time Hebrew to the Jew pure Greek to the Athenian and Latin to the Roman Lastly if the Fathers Testimonie may not prevaile they being of an uncertain Authority nor Scripture swey as being of an uncertain sence let common reason be heard in the cause which for as much as I can judge of it is as strong for the sufficiencie of Scripture that is its containing all points necessarie to salvation as any prudent man need require for warrant of his belief It is agreed upon by all sides that Man being ordained to a supernatural end nature is not sufficient to lead him thither but that he must have some meanes above it and proportionate to the end such as may either shew him the way if he can discern or lead him in it if he be blind or which is happiest and surest of all both instruct and conduct him in it This last kinde of guidance it were presumption for man to claim however Gods grace may afford it unto some The second it were stupidity for all to expect however some have little hopes without it And therefore it is the first that belongs to man in generall that is a directory to all those pathes and windings without the knowledge of which he cannot arrive to his primary end And by the knowledge of which he may and is responsible himself if he do not follow the direction which if God should withhold from us although I could not venture with some to apply to his Justice that of Pharaoh's requiring brick where he gives no straw nor to pronounce it a stain to his goodnesse should he condemn us for missing the way when he gave us no Map of the Countrey since to a life actually forfeited as all mans was in Adam the least reprieve is a grace a grace to be let row in the Gallies to him that the Gallowes expected A grace to take out of the ditch a man that put out his own eyes though you leave him to grope out the rest of his journey with perpetuall hazards of falling in againe I say though I dare not in this case pronounce the with-holding a directory from us inconsistent with his justice wisdome or goodnesse yet truly I think you will yeeld the man hath not so fitting a belief of Gods mercy wisdom as he ought who conceives that he would suffer those to perish for want of such a necessary directory for whose sake he gave up his own Son to death Now to suppose such a directory from God and to think it defective is again to fall into undue thoughts either of his mercy or of his power nay it is to destroy what you do suppose since the omission of any thing absolutely necessary in a direction makes the direction none This conclusion then I may safely draw and I doubt not but with your consent that the Supernatural Directorie and rule whereby we are through Gods grace and mercy to be instructed in the way to our supernatural end must needs be compleat and sufficient in all parts absolutely necessary to that end It only remains then to shew which is that rule and directory sufficient and compleat in all necessary parts Now as in a journey directions of the way how sufficient how exact soever will little advance you unless you beleeve them or the knowledge of the way unless you have legs to go or somewhat else to carry you so in our Souls progress to beatitude it must have reliance and its instruments of gradation too which is Faith the strongest vehiculum of Humanity to Divinity Now as I said before that the means must be proportionate to the end so it is certain that the way the Organs by which we move in it must be proportionate one to another or we shall never arrive at our end As that let all other things be never so well fitted yet if our way must be thorow the Air or the Sea good legs or directions will little avail us The Organ then of our motion to Heaven being Faith and that Faith the strongest assent of our souls the ground upon which it must march ought to be no less folid then infallibility since the strongest Assent cannot be given but upon the strongest inducement Forasmuch then as particular Tradition that is the unanimous testimony of any Church of what numerous parts soever hath been already concluded fallible and universal Tradition is as it were coincident with Scripture being only as Clemens sayes Strom. lib. 6. p. 679. as it were an unwritten Transcript of that in mens hearts and gives attestation to no materiall Object of Faith but what is deducible thence It follows That Scripture is the ground proportioned by unquestionable infallibity to Faith as correspondent likewise in all things else both to the goodnes of God that gives the directory to our necessities that are to follow it The sufficiency and perfection of Scripture having been shewed and likewise the defectibility of that kinde of Tradition for whose Authority you labour The preferring of this latter before the first in governing the Tenure of our Faith is of consequence such an error as I am sorry should be countenanced by your continuing in it But because the precedency which you give to the Churches Tradition before Scripture is pretended due upon another ground also which I have yet spoke little unto give me leave to say somewhat to that You lay Obscurity to the charge of Scripture That Articles of Faith are not there so plainly exprest that every body can understand them If it were so truely the Laytie of the Church of Rome is much obliged to it for easing them of the trouble of reading what is unintelligible unto them but little beholding unto S. John for passing for a precept of Christ's Search the Scriptures But how shall they take it now forasmuch as the contrary to your Assertion is a manifest Corollary to the proof of Scriptures sufficiencie and perfection the compleatness of a Rule or Directory consisting as well in its Evidence as its Fulness and must need Interpretation as little as Addition Yet let us grant your supposition a while Scripture is obscure you say What follows Tradition is to be preferred Tradition then is easier Tradition is clear say you to the Vulgar I should rather think Tradition impossible to be learn'd since Man can speak but with a few and millions must make up that unless you bring all lines that can be drawn from the Circumference into a Centrical point the Pope But you are too much a friend to the Doctors of the Sorbon to do that Besides if you do so the difficulty will still remain For here the Rule in Geometry will not hold The lines drawn back from the Centre to the Circumference are not equal Men are not all at an equal distance from him all cannot hear him How shall the Vulgar understand him By their Ghostly Fathers You will not attribute to private men a clearer fuller
once take the liberty to except against particular Doctrines or particular Fathers delivering them I may then with out any further proof flatly conclude that nothing can be this way concluded since your adversaries will likewise claim in whatsoever shall thwart them an equal liberty of excepting Now Cousin give me leave to examine a little neerer the three grounds whereon you build the pretended certainty of this Method in resolving your differences out of the Fathers declarations as I collect your sense they are these First That they were faithful Collectors of the general traditions of the Church in their times Secondly that they are sincere conveyers of them to us And Thirdly that the traditions collected and conveyed by them are infallible Should I grant them all to be true it would not follow that they were sufficient till it did appear which I think never will though for the present we will suppose it that there were general traditions preserved in the Church concerning all those points which we dispute of but unless they appear to be true I am sure they cannot pass for sufficient First That they were faithful Collectors of all the traditions of the Church where in faithful I suppose you comprise careful able for in the other single sense of fidelity faithful hath most proper relation to the following condition of Conveyers industry and ability being as fully requisite in this the Collecting part as integrity To this I say that as in one place I have formerly profest how I beleeve them such faithful Collectors of the Churches receptions that is careful and able as well as sincere in many things of greatest importance so in another I think I have said enough whereby to prove it unlikely that in things of less moment such as our controversies the Primitive Fathers did applie their care and abilities to sound the bottome of them whether in this way of collecting the traditions of the Church concerning them or any other Industry requiring alwayes stimulations in the particular businesses where we are to expect it and likewise some leasure remission from other pressing occupations Both which the Primitive Fathers totally wanted by little provocation in our cases and incessant allarms in more weighty ones So that to your first ground I will onely make of new this demand Was the knowledge and Collection of the Churches traditions receptions easie and evident to all careful investigators or hard and difficult If the latter which I beleeve since so many circumstances are requisite to the exact knowledge of the Churches traditions as first certain evidence what is that Church universal whose traditions are so sacred Secondly a clear and unconfus'd delivery of the same unto them lastly not only an exquisite apprehension of the substance of all the doctrines but a perfect intelligence of the degrees and necessities either of belief or practise wherein the Church did hold them if thus hard I say and intricate the Fathers being men and liable as you confess to error how can we be secured that they did not oftentimes mistake them since it is evident that sometimes they did If facill and obvious which is likelyest you take them to be since you prefer them before Scriptures because that you say is difficult how comes it that they disagree having a plain easie and infallible Directory whereby to regulate and conform their judgments And truly Cousin supposing it such I know not how to free divers of them that dissent from one another in matters where tradition is vouched from the imputation of stupidity either in not understanding the common and manifest tenents of the Church or of perversness and malice that knowing them would not own them but by arguing from their variances that they were not all in all matters of Religion careful Collectors of the Churches traditions Which if you once admit we cannot think to conclude any thing from the Fathers till some third authority assure us which of the many for ought appears to us of equal abilities and zeal were the careful Collectors which not and in what particulars they were so and in what not To your second ground that they are sincere Conveyers unto us of the traditions of the Church I say that to the just title of sincere Conveyers two conditions are requisite the one affirmative that they should deliver to us with all their rights that is clearness perspicauity identitie of sense as they received them all the right traditions of the Church And that the Fathers are not likely to have done this may be inferred from what hath been said before of their want of care and industry in collecting the Churches sene concerning our affairs matters being seldome right in the second digestion which were not good in the first The other is negative that they should not deliver any thing for a tradition of the Church universal that was not rightly and evidently such That the Fathers were not Scrupulous in this point my former instances I conceive have sufficiently evinced Wherein it is evident with what confidence to doubtful yea and erroneous doctrines that themselves effected they set this pretended great seal of infallibility Beleeve me Cousin that saying of St. Hierom Ingenium suum facit Ecclesiae Sacramenta belongs not onely unto Origen it may without wrong be extended to most of the Fathers that I have been acquainted with And no marvel that they should sometimes in heat of dispute be transported to vouch for tradition what was not when so often they swerve from what was apparently the universal receptions of the Church as hath been made evident by many examples From which I do not infer that the Fathers had alwayes such erroneous beliefs as their words would many times import but onely that it is likely that they who in heat of dispute or for some ends which they thought very important would recede in their expressions from the confest tradition of the Church in such high constitutive points of Christian Religion would not be scrupulous in the like heats or upon the like ends to misapply the seal of tradition to some points of lesser importance For though it appear a greater falsehood to set a seal surreptitiously where it belongs not yet it is neerer to Rebellion not to conforme to that Authority where the Royal seal is manifestly stamp'd There hath enough been said to maniest that the Fathers that would sometimes thus license themselves be the occasion what it will and the end how pious soever cannot pass for Candid or sincere conveyers of all the Churches receptions unto us and if less punctual in any sure likeliest in our controverted doctrines which rarely had they the occasion to mention but as serving to greater ends there were so many circumstances that might tempt and lead them from the exact punctuallities of a sincere conveyer that I am not much scandalized at their prevarication You shall finde that where Gregory Neoces Ariensis said that
Faith that you doe not most intirely assent unto For my part I doe not know what you understand by an Article of Faith but I am sure I have cited out of St. Austin of the necessity of Childrens partaking of the Eucharist an Article in this discourse which 't is evident he held as an Article both of necessary faith and practice wherein I believe you will refuse to joyne with him As for Epiphanius his over-sights I referre you onely to the Jesuit Petavius and for Eusebius to Cardinall Perron who casts upon him a trifling aspersion but of Arrianism or if his authority suffice not let Jerome Ep. 65. ad Pamach Oc. be heard who gives him this good testimony Impietatis Arrii apertissimus propugnator est Now to your third and last ground That the traditions of the Church are infallible I say that in part we agree in this point for I am perswaded that no man in his right wits will ever deny the firmest assent he hath about him to traditions of the nature which you Character doctrines taught by Christ to his Apostles and by them preached through the world and then again delivered to the ensuing ages by them that had these points inculcated in their hearts by the Apostles in this manner with care and every where handed over from age to age which upon particular occasions the Fathers used to summe up and produce against innovators that would make breaches upon the ancient and generally received faith of the Church-Traditions of this nature Doctrines thus delivered I say we agree to be derived from infallible Authority as well as the Scriptures and it is indifferent unto me whether I receive the waters of life from the Springs themselves from the originall cisternes and conserves into which they did immediarly flow or else conveyed through Aquiducts at sixteen hundred yeares distance so I be certain of the stanchnesse and purity of the pipes That such traditions and so exactly conveyed there are in the Church and to which is due as to the Scripture from every prudent man how ever a Sophister may cavill the strongest assent of his soule we likewise both agree such are those fore-named grand fundamentals of Christianity we agree further that by tradition we are as you say plainly fully and practifically taught how to understand Scripture I mean in those Fundamentals And much more must I agree with you that the businesse and errand of tradition is to deliver it so unto us since for my part I hold that those dignifying circumstances by which tradition may rightly pretend to be infallible belong onely to such doctrines as are either plainly or by necessary consequences deducibly coucht in Scripture in regard of which deductions we agree further that it cannot be denied but that it is as you say an easier and better rule to guide our understandings in the affairs of religion to use the help of such traditions then to resort for that end unto Scriptures alone as to read a book wherein there are difficulties with a judicious comment is likely to be more profitable then onely to peruse the single Text. And this last I assent unto without admitting of the supposition upon which you inferre it to wit that there can by tradition be had a compleat knowledge of all that Christ taught All this we are of accord in but what can you infer from hence to the advantage of the Romish cause since I peremptorily deny that there is such a qualified tradition really belonging to any Tenent of the Church of Rome disapproved by us or that seale with those quarterings and dignifyings wherewith you blazon it set by any of the primitive Fathers which yet were no sufficient warrant to any doctrine that doth so much as border upon our disputes since then I am sure you directed that part of your Letter to the same purpose that the rest I must answer what I conceive it tends to as well as what directly your words beare And as I have profest wherein we agree so now I must set down in what and why we differ concerning these particulars of Tradition and Scripture There are two principall poynts wherein I dissent from you First that in the generall you conceive all Traditions of the Church whatsoever infallible Secondly that you hold the Scripture to be no compleat body of Faith and therefore that we are to give tradition much the preheminency in governing the tenour of ours For the first namely that all the traditions of the Church are infallible I could by one demand of which is that Church whose traditions are infallible either bring you to our confession that the true Church is to be known meerly by its conformity to Scripture in belief and practice or else into a circle whilst you are forc'd to prove the truth and infallibility of the Church by her constant reception of those true and infallible traditions whose truth and infallibility you are at the same time proving by the Churches constant receiving them But I passe it by because I would not seeme to argue in any wise captiously and also for that Mr. Chillingworth hath already excellently laid open all the intricasies of this labyrinth And therefore taking the present Romish Church for that you mean I proceed to answer your Arguments wherby in your Letter to the Vicountesse of P. to which you referre me you endeavour to prove all doctrines of the Church received or delivered by way of tradition infallible the chiefe that I finde are in the 12 and 13. conclusions as you call them of that treatise where first for proof of your assertions that no false doctrine of Faith whatsoever can be admitted or creep into the Catholick Church you say that whatsoever the present Church beleeveth as a proposition of faith is upon this ground that Christ taught it as such unto the Church he planted himself a special good ground and that will soon end all controversies in this matter if the ground appear to be well grounded and that the Church of Rome which you suppose the present Catholick do never admit any doctrine of Faith but upon that ground But first the ground can never be made good that whatsoever of Faith the Church of Rome teacheth was ab initio so taught by Christ himself And secondly I beleeve that the Church of Rome her self doth not alwayes in all that she teaches for a tradition of Faith suppose that Christ himself did teach the same for this latter part I am better perswaded of the modesty of the Church of Rome then to think that she will so much as pretend it for all her doctrines as for example that of communicating onely in the bread is a tradition for you will not I suppose vouch Scripture for it unless you mean to apply to it Christ's prayer that the Cup might be removed it is a tradition of Faith yea and I think I may say of necessary faith for unless the Communicants
temporibus antecesserunt sapientia quoque antecesserunt quae si omnibus aequaliter datur occupari ab antecedentibus non potest sed hoc eos fallit quod majorum nomine posito non putant fieri posse aut ipsi plus sapiant quia minores vocantur aut illi dissipuerint quia majores nominantur Lactan. Divin Institut lib. 1. cap. 8. And now noble Cousin that I have examined your Opinions and discussed your Arguments let me have your patience or your pardon a little further while I give you an account concerning those Directions wherewith you favour me in your Letter and in what state I am to follow some and to excuse my self in others To the first namely The use which you conceive we are to make of reading of the Fathers I willingly conform my self in one part that is in letting pass those things which they write as Divines and Scholars onely allowing them no more weight with me then the reasons wherewith they are accompanied do give them I am likewise very willing to let pass for the most part what they write as Commentors upon the Scripture their interpretations in that kinde being many times if I may so say very Chymerical Although I must tell you that were I perswaded of any third Authority by whose seal the Fathers could transmit unto us in all things of Religion such certain and unquestionable resolutions as you imagine I should not expect their aid more earnestly nor take the omission more unkindly of them in any thing then in point of giving us the right and well-handed interpretation of Scriptures I further obey you in laying hold and relying on what they teach us as Pastors of the Church relying I say upon that chiefly to wit in the great Fundamentals of Christianity but not generally that is not in those Questions which we disagree on wherein they were neither willing nor able to be exact and least of all when they inveigh against Hereticks their passions and transportments being at such times greatest As for such Opinions as they deliver Dogmatically without alleadging texts of Scripture or learned Arguments to maintain them although they appear delivered with never so earnest an intent that they should be taken as matters of Faith you must pardon me if they sink no deeper into my belief then they are driven by such Arguments as my own or others discourse can finde for them either in Reason Scripture or Universal Tradition Your second advice is that I should apply my care to collect thorowout the sence of the Fathers and by what they say to frame to my self a Model of the Practice Government and Belief of the Church in their times and then to tell you whether it be like to yours or ours The Care and Attention you wisht me I brought at first to the studie of the Fathers but I cannot brag of the Model I have framed out of them finding that truely a work hard enough for the best Antiquary And to me 't is an improvement of the difficulty to an impossibility to be put to tell you which of the present Churches hath most resemblance to that of their times I could as easily resolve you which of two men that stood before me were likest to an hundred differing faces For I do not think there is a greater variety of countenances at a Publike Assembly then there are differences in the several Ages wherein the Fathers lived touching those three parts of Religion especially these two of Practice and Government of which Tertullian having summ'd up all the chief particulars of the Creed pronounces Hac lege fidei manente caetera jam disciplinae conversationis admittunt novitatem correctionis Tert. de Virg. Velan cap. 1. For matters of Practice 't is a clear case what libertie was taken to varie them according to several evasions and ends since some of the Apostles themselves you know did not stick to practise Circumcision nor do the several ages appear to me ere a whit the more exquisite in the imitation of their fore-fathers then you will say the Church of Rome is at this day of the Apostles in that and of those that followed after in administring the Eucharist to children and yet 't is she that pretends to be the Pantomime of antiquitie for matters of Government how Camelion-like that hath been how various is as visible as green and he that would reduce the Church now to the form of Government in the most primitive times should not take in my opinion the best nor wisest course I am sure not the safest for he would be found pecking toward the Presbytery of Scotland which for my part I beleeve in point of Government hath a greater resemblance then either yours or ours to the first age of Christs Church and yet is nere a whit the better for it since it was a form not chosen for the best but imposed by adversitie and oppression which in the beginning forc'd the Church from what it wisht to what it might not suffering that dignitie and state Ecclesiasticall which rightly belong'd unto it to manifest it self to the world and which soon afterwards upon the least lucida intervalla shone forth so gloriously in the happier as well as more Monarchicall condition of Episcopacy of which way of Government I am so well perswaded that I think it pittie 't was not made betimes an article of the Scotish Catechism that Bishops are jure divino But as it is a true maxime in nature Corruptio optimi pessima so it holds likewise in Government both civill and Ecclesiasticall The best of all Monarchy festers oft-times and swels into the worst of all Tyrannie To which after the first 500. years Policy having or'etopt Pietie the Church made a hastie progress and of the following ages in this particular I grant the present Church of Rome to be a copy farr exceeding the originall verifying now of the Roman the imputation that Aristides layd by way of reproach on all other Empires 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For matters of belief the salvation of Christians depending chiefly upon them 't is true in the primary and fundamental articles they have been more constant unanimous and exact and in those comparing the Church of their times with yours and ours I think I may pronounce them all three alike to one another but in points less material such as I esteem those wherein we two differ I should contradict my self to undertake the framing out of the Fathers a certain judgement which of the two present Churches were most correspondent to that of their times Notwithstanding if you command me to say for which side in my guess the Fathers do make most I will tell you truely and freely what I think holding then the ballance as even as I can I conceive the Fathers in some few poynts do lean somewhat more to you as in that of Christs descent into hell and also in that of free-wil those excepted that wrote
LETTERS BETWEEN The L d GEORGE DIGBY AND Sr KENELM DIGBY kt CONCERNING Religion London Printed for Humphrey Moseley and are to be sold at his Shop at the sign of the Prince's Arms in St Pauls Church-yard 1651. To the Reader IT is no EXCUSE though too often it is made one to tell Thee these LETTERS are now made publick to prevent false Copies for really if you have not these you will be abus'd with others so imperfect and mangled that we may justly pronounce them to be none of the Authors own In Matters of Religion there ought to be greatest care to publish nothing but what is genuine which here without more words thou wilt soon find is faithfully offered thee Farewell LETTERS BETWEEN The L d GEORGE DIGBY AND Sr KENELM DIGBY kt CONCERNING RELIGION My noblest Cousin and dearest friend I Ever thought my self a Rich man in the many testimonies of your favour being perswaded that the authority of your esteeming me may work more upon the World to my advantage then many personall defects of mine own to my prejudice Among my best titles to valuation with Worthy men I treasure up your last Letter expecting to receive thereby as much Credit hereafter as I doe now obligation when those that finde it knowing your eminence and only my name shall happily misconceive my praises there to have bin of your judgement which I must refer meerly to your love and civility Persist I beseech you in the former of these and restrain your self in the excess of the latter permitting and owning me to be your friend without making me mine own flatterer of which I can never come in danger but by your Commendations I think my self as happy to bear the name of your friend and promise to my self as much eternitie by the relation as he who ingraved Sir Philip Sydnie's friendship on his Monument But I must tell you I aspire yet to a farr greater felicity that is to be made worthy of so brave an appellation to which you can best contribute if you please to impart freely to me your own rare abilities and my weaknesses rather then to darken these unto me in exercising but the slightest part that you excell in Courtliness To take you off from this and to engage you in the other give me leave to lay hold on that part of your Letter which concerns my Studies Wherein as your example and advice have ever been my prime directory in the way of them so in the severall judgements of what I read yours must be ever with me of singular Authority Yet in the particular concerning the Fathers I must confess as I came unto them perhaps with different preparations so I have likewise perused many of them with reflections upon their usefulness far differing from those you specifie I am so farr from receiving them as Judges that in many cases I cannot admit them as witnesses Authentick enough whereon to pass a Verdict in Religion I discover methinks too prone a byas in most of their evidence either to the establishing of their own private opinions or to the destruction of their adversaries And this even in the most Primitive of them faction it seems and a kinde of Sectary passion having had as strong though not so various a Current even neer to the very springs of verity as afterward in the remoter Channels as you can much better instance if you please then I out of Eusebius Epiphanius and St Augustin who themselves also as they seem to adhere to the Catholick Church and as the Roman glories in them may well be by both sides allowed an Expurgator For that which you say Secondly that you rely more upon the Fathers for what they tell us they were taught then upon what they teach I profess I should do so too could I be but half so well assured of the first part of your reason namely that the former was derived from an infallible Authority as I am of the other that their own reasons were liable to Error But to tell you true as I can yet finde no reason to make me acknowledge that there is any infallible Authority but only the Scriptures which I conceive is not that you mean so do I finde as little that the Fathers especially those before the first Nicene Councell were perswaded of any such And grant they were I can least of all discern which of the various doctrins they deliver were rightly delivered to them from that unerring authority Since it is apparent methinks that they do teach many uncertainties and errors as Dogmatically and with as solemn confirmations as they do the most authentique truths Hardly shal you find Scripture alledged more frankly by them or the Church tradition proclaimed more lowdly in any point of Faith then by Justin and Tertullian in the rigid censure of the use of Images and in the same Tertullian in affirming Christs descent to free the Patriarks and in these two and divers others the gross assertion of the Angels copulation with women and lastly then in all the Millenaries most confident authorizing of their Judaick doctrine These are perhaps of the slighter instances such as flow easiest into a Letter from a bad memory and yet I pray you resolve me which of them I shall let pass as derived from infallibilitie whether that which our Church approves and the Roman condemns as the first or that which the Roman agrees to and we disallow as the second or the second last which both sides reject I profess I am as yet to distinguish which of them these Fathers meant we should swallow as delivered to them and which chew and consider as onely delivered by them These and many more irreconcileable passages in them have rendred me much alike affected both to what you say they tell us they were taught and to what they teach that is to have my reason as much as I can cleared and enlightened by both but to suffer it to be hoodwinkt and lead implicitly by neither I reverence those holy Fathers as divine establishers of Faith in things where they all concur and where not as happy aides of the understanding and as it were sacred bellowes of the soul whether to make it glow unto contrition and fervor of zeal or to subtilize and exalt it into flames of contemplation It is now high time for me to beg your pardon for having licensed my self so much to your trouble It is an inconvenience drawn upon you by your excess of favour and obligingness that have incouraged me freely to express to your self my ill-digested opinions wherein toward any other I should have been restrained by shame and the consciousness of mine own incapacities but from you I ever promise my self rectifying where from another I might look for contempt All your just censures I am sure will be sweetened instantly by this one consideration that this pennance hath been laid upon you by Noblest Cousin Your faithfull Servant SHERBURN Novemb. 2. 1638.
it be once admitted that by such tradition there can be had in all ages a compleat and true knowledg of what Christ taught it cannot be denied but that it is an easier and better rule to guide our understanding in the affairs of Religion then to resort for that end to the Scripture alone And that such tradition is infallible I have endeavoured to prove in another discourse which your Lordship hath so that I will not trouble you here with any repetitions upon that Subject Now when I wrote to your Lordship my opinion of the use to be made of reading the Fathers relying upon them more for what they were taught then for what they teach it was as taking them for faithful Collectors of the tradition that they found general through the Church in their times and sincere conveyers of them to us And this course you shall finde even among the ancientest of them When St. Austin will establish the doctrine of praying for the dead he telleth that it hath been the practise of the whole Church from the Apostles time The like he doth against the Pelagians and upon several other occasions and directeth us to enquire what faith is professed in the Churches established by the Apostles from whom he reckoneth on the uninterrupted succession of Pastors unto his time And by them he deriveth the present Doctrine from the first preachers who had it immediately from Christ Tertullian when he prescribeth against Heresie giveth you a Catalogue of the Bishops of several Churches from the several Apostles that planted them and with the successions of the persons urgeth the succession in those Churches of the Doctrine he seeketh to establish Irenaeus doth the like and generally all of them which they do not onely when they use those formal positive words that the whole Church hath received from the Apostles and holdeth generally such and such a Doctrine but at other times also when they do but intimate it in their discourses which intimation is such as is easily perceptible to whosoever of judgement shall read them impartially Therefore to summon up as short and as plainly as I can the use as I conceive is to be made of reading the Fathers I say that letting pass what they writ as Commentors upon the Scriptures and as Phliosophers and all which is but as Divines and Schollers we are generally to take hold of what they deliver us as Pastors of the Church which appeareth chiefly by what they writ against those they brand with Heresie which they could not do were not those points which they censure against the known and general tradition of the Church And next when they deliver us dogmatically and professedly any doctrine in such sort as we may reasonably conceive they intended we should take it as matter of faith not giving it as conceptions of their own which they bring onely learned arguments on texts of Scripture to maintain In all which a free good judgement will easily discern by reading them which way to incline which I knowing your Lordship to be do beseech you to apply it a little industriously to collect throughout their sense and by what they say to frame a model of the Government Beleif and practise of the Church wherein they lived and then tell me whether it be like yours or ours It is worth the while Criticks labour to get some knowledge of the manners and customes of Ages long since past by little fragments of antiquity that have hardly scaped into their hands And Lawyers get a knowledge of the Government and frame of the State in Kings raigns long agoe by broken and disjoynted Records that they meet with scattered in several Files And these maimed evidences by chance fallen into their Hands do serve to beget a fairer body of knowledge when they know how to make a right use of them and such as will convince an indifferent and equal hearer much more certainly the Fathers works that handle professedly and at large the affairs of the Church and Religion and whereof we have such plenty will fairly inform a rational and discoursing man of the true state of them in their times and what they conceived and had been taught imported Heaven or Hell in mans belief and practise which I am sure your Lordship will allow to carry a great stroke in ours and from which it is madness if not impiety to depart upon less grounds then a demonstration to convince the contrary Though I have already too much trespassed upon your Lordships patience by my tedious Letter yet I may not conclude it till I have said a word or two to the foure instances your Lordship giveth toward the latter end of yours First for the use of Images I doe not conceive it to be a precept given by Christ but since introduced by the Governors of the Church as a thing convenient to raise devotion in the people Now things of that nature may be convenient at one time and unfit at another When I dolatry was fresh in the memory and practise of the world it was dangerous to admit it therefore in the primitive times Justin and Tertullian might have reason to cry it down But because there was no precept of Christ in that behalfe conserved in the Church you see they urge not the authority of Tradition of the Church to beat down their use but arguments of their own and Texts of Scripture produced by them whereas now in times secured from that danger and a great good appearing in them they being as a Father said the bookes of unlettered persons to beget knowledge and stirre up devotion in them as strong arguments and as pregnant Texts of Scripture are produced for their use and to justifie the Governours of the Church in recommending them to the people Your second instance is of Tertullians affirming Christs descent to free the Patriarkes which I conceive not onely he but all the Fathers that ever spake of that particular deliver it in a matter of faith and so it hath been ever held by the Church which word of Descent I take it is to be understood as we all doe the Article of the Creed He descended into Hell that is by his power and operation at least by which he confounded the damned comforted the soules in Purgatory and brought to the sight of God those in Abrahams bosome that is a place of rest where yet they enjoyed not the beatificall vision For to give other motion and place to a soule is a question in Philosophy and concernes not faith and such was the assertion of the Angels copulation with women for many or rather most of the Fathers were of opinion that they were not pure Spirits but had very subtile immortall bodies the contrary of which was never yet delivered as matter of faith howbeit by force of Argument now the corporiety of Angels is exploded out of the Schools and thus supposing that opinion the way is obvious enough in commenting
avowed tradition of the Church from Christ it is true Papias seemeth to intimate as though it were in some obscure manner derived from Christ but not as a thing commanded to be preached and taught He telleth it as a mysterie or secret whispered by him to some of the Apostles whom he would oblige more then their fellowes by imparting some thing to them for their knowledge that the rest should be ignorant of But no such by-rivolet though it should come from the true fountain can ever fall into the main and avowed Channell of Ecclesiastical tradition Indeed it is likely that Cerinthus the Heretick to justifie his new device in that particular fathered it on Saint John as whispered to him by Christ in confidence and from him Papias that was an easie and simple man taking it passed by his name and vouched only the Apostles which some believed as a private truth and others denied as is apparent December 26 1638. Your Lordships most humble and faithfull Servant K. D. My Noblest Cousin and best friend I Beg your pardon for making you so slow a return of my humble thanks for your excellent Letter of the 26 of December and I should have needed your pardon much more if your favours in it had been lesser The excesse of them in such variety of obligations justifies me in the leasure I take to taste and enjoy each endearing circumstance apart weighing and comparing with one another the severall delights I ow you whilst every where I finde my self either courted by him I love most or applauded by him I emulate most or instructed by the person whose abilities I admire most and all this by you dear Cousin the prime object of my noblest affections My heart is so much affected with these favours that were this Letter or rather Volumne whose bulk may well affright you with the trouble it threatens filled with nothing but acknowledgments it would fall as short of satisfaction to my self in the thankfull part aâ— I fear it will of giving it you in the rest that it treats of But as in the first it is impossible for me to utter the hundredth part of my thoughts so in the other could I express all and more then ever I can think of I should yet despair of efficacy to convince you by any thing that can flow from a Pen animated with such dull reflections as mine which here notwithstanding I venture to set down chiefly in obedience to your commands in the close of your Letter and partly through fear that I might else in some kinde incurr the tax either of Hypocrisy if I should by silence confess an assent in matters of Religion where I am not convinced or of perversness should I d ssent without shewing cause for it which I shall here endeavour to manifest but still with this protestation that could I admit of such a doctrin that in the affaire of our faith I ought to be swayed by any humane authority either of one or many I should at this instant publish a valediction to my opinions what great wits soever may sustain them as willingly as I do here grant you the preheminence above the highest that I have known And here in the first place I do most heartily wish I could concurr with you in all the rest as I do in the Introduction of your discourse that so I might be united to you in opinion as I am most intirely in affection I joyne with you in full admiration of the Piety Learning and Integrity of those reverend Fathers of the Church whose Lives whose Zeales whose Deaths abundantly merited that title with everlasting celebrations of their memories theit veracity I attribute infinitely unto from a due consideration of all those happy circumstances wherewith your eloquence authorizes it You cannot aggravate their impieties enough who would offer to exclude such sages from being witnesses in the most important matters of Religion If any former slip of my pen can be but wrested to such an injustice let me purge my self by a solemn Recantation But I hope my words imported not any such sense I am sure my sense intended not any such words those of my Letter were as I remember that I could not admit them for witnesses Authentick enough whereon to pass a Verdict in many cases of Religion Wherein by two restrictions I am safely protected from any just imputation of so unjust a negative since the one by the very exception of many cases attributes to their testimony a validity in many the other allows it an inducing power in the very denying it a convincing one and tends no way to an exclusion but only to a qualification of their evidence Many indeed are the cases wherein I hold their Testimonials most sacred and unquestionable such are the grand Fundamentals of Christianity the doctrine of believing in one God of the incarnation the Passion the Resurrection and some other the constitutive Articles of Christian Faith These to use your own terms were matters indeed that concern'd their Art and Trade matters indeed whereon their own and their posterities Salvation undoubtedly depended matters indeed that challenged their whole care and attention both to receive them rightly and transferr them faithfully In these when they tell us as they often do plainly and unanimously what they were taught and what they found believed generally through the whole Church Let their affirmation be as definitive as Pythagoras's to his Disciples in these it is too mild a word to say have they not reason to take it unkindly to be rejected Be it sacrilege but to question their veracity but on the other side many cases too there are wherein I can in no wise venter to give sentence upon their evidence Such are most if not all the now controverted poynts between the Romish Church and ours and as in my former Letter levelling at these I could not admit the Fathers for witnesses authentical enough whereon to pass a Verdict in many cases of Religion so likewise I must again profess in this that I am as farr as ever from allowing them in these such a determining or convincing Authority witnesses of such an over ruling testimony though they bear the name of witnesses are judges in effect and they do give the Law though another pronounce it Now to be Judges I could cite you many passages wherein they themselves do utterly renounce the pretension and you say your self that their modesty will not let them be troubled when they are recused for such Neither will I wrong that vertue of theirs so much as to embrace their testimonies with any closer adherence then it self desires For be they what they will in point of interpreting to us the Doctrins of Church and Scripture I am sure they are the best declarers and limiters of their own both for their proper sense and the degrees of our receiving them Now that I have explained the sense of my former Letter let me tell you the
the Church universal Such were their Symboles such Irenaeus his unity of Faith in lib. 1. cap. 2. such Origens introduction to his book de principiis such Tertullians rule of Faith in his prescription against Hereticks such Epiphanius his conclusion of his work which he calls the settlement of truth assurance of immortality such likewise to fit you with some of all ages was that work of Gennadius written within these two hundred years De rectâ Christianorum Fide I will not say in some of which but in all which together there is not one Article of Faith received by the Church of Rome and rejected by us so much as mentioned save only in Epiphanius of Christs discent into Hel a Point variously and uncertainly understood among the Fathers as shall in another place be demonstrated Now for farther proof of the little agitation or great neglect of our controverted points in the Primitive times although it will follow of consequence to what hath been allready alledged yet I beseech you let me appeal to your own observation Do you know of any of the Fathers for the first four hundred years that hath purposely and of designe composed the least Treatise of any one of our questions or in some other tract handled them so much as in a formal digestion Inform me I beseech you for I profess all the works that ever I have met with of them appear to have been wholy directed either to deride the Pagans to confute Philosophers to convince the Jewes to confound prodigious Heresies or deliver precepts of good life or else to expound some passages of Scripture most useful to the same ends These appear to me to have been the sole objects both of their wills and abilities to combate And shall we venture to give sentence in our intricate disputes upon words or passages that by the by may seem to concern them either casually let fall or directed to other purposes in most of which in my conscience we finde our own opinions as rationally as Whittington his turn Lord Major of London in the ring of bells or some melancholy Lover his Mistrisses picture in the graine of Wainscote and their intentions as rightly as Eudocia Homers and another Virgils when they made him Evangelize so little do I regard what they say in this our case but to their silence I attribute much and think it strongly expressive but nothing to the advantage of those that impose for necessary Articles of Faith Doctrines that those renowned Oracles of the Church either never heard of or thought not worth their mentioning Thus noble Cousin I have laid before you the principal reasons that led me to deny the Fathers Testimonies to have such a validity whereon we may justly pass a verdict in our questions of Religion which I beseech you not to take as meant in a way of further derogation from them then in those very particulars for there is no man living that in the general payes them more reverence then my self in the highest admiration of their erudition and piety And therefore where I have mark'd out their heates against one another and contradictions let them be understood to have sprung from holy fervor and zeal in whatsoever they were for the time perswaded was good and true when I note their variance from themselves let it recommend their ingenuity that would so clearly avow their own fallibility when I tax them for dissenting from us all in this age although S. Austin when the Donatists press him with antiquity sticks not to say that the younger Doctors are sharper sighted yet let not my words be driven farther then this modest since you so call it flattery to our selves not of seeing clearer or sharper then they but onely by their helps further as dwarfs upon Gyants shoulders And lastly when I deny them the ability to determine our points of controversies let it be of no more derogation from their learning and judgement then it were of lessening to an Ambassador or of flattery to his followers to say that at a publike audience some of them could give a good account of the things in the lower end of the room when he himself could say little or nothing of them having onely past them by with his attentions intirely fixt upon the higher and more noble objects These were the Considerations that possest me when I wrote my former Letter although I had then the leisure but to point at a few of them and since I cannot speak to you but with truth and freedom I must here profess they remain in full force with me still your Letter having given me great contentment but little satisfaction for I can by no means yeeld that there is any Assurance much less infallibility in the Rule which you at the first prescribed and still insist on of judging our Controversies by the Fathers namely to use our liberty of reason only in what they teach of themselves with confirmations out of Scripture or probable Arguments but to resign it up in an entire and implicite Assent to what they tell us they were taught and deliver to us as delivered to them for the received sense of the Church which is to be understood you say not only when they use these formall positive Words That the Church hath received from the Apostles and holdeth generally such and such a Doctrine but at other times also when they do but intimate it in their Discourses where by the way I must needs tell you I ever thought intimations likelyer to beget Disputes then to end them If in this positive Rule you reserve a Liberty to except some particulars so delivered or some Catholick Fathers so delivering them Then without more adoe it is evident that this Way nothing can be decided for your Adversaries will claim in what thwarts them the like liberty of excepting If you lay the Rule absolutely generall to wit that what Article soever is delivered directly or by imtimation from the Fathers to have been a received Doctrine of the Church ought to be swallowed for an infallible verity it will easily be made appear that this method must betray you not only into some Protestant Tenents but also into Beliefs on both sides confessed to be erroneous It must draw you to be a Millenary it must draw you to hold a necessity of Childrens partaking the Eucharist it must draw you to abhorr that use of Images as Idolatrous and finally it must force you to reject out of the Canon those Books which we esteem Apochryphall for all these doe the Fathers deliver with somewhat more then intimations that they were taught to them as derived from the Apostles and from generall receptions of the Catholique Church First for the doctrine of the Millenaries I conceive you make a right judgement of the originall thereof from Papias whom St. Jerome the best Critick in Ecclesiasticall Antiquity sayes to have been the first Authour of it which error it is probable the
beleeve their partaking sufficient it must needs make that great Sacrament of the Church ineffectual and yet I do not think that the Church of Rome or scarce any Jesuite for her will have the confidence to pretend that Christ himself taught the mutilation or the belief of one Elements sufficiency since the contrary practise and belief is so evident for many ages after Christ and it is so easie to discover the very drie root it self of the custome to with-hold the cup from the people The like may be said of other doctrines Now for proof of the ground it self that all doctrines of Faith whatsoever admitted in the present Church were so taught by Christ to the Church which he planted himself you Alledge this argument The reason why the present Church beleeveth any proposition to be of Faith is because the immediate preceding Church of the age before delivered it unto her for such and so you may drive it on say you from age to age until you come to the Apostles and Christ an easie progress and which if you remember Mr. White much insisted upon at that time when Mr. Chillingworth did me the favour to give him a meeting for conference at your lodging although I set a great value upon that Gentlemans learning and fair way of disputation yet I confess his argument hath often made me smile it did so bring into my head that gallant consequence of Charles Thynnes wherewith all you once made me very merry by which he undertook to demonstrate that surely in the world there might be a man so disposed as having a good rise and with a convenient career to leap at once from England to Rome for said he Bring me the best Jumper you know and is it not likely that there may be another that you know not so active as to out-jump him a foot let him be brought I hope you will not deny but he may be out-jumpt an Inch so by inches straws-breadths of outleaping one another why not to a thousand miles I dare say that Mr. Hooper was better satisfied of the corruption of times in his pedigree from King Peppin then I was by that logick of the incorruption of times in his deduction of all Romish Doctrines from Christ nor am I yet better satisfied though I confess by your dwelling on the same Argument I see plainly that what may be liable to much slighting proposed by one man may be delivered with such weight and authority from another as though it convince not yet to require a serious pondering and discussion the scope of your reasoning as I understand it is this deduction ad Impossibile If the present Church say you hold a Doctrine of Tradition it is because all they of the precedent so held it and delivered it and the reason of the preceding Churches holding it so is the same relative to all those of the next before and so on till you come to the first Age of the Church Now this being so there cannot be admitted say you unto the avowed channell of the Church any corrupt Rivolet of erroneous Doctrine unless all they of one Age conspire in an untruth to deceive posterity which is impossible This latter Assertion which I must confess to be strangely jarring to my sense is built upon a supposition of the former which is it self of great ambiguity For besides that as I said formerly I doe not think but that the Church of Rome doth receive some unwritten doctrines for which she dares not pretend to so ancient a pedigree as to have been handed down to her from the Primitive Church that Christ himself hath planted I would fain know when the present Church as you say holds a thing for such because all they of the precedent age in Christs Church delivered it to them for such what is understood by Your all they of the Catholick Church in the age precedent by all they cannot be intended here what you say in your eleventh conclusion namely that you mean the whole Congregation of the faithful spread throughout the whole world for it is a far more evident impossibility then what you drive unto that the whole congregation of the faithful throughout the world in one age should confer with and teach the whole congregation of the faithful throughout the world in another If it be understood by all they all the Doctors and Governors of one age to all the faithful throughout the whole world of another I think you will finde that likewise to border upon impossibilitie By All they then as I conceive must be understood all the Doctors and Governors of the Church in one age to all the Doctors and Governors of the Church in another and from them the Doctrines spred among the whole multitudes of the faithful are said to be the traditions of the Catholick Church Now this is so narrow a confinement of universallity to the mouthes of the Doctors or Governors of a present Church that I think it no impossility for all those that have declared themselves in some point in some age to have agreed together on the teaching of somewhat more then was true or at least such a major part of them as the dissentors may well have bin overborn or supprest so that the doctrine may with a succeeding age have past for a tradition generally agreed on and to such a conspiracy methinks they might have been drawn by appearances of good as well as through ill ends As for Example The Doctors conceiving that a great restraint might be laid upon ill-livers by Auricular confession the apprehension of a sensible witnesse being most lively unto them might have complotted to teach the necessity of it to the multitude for an universal tradition which perhaps they knew not to have been such and so in other points as the good or danger might appear more or less to the Governors of the Church so likewise for worse ends in point of the Popes Supremacy it being a Doctrine so essential to the Monarchy of the Church I beleeve it far from impossible that in some age all the Doctors of the Church of Rome that shall be heard may resolve to teach it to their several Congregations for universal tradition since the major part as a Pope Aeneas Sylvius himself confesseth affirms that the Pope is above Councels because he hath so many Bishopricks to bestow the Councels have none besides if your All they of a precedent Church of Christ instructing the present be reduced to so few as the Doctors that are heard deliver their mindes in any one age The natural Argument by which you would prove the impossibility of a conspiracy in an untruth will fall to the ground since that is built upon a supposition that those general traditions which cannot be erroneous because of Humane natures love of truth are delivered by such a multitude of men as contain in them all the variety of dispositions and affections incident to the nature
of man which I doubt much whether it can truly be affirmed of all the Christians of the world I am sure it cannot of the poor number of Doctors and Governors in any one age among them But to let this supposition pass supposing that the present Church understands what is meant by All they of the preceding though I do not and that all the present receives she receives as delivered to her by all those of the preceding age let us examine a little that which you inferr upon it to wit That this being so no false proposition of faith nay as you say afterwards no false doctrine whatsoever can be admitted into the Church in any age unless they of that age do unanimously conspire to deceive their children and youngers in telling them they were taught by their Fathers what indeed they were not That this is not impossible since only the Doctors Pastors of the Church are to be understood by All they hath been already shown But is there no other way say you but this for falshood to creep into the Church Truely me-thinks on the contrary it is with error and necessary truths in the body Ecclesiastick as with life and death in the body natural And as there is onely one way for life to enter at but a thousand gates for death so for necessary truths there is but one ordinary avenne to the Church namely by Scripture read or taught but for error to get in at a thousand passages without supposing such a general conspiracie For though many times when an error hath had a long Current we cannot point directly at the spring yet are we ne're a whit less certain that it had an entrance because we know not at which doore Nilus hath a head though Geographers cannot say directly where it is And lines many times that at first appear parallels to the eie by that time they have been lengthned a great while prove apparently uneven though no man can assigne the point whereat the deflexion began The doctrine of the Chiliasts a doctrine which if any other surely that may well be said to have been a generally received tenent of the Church universal for some ages since in the whole Church for above 250. years after Christ there appears not in that point one dissenting vote till Dionysius of Alexandria oppos'd it An error 't is true and yet I hope you will not be so uncharitable as to accuse all the ancient Fathers of the second Centenary that they complotted to deceive posterity by teaching them a falshood for Apostolique tradition you are more favorable to them then so in the last part of the Letter where you your self discover a way how without conspiracy this error and so another may have overspread the Church by the Authority of one man delivering it for a whisper of the Apostles And truly Cousin what ever else may be said more probable in the particular I am confident 't is most true in the general that the worke is easie from one man of credits Asseveration to possess vast Multitudes with firme perswasions of a falshood and more in matters of Religion then in civil things since in those this pium credere prevailes much and most will rather take upon trust what many affirm and they discern no ill in then put themselves to the oft-times endless troubles of examining Credulity being so easie and natural Disproving so difficult I warrant you the Common Faith of Romulus Ascent into Heaven would have had upon your grounds as rational assertours in the State of Rome as any tradition by us questioned at this day in the sea of Rome See in that politique invention of Julius Proclus what power the imagined pietie of one man hath to make a fiction pass for an Epidemicall veritie which as Tertullian sayes Apol. cap. 8. Ab uno aliquando principe exorta exinde in traduces linguarum aurium serpat ita modici seminis vitium caetera rumoris obscurat ut nemo recogitet num primum illud os mendatium seminaverit The Jewes a much more numerous multitude heretofore and still I think equal in number to any Christian Church of one denomination were the most Religious the most scrupulous conservators of unwritten truths in their Cabala And yet what an error posfesses the whole Nation and did so long before the curse fell upon them concerning their Messias whose coming long before Christ and since they all expected and do expect in a temporal kingdome of which they did derive and do continue to posteritie the hopes by Universal tradition or if you will say that they build the doctrine not upon tradition but Scripture yet I am sure you cannot denie but that they continue the interpretation of Scripture that way by tradition which comes all to one Did you grant the possibility of a Multitudes Conspiracie I am sure you would denie it in this which is confestly the point upon which all of them agree that their supreme felicitie depended It would pass for a very fallacious reasoning to drive up this belief to the Patriarkes and so conclude it infallible because the present age received it for a tradition from the preceding and that from the Antepenultime and so forward Or because the instant where the error was admitted amongst them cannot Digito monstrari dicere hic est For truly Cousin partly through a natural desire in all men that others should think as they do or do what they think convenient from whence there springs an aptness in the teachers to applie to their opinions the strongest Authorities they can devise whether they do justly belong unto them or no and partly through an aptness of the ignorant which are the greatest part of Auditours to swallow more and retain better the words and the outward literal part of what is taught them then either to examine or hold fast the precise and inward sense It may well happen that multitudes may mumble the shell when a few have the kernell and looking superficially only upon the outward stamp toss up and down for currant among them counterfeit oft-times and Adulterate Coine The mistake is ordinary and the propagation of the error easie for instance sake in the doctrine of praying for the dead many of the Doctors of the Church who believed that all the souls of the departed were kept in certain receptacles untill the general resurrection conceiving that prayer for the beatitude of the dead came all to one with praying for the hastening of Christs Kingdome might teach it others thinking it no prophanation of prayer to imploy that holy Act even where we know it cannot availe since Christ himself prayed to have the bitter Cup of his passion removed and all the Doctours generally holding such prayers a convenient testimony of charity in the living whether they were Commemorative Eucharisticall or supplicatorie easily might the practice pass into a common doctrine Now the word Necessarie being often used for
and consequently the insufficiency of your rule of faith tradition hath been made appeare it will be fit to vindicate the sufficiency of that rule which we relie upon In which work the first hinderance that I meet with is this objection of yours That the particular books of Scripture were written for other particular ends and not to give us a compleat body of faith To which I answer that if by particular books of Scripture you understand each book a part severed from its relation to the whole I then agree with you that every particular book was no more intended for a compleat body of Faith then every particular Chapter for a compleat body of the book or then a Window or a Door to be a compleat body of a House but as the one was designed to give entrance the other light to some room or passage of the Edisice so the several books of Scripture were written some to give entrance to Christianity some to illustrate dark places of the whole some to inform us of matters of fact that we might understand in what chiefly to praise God some to discipline us in matters of practice that we might know how aptliest to serve and please him And others to instruct us in matter of belief that we might learn to relie upon him But on the other side if you remit the least of this abstract and Independent consideration of the particular books of Scripture I must then profess that I stedfastly beleeve that they were all designed to this chief and primary end of composing that compleat body of Faith whereon Christs perfect Church should be built as certainly as so many several parts of a building having each a particular end besides of their erection are yet in the general and main intention all destin'd to the making up of one compleat and intire Fabrick yea further without urging the comparison till it halt I am perswaded that as the Master Architect having an Idaea form'd of the whole directs many a part to the perfection of that when the subordinate workman that frames it thinks of nothing farther then of the peice he is in hand with So oftentimes the Almighty Architect when his Ministers perhaps never look'd further then that service in particular wherein they were imployed some perhaps in a Gospel in an Epistle some he by his infinite Wisdom directed each particular to the making up of the whole and compleat body and rule of Faith the written Word which by his admirable providence he hath and will I am consident ever preserve intire and uncorrupt in all parts necessary to its own perfection and harmony and to mans eternal safety and direction Insomuch that I cannot but think it at the best loss of time to be solicitous after any other rule and irreverence if not impiety to question the sufficiency of this But because my opinion is little considerable with one of so far a better Judgment take in this Point the Opinion of the Fathers which you so much relie upon To begin with Tertullian these are the last words of his 22. Chapter against Hermogines Scriptum esse doceat Hermogenis officina If it be not written saith he let him fear the Woe destin'd to such as shall adde or take away Can any thing be inferred more rightly then from this passage the sufficiency of Scripture and the superfluity of any other rule But take yet somewhat more direct from †Oratio ad Gentiles towards the beginning Athanasius The holy and from God inspired Scriptures saith he are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of themselves sufficient to the discovery of truth I appeal to St Basil himself of all the Fathers the greatest attributer to Tradition in all things wherein regard is justly due unto it Hear what he sayes handling a point wherein Scripture I think is as dark as in any necessary one whatsoever I mean that of the Trinity Believe what 's written saith * Hom. 29. advers Calum stan Trin. page 623. he what is not written seek not And in another place It is a manifest falling from the Faith sayes †De vera ac Pia side page 251. he and an argument of Arrogance either to reject any of those things that are written or to introduce any that are not of the written And lastly to sum up all that can be said by a Protestant in one sentence of a Father of greatest Learning and authority Listen but to St. Augustine De doctrina Christian lib. 2. cap. 9. In its quae appertè in Scriptura positasunt inveniuntur illa omnia quae continent fidem moresque vivendi He had need be a confident Sophister that would undertake to evade these Authorities but yet if they may not be admitted let Scripture be heard for it self It is a priviledge and preeminence solely peculiar to that sacred Volume to be Witness Advocate and Judge in its own cause Surely the Spirit spake in St. Paul when he told Timothy That holy Writ was able to make him wise unto salvation 2 Tim. 3. in fine And when numbring up almost all the particular parts that can be required to the compleat Institution of a Christian he concludes that in these by Scripture the man of God is made perfect and fitted to every good work And I am confident by the same Spirit he spake his own minde when he spake ours so directly to the Corinthians Vt dicsatis in nobis supra id quod scriptum est non sapere Epist 1. cap. 4. Where by the way it is to be noted that the Apostle applies this doctrine as an Antidote to that very inconvenience which I have heard some Papists object against the reliance on the search and use of Scripture namely that by it those of greater capacity were lkely to be blown up and to glory in their clearer discerning over weaker whereas the guidance of the Church and Tradition was equaller to all To this I say 't is worth observing what he delivers as it were by way of reason for the contrary Doctrine to wit of confining our selves to Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I profess Consin that these and many other passages of Scripture which for brevities sake I note only in the * Deut. cap. 4. cap. 12. Epist ad Gal. cap. 1. Margent prenounce to me in as clear a sense as may be the sufficiencie of Scripture and supersluity of relying on tradition for a rule of faith And yet I sweare I am none of those of whom St. Basil speaks p. 621. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 How they may sound or what other sense they may bear to you I know not since now adayes Gods Word proves to men of divers opinions as the Apostles language when the devided tongues had sat upon them in Dr. * This was likewise the fantastique opinion of the Authour of the book de Spiritu sancto fathered upon Cyprian Alabasters conceit to severall Nations at one and the same
some Texts of Scripture to fall into that error which so becommeth an error in Philosophy and in no wise concerning faith And that other of the Millenaries which is the last your Lordship urgeth appeareth plainly to have growne among some of the Fathers with whom the authority of Papias weighed much by literally interpreting a Text of the Apocalyps but never any of them urged the generally received opinion of the Church nor publick Tradition from Christ and the Apostles And besides the Church has never yet to this day condemned as an heresie that part of the Millenaries beliefe which some of the Fathers held which is of the Saints reigning with Christ a thousand yeares upon earth after their resurrection and enjoying onely spirituall delights but only other foule enormities which went under the name of the Millenaries heresies Now by what I have said to those instances in particular and bringing that spirit that I said before was required to the reading of the Fathers I conceive it will be no hard matter to determine which of them as your Lordship sayes we are to swallow as delivered to them and which to chaw and consider as onely delivered by them One thing more I shall adde in generall which is That a large and great soule like yours expresseth it selfe more to its advantage in weighing in the powerfull scale of reason that it hath the main bulk of what it is to judge of rather than to dwell with too scrupulous a diligence upon little quillets and niceties which admit arguments on both sides and in the mean time let slide away unnoted that great deale which is uncontroulable and plaine as though one were but to declame in Schoole to exercise ones wit and therefore he maketh choyce of some ingenious Paradox against a known and received truth and to impugne it can bring but against the skirts of it arguments or rather cavils of wit without being able to grapple with the main body of it and seeks rather to puzzle and embroyle his adversary then weightily to establish the solid truth This is a subject that is deeply to be considered for use the importantest that we can have not argued upon for ostentation and that a wise man ought to seek a settlement in and not aim at the applause of being sharp-sighted by reducing all things to uncertainty Therefore good my Lord apply that great understanding you are so excellently endowed withall to build as well as to pull down and read not the Fathers with a fore-laid designe to enerve their authority but with an indifferency to yeeld your assent to what upon the whole matter you shall judge reasonable for you so to doe And since I know that your judgement must in all things that are controverted before it of this nature tend to a settlement one way or other for only sciolous wits float onely in uncertainty as delighting to make objections and raise a dust which afterward their weak eyes cannot looke through let me recommend to you not onely to examine whether the opinion you meet with in your reading repugnant to what you were formerly imbued with be concludingly demonstrated or no but likewise examine as strictly the reason you have for your own and where the scale weighes heaviest give your assent For since of contradictory propositions one must necessarily be true and the other false a man proceedeth upon safe grounds if he take for a firm truth what is opposite to an assertion that betrayes its own weaknesse whereas if you look onely upon the true you may happily at the instant not finde a full resolution to every objection that may be raised against it which proceedeth not from the weaknesse of the thing but from ours that cannot at the first sight look into the bottome of it You see my Lord how confident I am with you to tell you what upon the present in such shortness and distraction of time occurreth to me upon this subject which your goodnesse hath invited me unto and I begge the continuance of it first in pardoning me and next in imparting to me your reflections upon them which I professe sincerely I value beyond any mans and most of all in loving me as you have ever done which is the happiest condition that can give a blessing unto London Decem. 29. 1638. My Lord your Lordships most humble and most faithfull servant K. D. My deare Lord WHen I wrot my Letter I intended to review and copy it but it held me much longer time then I designed to it It should not have been with my dull head and hand an after-suppers work and after comming home from vain entertainment with some impertinent she-wits that most tyrannically had seized upon me They had tun'd my brains to so crosse a Key as afterward all serious Images came so lamely into my fancy as I may be ashamed to send you this rough draught of them and so slowly halting as I was in good faith three houres about those blotted and interlined sheets For it was an houre past midnight afore I had done which was not one to enter upon so tedious a task as to lick this abortive and mishapen Embrion into form And now this morning my company calls upon me to be gone so that I am in a strait to appeare before your Lordship either extreamly negligent if I deferre till my return to towne the answering of your Letter and the sending my Lord Russels Picture or extreamly indiscreet if I send you so rude and indigested reflections upon your so judicious and strong discourse wherein the instances though your Lordship be pleased to call them slight ones and such as flow easiest into a Letter from a bad memorie yet you must give me leave to believe them the strongest and sharpest that can be urged upon this subject and the flower and Quintessence of what Mr. Chillingworth and the best wits have produced against the tradition of the Church and the authority of the Fathers But I will choose rather to fall into your hands for the latter then under your censure for the first and so asking you a thousand pardons I send you this by which all I can hope is that you will at least discern in me a great willingnes to come out of your debt in this kinde for all other I know impossible though I am but a flow and imperfect paymaster and that you will in some measure guess at what I would say if I had time to digest and range it as it should be I shall here only by way of supplement adde this more concerning the Millenaries because I would not render my Letters more illegible by new interlining it that as I remember Justin Martyr himself saith it is an opinion not generally beleeved in the Church but that many of the Orthodox reject it howbeit he professeth to hold it for true and accordingly endeavoureth to prove it by authority of Scripture all which manifestly declareth that it was no
the soule perspicatious and considerate of what is profitable Lastly to conclude this point let me set before you Macarius Homil. 17. and Theophylact more remote from one another in this article of faith then in the times wherein they lived Macarius telling us that we offer bread and wine the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of his flesh and blood and they which are partakers of the visible bread do eat the flesh of the Lord spiritually And Theophylact teaching the directly contrary doctrin upon the 6. of Saint John Note here saies he that the bread which we eat in the mysteries is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Lords flesh but the very flesh of the Lord and let no body be troubled that the bread should be believed flesh since the bread which he did eate when he walked here was altered into his body and made the same with his holy flesh so would the wafer be turned into his flesh if Christ as man did eat it will the veryest Sacramentary say I have insisted the longer upon this particular as conceiving it the highest point of all our controversies and wherein the Fathers should have most obliged us had they left to posteritie a right and unanimous intelligence of that great mysterie of the Eucharist But the certainest conclusion I can draw from them in this and the rest is of the uncertainty of concluding any thing in our differences from those that differ so much amongst themselves Justin Martyr in Orat. cohort ad Gent. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He should have my vote for a rare Musitian that could contrive those their discords into a Harmony fit to be the measure either of our practise or belief My next Reason is the Fathers variance from themselves a quality of much more prejudice to them then the other for upon contradiction of testimonies how point-blank soever a Judg may fall to examine the fame and reputed integrity of the witnesses in which if he find a difference he will not stick many times to pronounce a sentence according to the intire credit of the men but who will ever give judgement upon ones evidence who in the same businesse is found in contrary tales And here I could run over most of the materialest points wherein I made my former instances and produce almost out of every Father pro con examples not onely of variance but almost of as eminent contradiction as that of St. Augustine concerning Purgatory in Serm. 232. de Tempore where he flatly denies that there is any third place besides Heaven and Hell calling them deceivers that teach it And likewise in his 21. Book de Civitate Dei cap. 16. where he absolutely rejects the opinion of any Purgatory flames before the day of Judgement to another passage in Cap. 24. of Lib. 21. de Civitate Dei where he seemes positively to affirm i◠himselfe but I forbear in regard it would be tedious and likewise for that I am unwilling to presse a point of derogation from those holy Fathers whom I reverence further then I needs must it being sufficient for what I intend to inferre that they appeare oftentimes to vary from their owne positions in divers Articles that we dispute of and others fully as important in which I may be well excused from the trouble to us both of alledging examples since Genebrard and Pamelius thought it their best course to purge the one Origen the other Tertullian from grosse and impious errour in many places by shewing how they teach the cleane contrary in others though by the way I must needs say that Pamelius his manner appeares to be very extravagant for as to some poysonous doctrines of Tertullian a Montanist he rightly applies a cure from some other passage of Tertullian a Catholick so at other times to what hee thought venemous in Tertullian a Catholick he preposterously prescribes an Antitidote out of Tertullian an Heretick as you may see in the eighth of his Paradoxes where he confutes an errour in his Apologetique and de Testimonio Animae Bookes which that Father wrote being a Catholicke with a passage of his Book de Anima composed when he was turned Cataphrygian and yet who so forward as Pamelius when any passage in such bookes makes for us to cry out away with it 't was a saying of Tertullian a Montanist I may well help my cause the best I can by this unsetlednesse of the Fathers since the noblest pillar of the Roman Church Cardinall Peron so often wrests their variance from themselves so much to the advantage of his See how in his reply to King James p. 374. he makes bold with Gregory the Great with Ruffinus with Jerome touching the Maccabees reception into the Canon wherein I doe not think him more in the wrong in the particular then I believe him right in the generall to wit that the Fathers did often vary their opinions according to their severall greenness or maturity of studies from whence Vincentius Lyrenensis his directions will follow cont haeres c. 39. That the Fathers depositions are onely to be taken who living in the Catholick Faith and Communion holily and wisely did constantly teach and persist even untill their death in Christ and further such only as did receive preserve and deliver their doctrines all or the greatest part manifestly and in one and the same sense wherein what use soever some Papists make of that passage I professe I thinke we are somewhat lesse beholding to him for the certainty of a rule and evidence to guide our faith by then to Archimedes for his Engine to remove the World For the Mathematitian disabuses us and declares that there is not a solid place to be found wheron to fix his instrument but th' other leaves us to that vain search of an impossibility for truly as the case stands I cannot think it less then an impossibility to know with any competent assurance what in all or almost any of our debated questions the Fathers hold with all those solid circumstances whereon Vincentius his rule is grounded of holiness wisdom catholickness immutability of the teachers and perpetual identitie of the doctrins sense if with years they all improved I might be comforted a little by relying on their last dictamens but as I find a S. Augustin that with age retracted his errors so on the other side I meet with a Tertullian that going forward in years and experience went less in his judgement how happie should we both be in one that could assure us in the Legion of Fathers when was the verticle point of each their erudition whether at their summer or winter solstice if I give you the notes of it and tell you then only you have it certain when they are in a perfect and palpable conjunction with Scripture you will think it but an imperfect indication if you say that then they were ariv'd to the high point of their perfection when they were once exactly instructed in the full
sence of the Church I must not admit of that marke whilst you are proving the Churches receptions by theirs and therefore if you please let us both agree that for either of us there is no resolving evidence to be taken from the Fathers that are so irresolute themselves when you meet with a passage in any of them that stands not with your belief conceive their judgement not ripe or rotten when they writ it or that their recantations are lost the same liberty shall I take in mine for truly had Saint Austins admirable monument of humble ingenuity as well as high erudition his Retractations perished as Origens which as Saint Ierome saith he had made in an Epistle to Fabian Bishop of Rome Epist 65. ad Pamach et Occan. did before him Saint Austin might perhaps have had a place in some others Catalogue of heretiques as well as Saint Origen in his And truly who can secure us that the like mishap hath not befallen others of the Fathers now taxable with erronious doctrins by the loss perhaps of some after-survey of their own works My Third consideration is of the Fathers variousness and repugnancies to the Government practise and belief of both the Romish Church and ours In which I have prevented the need of examples by many of the instances both of my former Letter and this as that of the equalitie of Bishops Presbyters that of rebaptizing that of Angels that of the Millenaries c. to which I will lonly adde that which so many and most particularly S. Austin delivers of the necessity of childrens partaking of the Eucharist and his rigor against infants unbaptized some of which I take to be beames all more then motes fit to be removed out of their eyes before we can with reason resigne up our own sences to their guidance and manuduction My Fourth concluding reason is the want of ability in many of the Fathers in most of will to determine the points of controversie and this I hope I may safely affirm without wrong either to their abilities or good wills A general and potential ability to resolve difficulties every strong reason includes if in the particulars wherein it should be brought forth unto act there concur upon proposal meanes of informing ones self and a will to use it Such an ability those learned Fathers rich in all the choyce endowments of soule had in most singular eminence and as it were madness to rob them of those so I think it is neither Logicall nor prudential because they were knowing in the general to attribute to them an actual ability to discern such particular questions wherein it is so farr from appearing that they had the means of informing themselves or the will to use them that I see no signes that in their ages they were ever in proposal such and so farr from agitation or controversie the parents that give life and act to particular abilities were as I am perswaded in the primitive times the doctrins of infallibility annexed to a Church of any one denomination of adoring the Eucharist for God of Purgatory with its complements of Indulgences and many other choice points of our controversies All which I profess appear to me as unthought of for the first 500. years after Christ as the Antipodes or the Antartique pole to Lactantius or Justin Martyr that tooke the heavens to be to the earth but as the flat cover of a box In these I take it to be of no more derogation from them to deny their deciding abilities then to say that they were not able to leave to posterity an exact Mapp of America which was not discovered in so many hundred years after so far is it from an injurious detraction that to imagin them studious definitive or active in questions hardly ever moved that had neither profest maintainers or impugners were to imagine them idle and Ayre-beaters No marvail that to decide such they should want wills having neither means nor occasion to actuate their abilities or that they should want abilities having no provocations that might stimulate their wills Those primitive Champions of the Gospel the Fathers of the first 400. years who in this business are most to be consulted with had their time their industry their pens so incessantly exercised against the common enemie of Christ the Jews and Gentiles or else against those heynous heretiques that pretended the name of Christianity but tended to the utter subversion of it as the Ebionites the Samosaterians Gnostiques the Marcionists and divers other blasphemous or Chimerical innovators that they had little leasure to raise to themselves imaginarie enemies to combate with in such slight and trivial points as these we dispute of or if perchance any such were presented little care to subdue them But that I may not be thought to frame a discourse upon two false suppositions The one that our controverted points are of articles of Religion little material the other that in the primitive times there were few of them in agitation or neglected if they were let me tell you what induceth me to think so For the first that they were in themselves little material or at least thought so by the Fathers which is all one for our purpose though now I confess grown highly important by being injoyned many of them under the paine of Anathema's to be believed as essential to salvation I collect out of a survey of all those Antient yea and more modern rolls where it is likely all necessary points of faith or practice would be recorded where finding no newes at all of them I think I may safely conclude them but slight in comparison of what I finde there registred The first and prime inducement to me is that I meet with them no where in Scripture but this is none to you who do not allow that to be the perfect reconditory of all necessary Doctrines The next is that in the Fathers several Catalogues of Hereticks as that of Philastrius Epiphanius and S. Austin I finde none branded with Heresie for not holding those Articles imposed on mens beliefs by the Church of Rome and rejected by ours whose note it is not likely such would have escaped as had impugned any doctrines believed by them necessary to savlation But to this perhaps you will say that the denomination of Heretick was not incurred by the opinions that men held but by their obstinate persisting in such after the Churches manifests against them and that upon this reason divers who beleeved not all things necessary might well miss a place in their denumeration of Hereticks wherefore setting these two aside because though of much force with me yet likely to be invalide with you I onely press upon your consideration my last and I think undeniable reason taken from the non-appearance of such articles in those several pieces wherein the Fathers of set purpose and designe professedly do set down all the essential doctrines of Christianity agreed upon throughout