmes of Traditions and doctrines of the Scripture and haveaffirmed That as well the one as the other ought to be received by a good Christian All this we agree to how we shall show by and by more fully and here by comparing this by the words of St. John saying This Joh. 4. 21. Commandment have we from him that he that loveth God love his brother also By which it is not required that any Christian should with the same kind or degree of Love love his neighbour with which he loveth God For we must love God only for his own sake and our brother for Gods sake Nay when God sayes we must love our neighbour as our selves he does not exclude difference in degrees of love In like manner when it is said That we ought to believe and receive the unwritten as well as written traditions it was never intended by that excellent Father that we should admit
them in equal veneration For most things there by him instanced in are apparently extrinsical to Faith Therefore the true meaning is That no good Son of the Catholick Church can or ought to refuse the customes or practices or forms of words concerning the doctrine of Christ because they are not so express'd or contain'd in Scripture as other matters are And if we mark we shall not find any one thing exacted of Christians in the purest and most flourishing state of the Church as points of Faith which only depended upon unwritten Tradition and were not thought to have the written word of God for their warrant and foundation And in this one thing were there no more doth the prerogative of the Scripture manifest it self sufficiently above Traditions distinct from it That whatever vertue or credit they have is first of all owing to the Scriptures For otherwise why should not the Traditions of the Jew or Mahometan be as credible to a Christian as they of the Church but that he suck'd in his principle with his Mothers milk That the written word of God hath given so fair testimonie of the Church and its traditions For the testimonie of the Church otherwise would certainly be no more to be valued than that of any other societie of like moral honestie So that the Scriptures must be the very First principle of all Christian belief But here steps in the old objection drawn from a most eminent Father of the Church which Extollers of tradition can as well forget their own names as leave out of their disputations on this subject though according to their Augustin custome they have a very bad memory to bear in mind what hath been sufficiently replied to it I should not saith that Father have believed the Scriptures but for the Church and yet we have said we should not have believed the Church but for the Scriptures How can these stand together Very well if we please to distinguish the several wayes of information for in the same there must be granted a repugnancie And the distinction is much the same with what we have before laid down viz. Of the Occasion and the direct Cause of Faith For though the Churches tradition be an Introduction to the belief of the Scriptures and such a necessary Cause without which no man ordinarily comes so much as to the knowledge of them yet it doth not at all follow that through the influence of that supposed Cause an effect of Faith is wrought in the Soul concerning them but from a superiour illumination and interiour power which has been generally Joh. 4. required to such praeternatural Acts. As the Woman of Samaria brought her fellow Citizens to Christ but was not the author of that faith which after they had in him as the true Messias or as the Horse I ride on carrying me from London to York is not the proper Cause that I see that City but mine own senses though I perhaps should never have seen it otherwise But another more Ancient and no less venerable Father of the Church is Irenaeus here brought in demanding What if nothing had been written must we not then have altogether depended on the Traditions To such as extend this quaerie too far I move the like question What if we had no Traditions at all must not then every man have shifted as well as he could and traded upon the finall stock of natural reason in him Or was it impossible that man should come to bliss without the superadded light outwardly exhibited That as the case stands man ordinarily cannot be saved without such received revelations as are dealt to us from the Church I believe But upon supposal that no such means were extant that there should be no other Ordinary way of Gods revealing himself to man in order to his salvation believe it who will for me I answer therefore directly No question but tradition would have sufficed if nothing had been committed to writing For either God would have remitted of that rigour as no man can doubt but he might have made the terms of the Covenant fewer and lighter with which we now stand obliged to him according to that most equal Law of the Gospel as well as Reason Unto whom much is given of him shall be much required and to Luk. 12. 48. Mat. 25. whom men have committed much of him they will ask the more Neither is it probable against the intent of Christs most excellent Parable in St. Mathew that of that Person or that People to whom he hath delivered but two or five Talents he should extort the Effect of ten Well therefore doth that Father argue against such as should dare to consine God only to Scripture and so superciliously or contemptuously look on the Traditions of their Christian Fathers as not worth the stooping to take up yea as necessarily warring against the Word written Whenas it is certain a thing is written because it is first declared and is the Word of him that speaketh no less before than after it is written and not so because it is written St. Paul therefore joyns them both together in his Epistle to the Thessalonians saying Therefore brethren stand stedfast and hold 2 Thes 2. 15. the Traditions which ye have been taught whether by word or our Epistle Here are plainly both written Traditions and unwritten and written Word of God and unwritten and they differ only in the several ways of promulgation and not in the Law of God And it is more then probable That those first principles of Christian Faith were not received of St. Paul in writing of which he speaks in his first Epistle to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 15. 1 2 3 4. concerning the Incarnation Passion and Resurrection of our Saviour nor delivered in writing at his first publication yet were no less the word of God then than afterward Yet as this sufficiently allayes the heat of hostility indiscreetly conceived against all Traditions even for the very names sake which is become odious to us so doth it not so much favour the contrary party as hath been phantasi'd For 't is observable That there is a very great difference between the Tradition now touched and that so commonly and passionately disputed of in the Church That was and may be called a Tradition as every thing expressed by Word or Writing whereby one man delivers his mind for so the English Phrase hath it not amiss to another transiently But the Tradition now under debate may be described A constant continuation of what is once delivered from Generation to Generation For No man can with any propriety of speech term what is not a year or two in standing Tradition Tradition is a long custom of believing The things which are so called in the Scriptures are not such and therefore can be no president for those of these dayes There being not the like reason that we should give the same respect or esteem so
Apostolical that which now is so reputed and that which any mans memory might assure him was so in very deed the Apostles Doctrine This controversie then seems to come to this issue First in Reason Whether Oral and Memorial Tradition can be so secure as Scriptural The resolution of which doubt almost every man may make sufficiently of himself and hath been competently treated of above The other Question is about matter of Fact Whether the Church of God did ever so unanimously agree in the necessity validity or Sacredness of any Traditions not contained in the written Word of God as to equal them with this This we absolutely deny And upon the account of Tradition it self There being no such Tradition to be found in all the Records of the Church that Tradition is so highly to be valued Again there appearing consent sufficient in the Church for many ages That as to the Material parts of Christian doctrine the Scriptures do sufficiently instruct us as a Rule and Law of believing For If the Law of Moses as a Law was sufficient before the Prophets added to it for the People of God under that Dispensation And the Law and the Prophets were still sufficient till John and Christ is to believed That the Law of Christians delivered by Christs appointment should fall short of the same ends now It is truly affirmed That what St. Paul writeth in commendation of Scripture was intended chiefly if not only of the books of the Old Testament viz. That they were able to make a man wise unto Salvation through Faith that is in Christ Jesus and All Scripture is given by Inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine for correction for instruction in Righteousness That the man of God may be perfect throughly furnished unto all good works Now if the Scriptures of the Old Testamant were sufficient to bring a man to the Faith of Christ and to instruct him to Salvation can any man reasonably doubt Whether the much clearer and fuller manifestation of the Doctrine of Christ and Salvation by the books of the New Testament are sufficient to the same end joyned to the obscurer of the Old I know there are that say expresly No and endeavour to make it good by several instances very material to Faith and yet not expressed in Scripture and yet again of force to be believed by all that would be good Christians As the Articles of the Trinity and of Christs Person consisting of humane and divine nature Of his being born of the blessed Virgin Some other are added hereunto but they are either such as are neither favoured by Scripture nor good Tradition as Invocation of Saints Purgatory c. or have only a general warrant from Scripture and Tradition and such are they which are of a mutable nature Rites and Ceremonies of the Church which ought not when confirmed by long consent and use in the Church lightly to be refused and cast off so when any Church having power over its own body shall think fit to alter is that Church to be refused as a true Church by others But to the first of these we stick not openly to profess That it suffices to believe so much only as is really contained in and soberly deducible from the Scriptures taking these articles of Faith separately from certain accessory obligations of all good Christians For instance It is not required to believe the doctrine now established in the Catholick Church concerning the Trinity in the forms at present received from the nature of the Articles themselves which may with safety sufficient be assented to as they are simply found in Scripture yet considering That Hereticks have stirred up most dangerous and sacrilegious doubts to the obviating them and securing the main stake which would be endangered if farther explications were not found out and imposed it is needful to receive them also or at least not to oppose and declare against them For 't is very well known there passed some ages before the Articles of the Trinity of Persons were so much stood on or so well setled as now they are and that Tradition was as much to seek as the written Word of God to bring things to that pass they now are in And for Christ's manner of birth I know no such Tradition either written or unwritten which required antiently any more than to believe barely That the eternal Son of God became man and was incarnate and born of a woman who was a pure Virgin but probable circumstances and reverence to the high Mystery of Christs Person obliged to the honorary part of that Article And the like answer may be made to another instance about Paedobaptism which some as occasion offers will say is required in Scripture and again it serving at other times their turn better to deny Bellarmin it will hold the contrary For Baptism of Infants as Infants is not indeed required by Scripture but as persons saveable it is the rule general in Scripture running thus Except a man be born of water and the Holy John 3. 5. Ghost he cannot be saved It is not said unless a man be born by water while he is an infant or Child but absolutely For had it been so expressed just doubt might have been made whether a man baptized at his full age were effectually baptized Neither is Baptism appointed signally and precisely for men in years though none but such at the first preaching of the Gospel who could profess their Faith could be capable of it but indefinitely is it spoken without any limitation and therefore sufficiently implied Other instances against the plenitude of Scripture as a Rule of Faith have either already been touched as that which tells us It is nowhere contained in Scripture that the Scriptures are the word of God neither can it be proved by it for no more can it be demonstrated by Tradition or may be easily brought to the same end To conclude this point having shewed what we mean by Tradition and what it serveth not to it were unreasonable to leave it slurr'd so and not to give it its due in shewing the great use thereof in the Church of Christ For however we make it not supream nor coequal with the written word of God it may without any offence or invasion of Divine Right or Autoritie claim the next place to it and as Joseph to Pharaoh be greater then all the the people besides but inferiour to Pharaoh in the Throne Of God it is said Thou satest in the Throne judging right God now judges by his Word Psalm 9. 4. written as by a Law and Rule of faith as is shewed Yet I see no reason for the injudicious zeal and reverence of such who think they cannot give enough unto the Scriptures unless in word and pretence for t is no more themselves constantly acting contrarie to their profession they ascribe all the Form of Judging unto the Scriptures and all things determinable to their
are intimated to us in these words of St. Paul which are vulgarly brought against us viz. Nevertheless the foundation of God 2 Tim. 2. 19. standeth sure having this seal The Lord knoweth who are his And let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity The first foundation of God is that which he hath layed in his assuring us that he will have a Church in despite of all Enemies and Persecuters which would destroy it The second is the seal to this Charter which relating to special persons is twofold The First That God knoweth who are his that is according to Scripture phrase owneth and asserteth the cause of those that are his and will never forsake them otherwise than he hath declared that is they not violating egregiously the Covenant on their parts The second is that which follows viz. Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity This is the seal set to the Covenant made by God which if not duly and proportionably to the favourableness of the Evangelical Covenant observed by man the seal of God avails but little to the benefit of a Christian A second conclusion may be That notwithstanding God hath no where enjoyned us under any forfeiture to obtain this assurance yet he requireth us to be alwayes so pressing and proficient in Faith and Holiness of Life that above his Capitulations or ordinary Promises made in his Word he may communicate his pleasure unto us and good-will concerning the particular salvation of us This hath been imparted unto divers and may again when it seems good to God But it is no Rule to us Thirdly A faithful Christian ought to endeavour the attaining to a strong and true degree of Hope by Gods grace and the working out of his Salvation with fear and trembling For St. John saith That a man may arrive to such a state of assurance as 't is called that considering and believing the undetermined mercy of God in the Gospel he may have confidence of Gods love towards him his own conscience not condemning him as St. John saith Beloved if our heart condemn us not then 1 John 3. 21. have we confidence towards God Lastly This sense serves much to the comfort and tranquility of the mind of scrupulous Christians more than the holding of a peremptory assurance of Salvation which they who require it cannot deny to be wanting to many faithful servants of God For when they consider that the want of this assurance is no indication or character of a Reprobate as some would make it and they must who bring it under precept and promise then are they heartened still to press towards holy and devout exercises believing that God not seeing nor judging as man judgeth nor as they of themselves but out of his incircumscribed mercie may accept them and have mercy on them And here properly doth that doctrine of Faith commended in the Articles of our Church as very comfortable take place viz. as that which when we have done all we must betake ourselves unto and which brings us neerest to God namely not that we believe we are justified for or because we believe we are freely but because Faith and trust in God as it is the first stone in our heavenly building so is it the crown and consummation of all when we disown and disavow all sufficiencie in ourselves or our most Christian Acts even Faith it self and trust in his mercy to be accepted under all our fears and reasonings to the contrary not manifestly violating the Covenant with God for which our own hearts and ordinary apprehensions may condemn us CHAP. XXII Of the Contrary to true Faith Apostasie Heresie and Atheism Their differences The Difficulty of judging aright of Heresie Two things constituting Heresie The Evil disposition of the mind and the falseness of the Matter How far and when Heresie destroyes Faith How far it destroyes the Nature of a Church THus having sufficiently treated of the most general and principal Effect of Faith before we leave this we are in reason to enquire into that which privatively relates to true Faith and that is Heresie What that is and wherein it consisteth For Heresie cannot properly be applyed to any but such who are of the Faith and in some degree belong to the Catholick Church wherein it is distinct from Atheism Apostasie and professed Infidelity For Infidelity though it carries with it in its name a sense which comprehends both Atheism and Apostasie yet use hath prevailed so far as to apply it only to such who do receive some Articles of the Christian Faith and them fundamental too though not as the Christians For Example Infidels may believe there is a God and that God but one and that there shall be a Resurrection of the Just and Unjust and Life everlasting either in misery or bliss yet being either wholly ignorant of or directly denying some fundamental Points of Faith as Christian they continue Infidels though not Atheists Neither can they be accounted Hereticks having never been of the Church nor initiated into or embraced the true Faith These are Negatively only related to the Church as Logicians say Dissimilary things relate one to another viz. A black thing to a white But Heresie is of a privative sense and an opposition to the true Catholick Faith with an Obligation not only taken from the matter of Faith it self to which all the world owe homage and obedience but from some extrinsecal formalities whereby some men more especially contract a relation to the Church of Christ And the first and most principal cause hereof is the solemn dedication which is made by ourselves or others we not oppugning it of us in the initiating Rite of Baptism wherein renunciation is openly made of all things persons and opinions contrary and inconsisting with that Doctrine we there submit unto and vow to observe This Dedication of us to Christ doth make and denominate us Christians and Catholicks according to the less ancient use of the word of which we shall hereafter speak Now according to the degree or manner of violating this most solemn and sacred Vow in Baptism are men said to be Apostates and Hereticks And an Apostates are Hereticks but not all Hereticks Apostates The principal difference consisteth in this 1. That the Apostate doth renounce even the first principles of Christian Faith as Christian And they are they which are expresly contained in the form of Baptism whereby he became a Christian 2. In a formal profession contrary to such Covenant made with God in Christ But Heresie doth not absolutely deny the Grounds of Christianity it self but whether by affected errour or invincible doth resolutely and firmly assert things contrary to true Doctrine But to give a precise definition of Heresie as St. Augustine of old so we find at this day very difficult and not to turn to the right hand or to the left not to make it too broad and wide
nor too narrow and rigorous The Reason hereof may be first taken from the name which imports such 〈◊〉 dictae Gâ—â—â—â— voce ex interpretatieâ—â— electionas quâ— quis sive ad instituendas suâ—cipiendas utitur c. Tertullianus Praescript cap. 6. Vide 〈◊〉 Hispalens Origin lib. â—3 a singularity of choice and addiction to an opinion which may as well be true as false good as evil Thus the ancient Heathens as well Roman as Grecian used the word and so did the Christians too for some hundred years after Christ And when it began to be restrain'd to the evil part a second thing made the notion of it no less difficult and obscure viz. the largeness of it for those errors which were not material or of any great consequence to the Christian Faith or Church as for to stigmatize them which were of note and moment in the same And a third thing obscuring the true nature is the manner of asserting and maintaining great as well as small Errours The word Heresie generally signifies any opinion either good or bad More especially it signifies an Errour in Religion Thus Ecclesiastical Writers take it Yet most properly it is an Errour in the Foundation of Christian Religion taught and defended with obstinacy Perkins on Galat. 5. v. 20. To understand this we must know how that a twofold Criminalness in Heresie according to the two more essential parts constituting it according to opinions generally received The one is called the formal part which relates to the manner of holding such opinions as are erroneous Inter Haereticâ—s non sunt deputandi qui aut ab Ecclesiasticis seducti sunt à parentibus in errorem lapsi nullà pertinaci animâ—sitate defendunt quaerunt autem 〈◊〉 solicitudine veritatem corrigi parati quum invenerint Augustin Epist 168. For lighter errours against the Doctrine of the Scriptures and peace of the Church being maintained with obstinacy and against due proposal of the truth do characterize and constitute an Heretick The other is the material part namely That about which men do err in Faith And this hath a peculiar difficulty in it arising from the undetermined points of Faith and I think a moral impossibility as they call it to define what are those so necessary points of Faith to be believed the denyal where of makes an Heretick This is thought generally to be sufficiently explained in the Creeds of the Church by some But others find many considerable points not therein comprehended unless by such a reduction whereby any thing almost may be compelled to come under anothers wing There are therefore that hold that the decrees and resolutions of Counsels fully and only can satisfie this scrupulousness and no question but all these conduce very much to the acquiring a settled Judgment in matters of Faith and espeially this latter against which notwithstanding there may be made these following exceptions First That all things defined by Councels and that with the affixing of Anathema's are confessedly not of Faith but of Rites and Order also Secondly That those Canons which are of Faith are so variously and miserably handled and distracted by Learned Interpreters that a sober well-meaning Christian may without any heretical pravity of mind fall involuntarily into a reputed Heresie Thirdly That contrary things have sometimes been determined in several ages From all which it is manifest That it is much more easie to define Heresie then an Heretick because there is an ingredient of personal aversion from or opposition to the Truth which can scarce be discovered but in the abstract Heresie may properly enough be defined to be not an opinion but a False Proposition contrary to the Catholick Faith And if it be thus uncertain and obscure what Heresie is through so many various kinds and degrees thereof answerable to the several branches therefore it cannot be easie to prove all Heresie in the common notion as opposite to Faith to be destructive to Faith That it destroyes that Part of Faith against which it is bent is undeniable but that any particular Errour should destroy the whole any farther than it is opposite to the whole Body of Faith is incredible Some Heresies pluck up the Tree of Life Faith by the roots some cut it down to the root some lop off the arms some lesser branches and some which have been reputed Heresies do only brush and beat off the leaves and ornaments An example of the former is given by St. Paul to the Corinthians some of whom it should seem denied the Resurrection in general and by necessary implication of Christ who was as dead as any mortal man else But if there be no resurrection 1 Cor. 15. 13 14. of the dead then is Christ not risen And if Christ be not risen then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain It were to no purpose to believe any point in Christian Religion dis-believing that of the resurrection And in short to deny any thing expressed or necessarily and immediately included in the form of words used in Baptism is to root up all our Creed and render all our Faith vain in other Articles An instance of the second sort of Heresie may be to deny the Mediation of Christ by way of satisfaction for us restraining the intercession of him to that supposed one now in Heaven Of the third may be Errours about Free-will and affirming a positive necessity to commit sin against God Of the denyal of the efficacy of Good works done in Christ towards our salvation and the affirming a meritoriousness in them towards the same Of the last the affirming it unlawful to use any Ceremonies in Gods service but what are specially commanded in his word And from hence it seemeth necessary to distinguish Heresies and Hereticks into Formal or direct and Virtual and real A Formal Heresie is Propositio sapiens haeresim est ex cujus concessione co-assumpto aliquo quod non potest rationabiliter negari sequitur â—aeresis in fide vt siquis diceret quod beatus Gregorius non fuisset Papa Gerson de necessitate Salutis that which is expresly maintained and asserted in tearms but denied in the inference and consequence whichyet certainly and necessarily follows upon such positions as supposing a man should with the Monothelites of old affirm that Christ had but one Will. This is a formal and direct Heresie but if as it is possible the same person should deny the true consequence hereof viz. That he consisted but of one Nature He were not a formal Heretick in this latter because though this Errour doth certainly arise from the former yet all Heresies being erroneous apprehensions and affections of the mind this Errour being not received into his mind doth not so affect him as to denominate him formally an Heretick Yet must he answer for Heresie in his account before God because the movers and promoters of such shall no more escape then he shall from the punishment of
drunkenness who putteth the bottle to his neighbours mouth provoking him to drink to excess or of Theft who will by no means steal himself but is aiding in his advice and putting advantages into his hands to take anothers Goods In like manner the necessary consequence of a light Errour being very notorious though a person be not formally an Heretick in the conclusion which he may protest against as not following from his erroneous proposition yet if in truth it doth so and is generally so reputed to the mis-leading of Christians such a man is really or virtually an Heretick and obnoxious to the guilt and punishment due unto such Errours which he denies For instance It is a notorious Heresie to hold it unnecessary there should be any Church of Christ and to affirm That it suffices that every good Christian hath the word of God and believes and lives by himself though the word of God contradicts this impiety sufficiently and to be a Christian at large If any person heretically inclined shall deny that this is his opinion or that thus he would have it yet if he preaches such Doctrine and publishes such Opinions which do necessarily infer thus much he is a notorious Heretick in reality though not in the formality As also if he should teach The Church hath no power to enjoyn any thing besides what the word of God requires This Errour taken simply and nakedly hath no such monstrousness as may not pass for tolerable but in the necessary consequence it is as pernicious to the community of Christians as to preach against Christ himself And therefore the argument of late Rationalists is very false founded upon this ground Socinus Chi. viz. That Christians are not to be obliged under pain of damnation such as Anathema's and Excommunications are to any thing which Christ hath not by his Law prescribed For this indeed taken strictly is true Christ for ought may appear doth not in Scripture command Rites in use with the Church but Christ under pain of his displeasure doth require that we should do all things not contrary to his injunctions for the keeping up Non sunt parva existimanda sine quibus magna consistere enim possint Hieron of the nature of a Church and Christian Society and therefore though the Errour be in it self light it falls in the event heavy upon Christianity it self and deserves no less rigour than is used towards the offender in Faith it self Lastly From hence we may reasonably judge of the frequent denunciations of alienation from the Faith and Church against them who erred heretically affirming in general That Heresie quite alienated from the Church and that Society could not be of the Church which maintained an Heresie For first we are to note that few or none before St. Cyprians time were so severely censured by the ancient Fathers but such as were offenders against the very principles of Christianity it self St. Cyprian indeed and others from him extended this censure to such as were less criminal For it is a very hard matter to instance in any one Article of Faith though I know some great Clerks have attempted it which Novations or Donatists rejected or offended against So that abating somewhat for the vehemence of the zeal conceived against such enemies to the Church in the writings of Fathers against Hereticks it will appear that it was matter of Fact rather than Faith or Heresie which exposed them to such censures For uncharitableness will as certainly damn as unfaithfulness And he that dies for Christ as divers Hereticks did in animosity groundless against his brother and especially against the Church of which he is or ought to be a member may notwithstanding loose his Life hereafter as well as here But of this more now we are to speak of the Church CHAP. XXIII Of the proper Subject of Faith the Church The distinction and description of the Church In what sense the Church is a Collection of Saints Communion Visible as well as Invisible necessary to the constituting a Church HAving spoken of the Nature Kinds Acts and Effects of Christian Faith we proceed now to speak of the proper Subject of Faith which is the Church Which word is commonly used as well for the Place where our Lord is publickly and solemnly worshipped as for the People of God serving and worshipping him But of this latter only we art to treat at present which we define to be A Calling and Collection of Saints from The Church is an universal Congregation or fellowship of Gods faithful People and Elect built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets Jesus Christ being the head and corner stone Hom. Chur. of Engl. Part. 2. pa. 213. their vain Conversation in the world to the Faith and Worship of God according to the Rule and Laws of his Holy word and to visible communion with themselves which description I doubt not to be grounded in all its parts upon the Scriptures themselves And that God is the Author and only Institutor of such a Church if it needed any proof the Scripture would soon afford it St. Paul saith to the Corinthians Chap. 7. * 1 Cor. 7. 17. But as God hath distributed to every man as the Lord hath called every one so let him walk and so ordain I in all Churches And so exhorteth the Thessalonians to †1 Thess 2. 12 walk worthy of God who called them to his Kingdom and Glory And so in very many places else where as will appear farther now we consider the Term from whence God doth call and choose his faithful people and that is the World the world not taken in its natural sense signifying the Natural bodies of all sorts of which it consisteth nor absolutely from it in the more special sense in which Mankind is sometimes called the world for civil conversation and humane mutual Offices may be maintained and ought between Christians and Heathens or Infidels but rather in a moral sense that is unnatural unjust unrighteous communication with the wicked of the world as wicked as St. Paul explaineth himself to the 1 Cor. 5. 9 10. Corinthians I wrote unto you in an Epistle not to company with fornicatours Yet not altogether to refuse to converse with the fornicatours of this world or with the covetous or extortioners or with Idolaters for them must ye needs go out of the world but if any man that is called a brother be a fornicatour c. St. Peter takes most of the terms in our description speaking 1 Pet. 2. 9 10. of Converts to the Faith Ye are a chosen generation a Royal Priesthood an holy Nation a peculiar People that ye should shew forth the praises of God who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light c. And St. Paul to the Ephesians According as he hath chosen us in him before the Ephes 1. 4. foundation of the World that we should be holy and
particular defects and exigencies each man is subject unto in a separate condition And this Society thus combining or concurring together is commonly called a Republick the word signifying The common good it being the design and end of all Republicks or Common-wealths for men first in order to seek the common interest and good of the whole Society and so through that to derive particular and private benefit to each member thereof and not as some blindly and brutishly addicted to their private personal profits to begin at home and not to secure the Publick stock These are no better than such Pilferers and Thieves who being in partnership with others pocket up in the first place all that they can lay hold on and contribute no more to the common stock than they are by force constrained unto Now this Society may be divided into three sorts Natural Civil Divine or Ecclesiastical Natural is that Order and Regiment constituted Ordâ— est parium disparium rerum sua cuique loco triâ—uens dispositio Aug. Civ Dei 19. 13. Bernardus Gerson entitiloquio Gubernare est movere aliquos indebitum finem sicut nanta gubernat navem emendo eam ad portum Thomas 22. Q. 102. 2. co by God in every mans soul which consisteth of the Superiority of the Rational faculties and the Subjection and Obedience of the Inferiour or Sensitive Affections For Order as several of the Ancient have described it is nothing else but The Disposition or placing of equal and inequal things into their proper places which Order is the foundation of Government And Government according to Thomas is the moving of men to their due end There being therefore a twofold end of man secular and spiritual Government likewise must be answerable And both agree in this viz. to be the Administration of the Weal Publick to ends agreeable unto them In which we are yet farther to consider these things 1. The Original of Government 2. The Form of Government 3. The Rule and Reasons of Government 4. The Obligation upon Men under Government And of these briefly as a necessary Introduction to the Doctrine of the Church And concerning the first the Cause and Fountain of all Government Some pretending to fetch the Fountain head of all humane Rule from its first rise have quite forgot what they went about and inverting the order of nature have begun at the end which is rather the effect then cause For now we do not enquire why or to what end it is but who made it and whose hand it was that framed this Tool to bring to pass such a work as humane safety and tranquility That this must be the same cause with that of man himself seems reasonable to me to conclude from the necessity of the same and the wisdom of Divine Providence which having given generally such instinct and common prudence unto Creatures to do nothing which shall serve for nothing nor to erect any thing but with competent provision to conserve and continue the same in that being so far as the Supream Wisdom shall not oppose the same How is it credible that God should make that Master-piece of his Man upon earth and not at the same time provide for that subsistance and continuance Sevorum bestiarum inquit Aristoteles Polit. 3. cap. 6 non est Civitas 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which are necessary But it is plain that man though as brutish and a sensible creature he may wear out possibly an unhappy ignoble life yet without society and community and unity through the bands and ligaments of sound and reasonable Laws cannot subsist as civil or rational or as easily improvable to perfection of natural state upon earth but must necessarily degenerate into the rank of Brutes Therefore sure Divine Wisdome left him not destitute of such helps as were proper to this end but together with his very nature instills into him an inclination to Society and by his own Act and Ordinance whereby he ordained that man should propagate and multiply prescribed the best and only manner of civil Regiment investing some with a natural right of dominion over others As the man over the woman and the parents over the children from whence it is ready and easie to approach to a community and that with a subordination This is so plain that the perspicuity and simplicity doth rather then any thing else offend the unsatisfied acuteness of rarer wits and move them to pry farther to confound themselves others and the Order God hath set in the world beginning at the feet and ending in the head and putting counsel into the tail to teach the head how it should rule the body and empowring children to enact Laws for Parents how they ought to govern which they certainly do who affirm that the grosser body of the people did first of all agree upon Government and constitute their Ruler which dogmes have no fewer nor higher arguments to confute and oppress them than these First they are Ridiculous Secondly Sacrilegious and Impious Thirdly Impossible Fourthly Pestilential and Pernicious to all Government It is first ridiculous as that opinion which inverts all order and contrary to a much more sound and sober Rule in Politicks viz. That no man can create one greater than himself And if it be said that therefore no single one can confer greater power than he himself is possessed of on another but Many who are greater than one may I answer This is true where the supposition which is here false and taken for true is granted viz. That many men have in such cases as these any more power then one For I wholly deny that any are or altogether have any right whatsoever power they may usurp to create such Powers And it still remains absurd to suppose that any or all whose only place and capacity it is to serve should more then command For 't is a true saying It is more to make a King than to be a King For still I hold this which I have not found shaken by the many attempts of innovating Wits that there is a real Paternal Power in lawful Princes And though we should suppose that which was rarely if ever done that a man should adopt any man into the place of a Father as men usually did some as their sons yet can we not suppose that hereby any paternal Power is really conferred on such an one but only imaginary and impediments removed whereby Paternal power which hath an acknowledged common right to Rule take place over such a person as hath so submitted unto it So in like manner it cannot be denyed against innumerable instances to be given that the People in certain exigencies and faileurs have as it were adopted one man specially as their civil Parent whom we call commonly a King and hereupon absurdly and proudly conclude they have made a King but we know this to be nothing so For 't is not choice but Power that makes a King and
Gods Word already confirming this duty and to leave others to every ingenuous Christians diligent use of it to avoid prolixity And for the objections which may be made and are commonly found against what is above delivered for the same reason I pass them over as likewise because I intend not here Controversie but Positive Institutions CHAP. XXVII An Application of the former Discourse of Civil Government to Ecclesiastical How Christs Church is alwayes visible and how invisible Of the Communion of Christ and his Members The Church of Christ taken specially for the Elect who shall infallibly be saved never visible But taken for true Professours of the Faith must alwayes be visible though not Conspicuous in comparison of other Religions or Heresies THE Reasons moving me to insist a while upon Civil Government before I entred upon Ecclesiastical are First because I find Authors of the grounds of Christian Religion to treat of the same generally Secondly because where breaches have been made often in the Faith and Discipline of the Church there necessary provision ought to be made to secure them for the future but for want of due understanding of this Doctrine licencious zeal blinded with presumption hath transported very many into unchristian practises Thirdly because it is a necessary introduction to the more clear and compendious pursuing of our subject of the Spiritual Society of the Church of Christ and particularly its Form The Form of Christs Church may be distinguished according to the vulgar Notion into invisible and visible or inward and outward Invisible we here call that which doth not at all offer it self to our outward sense of seeing cannot be beholden with our eye Or that which may in some manner appear to our sight but not as a Church of Christ though in truth it so may be According to the first acceptation of invisible we understand the Body Mystical of Christ consisting of himself the only proper Head the Holy Spirit animating and influencing the same and the particular members of the holy most happy invisible Spirits in heaven and Saints on earth spiritually united to them by Christ in the divine band of holiness And hitherto do the words of the Apostle to the Ephesians seem to be applyed saying Having made known the mystery of his will That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather Ephes 1. 9 10. together in one all things in Christ both which are in heaven and which are in earth even in him signifying hereby the mystical conjunction of Men and Angels in Christ Jesus although there are who not improbably and more literally do understand these words only of the collection and uniting of Jews who in respect of their peculiar exaltation to Gods service and favour are stiled in Scripture heavenly compared with the Gentiles and Gentiles into one Faith and Church of Christ which therefore divers times is called a Mystery as Romans the 16. 25 26. Ephes 3. v. 3 4 5. Col. 1. 26 27. 1 Tim. 3. 16. because as is there expressed it was an hidden and incredible thing to the Jews that the Gentiles should be taken into the like priviledges and rights of serving God as were once esteemed incommunicable to any so fully as to the Jews But whether the Scripture according to its most genuine and literal sense intendeth at any time to comprehend into one Society Angelical Peings and Humane as the Church of Christ as I do not find though the Ancients as well as Modern have held such an opinion so do I not oppose the Mystery of which we now speak being sufficiently verified in the preternatural and invisible conjunction of Christ and his Church in the indissoluble bands of his Spirit guiding the members thereof into all sufficiencie of Grace here and immortal absolute glory hereafter in heaven To understand this co-union or conjunction of Christ and his Members the better we are to call to mind a threefold union intimated in holy Writ unto us First a conjunction of Nature when more are of the same individual nature as the three Persons in the Holy Trinity are united in the same Divine Nature though in themselves distinct which is so proper to that mystery of the Trinity that it is not to be found elsewhere no not in that intimate communion we now speak of between Christ and his Members their natures continuing distinct Again another conjunction proper to Christian Religion is the union of two natures into one Person as in the Mystery of Christs incarnation when the humane and divine Nature become one so far as to constitute but one Person Christ Jesus So do not Christ and his Church But by a third way are Christ and his Church united into one aggregate Spiritual Body or Society which is effected by his Spirit which yet do not make properly a Part of that Body but by its manifold divine Graces do produce and conserve the same Christ thereby and his Church being as St. Paul saith One Spirit He that is joyned unto the Lord is one Spirit And 1 Cor. 6. 17. St. John likewise saith Hereby we know that we dwell in him and he in us because he hath given us of his Spirit This truly and only in a proper sense is invisible and that alwayes and hath two Parts the triumphant in Heaven which is a most perfect pure holy and blessed Society which have through the bloud of the Lamb and the power of his Spirit overcome the three grand Enemies Sin Death and the Devil and reaped the fruits of their sufferings and labours all tears being wiped from their eyes all sorrows being fled away all temptations for ever conquered and ceasing to molest them Now this part of Christ's Church remains alwayes invosible unto us here below And as for the other Part which is called Militant and are described to be A number of faithful and elect people living under the Cross and aspiring towards the perfection of Grace and Glory hereafter supposing at present what may hereafter be farther discussed viz. That such a peculiar number of holy persons there are within the visible Church of Christ which shall infallibly attain to everlasting bliss in heaven yet neither are these as such at any time visible or discernable to our common senses It being scarce if at all possible to judge infallibly who shall be saved and who shall not be saved it being much more difficult for any man to be assured of another mans salvation than of his own seeing that as is said hereunto an inward testimony of Gods Spirit is required which is the ground of that sound hope which is commonly called Assurance but the Promises of God in holy Scripture do not extend in like manner to the assuring of any man that another shall be saved as that he himself shall or that anothers faith shall not fail as that his own shall not but thus far only probably a truer and more certain sentence may
be pronounced by others who are ordained of God to be judges of our state of Grace upon the discovery of our consciences to them then can be by our selves which is sufficient but of the unalterableness of that state no man can certainly affirm any thing Which holdeth true likewise as to the contrary state of Damnation For though a more than probable judgment may be made of the state of Damnation of him who continues impenitently in notorious sins yet may no man pronounce a peremptory sentence against any such person that he inevitably shall be damn'd because he cannot see into the abstruse Counsels of Almighty God so far as to deny a Liberty left in him to confer such efficacious grace upon such a notorious offender as may reduce him to God no more than withdraw grace from him who at present standeth in all probable way of perseverance This being so it followeth from hence necessarily That the Church of Christ taken for the so faithful and elect that they shall without all peradventure attain the Crown of the Triumphant is evermore in its own nature invisible that is not to be distinguished by us nor known certainly and if so then in vain and to no purpose at all are such Disputations as are made about the invisible Church in that sense of invisibility which signifies that which can in no manner appear certainly to us The other sense of invisibleness according to which a thing is possible to be seen is an object of sense but actually is either not to be seen or with very great difficulty For as in Philosophy it is with Divisibility so may it be with Visibility in Divinity Every thing that hath Quantity according to the Philosopher is divisible or is capable of being divided into lesser parts even without end but yet so small may the parts so divided become at last that no Artist shall be able to cut them any more in pieces So may we understand a thing to be visible which is so small and inconsiderable that actually it can hardly if at all be perceived But visible and palpable being taken for things which not only affect the senses simply but with some more than common notoriety the usual question Whether the Church of Christ is alwayes visible ought to be understood of such a competence of perspicuity as may ordinarily be discerned by persons rightly disposed in their understandings taking here right disposition of our inward apprehensions in a proportionable manner to that which relates to our common outward senses which if it be called into doubt as it may no wonder that the other may be and that without remedy Now according to the most strict acceptation of Visible for whatsoever may possibly be discerned the reasolution will be easie That Christs Church is and must alwayes be visible For thus to be Invisible is as much as not to be at all For seeing the Parts of which it consists be they but two or three persons in the most rigorous sense are Visible the whole must needs be visible too of it self however it may in the more received sense be termed invisible because compared with the Church of Christ as prophesied of and promised in the Gospel it is so inconsiderable as may deserve rather to be accounted invisible it being out-shined and over-shadowed by other Pretenders But there being two things which constitute the Church one the association of many persons into outward communion one with another the other the inward communion in the true Faith of Christ and the former being common very often to Hereticks as well as true Christians it may be doubted whether the true Church of Christ as opposed to heretical Societies is at all visible For seeing the true and orthodox Faith together with its practical holiness do not occur plainly to our senses the true Faith cannot be discerned visibly from the false by any outward sense How can it possibly be said that the Church of Christ is at all visible or apparent to a man 'T is true a man may discern a real man from a painted man or from any other creature from the outward notices of his body though he cannot see his soul which doth primarily constitute the person of man but he cannot see whether he be a true and honest man in a moral sense from any thing appearing outwardly So may one discern the Faith professed in general to be Christian by the outward frame and fashion of the Church professing the same but the soundness of the same and sincerity according to Christs will and institution he cannot from thence conclude upon And therefore if the Catholick Faith as Catholick in the stricter sense can never be visible the Catholick Church so being and denominated from that Faith can never be said to be properly visible but only as a Society not as the true Society of Christians in opposition to the false For instance sense or common reason not informed from the word of God could never judge whether the Arrian or the Catholick Faith as it then began to be called were most truly Christian but they both might judge that they were Christian Societies and so at least outwardly made a true Church But because it is one thing to profess the true Faith and another quite distinct from that Truly to profess the Faith as it is one thing to profess Justice and Truth and Honesty and another truly to profess these and practise them therefore can there be no estimate taken of the true Catholick Church from the persons professing the Catholick Faith who are alwayes uncertain and mutable but judgement must be made from the outward constitution only which are Discipline or Government and not Doctrine or Faith For where the former is not rightly composed according to the mind and institution of Christ there cannot be said to be a true Church And where the second is wanting there must likewise be no Church the foundation of the Church and Rule failing viz. the true Faith But wherever these be inviolately and incorruptly preserved and publickly professed though we should suppose every particular Member of such a Society to be notorious Hypocrites yet the Church might be said to be a true Church because the Church doth not receive any more than its material subsistance from the persons believing but its formal and more distinct Being it hath from the true Regiment and Faith which it is possible though scarce probable may be sufficiently preserved under hypocritical and wicked members of the same This is not only true in it self but appears so to be from the necessity of having any knowledge of the true Church at all and its being visible at any time For it never being certainly visible who are the predestinate infallibly to Life and who are not who shall constantly stand and who shall fall who are inwardly hypocrites and who are faithful and sincere indeed seeing notwithstanding the exactest judgment and search of man there
a Church in two things principally First in the matter The material part of a believer as he is a Christian not as he is a man is his Faith consisting of its several Articles and Branches But the matter of the Church is the Christians themselves whereof it consisteth Secondly they differ in their Form too For no man is properly a Christian though he believes all the Articles of a Christian and lives accordingly unless he be formed and fashioned Formale autem Ecclesiae Catholicae est professio fi dei Christi intâ—gra sub suis Legitimis Rectoribus à Christo institut â—â— ministris cum Sacramentorum obsignatione participatione Sec. Marcus Anton. Spalat Lib. 7. cap 10. §. 26. by the Sacrament of Regeneration which is Baptism But the Form of Christs Church doth consist in that outward disposition and order of Superiour and Inferiour communicating mutually in all Christian Acts and Offices necessary to the conservation of the whole Body and the edification and encrease of every Member thereof This Description of Christs Church is warranted us from St. Paul to the Ephesians who expresly maketh * Eph. 4. 15 16. Colos 2. 19. Christ the Head of his Church From whom the whole Body fitly joyned together and compacted by that which every joynt supplyeth according to the effectual working in the measure of every Part maketh increase of the Body unto the edifying its self in Love The like words to which we find to the Colossians chap. 2. 19. It must therefore from hence be granted That there is to be Government in Christs Church and that the Government ought to be proportionable to the Body thereby ordered and ruled To the Internal Body of Christ or Mystical Church not visible to us an Internal Mystical and Invisible administration is very agreeable and sufficient from Christ the Head and by the influence of the Holy Spirit but the external Church standeth in need necessarily of external Rule and Direction as much as it doth of external Doctrine Instructions and Sacraments though it be inwardly informed by the Spirit of Christ Now if it be enquired what that Government is whereby Christ would have his Church directed which is the most famous Question of late dayes though scarce ever call'd in question for some hundred years after Christ the resolution will be facilitated from what we delivered concerning Government civil For first if Government Ecclesiastical be so essential to the subsistence of a Church that without it it cannot be of any continuance without a Miracle it cannot be imagined with any probability of Reason that God or Christ should make one part of his Church and leave it to the liberty and pleasure of Man to make the other but least of all can they be of this opinion who think so sacredly of all Ecclesiastical Orders that to admit any of humane invention or prudence is to prophane the whole Systeme Again upon the grounds laid down in civil Government If Christ be the Author of Government Ecclesiastical in General he must also be the Cause of some one Government in Particular otherwise he could not be the Authour of any at all seeing Institution Political as well as Creation Natural must of necessity have some Object to terminate it as its effect Generals in all cases following Particulars in the things themselves though the way of knowledge or learning these things is to begin with the General and so to descend to Particulars Thirdly to understand what kind of Government Christ instituted in his Church what more certain and compendious way what more equal than to judge rather from matter of Fact than long and uncertain Disputations built on Arguments which are subject to diverse casualties from mans Passion and Interests prosecuted thereby whereas there is evidence sufficient from the thing it self to settle belief in that Point Fourthly we are here to note That when we speak of Government we intend not to comprehend therein all Accruments Ornaments or Additions which happened after the thing it self For these may be and doubtless oftentimes have been the effects of humane Prudence regulated by general Precepts but we speak of the Form it self or the Kind of Government For though we said God was the Author of All well grounded Government and do not mean that every particle thereof or inferiour additional Grace must proceed from the same hand For God having permitted if not ordered that every nation should conform it self in outward matters to the condition of the time and place God must have made for several Ages and several Places several Regiments which no man hath presumed to affirm the Divine Right or Institution extending only to those things wherein all at first agreed So that as children receive from the Nature of man at first created by God in Adam their fouls and bodily shape with the several parts necessarily thereunto belonging but their behaviours gestures gates favour and complexions are commonly derived from their immediate Pareâ—â—s So doth every true Body of Christ every Church receive common forms and shapes from the first Institution of Christ extant in the Primitive times but their particular modifications and customes are owing to to their Spiritual Fathers whether mediate or immediate Which frowardly and peevishly to reject or disobediently to oppose without higher warrant what is it else but to imitate such graceless and unnatural children who are ashamed of their own Parents Fifthly A distinction ought to be put between the nature and degrees of any thing and especially of the Church which had its conception in the womb of the Jewish Church its infancy during our blessed Saviours Tum maxime Deus ex memoria hominum labitur cum beneficiis ejus fruentes honorem dare divinae indulgentiae deberent Lactantius lib. 2. cap. 1. de Origine Erroris 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nazienz Orat 1. contra Julianum abode upon the earth its minority during the Apostolical Age of One hundred years its perfect state soon after the first Christian Emperours advanced it and augmented it with secular strength and glory And it is certain that as the Roman Empire became more corrupt and declined so Christs Empire degenerated in many things contracting deformities in Doctrine and Discipline even from secular advantages granted unto it by the Devotion and Bounty of the best Wishers to it We are not then to be so narrow in our judgment of the Churches state to allow no more to it then when it but just crept out of the womb or when having gathered a little strength it could stand alone but not act according to the prime Institutours intention but as it was habited and affected in its riper years when we may behold that in more conspicuous manner which at first was obscurer yet essentially the same For as nothing is more evident to all but such as resolve they will understand nothing that they dislike than that in nature the Father is made before
the children and not the children before the Parents so is it as plain according to the course of Christs Church and the history of the Scriptures that the people at the first did no more make or appoint their Government or Governours in Christ than they did teach or instruct them For by the word of God were Christians at first begotten to 1 Cor. 4. 15. Philem. 10. a new and spiritual life The method which Christ used in procreating and prosecuting his Church is therefore thus made plain First he himself as the Father and Head of us all under God immediately according to that of St. Paul The 1 Cor 11. 3. Ephes 5. 23. Head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is the man and the Head of Christ is God did by his divine Doctrine and Miracles beget unto himself his twelve Apostles his children these being first consummated by Christ unto a capacity of Fathers also and enabled to multiply into spiritual children of Grace when Christ ceased visibly and politically for he never ceases spiritually to assist and direct his Church were by him as so many Princes of his Ecclesiastical Monarchy commissioned and authorized to dilate the same and amplifie it according to the Power Prescriptions and Grace given them to that end And Christ foreseeing his Kingdom to be of that vast extent that it would surpass the strength and ability of any one man to administer the whole did not leave any Delegate so plenarily endued with Power Ecclesiastical as that all should derive from him as they did from himself For then it had appeared by some Act of Christ and some instance in them in their receiving subordinate power from that eminent Person during his abode on earth which could have been no more derogative from Christ than it is thought to be now by any But the Twelve were alike called by Christ immediately and not the least intimation of any prae-eminence unless in order which cannot be avoided where there is found never so great and just equality Now because they were rather inhabitude and Right than Act Rulers and Fathers of the Church and the whole Earth was to be their Diocess therefore it behoved and was most just that they should set in Common-councel together touching the general design of reducing the whole World to the knowledge and obedience of Christ as we read they did in the Second to the Acts and in the Fifteenth and elsewhere But being enjoyned to depart from Jerusalem and every one to betake himself to such peculiar Quarters of the World as fell to them by Gods Providence and Assignation it was no longer so absolutely necessary to hold assemblies for the special management of each ones proper Cure but full power resided in every Apostle of Christ and accordingly was by them exerted to ordain matters necessary to the Flock collected by them So that notwithstanding what was of publick concernment to the whole fell under the cognizance of all the Apostles as Peers of Christs Kingdom yet were limited Districts or Diocesses disposed of by the councel and authority of one presiding there And if there were called more to consult of that portion of the Church it was rather of humane reason than divine Institution For it was ever far from Gods intention in appointing extraordinary Methods and Rules for his Church utterly to extinguish or evacuate humane Reason which his own hand had planted in mans soul before but it was to be subject to the Superiour Law given by him and where that which was never intended to be of that unnecessary and immense latitude as to take in all contingencies prescribed not otherwise Gods will we may be sure it was that that other help of reason should not be denyed its office and right of ministring to our uses And what is more agreeable to reason then That In the multitude of counsels there is Prov. 11. 14. safety many being able to discern more than one alone and more willing and ready to execute when their head in determining goeth before their hand in executing And on the other side That For the transgression of a Prov. 28. 2. Land many are the Princes thereof Nature it self teacheth us that many Counsellers and few Commanders is the most rational and secure course to prevent discords and confusions But I am far from disputing or arguing this Question any farther than the ground I have laid already will allow and that is only to enquire after matter of Fact in the Government of Christs Church thinking it most reasonable and pious to conclude that to be the only Divine which Christ instituted and that Christ only instituted that which only appeared in the World at his being upon earth and his Apostles after him who though they brought not Ecclesiastical Government to that visible Form and Order as it afterwards shewed it self in to the world increasing with the number and magnificence of professours of Christ yet gave the Idea and Patern in all the main substantial parts of it For as the Father hath sent me even so send I you saith Christ Christ faith John 20. 21. not to any one of his Disciples So send I thee for then it might have been understood so as if he had endowed some single person with such a plenitude of power whereby he might succeed him in presiding over all his other Disciples and consequently over the universal Church but so send I you signifying the imparting of his absolute and entire power unto all his Apostles so far as might consist with the co-ordination founded amongst them and conduce to the benefit of the future Church Between Christ then and his Apostles there was a likeness but no parity or equality of power Between the Apostles themselves there was an equality But upon the raising of a Church and multiplying of Christians immediately sprang up discrimination of Persons and Officers in the Body of the Church Neither can any argue from the Parity of Christs Apostles that there ought to be a Parity also among all that succeed in the Ministerial Office any more than that this Parity should extend it self to the whole Body of the Church For so it was with the Church first of all not only all the Ministers but Members were equal And whether it were simple necessity or humane prudence or divine Inspiration that first moved the Apostles to limit that General Right which Christ had given them indefinitely to Go and teach all Nations and each of them to be universal Pastours in assuming to themselves the special care and tuition of some one place Province or Country it matters not much to enquire For the supposition which some make of an Obligation upon every Apostle to keep himself so strictly unto the commission of Christ empowring him to minister to all Nations that it was not lawful for him of himself nor by general and mutual counsel and consent amongst themselves to be
be in them before and which doth more than countervail such antecedent liberty of simply teaching as was then in some manner fixed Thirdly there was in such cases as this added a Power and Right of instituting others as occasion offered which is unknown to have been in them as Evangelists From it follows that of all the forementioned kinds of Government that of the Church approached neerest to that call'd Monarchical which was only absolute and universal in Christ the Soveraign Head thereof but Ministerially under him and over the Church under their circuit Politically as proper Heads and Rulers and whatever power after extraordinary Callings by Revelation from God ceased any one dispartake of in the Church was ctrtainly at first derived from such single Persons alone however to the solemnity of such ordination others of an inferiour Order concurred thereto And as the Government of the civil World was originally without exception so far as search can be made by the most curious Antiquaries Monarchical though it were not governed by one man alone but by Civil Supream Princes of several Dominions into which the earth was parcelled So though no one Father or Bishop ever presided over all the Christian world yet several single Persons in their respective Provinces governing the Church as Principal the Government of the Church may rightly be termed Monarchical in Particular but Aristocratical as to the whole For as the Apostles were all Monarchs compared with their Proselites Converts and Churches by them founded but were but Peers compared one with another So was it with the Bishops and Patriarchs of the Church succeeding them whereby the Prophesie of Christ in St. Matthew was verified spoken not so much as some mistake it of his Heavenly Kingdome but earthly his Church and its ensuing glory Verily I say unto you that ye which M … â—â— have followed me in the regeneration when the son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve Tribes of Israel That when the Church of Christ should flourish then there should be such as in lieu of the twelve Tribes of Israel should Rule as in Thrones the Church of God under the Gospel They who object against this the words of Christ in Saint Matthew Ye know that the Princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them and Mâ—tt 20 25. 26. they that are great exercise autority upon them But it shall not be so among you Do declare no less against Aristocratical then Monarchical Government yea all Government over the Church And their favourable gâ—osS in behalf of one will be as valid for that which they reject For as it was not at all the mind of Christ that there should be no Governours at all over his Church so doth it not at all appear that what was lawful for many to do was not lawful for one But here the old cheat again takes place to suppose that the Government of one is in it self tyrannical and of many free but neither Christ nor nature ever taught them how to prove this presumptuous imagination And to this may we add another such mistake from St. Peters words That men should not be Lords over Gods heritage And what then Must there be more 1 Pet. 5. 3. than one over a Church and not onely one May a company of Presbyters oblige Christians to do or believe such things and not Lord it but if by a principal Person bearing Rule this same thing be done then is the Precept violated Besides who sees not that hath not a mind to be blind That the Apostle speaks nothing at all in these words of the kind of Government but the exercise of it and abuse Surely if Episcopal Government could not choose but tyrannize and Presbyterial could do nothing but according to Scripture and equity this Objection were unanswerable otherwise not worth the mentioning much less answering as common as it is and as confidently urged And as to that Pretense intended to overthrow our prime ground of Christs institution taken from what was first actually found in the Church viz. That Imparity of Christs Ministers was not found in the Church till about an hundred and forty or fifty years after Christ when it is confessed by the Enemies of Ecclesiastical Hierarchies that it prevailed Let the Huggers of this Device First consider what a pitiful addition is made to their cause from hence seeing that it is undenyable there was a disparity all the Apostles dayes who in order excelled all Ecclesiastical Persons and that almost one hundred years were spent of the said tearm in their time So that about fifty or sixty years only this imaginary Government had its being and then was lost again for fourteen hundred and then was better lost then found and taken up again But a far worse inconvenience spoils this jest as being founded and raised only from conjecture and that conjecture upon the obscurity of those ages not so clearly known as afterwards CHAP. XXIX Of the necessity of holding visible Communion with Christs Church Knowledge of that visible Church necessary to that Communion Of the Notes to discern the true Church how far necessary Of the Nature or Condition of such Notes in General IT being so necessary as we have above shewed to be in communion with the visible Church of Christ and the Nature of things themselves being more intrinsick many times than to characterize sufficiently them to the Enquirer into them it hath been thought necessary to explain them farther by more apparent and observable notices given of them And in the Doctrine of the Church these seem to be of greatest consequence Visibility Universality or Catholickness Sanctity and Perpetuity Of all which we shall briefly speak in order yet first premising somewhat concerning Notes in General For seeing as we have said it is necessary to know the true Church from the false and the Natures of things are often-times so abstruse and hidden from us that we cannot discover them from their own Light therefore it hath been judged very reasonable to pitch upon certain outward Notes eading us unerringly to the knowledge of the thing it self And in truth I cannot wholly approve of that course chosen to certifie us and point out to us the-true Church taken from the very being of it such as are Faithful and sincere Doctrine taught therein Sacraments duly administred Worship purely performed and Discipline rightly constituted because these are rather of the very intrinsick nature and definition it self of the Church than notes and characters outward whereby the nature it self should be certainly known We all indeed without exception consent that that Church is the true Church which is thus qualified and affected believeth aright is governed aright administreth the Sacraments aright and worshippeth aright and in one word which followeth most exactly the Rules of Holy Scripture but in the Assumption and Application is all the doubt and infinite
to the world Upon this Innovating Hereticks were forced to seek subterfuge from revelations and extraordinary discoveries promised as they corruptly understood Scripture by Christ in St. John saying I have yet many things to say unto you but ye Joh. 16 12 13. cannot bear them now Howbeit when the Spirit of truth shall come he will guide you unto all truth c. Hence they collected That Christ communicated not all to his immediate Disciples but reserved diverse things to be imparted extraordinarily to them and the phansie of such extraordinary favours from God is such a bewitching device that few not soundly setled in Faith can chose but expect and thirst after and at last conceit that so God doth deal with them when there is no such matter And of this Sacrilegious and Heretical folly are those Churches no less than simple single persons guilty which under pretense of power in the Church which must not be denyed of declaring the sense of Scripture and Faith do in very deed invent and introduce new Articles of Faith and absurd Scholies unheard of before either in substance or form and say They do but explain only what was before implyed and included in holy Writ For all Articles of Faith all necessary and due Discipline all true Administration of Sacraments wherein the truth of Christian Churches are generally affirmed to consist must long since have been discovered from the Rule of all these or otherwise they who were ignorant of or defective in these could not lay any just claim to be true Churches of Christ So that in truth Antiquity thus understood is an excellent Note of the true Faith and the true Faith not contradicted in worship as is possible more than a Note or Sign of a true Church it is the very Being it self But where Antiquity it self is obscure the condition of a Note according to the Canvasers of this point being to be more cleer than that which is in question it cannot do this good office for us And to argue backward as too many do very incongruously endeavouring to prove that which should prove is to discover the fondness of their opinions and falsness of their cause at the same time For instance to say the Church cannot err in Doctrine therefore we must believe this to be most ancient And to affirm that no man can precisely declare the time and place when such a Doctrine entred the Church taxed for innovation is very absurd as commonly and confidently as it is used For St. Augustine on whose grounds they seem to build this supposition supposed that First no time could be instanced in when such an usance was not in the Church but many times this can be done against pretences to Apostolicalness though the direct time when it began may not be instanced in For whenas most Doctrines of Faith have some practical worship proper 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aristoteles Polit Lib 5. 8. 175. to them and evidencing them such as are the form the matter the rites of prayer none of which recorded in the Church insinuate any such opinions in that age of the Church especially of publick approbation is it not an argument more than conjectural there was then no such thing believed in the Church though we be not able to determine when it first sprung up Again it is very weak and frivolous which is presumed as unquestionable that all abuses and corruptions in the Church had some proper period wherein they must needs show themselves according to that formality as afterwards they appeared in and became notorious No doubt is to be made but points of Doctrine had their conceptions augmentations and progressions insensible as infinite other things in nature and manners have had and daily have A man may better demand the hour in which an Apple began first to rot or the week in which an old Groat began first to be defaced and loose its form than require a determinate point of time or perhaps the year in which such a Doctrine began to be corrupted into an heretical sense and practise But many of these are very exactly and faithfully set down and found short of immemorialness of Tradition as they term it For Succession another note of the Church I find it by some divided into Succession Doctrinal and Personal meaning better than they speak For I know nothing properly succeeding but where something is departed or lost Now the Doctrine of the Church being incessant and perpetual and not diverse from it self cannot be said so properly to succeed it self as to persevere in the Church But if we should pass that order and allow this language yet the thing it self seems here quite to be mistaken it being not at present enquired into the Faith of the Church which if it were granted to be sound and Catholick doth not of it self necessarily and fully infer a true Church and upon the reasons before agreed to viz. Due administration of Discipline to be essential to a true Church but into the Form constituting it a Visible and Formal Church to which is indispensably required proper Pastors and that by the appointment of Christ as St. Paul thus witnesseth speaking of Christ leaving Ephes 4. 11 12 the earth and ascending into heaven and deputing thereupon certain Officers in his stead in a visible ministration which he ceaseth now to exercise He gave some Apostles and some Prophets and some Evangelists and some Pastors and Teachers For the perfecting of the Saints for the work of the Ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ Now it is not necessary here to determine the quarrel about the kind of Officers here mentioned it sufficing to our purpose what is very evident that they who are Governours of the Church must be given to the Church by Christ But Christ acting no longer politically or visibly as hath been said and must be yielded but mystically he cannot be said to ordain any immediately in his own person but by the ministry of others Now how is it possible to distinguish them whom Christ hath appointed to constitute others in the Church from them to whom he hath given no such order but by this succession we now speak of namely a traduction of that faculty which is in one deriving it originally though by many intermediate hands from Christ himself to another succeeding him because as the Apostle to the Hebrews speaks the Priests are not suffered to continue by reason of Death This Hebr. 7. 23. surrogation then of Pastors and Priests is not to be at the pleasure or arbitrement of men to institute but must be by the will of Christ and this will of Christ must be revealed unto us either by the ordinary line and course from himself and Apostles or else must by some extraordinary and miraculous way be made known to men For though we deny it to be Christs practise to commission men to these ends we do not deny it to be
in his power so to do but that he hath so done actually to the fairest Pretenders we shall deny until better demonstrations than can be made from their own asseverations or appealings to the extraordinary effects of their Ministry Christ sayes in the Tenth of John Verily verily John 10â— 1. he that entreth not by the door into the sheep-fold but climbeth up some other way the same is a thief and a robber That the Sheep-fold is the Church that the door is the ordinary way of entring into office in that Church that the Shepheard is Presider over the Church I find none to doubt nor that climbing in at the windows is extraordinary thrusting ones self into Office in the Church nor that such as do so though they be never so conscionable painful and orthodox otherwise are not thieves and robbers if not shearing abusing the Flock yet taking that upon them without ordinary grant which belongs not to them This evil is only remedied by a successive and ordinary transmission of that Power which Christ left with certain peculiar persons he called Apostles with authority to communicate the same to others to the worlds end according to the several ranks and orders of his Ministers of which his Church consisteth So that succession not of Doctrine only but Officers in the Church is no less essential to a Church properly so called than Officers themselves or Discipline And as for the distinction invented without any precedent in antiquity without any warrant from Scripture without any justice or reason humane or divine to stop mens mouths and blind their eyes who are very simple of Vocation internal and external it is utterly rejected as a vain frivolous impertinent phansie For internal Vocation as they called it is nothing but an ability competently serving to such an end but this is no Vocation at all properly any more than it is for me to take anothers purse because God hath given me strength power and opportunity to do so It may be an exception will here be put in against the comparison from the unlawfulness of this latter and not of the former but I suppose as well an unlawfulness in the former though not so notorious as in the latter And adde That however considered in it self it be unlawful for me to spoil another yet if God calls me to it it is not and according to the new Doctrine of Vocation a man is then inwardly called when he is enabled to do a thing But an Outward call too is commended and that ordinary too when things are setled to our mind otherwise extraordinary calling must suffice And truly an extraordinary calling will suffice at any time but then very much better proofs are expected to make such extraordinary Vocation apparent to equal judges than we can any where find in the Apologies of them that rest wholly upon that as their safest Anchorage in this unhappy fluctuating Vocation By what therefore we can judge from the description the Scriptures give us of a formed Church and sentence of the Ancient no Society a Nibilâ—lind est quantum ego quidem intelligo Ordinaria Dei ad altquod munus vocatio quam ab his penes ques est plena legitima de ejusmodi rebus statuendi potestas personae ipsâ—rum judicio non in-idâ—nâ—ae nullo intercedente prava ambitione dolo malisve artibus designatio Sander sonus Praefat ad Tract de Juramento Church can be truly and formally called which wants lawful and ordinary Pastours and Priests and no ordinary Pastours or Priests without due Ordination and no due Ordination but from such who have that power in a right Line communicated unto them in a succession of mortal Persons to an immortal faculty in the Church as may hereafter in convenient place be farther proved So that it may well be admitted that Succession not when one steps up unappointed or illegally appointed into the place and office of another but thus explained is necessary to the Being of a true Church of Christ And yet I do not say it is necessary to Christianity or simply to salvation where it is not despised or scornfully rejected For we may well suppose that Gods promises will notso far fail as to leave a Christian people destitute of such ordinary means of becoming a Church without notorious forfeitures of his grace on their parts or will remit of the general rigor of his Laws requiring Unity of a Church as well as Unity of Faith to the being good Christians and true believers And for these who are most troublesome and loud in demanding Succession or rejecting all Churches defective therein as scarce in saveable condition though I hold it an high temptation of God and provocation of highest displeasure to flock to such Societies as are not known to have this succession of Pastors without such interruption that the Renewal and restitution thereof were meer Laical and consequently void yet where invincible ignorance through education or incapacity natural of judging hath subjected a Christian to that unhappiness who dares exclude him from salvation And the greatest boasters and magnifiers of succession should do well to consider how they can better than hitherto they have quit and secure themselves from the retort of want of succession For however a numerous a glorious Roll is shown of succeeders in their principal See yet we find unanswerable difficulties in their due succession and ordination of which these two will take them up more time and cost them more care and pains than their lives length may suffice to viz. The uncertainty of Succession from Intention necessary to that Sacrament of Ordination which can never be sufficiently known to have been present at that time no though the Ordainer should swear solemnly to it more than Morally which amounts to no moâ—e upon tryal than Probably And the more then probable suspicion of Simoniacal contracts in ascending the Pastoral throne which the common Law declareth nulling such indirect Invasions and voiding Ordinations For the third sign of the true Catholick Church Unity the more I look into it the less I find considerable in it It being necessary according to common Philosophy That every thing which hath a â—eing should be but one and not many and if the Catholick Church be so in this sense what great matter is acknowledged in it above other things For when a thing is divided into many parts it ceases to be what it was before but still there is unity in the Parts severally considered And so if we suppose the Universal Church divided schismaticaâ—ly into distinct and opposite societies it can scarce be supposed but the Parties so divided are though infinite yet in unity with themselves And how then can that which is common to so many be a specifick character of one especially By this separation therefore it may be concluded That one or perhaps both are in fault and guilty but agreeing within themselves equally as well they may
to be for certain reasons they draw at their pleasure out of Scripture and the necessity of our knowledge of it which is as solid a way of proceeding as if I finding my self by natural sense cold another should attempt to demonstrate the contrary because it is Midsommer But this use we may yet make of Universality to jude of Catholickness of Faith taking it for the most constant for time place and persons according as all humane account requires to ascribe that to the more numerous and eminent which is strictly proper only to the whole entire Body as a Councel or Senate is said to decree a thing when the chiefest do so some dissenting surely this is a very probable argument of the Catholickness of that Faith and consequently that Church so believing But what we before observed must not be forgotten here viz. That in all such enquiries as these the Estimate must be taken from the whole Church passed as well as Present and that there is as well an Eminency of Ages as Persons to preponderate in this Case Lastly the advantage Negative from Universality is very considerable to discern the true Faith and Church from false because it is most certain if any Doctrine or Discipline shall be obtruded on the Church which cannot be made evident to have been actually received in the Church and not by colourable and probable conjectures and new senses of Scripture invented to that purpose in some former Age that is Heretical and Schismatical and in no good sense Catholick The last Note which we shall mention is Sanctity which we hold very proper to this end taken abstractedly from all Persons as considered in Doctrine and Principles For if any Church doth teach contrary to the Law of nature of moral vertues of Justice or the like we may well conclude that to be a false Church though it keeps it self never so strictly to the Rule of Scriptures in many or most other things For it is in the power of mans wit and may be in the power of his hands to devise certain Religious Acts and impose them on others which shall carry a greater shew of severity and sanctity than there is any grounds for in Scripture or Presidents in the best approved Churches and yet this is not true Holiness of Believers For to this is principally required that it be regulated and warranted by Gods holy Word Yet neither so directly and expresly as if it were unlawful to act any thing in order to Holiness without special precept from thence For I see no cause at all to reject the ancient distinction found frequently with the Fathers of the Church of duties of Precept and duties of Councel For there ever was and ought to be in Christs Church several ranks of Professours of Christs Religion whereof for instance some live more contemplative some more active lives But if all commendable and profitable States were under Precept then should all sin that do not observe the same but God hath taken a mean course in not commanding some things of singular use to the promoting of Piety in true Believers but commending the same unto us Such are Virginal chastity Monastick life Travelling painfully not only towards the salvatian of a mans own soul but of others likewise and certain degrees uncommanded of Duties commanded as of charity towards our Christian neighbours Watchings unto Prayer and spiritual Devotion which being prescribed no man can determine to what degree they are by God required of us precisely some therefore are left to the Freewill-offerings of devouter persons who thereby endeavour either to assure themselves more fully of their salvation or increase of the glory afterward to be received For as Christ tells us in the Gospel Much was forgiven to Mary because she loved much so shall much be given upon the same reason They therefore that teach contrary to such wholesome and useful means of Holiness as these or the like under perhaps vain suspicion of too great opinion may be had of their worthiness incur at least with me the censure of being enemies to the holiness of Christs Church and render their Churches more suspected for the opposing of them than others for approving or practising them The Holiness then of the Church commending it to the eye and admiration of the World doth consist in the divineness and spiritualness of its Doctrine and Ecclesiastical discipline in use in it exceeding moral civility For it may be that such a severe hand of civil Justice may be held over a people that they may live more orderly and inoffensively to the world than some true Christian Churches but if this be done as often it is out of civil Prudence natural Gravity or a disposition inclined rather to get an estate than riotously and vainly to spend on which brings such scandal to Religion then is not this a sign of a true Church or Christian because it proceedeth not from principles proper to Christian Religion but secular interest how specious soever it may appear to the World CHAP. XXXI Of the Power and Acts of the Church Where they are properly posited Of the Fountain of the Power denyed to the Church Neither Prince nor People Authour of the Churches Power But Christ the true Head of the Church The manner how Christs Church was founded Four Conclusions upon the Premisses 1. That there was alwayes distinction of Persons in the Church of Christ 2. The Church was alwayes administred principally by the Clergy 3. The Rites generally received in the Church necessary to the conferring Clerical Power and Office 4. All are Vsurpers of Ecclesiastical Power who have not thus received it In what sense Kings may be said to be Heads of the Church AFter the Church found and founded as abovesaid the special Acts thereof claim due consideration and the Power or Right of so acting And this Power we make two-fold in General Political and Mystical or Sacramental Of both which we must first enquire after the proper Subject before we treat of the proper Acts thereof That all Power which is given by Christ doth reside in the Church as its subject no man can or doth question But because the Church it self being as is said a Society united in one Faith and administred outwardly by Christian Discipline according to Christs mind admitteth of several senses and acceptations therefore it must be first understood which and in what sense is according to Christs intention the proper seat of this power And before we come to Scriptural grounds we take no small help in this Enquiry from the common state of all Government which we have already shown to be such as is not ascending but descending It cometh not originally nor can from the multitude or people who are the object of this power i. e. the Persons properly to be governed and not governing all the Examples of former Ages confirming not only the unnaturalness and unreasonableness but impossibility of the People governing
Eucharist and especially going upon the grounds of Luther Calvin Perkins and some others of Great note that all Sacerdotal they may call them if they please Ministerial Acts done by him who is no true Minister are really null and void Fourthly we conclude that seeing all Ecclesiastical power as Ecclesiastical doth proceed from Christ and his Successors and that by Ordinary and visible means they who have not received the same by such Ordinary Methods are usurpers of the same whether Political or Mystical And that to deny this to the Church is to deny that which Christ hath given them and such a Principle of the Churches well Being without which it cannot subsist and it not subsisting neither can the Faith it self And to the reason above given we may add Prescription beyond all memory For from Christs time to this day a perpetual and peculiar power hath ever been in the Clergy which hath constantly likewise born the name of the Church to assemble define and dispose matters of Religion And why should not Prescription under Unchristian as well as Christian Governours for so many Ages together be as valid sacred and binding to acknowledgment in the Case of Religion as Civil Matters will ever remain a question in Conscience and common Equity even after irresistible Power hath forced a Resolution otherwise It is true such is the more natural and Ancient Right Civil Power hath over the outward Persons of men than that which Religion hath over the Inward man that it may claim a dominion and disposal of the Persons of even Christian subjects contrary to the soft and infirm Laws of the Church because as hath been said Men are Men before they are Christians and Nature goeth before Grace And Civil society is the Basis and support to Ecclesiastical Yet the grounds of Christianity being once received for good and divine and that Religion cannot subsist nor the Church consist without being a Society and no Society without a Right of counsel and consultation and no consultation without a Right to assemble together the Right of assembling must needs be in trinsique to the Church it self Now if no man that is a Christian can take away the essential ingredient to the Church how can any deny this of Assembling For the practise of it constantly and confidently by the Apostles and brethren contrary to the express will of the Lawful Powers of the Jews and Romans and the reason given in the Acts of the Apostles of obeying God rather then man do imply certainly a Law and Charter from God so to do and if this be granted as it must who can deny by the same Rule necessity of Cause and constant Prescription that they may as well provide for the safety of the Faith by securing the state of the Church as for the truth and stability of the Church by securing the true Faith by doctrine and determination The Great question hath ever been Whether the Church should suffer loss of power and priviledges upon the Supream Powers becomming Christian Or the Supream power it self loose that dominion which it had before it became of the Church For if Christianity subjected Kings necessarily to the Laws of others not deriving from them then were not Kings in so good a Condition after they were Christians as before when they had no such pretences or restraints upon them and so should Christs Law destroy or maim at least the Law of God by which Kings reign But there may be somewhatsaid weakning this absurdity For Granting this That there is a God and that he is to be worshipped and that as he appointeth all which we must by nature believe it seems no less natural to have these observed than the Laws of natural Dominion Now granting that at present which if we be true to our Religion we must not deny viz. That Christian Religion is the true Religion and that God will be worshipped in such sort as is therein contained For any Prince absolute to submit to the essentials of that Religion is not to loose any thing of his Pristine Rights which he had before being an Heathen for he never had any Right to go against the Law of God more then to go against the Law of Nature but it doth restrain his Acts and the exercise of his Power And if the Supream after he hath embraced Christianity shall proceed to exert the same Authority over the Church as before yet the Church hath no power to resist or restrain him Civilly any more than when he was an Alien to it Now it being apparent that Christian Faith and Churches had their Forms of believing and Communion before Soveraign powers were converted and that he who is truly converted to a Religion doth embrace it upon the terms which he there finds not such as he brings with him or devises therefore there lies an Obligation upon such powers to preserve the same as they found it inviolate And truly for any secular Power to become Christian with a condition of inverting the orders of the Church and deluting the Faith is to take away much more than ordinary accrues unto it by such a change It is true the distinction is considerable between the Power of a Christian and unchristian King exerted in this manner because taking the Church in the Largest sense in which all Christians in Communion are of it what Christian Kings act with the Church may in some sense bear the name of the Church as it doth in the State acting according to their secular capacity but much more improperly there than here because there are no inferiour Officers or Magistrates in such a Commonwealth which are not of his founding and institution whatsoever they do referr to him and whatsoever almost he doth is executed by them But Christ as we have shewed having ordained special Officers of his own which derive not their Spiritual Power at all from the Civil and to this end that his Church might be duly taught and governed what is done without the concurrence of these can in no proper sense bear the name of the Church But many say the King is a Mixt person consisting partly of Ecclesiastical and partly Civil Authority but this taken in the ordinary latitude is to begg the Question and more a great deal than at first was demanded For who knows how far this Mixture extends and that it comprehends not the Mystical Power of the Church as well as the Political And how have they proved one more than the other by such a title It were reasonable therefore first to declare his Rights in Ecclesiastical matters as well as Civil and thence conclude he is a Mixt Person and not to affirm barely he is a Mixt Person and from thence inferr they know not what Ecclesiastical power themselves And if he hath such power whether it is immediately of God annexed to his Natural Right or by consent of the Church is attributed unto him For by taking this course we
may possibly to them were this any more than to say They would be at peace and unity with them when they became of their mind did as they would have them and not differ from them But I have transgressed I fear on this subject here at present which yet is not impertinent altogether it proving that it is Lawful to Excommunicate such who agree with us in Faith And the summ of the reason is this viz. Because there are as hath been acknowledged on both sides yea is almost on all sides granted two things essential to the Church Doctrine and Government or Discipline as it is called to act any thing to the violation of either of these may justly subject a man to this Ecclesiastical Censure And however at first sight dissension and opposition to the Rites and practices of a Church may not appear of a mortal nature of themselves as being perhaps about things in nature alterable yet in the consequence making a breach in the wall of the City of God they let in certain ruine and destruction Thieves and Robers And this holds no less to the Justification of the Church in Excommunicating refractory and disobedient persons to the Church in her citations though in truth the ground of her citation be matter of small moment It were indeed much to be wish'd that such severe sentences might not be executed but on occasions of greatest moment not only for the persons sake so excluded but the Churches sake denouncing whose autority must needs be much weakened and her sentence much contemned when upon matters appearing meerly trivial and light it is inflicted And therefore most useful it seemeth That redress of pecuniary pretensions on persons relating to Ecclesiastical Courts should not be by Excommunication but from the Civil Power enabling the Ecclesiastical to exact their dues But where this is not in use and where no other means appears of obliging men to reverence and submit to Ecclesiastical Powers but the punishment Ecclesiastical I would fain have such persons who profess not the utter abolition of such autority and dissolution propound some other effectual way of keeping up the power and autority of those Courts besides Excommunication before they declare so smartly against the abuse of it Lastly whosoever doth by contempt and disobedience first deny the Churches power and in very deed sever himself from it can he or any man of Christian reason or modesty contradict the Churches Act in declaring and formally manifesting what was more closely but really before done by himself So far as a man disobeys and opposes the Church so far is he really separated from it And to be partly on and partly off as some men propound to themselves and please themselves in thinking it free to choose and leave at their pleasure what their private judgements shall lead them to is not at all to clear them from the guilt or imputation of Schismaticalness For all proper Schismaticks agree in many things with the Church which they trouble and divide And every Schismatick stands divided from the Church And may not the censure of the Church by Excommunication most reasonably at least follow a mans own Act and declare that to be so which himself hath made so especially not only thereby or so much punishing the Offendor as securing the innocent and sound by such notice from the like contagion Doth not St. Paul cleerly imply so much when Gal. 5. 12. he saith to the Gallatians I would they were even cut off that trouble you How did these intruders and seducers so trouble the Church as to deserve such Excision or Cutting off By two things principally one whereof follows in the next verse by a presumption of such Christian Liberty which was never intended by Christ for his Church Another was in point Gal. 1. 6 7. of doctrine innovating rather in form than words For it was not another doctrine of the Gospel that was offered to these green and unstable Christians but another Form the easier to prevail upon their Consciences and to alienate them from their true Pastors Such as these would the Apostle have Cut off and therefore very false and frivolous is that ground of Socinian Extract mentioned in the beginning viz. That nothing which in it self hinders not salvation can give just occasion of Excommunication I do not here as many insist much upon the words of Christ in St. Matthew whereby he warrants a man to account him as Heathen and publican Math. 18. 15 16 17. who shall refuse to hear the Church arbitrating and judging within it self because I am of their opinion who expound this not of excommunication from the Church but of a freedom granted to a man to go to the humane Civil Power for justice against such a brother as if he were no better than a Heathen and Publican who will not listen to the voice and judgement of the Church Yet surely this intimates a power in the Church to determine and a duty in the members of it to submit unto the Judgement of it and if a private man may treat one of his brethren as he would a heathen in some cases may not the Church This is the least we can honestly make of Christs Charter given to the Church by St. Peter in Mat. 16. 19. the same Gospel I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven But consideration and limitation of this grievous censure is not to be omitted according to diversity of Persons Relations and the Causes given from whence I suppose arose the distinction of Major and Minor or Greater and Lesser Excommunication of ancient use in the Church And Anathema and Excommunication according to the Ancient differ For Excommunication is nothing else but a denunciation of a person alienated from the Communion of the Church in the mysteries and worship proper to Christians And this we may take to be the Lesser Excommunication but Anathema or the Greater Excommunication besides excluding from Christian Communion added a Curse corporal which the Scripture calls properly a Delivering unto Satan as well for the destruction of Body as Soul Thus was that incestuous person excommunicated by St. Paul For the destruction of the flesh that the Spirit may be 1 Cor. 5â— 5. saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ For though we say that this Anathema was to the destruction of the flesh we mean only Actually as in that state but the end of that was rather the Salvation of it by such outward judgements reducing the offender to repentance This Anathema upon the body by plaguing it being miraculously inflicted hath ceased But yet not all bodily punishments with it taking here bodily punishments not only for bodily pains but bodily and outward losses Of this sort may be those separate men from all Civil Communion
and this is to our brethren whom we have wronged and scandalized And is either publick when we have done any thing against the Church in general by unchristian practises as Murders Sacriledge Uncleanness and such like It was constantly required that such should satisfie the will of the Church of which they were members and undergo penalties or penances judged meet for such offences and not be admitted into brotherly communion until they had suffered for their folly to the content of the Church A laudable necessary practise to be retained still as well that the offender being put to publick shame for publick sins might amend his life and the Church may be preserved from the like contagion of sin For notorious offenders being excluded from the Communion were not restored to it until such satisfaction as this was made Another satisfaction much of the same nature with this is that which ought to be made to the utmost of our power to them whom we have wronged by unjust words or deeds against them which is necessary for the obtaining of Gods mercy and pardon to us For if we must forgive the injuries done unto us if we would have God forgive us our trespasses ought we not much more to give every man his due in point of justice The first seems to be a Law purely Evangelical but the second Natural supposed to the Gospel as imperfect yet most necessary The Rule therefore amongst Divines is most certain The sin is not pardoned until the thing Non remittitur peccatum nisi restituatur ablatum cum restitui potest Aug. Epist 54 taken away be restored Now we take away a mans Good name and we take away his Estate unjustly and before we can say we have repented we must be careful to our utmost to make this Satisfaction or Restitution Where we take away a mans life we cannot indeed ever satisfie the Party no though we should dedicate our own lives to him yet so far as we can even outwardly humble our selves by afflicting our bodies and purses and especially endeavouring by extraordinary acts of bounty and Charity to preserve the lives of such who stand in need of our assistance and relief It was no satisfaction to him whose eye was put out or tooth broken to have the eye or tooth of his Adversary to be struck out for it Yet it shewed in the Moral sense thus much that our utmost indeavour must not be wanting to make satisfaction to them we have wilfully spoiled oppressed defrauded or otherwise injured For otherwise it doth not appear how a man dying conscious of such apparent injustices as these can escape the damnation of hell A new stupifying notion of Faith freely justifying may perhaps be so ministred to him as to quiet his Conscience but save his Soul it cannot where it is in a mans power to make recompence and satisfie injuries and injustices But because man is naturally so partial unto himself as for his ease and self-love to make the best construction of Gods mercy inconditionate to him and his sins against God It was never in open notorious scandalous sins permitted to the offender to judge for himself but his actions were subject to Ecclesiastical censures and proper punishments imposed upon him to bring him by those outward censures to inward remorse Which severe censures when they were observed to have a great effect upon the Penitent were divers times remitted in part lightened and shortened by the favour of the Church which were called therefore Indulgences Following herein the precept and example of St. Paul in the like case of the incestuous Corinthian excommunicated out of the Church who demonstrating sincere and extraordinary repentance for such his fact St. Paul with a 2 Cor. 2. 6 7. fatherly affection puts a stop to the utmost process of his Penance saying Sufficient to such a man is this punishment which was inflicted of many So that contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him and comfort him lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with over-much sorrow c. Lest the punishment imposed on grievous offenders meeting with a tender spirit should break the heart rather then humble it and cast him away whom they intended to save thereby a seasonable relaxation was alwayes at hand to the restauration of such an one But as for that sense and gross abuse of Indulgence whereby it is turned to remit sins aforehand without due humiliation passed and not only so but to reach the torments supposed to be inflicted on Christians after this life in Purgatory it is so absurd in it self so unknown to all ancient Christian ages so inconsistent with the doctrine of the Gospel and nature of Repentance that as it is impudence in that Church to pretend any of these to favour it so is it stupidity in any person to lend any credit to it or have any relvance upon it It is usually said That few souls going out of this life so pure and thorowly cleansed as to be fit presently to enter into the holy place of heaven where no unclean thing shall come it is requisite there should remain some place to perfect the purgation of the Soul begun here And that the power of the Church especially the reputed Universal Father of it extendeth in like manner to the mitigating and shortning of those purgative torments as to the penances inflicted upon Penitents on earth Truly if they could but prove what they as yet have not taken the boldness so much as to say that they or the Church inflicted the torments of Purgatory upon sinners there detained I should be apt to believe they could take off the Rod they laid on but never pretending to that I marvel they should pretend to this any more than they dare to the removal of a Fever by an indulgence only because they judged the Party so ill affected to have suffered and been sick long enough There being not the least ground in holy Scripture to enable them so far nor any argument out of Scripture to perswade themselves of this power so great as temporal gain and filthy cursed lucre more like to damn the pretenders to it then save the tormented out of misery But this is upon supposal made of such a Purgatory but that it is only supposed and no real existence appears from most ancient Tradition retained to this day in the Church of Greece which indeed taking occasion from Origen's singular opinion doth affirm a Purgation and that by fire at the last day of the general Resurrection when by an unknown manner God shall cause a purgation and change of the corruptible body of man into an incorruptible condition more fit for heaven and glory Austin sometimes Aug. Civ Dei lib. 21. c. 24. doubted whether any such place or state after death were wherein Souls were detained for their emendation and preparation for Heaven He grants it possible and that it is all but actually and positively so to
necessary to Salvation are as clear as those under the Old But this is not so clear as Circumcision To which we answer That this is as true taking in the whole manifestation of Gods will For the clearness of the Sacraments enjoyned in the Old Testament do conduce to the clearness of them signified by them And there needs nothing more be said for the clearing of the necessity of these than to admit them to have succeeded those two in the Old Testament And we find not such necessity particularly imposed upon us of receiving the Eucharist as was upon the Israelites of receiving the Paschal Lamb but general necessity without determination of time or place the Gospel expresseth unto us upon the hope of salvation which is sufficient The vertue and Efficacie of this Sacrament above-touched proves this farther but it needs it self be proved according to those extravagant opinions brought by Modern Divines into the Church that it is only a seal of our Faith and eternal Favour of God in Predestinating us to Glory As if First all according to their judgements that were baptized were ordained to Glory and this were assured them by that Seal Or Secondly that God had Predestinated any to Life without the necessary means to it Or that remission of sins Actual and the expiation of Original were not necessary to the entring into Life or that God had so simply and absolutely ordained us to heaven that he had not ordained these two as Means to obtain Perkins on Gal. 2. v. 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theod Haret Fabul 5. c. 2. this For what can be a more horrible prophanation of this Sacrament then to say with one upon the Galatians We are born Christians if our Parents believe and not made so in Baptism Which is contrary to the Doctrine of our Catechism and the whole stream of Primitive Doctors of the Church from whom we may Gather this threefold Effect of Baptism First it is not only a sign as the same Persons say of our Covenant but it is the Covenant it self made between God and Man For God indeed doth make a Promise but he maketh no Covenant otherwise than by Baptism God made a Promise to Abraham that his seed should be blessed before Circumcision but he made no Covenant with him but by Circumcision nor is any actually in the Covenant of Faith but by being baptized Doth not the Scripture expresly say that God gave Abraham the Covenant of Act. 7. 8. Circumcision Circumcision then was not only a Sign of that Covenant though that it were but an Essential part of it Circumcision therefore was a sign in a twofold sense First in respect of the Covenant under the Law as words whereof the Covenant consists are signs of the Will of the Covenanters to the ear and works outward are in like manner signs of the same to the Eye which sort of signs are not distinct from the thing it signifies For God Covenanted with Abraham that he should use those Ceremonies Now this outward visible Covenant was a sign of an inward and invisible relating to the righteousness of Faith as St. Paul saith of Abraham And he received the Sign of Circumcision a Seal of the Righteousness Rom 4. 11. of Faith So that is the Second way in which Circumcision may be said to be a sign viz. As the whole Sacramental Covenant of which it was a part signified the Covenant of Faith into which we are entred by Baptism as the Jews into the other by Circumcision A Second effect of Baptism is to wash away all sins as well Original as Actual of which that Prophesie of Zacharie is generally understood In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and Zechar. 13. 1. to the inhabitants of Jerusalem For sin and for uncleanness To which St. Paul agrees in his Epistle to the Ephesians speaking of the Church That Eph. 5. 26. he might sanctifie it and cleanse it by the washing of water by the word Where the Word sanctifieth the Water and the water sanctifieth the Person which it can no otherwise do then by washing off the sins of the Soul As St. Peter hath it Not the putting away of the filth of the flesh but the answer 1 Pet. 3. 21. of a good Conscience towards God That is at the time of baptism whereby the filth of the Spirit necessarily implied to make up the correspondence is put away And St. Paul telleth the Corinthians They were washed 1 Cor. 6. they were Sanctified viz. By Baptism But whether Original sin be so far extinguished in the baptized as no more remains should be found is much doubted to which we briefly and clearly answer from the distinction of Sins For sometimes the Cause of sin is termed sin Sometime the Effect of Sin is called Sin whereas Sin is properly the Evil Act it self or the omission of an act due from us Original Sin in us is not so properly called Sin as it was in Adam who actually sinned and that with a consent of his own will But it is rather the Effect of his Actual transgression which doth originally adhere to us and is called sin upon this threefold account First because it is the necessary effect or consequence of Adams Sin as we find Moses to speak in Deuteronomy And I took your sin the Calfe which ye made The Calfe was the fruit of their Sin and Deut. 9. 21. not their sin it self So is that evil Effect the Sin Original because it is the evil consequence of it Secondly It is Sin because it doth partake of the nature of sin in one of the principal parts making up sin They are two The Obliquity of the Act or Deformity and disagreement to the accurate Law of God and the disobedience of the will and pravity thereof This latter original sin as it was actual in Adam had as well as the former but so is it not with us There can be no such disobedience in the Will where there is no Will. There is no will in Infants besides the remote faculty it self and therefore all sin yea all humane acts requiring consent of the Will original sin cannot be sin in this sense But taking sin for a dissonancy from 1 Joh. 3. 4. the Law and Rule as St. John doth and that conformity as is justly required by the Law certainly that Original depravation and corruption found generally in our natures at our first entrance into the World may truly be called sin because it makes us to differ so much from that God made us and intended us to be Thirdly Original sin hath this likewise denominating it sin that it is the cause of sin that original inclination to sin being that which moves us all unto the actual commission of sin which St. Paul surely aimeth at where he saith Now then it is no more I that do Rom. 7. 17. it but sin that dwelleth in
Sanctified by the word and â— Tim. 4. 5. Prayer But the word and Sanctification there are no preaching or consecration but only signify that God by the Gospel which is his word proper removed the sentence of uncleannesse from things so judged to be under the Law and set them as free as other reputed Clean But prayer's proper Act and Office it is to bring down a special Benediction upon Sacramental and Familiar food On the other side the difference being so vast and Sacred between Common Creatures of bread and Wine and the Sacramental it was lookt upon as a thing of greatest use and concernment to all believers to know whether such consecration was performed or not But where the form was so loose and indetermined as it must needs be consisting in the various and Prolix office belonging thereunto how could it possible be diserned when the Host was consecrated and whether seeing neither the whole Canon could be said thereunto absolutely necessary nor could it be assigned what part thereof essentially and essectually performed he Consecration Hereupon the Latine Church hath taken upon them to define the Conversion of the Elements into Christ for that they make Consecration to a very few precise words used by Christ at the First Institution of his Holy Supper viz This is my Body and This is my Blood And I have not found how the Arguments on either side can be well answered while the Opinion of trans-elementation or such supposed conversion stands Good and is accepted but otherwise it is no hard matter to answer Both. For supposing not a change of the proper natures and substances of the Elements into the Body of Christ naturall What inconvenience would it be to be undetermined by a certain number of words when the mystical change was wrought granting that this change Relative is made by the word and Prayer as the change of water in baptism is made not by any special number or form of words but by the Office whether longer or shorter And therefore the necessitie of putting the whole virtue in those few words recited was received presently upon the doctrine of Transubstantiation which is an argument that the Greek Church never admitted it in the Latin sense however I know they would not in their Councels contend with them about that but kept themselves to the tradition of their Predecessors who restrained not the Consecration to such number of words but must have with the like prudence and necessity have done so had they so apparently and expresly received such a simple conversion as being true all Christians ought to be so punctually assured of and venerate that nothing in their Creed could be more necessary and not contented themselves with the Relative change only of the things themselves which precisely to know stood them not so much in hand seeing the Reverence given to the Visible objects could not exceed that communicable to Creatures It may be granted therefore that the words of Christ are so necessary that Consecration cannot rightly be performed without them but yet denied to be so operative that upon the plain recitation of them they should presently effect that great alteration of them as the Story I make no doubt feigned to beget belief of this new opinion implieth telling us That certain Shepheards while it was the custom to pronounce the Canon of the Mass openly having learned it Henorius in Gemma Animae 1. 103. and recited it over their bread and wine which they had before them in the field as they were at their ordinary Meal the bread was turned visibly into Christs body and the Wine into his Blood and that the Shepheards were struck dead from heaven Whereupon it was decreed in a Synod that from thence forward no man should rehearse the said Canon Audibly or out of Sacred Places or without Book or without Holy Vestments or without an Altar A tale as likely to be true as the thing they would prove by it And so let them pass together while we proceed to the CHAP. XLVI Of the Participation of this Sacrament in both Kinds The vanity of Papists allegations to the Contrary No Sacramental Receiving of Christ in One kind only How Antiquity is to be understood mentioning the receiving of one Element only The pretended inconveniences of partaking in both kinds insufficient Of Adoration of the Eucharist SECOND Thing formally necessary to this Sacrament which is Celebration in both Kinds or Bread and Wine In treating whereof we must do so much Justice to the Cause as to acknowledge a reasonable distinction between the Sacrament it self and the Communicants in it To the former I suppose it is agreed that indispensably both Elements are necessary and Essential and that there can be no Sacrament without them both whatever solemnity may be acted to the eye or ear For the Sacrament noâ— being a thing of natural force or vertue but instituted the very formality of the Institution consisting in the joint concurrence of both Elements the Removing of One is the Adulteration of the Whole and destruction neither can that be said to be a Sacrament of Christs Institution but if at all of mans devising Neither do I see how the argument should not hold in the Participation of that Sacrament as well as Consecration viz that as consecration in one Kind only maketh not a Sacrament so communication in one Kind where both are in being should be receiving the Sacrament For the natures of things as Aristotle hath it are like numbers which with the addition or Substraction of one change their kind We do not make Bread of the Nature of Wine or on the contrary but we make them both equally of the nature of that Sacrament which by Christs own Institution was an Aggregate thing constituted of both and therefore to withdraw or deny one is in effect to deny both And the Evasion to salve this is both ridiculous and prophane which saith The blood is contained in the Body of Christ and therefore in taking one both are received But 't is nothing so For the Blood of Christ in the Sacrament is no more contained in the Body than the Body in the blood And besides we say that he who not at all receives the Cup cannot at all receive the signified body of Christ but only the signifying Again How can this assertion consist with the opinion of an Incruent Sacrifice For either the Sacramental Body of Christ hath Blood in it or it hath not If it hath then is it a Bloody and not Incruent Sacrifice For I think there is no ground for a man to say a Sacrifice was called Bloody or Cruent because only Blood was shed before it was Sacrificed and not because even at that time it contained blood in it For Cruent and Incruent are the same in the Law from whence the Gospel borrows this Phrase as Animate and Inanimate Sacrifices If it hath not how can it be said to have the blood
us but nothing could suffice to lay aside the proper cerimonies used at the Institution or form of it but such an opinion as that of Transubstantiation â—ellarmin It now sufficing according to moderner Judgments that the several Wafers now in use were all one when they came first from mill and are broken by the Teeth in actually receiving them whereas Christ represented the unity of his mystical Members and Fraction of his Natural Body by the Forms set before his Disciples the better to affect our hearts and quicken our devotion To the same end in Ancienter though not first dayes of Christianity there was an Elevation of the Mysteries made by the Priest to shew only how Christ was Lifted up on the Cross for our sins but upon the doctrine and perswasion of transubstantiation this was corrupted and perverted to the drawing people to a direct Adoration terminated in the Visible objects and not as was anciently used from that Action to take an occasion of worshipping Christ himself with a seqestration of their mind from their senses To this likewise pertains the Grosser devotion for many hundred years impractised and unknown to Christians that not only Adoration to God and Christ should be made by all who approched as Communicants to these Holy Mysteries but that the Host should be on purpose publickly exposed to the view of all enterers into the Church where it is with an injunction to exhibit all devout and divine worship to it which invention the Fathers and all Christian Churches were holy ignorant of for many hundred years and never was there so much as a Feast of Corpus Cristi till Urbane the Fourth instituted one about the year 1263. And the Adoration of the Host as Christ himself much later But if such an opinion had been of any tolerable Antiquity in the Church how could it be avoided but such direct and open Adoraâ—ion should have been given much more early it being a most ancient Principle of Christian Faith that Christ was God and of common humane reason that God is to be worshipped And yet no mention made of such Adorations as are of late introduced and required which is an argument they never believed as now the Romanists do for had they they must have necessarily done as they do But a stop must be put to this luxuriant Subject to keep our selves in the Limits presribed to our selves and here let it be Only having hitherto spoken of the Preparatories to Christian Faith the nature Kinds Acts effects and Lastly subject which is the Church and of this again in its Political and Mystical Capacity and Power which consists in the due Administration of the Sacraments as well Properly as Improperly and Equivocally so called It remains now to conclude and Crown the present doctrine of the Church with that which is most contrary of all things to the Nature of a Visible Church and that is Schism For by this unnatural state the true Nature of the Church is more illustrated and the Unitie of it by the explication of this Separation and Dis-union called Schism CHAP. XLVII The Conclusion of the Treatise of the subject of Christian Faith the Church by the treating of Schism contrary to the Visible Church Departure from the Faith real Schism not formal as to the outward form Of the state of Separation or Schism Of separation of Persons Coordinate and Subordinate Of Formal and Vertual Schism All Heresie vertually Schism not formally Separation from an Heretical Society no Schism From Societies not Heretical Schism Heretical Doctrine or Discipline justifie â—eparation How separation from a true Church is Schism and how not In what sense we call the Roman Church a true Church Some instances of Heretical Errours in the Roman Church Of the Guilt of Schism Of the notorious guilt of English Sectaries The folly of their Vindications That the Case of them and us is altogether different from that of us and the Church of Rome Not lawful to separate from the Vniversal Church VVHile we treat of the Church it must be alwaies remembred that we intend not to speak of the Invisible Church as it is taken for a select number supposed to belong intimately and inseparably to Christs invisible Body of which no knowledg or account can be had but by sensible outward things but we altogether enquire of the Visible Church which though it be not alwaies Actually seen or discerned from other Societies especially pretending to be Churches of Christ yet must alwaies be Visible though not conspicious And it would be a gross mistake in any so to judge of the Church Visible and Invisible as of distinct Churches or necessarily distinct parts of the same Church because the same persons may at the same time be of the Visible and Invisible Church This distinction then is to be allowed no farther than as it insinuates to us the Several States of the Members of the same Church the Church in nature being but One according to several testimonies of Holy-Writt and the very nature of all Communities and much more of the Church which is to be an Aggregate Body consisting of many parts by no natural Bond or influence united together but by divine Falsae Professionis Imagine utimur si cujus nomine gloriamur ejus instituta non sequimur Leo. Mag. Serm. 5. de Jejun 7. Mensis and Spiritual Which is manifested by certain outward Acts which renders and denominates such a society of Men Visible as a Church of Christ These Acts are principally two The profession and declaration in word or writing of the true Faith and the Exercise of those Graces and workes which that Faith requires in Religious worship and Obedience That and in what degree of necessitie this Church must be One as well as Visible is before declared and here only repeated to give light to the nature of Schisme now to be explained For to omit the Criticismes and various acceptations of the word Schism as not necessarie we shall proceed by degrees to shew these two things concerning it The Nature and Guilt of it For the Nature of Schism it doth appear from the Unitie and conjunction of Christs Body of the Church consisting in two things Communion with Christ the Head and mutual Communion of the members one with another the contrary to this must needs be Discommunion and Separation But there being two parts in Communion a Material or the things in which men communicate as faith it selfe and the substantial Part of Christian worship And a Formal the Actual outward exercise of this The First of these though it be really yet is not formally Schism as may appear more fully by and by because all Schism doth suppose some agreement with and Relation to that One Body the Church but where the foundation of such Relation is destroyed there the whole perishes And therefore a division from the Faith of Christs bodie the Church being either Total and that again either Negatively when
alledge in there excuse and Defence They are readie to return but they cannot be admitted but upon unreasonable Terms and conditions How does this appear if it should be denied as without all peradventure it will Must not the Defendents be here forced to take their grounds of Apologie and Justification from the very things themselves under debate and put in their exceptions against the terms upon which they are to be receiv'd or condemn themselves Neither will it suffice to say We shall be hardly used or beaten if we return to such severe Masters and therefore we will keep out For they may deserve it and though nature teacheth a man as it did Hagar to flee from her Mistris Sarahs Tents for fear of blows yet God and Justice and Christian Charity advise us to return to our Duty It must then be necessarily alledged and made good That we deserve not to be so ill used or rather that it is ill usage which we fore-see shall befall us and that the case so standing it is not our duty to return and all this can no waies possible be made good but by examination of the matter it self And that which will Justifie us from not returning will also warrant our free Separation at first T is the cause then that makes the Separation Schism or not An Instance whereof we have in the famous Schism of the Donatists which almost all Christians now adays confess to have been notorious Schismaticks because they could not make good their Reasons which induced them for could they they had not been Schismaticks as a sober Author notes upon Optatus thus If those things were true which Albaspinus Observat In Optat pag. 3. the Donatists laid to Caecilianus and Mensurius and Caecilianus had polluted themselves with Idolatry The Donatists had offended nothing against the Discipline and Canons of the Church refusing to communicate with Caecilianus and his Companions That is they had not been Schismaticks if so be they could have made good their Principal Charges against the Church And this we may bring home to our selves as now we stand devided from other Churches and particularly that of Rome For if the Corruptions in doctrine and Practice be not sufficient to justifie our present posture of opposition if they had not before we left them departed from the true faith if they were not really and materially Schismatiques before we were divided from them then surely we were at our separation and so continue For to say We have a willing mind to unity we have Charity so great that we earnestly desire Reconciliation with them is to deceive the world and our selves and encourage and justify Schism in others who no doubt will all pretend to so much charity as to declare themselves willing to embrace unity upon their own terms But in such cases we cannot be said to go to them though in outward apparence we may seem so to do as they come to us The question therefore is to be put under the circumstances as now they are and as the Case is now with them And in that it ought and may be roundly and resolutely answer'd We neither can nor ought nor will re-unite and yet well enough free our selves from Schism upon the account of the Justness of the occasions and Causes there found and given us to divide from them Then ought it to be enquired for this they passionately call for what are those errors which that Church is subject to for which a Separation may be Legitimated and not participate of the nature of Schism It is commonly and with general consent averted and that even by leaving Schismaticks amongst us That Corruption in Act or manners is not sufficient to warrant a Separation from a Church subject to them and so infected no not perhaps though Idolatry it self should be too common amongst them in it when no necessity lies upon the particular Members to be obnoxious to the same the doctrine of Christ bearing up its head above it and obeyed truly by others But when Evil actions and notorious errours in Fact shall come to that height as to be reduced to doctrine and formed into an heretical or Idolatrous proposition as in time it must of necessity be it being natural as well to all Churches as persons to defend by argument what they choose to practise and be taught publickly then doth that Church become truly Heretical and Idolatrous and from that Church which hath so far departed from the Faith any Church or person may lawfully depart without Scruple of Schism though such separation be not absolutely necessarie because though the infection be common it is not necessarily so general that all should be obliged to espouse it and be corrupted by it but when to this degree of doctrine shall be added a third which is of Precept and such unsound and pernicious opinions shall be imposed on others and exacted of all there it is not only lawful but necessary to salvation to divide from such a pretended Church of Christ I mean a necessity of Precept though not of Means as if it were not possible that a man should be saved who liveth in an Heretical or Idolatrous Church though with those many circumstances of a general Right Intention humble walking with God and invincible ignorance of the more pure and Christian Faith and worship For there is undoubtedly a Mean between these two Necessity to Salvation and Necessity of Damnation Well might Athanasius say Whosoever will be saved it is necessary that he hold the Catholick Faith and add yet farther Which Faith except a man do keep whole and undefiled without doubt he shall perish everlastingly and so give us the particulars of that Faith so necessary For he means no more than that such Errors are in themselves damnable But heresies do not work after the manner of such natural Causes which have such effects infallibly but may be said notwithstanding naturally to tend to such events which yet may be prevented by various Allayes of Circumstances both inward and outward impeding such Effects The Consideration of which possibility of escaping the ordinary danger can no ways excuse a man or confirm him in such errours but the common and as you may say natural tendence of them to ruine and perdition strongly oblige him to relinquish that Church wherein it is only possible by vertue of some extraordinarie indulgence of God to come to salvation and whose errours are of themselves damnable So if the Question be put as generally it is Whether for example a man may not be saved in the Roman Church The answer is abundantly sufficient within Religion and Divinitie though perhaps not so formal in Logick That they certainly may be damn'd and that for holding the Faith and worship there commanded and received with full approbation And this is sufficient to call any sober Christian off from that communion though there may occur so many mitigating Circumstances as to a Person of
that communion which may detain any man of Christian modesty and Charity from pronouncing such an one to be infallibly damn'd or out of possibility to salvation And if it be hereupon demanded What difference we put between Infidels and such corrupt Christians seeing diverse have undertaken to assert a Possibility of salvation to them also living exactly to the Light and Rule of Nature in them I answer not absolutely at present dashing the argument a-pieces by denying the supposition and their colourable proofs thereof but demonstrating a vast discrimination between the one and other condition For commonly where Heresies which are so properly called and not Gentilism as they are which destroy the first Principles of Christianity are taught and maintained there are to be found all truths necessarie to salvation in a Christian sense For the Holy Scriptures we suppose are there received and submitted unto which are able to make a 2 Tim 3. 16 17. man wise unto salvation and thorowly to furnish him unto all good works And the Records of the Church and ancienter practise good guides against the rocks way-laying a man in his course to Heaven And the want of actual communion with a Church doth then only expose our souls to Perdition when it is wilfully and causelesly slighted and contemned And then only doth Separation visible 〈◊〉 less Visible alienation of mind and affection put on the nature of Schism And there are two general defects in a Church which justify Separation according to those two things we have shewed do constitute a Church Doctrine of Faith and Divine Regiment called commonly Discipline If a Church errs notoriously in the former no Separation can be called Schism oâ— if defective not in Government absolutely for without some Government it could not be so much as a Society but in the Government oâ—dained for it because then it should not be a Christian Society For the faith of Christians held do not make a Christian Society but the Christian Regiment Christian Regiment also I call that not whereby Christians are Governed for Civil Governments are common to Heathens and Christians but that which is Proper to Christians as Christians and was instituted by Christ for Christians and not invented out of mens wise brains and accommodated to the Church and perhaps called Divine to give it greater credit and place amongst Christians Of which we have alreadie spoken It being a common rule amongst the Ancients Clemens Alexand Stromal immutable with me There can be no true Flock without true Pastours And there can be no true Pastours where they are not set over the Flock according to Christs known and received will but some presumed tacit and extraordinary Vocation as they term it when there is an entrance by the Window and not by the Door From hence it doth appear how uncertain and confused their notion and position is who without any more adoe conclude all those to be Schismaticks and that upon their own Principles and Concessions who separate from a Christian Societie which they acknowledge to be a true Church For very great is the ambiguity both of Separation and True Church First Separation is as we have before noted either of Subordinates or Co-ordinates And of Subordinates either simply or with Restriction Simply subordinate I call them not comparitively with Christs Imperial Power but with all External power who by divine Right of Providence owe direct obedience to their Pastours in all things not inhibited by the Law of God to which all Spiritual Pastours are to be no â—ess subject than the sheep themselves And thus every Bishop is true Head and Governor of that Flock which under Christ is committed to his Care and Custodie But in like manner is not that Bishop subject to the Metropolitane and much less that Metropolitane to his Patriarch For these are but Ecclesiastical Constitutions and of no distinct Order though Degree According to which obligations of obeying the refusing to obey and dis-uniting ones self from the Governours of the Church doth aggravate or extenuate the Division and the guilt thereof And without all peradventure may one Church divide from another upon less grounds then the Members of one Church separate from the more immediate Head of the same How thick do instances stand in Ecclesiastical History of Churches who by vertue of their Respective Governours have been divided and yet both remain true Churches Again a True Church is said so to be more than one way viz. As to Being absolutely and Being perfectly We know that every Errour in Doctrine though great nay though heretical doth not presently destroy the nature of a Church absolutely though it takes away from the perfection of a Church How that opinion was delivered by the Fathers viz. That Heresie destroyes the Church we have Cyprianus Epistola 52. â— gat Novatianos eâ—â—e Christianosâ— shewed in part speaking of Heresie and now may add farther that the the same persons of old or their Co-equals denied an Heretique to be a Christian also and therefore they are to be understood of the such foul and unchristian Heresies which rased the foundation of faith it self as did the Valentinians the Gnosticks the Marcionites and such like For t is now agreed to That unless a man be a Christian he cannot be an Heretique Or if at any time they spake of more tolerable Heresies not wholly inconsistent with Christianity it self then they laid the burden of Damnation upon that accessorie but separable Aggravation Uncharitableness which alone and especially conjoined with such errours exposed to damnation But as it is with the Natural Man it is with the Spiritual There are some parts Essential and Vital which cannot be wanting or corrupted but the Whole must loose its nature and denomination and there are others not absolutely Essential which are called Integral without which the Body may possible subsist but not be perfect in its material Parts And so it is with the Body of Faith consisting of so many Articles or members as Parts some Vital and essential some necessarie to its perfections but not its Being absolutely And a Church may be called a true Church which is defective or Excessive in these though not in them And yet we need not betake our selves to that explication by some used of a True-man and a Thief to express how a Church may be a True Church and an erroneous one at the same time For the nature of this truth we ascribe unto the Church consisting only in Morality If the Church failes in that the Nature of it failes as it doth not in a man when he is corrupted with falsness and vice But this we say That although all Truths are equally true as to the nature of Truth it self they are not of equal importance and use to us or to a Church Therefore such a Latitude being in the notion of a True Church how can any man so confidently say that No Church can separate from the Church
of Rome but they must make themselves thereby Schismatiques before God though before the Church they cannot be condemned for such qualifying this hard saying with this Supposition only That the Church of Rome alwayes had and hath Salvation in it as a true Church though corrupted For that we may and do call a True Church wherein the principles of Christianity are kept intire as to the most fundamental of them but withal this hinders not but diverse things at the same time and by the same Church which are damnable may be found in it For in the same house saith St Paul there are Vessels to honour and dishonour which we may as well interpret of Tenets of faith as of the Professours of the Faith And in the same Dispensatorie are both Poisons and Cordials yea in the same dish may be found Food sufficient to nourish and destroy shall we therefore not be careful to avoid the whole because we do acknowledge the wholesomness of so many in it Who knowes not that there are monstrousnesses in Excess as well as defect And that it suffices not to keep a man in communion with a Church that all things necessary are therein contained when withal many things not only unnecessary but pernicious are shuffled together with them If we can therefore shew as we suppose we have and can that the Roman Church alloweth and propoundeth many heretical dogmes many Idololatrical practises what will it avail them to have it granted them that all truths are extant there in the Monuments of their Church It will here infallibly be replied by them That it cannot be that a Church at the same time can hold all things needful in Faith and worship and yet maintain such errours as are charged upon them To which I say and grant That 't is not possible they should hold the same things as contrary or appearing so unto them But really they may and actually doe First as Philosophers should of contraries In gradu remisso not Intenso In the remisser and lower degrees not the extremest Secondly They may hold contraries really though not formally and as contrary For instance They may hold this fundamental opinion That God alone is to be worshipped with that divine worship which is the supreamest of all And they may hold that such a thing for example the Host is very God which verily is not God and consequently may teach the worship of such a reputed God Their Churches faith if it teaches strictly that only the true God is to be worshipped is inviolate and sound in Thesis But their Perswasion that such this is is an errour in fact rather than in Faith which contradicts the former opinion really But we hold That it is necessary to salvation that we erre not in such gross facts though we abominate detest and renounce the sin never so solemnly And the like may we say in many points of difference between us and them when they hold the proposition in General sound and good but by help of infinite and unintelligible distinctions word it out and ware off the imputation but not the Guilt of Errour Of the number of which things hard to be understood is that consideration of Schism before God and Schism before the Church with an implication that Separation from a true Church makes men Schismaticks before God though not before men because for example The Church of Rome cannot oblige any body to stand to the Autority which it so abaseth namely by breaking the Canons of the Church It is true A Church or Man may be a Schismatick before God and not before the Church But it cannot possibly be imagined how a man can be a Schismatique before men and from men and not before God But if it could be were we not in a very fair way to hell if we had no more to answer for than our Schism before God Were not our whole Church Schismatical and as good as lost though men took no notice of it It doth not follow therefore neither is it confessed that all are Schismaticks who separate from a true Church unless the separation be from it As it is true For we have shown that a Church true in essentials may fail in Integrals And it is no hard matter to show that a Church Erring in doctrines constituting the body of Faith may be separated from without Schism And the reason proving this is because that such Churches are alreadie really Schismatical through the said errours and it is not only lawful but a duty to separate from Schismaticks For so saith St. Paul We command you brethern in the name of the 2 Thes 3. 6. Lord Jesus Christ that ye withdraw your selves from every brother that walketh disorderly and not after the tradition which he received of us And what Traditions do we think St Paul intendeth there Only Ecclesiastical Canons and decrees of Councils for the better Government of the Catholick Church That this he may mean I denie not but that no more I denie For he that offends against the Faith offends against the Traditions To the Church but he that breaks the Constitutions offends against the Traditions Of the Church only which are of far inferiour nature It may well be doubted whether breaking of the Canons of the Church only can justify a Separation from a Church because they are not so much the Traditions delivered To the Church by Christ and his Apostles as the Traditions Of the Church which in their nature are mutable But yet if any co-ordinate Church shall refuse to innovate but stick resolutely and firmly to the received Discipline and Lawes of the Church while others shall violate them and choose new Forms and impose new Conditions of communion with it not agreeable to the old upon which a schism followes surely the guilt of Schism is to fall only upon that Church which thus innovates For though I am apt to believe that such alterations may not be sufficient to justifie a renunciation of Communion with such an Innovating Church and much less in single persons and private members of the same Church yet doubtless it fully excuses from the guilt of Schism if it patiently and passively persists in the more ancient and conformable way to the Churches of Christ in past ages even with apparent peril of Schism provided that the said Traditional Laws and practices shall not by the more judicious and conspicious part of the Church assembled freely and Lawfully in Council be judged inconvenient and so according to the Right it hath to reverse or establish things in nature alterable declar'd void and introduce new For in such cases disowning of the Power and Autority of the Church and refusing the decrees thereof tending to the General unitie of it is of it self a Schismatical Act. But in notorious errours in Doctrine or Faith it is free for any particular Church to divide from another because such corruption is of selfe damnable And in such cases we need
is so defended as to call in question the truth of Christs divine nature and to commend and command the direct worship of those objects so mistaken then certainly it is Heresie and somewhat more And so their doctrine of Communicating in one Kind contrary to all the mention we have of celebrating the Eucharist in the Scriptures and those deserving the name of Fathers in the Church may rightly be termed Heretical when it shall be drawn into such a Proposition as this as of necessity it must viz. That it is of equal vertue and use to receive the Sacrament in one kind alone as both Kinds whereas only to deny the use of it is no more than an unjust and sacrilegious piece of Tyranny over the Laicks To these it were easie to add more of like natures as sufficient Grounds to leave such a Church as maintains them But for those who are not in Episcopal nor yet so much as Metropolitan subordination and subjection to that Church but only Patriarchal which obliges cheifly if not only to a recognition of a Remote Right of Order and Principle of unity when the Church is united in bringing them to Councels and keeping them to those Laws which are prescribed by General Consent of the Church and this not originally by first planting and forming a Christian Church in a Nation but restoring and augmenting it the case is yet more plain that it is free for such Churches to relinquish communion of any Church subject to less Errours than are properly called Heresies But for persons educated in a Church and thereby subject to it and owing Canonical obedience not only as they most weakly and wickedly imagine to the Rule of Faith therein asserted and maintained but to the Rule of Unity and Communion outward for such I say to divide from that Church which hath not by falling into notorious Heresies or Idolatrous practices first fallen from Christian Faith is to profess Schism For to alledg that they would incorporate with the Church if certain things which may possibly be parted with without destroying the Faith at least immediately were granted to them is to demand that their Superiors should bow to them rather than they to their Superiors and in effect to make the condition of their obedience and uniting with the Church to be this That first the Church should be of their Religion the difference between them consisting in things in their own nature mutable For though Faith consisteth in those things which are judged necessary in themselves to be received Yet Religion is made up as well of the manner of serving God as the material grounds of it And therefore it is according to the manner of their treaties of peace in other Cases to require the thing in debate to be granted them before they will bear of a commodation or reconciliation This senseless Charity is that of most Desperate Schismaticks Yet not absolutely to despair of reducing some few of them and much less of preventing the like ruine of souls in others we shall now conclude with a few words concerning the Second thing in the beginning of this Point viz. The guilt of Schism Supposing then what is above said that Schism is a Causeless Separation from the Church of Christ meaning by Causeless not want of all reasons or causes but Sufficient as are errours now mention'd in Faith we farther understand by Separation not that of the inward and hidden man but outward and Visible answerable to that we have called and acknowledged to be properly called a Church i. e. Visible For possible we grant it is what we do scarce believe to be actually true though we hear such things sometimes spoken that dissenters may have a tolerable good opinion of a Church as that it is a true Church in their private senses they may pretend some general kindness and Charity to the Members of it Nay they may hold it no grievous sin to communicate with it for some persons especially and yet for all this be rank Schismaticks For Schismatizing in its remoter Cause may spring from evil opinions and dispositions of the inward man but its formality is altogether in outward profession of averseness separation and opposition to a Church This is it which hath raised so much just clamour of the Ancient and even of those very modern Persons who stomach nothing more than to be reduced to their own general Rules and have worthily brandished their swords and pens to bring people to the unity of that Cause which never was the true Faith and to that Visible Company which never was a Church and yet cannot understand their own language nor receive their own reasons and arguments in Cases infinitely more capable of such vindications than the Party they created and asserted Herein surely they have exceeded all other Factions in immodesty and undauntedness that whereas those have been very scrupulous and sparing in delivering doctrines of coercion and constraint to unity and therefore may though with no reason with some little colour stand out against Unity and oppose all Coaction thereunto They of the Presbyterian Sect have preach'd spoken and written so much and expresly against Schism and the Liberty which tends necessarily to it that it is beyond not only reason but admiration they should neither be affected with what other men have said against them nor what they have unanswerably said against themselves but proceed no otherwise than brutishly to hold their Conclusion and stick to their invet eraâ—e errours as if they could find no Church to unite to or had no souls to save or did not even according to their own principles run the apparent hazard of loosing them by that sin which they confess is one of the Greatest Size viz unnecessary division And unnecessary division themselves call what is not for to avoid Idolatrous practises or Heretical errours and yet in their Apologies for themselves alledge none but frivolous instances tending as they judge to Superstition wherein they prove themselves much more superstitious by such religious opposition as they make against them and deeply concerning their best Consciences than they possibly can be who for order sake solemness of worship and conformity to the ancient Customs of Christs Church and to avoid offence unto other Churches sticking inseparably unto them retain rather than invent such adjuncts to Divine Religion It is hard to search out any new Topick from whence to draw out reasons against this hainous sin of Schismatizing wherein I am not prevented by them disputing upon the false suppositions that they at any time were a Church and if they had been that they who opposed them could be said to Divide Schismatically from them of whose communion they never were nor ever were obliged to be They are therefore with others to consider How solemn and severe a command of Christ they slight and contemn who divide from a Church without more weighty exceptions than hitherto have been offered by them or heard
it implies as much as to say Give us but our demands and then we will be quiet by which Rule no man should defend his own right in lesser matters which to part with perhaps would not utterly undo him but he must be lookt on as accessary to and guilty of his own destruction if the Invader shall have power enough to bring it upon him because he will not peaceably satisfie his unjust desires A man may be and our Saviour in the Gospel saith expresly Luk. 16. 10. is unjust in the least as well as in much And so undoubtedly are they who having no Autority but what they frame to themselves shall by violence and aggressions attempt to extort the least thing belonging of right to another though haply better spar'd than kept For it is a Case of Justice rather than Christianity In justice and common equity the inferiour members of a Church and state owe obedience to their Superiours in all things not contrary to the Law of God the Church or the Nation but at most they can claim such things that are as they say indifferent to be granted them out of Courtesie or Charity only And whoever was so wilfully stupid as not to perceive that Injustice is much more a sin than Uncharitableness and so whatever mischief or guilt shall fall out in such contentions must necessarily light upon the heads of the unjust Aggressour and not indiscreet Resister were it indiscretion to withstand to deny such bold and insolent demanders or uncharitableness both which are denied in the present Case For there can be nothing more unjust on the one side and unwise on the other than so rudely and unrighteously to require of another all that may be granted or to grant all such things as are so demanded And if they urge still The peace of the Church to require such concessions I shall answer Let them first as all good Christians ought to do observe the Peace of Nature and the Peace of Nations which is not to offer violence nor to be unjust nor to go out of their Rank and Order but with good Autority and then take care for the Peace of the Church But what can be more absurd than that men should break the Peace of Nations and Nature it self yea the Law of God and Scriptures which require to obey all that are in autority over us as well Ecclesiastically as Civilly and then so much as to mention the Peace of the Church especially calling that only the Peace of the Church which puts them into quiet possession of their desires But to this we add that it is also very false which is here supposed to be true For there is nothing more manifest than that with diverse things of indifferent nature they mix many things of indispensable use to a Church and such is that so much reproached and derided Hierarchie which all the earth sees they have made it their business to Destroy utterly And when we plainly see as we do that those things in nature indifferent are demanded chiefly as an introduction to a farther abolition of things we hold necessary we hold them no longer indifferent nor can we in common prudence or Christianity part with them to such person any more than we can in a neighbourly manner lend away an Ax or Hammer when we are assured they will be made use of to break open our houses and spoil us though we know they may possibly be made use of to other purposes The Second Obstacle rather than Objection cast in our way is the parity of their Case with the Church of England with that of the Church of England with the Roman wherein whether they show more Spite or Policy may be a question Their Policy imitates them who finding the war to lie heavy upon them at their own doors contrive by all means possible to translate it into another Country as was particularly seen in Hindersons Letter to his late Sacred Majesty who finding the ability of his pen and weight of his discourses advised him rather to turn himself against the common enemy the Papist And thus these men would needs oblige us to make our quarrel good against the Romanists that they may be the les molested in the pursuance of their most Schismatical designs against the Church in which they were educated And this being discovered we might well excuse ourselves from such a task as they would set us But this we have before resolved in good part and had we not might and shall in a very few words dispatch as somewhat out of its proper place We grant then there is a Schism between us and the Romanists And we grant that there can be no cause to be Schismaticks though for a Separation there may and that they are truly Schismaticks who have ministred just Cause of Separation Some we know out of an ancient Father have urged against us That there can be no cause to divide the Church which is true in two senses only First when that Church is not before really divided from other Churches of unquestion'd integrity Realy I say by deserting some considerable point of Faith or introducing some unchristian manner of worship though not Openly and Formally as hath been said Again it is true only in such junctures as the Father spake those words in which was an apt and orthodox agreement within itself both in Faith and manners in such Cases there can be no cause to divide the Church as did the Novatians and Donatists But it was never his purpose to say that no case could happen in which it was not lawful for one Church to leave the Communion of another when it was so often done So still the point is wholly whether cause was given or not and not whether such outward and wilful Separation was made For undoubtedly however some would mince the matter Separate we did and that wilfully from the Church of Rome and chose rather than were forced to go out And upon those very grounds we still stand out and refuse to return The gross corruptions there maintained and not lurking and the fear of the loss of our souls in there continuing and much more thither returning What those are hath been even now touched and we here add that notwithstanding 't is confessed such senses are found of their doctrine and superstitious worship in some private authors amongst them which they offer at first to them they would seduce which may put persons into a possibility of their continuing without incurring damnation yet the Publick autority of that Church which I suppose they will call their Church having evermore of late years censur'd purged and expunged such more tollerable constructions and appeared for the most harsh and uncatholick there can be no great regard had to the fairer opinions Again it is not sufficient that a Church hath a true sense of Christian Faith if it alloweth and commendeth a false and a wicked sense 'T is little to the
purpose or to their advantage to say for instance sake as the more sober especially when they would gain upon the good opinion of men That Images may be worshipped relatively and as instruments to devotion and helps but when there are found and generally known to be such doctrines as teach a veneration of Images for their own sakes and directly and that with the same sort of worship that the things they represent are capable of though perhaps they upon a pinch can insert a distinction which neither can be understood nor profit such a doctrine as this known to be delivered by the Principal Doctors of their Churches and maintain'd not being condemned by that Church however not generally embraced may subject a Church to a censure of Heresie and Idolatry of both and so in other things whereof tolerable senses are given in the Church of Rome or else they could not be said so much as to be a Church at all but intolerable and Heretical are also uncondemned and so are no true Church and so may be separated from without Schism but not without peril of damnation united to And do not our brethren for such they were before they professed Schism and I hope may be after they have renounced it see now plainly enough the vaniâ—y and spitefulness of their Evasion Are not the Cases infinitely different and that in their own eyes Hear they what Perkins saith to our and their purpose So long as a Church Perkins on Gal. C. 5. V. 20. or people do not Separate from Christ we may not separate from them 2 Pro. 24. 21. Fear the King and meddle not with them that vary i. e make alterations against the Laws of God and the King Indeed Subjects may signifie what is good for the State and what is amiss but to make any alteration in the State either Civil or Ecclesiastical belongs to the Supream Magistrate And â—n another place the same Author hath these words Great therefore is the rashness Id. Galat 1. V. 2. and want of moderation in many that have been of us that condemn our Church for no Church without sufficient conviction going before If they say we have been admonished by books published I say again these be grosser faults in some of those books than any of the faults that they reprove in the Church of England and therefore the books are not â—it to convince especially a Church Thus we see how the cases in the matter difier And no less may we see the difference in the manner For 't is apparent that Schismaticks against the Church of England never had any Legal autority to warrant their vile and Scandalous practices but were forced to give names to things uncapable of them to excuse themselves or else by an unnatural course to entitle the People to a Power Supream who have none at all but what is given them from another fountain neither did the people concurr with such misdemeaners as was pretended they did But thirdly another difference is to be noted from the Rights of a Patriarchal Power over a Provincial Church not properly of its Diocess and that of a Metropolitan with his Suffragans over the members of the Church which they altogether make For according to the constitutions of the Church though a Patriarchs Power was Intensively equal to Episcopal over his proper and immediate Diocess and Extensively much greater than the Metropolitans or Bishops in relation to other Diocesses yet was it never so Intensive i. e. so particular and great in those Bishops Diocesses over which he had only an Order of Unity rather than Intrinsick power to dispose matters therein though in process of time this also was invaded much by him and might be recovered to the proper Bishop by the Laws of the Church But the Bishops of this Church had the sole and immediate disposing of the affairs of it and nothing could be concluded without obligation of obedience out of Conscience without their Concurrence as desparately as Schismaticks then did and still do rage at this truth But then as Hinderson saith with others They would never reform themselves It is very likely so meaning as they would have them but that not to the better Rule of the Ancient Churches and the Scriptures is more than they knew or would acknowledg when they saw because still they would have done otherwise and invented a new Rule of their own But seeing the grounds and Cause of separation are they upon which the Guilt of Schism is avoided or contracted according to the nature of them and obscure and difficult and tedious is the method leading to the tryal of the sufficiency of them to justifie a Separation therefore it were well contrived if as in the search of a true Church they may being very long and uncertain and grievous to most proceeding upon the points of Faith and Parts of worship themselves certain infaâ—lible obvious and plain Characters could be produced to convince the Schism and distinguish it from simple and innocent Separation A Fair attempt to which hath been made by Austin who dispuâ—ing against the Donatists denies that any man can separate from the Universal Church innocently So that although it should be doubtful as most things are managed by Learned Partisans whether considering the grounds of Separation in themselves the Separation be Schismatical or lawful and laudable yet by such an outward Characteristick it might be competently discerned And so farmust I needs comply with that Judicious and Holy Father and such as urge this out of him against us as to yield it a most probable outward Note of Schism for any man or number of men not a Church but in Fieri as they speak only and in breeding to divide from the Universal Church not only as comprehending all Ages but of any one Age the weight and evidence of which Concession will appear from the esteem of the Church Catholick and the wrath and extent of Christs promises to preserve it in All truth For this is certain That Christ directed his promises and restrained them to no one time or Age. And it is not probable there should be such an Intercession or intermission of Faith or Christianity that the universal Church should mortally err in any one thing necessary to salvation nay though we take it not in such a large sense as sometimes it is wont to be used for all individual persons in it as well as Churches of which the whole is constituted And therefore to desert the communion of all Churches not of persons for this is scarce to be supposed to happen at any time doth argue shrewdly That the separation hath much of Schism in it without examination of particular grounds which are pretended sufficient For it will be said That it ought not to be supposed that Christ should deliver over his whole Church to such heretical errours which only can exempt a Separation from Schism From such notorious suspicions as these we
be made apparent in how many and great things they have degenerated in their Doctrine and Worship since it pleased God to withdraw his holy Spirit from that Church upon their rejecting of the true Messias sent them and to translate it to the Church of the Gentiles And no wonder that they who observe not that now should argue against it as a thing not to be done and moreover deny that ever it was believed or practised by their Forefathers for there remains no other way to excuse themselves in their present error but to maintain that it was never otherwise held This is a common evasion of all Hereticks and Sectaries But that the Scriptures of the Old Testament contained this Doctrine in substance though the more perspicuous and glorious manifestation of the same was reserved for the New is not to be denied especially if we consider how that many of their own Doctors and Rabbies have so interpreted the same And some have admired the Hebrew Language as the holy Tongue not so much as some of moderner standing amongst them have given out because of the neat and modest expression of things of impure and obscene nature for it is very plain that the most obscene things are there as broadly and manifestly expressed as elsewhere but from the matter which it treats of generally very divine and particularly from the nature of that Tongue in every word of which being a Radix or original the Mystery of the Trinity is implied in that it consists but of three principal Letters which Letters make but one word But there are more sure words of Prophesie than they and such are these together with the Comment and approbation of the Chaldee Paraphrast Gen. 3. v. 8. it is said They heard the voice of the Gen 3. 8. Lord God walking in the Garden which words Onkelos renders thus And they heard the voice of the Word of the Lord God where we see that Voice and Word are distinguished the one being taken for the Word spoken the other for the Word subsisting or personal And again v. 22. where the Hebrew hath And the Lord God said c. Jonathans or as some more properly the Hierusalem Targum hath The Word of the Lord said And the same Hierusalem Targum on Deuteronomy the 33. 7. hath The Word of the voice of the Lord heard Judah where the Original and other Translations have Hear Lord or receive Lord the voice of Judah And so in other places which doth argue a Personality ascribed unto the Word of God Which doth farther appear for that the action of Creation extending the Heavens and Repenting is attributed unto the Word of God But I leave the asserting of the Mystery of the Trinity from the Scriptures of the Old Testament interpreted by the learnedst and most renowned of the Jewish Doctors to such who have made it their design to convince them from testimonies of their own Authors as Petrus Galatinus and more exactly Josephus de Voisin in his Comments on Prigro Christianae Fidei and especially de Trinitate I shall only add here that memorable passage in Bibliander out of the Jewish Rabbies upon that place in Bibliander de Paschate Israel Gen. 28. 11. Gen. 28. And he lighted upon a certain place and tarried there all night because the Sun was set and he took of the stones of the place and put them for his pillows and lay down in that place to sleep Where some Rabbies saith Bibliander do understand that he took two stones but others as Rabbi Nechemias that he took three and in this manner prayed to God If God shall write his Name upon me as he did his Name upon mine Ancestors let all these become one and he found them all one By which type of the stone they give to understand God to be the Original of all things for the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which in Hebrew is a stone implies in a mystery the Trinity for in Aben Ab intimates the Father Ben signifies the Son and ◠or N. Neshanna or Spirit Thus they Which their interpretation whether it hath not more of wit than solid Argument I am not here to determine it sufficing our present purpose to shew that the Doctrine of the Trinity is no invention of Christians as moderner Jews vainly give out for if their forefathers mention the same though their grounds may not be of the soundest it argues they knew and received it Other Texts from the Old Testament implying this Mystery are chiefly these 2 Sam. 23. 2. Isa 48. 16 17. and chap. 61. 1. and chap. 63. 9. Psal 33. 6. compared with Joh. 11. 1 2 3. Haggai 2. 5. compared with Gen. 1. 26. Isa 6 3 c. Concerning all which it is to be observed First That it is not to be expected the testimonies of the Old Testament whose design it was to deliver all things more covertly and obscurely should be altogether so literally and expresly taken as that none other may be found as proper as that sence given by Christians but it may suffice that an apt accommodation may be made to the confirmation of our Faith and that by the chief enemies to it Secondly That the Tradition of the Jewish Church differed from the historical or literal sence Hence our Saviour Christ proves the Messias to be God out of Psalm 110. v. 1. The Lord said Psal 110. Matth. 22. 42. unto c. arguing to this effect He who was greater than David himself from whom the Messias should come must needs be God David calling him in Spirit Lord but David in Spirit calls the Messias his Lord whereas David being himself absolute Soveraign had no mortal greater than he therefore he must be God This was then generally received amongst the wisest of them That the Messias was there intended though the words might be capable of a more literal sence And the like may we judge of the Arguments of St. Paul drawn out of the Old Testament to confirm the Doctrine of the New and particularly this for it is confessed that he bringeth many proofs as do also the other sacred Pen-men out of the Books of the Old Testament which have a literal sence much differing from that purpose to which they are alledged But it is certain that the ancient Jews did maintain two sences a Literal and a Mystical and that St. Paul being educated in the prime Traditions and Mysteries of their Divinity used them according to the known sence of the learned For otherwise it had been as easie then for the Jews to have put in their exceptions against his Doctrine as now it is for Jews to cavil at them But besides the Autority of the Old Testament principally to be used against Jews the Autority of the New must be enforced against the Heresies of Christians against this great Mystery Go ye saith Christ in St. Matthew and teach all Nations baptizing them in the Name of the Father Matth.
following these words For it is most certain that the Apostles aim was to discover and oppose false teachers start up to the prejudice of the true Apostles of Christ and laying at least in shew another foundation of faith v. 10 11. than Christ had laid or building otherwise upon St. Pauls foundation than became them Now what think we doth St. Paul abruptly leave the subject he was treating of and the persons he was confuting of and warning the Corinthians against and pass to the Doctrine nothing at all depending upon what went before or after of Purgatory Or if he did not altogether desert his subject but as may be granted by them declare what would be the end of such Doctours or Doctrines after they were all dead and gone would this satisfie the expectation of such who stood in need of present advice and directions to secure themselves from such Impostures Surely no. St. Paul therefore doth certainly in this Metaphorical or Allegorical manner apply himself to the present state of the Corinthians whom he adviseth to beware of such dangerous teachers And how doth he this First under the Metaphor of a Workman insinuating the teacher himself Secondly under the Metaphor of a piece of Work figuring the Doctrines taught and instilled into men Thirdly by Fire certifying the manner of discerning the true Doctrine from the false and that fire is afflictions and persecutions which then were actually on the Church but were soon after like to fall more heavily on it Fourthly by hay stubble wood he means corrupt and erroneous Doctrines by gold silver precious stones sincere and sound Doctrine Now collect we all into one and can any man desire any plainer and more current consonancie between the figurative speech as most infallibly this is and the proper intention of the Apostle I have begun amongst you O v. 10. Corinthians to preach Christ I have lald the foundation of saving Faith like a wise Master-builder yet there are some who building partly upon my Doctrine and partly laying another foundation of their 11. own heads when in very truth there can be no other foundation laid by any man than that is already laid by me which is Jesus Christ Now if any man build upon this foundation thus laid gold silver 12. precious stones wood hay stubble that is sound or unsound ye shall know which Doctrine is as gold silver and precious stones sound and valuable and which as wood hay and stubble that is refuse and corrupt For the day shall declare it What day The day of tryal What tryal the tryal by fire for the fire shall try every mans work of what sort it is But what fire The fire of Persecution 1 Pet. 4. 12. or fiery tryal as St. Peter speaks And this is the second ground of this interpretation taken from the frequencie of this phrase Fire signifying in Scripture no more than afflictions or persecutions which may convince us of the true acceptation here Christ in the Gospel of St. Luke saith I am come to send fire on the earth and what Luke 12. 49. will I if it be already kindled And that this fire was no other than persecutions and troubles with which the followers of Christ were to contend and struggle is manifest from the following words And Tertullian taking occasion to speak of those words saith Ipse melius interpretabitur ignis illius qualitatem c. He Christ himself explains better the condition of that fire Do ye think that I came to send peace on v. 51. the earth St. Peter commeth much nearer to our present case where he saith That the tryal of your faith being much more precious than of gold 1 Pet. 1. 7. that perisheth though it be tryed with fire might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearance of Jesus Christ The Psalmist saying Thou hast caused men to ride over our head we went through fire and Psalm 66. 12. through water c. what can we understand but afflictions And no need of any more instances to the purpose i. e. either to show in general that Fire in holy Scripture imports afflictions or that so it is here with St. Paul used Yet the words immediately following agree so exactly with it that it is yet farther put out of question what should be the meaning of the former viz. If any mans work abide which he hath built thereupon he shall receive a reward If any mans work shall be burnt he shall suffer loss but he himself shall be saved yet so as by fire That is if any man hath so built upon the foundation Christ Jesus as his work abides the tryal and so be found good and laudable then he shall have his due reward for his pains But if otherwise his work shall be burnt that is upon tryal not be found as gold and silver which cometh out of the fire better and purer but Persecutions and Examinations shall reveal or manifest it to be dross vain and corrupt then shall such an one suffer loss he shall have lost his labour and his reputation yet may we not despair of him For however he be found defective in his Doctrines yet himself may be saved upon his repentance so as by fire i. e. by having passed himself through such persecutions as may bring him to the sincere profession of the Faith though his erroneous Doctrines perish and come to nought And to this sense of the Apostle do I stick though I am not ignorant how diversly he is interpreted by as well Ancient as Modern Divines to whom to be tyed when they are so dissonant were too hard measure especially when the simplicity of a literal sense offers it self so fairly as here and the greatest part of the expositions agree hereunto Thirdly It is not very strange that the words of St. Paul elsewhere to the Corinthians should be drawn this way too viz. What shall they do 1 Cor. 15. 29. Hic locus apertè convincit quod volumus si bene intelligatur Bellar. de Purg. l. 1. c. 6. that are baptized for the dead and that as he that alledges them saith manifestly making for what they would have them when as immediately he brings six several senses given of them Can they then be so very plain He well therefore adds If they be rightly understood And when are they rightly understood according to him Not until they make for Purgatory It were too tedious and polemical to refute all brought for the vindicating these words to the use of Purgatory or to contend about the sense of them farther then what Epiphanius long since hath with great judgment and simplicity lead us too which I profess to adhear to and with which most imaginary senses are answered For says he there were a certain sort of Hereticks crept into the Church in St. Pauls dayes which maintained such a necessity of Baptism to be saved that they would baptize
of devotion must be held before the eyes as if they were asham'd of what they did whereas St. Paul saith plainly every man praying or prophesying having his head covered 1 Cor. 11. 4. dishonoureth his head and again For a man ought not to cover his head c. 7. But surely he who covereth his face with his hat or such liâ—â— doth altogether as much thwart the design of the Apostle as he that covereth it with his hair I wonder much who could be the author of such an indecent and absurd custom but more to find it defended in some sort by Calvin Calvinus in Esaiam cap. 38. 2. upon Esay and reasons rendered for the same by Amesius in his Cases of Conscience the best he can devise being these two Either to prevent avocation of mind which may be occasioned by the eye Or to conceal such singular gestures Ames de Conscient lib. 4. c. 18. quaest 3. which may be some times necessary to us but seem silly and hypocritical to others These two occasions being taken away Covering the head agrees rather to women than men 1 Cor. 11. 4 5. Thus he And that these are not sufficient causes thus appears because such an accidental inconvenience as is the former ought not to null a direct good but publique and open profession of our duty reverence and devotion to God is that which God doth require as an act of worship and the good example to others should preponderate that particular possible inconvenience And as for the other no man ought to use such absurd and ridiculous ceremonies in his face being in publique as should be apt to give offence but compose his whole man to such gravity and decency as might become the place wherein he is which is in every mans power as it is his part And 't is very unreasonable and somewhat more that men should abhor to receive ceremonies of Communion and uniformity from the Church and yet be more superstitious in inventing and introducing private Ceremonies into the Church and unapproved by it such as this is But though all postures and gestures be alike in nature yet nothing must be done in publique but what is reputed sober modest and grave as well in respect of the persons assembled as for the place sake of which if we had a due opinion it would be superfluous to multiply arguments to extort reverence therein And what need we any farther proofs of the dignity of it then that it is Gods house as hath been shewed and the place where his honour dwells and our happiness especially And therefore before I end this I cannot forbear giving all good Christians warning of one of Mr. Perkins absurd and false dogmes which I doubt not but hath deceived many into prophaness in publique In regard of Conscience Holiness and Religion all places are holy and alike in the New Testament since the coming of Christ The Perkins Cases of Conscience lib. 2. c. 6. qu. 3. §. 3. House or the Field is as holy as the Church And if we pray in either of them our prayer is as acceptable to God as that which is made in the Church All this we look upon as prophane and false Let us hear how out of Scripture he proves his new paradoxes For now saith he the days are come which were foretold by the Prophet where in a clean offering should be offered to God in every place Mal. 1. 11. which Paul expounds 1 Tim. 2. 8. of pure and holy prayer offered to God in every place Of these words of St. Paul which I acknowledge to be the sense of the Prophet I have already given the true meaning and so answered both to this effect That whatever the Scripture prophetically delivers concerning the diffusion of Gods worship or the Apostle actually declares as come to pass comes to no more but that God should be more purely served under the Gospel by the Sacrifice of prayer c. than he was by the Sacrifice of beasts to him and such like and that the service of God should be as well performed out of Jerusalem as in it and in Christian Temples in what Country or Angle of the world soever they were built as in that of Hierusalem but that it was ever intended that he should be as well served in the fields or private houses as in Churches raised for that purpose when necessity constrained not men otherwise doth not in the least appear And the same answer likewise we give to the words of Christ to the woman of Samaria Joh. 4. 25. of which we also spake before As also to that of Christ Matth. 6. 5. reproving the affected hypocritical practise of the Pharisees praying in all publick places to be noted Then which kind of Devotion no doubt but a Prayer in the Closet is much more acceptable to God But doth it therefore follow that such a prayer as is so acceptable in the closet would not be as acceptable in the Temple and more too surely nothing of this which ought to be the conclusion is contained in the argument Now proceeds Mr. Perkins the opinion of the Papist is otherwise It is so and is much truer than the Puritans and more agreeable to the word of God For he thinks that in the New Testament hallowed Churches are more holy than other places are or can be and do make the prayers offered to God in them more acceptable to him than in any other and hereupon they teach that private men must pray in Churches and private prayers must be made in Churches if they will have them heard All this they teach indeed but do they teach this as Papists or as Christians Did not the doctrine and constant practise of all ages and places when and where there were Churches teach the very same Nay doth not Bucer one of the most eminent Reformers for judgment and Quantâ— jam religione sunt loca cultui Dei consecrata huic uni reipate facienda supra aliqua ex parte ostendimus Adeo autem vulgo obtinuit horum locorum horrenda sane prophanatio c. Bucerus de Regno Christi l. 2. c. 11. learning say in a manner as much in these words With what religiousness therefore are places consecrated to Divine worship to be opened to this one thing and to be preserved most sacred we have in some measure before shewed But vulgar custom has far prevailed in a horrible profanation of these places while men having thrown away all reverence of a Deity in them walk in them for their recreation as in walks void of all sacredness and in them exchange all sorts of prophane and impure discourse so that to remove this so unseasonable dammage to the Divine Majesty severe Laws of godly Kings and Princes are requisite and ready and constant vindications of such Laws besides the devout exhortations of holy men whereby it should be brought to pass that Gods holy Temple should not be
it was not here cannot be exercised but according to that Light and that Rule given them which is the will of God which perceiving so fully and in which being so absolutely satisfied they cannot be said to pray that it might be done so much as admire and continually adore the doing of it without interposing by way of particular intercession as we out of ignorance do here on earth for the inclining or averting of God from any thing they see in him future or rather present They have therefore indeed greater Charity as to the purity and intenseness of it which is Charity Triumphant but not Militant according to which last only they are said to assist us by their prayers And yet this I may add That as the intercession of Saints in Heaven for us is no wayes to be allowed to be vocal or proper as on earth nor by any special act direct to God on the behalf of their Friends and Fellow-members on earth for the reason now given so may they not be denyed all influence upon God in his dispensation of grace and benefits to us on earth as God doth please to consider their Labor of Love not only for themselves but fellow-members here below And whereas one of the best testimonies alledged to prove special offices of Angels done before God in behalf of the Militant Members of Christ here is taken out of the Revelation where S. John prayeth or saluteth Rev. 4. rather with a Pastoral and Apostolical benediction the seven Churches of Asia saying Grace be unto you and peace from him which is and which was and which is to come and from the seven spirits which are before Tobit 12. 15. his Throne It may sufficiently be answered with that of Tobit c. 12 15. where mention is made of Seven Angels before the Throne were this autority greater with us than it is That we doubt not but God doth make use of the Ministry of Angels to impart his blessings to men on Gen. 48. 16. earth For this implys the benediction of Jacob given to Joseph The Angel which redeemed me from all evil bless the Lads but this infers not either that Jacob did then or we should now address our selves to Angels but as he certainly there so ought we to seek of God only that he would by his servants the holy Angels preserve and bless us Nevertheless I according to my former Rule interpret the seven spirits in the Revelation to be none other than the seven Governors or Bishops of the seven Churches of which St. John speaks immediately before whom in a Vision St. John saw to stand before the golden Altar or proper place of worship and from thence blessing the people But no more of this Agreeable to this is the doctrine of making Images and Reliques of Azorius ubi sâ—p Saints objects of divine worship too and that though not for their own sakes yet for Gods sake to which I need say no more than is already spoken of so worshiping Saints But for their sakes who can be content with less honor done unto Cassan Consult them it may suffice to say in few words what Cassander hath observed before me It is certain that at the beginning of the preaching of the Gospel for a good time especially in Churches there was no use of Images at all as Clemens and Arnobius witness And this was above two hundred years after Christ Afterward Pictures were admitted into Churches with great simplicity and innocency yea benefit to the vulgar Christian whose book Gregory not unfitly called them as expressing the historical part of Christian Faith and no more worshipped then than Papists worship their Bibles now And that Images should be erected at all or being constituted that they should be worshipped at all or brought into Temples there was never any admirer or adorer of them could pretend to show out of Scripture But the second commandment against all Images in order to worship or reverence hath prov'd such a bone that it hath broke the teeth of all that would break it Erasmus in his Catechism stateth the cause thus Before the coming of Christ when the Israelites were very rude and dull all Imagery was prohibited them for fear of Idolatry But now since all Paganism is extinguished by the Light of the Gospel the danger is not the same and if any superstition should lurk still in the minds of Christians it may easily be driven thence by holy Doctrine Until the age of St. Hierom were certain men of sound Religion which would endure no Images at all in Churches either painted or graven or wrought no not of Christ I suppose by reason of the Anthropomorphites yet by little and little Where are they then that with so much importunity and little reason call for the very time precisely wherein corruptions entered into the Church or else will not be satisfied the use of Images entred into Churches And perhaps there would be no undecency if in such places as God is served in solemnly no images should be placed saving the Image of Christ crucified But Pictures if they were duly used besides the honest pleasure they bring conduce very much to memory and understanding of history Yea the learned many times see more in Pictures than Letters and are more vehemently affected And as the Ancient Church prohibited all books not canonical to be used in Churches so perhaps were it not amiss if all kinds of Pictures of things not contained in Holy Scripture were excluded To this effect and almost in these very words he To which we must so far assent as to yield a possible good effect of Information and Devotion arising from such outward occasions as Pictures yet considering God hath no where laid any obligation upon us to profit by such helps as he hath to advance our selves in knowledg and Christian vertues by consulting Holy Scriptures and how great and manifest peril of falling into Idolatry by them there is it were more pious and safe to interdict the falling down before as well as to them man being naturally as prone to Idolatry as to unlawful carnal copulation But whereas Erasmus proceedeth to defend Images because God in the Old Law commanded to make Cherubins and Seraphins about the Ark Tertullian answereth That so may we too when we have the like command For though God ties us up strictly to his Laws he doth not so tye himself but when he pleases he may give us a dispensation But besides Vid. Phil. Judaeum Legat. ad Caium p. 801. Gen. this such Images were altogether hid from the peoples eyes and much more use being in the Holiest of Holies and we speak now of such as are exposed to view and reverence And as common as this instance is amongst the great Doctors of Rome it makes little to their purpose Again Erasmus That which is before God meaning that Thou shalt have no other God before me is made equal to God
of St. Paul that 1 Cor. 14. 35. women should ask their husbands and learn at home And St. Chrysostom often exhorts his hearers to consider of what they hear in publique at home and meditate of the Scriptures at home which was either privately with every mans self or to such as could not have access to the Publique And this publique way of Preaching had for a long time no prescribed subject but what the Bishop thought proper or seasonable for instruction or Exhortation was uttered by him But in Saint Bafils Nazianzens Chrysostoms and Augustines Sermons we find mention made of the Scriptures read before and Sermons made by way of Exposition of them after the manner that Epistles and Gospels are in use with us and commended as proper subjects to instruct Christian People the one giving us matter of Instruction from the history of the Life Doctrine Miracles and Death of our only Saviour Christ and the other principally moving us to the exercise of all Christians Graces and Vertues conformable to our calling and knowledg of God and Christ Far were our Christian Ancestors and well they might from the modern perswasion of Erratick Christians that the Sermon was more necessary than the Scriptures or that reading of the Scriptures was not Preaching or that Catechizing and instructing Novices in Christian Religion was not Preaching I confess I am of opinion that there is a distinction to be made between a Preaching and a Sermon taking here a Sermon for an Oration made by un-Christian as well as Christian Orators to inform and perswade to what they aimed at in such speeches And no instance can be given of any Orator Gentile or Christian for many hundred years that presumed to speak to the People out of his own writings rehearsed to them Poets were wont in Publique to recite their verses in Publique out of their book by reading and therefore could never in my judgment comply with the very modern practise of it there being no reason why it should be more tolerated in Divine than Humane Orations or why setting the custome of the place aside which must needs be corrupt and absurd as it is singular and new it is less ridiculous to rehearse a Divine Oration which we call a Sermon by reading than Humane I am sure the ancient Fathers whom we pretend to imitate and all modern Churches without exception of any but our own abhor it And are not at all sensible of the vulgar arguments weight to justifie it viz. because the matter is the same And what difference is there between a Sermon deliver'd without reading and with it if the hearer sees him not or looks not on him that Preaches But it is very expedient the Hearers eye should be attent as well as his ear and yet that is not all might be said neither but all I will here say But undoubtedly they erregregiously on the other hand who imagine such sermoning as we now speak of is only Preaching according to the mind of the Apostle and that which is the only proper means of Salvation We are not saved but by Faith we cannot believe but by hearing we cannot hear without a Preacher as the Apostle most undeniably concluding from thence the absolute necessity of Preaching But what Preaching When I said Recitation of a Speech concerning divine matters and our Salvation was not properly a Sermon or Oration unless pronounced after the universal Law of all Orators which is to denominate things aright I said not that it was not Preaching taking preaching from the end of it and not so much from the form The end is undoubtedly knowledg first of the Christian Faith The next end is Assent to that Doctrine of Faith The third end is Obedience to the Faith The last end is the Salvation of such a true believer Now all these may without doubt be obtained without the Forms of Oratory and by so many wayes as we are made capable of these great ends so many wayes are we preacht to And therefore reading to and writing to another as the Apostles did their their Epistles to several Churches or any communication may be called the word of God and Preaching as really as the most Oratorical Sermon Though still considering the nature of man and the ordinary course of perswading settled all the world over I cannot grant that such wayes are so effectual or operative upon the partakers of the same instructions By what is said may be gathered what I propounded at first viz. in what sense Preaching and Hearing may be reduced to the Worshipping of God and become part of his Service For taking the service of God strictly and properly neither of both of them are such but they are a necessary foundation to build our worship of God on They have of late dayes amongst Sectaries been called The Means in so high and signal sense as if they need say no more and they comprehended all Religious acts eminently which is nothing so They are indeed The Means and that of Faith worship and Salvation But worshipping of God in prayer and praises c. and obeying his will and living godly and soberly in this present world are much more effectual and excellent Means of our Salvation than they They are but Means to the more excellent means of Salvation as Faith Hope and Charity and therefore must know their place and keep their distance and Mr. Thorndyck Epilog l. 3. c. 25. their limits too For as an excellent person hath at large showed the vain abuse of this preaching by Presbyterians which shall cause me to contract here Preaching is not so much as the Means of Salvation unless it contains it self within the limits of the doctrine of the Church To the confirmation of whose opinion I shall here give St. Austins Judgment Nobis autem ad certam regulam loqui fas est ne verbâ—rum licentia etiam rebus quae his significantur impiam gignat opinicnem Aug. Civit. Dei l. 10. c. 23. who would have not only limits set to the matter but manner of preaching too by obliging to the phrase of the Church saying We Christians must speak by certain Rule lest by a License taken of wording it a wicked opinion be begot of the things themselves signified thereby And concerning this we know St. Paul hath thus provided in his directions to Timothy Hold fast the Form of sound words which thou hast heard of me in Faith and Love which is in Christ Jesus It was very well known to the ancient Church that if Preachers kept not themselves in the compass of sober words and phrases to which faithful ears had been accustomed though their new Forms and phantastique phrases might possibly admit of a fair construction yet naturally they tended to the dissetling of mens minds from the truth and drawing them to novelty of doctrine and worship By which means as also by affected postures gestures pronunciation and such like carrying with them an
the opinion of Tertullian They who tranâ—gress the Rule of Discipline cease to be reckoned among Christians And as Clemens Alexandrinus saith As it behoveth a person of Equity to falsifie in nothing and to go back from Qui excedunt dâ— Reculâ— disciplinâ— dâ—sinunt hâ—berâ— Christiani Tertul. Clem. Alex. Strom. 7. p. 753 764. nothing that he hath promised although others should break Covenants so it becometh us to transgress the Ecclesiastical Canon in no manner And to convince any man of conscience or fear of God of this Balsamon's reasons may suffice demonstrating a greater reverence and respect to be due to the Constitutions of the Church than to the Laws of the State For saith he the Canons being explained and confirmed by Kings and Holy Fathers are received as the Scriptures But the Laws of the State were received and established by Kings alone and therefore do not prevail against See Photius's Nomocanon Tit. 1. c. 2. cum Palsamone p. 817 818. the Scriptures nor the Canons And this I rather instance in from the Greek than Latin Church because the ignorant and loud clamors of Sectaries have had nothing more to alledg against the Sacredness of Ecclesiastical Constitutions than that which serves their turns in all things Popishness of Canonical Obedience But may they judg what they please according as design and interest sway them this we constantly and confidently affirm that whoever despises the Rules of of Obedience and Laws of the Church cannot rise higher in that Part of Christian Religion which we call Worship of God than may meer Moral men Because that which chiefly distinguishes good Christians from good honest Heathens next to the doctrine of Faith is proportionable Obedience as well to those God hath substituted under him to ordain things omitted in the Scriptures for the security of the Faith regulating devotion and worship and peace of the Church none of which can long subsist without such a Power acknowledged and obeyed in the Governors of the Church And this â—pparently is at the bottom of the deceitful pretences of Christian Liberty and Conscience for disobedience of them who are designed thereby to ruine and overthrow as matter of fact hath demonstrated But it is not only the Puritans intollerable dogms against obedience but the contrary practise of no small persons of place and esteem in the Church who can heartily and with zeal even to indignation prosecute Sectaries inconformity to the Discipline and Rites of the Church glorying and boasting that they are Sons of the Church and yet do more mischief to the Church by their ill govern'd persons as to common honesty sobriety and gravity and more advance and bring into credit and reputation the enemies of the Church than all their fair and fallacious pretences could otherwise possibly do If such persons who have not attained to common Moral prudence or Philosophy bear such kindness as they flourish with to the Church let them shew it as that lewd Fellow in the Athenian Senate was advised who notwithstanding his vitious life had somewhat very beneficial to the Common-wealth to propound in the Senate and commend it by the mouth of another For what can be more absurd and ridiculous than for any such person to profess esteem to that Church which condemns him more than any other Society And whereas it supposes as a foundation natural justice continence and temperance and the like moral vertues to the divine Precepts and Institutions of Perfection what may turn the stomach and raise laughter more at a man then for such an one to discover his offense at an unceremonious Puritane the matter of whose Crime is nothing comparable to his If thou beest a Christian saith a holy Father either speak as thou livest or live as thou speakest What evil spirit hath set thee on first to abuse thy self with scandalous practises and then the Church by taking Sanctuary in it Can stupidity so far accompany vice as first to break the known and common Laws and Rules of good conversation which is affront enough to the Church and then to add to that affront by professing a special duty to that which thereby is destroyed There is no Sect or Schism whose Orders and Laws of Christian walking with God can be compared with those of the Church of England there being nothing amongst them besides Faith which an Heathen may not do that never heard of Christian Perfection accounting nothing needful to be done nothing unlawful to them which is not punishable by the Law of man or against the light of nature Christ they say hath purchased for them a liberty to do what they please in eating drinking sleepping and other matters so that they wrong not their own bodies nor injure their Neighbors And shall there be that protect themselves under this Churches shelter in such light loose foolish and vitious courses to the degrading of it beneath her inferiors Is this to be sons of the Church and not only so but to brag that such they are in open hostility to it I confess notwithstanding all this in comparing the enemies to the true Faith together we are to distinguish between the doers of evil simply and the teachers of men so to do And that though drunkenness and uncleaness be greater sins by far in their nature than is dissent from a ceremony or Rite not necessary in its nature Yet for any man with a spirit of opposition and contention to take upon him to declare against such an unnecessary order and teach men against the unity and peace of the Church otherwise than becomes him is no less criminal in the consequence before God yea probably much more than those other more scandalous before men and will more endanger his Soul But concerning such persons as are in profession really Sons and perhaps Fathers of the Church and yet wilfully and studiously violate the Laws Constitutions Rubricks or Canons of it no necessity compelling them no reason being to be alledged defending them but what is taken from their ease which otherwise would be much interrupted or their benefit and profit which would be much hindred I leave their own hearts and Consciences to condemn them until God himself doth which certainly without repentance he will and that out of their own consciences and mouths their consciences which witness that these are the true causes of their negligence and contempt of their Duty in their proper stations and their mouths and professions in that they pretend obedience and are much offended at the disobedience of Puritans as if God and the Church would be sufficiently satisfied with their Anger against them while they themselves regard it no farther than is for their turn Two vulgar apologies I shall here take notice of only For as for that which is also commonly said that evil times hinder them from their duty I shall say no more but humbly advise them to deal sincerely with God and their own consciences in such cases
to be cordially addicted to the Good of the Church or Glory of God would use more civility and common Ingenuity if not conscience towards both then purposely and industriously to involve and cumber themselves with multiplicities of inconsisting Cares and Cures and then use it as sufficient excuse for their ill discharge of their Duty in all or most of them That they have so many occasions as that they cannot attend on them all as they confess they should and say they would For this is plainly to mock God and the Church too But experience proveth this to be too true that they who are most engaged in multitude of imploiments or charges seldom perform so much service to all of them put together as he that hath but one single Charge doth to it alone Chap. XVIII Of Obedience to the Church in Particular in the Five Precepts of the Church common to all viz. 1. Observation of Festival Dayes 2. Observation of the Fasts of the Church Of the Times Manner and Grounds of them Exceptions against them answered 3. Of the Customs and Ceremonies of the Church 4. Frequentation of the Publick Worship 5. Frequent Communicating and the due preparation thereunto IT was well said by a Reverend Person of our Church even where he argues against the blind obedience of the Roman Church Certainly Donnes Pseudomartyrs chap. 6. p. 180. the inestimable benefits which we receive from the Church who feeds us with the Word and Sacraments deserves from us an humble acknowledgment and obedient confidence in her yea it is spiritual treason not to obey her And though I dare not say with Catharinus against Cajetan The In eâ—dem gradu habenda sunt pracepta Ecclesiae si bona sunt quo ipsius Dei quoad hoc quod similiter ligant c. Catharinus Annotatin Com. Cajet lib. 2. Precepts of the Church are to be received with the same degree of honor yet I may say with as real reverence as the Precepts of God if they be good thus far that they both bind alike under pain of eternal damnation So that there could scarce any doctrine be devised more pestilent to the Church or pernicious to the souls of Men then that which infuses into mens heads to obey the Church as little as they can possibly without danger from the Civil Magistrate or express and particular violation of some text of Holy Writ alwayes excepted that more then Antichristian Dogme That men should refuse to do any thing enjoyned by any lawful Authority because it is commanded least forsooth their Christian liberties should be invaded But Bernard was certainly a much better Christian in this subject then these men to whom none in their own opinions are to be compared who tells us Whatever of Obedience is yielded unto them that are set over us is given Bernard de Virtute Obedientiae unto him who saith He that heareth you heareth me c. especially when the things so injoyned tend so directly to the service of God as doth those particularly commended unto our practise by our Church against which the Adversaries arguments are taken from the general quarrel they have against such Governours whom they would not have to rule at all but come under them or from the things themselves which they give out are against the Word of God because against their Negative Superstitions When we therefore propound to them and all faithful servants of God and true obedient and humble children of the Church the Five Precepts of the Church we suppose them to whom they are directed to be free from the leven and infection of Schism and Stubbornness we suppose them to be bred and educated in the bosome of the Church and to have no other Fathers in Christ than the Fathers of the Church For when they have made defection from that body of which they are or were Members either in heart and affections or outward declaration against it then no wonder if a thousand malicious reasons be at hand to enervate the commands upon them and defie all Authority But they who hold to their sound profession and have any honour for their spiritual Parents as well as natural or respect 〈◊〉 the Fifth Commandment which themselves generally interpret to extend to Religious as well as Moral Obedience and Offices whose interest will not suffer them to observe it cannot boggle at the reasonable use of Power in requiring such things nor at the Piety of the Precepts themselves Now the Five Precepts of the Church are these which have been with long continuance as to time and with great conscience as to all good Christians observed drawn out of our Liturgy by the Authour of the Collection Church Calendar of Private Devotions or Hours of Prayers First to observe the Festival or Holydayes appointed Of the reasâ—nabless whereof we have before spoken The manner of keeping them is by suspending all humane businesses wherein Justice and Mercy which are to be preferred before Sacrifice do not principally consist inconsistent with that due service of God on that day celebrated It is plain that before distinction of days set apart in special manner to the praise of God which we now call Holidayes there was a daily publick worship solemnly used by the Church and Christians held themselves bound to be present at the same For Origen upon Leviticus affirms That to Christians every day was an Holiday and Festival And to Chrys To. 5. Serin 88. p. 602 603. the same purpose St. Chrysostome in whose age the special Memory of Saints was frequent saith that Every day is a Feast to a Christian And out of Austin and others it is manifest that there was wont to have been a daily communication by Christians of the Eucharist But this so solemn and constant attendance on Gods worship ill agreeing with mens daily civil imployments it was the wisdom and piety of the Church to restrain the more solemn Service of God to some special days which was signalized with the memory of Christ or his eminent Servants and Saints So that if Sectaries would but keep to the grounds of Christianity rather than natural Policie and Interest they might find the contrary to that Calumny against the Church viz. That it restrains men in their callings For the Church hath rather made a Relaxation and Indulgence to men in order to their worldly affairs than laid any new restraints upon them in that it hath much lessened the number of Festivals to what they were twelve or thirteen hundred years ago and much more in the later days of the Roman Church It is a gross and prophane Errour of modern Sectaries to imagine that there is no obligation upon Christian people to repair to the house of God every day whether to publick or private Devotion as we have said before but much greater to imagine that the obligation is not yet stronger when the Authority of the Church determines the time and place though
there was no intention to divide that Period into two Precepts For then in all probability the Persons should have been ranked by themselves and the Goods by themselves so to distinguish them but no heed being given to this no intention seems to be for that To this they answer most colourably That in Deuteronomy the order is otherwise Coveting ones Neighbours wife being first prohibited and Deut. 5. 21. that the Law as there repeated and revised is to be a President to us But first the contrary to this is most true That the Law was more exactly delivered in Exodus than in Deuteronomie in all those points which are in common to them as hath been shewed out of Grotius For Deuteronomy according to its Name being indeed a Repetition in a compendious manner of what was more expresly and at large handled in the four first Books of Moses it cannot be supposed but many if not all things should be in them more plainly and accurately treated of than in this For as St. Augustine Evangelista autem Lucas in oratione Dominicà Petitiones non septem sed quinque complexus est c. Aug. Enchirid ad Laurent cap. 115. hath observed of the diverse manner of reciting the Lords Prayer in Saint Matthews Gospel and St. Lukes St. Matthew setting down seven Petitions and St. Luke but five and thereupon directs us to make St. Matthews words the Rule of understanding St. Lukes So questionless where a thing in the Pentateuch is more distinctly and fully expressed there ought we to take our measures for the interpretation of what is more confusedly or breifly rehearsed elsewhere and by consequence the Law in Deuteronomy is to be regulated by that of Exodus But farther The order of persons or things is not in Deuteronomie observed For first it is said Thou shalt not desire thy Neighbours Wife then Neither shalt thou covet thy Neighbours House and then follows his Servants and then again his Goods which shew that God would not have us too rigorously to seek for methods in his word but matter Therefore the sum of all is this That God knowing how imperfect mans understanding was in the matter wherein his senses were concerned and how willing he was to be deceived and ignorant of his duty and lastly how prone a man is to proceed from evil thoughts to evil deeds he doth here inform his people in an higher point of Sobriety and Justice than Gentile Philosophers or common light of Nature could direct men For Saint Paul saith he had not known lust to be a sin except the Law had said Thou Rom. 7. 7. Matth. 5. 28. shalt not covet And our Saviour in the Gospel interdicteth all vain and lascivious looks whereby Lust may be conceived The reason of all which is this because as the Scripture often intimates unto us God accepteth the heart for the act and the will for the deed where there is a defect of power to bring things to perfection which are righteous and holy so doth God judge that Evil to be done against him which is so conceived and resolved upon in the mind as to want nothing but ability and opportunity to put in execution For as an holy Father saith No man is righteous who cannot do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Basil Mag. Per hoc etiamsi minora mala faciant quia minus possunt non minus tamen mali sunt quia nollent minus esse si pâ—ssent amiss And as another speaks of wicked mens inclinations By this though peradventure they commit less evil they are no less evil because they would not be less wicked if they could tell how to shift it Thus Salvian And necessary was this Commandment not only for the reasons now given but also for the general pronity of all men to fall into this sin All men naturally having this unnatural called sometimes for the commonness Natural Concupiscence in them inclining and urging them to evil none but Christ himself not the Virgin Mary being exempted from it in the root and first seed called Original sin But Original sin is not here forbidden as that which surprises a man inevitably and cannot possibly be prevented but the actuating or drawing that evil principle which lurks in our nature forth Neque enim ea dimitti nobis volumus quae dimissa non dubitamus in baptismo sed illa c. Aug. Epist 108 to particular evil motions of the will For as St. Austine hath observed We do not pray God to forgive us those sins which we doubt not but are forgiven in baptism but those which through human frailty creep upon us unawares which though small are frequent So are we not here advised to pray against or resist Original sin which is irresistible but the vermine of evil thoughts which are apt to breed in the remains of natural Concupiscence as Snakes in a dunghil which coming to get strength creep out in evil outward acts to the endangering of the soul Hence it is that the Scriptures exhort us to avoid the occasions and resist the Devil at first and by Faith to quench these fiery darts of the Devil that shall be shot into our souls with some of which proper and useful means so to do I shall conclude this Chapter First the outward occasions of wicked thoughts are carefully and resolutely to be avoided such as are Idleness evil Objects evil Authours and evil Company Secondly Not to give way to the least friendly entertainment to the first motions or injections of the Tempter but crush the Cockatrice egg and quench the spark and growing flame at the very first For as when an enemy without throws in a Granado into a Fort to ruin it if they within take it up presently and throw it back again before it breaks it confounds the Enemy rather then them in the Fort so do evil thoughts cast into the Soul by the Devil rather torment him than hurt the Soul when they are rejected suddainly and cast out Thirdly By being instant and fervent Wisd 8. 21. Matth. 17. 21. in prayer whereby God is called to the assistance of the labouring Soul as some good hand by crying out is ready to pull out one sinking in waters Fourthly Imploying a mans self constantly and carefully in some laudable and profitable actions much secures him from the vain illusions of the mind from whence do spring that Lust of the Flesh Lust of the Eyes and Pride of Life against which St. John warns us and all which with their particular branches are forbidden by this last Commandment CHAP. XXI Of Superstition contrary to the true Worship of God and Christian Obedience AS Heresie is a corruption of the Faith or Doctrine of the Church and Schism of its Unity and Christian Communion so necessary to its well being so is Superstition a degeneration and corruption of the true worship of God now last spoken of And therefore as to the more compleat
a good while after So that the same difficulty is in reference to the Sabbath and it and is thus solved by Calvin himself That there were certain previous injunctions given Calvin Harmon in Pent. particularly and more rudely by God concerning the observation of certain Rites before that more exact delivery of them by God to Moses on Mount Sinai And as alwayes a day or time was allotted so likewise some special place separated from common uses as that called here the Tabernacle to the service of God For had there been any proper weakly day appointed by God before Moses surely we should have found some little mention thereof in the History of Moses from the Creation to his days but not a word of any such thing do we find to that purpose CHAP. XIII Of the Institution of the Lords Day That it was in part of Apostolical and partly Ecclesiastical Tradition Festival Days and Fasting derived unto us from the same Fountain and accordingly to be observed upon the like grounds Private Prayers in Families to the neglect of the Publique Worship unacceptable to God Of the Obligation all Priests have to pray daily according to their Office Of the Abuse of Holy days in the Number and unjustifiable occasions of them Of the Seven Hours of Prayer approved by the Ancient Church and our First Reformers Mr. Prinne's Cavils against Canonical Hours refuted THAT the Institution of the Lords day hath no known foundation from the Command of God or Christ may be collected from what is said But that the Apostles and Church Apostolical did by their example and practice commend it to following generations of Christians I acknowledge most true But still there remains a knot to be untied about the force of that Constitution whether it was only of Custom or Precept or all the Obligation proceeded from the decrees of the Church after the Apostles For direct Precept we find little or no Grounds in Scripture For Practice Apostolical and Custom upon that descending to posterity also the accession of the Laws Ecclesiastical and Imperial we make no scruple to acknowledge them to be very solemn and obligatory upon all good Christians But seeing all things practis'd by the Apostles are not Obligatory it will be worth the enquiry under what Capacity they so acted whether as Apostles or as Governors of the Church in such a large sense as might be communicable to their successours That it was not meerly and precisely an Apostolical Act to establish such a Festival seems to appear from the grounds found in the Law of Nature moving men to celebrate a day to God again that the first day of the week being the day of our Lord and Saviours Resurrection seems to be no other than Common Ecclesiastical Prudence as that which agreeth most with the End it self viz. The due commemoration of Christs resurrection on that day but that Christ should be so Commemorated and God so glorified seems to me to be specially Apostolical and so Divine that it is not alterable by the Counsel or Decrees of the Church any time after from whence may conveniently be reconciled the opposite opinions of both School-men and Canonists some of whom have asserted the divine Right of the Lords day and others the Ecclesiastical or Canonical only For that a day be Festivally observed to God is Natural that on such a Festival or Thanksgiving day Christ should be magnified and God praised is Apostolical but that on the First day of the week Christian Prudence and the necessary power of the Church may seem to suffice Which appeareth from the manner of celebrating the Christian Sabbath which hath been always left to the Authority and wisdom of the Church varying according to occasions given For that Christians very anciently met to treat of divine matters to communicate to celebrate the Eucharist and to sing Psalms Hymns and Spiritual Songs Justine Justin Apol. 2. Tertul. Apologer Martyr and Tertullian and the famous Epistle of Pliny witness And to this end they had a vacation from all worldly servile matters as many proofs of Antiquity demonstrate And for the dignity of this day it was that on it and none other Bishops were to be consecrated by the constitution of Leo 1. And what are the Prerogatives of this First Leo 1. Distinct 75. c. 1. Quod die c. day of the week are explained at large by the Ancient Fathers and Councils here not to be rehearsed From this Fountain of Ecclesiastical power resident in the Church springeth the Act of instituting other days to the Glory and Praise of God of two sorts viz. days of Humiliation and Exultation or joy For it is certain that after it was agreed upon that Christs Resurrection should be weekly celebrated it was consented to also that a Yearly Thanksgiving should be kept for the same which was the Christians Passover and our Easter day is immemorially practised and without interruption derived to this present age And therefore as well because it is the greatest matter of joy that at any time befell the Church of Christ as because it regulateth other principal Feasts and Fasts of the Church as lastly because thence is plainly inferred a power in the Church of ordaining Feasts and Fasts to the worship of God it is called by the Ancient The Mother of Feasts And surely upon this the Fathers of the Church produced many other Daughter-Feasts not all in a year nor an age but according to their power to maintain and defend them which was very difficult for them to do as becomed under Gentile persecution who were most severe against such Celebrities instituted by Christians to the overthrow and contempt of Gentile worship which according to the Light of nature consisted much in this as Seneca Legum Conditores Festùm instruerunt dies ut ad hilaritatem homines cogerent c. Seneca de Tranquil Aninai c. 15. hath said in these words The Founders of Laws ordained Festival days to the end that men might meet publiquely in Jollity puting some moderation to Labours as necessary for them These Gentile Institutions prevailing not only to Idololatrical service but corruption of manners contrary to nature it self The Ancient Fathers of the Church knew no better Antidote against such poison than to introduce Christian Festivals whereby all the natural and Civil benefit of Vacation from Labours friendly conversation and such like might be enjoyed and due worship and praise be given unto God in Christ Jesus And therefore Theodoret. Serm. 7. de Sacrificiis Theodoret with other Fathers is not ashamed to profess as a very laudable and religious occasion of Christian Feasts That they succeeded the Idolatrous and lewd Feasts of the Gentiles which some but in vain would turn against the use of them But they stand upon surer foundations than to be blown down with the wind of vain doctrines blustering against them For First as is said Nature it self directs to them
Secondly Religion of all sorts ever acknowledged Festival worship Thirdly Apostolical practice and Prescription commend them and Fourthly our Church Homilies one reason possibly they have suffered Homily of the time and place of Prayer pag. 125. so many reproaches of ungodly men tell us that Holy days were appointed by the same Authority that the Lords day was which as sorely as it may vex these dissenters to hear is most true For though it sayes with the same Authority it doth not from thence follow that they by that Authority were instituted with the same sacredness And Mr. Perkins is Perkins Preparat to Problem pag. 681. deceived who tells us Not a Feast except Easter can be proved for 300 years after Christ Indeed Socrates whom he quotes saith the Apostles did not much concern themselves in Feasts but his meaning plainly is not about such punctilio's or Circumstances of Feasts as gave him occasion to write about them such as were the Contentions between the Eastern and Western Church about the day of keeping Easter But that Easter was Apostolical can be no more doubted then that Sunday was so And that fifty days after Easter to Whitsuntide were kept Festivally Tertullian witnesseth And therefore Cartwright whom nothing Tertul. Advers Psychicos cap. 14. could hold but his own fansie and the Genevan Plat-form thought it safer to say being urged with Antiquity I appeal from the examples of the Ancient Church to the Scriptures There were other grosser Errors countenanced by Antiquity There were so or there were none at all But what greater errour did Antiquity generally assert to then this of Innovatours denying all Holy days lawful but the Lords day Do you appeal to Scripture to prove this So do we Show one place against them if ye can Or show that the Church where there is no precept of Scripture in particular may not ordain such times of Worship When will these Scriptures appear For the places commonly alledged against set days viz. Rom. 14. 5. I leave Mr. Perkins to answer sufficiently though not absolutely in his Cases of Conscience Lib. 2. cap. 16. And that of Galat. 4. 10. to his Comment on the words And that of Colos 2. 16. to the now quoted place of his Cases of Conscience intending here no formal disputation though this Author falls into many pitiful suspicions and imaginations of his own in these places As for instance on Galatians 4. 10. he saith Indeed the Church of England observes Holy days but the Popish superstition is cut off This is true but the reason he gives very false which is this For we are not bound in conscience to the Observation of those days For Conscience binds every good Christian from singularizing Conscience binds to embrace all convenient opportunities to praise and honor God Conscience likewise binds to faithful obedience to our Ecclesiastical Superiours in such pious exercises as these and against which no more then the rude Effects of their private opinions and passion hath been alledged notwithstanding I know how much Gelaspie and after him Voctius have travailed in this subject and notwithstanding his answers Davenant on Coloss 2. v. 16. I hold the Reasons of Bishop Davenant to be strong and Pious given us for the observation of Holy days in his Comment upon the Colossians to which I refer the Reader for brevity sake And for the same reason I reduce what may be said about Fasts to what is already said of the Feasts of the Church For there is the very same reason of Antiquity Apostolical for the observation of both power and Liberty of the Church just occasions offered Conformity to the Primitive state of the Church Advantages of such exercises Characteristicks of Christian from unchristian societies and professions which all equally infer the duty of Fasting on set days as of Feasting and the madness and wickedness of such Christians as dare open their mouths against them because no doubt but both one and other have been much abused by Roman superstition Yet not Fasting so much as Festival days The abuses may here be noted to be these 1. Multitude whereby works of Nature and Civil necessities should be so far impeded Origen Hom. 10. in Genes and retarded that no small prejudice should befall the Common-wealth thereby Indeed Origen saith Every day is to be a Festival to a Christian calling them Jews who observe some now and then but his meaning is not that every day a man should cease from his labour wholly and only wear his best cloaths walk about and do nothing but worship God but as there he expresses himself should go to Church daily and not content himself with his domestique devotion but appear before God in publique place though not in that publique manner as with the assembly of Christians This still binds as a Councill at least if not Command and that which as hath been shewed already is much better then that which is performed within the walls of our Bucerus de Regno Christ lib. 2. cap. 10. own house or Closets if we will take Bucers judgment who speaketh thus When as all that we have and are and our very lives we have received and do receive daily from the free bounty of God is it not very meet also that we should assemble daily also to render him thanks and to renew our devotion to him and our worship of him by his Word and Sacraments which he hath for this purpose appointed for us and by daily Prayers which he requireth of us Your Majesties therefore he speaketh to Edward the sixth Part it is to inforce the authority of the Divine Law against this so great abuse of God and unbridled profanation of Holy days And therefore if Sectaries Religion be examined duly which hath procured them so much credit and esteem amongst unknowing people it will be found to fall short by much of that which is approved and established by our Church They are said to be frequent and constant in duties as they call them of their Families meaning prayers perhaps morning and evening this is very good and laudable But consider we a little whence this practice hath arisen whither it tendeth and it is rather a defrauding God of that due which we plead for then out-doing others The Church the publique house of God is the proper place of Gods worship and that he is more glorified in than by home-made worship Therefore for them to translate the Service of God out of the Church at all times but when a Sermon calls them forth into their own houses and to offer the morning and evening sacrifice at home when it ought and may be offered in his own house is so far from deserving the name of extraordinary Pieties that it deserves rather the name of Sacriledge And this I speak meaning when this proceeds either from that brutish opinion that all places are alike to God which is only true in sensu diviso and