sending his Apostles and Disciples to Preach the Gospel and after four of them writing his Gospel which shewes if the Books be true to the title that they writ all they preacht at least that was necessarie for else they were not Gospels but Parts of it that they should not rather leave out any thing else how important soever then not have imploied themselves about teaching us that the Churches Definitions are a Rule of our Faith and instructing us in Markes so proper to her that we might never need to doubt whether it be she that defines or no and whether their not having done this evince not in Reason that this your Doctrine is false Secondly I pray consider whether if there were any such continu'd Tradition about the Definitions of the Church whether that must not also have taught or else have been to small purpose when it is that the Church hath defin'd but yet that is a case not fully judged among you For some hold that the Church hath defin'd when a Councel hath although unapproved by the Pope which is denied by others Thirdly Consider whether supposing as was before suppos'd it must not also have taught certaine Notes to know the Church by but yet about those you are not agreed Salmeron putting Miracles among the false Signes of the Church and Bellarmine and many more among the True ones Fourthly Consider whether the Church have an eternall spring of Doctrines within her or but a finite number and onely those which the Apostles preacht and I believe you will pitch upon the latter Not then to ask how they come to know them nor if you answer by Tradition to ask you againe how come men then not to know before a Definition what it is they Preacht for if the Bishops of which a Councell is compounded know it not now how will they know it when they meet I will desire to know why the Church will not at once teach us all she knowes and not keep us in doubts which she may resolve and did the Apostles teach their Doctrines to be lockt up or taught to us And then having considered this you will find I believe that the Church do with Doctrines as Fathers with Estates never give their Children all that they may still have something to keep them in awe with because if she should she could never have after pretended a Power to end any new emergent controversie keeping in secret what she knowes any that ariseth she may still pretend is endable by her Fiftly Consider that it will appear but a shift if you say that there is a Tradition that all the Churches Definitions be true and so excuse the particular Doctrines for otherwise having none and yet avoid giving us any Rules to know the Church by at all times and answering those Questions which must be ended before we can know at any time when she hath defin'd Now I confesse if you had said Tradition teacheth that the particular Church of Rome is so the Admiral ship that we may know any other if it be of God's Fleet because then it must follow her that is be subject to her decrees theirs which joyn with her this would have bin plainly to let me know your mind and we might quickly have examin'd whether there were any Tradition for the Church in this sence to be alwaies obeyed when she Teaches and without you say this you say nothing and will never be able to give any such Note of the Church as the ignorant may without blushing pretend to know it by Because therefore I guesse that when not I but your Adversaries reasons for I am but one of the worst transcribers of them have driven you from your own Fort you must retire to that of your friends or like them which are drowning you will rather catch at a Twigg then sink I will consider this Assertion which I suppose you must lay hold of so far forth as to shew it to be indeed but an Assertion That there hath no such Verbal Tradition nor indeed any come downe seems to me for these reasons Saint Cyprian by opposing the Church of Rome and that with many Bishops about the Rebaptization shewes sufficiently that he and they knew of no such Tradition and then in what Cave must it have lain hid if the chiefe Doctor of that age was ignorant of it and even his Adversaries claim'd it not And that he knew no such appears not onely by his Actions but also by his words for to them who claim'd Tradition for the particular point propos'd though none for the Authority of the Church proposing he answers if it be contain'd in the Gospels Epistles or Acts let it be observed at one blow cutting off not onely that for sure this authority of the Church of Rome is no way taught in the Scriptures but all other unwritten Traditions which Cardinal Perron thought most skilfull in that kind of Fence was not able to ward but Du Plesis objecting it receiv'd no other answer then that the opinion of Cyprian was condemn'd and that Tradition although unwritten maintain'd Which answer though it be as far from befitting the Cardinall as from answering the objection since it is plaine that this opinion was once held by such as were of chiefe estimation among the Orthodox and consequently the contrary was not then the generall and necessary doctrine of Christians and the prevailing of the one since proves not the other false but rather unfortunate or the spreaders faulty yet I confesse I excuse him for as I have learnt from Aristotle that it is ridiculous to expect a Demonstration where the matter will beare but a probability so would it be in me to expect even a probable solution of an Argument the evidence of which will suffer none at all Neither was he I mean Cyprian the first that without blot of Heresie oppos'd the Tradition of the Church of Rome but that courage which he left to others after him when they saw the Christian World joyne in counting him a Saint and a Martyr whom the Bishop of Rome had stiled a false Christ and a false Apostle the same had he received by seeing that the Asian Bishop had also rejected and oppos'd her Tradition and yet Policrates ever had in great honour and the rest never branded with the crime of Heresie nay even the more neighbouring Bishops and who joyn'd with the Pope in the time of celebrating Easter as Iraeneus yet thought the difference not worth excommunication and for want of skill in the Canon Law transgrest so farre as to reprehend for it whereas if to that Church all else had been to conform themselves then Iraeneus ought therefore to have thought the matter of weight enough because she thought it so who were to small purpose made a Judge if she were not as well enabled to distinguish between slight and materiall as between False and Truth though that it seemes she was not for the
which the simple are capable of understanding I mean as much as is plaine and more is not necessarie since other Questions may as well be suffered without harme as those between the Jesuites and the Dominicans about Praedetermination and between the Dominicans and allmost all the rest about the Immaculate Conception and those who are not neither are they capable out of Scripture to discerne the true Church much lesse by any of those Noteswhich require much understanding and learning as Conformity with the Ancients and such like Ninethly The same answer I give to this serves also to the following words of Saint Austine for whereas Mr. Mountague concludeth that he could not meane the Scriptures as a competent Rule to mankind which consisteth most of simple Persons because there hath been continuall alterations about the sence of important places I answer That I may as well conclude by the same Logick that neither is the Church a competent Guide because in all Ages there have also been disputes not onely about her authority but even which was she and to whatsoever reason he imputes this to the same may we the other as to Negligence Pride Praejudication and the like and if he please to search I verily beleeve he will find that the Scriptures are both easier to be known then the Church and that it is as easie to know what these teach as when that hath defined since they hold no decrees of hers binding de Fide without a confirmation of the Popes who cannot never be known infalliblly to be a Pope because a secret Simony makes him none no not to be a Christian because want of due intention in the Baptizer makes him none whereof the latter is alwaies possible and the first in some ages likely and in hard Questions a readinesse to yeeld when they shall be explained me thinks should serve as well as a readinesse to assent to the decrees of the Church when those shall be pronounced Tenthly He saith that the Scripture must be kept safe in some hands whose authority must beget our acceptance of it which being no other then the Church of all ages we have no more reason to beleeve that it hath preserved that free from Corruption then it self in a continuall visibilitie I answer That neither to giving authority to Scriptures nor to the keeping of them is required a continuall visibility of a no-waies erring body of Christians the Writers of them give them their authority among Christians nor can the Church move any other and that they were the Writers we receive from the generall Tradition and Testimony of the first Christians not from any following Church who could know nothing of it but from them for for those parts which were then doubted of by such as were not condemned for it by the rest why may not we remain in the same suspence of them that they did and for their being kept and conveighed this was not done onely by their Church but by others as by the Greeks and there is no reason to say that to the keeping and transmitting of records safely it is required to understand them perfectly since the old Testament was kept and transmitted by the Jewes who yet were so capable of erring that out of it they looked for a Temporall King when it spoke of a Spirituall and me thinks the Testimony is greater of a Church which contradicts the Scripture then of one which doth not since no mans witnessing is so soon to be taken as when against himself and so their Testimonie is more receiveable which is given to the Scriptures by which themselves are condemned Besides the generall reverence which ever hath been given to these Books and the continuall use of them together with severall parties having alwaies their eyes upon each other each desirous to have somewhat to accuse in their adversaries give us a greater certaintie that these are the same writings then we have that any other ancient book is any other ancient Author and we need not to have any erring Company preserved to make us surer of it Yet the Church of Rome as infallible a Depositarie as she is hath suffered some variety to creep into the Coppies in some lesse materiall things nay and some whole Books as they themselves say to be lost and if they say how then can that be rule whereof part is lost I reply That wee are excused if we walk by all the Rule that we have and that this maketh as much against Traditions being the Rule since the Church hath not looked better to Gods unwritten Word then to his written and if she pretend she hath let her tell us the cause why Antichrists comming was deferred which was a Tradition of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians and which without impudence she cannot pretend to have lost And if againe they say God hath preserved all necessary Tradition I reply so hath he all necessarie Scripture for by not being preserved it became to us not necessarie since we cannot be bound to beleeve and follow that we cannot find But besides I beleeve that which was ever necessary is contained in what remaines for Pappias saith of Saint Mark that he writ all that Saint Peter preacht as Irenaeus doth that Luke writ all that Saint Paul preacht nay Vincentius Lirinensis though he would have the Scripture expounded by ancient Tradition yet confesseth that all is there which is necessary and yet then there was no more Scripture then we now have as indeed by such a Tradition as he speakes of no more can be proved then is plainly there and almost all Christians consent in and truely I wonder that they should brag so much of that Author since both in this and other things he makes much against them as especially in not sending men to the present Roman Church for a Guide a much readier way if he had known it then such a long and doubtfull Rule as he prescribes which indeed it is impossible that almost any Question should be ended by Eleventhly He brings Saint Austines authority to prove that the true Church must be alwaies visible but if he understood Church in Mr Mountagues sence I think he was deceived neither is this impudent for me to say since I have cause to think it but his particular opinion by his saying which Cardinall Perron quoted that before the Donatists the Question of the Church had never been exactly disputed of and by this being one of his maine grounds against them and yet claiming no Tradition but onely places of Scripture most of them allegoricall and if it were no more I may better dissent from it then he from all the first Fathers for Dionysius Areopagita was not then hatcht in the point of the Chiliasts though some of them Pappias and Irenaeus claimed a direct Tradition and Christs owne words Secondly As useth this kind of libertie so he professeth it in his nineteenth Epistle where he saith that to Canonicall Scriptures he had
but the Apostle the Prophet or the Evangelist and mentioned the place where they thought such a doctrine was included seldome speak of any verball Tradition lesse of such a one upon which you wholly rely except urg'd to it when that was impudently claim'd by some Heretique and when they did as the Asian Bishops about Easter Justin Martir about the age of Christ Saint Austine about communicating Infants Papius and Iraeneus about the doctrine of the Chiliasts then as Lucian tels us that when that Jugler Alexander sent to a City a Verse to be set upon their doores to keepe away the Plague those houses which used the remedy were more visited then those that did not so those doctrines which the Fathers did grace by writing verball Tradition in their foreheads were not lesse perhaps more apt to be after disbeleeved then the other which were not in that kind taught Now if the Ignorant be not expresly instructed that upon this ground they are to think that true which they are bid to beleeve especially where their religion is easily enough received onely for being that of their Country you must allow that the greatest part of your Church cannot nor does not pretend to have received all they beleeve under that Notion and to know they did you must have spoke with them all or have heard them all instructed for what is in some places so taught may be delivered upon other grounds in the very next Parishes From the Ignorant let us come to the learned and see whether they doe not both beleeve more and require more to be beleeved then hath had any such pedigree as you imagine First then the great eloquent and judicious Cardinall Perron whom I preferre so much before all those of his side that have been Authors that if a Pigmy may be allowed to measure Giants I should think that the vast learning and industry of Bellarmine and Baronius might with most advantage to their party and no disgrace to them have been employ'd in seeking quotations for his large and monstrous understanding to have employ'd them he I say tels us and not from himselfe but from Saint Austine that the Trinity Pennance Free-will and the Church were never exactly disputed of before the Arrians the Novatians the Pelagians and the Donatists Now since without doubt the former ages disputed as well as they could and so could not instruct their Proselites better then they confuted their Adversaries I think it evident that more hath since been concluded then came from Tradition and that the way you speak of appeared not sufficient either to Cardinall Perron or Saint Austin But because Bellarmine being written in a more generall language is more generally though I thinke unjustly esteemed then Perron I will aske you a question of him when he excuseth Pope John the 22 th for denying that Saints enjoy the beatificall vision before the day of judgement in which he was lead by a Troop of Fathers because the Church had not then defined the contrary did Bellarmine beleeve that then Christians had received from their Fathers as from the Apostles a direct contrary Tradition to his doctrine If he did how could he think the Pope either possibly to be ignorant of it or excuseable if he stood against it If not then he thought our Age beholding to our Fathers for finding out some truths which had no such line to come down by nay which the Apostles either taught not or but obscurely and so as needs Arguments to deduce it out of their writings at least not so generally but that a Pope and many more chiefe Doctors of the Church knew not they had done so although you often put us in minde that Tertullian tels us how in that Church which he governed the Apostles poured out all their doctrines with their blood and in his time Fathers taught not their children so And this objectionlyes against you as often as any of your side confesse any of the Ancients accompted Orthodox to have delivered any doctrine contrary to that of the now Church of Rome which many of them often confesse and your selfe doe not deny for that they could not have done if an uninterrupted verball Tradition had been then the onely rule of true doctrine and they had known it to be so for then they had a way of information which you must confesse easie since they might soon have known whether generally Christians had been taught the contrary under such a Notion and in such a degree as you speak of or the Church of Rome had not since either deviated from the tradition of one part or introduced on the other But because you knew that the claime of Tradition could not serve your Churches turne if any other different from yours made the same you therefore affirme that none doth and prove it because two cannot doe it and in this you must give me leave to say that you imitate the Philosopher who made Arguments against Motion though one walked before him for though we see that the Greek Church does it as much as the Romane though apt to be deceived in the doing it by the same wayes yet you hope to perswade us beyond our eyes by a reason which indeed ends in an assertion for I pray why may not two companies of Christians both pretend to such a Tradition though opposing each other as well as the Asian Churches and the Roman did long together about the celebration of Easter But not onely that it may be so but that it is so you may find by Hieremy Nilus and Barlaam who professe to stand to the Scriptures the ancient Tradition of their Fathers and the seven first generall Councels and they can be disprov'd no way but by the same you may be so too over and above the confessions of your own men But suppose you did pretend and alone pretend to such a Tradition yet you might falsely doe it for I desire you to remember that the Apostles delivered as well Writings as verball Doctrine and whatsoever the first ages thought to be contained there that they might as well deliver to their posterity as taught them by the Apostles as what they received by word of mouth since we use to say I learnt this of such a man when we mean from his book and though you strive to joyne verball Tradition in commission with Scripture yet sure none of you can desire to thrust Scripture out quite from being at least a part of the Rule Now that they might erre in interpreting their writings and an error in the cheifest then might easily cause a generall one since I think you will not deny especially since to say that they left by Tradition every place of Scripture interpreted would be an evidently false assertion for how could the Fathers then have written upon it such differently-expounding Comments Secondly How shall it appeare that there were not once two contrary Traditions claimed by two Parts as the Asian Church and
they went by such a Tradition since of that eighty so many persons from so many several Parts are witnesses beyond exception according to your own grounds and that their Infallibility is not thought to depend upon an Impossibility that in the matter of Fact what hath been taught under that Notion they should either deceive or be deceiv'd but upon an infallible assistance of the Holy Ghost which may be wanting to any company whereof the Pope is no part or of whose decrees he is no confirmer Now to return to my proofes that against the Arrians there was no such Tradition as you speak of at least that was the ground upon which they were condemned consider if you please that in that Epistle which Eusebius of Caesarea writ to some Arrians after the Councell of Nice he saith First that they assented to the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Consubstantiall because also they knew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some eloquent and illustrious Bishops and Writers had us'd the Terme In which I note thatneither claim'dhe any such Verbal Tradition for this as you speak of and of that sort which he claim'd he names onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some as knowing too many had writ otherwise to give such a Tradition leave to be generall Secondly He saith they consented to Anathematize the Contradictors 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to hinder men from using unwritten words by which he saith and that truely that all confusion hath come upon the Church And if it be askt why the same reason made them not keep out the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I answer That I believe or else he is not constant to his own reason that he meant onely those words to be unwritten which were in Scripture neither themselves nor equivalently whereas he took 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be in the Scripture in the latter sence And that by written he meant in the Scripture onely appeares by what followes that no divinely-inspired writing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 using the Arrians Phrase it was neither fitting to say nor teach them Neither can you say that Eusebius being himself a secret Arrian prevaricated herein for Theodoret makes this Epistle an Argument against them which he would not have done if either it had seem'd to him to say any thing contrary to the Catholique doctrine or not to have oppos'd the contrary by a Catholique way at least without giving his leader some Caution concerning it All which reasons move me to think that the generality of Christians had not been alwaies taught the contrary to Arrius's doctrine but some one way others the other most neither as having been onely spoken of upon occasions and therefore me thinks you had better either say with the Protestants that the Truth was concluded as Constantine said it should be by Arguments from Scripture or as some of your own say of other points that before the Councell it lay in Archivis Ecclesiae in the Deskes of the Church then claime such a Tradition for it as appeares it can never be defended that it had Let us consider but two opinions more That Infants are not to receive the Eucharist is now both the doctrine and practise of the Roman Church but six hundred yeeres the Church us'd it Saint Austine accounted it necessary at least in some sence of the word if not absolutely which last is most likely because from the necessity of that which could not be receiv'd but by them who had received Baptisme he and Innocentius a Pope prove the necessity of Baptisme and an Apostolicall Tradition If therefore both these Ages had gone by your Rule how comes this difference between their opinions the Sacrament being the same it was and the Children the same they were This I may consider and see if the same way that this Doctrine hath been altered whether any other might not have received change Next that Saints are invocable you must say is Tradition taught from Father to Sonne as deriv'd from the Apostles if you will be constant to your own principle now though I might disprove this first by the many Fathers that beleeved the Just not to be admitted to the Beatificall vision before the day of judgement for upon this your side now grounds that but to be kept in secretreceptacles and by the long time which pass'd before this doctrine was condemn'd Secondly by the beginning of it which was particular Doctors Hipotheticall prayers with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and such conditionall clauses And thirdly by Nicephorus Calistus his Relation who in this is a believable witnesse because he allowes of your opinion that prayers to the Virgin Mary were first brought into the publick Liturgie by one Petrus Gnapheus a Heretick about five hundred yeares after Christ yet I will rather chuse to confute this by the confession of Sancta Clara out of Horantius who to this objection that sub Evangelio which must mean when the Gospel was preacht no such precept is extant not onely denies it not but gives this reason for it least the Pagans should-think themselves brought againe to the worshipping of Men instead of Gods If upon this or any other reason this were not then taught then have not all your Doctrines such a Pedigree as you suppose but allow it were yet howsoever it followes that some at least of the learned of your Church have not been taught that they have or consequently that it is necessary they should have Though it seemes to me little less then Montanisme to believe that any since as it were a Paraclet should perfect the doctrine which then was delivered by the Apostles Neither can you answer that they speake onely of such a Precept and of being extant whereas they might teach it lawfull without giving any Precept and they might have given such a Precept although not extant for I should readily reply that the reason they give why there is none such extant shewes that they mean there was none at all neither Precept nor allowance since the Pagans would have been scandaliz'd at its being accounted lawfull to worship men instead of Gods although it were not commanded and not a whit the lesse whether that in after times were extant or not which they could not foresee The onelie answer which I am able to invent in your behalfe is this that though some of your particular doctrines have not such a Tradition yet there being a Tradition that the Churches definitions are infallible whatsoever she at any time defines is then to be believed upon the strength of such a Tradition and before did latere in causis as Flowers do in Winter Yet to this I may reply by desiring you to enter with me into some few considerations First If this were so and that so much of Christian Religion depends upon the definitions of the Church and our Reception of them upon knowing alwaies which is she and that such is her authority can you perswade your selfe that Christ
how they can serve to preserve the rest certainly from all corruption indeed to secure any Truth But I believe many may be miscounted Hereticks for onely opposing some of these what through the over-caution and too much ardor of some Primum mobile and of the greater part lead by a few such what through their being come having been long from pious opinions to be matters of Faith as in great Families Servants who haue waited long in meaner places are rewarded with higher Besides I verily believe that many Doctrines which you account necessary have no such redoubts about them or at least have not alwaies had and indeed you onely affirming it by Tullies Rule who was no small Master of Reason Sat erit verbo negare It will be enough for me barelie to deny it And for Rites and Ceremonies which you suppose guard your Doctrines many used among the Ancients being not now in use amonst you either some Tenets which those did guard and they did hold yee hold not or if you do still at least they are now unguarded But still I speaking most of the easinesse that false and new Doctrines not contradicting the old may be brought into the Church what answer is it to tell me how the Principall of Christian Religion are sure guarded since so they may be and yet such other may be brought in As Christs Promises and chiefe injunctions may be retained and yet praying to Saints and Purgatory and such like be superinduct Let any discreete man consider what further evidence he can desire or peradventure what greater assurance Nature can afford Sir I wish you so well that I cannot but give you warning that this saying of yours doth Sapere Haeresin since it seemes as if you disclaimed any absolute Infallibility and pretend onely to grounds of most possibility which the Protestants doing too use yet to be accused for making nothing certaine and having no firm foundation to build any thing upon But as you claime lesse then by your own Rules you should so you claim still more then either you are able to prove or we likely to grant The Philosophers say it is indisciplinati ingenii to expect in any Science more exactnesse then the Nature of it affords I confesse this to be true but I desire you also to remember that as it is absurd to expect as exact a proof in the Politicks as in Geometry so it is absurd to expect as high a degree of Assent to the first as to the second of my objections being intended against those who will be infalliblly believed to be infallible upon probable grounds for they themselves give them no higher a Title and indeed that it self in my opinion is more then they deserve What shall we expect then in Religion to see a main advantage on the one Party we cast our selves upon Truely such Advantage on your part I cannot see Neither if I did could I in reason joyn with you A maine advantage it is to have more Truth then any other Society of Christians but supposing you had so which is but a supposition for I verily believe if the Question were but who had most Title to so much yee would appear to a dispassionate man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Neither third nor fourth according to the answer of the Ancient Oracle yet you withall require not onely that I should believe you erre in nothing but that you never can and then I had rather remaine in their communion I say not who themselves erred not but whose conditions of Communion were lesse rigorous and exacted not of me to professe they could not erre when I believe they do And if you answer that it would necessarily follow that if they had fewest errors they must have none because some society of Christians must be allwaies free from all this I shall absolutely deny and the more earnestly because I know this is a trappe wherein many have been caught who taking this for granted have examined the Doctrines of the most known Churches of Protestants and finding as they thought and peradventure truely some errors in them some Doctrines no way to be proved but upon Popish grounds and by that justifying those and some imputations imposed upon their Adversaries wherein their Tenets or the consequences from them were mistaken they then by the Doggs Logick have run over without smelling to the Church of Rome as knowing no other Society but these and being praepossest that one of necessity must be free from all error Whereas for my part as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those who bound not themselves to believe absolutely the whole Doctrines of any Sect but pickt out what they thought accorded with reason out of them all were a wise sort of Philosophers so they seem to me reasonable Divines who speak Gods will as they did Truth for it is not to chuse by reason and Scripture or Tradition received by Reason which makes a Hereticke but to chuse an opinion which will make most either for the chusers Lust or Power and Fame and then seeking waies how to entitle God to it For since it would be a Miracle if the Errors of the Roman Church being long gathering could have been all discovered in a Day or if it had been possible for the first Reformers who having their eyes but newly open it is not strange if like the man in the Gospel they saw at first men walking like Trees and had but an imperfect apprehension of Truth especially being in Tullies state Quem fugio habeo Quem sequar non habeo I see whom to fly but not whom to follow not to have left some opinions untaxt which yet were errors nor to have expurged others which yet were none I cannot see why we may not in some points joyn with the one and with others in other and besides find some Truths which ly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 well in the mid-way betweene the Parties 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nay in some points differ wholly from both Which Liberty if it were generally allowed and generally practised if particular interests were trod wholly under foot especially by the greatest and if such spirits as those of Cassander and Melancton were more common no considerable things would in a short time be left but all would flow againe in the same Chanell whereas this opinion that allwaies one part erres not is both prejudiciall to Truth and the best Unity which is that of Charity for it perswades them who have fewest errors to believe those to be none and to hate all opposers as Hereticks and of this your Church is most guilty which not onely affirmes that there is such a one but that she is it and prophesies as much of her selfe allwaies for the future as she promiseth for the present and upon this ground like him who having won nineteene games at Tables threw the Dice in the fire for not winning him the twentieth though we should
likelyhood but know their writings I owe the knowledge of the Scripture and to that the knowledge of Gods will and to that Heaven if I conforme carefully to it both my Life and my Beliefe and to the Church in this sence I owe both as much gratitude as you please and believe whatsoever this as generally witnesseth to have received from the Apostles But this concerning any present Church doth as little concerne your present purpose For let us mean by the Church that company of men which hath kept Tradition wholly uncorrupted and suppose there is such a one yet to know that she hath done so I must examine her Doctrine and compare it either with Scripture or the first Antiquity and so rather receive her for it then it for her Besides that the whole Church teaches nothing and if she did yet by the same waies from any single learned Orthodox man I may receive the same instruction to whose commands neverthelesse except when he delivers Gods I owe no obedience Thustoo when the Orthodox company commands as they are Orthodox that is something of the will of God then they are to be obeyed and so am I and so againe when the chosen governours for that purpose command indifferent Things but if they exceed their Commission in commanding no man is longer bound to obey no more then if a Mayor of a Town should command the People to make his Hay they were bound to obedience since commanding more then his Magistracy authorizeth him he in that case is no Magisttate This Church can satisfie both learned and unlearned For in matters of Faith above the reach of learning whose spring is from what Christ and his Apostles taught what learned man can refuse in his inmost soule to bow to that which is testified by so great a multitude to have come from Christ and what unlearned man can require more for his faith then to be taught by a Mistresse of so many prerogaives and advantages above all others The learned cannot reasonablie be satisfied with this especiallie so farre forth as to beleeve it infalliblie true First because they see great multitudes have and doe testifie contrarie things Secondlie because they must have observed with Salmeron that a multitude of some opinion may proceed from some one Doctor especiallie if he be Illustrious and some againe taken with a pious and an humble feare chuse rather against their mind to approve what hath come from others then to bring forth any new thing out of their own understanding least they may seem to bring some thing unwonted into the Church This they must needs see may bring an undelivered opinion to be generall and then the generallitie may bring it to be thought to come from Tradition according to Tertullians rule Quod apud multas ecclesias unum invenitur non est erratum sed Traditum and that of Saint Austine that of whatsoever no beginning is known and yet is generall is to be beleeved to have its originall from the Apostles By this way supposing that all your Church did witnesse all their doctrines to have had such a lineall succession which they know to be false they see that opinions falslie and illogicallie deduct from true Traditions may be equallie beleeved to be such themselves Vincentius Lirinensis allowing the following Church to give light to the former which they might mistake in doing at least the certaintie of her Illustrations cannot have their force from Tradition By this way they see that in time such doctrines may come to have such a generall attestation which had their first spring from Scripture mis-interpreted either by publicke mistakes or by Councels mislead either by feare error or partialitie and what proceeded either from consent or definition may seem to have been deduct from Tradition In this they will be confirmed by seeing plainlie that more is now required to be beleeved by the Church of Rome then in all times hath been that now among you contrarie parties urge for or expect a generall Councell to end questions concerning which neither side claimes any continued verball Tradition and that the greatest part are ready to receive such a definition in as high a degree as any Tradition whatsoever They will be also confirmed by your denying Infallibilitie to a Councell how generall soever unapproved by the Pope by seeing that if as you say no man can be ignorant what he was taught when he was a childe as the ground and substance of his hopes for all eternitie and if in this all your Religion were comprised or else to what purpose say you this then no man bred in the Orthodox Church could erre or ever have erred in matter of Faith without knowing that he had departed from the very Basis of Christianitie and for Instructions in these points not onely all Authors as Commenters upon Scripture and the like were wholly uselesse but it were also a vaine thing to goe for instruction even to Christs Vicar and S. Hierome might have resolved his own question about the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 every whit as well as Damasus or Saint Peter himselfe And for the same reason it were wholly impossible that at the same time the Popes and most notable and most pious and most learned Papists living should have justified and applauded Erasmus for the same workes the one by his printed Diplomas and the rest by their Letters for which at the same instant the greatest part of the Monkes counted and proclaimed him a more pestilent Heretick then Luther if they had all weighed heresie in the same ballance and more impossible if in yours which the learned will yet lesse approve of when they see how soon the worse opinion and lesser authoritie may prevaile as how that of the Monkes hath done against that of the Popes and Bishops and that so much that Erasmus is now generallie disavowed as no Catholicke and given to us whom wee accept as a great present that Bellarmine will allow him to be but halfe a Christian and Cardinall Perron which I am sorry for gives a censure upon him which would better have become the pen of a Latomus a Bedda a Stunica or an Egmundane then of so learned and judicious a Prelate Now for the Ignorant I am sure you will never be able to prove infalliblie to them that your Church hath any prerogatives above others the ordinarie way cannot be taken with them because they not understanding the languages in which the Fathers and Councels are written cannot be press'd by what they cannot construe and your way as little because they are not more though totallie ignorant of the Authors of past Ages then they are of the state opinions and claimes of the present time so that I know not how you can attempt them if they have but a moderate understanding to their no knowledge The body of our Position shoots forth the branches of divers Questions or rather the Solutions of
scope of Christian Doctrine being great and the Apostles preaching in so great varieties of Countries it might happen some point in one Country might be lesse understood or peradventure not preacht which in another was often preacht and well both understood and retained we may easily free our selves from these brambles For the Spirit of Tradition residing in this that the testimony be exceptione majus and beyond all danger of deceit It is not necessary to the efficaciousnesse of Tradition that the whole universall Church should be witnesse to such a truth but so great a part as could be a warrant against mistaking so that if all the Churches of Asia Greece or Affrick or AEgypt should constantly affirm such a Tradition to have been delivered them from the Apostles it were enough to make a Doctrine exceptione majorem Whence it ensueth that if in a meeting of the universall Church it were found that such a part hath such a Tradition concerning some matter whereof the rest had either no understanding or no certainty such a Doctrine would passe into a necessary bond of Faith in the whole Church Your sword is so sharp and your shield so weak that I can hardly believe they came out of the same forge but when I observe how much you have a better right hand then a left and that not onely you have raised an objection which you cannot lay but your answer to it multiplies more I cannot but compare you to him in Lucian who travelling with a Magician that had no servant and instead of one was daily wont to say to a Pestle Pestle be thou a man and it would be so and when his occasions were served would bid it return to be a Pestle and was obeyed thought one time to imitate the Magitian he being abroad and made indeed the Pestle a man and draw water but could not make it return to the former state but it continued still to draw wherefore angry and afraid he took up an axe and clove the Pestle-man in two whereupon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in stead of one water-drawer there lept up two For first I pray consider what could you have found more certaine to destroy all which you had before laboured to settle about the Infallibilitie of your Tradition then this distincton of Exceptione Major since if not a generall one but one which seemed such were required how easie was it for false opinions to get in under that colour testified but by a few reputed honest men and so received by and transmitted from others of great and generall authoritie Secondlie how could you have found a better way to answer your owne Objection against the Chiliasts Tradition for want of being sufficientlie publique since if that had not seemed to them to have had this condition I mean if they had thought they should for this cause have excepted against it it had been impossible these Saints should have received it and concerning the publicitie of it and the number and authoritie of the deliverers they must of necessitie have been the best Judges who then lived and who were the more considerable Doctors of the most considerable Ages so that you must either confesse that a Tradition bindes not unlesse indeed generall or confesse that this doth supposing this not to have been generall which you cannot prove A likely example of this may be drawn from the Canonicall Bookes I deny it to be now necessarie to Salvation to admit of any Bookes for Canonicall which it was lawfull for Christians in past ages to doubt of and which had no generall Tradition and againe this answer helpes against your selfe for it is plaine by Saint Hieromes Testimonie that the Roman Church received not the Epistle to the Hebrewes which the Easterne Churches received whose Testimonie according to your grounds she then should have beleeved to be beyond exception and it is plaine by Perrons Testimonie that the Easterne Churches received not the Macchabees when he saies the Church of Rome did Now it is plaine that the Receivers pretended to Tradition because nothing else could make a booke thought Canonicall whereas other opinions might be brought in by a false Interpretation of Scriptures and after being spread might be thought to come from Tradition So that according to your grounds and these testimonies not onely the Westerne Church ought to have beleeved the Easterne about the Epistle to the Hebrewes and the Easterne the Westerne about the Macchabees but also they ought to have required this assent from each other which they not doing as they would have done if they had thought their testimonie so valid as you doe it followes that you doe differ from the Churches of the fifth and sixth age about what is exceptione majus you thinking that to be so which they thought not and againe from all the extant Doctors of the two first ages you thinking that not so which they thought was as also those two times agreed about it as little with each other as you with them both The third question may be how Christian Religion consisting of so many points is possible to be kept uncorrupted by Tradition which depending upon Memory and our memory being so fraile it seemeth cannot without manifest miracle conserve so great a diversity of points unchanged for so many ages But if we consider that Faith is a Science a thing whose parts are so connexed that if one be false all must needs be false we shall easily see that contrarily the multitude of divers points is a conservation the one to the right the other wherein we doubt As in Judges when a battell was to be fought between the children of Israel and the Midianites the Midianites destroyed each other and left nothing to doe for Israel but onely to pursue them so truly your Objections worke so strongly upon your own Party that I have nothing left me to presse and much to applaud For for this very reason I beleeve that all necessarie points were given in writing and onely the witnessing that these were the Apostles writings was left to Tradition which was both much lesse subject to error as being but one point and that a matter of fact and could no other way be done because no writing could have witnessed for it selfe so sufficientlie that we should have had reason to have beleeved it upon no other certificates and to this your answer seemes to me no way satisfactorie since first I deny Faith to be a Science it being nothing but an assent to Gods Revelations neither are those so connexed as you liberallic affirme and sparinglie prove Nay suppose they were yet though errors would be the lesse likely to enter yet when any one by any meanes were got in ' then this connexion would be a ready way to helpe it to let in all its fellowes Besides those opinions which may be superinduct as Traditions which such a connexion could not hinder if they were not
Writers and find it in every one I take it to be impossible testimonies one may find in many ages but such as will demonstrate and convince a full Tradition I much doubt Neither do I find by experience that who will draw a man by a rope or chaine giveth him the whole rope or chaine into his hands but onely one end of it unto which if he cleave hard he shall be drawn which way the rope is carried Tradition is a long chaine every generation or delivery from Father to Son being a link in it c. Of this opinion I was wholly before First upon my own small observation which also perswaded me that no controverted opinions had so much colour for such a Tradition out of antiquity as some which now are by both parts condemned And after by consideration of what hath been so temperately learned and judiciously writen by our Protestant Perron D'Aille But though I think that nothing is wholly provable by sufficient testimonies of the first ages to have had Primary and generall Tradition except the undoubted books of Scripture or what is so plainly there that it is not controverted between you and us yet I think the Negative is easie to be proved because any one known person dessenting and yet then accounted a learned and pious Catholique shews the Tradition not to have been generall and that the Church of this Age differs from that of those times if it Anathematize now for what then was either approved of or at least thought not so horrid but it might be borne with And again though we agree upon what will not serve to convince a full Tradition yet we disagree about what will serve for allowing there were any controverted opinions delivered with equall Tradition to the Scripture which I deny to have beene but would receive if it so appeared yet sure you beginne at the wrong end in the examination of what those are which ought to be done by considering the testimonies of the first ages and not of the last for in your own similitude of a rope though to helpe me to climbe by if you put but one end into my hands yet you must shew me that the other end is somewhere fastened or else for ought I know instead of getting up by it I may onelie get a fall and this fastening appeares not to me till I be shewed some more certaine connexion between the Opinions of this Age and those of the Apostolicke times then yet you have done or till you have answered those Arguments by which as I perswade my selfe I have made it appeare that it cannot be done As for the two places concerning the Popes and Councels Infallibillity it is not to my purpose to meddle of them because of one side the way I have begun beareth no need of those discourses and on the other I should engage my selfe in Quarrels betweene Catholique and Catholique obscure the matter I have taken in hand and profit nothing in my hearers more then to be judged peradventure to have more learning then wisedome to governe it withall With your favour Sir these places concerne not onely questions between your selves but between you and us for I thought you had all agreed though I knew you had not alwaies done so and though it seemes by your declining to speak about it that you doe not yet that generall Councels confirmed by the Pope are infallible and the Doctrines defined by them are to be beleeved de fide which if you be not then the Glew which it is so bragged you have to keepe you still at Unitie is dissolved and if you be then you should both have answered upon what grounds you are so and have destroyed my Objections against the possibilitie of certaintie knowing when it is that these which used to be called the Church have defined finding therefore Altum Silentium where there was so much cause of speaking makes me beleeve that the cause why you have not answered is onely because you could not and then you have a readie Apologie that Nemo tenetur ad impossibilia which I beleeve the rather because I know that to so cleare a judgement as yours that place of Scripture When two or three are gathered together c. which is so often press'd for the Infallibilitie of Councels must appeare to make as much for the Synod of Dort as for the Councell of Trent and to so great a learning as yours it cannot be unknown how few if any of the Ancients have asserted their Infallibilitie and how many both of the Ancients and your Modernes have denied it I am confirmed in this beleife too because you I know would never have accepted that as a sufficient excuse from me if I had avoided to answer an Argument so because Protestants are not agreed upon the point if you had thought it such as that they ought to have been agreed upon it and truelie this is as great and considerable a question as any among us As for the two places of Fevardentius which alloweth many Fathers to have fallen into errors I thinke it will not trouble him who is accquainted with the course of this present Church wherein divers who be thought great Divines fall into errors for which their Bookes are sometimes hindered from the print sometimes recalled or some leaves commanded to be pasted up the reason is the multiplicity of Catholike Doctrine which doth not oblige a man to the knowledge of every part but to the prompt subjection of the instruction of the Church wherefore many men may hold false doctrine inculpably not knowing it to be such even now after the learned labours of so many that have strived to open and facilitate by Method what is true and what is false much more in the Fathers times when there was great want of so many Compilers as these latter ages have produced First What Fevardentius confesseth proves plainlie that for which I intended it which was the ridiculousnesse of proving their Doctrine to be true by being conformable to that of the Fathers and yet making themselves Judges of those Judges they appeale too and confessing that many of them erred in many points which if they did they might as well doe the same in those about which we differ although they agreed with you and dissented from us Secondlie What both he confesseth and you confesse with him disproves that way of knowing divine Truths which you propose for neither the Doctors of the ancient Church who were sure more likelie to know what was then taken for Tradition then any late Compilers nor of the Modern who had a mind to deliver truth and trac'd and followed your way of finding it could erre in points of faith if Qui docet ut didicit he that teacheth as he hath been taught must still be in the right for publique Tradition no learned man at least can be ignorant not any man say you of what he was taught
as you inflict when you have for though you will say that none should punish but the Church yet every divided companie of Christians thinking themselves to be that that is to be the orthodox will use your own custome to your harme and you will be short like the Eagle in Esope 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with your own feathers and so Truth weresoever she be if all follow this way will by force by many parties be opposed and but by one propagated and defended so that not onely in consideration of Christianity but even of Policy I mislike this course as being alwaies wicked and often hurtfull and more often uneffectuall And for my part I desire so much that good be done for evill that though you be most fit of any to be so used who use us so where your power extends and whose cruelty will extend with your acquisition if you make any and you hold your selves that impendens periculum is cause enough for a warr yet I heartily wish all lawes against you repealed and trust that disarmed Truth would serve to expell Falshood whereas now they being in force against you give you the honour of a persecution and not being executed give you not the feare of one It is truely said Militia Christiana est Haereses expellere but it needs this limitation sed armis Christianis that Christian warfare employ onely Christian armes which are good arguments and good life else if they use such a course as is more properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and go to force that part of man which is liable to no power but that of perswasion which if it do not beget a true and pious assent in likelyhood it will a damnable dissimulation and which if Christ had meant for a prop for his Doctrine he would as soon have at first made it a part of the foundation and have charged his Apostles not to shake the dust off their feet but to draw their swords out of the scabbard at those who rejected what they taught then it often though sometimes by reason of the different dispositions which reigne at severall times among men and may happen otherwise misseth of the intended end and works not often so much as upon mens tongues and never upon their Heads and Hearts A great example of which happened not long since Calvin with all his works since the time they were written having scarce made so many Protestants in France as I have credibly heard it reported that the Massacre made in a Night which act though I impute not to all those of your Religion for many of them I know did and do mislike it yet it both had its fountaine from the Popes Legate and consequently in all likelyhood from the Pope who gave God publick thanks for it as one of his successors confess'd to Cardinall D' Ossat Page 432 and it may be justified as well as any judiciall proceeding upon that reason which you give why Heresie may be stopped with the sword least they who are wrought upon by it may work upon others To conclude I should be better contented with this course if the opinions were infallibly errors and infallibly damnable and this were alwaies an effectuall way and no other could be found more mercifull to stop their spreading but since you have no infallible way of knowing the Church to be infallible in her definitions and consequently that the contrary opinions are false since you know not infallibly which is she for you pretend but prudentiall Motives since your knowledge having defined is likewise fallible as depending upon many uncertaine circumstances since not onely the matter of Heresie is thus uncertaine but the form too for you confesse you doubt whether Ignorantia affectata be it or no and since though the form were certaine yet in whom it is by no meanes plaine but rather impossible to be known as who is obstinate and consequently to whom it is damnable since this course often gives growth and strength to that from which it would take even Being and Subsistance I cannot but think you have cause to change your proceedings least not onely you expell not but least you encrease Heresie and againe least you oppose it not but mistake the Truth for it and applaud your self for cutting off a Gangren'd member when you destroy a sound one and instead of ending a Heretick make a Martyr and againe least allowing this to be the Truth yet you put to death innocent persons instead of guilty especially since if the opinions were damnable in whomsoever they were yet some better way might be found as close imprisonment or the like to keep them from harming with them rather then as you do by putting them to death when else they might live to be converted to damne them certainly least they may possibly damne some others Againe for Protestants who joyne with me in beleeving that there is no way to know the true Church but by true Doctrine nor to know that but by the Scripture for Universall Tradition seemes to us to deliver nothing but what is so plainly contained there that it is agreed upon in them I beleeve it must be intollerable Pride and rashnesse and the same in Papists concerning those places out of which they would prove the Churches infallibility To conclude this seemes to me the sence of this place of Scripture therefore this infallibility it is and no man can denie it who either gainsaies not his Conscience or hath it not mislead by some sinfull passion or affection and therefore the deniers must be damned and therefore least they damne others we will send them through one fire to another And this though it be an equall fault in both Protestants and Papists to say and do yet it is more Illogicall in the former as contradicting at first sight all their Principles and destroying the whole Platforme upon which the Reformation was built He urgeth afterwards against the Unity of the Church that it is none such as we brag of And I confesse we brag of it and think we have Reason And if it please him to look into the difference of our Country of England and some land of Barbarians as Brasile or such other where they live without Law or Government I think he will find our bragging is not without ground For wherein is the difference betwixt a Civill Government and a Barbarous Anarchie Is it either that in a Civill Estate there be no Quarrells or amongst Barbarians there is no Quiet The former would prejudice our Courts and Justice the latter is impossible even in Nature What is then the goodnesse of a government but in a well Governed Country there is a means to end Quarels and in Anarchie there can be no assured peace This therefore is it we brag of that amongst us if any controversie arise there is a way to end it which is not amongst them who parted from us And Secondly That there is no assured agreement
and all the rest upon Scripture and he shall see that relying upon Scripture cannot draw to an Unitie those who relie upon it and more then one cannot relie upon Tradition If all that relie upon Tradition be Catholicks you must admit the Eastern Churches into your Communion although you now account them both Scismaticks and Hereticks If all Catholicks do relie upon Tradition as their onelie grounds and Tradition be so sure and infallible and unmistakable a deliverer as you would perswade us how come so manie differences between you some ever counting those things matter of Faith which others do not which differences shew if they all relie on these Questions upon the ground you say they do that more then one may relie upon Tradition and neither can Tradition any more then Scripture draw to an Unitie those who relie upon it if either neither part do or either do not then Tradition is not the Common Tenure of Catholicks not onelie in different opinions but even in such as are most de fide and as both parts think nothing but a definition and some scarce that to make the Holders of the contrary to them Hereticks since if it were neither could one part of Catholicks relie upon any other then the Catholick ground neither is it to be doubted but that side which builds their opinion upon an Hereticall foundation against another beleeved upon a Catholick ground would long agone have been among you exploded and the Pope have been not onelie with so much paines perswaded but even of himselfe readie to have past his censure upon them if not for their superstructions yet for their foundation If I will be a Christian I must be of one side If you mean I must be of one side that is take one of these grounds I answer That I take both one from the other Scripture from Tradition though not from the present Tradition of a Part but from the Universall one of the first Christians opposed by none but by them who were instantlie counted by the generallitie heterodox and as soon opposed as known If you mean that I must be of one side in points I whollie denie any such necessitie By falling on the one side I see my fortune in thousands who have gone before me to wit that I shall be to seek all my life time as I see they are and how greatlie they magnifie verie weak pieces On the other side I see everie man who followeth as farr as he followeth it is at quiet I see not but the greatest part of those who take the ground which you mislike are yet setled and confident enough in their opinion and if they continued alwaies seeking Truth for the love of it I know not why they should be the lesse likely to find Heaven Neither think I that you will say nay it is plaine by your own words that you will not say that Saint Austine had been damned if he had died in his search nor consequently any other in his case And whereas you say that all who follow the other are at quiet as farr as they follow it I answer So are all who fixedly beleeve themselves to follow an infallible although indeed a false Guide as the Mahumetans being led by their Mufty Which proves Quiet no sufficient caution for Truth nor Securitie for Safetie and that supposing yours the more easie and satisfying way it followes not that it is the more reasonable And for what you say of a mans duty to judge himself rigorously whether he seek as he ought I subscribe to that opinion and approve of your Councell Besides this he must have this care that he seek what the Nature of the subject can yeeld and not as these Physitians who when they have promised no lesse then immortality can at last onely reach to some conservation of health or youth in some small degree So I could wish the Author well to assure himself First that there is possible an infallibilitie before he be to earnest to be contented with nothing lesse For what if humane nature should not be capable of so great a good would he therefore think fitting to live without any Religion because he could not get such a one as himself desired though with more then a mans wish What you now say I confesse is very rationall as indeed all you say is as much as your cause will suffer and I require you not therefore to prove your opinions to be infallible by infallible arguments as necessarie to be done in it self but as necessarie to be done by them of whose opinions their Churches infallibilitie is not onelie a part but a ground and that the chief if not the onelie one and of which an infallible certaintie is the first and main condition of their Communion and our want of it one of their maine Objections against us He that will make a judgement in an Art he is not Master in if he be deceived it is to be imputed to himself The Phrase commandeth us to believe every man in his Art he who knoweth and understandeth himselfe beleeveth not Therefore when wee see Masters in an Art we are not skild in oppose us we may beleeve we are in the wrong which will breed this Resolution in the Author of the discourse that if himself be not skild in all those waies in which he pursues his search he must find himself obleiged to seek Masters who be both well skilled and the matter being subject to faction also very honest and upright men or else he doth not quitt himself before God Truelie I am farr from being Master either in this or any other Art but if for this cause I ought to doubt and because much learneder persons oppose me I ought to beleeve my self in the wrong then so ought those of your part to do who are as Ignorant as I we having many much more learned then they who oppose them and take our part though therefore I think not of my self what Tully in a Complement would perswade one of his Friends that Nemo est qui sapientius mihi possit suadere meipso yet I dare not chuse as you would have me some Master to search for me and beleeve him blind-fold though if I would I see no cause why to chuse any from among you who have so many able Teachers at home for you confessing that the matters are subject to Faction and it being certaine that not onelie who are honest is impossible to be known but that eagernesse and desire to have what they think Truth prevaile makes even the honest men sometimes deviate from the line of exact honestie and lie for God which he not onelie needs not but forbids as is to be seen too frequentlie in the Quotations of both sides I conceive it the best way to follow my own Reason since I know I have no will to cozen my self as they may have to cozen me Especially since
we suffer a considerable part of it to be turned out of doors So that for any care is taken by this Bill for new dwelling and I will never consent they shall play an after-game for all they have either we must see them starve in the streets before us or to avoid that we must ship them some-whither away like the Moors out of Spain From the hurt of the Learned I come to that of Learning and desire you to consider whether when all considerable maintenance shall be reduced to cure of Souls all studies will not be reduced to those which are in order to Preaching the Arts and Languages and even eminent skill in Controversies to which great leasure and great means is required much neglected and to the joy and gain of our common Adversary Syntagms Postills Catechisms Commentators and Concordances almost onely bought and the rest of Libraries remain rather as of ornament then as of use I do not deny but for all this want the wit of some hath attempted both and the parts of some few have served to discharge both as those of Calvin to advise about and dispatch more Temporall businesse into the bargain than all our Privy-Councell yet such abilities are extreamly rare and very few will ever p each mice a Sunday and be any match for Bellarmine Nay I fear Sir that this will make us to have fewer able even in Preaching it self as it is separated from generall Learning for I fear many whose parts friends and means might make them hope for better advancements in other courses when these shall be taken away from this will be less ready to imbrace it and though it were to be wisht that all men should onely undertake those Embassages with reference to His Honour Whose Embassadors they are yet I doubt not but many who have entred into the Church by the Door or rather by the Window have done it after great and sincere service and better reasons have made them labour in the vineyard than brought them thither at first and though the meer love of God ought to make us good though there were no reward or punishment yet it would be very inconvenient to piety that hope of Heaven and fear of Hell were taken away The next inconvenience I fear is this that if we should take away a Government which hath as much testimony of the first antiquity to have been founded by the Apostles as can be brought for some parts of Scripture to have been written by them lest this may avert some of our Church from us and rivet some of the Roman Church to her and as I remember the Apostle commands us to be carefull not to give scandall even to those that are without Sir It hath been said that we have a better way to know Scripture than by Tradition I dispute not this Sir but I know that Tradition is the onely argument to prove Scripture to another and the first to every mans self being compared to the Samaritan Woman's report which made many first believe in Christ though they after believed him for himself And I therefore would not have this so far weakned to us as to take away Episcopacy as unlawfull which is so far by Tradition proved to be lawfull The next inconvenience that I fear is this having observed those generally who are against Bishops I will not now speak of such as are among us who by being selected from the rest are to be hoped to be freer then ordinary from vulgar passions to have somewhat more animosity against those who are for them then vice versâ lest when they shall have prevaild against the Bishops they be so far encouraged against their partakers and will so have discouraged their adversaries as in time to induce a necessity upon others at least of the Clergy to believe them as unlawfull as they themselves do and to assent to other of their opinions yet left at large Which will be a way to deprive us I think of not our worst I am sure of our most learned Ministers and to send a greater Colonie to New England then it hath been said this Bill will recall from thence I come now from the incoveniences of taking away this Government to the inconveniences of that which shall succeed it and to this I can speak but by guesse and groping because I have no light given me what that shall be onely I hope I shall be excused for shooting at random since you will set me up no Butt to shoot at The first I fear the Scotch Government will either presently be taken or if any other succeed for a while yet the unity and industry of those of that opinion in this Nation assisted by the cōnsell and friendship of that will shortly bring it in if any lesse opposite Government to it be here placed than that of Episcopacy And indeed Sir since any other Government than theirs will by no means give any satisfaction to their desire of uniformity since all they who see not the dishonour and ill consequences of it will be unwilling to deny their Brethren what they esteem indifferent since our own Government being destroyed we shall in all I kelyhood be aptest to receive that which is both next at hand and ready made For these reasons I look upon it as probable and for the following ones as inconvenient When some Bishops pretended to Jure divino though nothing so likely to be believed by the People as those would be nor consequently to hurt us by that pretence this was cry'd out upon as destructive to His Majestie 's Supremacy who was to be confessed to be the Fountain of Jurisdiction in this Kingdom Yet to Jure divino the Scotch Ecclesiasticall government pretends To meet when they please to treat of what they please to excommunicate whom they please even Parliaments themselves so far are they from receiving either rules or punishments from them And for us to bring in any unlimited any Independent authority the first is against the Liberty of the Subject the second against the Right and Priviledge of Parliament and both against the Protestation If it be said that this unlimitednesse and independence is onely in Spirituall things I answer first that arbitrary Government being the worst of Governments and our Bodies being worse than our Souls it will be strange to set up that over the second of which we were so impatient over the first Secondly that M. Sollicitor speaking about the Power of the Clergy to make Canons to bind did excellently inform us what a mighty influence Spiritual power hath upon Temporal affairs So that if our Clergy had the one they had inclusively almost all the other And to this I may adde what all men may see the vast Temporall power of the Pope allow'd him by such who allow it him onely in ordine ad Spiritualia for the Fable will tell you if you make the Lyon and the Clergy assisted by the people is Lyon enough
the Character will be farr too short It is in you and onely you my Lord to set him out truely and to resemble him to the life and that will be by taking that Evangelicall Counsell Tu autem fac similiter Do like him live like him and pardon me if I add one thing more like him Love My Lord Your Lordships most humble and affectionately devoted Servant TRIPLET OF THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE CHURCH OF ROME A discourse written by the Lord Viscount FALKLAND TO him that doubteth whether the Church of Rome hath any errors they answer that she hath none for she never can have any this being so much harder to beleeve then the first had need be proved by some certainer Arguments if they expect that the beleefe of this one should draw on whatsoever they please to propose yet this if offered to be proved by no better wayes then we offer to prove by that she hath erred which are arguments from Scripture and ancient Writers all which they say are fallible for nothing is not so but the Church Which if it be the onely infallible determination and that can never be believed upon its owne authority we can never infallibly know that the Church is infallible for these other waies of proofe may deceive both them and us and so neither side is bound to beleeve them If they say that an argument out of Scripture is sufficient ground of Divine Faith why are they offended with the Protestants for beleeving every part of their Religion upon that ground upon which they build all theirs at once And if following the same Rule with equall desire of finding the Truth by it having neither of those qualities which Isid. Pelus saith are the cause of all Heresie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pride and Prejudication why should God be more offended with the one then with the other though they chance to erre They say the Church is therefore made infallible by God that all men may have some certain Guide yet though it be infallible unlesse it both plainly appeare to be so for it is not certaine to whom it doth not appeare certaine and unlesse it be manifest which is the Church God hath not attained his end and it were to set a ladder to Heaven and seem to have a great care of my going up whereas unlesse there be care taken that I may know this ladder is here to that purpose it were as good for me it never had been set If they say we may know for that generall Tradition instructs us in it I answer that ignorant people cannot know this and so it can be no Rule for them and if learned people mistake in this there can be no condemnation for them For suppose to know whether the Church of Rome may erre as a way which will conclude against her but not for her I seek whether she have erred and conceiving she hath contradicted her self conclude necessarily she hath erred I suppose it not damnable though false because I try the Church by one of the touch-stones which herself appoints me Conformity with the Ancients For to say I am to beleeve the present Church that it differs not from the former though it seem to me to do so is to send me to a witnesse and bid me not beleeve it now to say the Church is provided for a guide of Faith but must be known by such markes as the ignorant cannot seek it by and the learned may chance not find it by can no way satisfie me If they say God will reveale the Truth to whomsoever seeks it these waies sincerely this saying both sides will without meanes of being confuted make use of therefore it would be as good that neither did When they have proved the Church to be Infallible yet to my understanding they have proceeded nothing farther unlesse we can be sure which is it For it signifies onely that God will have a Church alwaies which shall not erre but not that such or such a succession shall be in the right so that if they say the Greek Church is not the Church because by its own confession it is not Infallible I answer That it may be now the Church and may hereafter erre and so not be now infallible and yet the Church never erre because before their fall from Truth others may arise to maintaine it who then will be the Church and so the Church may still be infallible though not in respect of any set persons whom we may know at all times for our Guide Then if they prove the Church of Rome to be the true Church and not the Greek Church because their opinions are consonant either to Scripture or Antiquitie they run into a Circle proving their Tenets to be true First because the Church holds them And then theirs to be the Church because the Church holds the Truth Which last though it appears to me the onely way yet it takes away its being a Guide which we may follow without examination without which all they say besides is nothing Nay suppose that they had evinced that some succession were Infallible and so had proved to a learned man that the Roman Chruch must be this because none else pretends to it yet this can be no sufficient ground to the ignorant who cannot have any infallible foundation for their beleefe that the Church of Greece pretends not to the same and even to the Learned it is but an accidentall Argument because if any other Company had likewise claimed to be Infallible it had overthrown all The chiefest reason why they disallow of Scripture for Judge is because when differences arise about the interpretation there is no way to end them And that it will not stand with the goodnesse of God to damne men for not following his Will if he had assigned no infallible way to find it I confesse this to be wonderfull true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and let them excuse themselves that think otherwise yet this will be no Argument against him that beleeves that to them who follow their reason in the interpretation of the Scriptures God will either give his Grace for assistance to find the Truth or his pardon if they misse it And then this supposed necessitie of an infallible Guide with the supposed damnation for want of it fall together to the ground If they command us to beleeve infallibly the contrary to this they are to prove it false by some infallible way for the conclusion must be of the same nature and not conclude more then the premisses set down Now such a way Scripture and Reason and infused Faith cannot be for they use to object the fallibility of these to those that build their Religion upon them nor the authority of the Church for this is part of the Question and must it self be first proved and that by none of the former waies for the former reasons The Popes Infallibility can be no infallible ground of Faith being it self no
acquit him One much prevailing argument which they make is this That whosoever leaves them sall into dissention between themselves whereas they in the mean while are allwaies at Unity I answer First In this whereof the Question is now they all assent Secondly When there is fire for them that disagree they need not bragg of their Uniformity who consent Thirdly they have many differences among them as whether the Pope be Infallible whether God predeterminate every action whether Election and Reprobation depend upon fore-sight Which seemes to me as great as any between their Adversaries and in the latter the Jesuites have ancienter and generaller Tradition on their side then the Church of Rome hath in any other Question and as much ground from Reason for the defence of Gods goodnesse as they can think they have for the necessity of an infallible guide Yet these arguments must not make the Dominicans Hereticks and must us If they say the Church hath not resolved it which signifies onely that they are not agreed about it which is that we object I answer It ought to have done so if uniformity to the Ancient Church be required in which all that ever I could heare of before Saint Austine who is ever various I confesse in it delivered the contrary to the Dominicans as not doubtfull and to say it is lawfull for them to disagree wheresoever they do not agree is ridiculous for they cannot do both at once about the same point and if they say they mean by the Churches not having concluded it that a Councell hath not I Answer First That they condemne some without any Councell and why not these Next I say the opinion of the diffused Church is of more force then the conclusion of the representative which hath its authority from the other and therefore if all extant for the first four hundered yeares taught any Cannon it is more Heresie to deny that then any Cannon of a Councell But may not howsoever any other Company of People that would maintaine themselves to be infallible say as much that all other Sects differ from one another and therefore should all agree with them would not those think they ascribe all other mens dissentions and learned mens falling into diverse heresies to their not allowing their Infallibility to their not assenting to their Decrees and not suffering them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to sit as teachers of those things that come in Question and to have all others in the place of Disciples obedient to them which is that which Nilus a Greek Bishop professed that because the Greeks would not allow the Romans was the chief cause of separation between them Next They use much to object how could errors come into the Church without opposition and mention both of them and the opposition to them in History I answer They might come not at once but by degrees as in the growth of a Child or motion of a Clock we see neither in the present but know there was a present when we find it past Next I say there are two sorts of errors To hold a thing necessary that is unlawfull and false or that is but profitable and probable Of the second sort that errors should come in it appears not hard to me especially in those ages where want of Printing made Books and consequently Learning not so common as now it is where the few that did study busied themselves in Schoole speculations onely when the authority of a man of chief note had a more generall influence then now it hath and so as Thucidides saith the Plague did in his time 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the disease that first settled in the head EASILY passed through all the body considering how apt men are to desire that all men should think as they do and consequently to lay a necessity upon the receiving that opinion if they conceive that a way to have it received And then if it were beleeved generally profitable as confession who would be apt to oppose their calling it necessary for the same cause for which they called it so Besides If this error were delivered by some Father in the hot opposition of some Heretick it may be none would oppose it least the adversaries might take advantage by their dissention and he that disputed for the Orthodox side might lose by it much of his authority The word necessary it self is also often used for very convenient and then from necessary in that sence to absolutely necessary is no difficult change though it be a great one Then the Fathers use the word Hereticks sometimes in a larger sence and sometimes in a stricter and so differ in the reckoning them up some leaving out those that others put in though they had seen the precedent Catalogue and so the doubtfullnesse of the sence of these words might bring in error Names also as Altar Sacrifice Masse may have been used First in one sence and the name retained though the thing signified received change as it was once of an Emperour of Rome cui proprium fuit nuper reperta I leave out scelera priscis verbis obtegere whose property it was to cover things newly found with ancient tearmes And the same Author tells us that the same state was as it were cheated out of her liberty because there did remaine eadem Magistratuum vocabula the same titles of Magistrates And I beleeve that if the Protestants beyond the Seas would have thought Bishops as good a word as Super-intendents and so in other such things many who understand nothing but names would have missed the scandale they have now taken These waies I think these things may have come without much opposition from being thought profitable to be done and probable to be beleeved to be thought necessary to be both and how things may have been by little and little received under old names which would not have been so at once under new ones it is not hard to conceive The first of these being no such small fault but that part of the Montanists Heresies was thinking uncommanded fasting daies necessary to be observed which without doubt might lawfully have been kept so that no necessitie had been imposed But my maine answer is that if to be in the Church without known precedent opposition be a certaine note of being derived from the begining let them answer how came in the opinion of the Chiliasts not contradicted till two hundred yeares after it came in To conclude If they can prove that the Scripture may be a certainer teacher of truth to them then to us so that they may conclude the Infallibility of the Church out of it and we nothing If they can prove the Churches Infallibility to be a sufficient Guide for him that doubts which is the Church and cannot examine that for want of learning by her chiefe marke which is conformity with the Ancients If they can prove that the consent of Fathers long together is a stronger
opposed when they first parted first began the Schism how the points of difference be such as on the Catholike side help devotion and on the contrary diminish the same and such like sensible differences which will clearly shew a main advantage on the Catholike side which is the proportionall motive to his understanding To the Grammarian I will give two Memorandums First that seeing Catholiques were first in possession both of the Scriptures and the interpretations the adverse part is bound to bring such places as can receive no probable Exposition by the Catholikes It is not sufficient that their Expositions seem good or better that is more conformable unto the Text but they must be evincent to which no so sound answer even with some impropriety can be given For who knoweth not that is conversant in Criticks how many obscure and difficult places occurre in most plain Authors and the Scripture of all Books the greater part of the men who wrote them specially the new Testament being not eloquent and writing not in their native tongue for the most part are subject to many Improprieties The other Memorandum is That to prove a Catholike point by Scripture it is sufficient that the place brought do bear the Explication the Catholike beareth and if it be more probable by the very letter it is an evincent place The reason is Because the Question being about a Christian Law the Axioms of the Jurists taketh place that Consuetudo optima interpres Legis So that if it be manifest that Christian practise which was before the controversie be for the one sense and the words be tolerable no force of Grammar can prevail to equalize this advantage The Grammarian therefore who will observe these rules I turn him loose to the Scriptures and Fathers to seek in them what is the faith of Christ and properties of his Church to know her by Of the the Philosopher I exact to go like a Philosopher and to search out the specificall differences of every Sect and when he hath found them if any one but the Catholike hath any rule of Faith and good life which I remit to him to enquire But at least when he hath found the Catholiques to be this claim of Tradition before declared then if this doe not bring him as demonstratively as he knoweth any conclusion in Philosophie and Mathematicks to the notice that this is the only true Church of Christ for my part I shall quit him before God and man The Divine if he hath truly understood the principles of his Faith in the nature of a Divine I mean Trinity Incarnation Redemption Eucharist Beatitude the Creation and Dissolution of the World and hath seen the exact conformitie with the deepest principles of nature with an unspeakable wisedome of the contriver If he does not plainly confesse it was above the nature of man to frame the Catholike Religion and seeth not that onely that is conformable to nature and it selfe I say he hath no ground sufficient to be of it At last the Statesman who is truly informed of the Church how far it is really of Christs Institution and what either pious men have added or peradventure ambitious men encroached If he does not find a government of so high and Exotick strain that neither mans wit would dare to have attempted it neither mans power could possibly have effected it If he findeth not eminent helpes and no disadvantage to the temporall government I shall think there wanteth one Star in the Heaven of the Church to direct these Sages to Bethlehem But if God Almighty hath in all sorts and manners provided his Church that she may enlighten every man in his way which goeth the way of a man then let every man consider which is the fit way for himselfe and what in other matters of that way he accomptech evidence And if there be no interest in his soule to make him loath to beleeve what in another matter of the like nature he would not stick at or heavy to practise what he seeth clearly enough I feare not his choice but if God send him time and meanes to prosecute his search any indifferent while it is long ago known of what religion he is to be of After this followeth no order of Chapters because it is applied to the discourse which was occasion of it Although if what is already be not satisfaction unto the writing and the Author thereof for whose sake and contentment all that hath been discoursed hitherto hath been set down I confesse that I have not ability to give him satisfaction yet least it should be interpreted neglect If I did not make an application of it unto the writing I shall as breifly as I can for avoiding tediousnesse runne over the discourse And true it is speaking of the Church of Rome as this day it is the true Church of God I answer the doubter she neither hath nor can have any error which he need to feare and be shye of The which two limitations I adde for avoiding questions impertinent to our discourse The first for those which are concerning the connection of the Sea of Rome to the universall Church The latter to avoid such questions as touch that point whether the Church may erre in any Phylosophicall or other such like matter which questi on s are not so pertinent to our matter Neither doe I remit the Questioner unto Scripture for his satisfaction although I hold Scripture a very sufficient meanes to satisfie the man who goeth to it with that preparation of understanding and will which is meet and required Howsoever this I may answer for them who prove it out of Scripture that because they dispute against them who admit of Scripture and deny the authority of the Church if they can convince it they doe well though they will not themselves admit generally of a proofe out of Scripture as not able to prove every thing in foro contentioso That they say the Church is made infallible that we may have some guide I think it very rationall For nature hath given ever some strong and uncontroulable principle in all natures to guide the rest The Common-wealth hath a Governour not questionable our understanding hath some principles which she cannot judge but by them judgeth of all other verities If there should not be some such principle in the Church it were the onely maimed thing God had created and maimed in its principall part in the very head And if there be such a principle the whole Church is infallible by that as the whole man seeth by his eyes toucheth by his hands Neither can I deny but that the Author well excepteth or assumeth that there is no lesse necessity the Church should be known to be infallible or which is this Church then that there is one For if I should admit absolutely that it is necessary for every man to know the Church is Infallible precedently to the knowledge of which is the true Church
with that indifference and equalitie which is fit for a Judge and with which I both began and continue it Yet least there might some un-mark't prejudice lye lurking in me and least I might harbour some secret inclination to those Tenets which I had first been raught I have ever lean'd and set my Byas to the other side and have both more discoursed of matters of Religion with those of the Church of Rome then with their Adversaries and read more of their writings though none either so often or so carefully as this which I am now answering both because it was intended for my Instruction and confutation as also because the beauty of the stile and language in which you have apparrelled your conceptions although Non haec Auxilio tibi sunt Decor est quaesitus ab istis yet showes the Author a considerable Person and I may say of the splendour and outside of what you have said for my opinion that it wants soliditie and that the Logick of it is inferiour to the Rhetorick is seen by my writing against it what Tacitus sayes of Vitellius his Armie Phalerae torquesque splendebant non Vitellio principe dignus exercitus for as he would have had that glorious Army been imployed in the defence of a better and braver Prince so I wish your eloquence had guilded the better cause 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And having learn't moreover from the Pagan Divinitie of Hierocles which in this is conformable to that of most Christians that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that all our search is but the stretching forth of our hands and that our finding proceeds from Gods delivering the Truth unto us and that prayer is the best meanes to joyn the latter to the former I have not only with my utmost endeavours done my part but also besought God with my most earnest fervency to doe his and so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 joyning Prayer to search like form to Matter I doubt not but God who hath given me a will to seek his Will also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and if I have not the truth already I shall be taught the truth by him and by you as his Instrument or shall be excused if I find it not assuring you that I was never more ready to part with my clothes when they were torn then with my opinions when they were confuted and appeared to me to be so To begin then with your Treatise you can say nothing for Tradition which I will not willingly allow Scripture it self being a Traditum and by that way comming to our knowledge for I am confident that those who would know it by the Spirit run themselves into the same Circle between Scripture and Spirit out of which some of your side have but unsuccessefully laboured to get out between Scripture and Church but that this way which you propound should be convenient to know what was Tradition at first I can by no means agree Which to consider the better I will comprehend all the strength of what you have said in a little room and shut up your Oration into the compasse of some 3. Sillogismes thus you argue What company soever of Christians alone pretend to teach nothing but what they have received from their Fathers as received from theirs as so come down from the Apostles that company alone must hold the truth But that company of Christians which are in communion with the Church of Rome only pretend this Therefore they alone hold the truth and the Church The Major you prove thus If such a company of Christians could teach falshoods then since it is granted that what was at first delivered was true some age must either have erred in understanding their Ancestors or have joyned to deceive their posterity But neither of these are beleevable Therefore neither is it beleevable that such a company of Christians should teach falshoods The Minor you prove thus I mean that they alone pretend it for that they I mean all they pretend it you take for granted If it be incompatible with the Church of Romes doing it that any else should doe it then she does it alone But it is incompatible which is denied and not yet proved Therefore she doth it alone The severall parts of this Argument I mean first to Answer and secondly Whatsoever lyes scatter'd in your discourse any thing to this purpose or any other unanswer'd in the first part and thirdly I will reply to those Answers which you have been pleased to make to part of that Nothing which I writ wishing that this last work might have bin longer I mean that by answering it all and in order you had given me occasion to have dwelt more upon my Reply Now if I doe not shew that all of the Church of Rome do not nor cannot pretend this that for two to pretend it is not incompatible as having been so heretofore that those who alone pretend this may pretend it falsely that some men and in time all may mistake their Ancestors and have a mind in some cases to deceive their posterity and that it is not necessary for a whole age at once to joyn in doing it though it be done if I say I shew not this then let me not bee beleeved and if you can shew me that I have not shewed it I will promise to beleeve you First That the Church of Rome doth not nor cannot pretend that all their doctrine was received by them from their fathers as come down from the Apostles it appeares because when questions have risen about such things whereof there was before no speech yet if a Councell have determined them they are received with the same assent as if they had come from the Apostles and they professe now the same readinesse to receive alwayes any such definition though about a question now unknown and it is likely they have done what they professe they are ready to doe at least they shew that yours is not the ground upon which they build And I pray aske your selfe whether those that teach the common people who are the greatest part of your Church use to be askt about it by them or use to tell them that this they received from their Fathers as descended from the Apostles by a continuall verball Tradition For suppose they told them that this Tradition tels us yet they are not able to distinguish between such as is but Ecclesiasticall and Apostolicall or whether this be known to them onely by deductions or from ancient bookes and no such uncontinued line of teaching and not rather perswade them in generall to beleeve it what by Arguments drawne from Scripture what from reason what from Fathers Councels or Decretals I am not certaine what is their course but I am sure the most ordinary amongst the Ancients whom they pretend to follow was that when they had told the people that such a proposition was true they added neither is it I that say so
Church of Rome never refus'd their Communion before though she knew them to hold the same opinion and so as plainly appeares counted that materiall in one Age which she had not so esteemed in others and therefore in the degree at least of holding what she held contradicted herself and followed Traditions And as Cyprian imitated them so did the Affrican Bishop him for a Question hapning between them and the Bishops of Rome about Appeales though they absolutely oppos'd him and in vaine I confesse desired him that he would not bring into the Church Typhum hujus Saeculi the swelling pride of this World and though he laboured infinitely in the businesse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he might bring it to passe yet he and two of his successors were either so unready or so unskil'd in the present Roman Doctrine that Feed my sheeep and thou art Peter were either out of their knowledge or out of their memory and they alleadged not any power jure divino but onely pretended to a Cannon of the Councel of Nice which when the Affricans found not in their coppies for they would not believe the Church of Rome so farre as to trust to hers though now you generally think the Scripture it selfe to have its authority quoad nos onely for her definitions they sent to the East to enquire there and finding their coppies agreeing with theirs they then more resolutely withstood the Pretence which brought at that time nothing to the Popes but repulse and shame And indeed not to object that it is not numbered among any of the ancient Herisies that they differ'd from the particular Roman Church nor is this Rule of being sure at all times to joyne with her ever given by those Fathers who set us waies and Antidotes how to secure our selves against Heresie which could not have been left undone if they had known any such Tradition nor to speak of the Cannon of the Councell of Chalcedon which attributes the power of the Popes to the gift of their Fathers and that againe to Romes being the head City setting all this aside I will aske your selfe if it be not plain that those Fathers who upon the impudent pretence of some Hereticks send men to severall places to enquire after Tradition either send them to all the Apostolicall churches or to save their labour to that to which they were nearest as esteeming them all of equall authority though not jurisdiction for I may say of Rome and them as Tacitus doth of Caelius and the other Commanders Mutato nomine the name onely chang'd Pares jure Roma audendo potentior for what by watching all occasions to greaten herself whereof Cardinal D' Ossat is my witnesse what by abusing the respect all men had ever given her in respect of the chiefe Apostles which founded her of the Empire which was long seated in her and of her ancient Bishops whereof about thirtie together were martyr'd there what by interpreting what was given to her Authority as given to her Power and taking civilities aud complements of which no Court is now so full as the ancient Bishops were made to Popes for alleagiance sworn to them what by forging false decretall Epistles which the Tearmed Authors of them would not forgive them for if they knew it if it were onely for the barbarous language what by these and such other waies she is come at length to that passe that what Auitus a Roman Generall said to the Ansibarians who gave him reasons why he ought not in justice to disturbe their possessions Id Diis placitum ut Arbitrium penes Romanos maneret quid darent quidve adimerent neque alios Judices quam seipsos paterentur It is the will of Heaven that it be left to the Romans what they will please to give or take away and suffer not any Judges but themselves appeares now not so much a History of the Pride of the Roman Empire as a Prophecy of the generall doctrine of the Roman Church Having ever marked Error and Confidence to keep so much company that I seldome find the first but I mistrust the second makes me loath to affirme any thing over-dogmatically out of these objections or say that they cannot be answered Onely because I must not offend against Truth for feare of offending against Modesty I will take leave to say that if I could have answered them my selfe I would not have put you to the trouble of doing it which you might also have sav'd if by letting me know your name you would have enabled me to have found you out and so in a short discourse have tried whether I could have obtain'd that satisfaction from your words which I must now expect from your Pen. But supposing I had none of these objections yet two things besides would have kept me from assenting to what you say The first is that your men when they aske us how we know Scripture to be Scripture and this to be the sence of it tell us withall that unlesse we know it by some more infallible way then our owne Reason they mean their Church it will not serve for a beliefe of those things which are to be believ'd by a divine Faith Now this Argument of yours upon which you build all allowing that it appear'd good reason yet at most it is but reason and liable to the same exceptions unlesse the same thing be a wall when you leane upon it and a bulrush when we doe The second is that all you say for as yet you speak not of the Authority of the Particnlar Church of Rome though you must at length come to it though by that too little is to be gotten if it were granted would but prove those who adhere now to the Church of Rome to be now in the right but I asked for a guide which might without new search serve me the next yeer as well as this For for all that you have prov'd she may leave the way you say she now pretends to walk in and attempt to reform too which I wish were as probable as it is possible or there may arise a schisme between two parts of those Churches which now adhere to the Roman and both may claime Tradition for what hath been may be againe and how shall I know then which side to take since both will seem equally good by that Touchstone which you appoint me to try with And if I be then sent to try by Ancient Writers it is certaine that besides the fallibility of that way for the learned this cannot be done at all by the ignorant and it is probable that both Parties will fall into that absurdity into which the Church of Rome daily runs which is that although the evidence which she claimes by cannot well be exactlie read over in thirty yeares time yet she requires us under paine of Damnation to give our Verdicts for her by twenty yeeres old The Second Part. THe high and Sage Master
this title that she hath received it from his Apostles without interruption delivered from Father to Son untill this day and admits not any Doctrine for good and legitimate which he doth not receive in this manner What the Judicious of whom I am no member can do I know not but I not onely can but do deny it you meaning by that Congregation the Church of Rome for by seeing that not upon this but other kind of claim certaine Doctrines have arrived to the very brink of being defined I have cause to think that if they received none in upon other grounds these would not be suffered to stand so neer the doore And indeed there being between your selfe such differences that Erasmus tels us that he who is a Heretick among the Dominicans is Orthodox to the Scotists sure one side hath admitted of a Doctrine for Legitimate which hath not been so received and then me thinks this being easily endable which it is by seeing which claimes such a delivery for if both do it then two Parts may which you deny if neither do then your whole Church goes by some other Rule that which doth upon that which you call the Catholique Grounds me thinks should have obtained a definition for her and the other which resists that Principle upon which they ought onely to build should have been suddenly and absolutely condemned This will appeare plainer if we consider the opinions of your Church by the Actions of her Head in a notable and late Example A great controversie being risen between the Dominicans and the Jesuites it was heard before Pope Clement let us see then what course he took to find which Part held the Truth since he was not likely especially in a time wherein by being more opposed then usually he had reasons to be consequently more cautious to chuse a new way by which truth was not wont to be found out by your side upon like occasions Did he send for the wisest and best men from all nay from adjoyning Parts to enquire of them what they had been taught by their Fathers to have been received by them uninterruptedly from the Apostles did he examine with which of them the first and purest ages sided did he consider which opinion would make us have the more excellent conceit of God and work most towards the expelling of Vice None of all these were his course but he appointed both sides to prove which of them followed Saint Austine and according to them he intended to give sentence if the advice of Cardinall Perron had not prevailed to the contrary But many days they spent in examining what he thought who thought so variously concerning it that he scarce knew himself which whereas before him all the Ancients that I could ever meet with were with the Iesuites with an Vnanimous consent and by them if they must be tried by men as fallible as themselves it would have better agreed with their own Principles to have had both Parts judged After the Pope let us hear Bishop and allmost Cardinall Fisher who being one of your own Authors and Martyrs cannot be thought to praevaricate against that Church for whose defence he imployed not onely his Inke but his Blood His words are these There are many things of which was no enquirie in the Primitive Church which yet upon doubts arising are now become perspicuous by the diligence of after-times And that you may see that he speakes of points of Faith He addes No Orthodox man now doubts whether there be a Purgatory of which yet among the Ancients there is no mention or exceeding rarely It is not believed by the Greeks to this day Neither did the Latines conceive this Truth at once but by little and little And for an Epiphonema he closeth it thus Considering that Purg atory was a good while unknown after partly by Revelations partly by Scripture came little by little to be believed by some and so at last the beliefe of it was generally received by the Catholique Churches Who can wonder concerning Indulgencies that in the Priinitive Church there was no use of them Indulgences therefore began after men had trembled a while at the Torments of Purgatory See I pray how will you two agree You say the Church of Rome receives but what she claimes to be come down to her from the Apostles without interruption He saith some of her Doctrines were long unknown and came in by Revelations and Scripture you say new Doctrines cannot come into a Church that holds this Principle He saith Doctrines have come in by little and little So either she held not allwaies this Principle or for all that they might come in To be short all which he hath said seemes to me as if he had purposely intended to frame a Ram to batter down that fortification which you have built about the Roman Church Now though he be of so great an Authority that he needs no backing yet I will desire you to look into Alphonsus de Castro where he speakes of Indulgences and see if he mend the matter He confesseth that the use of them seemes to be late received into the Church yet would not have them contemned because many things are known to after-commers of which those ancient Writers were wholly ignorant Amongst whom there is rarely mention of Transubst antiation more rarely of the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son of Purgatory almost none For though he speaks after as if he meant onely that the names of these were unmentioned and not the things yet it is plaine that if he brought them in to any purpose it was to prove that some Doctrines are after of necessity to be believed which once were not and Doctrines consist in the Things not in the Name I could next tell you of Erasmus his saying Res deducta est ad Sophisticas contentiones Articulorum Miriades proruperunt Religion is come down to Sophistry and a Miriad of Articles are broken out But knowing that his words will not find so much respect because he himself finds lesse favour as those of others more allowed among you let us mark these words of Sancta Clara The Church when it is said to define any thing she rests not upon any new Revelations but upon the ancient lying hid in writings and words of the Apostles which he sayes not as his private opinion but the constant beliefe of Doctors By which it appeares plainly that there are at least interpretations of what the Apostles taught drawn forth by Reason not received by Tradition which makes now a part of the present Roman Religion a sufficient Gappe for Errors to enter at when either mistakings or ends may become new opinions and stile them but interpretations of the old Salmeron a Voluminous Jesuite one neither by his order nor his inclination an enemy at all to the Roman Church being press'd by the opinions of the Ancients affirmes Doctores quò Juniores
eò perspicaciores esse That the more modern Doctors are the more prespicatious that per incrementa Temporum nota facta sunt Divina mysteria quae tamen antea multos latuerunt In processe of time Divine Mysteries have been made known which before lay hid from many That it is infirm arguing from Authority and answers to the multitude of them who in times past had opposed him with these words of Exodus That the opinion of many is not to be followed leading us out of the way with some other very Anabaptisticall answers and very contrary to your Tenets for sure it were a strange Tradition which had so many Orthodox Opposers and nothing inferiour to that saying of Zuinglius so much exaggerated Quid mihi cum Patribus potius quam cum Matribus The same Author in same place saies that Saint Hierome durst not affirm the Assumption but Saint Austine durst and by that meanes the Church perswaded by his reason believes it Such a notable Tradition have all her opinions for even this affirmation which he confesseth brought in this beliefe is it self not now believed to be Saint Austines for I take it he must mean his tract of the Assumption counted not his by your own Divinity-Criticks the Lovaine Doctors which have set it forth at Cullen And because I am willing to spend no more time in the proofe of so apparent a Truth I will not urge Posa who to perswade the defining of an opinion which hath a great current of the Ancients against it so farr it is from having any Tradition for it reckons many other opinions condemned by your Church and defended by the Ancients unlesse you will believe his impudent Assertion that they are all corrupted and will passe to the Conclusion of this which shall have for a Corollary the Confession of a Spanish Arch-Bishop who is to be thought to speak with more authority then his own because being imployed to bring that to passe which was desired by so great a Part of your Church he can scarce be supposed not to have had the advice and consent of many of them in what he sayes He then tell us First every Age either brings forth or opens her Truth Things are done in their times and severall Doctrines are unlockt in severall Ages Secondly To shew that though his opinion had no such Tradition as you say your Church claimes for all her Doctrines yet it may and ought to be defined he desires to know who ever taught the Assumption of the Virgin before Saint Austines and Hieromes time and by whom was that opinion deduct from the Apostles Nay he absolutely affirmes that before Nazianzene no man ever taught any thing of her delivery without paine yet many thought the contrary Thirdly and lastly For your absolute confutation he confesseth that we believe and hold in this Age many things for Mysteries of Faith which in former Ages did waver under small or no Probability and many Things are now defined for Articles of Faith which have endured a hard repulse among the most and the weightiest of the Ancient Doctors and no light contradiction among the Ancient Fathers and having reckoned up five Particulars The Validity of Hereticks Baptisme The Beatificall Vision before the day of Judgment The Spirituallity of Angels The Soules being immediately created and not ex traduce And The Virgines being free from all actuall Sinne He shuts it thus Many of these kinds of Opinions there are which sometimes declined to one Part sometimes to the other and had contrary Favourers according to severall times untill a diligent and long disquisition being praemitted the Truth was manifested either by Pope or Provinciall or generall Councels nay and saies that the disquisition is made by conferring of Places of Scripture and Reason which is the way which you mislike These things considered whosoever shall after say that your Church claimes all her Doctrines to have come by a Verball and constant Tradition to her from the Apostles I will not say that he is very impudent but I cannot think that a small matter-will put him out of countenance for your part I esteeme you so much that I am confident you have not so little Nose as not to find the contrary nor so little Forehead as not to confesse it having received the Affidavit of such a cloud of Witnesses Whosoever pretend Christ his Truth against her saith that true it is she had once had the true way but by length of times she is fallen into grosse Errors which they will reform not by any Truth which they have received from hand to hand from those who by both Parts are acknowledged to have received their lesson from Christ and his Apostles but by Arguments either out of Ancient Writers or the secrets of Reason This is no farther true then as it concernes the Protestants for the Greek Church will not suffer your proposition to be generall but forbid the Banes They pretend not to have made any Reformation but to have kept ever since the Apostles what from them was received Barlaam saies they do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 keep safe and whole the Tradition of the Catholique Church nay he proves his to be the sound Part because by them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nothing was ever more esteemed then her Tradition And he objects it to your Church that she doth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 difanull the Tradition of the Catholique Church and setting them at naught bring in strange and undenizon'd opinions And that Greeke who is joyned to Nilus and Barlaam in Salmatius his Edition disputing against a Cardinall chargeth you that you do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sow Tares among the Tradition of the Apostles and Fathers if when they make this claime they either say so and think not so or think so and erre then this proves that though the Roman Church did make that claime which you say she doth yet she too might either claime it against her Conscience or against Truth For this claime of the last cannot be denyed but by him who will imitate that Hamshire Clown of whom you give me warning and believe no more then he sees himself especially since your own Authors when they dispute for Traditions prove their authority from this profession of the Greekes but I cannot blame you to forget them if we would suffer you since they cannot be remembred but by your Religions disadvantage For I verily believe that if they had but one Addition which they want I mean Riches not onely most of them who leave the Protestants would sooner go to them then to you unlesse they would take their Religion as we take Boates for being the Next but money among you who though they dislike your pretended Infallibility that the Popes usurpations upon the rights of other Bishops his not ancient claime of power to deliver Soules out of Purgatory c And yet are frighted from joyning
with the Protestants by want of Succession Vocation and such like Bull-beggers would goe over to them as I have heard Spalato meant to doe if they were not kept by an unwillingnesse to change the spirituall tyrannie of the Pope for the temporall of the Turke But although there were no such Churches or they made no such claime yet having shew'd out of your own Authors that some opinions have not been constantly delivered by Tradition but have entered into the Church upon the grounds which might at least possiblie deceive them of Scripture Reason and Revelation and others knockt apace to be let in I hope we may be excused for making a reveiw of all and examining what doctrines have been brought in if not by Scripture which we think reasonable at least by comparing what this age teacheth and requires with what the first Ages did to which we are encourag'd by your selves who make agreement with Antiquitie the chief mark of the Church unlesse you meane your selves to be onelie Judges even of those things by which you bid us to judge you For our examinations by reason I cannot tell why you mislike it since those who trust their own reason least trust it yet to chuse for them one whom they may trust against which all Arguments drawn from her fallibilitie without question lie Your Religion is built upon your Church her authoritie upon reasons which we think slight and fallacious and your selves think but prudentiall and probable ought we not then nay must we not examine them by Reason or receive them upon your word And allowing them probable reason yet I have still cause to examine further whether your superstructions be not more unreasonable then your foundations are reasonable for then I cannot receive a more unprobable doctrine then that is probable which it is prov'd by Yet in respect of things appearing divers at divers times I doe not like my own way so well as to esteem it absolutelie infallible but though I keep it because I account it the best yet I will promise to leave it when you can shew me a better which will be hard to doe because you cannot prove it to be better but by reason against which proofe and consequentlie against whatsoever it proves your own Objections remaine For to be perswaded by reason that to such an authoritie I ought to submit it is still to follow reason and not to quit her And by what else is it that you examine what the Apostles taught when you examine that by ancient Tradition and ancient Tradition by a present Testimonie Yet when I speake thus of finding the Truth by Reason I intend not to exclude the Grace of God which I doubt not for as much as is necessarie to Salvation is readie to concurre to our Instruction as the Sunne is to our sight if we by a wilfull winking chuse not to make not it but our selves guilty of our blindnesse Indeed if we love darknesse better then light and instead of esteeming it shut it out it were but just in God if we so continue long hardened not to suffer it to see after when we would since so obstinatelie we would not when we might like to that which happened to those Englishmen of whom Froissard speakes who having long bound up an eye and made a foolish vow never to see with that till they could see their Mistresses when they returned and unbound them they saw nothing but that they could not see Yet when I speake of Gods grace I mean not that it infuseth a knowledge without reason but workes by it as by its Minister and dispels those Mists of Passions which doe wrap up Truth from our Understandings For if you speake of its instructing any other way though I confesse it is possible as God may give us a sixth sence yet it is not ordinarie and ought not to be brought to dispute because so we leave visible Arguments to flie to invisible and your Adversarie when he hath found your play will be soon at the same locke and I beleeve in this sence infus'd Faith is but the same thing otherwise apparell'd which you have so often laught at in the Puritans under the title of private Spirit This being supposed either this Principle hath remain'd unto her ever since her beginning or she took it up in some one Age of the sixteen if she took it up she then thought she bad nothing in her but what she had receiv'd from her fore-fathers and if she thought so she knew it This Principle is not yet taken up by her and suppose it were yet since some other opinions are confess'd to have been receiv'd by her not from a constant Tradition but Scripture and Revelations and not at once but by little and little this very Principle of receiving nothing but from Tradition might it selfe have been receiv'd not from Tradition nor need it have been in any one Age of the sixteen but some might have taught it in one Age more in another and all at last and this so farre from being an impossibilitie that it were no wonder Let us adde that the multitude of this Church is so dispersed through so many Countries and Languages that it is impossible they should agree together upon a false Determination to affirme with one consent a Falsity for Truth no Interest being able to be common to them all to produce such an effect Although so many Countries could not so well agree upon it at once yet some might so perswade others that in time and by degrees the disease may be grown epidemicall And trulie considering in everie Countrie how few there are who thinke of Religion at all or of them againe who walke in it by the directions of their owne eyes even of them who take upon them to shew that way to others but for the most part which they did much more in more ignorant times when Scriptura sacra cum vetustis authoribus frigebat are lead by some few whom they reverence for their Piety and learning 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whose words are accounted lawes and they againe by a Thomas or a Scot or at best by Austine or Hierome and thinke it Tradition enough to have it from them for else why thinke they to beare us downe with the Authoritie of one or two Fathers if they thinke that not ground enough to goe upon themselves it seemes little stranger to me that whole Countries should let in not ancient opinions then that a few should since a few in all places have ever govern'd all the rest of this I will bring two very known examples out of the Ecclesiasticall Historie The first is of Valens the Emperour who being himselfe an Arrian and making peace with a Nation which was not so and supposing that they would never have firme concord with him to whom in Faith he was so opposite was advised to perswade their Bishop to change his beleife for which end having
neither indeed know I define it as you please how it doth since you confesse that men may oppose any companie of men whomsoever you will call the Church without being obstinate or consequentlie by heresie excluded from Heaven and so may for all that be elected Neither indeed know I how God hath made mankinde for his Elect It is true that having elected those who shall persevere in Faith and Obedience and given man Free-will which joyned with Grace universallie offered might bring him to the condition and in that to election and by that to Heaven God may be said to have made mankinde for his elect that is to be his elect if they shut not themselves out of the way to be so And all men especiallie Christians I beleeve have and alwaies shall have meanes enough to performe these conditions in such a measure all things considered I meane either naturall defects as in Ideots never having heard of Christ as in many Pagans not having Christs will sufficientlie proposed as in many Christians and whosoever is not by some fault in his will hindered from assenting to him it is not proposed sufficientlie as shall by God be from them required But this hinders not but that all Christians may see what they should if they stand not in their own light or wilfullie winke and if they neglect Christs Instructions or Commands and make themselves deafe against his voice charme he never so wiselie they then may fall from necessarie Truths much more from others unto error as well as from good life into wickednesse from which without question Gods Spirit is as readie to keep men that will be kept as from the other and which is no lesse if not more part of the conditions required for in that epitomie which Christ hath given us of the day of judgement men are onely mentioned to be punished for want of Charitie and not mis-interpretations of doctrine though I grieve to see so many of all parts whereof I am too much one live as if God were so obliged to them for their Faith that he were bound to winke upon their workes and not to be an Idolater or not a Heretick were enough not to be damned And certainlie to say That one tittle of Gods Word shall not passe away is not to say that God will keepe here alwaies a knowne companie of men to teach us all Divine Truths which from them because of their authoritie we may without more adoe accept for unlesse you meane the Church in this sence it concernes not our differences till you can prove that this word makes some such promise For this seemes to me onelie to shew the veracitie of Gods Word without speaking at all of any Churches continuall obedience to it or true interpretation of it or the impossibilitie of her receiving the Traditions of men for the will of God Besides in this Paragraph I observe three things The first That you now draw your Arguments from the stedfast Truth of Holie Writ whereas you neither quote out of it any thing to prove your maine Assertion and in that way which you laid before to finde out Truth by you tooke no notice at all of Scripture but would have all differences decided by onely comparing what men had by verball Tradition like that Dominican of whom Erasmus tels us in his Epistles that when in the Schooles any man refuted his conclusion by shewing it contrarie to the words of Scripture he would crie out Ista est Argumentatio Lutherana protestor me non responsurum This is a Lutheran way of Arguing I protest I will not answer to it Secondlie You now bring the proofe of your certaintie from Gods Spirit never failing his Church though you neither define what is there meant by Church nor doe you bring any proofe or ever can that Gods Spirit will stay with any unlesse they please it or that this will not consist with the least error in divine matters whereas before you made it a Physicall or rather superphysicall certaintie that Traditions must be delivered from Age to Age uncorrupted and this not because of any other assistance but ex necessitate Rei Thirdlie You seeme to thinke that aptnesse to startle in the faithfull will serve to secure them from all error whereas I must professe my selfe of opinion that in some times and some cases that may serve to induce it for it being trulie said that there is as much follie beyond wisedome as on this side of it and Nazianzene telling us trulie that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the marke is equallie missed by over shooting as by shooting short I doubt whether over much caution may not have made some doctrines and their Abetters condemned especiallie when they appeared somewhat new some Truths rejcted for feare least they did by consequence contradict some point of Faith when indeed they did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Dogs often barke at a friend for an enemie upon the first noise he makes before having considered which he is This made the Ancients so earnest against the now-certaintie of the Antipodes this in after times for the same opinion cost a Bishop his Bishopricke and truth in all probabilitie would have then beene defined a heresie if a generall Councell had been called about it Since then this aptnesse to startle hath inclined Orthodox Christians to condemn not onely those who had affirmed in termes the contrarie to Tradition but even those from whose opinions they thought it would result and consequentlie to exact an Assent not onely to direct Tradition but also to whatsoever else seemed to them reasonable deductions from it This seemes to me a way by which Errors may have entered by shoales the first Ages I mean then Cum Augustinus habebatur inexpugnabilis Dialecticus quod legisset Categorias Aristotelis not having been so carefull and subtile in their Logick as these more learned times both Arminians and Calvinists Dominicans and Jesuites Papists and Protestants seeming to me to argue much more consequently to their owne Principles more close to their present businesse and every way more rationally then the ancient Doctors used to do I mean those which I haveseen And I am confident that if two or three Fathers should rise againe unknown and should return to their old Argument against the Arrians from Cor meum eructavit verbum bonum both Parties would be so farr from receiving them for Judges that neither would accept of them for Advocates nor trust their Cause to their arguing who opposed their common enemy no better Now that this way of making Deductions out of Tradition and those both very hasty and false ones is very ancient appeares even by an example in the end of the Gospell of John for there out of Christs words falsly interpreted a conclusion was drawn and spread among the Bretheren that Saint John should not dye and what they did out of these words of Christ other in other times may have done out of other words
it self I am not capable of discerning to be so any more then a blind man is likely to assent to an argument drawn from Colours of which he could have no possible notion Now whereas you say that the world was once of this accord it is more then I know we are told that wholeChurches in the East had long denied this when Luther first left you and howsoever that it could not be brought in time by arts propt by power to accord in an error is more then you have proved Whereas you say that those who opposed this when they first parted first began the contrary Sects I answer that our men pretend that they began no new Doctrine but onely scoured off the rust which time and worldly ends in some and negligence in others had suffered to grow on Which Question againe remaines to be tried if you refuse Scripture as your side useth to do by a Jury of such who are for the most part untranslated or those which are by Parties and whose language I cannot spell nor consequently determine by their evidence Now whereas you say that the points in controversie on your side help Devotion and on ours diminish it I wish you had instanced which and wherein for I for the most part see nothing towards it they being meere speculative opinions and not reduceable to life as especially this whereof we most differ which is your Churches being a generall guide Those which most may seem such are either Confession which yet we denie onely to be necessary not profitable if well used which is practised by some of us and recommended to all and which as you have tempered it making contrition sufficient for his salvation who hath till his hour of death lived in all sin and making attrition with absolution of the same force as contrition and requiring to attrition as I am told you do onely sorrow for sin though arising from the feare of Hell so some love of God being joyned to it which none can want but an Infidell will not help Devotion much but rather diminish it or Monastick life which was grown into great excesse and disorder which yet many wise and moderne Protestants think might as well have been reformed as the other parts of the Church without totall obolition and so upon this is left no Question or Fasting which if you think Protestants are against I pray read Bishop Andrews his Lent Sermons and which if it be not so much used among us as it should is not so much the fault of the Religion as of the Men and all these things considered I find none of your motives to shew a maine advantage on your side and therefore I have yet no cause to leave my owne And if in some of these things you should seeme to have more Truth then we yet that would not free you from having more error in other points then this comes to much lesse from having any at all without the beliefe of which I should not be received among you though I were willing to come And this lieth upon you to prove and that not by probable but by infallible arguments if you require as they say your side useth to do an assent of that Nature To the Grammarian I will give two Memorandums first that seeing the Catholicks were first in possession both of the Scriptures and the Interpretations The adverse part is bound to bring such places as can receive no probable Exposition by the Catholickes For who knoweth not that is conversant in Criticks how many obscure and difficult places occurre in most plaine Authors and the Scripture of all Bookes the greater part of the men that wrote them especially the New Testament being not eloquent and writing not in their native Tongue for the most part are subject to much impropriety The other Memorandum is that to prove a Catholique point by Scripture it is sufficient that the place brought beare the Exposition the Catholique giveth and if it be the more probable by the very letter it is an evincent place The reason is because the question being of a Christian law the Axiome of the Jurists taketh place that Consuetudo optima Interpres Legis so that if it be manifest that Christian practise which was before the controversie bee for the one sence and the words be tolerable no force of Grammer can prevaile to equalize this advantage The Grammarian therefore who will observe these Rules I turne him loose to the Scriptures and Fathers to seeke there what is the Faith of Christ and proprieties of her Church to know her by To your first Memorandum I answer that you have grounded it wholly upon begging the question for if those of your Religion had first been in possession of the Scriptures then the Christians had been of it in the Apostles times which if you could prove you would need to prove no more but all would easilie follow and then for your consequence that is equallie false for though I confesse to make any Doctrine a point of Faith it is required that the place be as plaine as you please yet to the making it the more probable opinion and consequentlie excluding the contrarie from being necessarie so much is not required The greatest cause of the obscuritie of those bookes in which Criticks are conversant is the negligence and ignorance of Transcribers so that some Authors would scarce know their own Bookes if they were revived whereas the great care of Christians about so deare a pledge hath much if not wholly hindered the same cause from perverting and so obscuring Scripture At least if it have not it seemes your Church is not so faithfull a Guardian of her deposit as her deare friends moved by partiallitie or ends would make us beleeve Besides till now I ever thought that Eloquence rather lead men to speake improperlie then the want of it since ignorant persons keepe themselves within the bounds of what preciselie they meane whereas the eloquent wander into figures which are so many and have gotten such footing in language whilst in the search of significancie proprietie is lost that those who use them are obliged to those who will please to understand because all they say may beare two sences the one proper the other improper And though it be true that they have over-flowne even into the language of the ignorant yet it is as true that both they are much lesse used among these and that they had not hence their beginning but from Eloquence And though the Apostles write not in their native Tongues yet they write in an inspired language so that they were not likely to commit at least any such soloecismes as should destroy the end of the Inspirer which was that they should be understood by it To your second Memorandum I answer that since every man is free till some thing binds him you who pretend that we are bound to receive more doctrine as necessarie then appeares to us
to be so are in all reason to give us plainlie evincent proofe that what you thus require God requires too for till then to returne you to another Axiome for yours praesumitur pro libertate whereas wee the burden of the Negative proofe not lying upon us if we bring probable Arguments we doe it ex abundanti and bring more then we need to bring And whereas you stand upon Customes having power in Law matters I answer that in all cases that is not of force for we hold that it must not prevaile against a Statute which shewes that they may be contradictorie and as Nullum tempus occurrit Regi is thought to be a good civill topicall Law so me thinkes Nullum tempus occurrit veritati is a good publique divinitie Law your owne Scripture too telling us that Truth is stronger then the King Besides where it is of force it is in such cases as the law hath appointed that it should be so and if you can prove out of Christs Law that there it is so appointed to be in matters of Divinity wee shall willinglie yeild but seeing that our law which allowes this force to custome sets downe also in how long time it is before it become of force and I have cause to thinke that Christ would have been as carefull as our law and have set down this too if he had had any such meaning and if it were setled to be a custome of such a standing as by Saint Austine sometimes is spoken of as that in no time it be known that ever it was otherwise in most of your affaires this would stead you a little though one side have burnt the evidences of the other to which in likeliehood you owe it if this stead you in any of questions whereof Scripture and Antiquitie are wholly silent or meerly speculative and unreducible unto act of which sort are the greatest between us or not concerning the lawfulnesse but the necessity of an Action to the first kind no ancient custome can belong nor other to the others then a custome of Interpretation of some text concerning it not enough to conclude upon besides that it is not that which you speake of since daily your men differ and defend their differing from all that went before them about more then many texts as Cajetane Salmeron and Maldonate shall beare me witnesse unlesse like Sampson you may breake those Ropes by which others must be bound And adding to all this that our custome may serve to shew the meaning of the law when our selves were Authors of it though not when God is and that our generall custome arguing our united consent which onely gives force to our lawes may be as fit to bind as a law in civill cases and yet not in divine where the lawes proceed from a higher fountaine that such a rule may be good in civill resolutions which require but probable proofes and yet not in divine ones where according to the grounds of your Party which requires an undoubting assent to her doctrines as infallible infallible proofes are necessary especially this like other Topycall arguments having onely force caeteris paribus and againe good where it is not so necessary that the will of the Legislator be followed as that peace and quiet be preserved to which all alterations even to the better are enemies and yet not in these cases where we are to prefer the will of our Law-maker before any humane convenience or good if the custome past unquestioned when the Law was first promulgated but not if crept in after by negligence or plainely appearing to have been brought in by power all this perswading me not to be so farr swaied by your Rules as you would have me I suppose you have small hope that not being so I should find either in Scripture or the first Antiquitie either that Faith which your Church proposeth or these properties of Christs Church by which your Church proves or rather strives to prove that she it is Give me leave besides to aske you one Question and that is What we shall conclude when the Christian practice of severall places have ever differed as that of Greece from that of Rome which it may also do in more places then we are acquainted with the extent of Christianitie being unknown to us as are the customes of some remote Christian Countries which we know Of the Philosopher I exact to goe like a Philosopher and to search out the specificall differences of every Sect and when he hath found them if any one but the Catholique hath any rule of faith and good life which I remit to him to enquire but at least when he hath found the Catholicks to be this claime of Tradition before declared then if this doe not bring him as demonstratively as he knoweth any Conclusion in Philosophy and Mathematicks to the notice of this is the onely true Church of Christ for my part I shall quit him before God and Man I have examined the differences between all parts as you bid me and find the Protestants to have a sufficient rule of Faith and good life yea such a one as by Master Knotts confession Quem honoris causa nomino is as perfect as a writing can be And since a writing may containe all Doctrines and onely cannot give testimonie to it self nor be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I have no reason to think it inferior to that of their adversaries Your claime of Tradition I see plainely enough and as plainely that it is but a claime many of your side overthrowing it and others not of your owne pretending to it Bishop Fisher confesseth that Scripture and Miracles brought in the Doctrine of Purgatory and that againe the doctrine of Indulgences Erasmus who though himself no Martyr yet one who may passe for a Confessor having suffered and long by the Bigotts of both Parties and a dear Friend both to Fisher and his Colleague in Martyrdome Sir Thomas Moore who were the Deucalions of learning in this our Country makes yet a larger confession Non obscurum est quot opiniones invectae sunt in orbem per homines ad suum Quaestum callidos conflictorum Miraculorum praesidio These reasons alone allowing for brevities sake that I had no more would make me believe not onely that what you say concludes not geometrically but perswades not probably and consequently you by your promise have quitted me which without it I doubt not but God would have done The Divine if he hath truly understood the Principles of Faith in the nature of a Divine I mean Trinity Incarnation Redemption Eucharist Beatitude the Creation and Dissolution of the World and hath seen the exact conformity of the deepest Principles of Nature with an unspeakable wisdome of the Contriver If he doth not plainely confesse it was above the naure of man to frame the Catholique Religion and seeth not that onely that is conformable to Nature and it self I say he
hath no ground sufficient to be of it Supposing the greatest part of what you say to be true for I see not how a bare consideration even of these Doctrines will serve to prove them to come from Gods Revelation it might prove the Christian Religion against Pagans but for yours against Protestants I can draw out of it no Argument which if upon your explanation it appeares not to be through the default of the Lymbeck which I expect then the better I think of you the worse I shall think of your cause which would have ministred to so sharp an inquirer better proofes but that the old Axiom hindered it of Nihil dat quod non habet These Principles of Faith you speak of are agreed on by both Parts so out of their Truth and the impossibility of their being forged all the other points cannot be proved which have upon them no necessarie dependance and that your Religion is conformable to the deepest Principles of Nature I am so farr from seeing that I conceive your own opinion of Transubstantiation contradicts them almost all Neither see I any such unspeakablenesse in the contriving but that ordinary understandings by severall degrees in a long tract of many ignorant negligent ages egged on by ambition cloakt over by hipocrisie assisted by false miracles and maintained by tyrannie might easily both induce and establish them so that though we have hitherto differed in our premisses yet we meet in the Conclusion which is that I have no sufficient ground to be of your Religion The Statesman who is truely informed of the Church how farr is really of Christs institution and what either pious men have added or peradventure ambitious men encroacht if he doth not find a government of so high and exotick straine that neither mans wit dare to have attempted it neither mans power would possibly have effected it If he find no eminent helpes and no disadvantage to the temporall government I shall think there wants one starr in the heaven of the Church to direct these Sages to Bethlehem I answer now in the person of a Statesman a part which but for this occasion I am sure never to have acted Thus I find so much policie in your Church for most part really and alwaies in voto aimed at although miss'd that of no body of men did ever Aristotl's saying appear to me truer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Among some men it is the end of the Lawes of their Common-wealth to be masters of their neighbours but I find nothing in the government that should prove it to proceed from a divine fountaine In Ecclesiasticall Monarchie you have so have also the Tunks the Pope pretends to a power of ending all controversies so doth also their Musty and since mans wit attempted that and mans power effected it why it might not do the same in the West it did in the East having the aide of some Tinsell-reasons and some not wholly averse places of Scripture I cannot conceive And what help is by your Church given to temporall government I see not unlesse giving the Pope power in temporalls even to depose Kings be the helpes you mean I know that some of your side are not concerned in this but it is grown so generall that though it be as yet no necessary part of your Religion it is like to be shortly And truely throughout I find somethings which pious men have added many whic hambitious men have encroacht though of your Church I could not be informed in this who hath not decided the Question but nothing that you alone hold instituted by Christ and so to your Bethlehem for want of a starr I am not likely to travell Let every man consider which is the fit way for himself and what in other matter of that way he accounteth evidence and if there be no interest in his soule to make him loath to believe what in another matter of the like nature he would not stick at or heavie to practise what he seeth clearly enough I feare not his choice but if God send him time and meanes to prosecute his search any indifferent while it is long agoe known of what Religion he is to be of I see yet no cause to think that your Religion is that which will be chosen though we agree about the state in which every enquirers soule ought to be and in which those of few are I see all parents labour to fix opinions into their Children before they cometo an age fit to judge of any greater doubts then what may happen at span-counter or cherry pit and they againe seldome labour to set right what Education hath swared Neither are they wrought upon onely by prejudice but some because of gaine like Demetrius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because by this craft they have their Gods some because of temporall honour like the Pharisees 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 least they be cast out of the Synagogue loving the praise of men more then the praise of God some for feare like the High Priests 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Romans will come and take away both our Place and Nation Some because of the contradiction in the true Doctrine to their vaine or wicked desires and so as some Disciples said though somewhat upon another occasion they account it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a hard saying which made Epictetus say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 indeed most Christians who oppose any of Christs Commands either for some of these reasons dare not enquire whether Christ hath commanded them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or enquiring find but confesse it not like those I spoke of before who 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 As Epictetus therefore saith that we should enquire of God who is our guide as Travelers do of them they meet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 having no desire to turne rather to the right hand then to the left or againe as we enquire of our eyes concerning what is to be seen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not perswading them to shew us one thing rather then another so say I ought we to goe to reason to find Gods will indifferent which is Truth or else we are likely very lazilie to seek what we are unwilling to find and a probable argument for what we desire will seem a Demonstration and a Demonstration against it scarce a probable Argument This I insist upon the more because I think we have more cause to put you in mind of this then you us being too little practised on both parts but not most by yours whereof the greatest part commonly arrives not so farr as at the fault of not seeking as they should because commonly they have not leave given them to seek at all for besides those who neglect to seek and may no Bible being allowed by you to most as no Smith was suffered by the Philistines in Israel they fearing least the Hebrews should make them swords and speares and you least they should
make out of it Arguments to perswade them to revolt from you It is no wonder if your Church be like the Congregation in the Acts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the most part know not why they are come together And truely if thus it were not if all had liberty to seek Truth and if all who sought it were indifferent in their seeking and their judgments were absolutely unbridled by their affections and unswaied by prejudice I cannot perswade my self that so many could meet in thinking it fit to receive for so they seem to me such impossible Doctrines upon such improbable grounds or to require a more then probable assent to but probable Doctrines allowing them to be such and should not see what is grounded upon them if not impossible is at least much more improbable then the Motives are probable which kind of Assent cannot be expected by God who as he requires onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a reasonable service so also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a reasonable Faith Here followeth the Third Part of this Discourse which is a Reply to such Answers as you have been pleased to make to a little of that little which I at first opposed SPeaking of the Church Rome as this day it is the true Church of God I answer the doubter she neither hath nor can have any error which he need to feare and be shie of The which two limitations I adde for avoiding Questions impertinent unto our businesse The first for those which concerneth the connexion of the Sca of Rome to the Universall The latter to avoide such Questions as touch that point whether the Church may erre in any Philosophicall or other such matter which Questions are not so pertinent to our Matter Meaning by the true Church a companie of men which hold all and no more that Christ taught for other interpretation I beleeve you will not give it then there is no question but that not onely it hath no dangerous error but none at all but that yours is such remaines unproved and I beleeve manet aeternumque manebit For upon examination I doubt not it will appeare that as I have read of a Cohort of Persians which they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Immortall Cohort which all died in one battell so your infallibe Church will be found to abound in errors and to belie equallie hertitle being troubled her selfe with what she undertakes to secure others from like the Apothecary in Lucian who undertaking to cure all men of the Cough 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 could himselfe scarce prescribe his Medicine for coughing the while Besides of what sort soever the error be yet since the Condition of her Communion is to professe a beleife that she hath none such a one as to them who indeed beleeve so would not be dangerous yet to me who cannot professe this but against my Conscience how slight a one soever may be an occasion of damnation Againe as to me your answer appeares false so to those of your own side it will appeare hereticall to me it would give no satisfaction though you had proved what you but affirme because I desire to know an eternall not a temporarie Guide whereas if in your Church there should happen any Schisme your answer then would give me no meanes to resolve my selfe which part were the guide that is the true Church without a new and peradventure by the way an endlesse search To them it will give scandall because first you presuppose that we must know the Church by the Doctrine and the Doctrine by the Church and secondlie you imply a possibilitie that the Church of Rome is now but by accident and may come not to be the true Church and so all their confidence built upon her as the Directresse of all Churches and the eternall Admirall of Gods Fleet will appeare to have a very fallible foundation Besides in the cause of your Limitation I find more reason to commend your Discretion then your Ingenuitie for for the first if you had said that the Universall Church of Christ must alwaies be connected to the particular one of Rome which were to allow her Infallibilitie you knew Antiquitie to have said much against you and besides that this being not yet de fide among your selves nor evident in it selfe could not serve for a foundation to the whole bodie of our faith if you had absolutelie denied it you knew that you should incurre the displeasure of the most prevailing part of your own men and that then the maine and to the Ignorant the onely visible signe would bee taken away For the second if you had affirmed that the Church could erre in nothing how slight soever you would both have contradicted many of your own side as Stapleton by name and have asserted more then there were any coloun of proofe for and would have wanted this distinction to retire to if you were confuted in any particular if you had restrained her Infallibilitie to things necessarie or weightie or the like then the question would again have risen which are those for many errors which we lay to her charge concerne not things indeed necessarie though she adde to the error that other of thinking that whatsoever she holds becomes necessarie by her holding it and then for all you have said the doctrine of Purgatorie might be false and yet she the Church and that infallible as farre as by your Doctrine her Infallibilitie had need to be extended Neither doe I remit the questioner to Scripture for his satisfaction although I hold Scripture a very sufficient meanes to satisfie the man who goeth to it with that preparation of understanding and will which is meet and required Howsoever this I may answer for them who prove it out of Scripture that because they dispute against them who admit of Scripture and deny the authority of the Church if they can convince it they doe well though they will not themselves admit generally of a proofe out of Scripture as not able to prove every thing in foro contentioso If you hold Scripture to be so sufficient a mean I wonder Sir why you thinke not fit to remit me to it unlesse you thinke that you have severall sufficient waies to prove so evidenta Truth by or thinke me not to come with meet preparation Indeed if that be as among you it is counted to come resolved not to judge of what the Roman Church holds by what the Scriptures say but to beleeve that they say whatsoever she holds then I confesse I come not with the Conditions required but if it be to come desirous to finde the Truth and to follow and professe it when I have found it in spite of all temporall respects which might either fright or allure me from so doing then I suppose that Charitie which hopeth all things will encline you to beleeve that I come as I ought to come untill some evident reason perswade you to the
contrarie That the Scripture cannot prove every thing in foro contentioso I beleeve but all necessarie Truths I beleeve it can for onely those which it can are such I denie not but that a contentious person may denie a thing to be proved when his own Conscience contradicts his words but so he may Arguments drawn from any other ground as well as Scripture so that if for that cause you refuse to admit of proofes from thence you might as well for the same refuse to admit of any by any other kinde of Arguments And certainlie if the Scriptures I meane the plaine places of it cannot be a sufficient ground for such and such a point surelie it cannot be a sufficient ground to build a ground upon as the Churches Infallibilitie and therefore though it it seemes you desire so much that this be beleeved that so it be you care not upon what proofe yet a considering Protestant who is not as hot to receive your Religion as you are that he should may presentlie say when he is press'd by you with Scripture to this since this is a way of proofe which your selves admit not of an Argument from hence may bring me from my own Religion but never to yours because it is a beame which that relies much upon that by any other way then the authoritie of the Church no man can be sufficientlie sure of the meaning of Scripture That they say the Church is made infallible that we may have some guide I thinke it very rationall for Nature hath given ever some strong and uncontroulable Principle in all Natures to guide the rest The Common-wealth hath a Governour not questionable our Understanding hath Principles which she cannot judge but by them judgeth of all other verities If there should not be some Principle in the Church it were the onely maimed thing God had created and maimed in its Principall part in the very head Andif there be such a Principle the whole Church is Infallible by that as the whole man seeth by his eyes toucheth by his hands Christ is our unquestionable and infallible Governour and his Will the Principle by which we are guided and the Scripture the place where this Will is contained which if we endeavour to find there we shall be excused though we chance to misse and therefore want not your guide who either is not or as hard to find as the way and againe when he hath defined the certaine meaning of that definition as hard to find as herfelf Neither is a company of men thus beleeving maimed in the head though having no other more uncontroulable Principle If your guide were evident of her self as those Principles are by which we judge all things else then your Similitude would hold a little whereas being neither knowable in her self nor proveable by ought else what you have said onely shewes what an ill match is made when Witt is set against Truth It is sufficient for a Child to believe his Parents for a Clown to believe his Preacher about the Churches Infallibility For Faith is given to mankind to be a meanes of believing and living like a Christian and so he hath this second it is not much matter in what tearmes he be with the first To what you say I answer that I confesse that it is not possible that without particular Revelations or Inspirations the ignorant even of the Orthodox party should receive their Religion upon very strong grounds which makes me wonder that even from them you should exact an assent of a higher nature and a much greater certaintie then can be ministred to them by any arguments which they are capable of yet if they believe what they receive with an intention of obedience to God and supposall that their opinions are his Revelations and use those meanes which they in their Conscience think best to examine whether they be or no though it be when they find themselves unable to search by trusting others whom they count fittest to be trusted I beleeve they are in a very saveable estate though they be farr from having of the truth of their Tenets any Infallible certaintie and the same I think of those which are in error for since you cannot deny but that a Child or a Clown with the same aptnesse to follow Gods will may be taught by his Parents or his Preacher that what God forbids he commands that Christ's Vicar is Antichrist or the Church Babylon and scarce teacheth any truth though it could not teach the least error why should such a one be damned for the misfortune of having had Hereticall Parents or a deceiving Preacher For no more it seemes is required of such then to give his beliefe to those And indeed the same reason extended will excuse him who though learned impartially aimeth at Gods will and misseth it for though you seeme to insinuate by the cause you give of what you say that so men believe and do what they heare God command he careth not upon what grounds yet I who know that God hath no other gaine by our so doing then that in it we sacrifice to him our soules and affections cannot believe but that they shall be accepted who give him that which he most cares for and obey him formally though they disobey him materially God more considering and valuing the Heart then the Head the end then the actions and the fountaine then the streames And truely else he who through stupidity or impotence abstained from any vice or through negligence or prejudice miss'd some error would be as well accepted of by God as he that by a care of his waies and of obedience to him who should rule them did avoide the first and by a studious search the second I cannot part from this Theame without one consideration more and that is that if so Fallible a Director as you speak of may be cause enough of assent to one Truth why may they not be so to another and why shall not the beleefe of our ignorants upon their testimonie that the Scripture is the Word of God be as well founded as that of yours to the Infallibility of the Church upon the same And yet it is daily objected to us that this beleefe of ours is not surely enough founded since not received from their Church although the unlearned among us receive it from their Parents and Preachers and the learned from Tradition as from the first of those your unlearned do and from the second of which your learned pretend they do receive the authority and infallibility of the Church it self Although we be so much more reasonable then you that we require them not to be so sure upon it as they are of what they know by sence but onely to give them so much credit that they may give up their hearts to obedience Neither do I remit him to a generall and constant Tradition as if himself should climbe up every age by learned
when a Childe as the substance of his hopes for all eternitie and so cannot in reason have his books either forbidden or pasted up for delivering any thing contrary to it Secondly Who are these Censors who forbid and paste up books certainly not the Universall Church nor yet the Representative the latter is not alwaies in being nor when it is at leasure to consider and judge all authors and of the first these Authors are a part if then they be fallible as they must be if they be not the Church why may not they erre and the Martyr-books speake truth which yet will easily by this meanes be kept from Posteritie if those in the Dictatory Office dissent from it as they will be sure to do if the opinion contradict never so little the power or greatnesse of the Pope upon whose favour these Oecumenicall Correctors must depend or they not longremaine in their places and yet you expect that your adversary should produce succession of their opinions in all ages though nothing be let passe but what a few please and though when in time all of you are agreed as you will soon be or appear to be if one side appear to be gag'd then this consent though thus brought about becomes the consent of the Church and a very notable Motive And since you say that what all are bound to is onely a prompt subjection to the Church why leave you it so in doubt what is the Church as if men were tyed to be subject but must not know to what you say indeed that the adherers to the Church of Rome are now the Church but what they may be you will not plainely declare So that if a Schisme among them should happen we are all as farr to seek as if you had been wholly silent for since the infallibility lies not in the particular Church of Rome and consequently the adhering to her is not ever a sufficient note of the Church as you will not say nor is it among your selves de fide since the Universall Church whatsoever she be can never define any thing and of the authority of the definitions of the Representative and of what constitutes both her and her decrees you refuse to speak what remaines there to which this prompt subjection is to be the onely everlasting Note of the true Church but onely the Truth whensoever she appeares Thus as the Priests of Apollo therefore peradventure called Loxias used to spread lies and secure his reputation the first by the antiquity and the second by the darknesse of his Oracles so doth your Religion gaine upon many men and secure her seflf rom many objections by the manyfold acceptions and consequently difficulty of this tearme Church For whatsoever is said in Scripture concerning her being free from all spot or prevailing against the gates of Hell or their danger who resist her the first meant as I believe and the place denies not by any circumstance of the Church Triumphant the second of the Church of the Elect and the third of the Professors of Christianity in generall or at most of those who are in all necessary points Orthodox among them That they without sufficient proofe resolve to be spoken of the Church in their sence they have fancied That is some ever known body of Christians which must be still guide to the rest and then claime to be that because no other all else being more ingenious claimes it besides themselves whereas if considering that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Oraculous truth of my great Lord Bacon's observation that unlesse men in the beginning of their disputes agree about the meaning of their tearmes they must end about words where they ought to have begun they had marked what other sence these words were capable of for if it will here beare another then this cannot hence be concluded but by leave they would then soon have seen the weaknesse of their building by the slightnesse of their foundation Againe they prevaile much by working upon mens assents by the meanes of their modesties and presse it to be an intollerable pride to oppose their opinions to the consent of the Catholick Church whereas if it be weighed how small a part of it they mean by that word and yet of them how many follow blindly the decrees of one and how soon those prevaile against that few not backed by any power who do not it will then appeare that not onely other Churches but even a John or a Thomas have as much reason to be lead by their own understandings as by the opinions and decrees of and Vrban or a Gregory upon which that consent is so often founded And as they make their advantage of this word in their offensive warres so do they in their defensive for when they are press'd unto the absurdity of their Tenets then though indeed they be generall yet they pretend that they are the opinions but of private though many men and not of the Church and againe when any Fathers who yet sometimes they say are wholly theirs are shewed to contradict some of their Doctrines so plainely that none of those subterfuges which in one of their expurgatory Indexes they consesse they often use will serve to palliate it then they strive to scape by answering that the Church had not then defined it whereas if it be examined how farre they consent about what is the Church and what are her Definitions whereof they are not yet agreed for some say she hath defined what others say she hath not this onely will be certainlie found that it never can be certainlie found what are her opinions of any point or when she hath declared her selfe As besides manie other Arguments some press'd by my selfe and others by other Pens more fit to treat of so weightie a matter appeares by your refusing to leave your Latibula and declare plainlie your opinion concerning it which if you saw defensible and you were all agreed about it you would quicklie have done and not incurred the reprehension of that Axiome which teacheth that Dolosus versatur in generalibus which makes me thinke that if this were generallie enough mark'd you would no longer be able to dazle any mans eyes with the splendid title of Somes to the Catholique Church as Alexander hoped to doe those of the Barbarians with stiling himselfe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Sonne of Jupiter although indeed he was so much the more moderate then the second as never to denie that any other could be Sonne to the same Father whereas you will not allow that any may have interest in your Mother besides your selves To conclude this Paragraph give me leave to aske one question and that is how your saying that Truth is more easie to finde now then in the Fathers times will agree either with the way which you say is the onely Catholique one to finde Truth by for sure such a Tradition was alwaies equallie easie to finde and if the first
you neither agree of any certaine and proper markes to know her by nor when it is that she interposeth her judgement some take it to be the particular Church of Rome others of which number you are all which communicate with her supposing the first to be true yet not being de fide it will serve but ill by your rules to build our faith upon and even when she delivers her opinion is not certainlie agreed whether the people of Rome be to have Votes or onelie the Clergie or of them onelie the Pope with the Cardinals or the Pope onelie without them if the Pope whether onelie in his Chaire and what circumstances are required to his decreeing in Cathedra would beget more questions If all that communicate with her as you say it is as things now stand First I would know whether they be sure to be at all times the Church to that you refuse to determine and so inclusivelie denie Secondlie It is not possible that such a multitude should ever give any sentence explicitelie nor can we ever know that it hath even tacitelic done so if they be to decree onelie by representation then how large a companie represents them with all their power of whom that companie is to consist how many of them are to agree to make it a binding sentence c. are things yet undefined and like to be and if any goe about to determine them their power being it selfe still a question could not end these Therefore whereas you say that we have no definitive sentence besides that truly to have one and not to know when we have one is much alike I answer that whensoever the Scripture shall seeme to us to have defined we are according to our doctrine readie to yeeld and so the controversie is ended and sure the Scripture may be said to be a definitive sentence as well as the written Councell of Trent and till then though we differ about interpretations of not plaine places we have as much Unitie as you who are not resolved upon the sence of manie decrees of that and other Councels and if a desire and diligence to finde the true meaning of them and an aptnesse to assent when it is found be thought to secure among you those who mistake the true sence of these Councels why should not the same disposition in us towards the Scripture be thought every whit as sufficient not onely to keepe us in unitie but to secure us from danger To conclude though unitie be a thing much spoken of by you yet I finde it chieflie onely in your discourse your differences are many and great onelie you say you agree in what is necessarie and make the measure of things necessarie what you agree in so the summe is you agree in what you doe agree which it is impossible you should not though you had carried away the bayes from Bibrias his Tombe eager against us and yet divided among your selves like the state of an Armie in Tacitus Manente Legionum auxiliorumque ubi adversus Paganos certandum foret consensu and if your Church brag of such an Unity I perceive a small matter will make her brag Againe I do confesse most English men confesse a Trinity the Incarnation and Passion of our Saviour but if to morrow any one or more of them light upon some Book of an Arrian Trinitarian or other Sect so wittily written that he putteth probable solutions for the places of Scriptures shewes slight waies how our well meaning fore-fathers may have slipped into such an Error what is there to retaine those men from disagreeing with the rest of their Bretheren and betake themselves to the Arrians And when the heat is past light upon some Rabbi who shall cunningly exaggerate the absurdities as he shall tearm them of the Trinitie Incarnation Say our Saviour did strange things in vertue of some Constellation and delivering these things so Oratorically that for a new heat some of these things shall seem more conformable then his Arrianisine what then shall hinder this man to become a Jew and at last to prove himself so great a Clerk as to write de tribus Impostoribus Take away the power of the Church which every man doth who taketh away the Infallibility what can retaine any man why he should not yeeld to that discourse which seemeth fairest seeing nothing is certaine And if you should meet with a book which should give probable solutions to the places of Scripture and reasons which you now think prove the authority of the Church and bring other though suppose but slight yet such as may seem strong Arguments to prove it not infallible and shew waies of the same kind how your ancestors may have slipt in that and by that into other errors what is there to retaine you with the rest of your Bretheren and betaking your selfe to us If you say this is impossible to be done so think the Protestants that the Arrians can give them no probable answer to their places of Scripture and such as will seem so to some is no imputation to their grounds since so may and do our Answers and Objections to some of you who thereupon leave you and yet you count not your grounds disparaged For my part I professe my self not onely to be an Anti-Trinitarian but a Turk whensoever more reason appeares to me for that then for the Contrary and so sure would you be too for the pretended infallibility of your Church could no longer hold you if you thought you saw reason to beleeve it fallible as you must do if all weighed more reason appeared of her adversaries side either your proofes of her authority not to be probable or else your Doctrinestaught by her more contrary to reason then her authority though probably founded yet not upon demonstrations is sufficient to caution and answer for It is true so long as you stick to this hold upon the Roman Church you are sure to receive no error but which she offers you and indeed you need not for those are enough but that destroied which is apter to be destroied then most of the Protestants as weaklier supported by reason then no error that a Protestant may fall into but so may you too and the other is but such a Priviledge as I may have by sticking to the English Church as well as you to the Roman And though this following your guide may be able as long as she keep her self to keep you from some Ditches into which you might otherwise fall yet it may lead you unto others and indeed there is no error but by this way you are liable too yea even of those which she now condemnes since though she changed her opinion which is neither impossible nor unlawfull yet you are by your blind obedience to believe that she had not and to submit your understanding in this Question to some distinction though without a difference These things then I dislike in what
you say First Your saying as though there is nothing to retain a Protestant from being of any error when it shall appeare more probable to him then Truth therefore there were nothing to keep him from those errors whereas you should have considered that the greater probabilities may serve reasonably to hold him without a demonstration and the evidence of the thing without a guide and that if those be not ground enough for a man to fix upon in how ill estate are those of your Church in the Question concerning the Church in which they follow no guide nor have any demonstration but professe they yeeld to her authority but upon prudentiall motives which kind of arguments sure may as well and as fixedly preserve a Protestant in `n Orthodox opinion against a Heretick as the authoritie of the Church no surelier founded can you against us That every man should yeeld to that discourse which seemeeth fairest to him I confesse it is alwaies not onelie safe and fit but also necessarie even for them who receive the Infallibilitie of the Church since those who beleeve that beleeve it because that appeares fairest to them and as you object to us the possibilitie of being perswaded from the truth by some wittie Author why thinke you not the same Author may possiblie too appeare to you to destroy your prudentiall Motives and so consequentlie your whole Faith which is built upon the Church which is built upon them Secondlie I diflike your seeming to beleeve that any grounds which are not demonstrative are too slipperie to rest upon as not onelie being contrarie to reason but to your selfe who told me before that no more was required then a maine advantage on one side and that we had reason to be satisfied with Probabilities to guide our Actions in Religion or since by them we were content to regulate all the other Actions of our life Thirdlie I dislike in your own parties behalfe your saying that a Protestant is in good likelihood to turne Arrian for if you meane onelie that it is possible it concernes you as much as them since this seemes to inferre that the Scriptures doe make more probablie for them which if they did it is not Heresie and to contradict all those whom both parts call Fathers who thinke enough plaine in Scripture not onely to keepe but also to convert men from Arrianisme as it appeares by their employing so solelie those Armes against them that they needed the admonition of a Heretique to counsell them to the use of another Fourthlie I dislike your saying that after being made an Arrian he is not unlikelie to turne Jew especiallie that he is likelie to be perswaded by any exaggeration of the Absurdities in the Trinitie since both Grotius and other Authors seeme to say that the Jewes have their Trinitie too in the same Notion and howsoever the Arrian is so fullie perswaded alreadie that those are absurdities that perswasion being almost the forme of that opinion which constitutes him an Arrian yet the exaggeration of them can never worke upon him And for the Constellation you speak of it were so irrationall and so unprovable a Crotchet that no Oratorie could ever make it seeme to a reasonable man to have any inclination to sence and a foole may be made beleeve any thing how contrarie soever to his grounds unlesse he be of those who are given over to vaine imaginations because they love darknesse better then the light and the fault of no particular mens understanding or will is to lead any man to condemne his grounds for they are to be accused not of whatsoever he concludes who holds or rather in this case hath held them but onelie of what he concludes reasonablie according to them Besides for this cause it appeares strange to me that trusting to Scripture alone and without meaning the Church for my certaine guide should bring a man into danger of parting with his Christianitie since nothing can hold a man longer then he beleeves it and as long as our ground the Scripture is by him beleeved no man can possiblie turne either Atheist or Jew and he who leaves to beleeve your ground the Church cannot by that be any more with-held from either Besides that I thinke it is impossible I am sure it is irrationall that any of you should beleeve in Christ upon the authoritie of Christs Church since beleeving the latter which claimes no authoritie but from Christ praesupposeth the beleife of him and so Christianitie is not the apter to be overthrown through the absence of that upon which it is not built I feare rather least your doctrine known to be grounded it selfe upon Tradition by such a way according to which a Jew would have much advantage of a Christian may incline a man to Judaisme and your sides generall slighting all waies of knowing Gods will but onely by the Church and then neither proving her power stronglier nor teaching how to know her plainer may make men sinke into Atheisme by being perswaded by you in letting goe other strong holds upon Truth and receiving such weake ones from you Not to speake of your loading Christianitie with such impossibilities as the Pillars of it which are not absolute Demonstrations of which it may be scarce any thing is in nature capable but lines and numbers are able to beare and using all your Wits and Industries to perswade men that it is equallie unsafe to refuse any part of your Religion as to receive none and so instead of making these your beleefs admitted for the sake of Christianitie causing Christianitie to be rejected because of them But peradventure some may attribute Power to the Church without infallibilitie whom I would have consider but what himself saith For his Church by the Power it hath must either say I command you to believe or I command you to professe this whether you believe me or no. The second I think no enemy of equivocation will admit and the former it is as much as if it should say I know not whether I say true or no yet you must think I say true We having received a command that all things be done decently and in order and this being to be appointed by them whom either the Law of the Land if that consist of faithfull or the consent or custome of Christians hath appointed for Ecclesiasticall Rulers in this matter in every place the Church thus restrained to the Governours of the Church may have in some cases though not to your purpose power without the least Infallibilitie And for instruction which you aime at no Church can give it yours especially being too large a body ever to meet or joyn in doing it and if you restraine the Church to the Cleargie whereof yet many teach not and they too are too many for any man to be sure what they all agree in teaching and when they differ how shall I know which to follow otherwise then by your Rule
which I have answered their duty indeed but not theirs onely though Principally is to instruct us in the way to Heaven which they doing in the Persons of Embassadors between God and us and having no absolute Letters of Credence to bid us to beleeve that God saies whatsoever they say he saies as much as can be wrested out of Scriptures for any present Church being said of the Scribes and Pharisees who yet proved themselves not infallible our best way is in my mind to examine their Commission and if they can shew that they treat according to that to submit to them as in the same case we must to any of the Layetie or rather to God of whose commands they are but Organs and if not to beware of their Leaven Yet it may be that some man may hold that such an opinion is to be beleeved onelie because such a Church proposeth it and yet not believe her Infallible since he may think her authoritie by reason of her Learning Multitude Sanctitie Unitie and Libertie to be more probable then any contradicting argument and that men are to assent to what is most probable and truelie if he could prove to me his Major I am alreadie so much of the opinion of his Minor that I should joyne with him in his Conclusion So that if I understand any thing where there is no Infallibility there is no Power where no Power no Unity where no Unity no Entity where no Entity no Church How you tie Power to Infallibilitie I guesse but cannot how you tie Unitie to Power For how many things are all men even at Unitie about though one have no Power over another in them onelie cemented together by their clear evidence And how many more do whole Bodies and Sects of men agree about without any such power though they differ in other points as so do you too Do not Protestants agree with you about manie and the chiefest credenda and about almost all the meerely facienda Though not perswaded to this agreement by the Power of any Judge which they do acknowledge Nay if men could be at Unitie about no thing which were not proposed by some Guide or defined by some Judge endued with such a power how came all you to agree that there is some such Guide and Judge required since sure you receive not that upon its own authoritie and if men may find the necessitie of a Guide and Judge without any Guide or Judge and remain in Unitie about that why may they not also about whatsoever is clearly taught by God which reason assures us to be all that is necessarie and if you say that all things necessarie are not clearlie taught because we do not though it proves not that we might not agree upon them then I replie that I may as well say that neither is it cleare that there is a Guide because we dissent from you in it although receiving the authoritie of the Scripture out of which Cardinall Perron confesseth that Saint Austine saith that both the necessitie of your guide the Church and she her self are to be known and reason which as they may be plain in this point for you and yet perswade us not so may they be in all necessarie points and yet we who make theirs our ground not perswade one another As little see I why there can be no Entitie nor Church where there is no Unitie For the first though there be small Unitie among Christians yet certainly Christians and their Religion have some Entitie indeed if what you say were true there were no Entitie in yours For the second I know not why two parties over-valuing their differences may not conceive each other to be none of the Church and so declare even by excommunications and yet remain both Parts of it for if a Husband misse-suspecting his Wife of Adulterie declare her to be no longer his Wife this cannot make her give over being so if the bond be indeed not broken as well as chrysostome and Epiphanius both excommunicated by each other and yet both Saints or as particular men may by your own confession be interiorly in the Church although seeming out of it even to the Church her self and so those be both of the Church between whom there is no Unity For not onely in your own Cariophilus his words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but also though the persons have power yet if the cause have not sufficiencie I take you to agree that an excommunication is but a brutum fulmen as Victors of the Asian Bishops The best therefore and strictest definition and which I think you will not refute which I can give for the Church is especially in that sence as out of it there can be no salvation those who are desirous to know Gods Will or Christs at the strictest for I am not certaine nor I beleeve is it defined among you whether an explicite knowledge of Christ be absolutely necessarie to Salvation though I know no guiltlesse ignorance of him can bring unavoidably upon any man eternall torments and ready when known to beleeve and follow it and sure many of these may eternally disagree even in points which are necessarie abstracting from particular cases and yet their differences not exclude them from the Church and consequentlie a Church may be without Unitie Quod erat demonstrandum Now for the Controversies mentioned besides that there is a meanes to terminate them they be such as bring no breach of the ancient life and action of Christians which all those opinions do which for the most part are reputed to make Hereticks You saw verie well that if no Unitie no Church were a true Proposition yours hath in it differencies enough to destroy its being a Church and therefore are faine to applie what salves you can but all in vaine For your meanes to terminate them doth not make them not to be before they are terminated and consequently by your Rule yours is no Church till then Besides their bringing to breach of the ancient life and action of Christians proves not but one of them may be a Heresie since you say not your selfe that all Heresies are such but onelie for the most part and indeed to prove that you must be able to set down what those opinions are which before a definition may make a Heretick which I beleeve you will not venture to doe in haste though we much desire it at your hands that we may know if none of them be such That some controversies amongst us are not resolved is a thing necessarie amongst humane affaires where things must have a time to be born to encrease to fall and the greater things are the greater is their Period It is true that some time to be taken notice of must passe between an opinions rising and being condemned but that so long they should run on and many of your Councels having since been held is sure not necessarie and shewes
comprehensible by all capacities and the controversies of doctrine so intricate and so many as they required much time and learning for their disquisition onely I found my selfe unprovided for both those requisitions for this undertaking and for the decision of the other I needed not much presumption to beleeve my selfe a competent Judge when it consisteth onely in the perusall of authentique Testimonies Secondly I considered that there was no one point of controverted doctrine whereon all the rest depended but that this one Question of Fact was such as the dicision of it determined all the rest for if Luther could be proved to be the Innovatour of the Protestants faith it was necessary evicted of not being the true ancient Apostolicall Religion Therefore I began with this enquiry which Protestants are bound to make to answer to this Objection to find out an existence of some Professors of the reformed Doctrines before Luthers time for finding the Catholicks were not obligedto prove the Negative it was my part to prove to my selfe the Affirmative that our Religion was no innovation by some pre-existence before that but in the perusall of all the Stories or Records Eccesiasticall or Civill as I could choose I could finde no ancienter a dissention from the Roman Church then Waldo Wickliffe or Husse whose cause had relation to the now-professed Protestancy so as I found an intervall of about eight hundred yeares from the time that all the Protestants confesse a Unity with the Church of Rome down to those persons without any apparent profession of different Faith To answer my selfe in this point I read many of our Protestant Authors who treated of it and I found most of them reply to this sence in which I cite here one of the most authentique Doctor Whitaker in his Controversie 2. 3. pag. 479. where they aske of us where our Church was heretofore for so many Ages We answer that it was in secret solitude that is to say it was concealed and lay hid from the sight of men and further the same Doctor Chap. 4. pag. 502. our Church alwayes was but you say it was not visible doth that prove that it was not No for it lay hid in a solitary concealment to this direct sence were all the answers that ever I could meet to this Objection I repeat no more these places being so positive to our point This confession of Invisibilitie in our Church for so many ages did much perplex me it seemed to me even to offend Naturall reason such a derogation from Gods power or providence as the sufferance of so great an Ecclipse of the light of this true Church and such a Church as this is described to be seeming to me repugnant to the maine reason why God hath a Church on Earth which is to be conserver of the Doctrine Christs precepts and to conveigh it from age to age untill the end of the world Therefore I applyed my study to peruse such arguments as the Catholicks brought for the proofe of a continuall visibility of the true Church down from the Apostles time in all Ages and apparance of Doctors teaching and administring the Sacrament in proofe of this I found they brought many provisoes of the Scripture but this text most literall of the fourth of the Ephesians Christ hath placed in his Church Pastors and Doctors to the consummation of the saints till we meet in the Unity of the Faith and next the discourse upon which they inferre this necessary visible succession of the Church seemed to me to be a most rationall and convincing one which is to this effect Naturall Reason not being able to proportion to a man a cause that might certainly bring him to a state of supernaturall happinesse and that such a cause being necessary to mankinde which otherwise would totally faile of the end it was created for there remained no other way but that it must be proposed unto us by one whose authority we could not of and that in so plaine a manner as the simplest may be capable of it as well as the learned This work was performed by our Saviour from whose mouth all our Faith is originally derived but this suceeding age not being able to receive it immediate from thence it was necessary it should be conveyed unto them that lived in it by those that did receive it from Christs own Mouth and so from Age to Age untill the end of the world and in what Age soever this thred of doctrine should be broken it must needs be acknowledged for the reason above mentioned that the light which should convey mankind through the darknesse of this world was extinguished and mankind is left without a Guide to infallible ruine which cannot stand with Gods providence and goodnesse which Saint Austine affirmes for his opinion directly in his book de Util. Cred. Cap. 16. saying If divine providence doe preside over humane affaires it is not to be doubted but that there is some authoritie constituted by the same God upon which going as upon certaine steps we are carried to God nor can it be said he meant the Scriptures onely by these steps sinoe experience shewes us the continuall alteration about the right sence of severall of the most important places of it that what is contained there cannot be a competent rule to mankind which consisteth more of simple then leanned men and besides the Scriptures must have been supposed to have been kept in some hands whose authority must beget our acceptance of it which being no other thing then the Church in all Ages we have no more reason to beleeve that it hath preserved the Scriptures free from all corruption then that it hath maintained it selfe in a continuall visibility which Saint Augustine concludeth to be a marke of the true Church in these words in his book Cont. Cecill 104. The true Church hath this certaine signe that it cannot be hid therefore it must be known to all Nations but that part of the Protestants is unknown to many therefore cannot be the true no inference can be stronger then from hence that the concealement of a Church disproves the truth of it Lastly not to insist upon the allegation of the sence of all the Fathers of the Church in every severall Age which seemed to me most cleare that which in this cause weighed much with me was the confession and testimony of the approved Doctors themselves of the Protestant Church as Hooker in his Book of Eccles. Pol. pag. 126. God alwaies had and must have some visible Church upon Earth and Doctor Field the first of Eccles. cap. 10. It cannot be but those that are the true Church must be known by the profession of truth and further the same Doctor sayes How should the Church be in the world and nobody professe openly the saving truth of God and Doctor White in his defence of the Way chap. 4. pag. 790. The providence of God hath left Monuments and Stories for the confirmation
I mean as many as are now extant and speak of it held something which both parts condemne as the opinions of the Chiliasts If I say he find not this or I shew him not that he might have found it I professe I will be ready to spend my life for that Church against which I now employ my Pen So that this will be the end neither of your Churches have been alwaies visible onely the difference is this that we are most troubled to shew our Church in the Latter and more corrupt Ages and they theirs in the first and purest that we can least find ours at night and they theirs at Noone And whereas he expects that Doctor White should stand to this to confesse his Religion false if a continuall descent of it cannot be demonstrated if he himself will please to grant as much as he exacts if he but continue in this resolution and in this search I doubt no more but that he will soone leave to be a Papist then I should doubt if I saw him now receiving the Communion in the Kings Chappell that he had done it already Sixtly His Reasons for the necessitie of the Visibility follow because the contrary were a derogation from Gods Power or Providence I answer To say he could not keep the Truth exactly in mens beleefe were to derogate from Gods Power to say he had not given sufficient meanes to find the Truth and yet damned men for error the first would be a derogation from his Providence the second from his Justice but to say he suffers men to erre who neglect the meanes of not erring and that he damnes none for a meer error in which the will hath no part and consequently the man no fault derogates from none of the three but saies he this is repugnant to the maine reason why God hath a Church upon Earth to be the conserver of the Doctrine of Christ and to conveigh it from Age to Age. I answer To conserve it is every mans duty but such as they may all faile in and indeed is rather the the form of the Church then the end of the Church an exact conservation making an exact Church and a lesse perfect conserving a lesse perfect Church As for conveighance of Doctrine the whole Church conveighs none whereof many if his be it have had but little conveighed to them Particular Christians especially Pastors teach others which it is every mans duty to do when he meets with them who want instruction which he can give and they are likely to receive yet is not the instruction of others every mans maine end But Mr. Mountague I know perswades him that some body of men are appointed to conveigh this Doctrine which men are to receive onely because they deliver it and this I absolutely deny for we receive no Doctrine from the Church upon the Churches authority because we know her not to be the Church till we have examined her Doctrine and so rather receive her for it then it for her Neither for the conveighance of the Truth is it necessarie that any company of men in all times hold it all because some may conveigh some Truthes and others another out of which by comparing their Doctrine with the Scripture men may draw forth a whole and perfect body of Truth and though they deliver few other Truthes yet in delivering Scripture wherein all necessarie Truth is conteined they deliver all and by that Rule whosoever regulates his life and Doctrine I am confident that though he may mistake Error for Truth in the way he shall never mistake Hell for Heaven in the end Seventhly His next reason is their common Achilles the fourth of the Ephesians which he chuseth onely to employ like his Triarios his main Battle leaving his Velites his light-armed Souldiers some places too allegoricall even in his own opinion to stand examination The words are these He hath given some Prophets some Apostles some Evangelists some Pastors and some Doctors For the instauration of the Saints for the work of the Ministery for the Edification of the body of Christ till we all meet in the Unity of Faith and the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man and unto the measure of the Age of the fullnesse of Christ. That we may be no more Children tost and carried about with every wind of Doctrine c. Now out of this place I see not how a Succession may be evinced rather I think it may if that Apostle meant none For first He saith not I will give but he hath given and who could suppose that the Apostles could say that Christ had given then the present Pope and the Doctors who now adhere to him Secondly Allow that by what he hath given were meant he hath promised which would be a glosse not much unlike to that which one of the most wittie and most eloquent of our Modern Divines Doctor Donne notes of Statuimus i abrogamus yet since these severall Nounes are governed by the same Verb and no distinction put it would prove as well a necessitie of a continuall Succession of Apostles Prophets and Evangelists as of Pastors and Doctors which is more then either they can shew or pretend they can so that it seemes to me to follow that these were then given to do this till then and not a Succession of them promised till then to do this and so we receiving and retaining the Scriptures wherein what they taught is contained as we would any thing else that had as generall and ancient a Tradition if there were any such need no more for if he say that men are tost for all the Scripture I answer so are they for all their Doctors nay if these keep any from being tost it is the Scripture which does it upon which their authoritie is by them founded upon their own Interpretation and Reason who yet will not give us leave to build any thing upon ours out of plainer places and though they tell us that we cannot know the Scriptures but from the Church they are yet faine as appeares to prove the authoritie of the Church out of Scripture which makes me ask them in the words of their own Campian and with much more cause Nihilne pudet Labyrinthi Eighthly There followes another reason to this sence that reason not being able to shew man a way to eternall happinesse and without such a one man would faile of the end to which he was ordained it must be proposed by an infallible authority in so plaine a manner as even the simple might be capable of it which being performed by our Saviour it must be conveighed to succeeding Ages by those who heard it from him and whensoever this thread failed mankind was left without a Guide to inevitable ruine I answer That though all this granted it proves not against us for we have the Scripture come down to us relating Christs Doctrine and written by those that heard it
learnt to give the reverence as not to doubt of what they said because they said it from all others he expected proofe from Scripture or Reason Thirdly The Church of Rome condemnes severall opinions of his and therefore she ought not to find fault with them who imitate her example Twelfthly He addes two reasons more The consent of the Fathers of all ages And the confession of Protestants To the Frst I answer That I know not of any such and am the more unapt to beleeve it because Mr. Mountague vouchsafes not to insist upon it nor to quote any which I guesse he would have done but that he misdoubted their strength Secondly Suppose that all the Fathers which speake of this did say so yet if they say it but as private Doctors and claime no Tradition I know not why they should weigh more then so many of the now learned who having more helpes from Arts and no fewer from Nature are not worse searchers into what is Truth though lesse capable of being Witnesses to what was Tradition Thirdly They themselves often professe they expect not to be read as Judges but as to be judged by their and our Rule the Canonicall Scriptures Fourthly Let him please to read about the Immaculate Conception Rosa Salmeron and Wadding and he will find me as submissive to Antiquity even whilst I reject it as those of their own Party for they to prefer new opinions before old are faine to prefer new Doctors before old and to confesse the latter more perspicatious and to differ from those of former times with as little scruple as he would from Calvin whom Maldonat on purpose to oppose confesseth he chuseth a new Interpretation before that of all the Ancients which no witnesse but my eyes could have made me beleeve nay and produce other points wherein their Church hath decreed against the Fathers to perswade her to do so againe althoug Campian with an eloquent brag would perswade us that they are all as much for him as Gregory the thirteenth who was then Pope To the Second I answer That Infallibility is not by us denied to the Church of Rome with an intention of allowing it to particular Protestants how wise and learned soever Thirteenthly He saies next that he after resolved to inform himself in other points which seemed to him unwarrantable and superstitious and found onely his own mistakes gave him occasion of Scandall To this I answer That I cannot well answer any thing unlesse he had specified the points but I can say that there are many as picturing God the Father which is generally thought lawfull and as generally practised their offerings to the Virgin Mary which onely differs from the Heresie of the Colltridians in that a Candle is not a Cake their praying to Saints and beleeving de fide that they heare us though no way made certaine that they do so and many more which without any mistake of his might have given him occasion to be still scandalized For whereas he saith that those points were grounded upon the authority of the ancient Fathers which was refused as insufficient by Protestants I answer That none of these I name have any ground in the Ancientest nay the first is by them disallowed and if any other superstition of theirs have from them any ground yet they who depart from so many of the Ancients in severall opinions cannot by any reason be excused for retaining any error because therein they consent nor have the Protestants cause to receive it from them as a sufficient Apologie neither hath he to follow the Fathers rather then Protestants in a cause in which not the Persons but the Reasons were to have been considered For when Saint Hierome was by this way both brought into and held in a strange error though he speakes something like Mr. Mountague Patiaris me errare cum talibus Suffer me to erre with such men yet he could not obtaine Saint Austines leave who would not suffer him but answered their Reasons and neglected their Authorities Fourteenthly He speakes of his Religion super-infusing Loyalty and if he had onely said it destroied or weakned it not I who wish that no doubt of his alleagiance may once enter his mind to whom we all owe it but professe my self his humble Servant and no waies his enemy though his adversarie would then made no answer but since he speakes as if Popery were the way to obedience I cannot but say that though no Tenet of their whole Church which I know make at all against it yet there are prevailing opinions on that side which are not fit to make good subjects when their King and they are of different perswasions For besides that Cardinall D' Ossat an Author which Mr. Mountague I know hath read because whosoeuer hath but considered State matters must be as well skilled in him as any Priest in his Breviary tell us that it is the Spaniards Maxime That Faith is not to be kept amongst Hereticks and more that the Pope intimated as much in a discourse intended to perswade the King of France to forsake the Queen of England he saith moreover speaking in another place speaking about the Marquizat of Saluces that they hold at Rome that the Pope to avoid a probable danger of the encreasing of Heresie may take a Territory from the true Owner and dispose of it to another and many also defend that he hath power to depose an Hereticall Prince and of Heresie he makes himself the Judge So that though I had rather my tongue should cleave to the roofe of my mouth then that I should deny that a Papist may be a good Subject even to a King whom he accounts an Heretick since I veriy beleeve that I my self know very many very good yet Popely is like to an ill aire wherein though many keep their healthes yet many are infected so that at most they are good Subjects but during the Popes pleasure and the rest are in more danger then if they were out of it To conclude I beleeve that what I have said may at least serve if he will descend to consider it to move Mr. Mountague to a further search and for Memorandums in it which if it do he will be soone able to give as much better Reasons for my conclusion that such a Visible Church neither need nor can be shewed as his understanding is degrees above mine I hope also by comparing the body of their beleefe and the ground of their authority the little that can be drawn out of the fourth of the Ephesians with the Miriads of contradiction in Transubstantiation he will come to see that their Pillars are too weak to hold up any building be it never so light and their building is too heavie to be held up by any Pillars be they never so strong and trust he will return to us whom he will find that he hath causelessely left if he be which I doubt not so ingenuous as not to hold an opinion because he hath turned to it nor to stay onely because he went FINIS * See the Collection of Petitions for Episcopacy printed for Will. Shears * To whom two others also from Geneva may be added Daniel Chamierus in Panstratia tom 2. lib. 10. cap. 6. §. 24. and Nicol. Vedelius Exercitat 3. in epist. Ignatii ad Philadelph cap. 14. Exercit. 8. in epist. ad Mariam cap. 3. which is fully also demonstated in D. Hammonds dissertations against Blondel which never were answerd never will by the testimonies of those who wrote in the very next Age after the Apo stles Tacitus Object Answ. Synesius Ovid. Metamorph Xenophon Hist. 3. Euseb. Orat. de Laud. Const. * De Coroná Wadd Pag. 271. Wadding p. 124. Page 97. Page 90. Page 400. Page 57. Page 127. Page 275. Wadding p. 334. Vincent Lir. Wadd Pag. 282 Camp Ethicks Lib. Con. R. Jac. Pag. 633. Theodoret. Lib. 15. C. 28 Pag. 271. Tom. 13. Pag. 193. Pag. 208. and 687. Tacitus Object Resp. Object Resp. 〈◊〉 Socrat. lib. 5. Object Resp. Wadd Pag. 30. His Opusc. Dr. D. Object Resp. Praefat. in Hillar Pag. 496. Pag. 497. Epist. Pag. 1164. Pag. 296. 1 Edict Tom. 13. Pag. 467 In Elucidar Deiparae Pag. 1113. Wadd Pag. 125. Pag. 270 Pag. 202. Pag. 203. Pag. 204. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Theodoret lib 4. Object Resp. Cap. 6 Lib. 3 de Romano Pontifice Object Resp. Object Resp. Lib. Con. Reg. Iac. Pag. 892. Object Resp. Tertul. De fide Symb. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Arist. Ethick Con. Reg. Iac. Pag. 708. Object Resp. Arrian Eras. Ep. Rhetor. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Salust Object Resp. Tom. 13. Pag. 468. Object Resp Object Resp. Object Resp. Philos. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Object Resp. Resp. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Resp. Repl. Tom. 9. An. 726. de fide Simbol 2 Lib. C. 2. Vers. 11. 12 13 6 Cap. St. Johan
the Roman whereof both it seemes claim'd a direct verball Tradition because one pretended to have received theirs from Saint John and the other from Saint Peter whereof there is no word in their workes and that the erring Part did not prevaile We know out of the fifth of Eusebius History that the fore-runners laid claime to Tradition and nam'd the very Pope that had chang'd the doctrine at Rome which claime how impudently soever yet shewes that men might joyne to deceive their Posterity as pretending to a Tradition when there was no such for if you say those were but few I answer both that you are not certaine of their number and since so many may joyn I pray what number is it cannot Thirdly Since you must and doe confesse that some Doctrines which were not once generally witnessed to have been delivered by the Apostles are now Doctrines of Faith as the Epistle to the Hebrewes was rejected by the Roman Church in Saint Hierom's time though to her yee use to say that Iraeneus would have every Church agree and though Saint Hierom whom you would prove to have thought Damafus infallible when it is known that he thought Libertius a Heretick received it for all that because you say that these doctrines had so much Tradition as was exceptione major beyond exception though the Church of Rome thought not so then doth not this rest upon the Logick of those Ages to conclude what Testimony is so which might easily deceive them especially since you confesse also that particular Traditions may be false as you instance in the Chiliasts and yet the same reason which perswaded some to receive them may perswade more and more in severall times and so no age need to joyne as you suppose and so a false Tradition may grow a generall one as it seemes that of the Chiliasts if it be one did so generall that Justin Martyr sayes in his time all Orthodox Christians held it Besides in those things which were beleeved very convenient and which yet it was fear'd that unlesse men thought them necessary they would be backward to practise in respect of the contrariety of them to their dispositions as confession how easie was it for them to be after taught under paine of more danger then at first they were delivered with as Physitians often tell their Patients unlesse they take such a Potion from which they are very averse they must unavoidably die though the not taking of it even in their own opinions would but make them lesse likely to recover Some of great authority moved by a good meaning might thus deceive others these thus deceived might deceive others till being generally spread other good men being loath to oppose them for the same reason for which others desir'd to spread them as we saw Erasmus who beleeved your confession not to have been instituted by the Apostles yet would not reprehend them that said so thinking it an error that would increase Piety they be at last taken to have been commanded by the Apostles without contradiction Indeed all the waies by which I shewd in that paper which you vouchsafed to answer which I desire not to repeat to avoid both your being wearied and my own 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that errors might come to be generall all those are waies by which the same errors might come to be thought to have proceeded from Tradition Saint Austin and Tertullian agreeing in the sence of the sentence which we read in the latter Si legem nusquam reperio sequitur ut Traditio consuetudini morem hunc dederit habiturum quandoque apostoli authoritatem ex interpretatione rationis and it is the more strange that Tertullian should allow any custome the authority of comming from the Apostles since in the same place he gives any man leave to beginne a custome so it be good which depends upon his reason as the reception of it does upon theirs that follow him and so make it a custome in these words Annon putas licere omni fideli concipere constituere duntaxat quod Deo congruat quod disciplinae conducat quod saluti proficiat dicente Domino cur non vobis ipsis quod justum est judicatis By which it seemes he was willing more should be beleev'd then was first taught and when that way had brought in any thing for there is the same reason of opinion as of actions and made it common then the former Rule serves to rivet it in under the false Notion of comming from the Apostles or having at least equall authority neither can you except against this as said by him when he was a Montanist since your side useth to brag of this and the like places as making for them To explaine my meaning the fuller give me leave to consider one question which shall be the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin In the first ages it is a thing granted that many Fathers beleeved her not onely not free from Originall sinne but not even from Actuall after this second question came to be more considered and this first to be defin'd but yet those of the Affirmative opinion cannot but grant to those of the Negative that many Fathers sided with them or else they were impudent Quoters who claim three hundred nay even in Saint Thomas his time they confesse that the Negative opinion was the more common doctrine and yet see I pray how things are altered We have now a History of some Treaties of two Kings of Spaine with two Popes by two Embassadours to perswade them to define the Affirmative The History is written by one Wadding an Irish-man his Secretary there I find that the Bishop of Carthage having Order from the Embassadour his Master to desire to presse nay almost to tear a Definition from his Holinesse about it tells him and not falsely that those who hold the Negative are Inter Catholicos soli pauci unius instituti viri unus alter ab illis edocti but a few of one onely Order and one or two of their Disciples His Master bids him urge for the contrary The opinion and subscription of so many Prelates Orders and Universities the universall acclamation of the People the weighty necessity of cutting off scandals nay saith he many Universities suffer none to take Degrees without making a Vow for the Defence of the Immaculate conception and for the Oppugners Constat eos sentire aliter quà m universa docet Ecclesia they differ from the Doctrine of the Universall Church If then an opinion for which nothing is to be said out of Antiquitie and much against it which was even lately the lesse common opinion could grow to be held by so great a multitude in so high a degree in so short a time that the much greater part of the Church should now presse to have it defin'd and that so earnestly that to remove the opposing Fathers out of the way they
that you esteem not Unitie so necessarie as you pretend some opinions I am sure you can soon enough quash as that not long since risen in Spaine concerning Fornication being but a Veniall Sin And whereas you say the greater things are the greater their period though this be ture in some things yet not in this for sure the greater a difference is the greater necessitie is there that it be soon decided and so if your decision have power to effect it as you pretend among you it hath it must fall as soon as it is born like the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Creatures that live but a day Wherefore I do not see why this may hurt the Church more then the suits which hang in our Courts prejudice the government of the Land If any of these opinions be of that importance as that though uncondemn'd the Holders are Hereticks as some may be and my definition being concluded of such among you some of these may be some of them then sure they hurt the Church much and more then the Suites hurt the Government which their hanging hurts not at all though it hurts sometimes unavoidablie the Parties But if where there is no Unitie there were no Common-wealth as you say where there is no Uuitie there can be no Church then the Government were much prejudic'd by the Suits as your Church by this rule is made no Church by the differences And indeed if men were not agreed about the power of the Governours as you are not about some of your questions it must be a maime to the government of any Common-wealth as consequentlie these are to the goverment of your Church The last point of the Authors discourse is to shew how errors might have crept in wherein I shall have no opposition with him for I doe not thinke the question is how they should creep in but how they should be kept out Here Sir I cannot but beleeve that you intended to refresh your selfe with some Mirth as with Musicke between the Acts for though both our ends be that errors should not creep in yet the question was whether it were possible that they might creepe in and to my affirmative part it conduced to shew those waies by which either they have entred or easilie might doe so this shewing how they may steale in teacheth how to keep them out as it is an aide to the saving of a Town to discover the breaches which cannot be guarded without they be first known For the Fluxibility of humane Nature is so great that it is no wonder if errors should have crept in the wayes being so many but it is a great wonder of God that none should have crept in This neverthelesse I may say if the Author will confesse as I thinke he will not deny but that it is disputable whether any error in sixteen Ages hath crept in this very thing is above Nature For if there were not an excellency beyond the nature of corruptible things it would be undeniably evident that not one or two but thousands of errors had quite changed the shape of the Church in so many yeares tempests dis-unions want of Commerce in the body of the Church The greater wonder it were if your Church had no error the greater it is to me that upon one at most but probable Reason you should require all men to beleeve she hath none Neither doth it appeare to me disputable whether she have or no but evident that she hath not by Demonstrations yet by Probabilities of that multitude and weight upon which you say and say trulie that in all other cases we relie and venture that we most esteem whereas indeed you as you are of the imposing Partie ought to bring at least such proofes that you are fallen into none and as you are of the Infallibilitie-pretending-partie your proofes are likewise to rise from probable to Infallible Neither doe I conceive it to be probablie argued it is disputable whether this bodie of men have ever let in any error therefore it can never let in any since it is at least as disputable whether the Grecians have let in any yet you will not allow that upon this we should adjudge to her Infallibilitie Nay if it were demonstrative that your Church had yet never erred yet it would but unwillinglie follow that she never could since all things necessarie are so plaine without the confession of which you seeme to tax God and it is naturallie so plaine what is plaine that I cannot but thinke it a miracle that some one bodie of Christians among so many should be free from any such dogmaticallie-defended error especiallic if Truth were so indifferentlie sought after as it ought to be and Passion were not often called to counsell and Reason shut out of doores But this one Maxime that she receiveth her Faith by Tradition and not from Doctors hath ever kept her entire And he that will shew the contrary must shew how it should come to passe that those who lived in such an Age would say unto our Children this we received from our fore-fathers as taught them by our fore-fathers to have been received from Christ and his Apostles from hand to hand which if it could not be the question is resolved that no error is in the Church of God which holdeth her faith upon that Tenure Not to repeat usque ad nauseam what I have heretofore answered as that others differing from you hold upon the same Tenure that your selves have not alwaies held nor hold not upon it c. I will onelie tell you what Cardinall Perron tels me of the Jewes out of Isidore and that is that they seeing in the book of Wisedome so cleare proofes of Christ plotted together to put it out of the Canon which serves not so much his turne if it were so as it makes against yours and shews how that might come to passe which you judge impossible the Posteritie of the Jewes having been deceived by this Complot although pretending at least and for ought appeares beleeving that the Tradition of their Church is still uncorrupted And truely if the Author desires to examine divers Religions let him look their maine ground wherein they relie and see whether that be good or no And I think amongst Christians he shall find but two Tradition and Scripture First I allow not of your division for not to say now that you relie not onely upon Tradition these Protestants whose part in this I take depend not onelie upon Scripture but upon Universall Tradition too from which they receive that and would more if more seemed as clearly to them so to be delivered Secondly I think it reasonable not onely to examine what their Principles are but whether they do constantly follow them for a man may write awrie that hath a streight Ruler if he observe it not carefully And the Catholiques onely to relie upon Tradition