unto swift destruction 2 Pet. 2.1 And if there were not great caution to be used in relation to mens Principles and Belief Faith would not have been made the condition of the Gospel nor the qualification to justifie a sinner 3. By a strict examination of Principles and Doctrines we may preserve the peace of our own consciences For if conscience in things pertaining to Religion consists in the agreement of our notions with the will of God revealed unto men Then the trial of Opinions under whatever pretence they seem to be conveyed by this rule and accordingly either rejecting or receiving them must much conduce to the peace and quiet of our own minds which are regulated by the same rule by which we examine Doctrines and Opinions And can there be a greater advantage to men on Earth than full satisfaction and a quiet conscience settled upon an unalterable and firm foundation Contentment in the enjoyments of this world is that which makes the meanest Peasant as happy as his Prince and creates a level amongst mankind How much greater delight then must that satisfaction advance men to which relates to things of an everlasting concernment that causes the pangs of death ro vanish and the fears of Hell and torment to depart that carries us with all steadiness and peace through all the billows and storms of the World into that blessed Haven of rest and tranquillity where we shall know no trouble any more This is enjoying a perpetual Feast a pleasure beyond the greatest sensuality exceeding what men can otherwise possess or as much as invent or think upon For what are then all the concernments or advantages of the world when in matters of Religion I am fix'd and setled If I live in misery it cannot be long nature will soon have spun her thread if no accident cuts it off And if having my Religion fixed upon such Principles which cannot deceive me I regulate my actions by their directions death must then be welcome to me because it gives me the fruits of my hope and enters me into the joy of my Master who from earth having suffered an antecedent separation of soul and body entered visibly into his own glory and has made a passage to the same for those who live in the belief of what he has revealed and the practice of that Religion which in fulness of faith and indisputable assurance they have had a well grounded confidence in 4. This trial and examination of the Doctrines and Opinions of others will make men endeavour to live without disturbance in that Society of which they are members Nothing disturbs the Government of the world so much as doubtings and disputes about Religion But this when found out by a regular enquiry and truly established in the minds of men gives the greatest and most effectual checks to all the breaches made upon enclosures and those irregularities and invasions that are committed upon the properties of men This forbids the Prince to be a Tyrant and admonishes the Subjects to be obedient to the Laws to become Subject for conscience sake and not to rebel against the powers of this world lest they receive damnation in the next Rom. 13. But when men are apt to entertain the furious Principles of others when conveyed to them under the specious pretence of Spirit and inspiration With what ease are they ensnared when they are either lazy or refuse to examine There is nothing then so ruinous to Society nothing that puts men more into confusion nothing that dissolves the bands of Community and breaks Order into a Chaos but they will attempt under the covert of Religion and conclude they do service unto God when they are immediately offering to the Devil For the sence of Religion being the greatest tye upon mankind what will they not attempt or suffer when their actions let them be never so full of villany shall under pretence of the authority or inspirations of others be adopted into the number of vertues and heroick acts and their sufferings be advanced to Martyrdom Justice shall be violated when it shall be the act of Religion to gain a Crown from the head of him that rightly wears it And then they will make a way to the accomplishment of their design though they pave it throughout with the carkasses of the slain But if such Principles that ruine Religion under its name are well examined and submitted to the trial of reason and the Scriptures and new inspirations are measured by those that are old We shall easily conclude that such a Doctrine cannot come from God that teaches men to do the works of the Devil nor the Principles that tend to confusion among mankind ever proceed from a God of Order But they are upon the first audit to be damn'd to the place from whence they took their original and must be concluded to come from Hell which thus fire and consume the world And so you see that the several advantages which accrew to men upon trial of those that pretend to inspiration may be so many incouragements to the thing and so many arguments to recommend the duty to all those who by the Devil and his agents do not love to be led captive Finally To what purpose were faculties given to us that are able to judge and according to judgment to make our choice in matters of Religion if by a pretence of any ones inspiration the natural powers of our souls must cease or else be rendred useless They being suspended by a pretension of authority that without examination cannot appear to us to be Divine Nay why should the Apostle impose such a task upon us which without the use of every mans particular faculties becomes impossible No choice will then be left in Religion to the generality of men But it will become a necessary thing and we are bound like machins to move alwayes by the impulse of another nay quite contrary to what we were obliged before if the pretender to inspiration change his note and playes to us on a contrary string Would it not be strange for any man to preach to and exhort stones Or argue to one that were not capable of any impression Or could S. John be so unreasonable as to impose the trial of Spirits on men that either have no faculties to examine or have their senses tied up by a superiour power Must all false Prophets be rejected and is there a necessity of mens believing what Doctrines have been revealed from Heaven and must they not yet try the Spirits and use their own faculties to examine them To deny this may indeed be suitable to some Doctrines of the Church of Rome Yet it cannot but be plain to a Protestant or any other reasonable man that has not his faculties given him in vain that such arguing and such belief serve only to justifie imposture under the pretence of truth and to blind mens eyes that they may be led into a ditch This is to
't is but calling any one Heretick and a dressing him up with pictures of Devils and presently he is exposed to the flames And this is such a Sovereign power of life and death that it reaches not only the body but the soul Thus as some flea the truth to prove it naked and instead of declaring it expose it So others pretending to its safe custody permit none to understand it but themselves And so the rest must swallow a Serpent for a Fish and eat stones instead of bread As if imposing cheats upon the World were the best way to prove a man insallible and deluding others were the only Argument to evidence that we are not deceived our selves This is the great secret of the Roman Empire that does not only silence Disputes but forbid Enquiry That does not only stop the mouths but crack the skulls of mankind taking away our judgement of discretion and our choice and Metamorphosing men into Beasts And then they put the yoke upon us and whip us on to toyl and drudgery that their own Pastures may be covered with Flocks and their Valleys stand thick with Corn whilst the high Hills laugh and sing For if it be once supposed that their Church is infallible whatever they determine must be true And when we have vow'd obedience to them 't will be too late afterwards to make enquiry A powerful way this is to reconcile men when contradictions themselves may thus meet and at any infinite distance embrace when the Romanists please to declare them true If this one point be but admitted 't will be ridiculous to dispute the rest For all the Articles must certainly be true which a Church has determined that cannot err This is a new way indeed to walk by faith and not by sense to pull out our eyes that we may see the better And instead of captivating our understandings to the obedience of Faith to deliver up our reason to another man This is perfectly to enslave our selves when Christ has made us free to entangle our necks in the yoke of bondage and to leave the burden of the old Law for the greater load and oppression of a new And to make our selves like gentle Beasts ready trapped and furnish'd for others to ride us Let the Church of Rome once be infallible and then they become as omniscient as Apollo All their determinations are ex Tripode And we must then become as silent as in the Grave and make our selves a prey to these Worms We must kneel down at the Popes feet and make our selves fit to be trod upon But our reason is so properly our own that as no man has a right over it so is it strongly fortified within us that none is able to take it from us unless we will deliver it up our selves If we will suffer the Philistins to deprive us of our strength and put out our eyes they will certainly then make sport with us And if we yield so great a Point as they unjustly challenge from the Old Testament and the New we deserve then to be made a Spectacle when they have no reason to prove their Authority but because they have a mind to rule and we become such fools as to obey The Prophets then may prophesie falsely and the Priests bear rule by their means when the people shall love to have it so and what will you do in the end thereof Jer. 5.31 Seneca sayes of men that are curious about trifles operose nihil agunt De brev vitae cap. 13. that they are very industrious about nothing and though the studying of many of our Modern Controversies is like an Emperours locking himself into his Closet that he may be very busie in catching Flies and we may say of some great Controvertists in the world what Seneca sayes of those that took abundance of pains to find out a few unprofitable experiments that by this they did not appear more learned but troublesom Vid. ut sup Yet when by admitting a Principle our reason is destroyed and our Religion in an eternal hazard by being at the devoir of another altogether as fallible as our selves and of whose honesty we cannot alwayes be assured We must then rally our Arguments to resist or suffer our selves to be led into slavery That there is not therefore a foundation from any Text for the Romanists pretended Infallibility nor any Argument grounded upon reason I shall endeavour briefly to make appear And therefore we may yet believe our selves to be men and the Pope himself to be no other Because 1. There is no absolute promise of intire Infallibility made to men in the whole Book of God but only with limitation and restriction I readily grant that there are promises of Infallibility in some Texts But these were made good in the Apostles and the seventy Disciples And yet though delivered in general terms they are to be restrained not only to the persons to whom our Saviour spake but to things necessary for them to know in relation to that end for which they were inspired And these were only such truths as our Saviour delivered to be the standing rules for Posterity to guide themselves by in relation to their eternal welfare This is plain both from the latter part of the Verse of which the promise of the Spirits guiding into all truth Joh. 6.3 is the former And from the comparison of this Text with another In the Verse of which this Text is a part we have this added to confirm the promise lest any should think the revelation of the Spirit should not prove equally certain with the declaration of our Saviour He shall not speak of himself but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak Whatsoever he shall be commissioned to inspire you with that shall he communicate unto you Which is still included in these two particulars 1. In what our Saviour himself had delivered to them Or 2. In what he should suggest to them to make their defence before Kings and Rulers which need not at all concern them whose ignorance in the Laws might cause them to fear because the Holy Ghost should teach them in the same hour what they ought to say Luke 12.11 12. This only is superadded And he will shew you things to come Which must either relate to the Gnostick defection and the perdition of the Jews which our Saviour had predicted Matth. 24. Or else to the Spiritual nature of Christs Kingdom which the Apostles were so prejudiced against to inform them that this with some other things which they could not bear whilst he was with them in the flesh they should at last be satisfied in Joh. 10.12 Or else it must include those predictions of Prophets more frequent in the Primitive times of Christianity such was that of Agabus Acts 11.28 who foretold the Famine that should come to pass in the dayes of Claudius Caesar And that prediction of S. Pauls bonds and imprisonment Acts 21.11 All which
an evasion is a palpable error is apparent from the institution of our Saviour as recorded by all the Evangelists that mention it in all the Gospels where this is repeated For as the essential parts are always set down so we have prescribed Bread and Wine which by a solemn consecration are blessed and separated from common uses to signifie Christs Body and Blood and in a separate manner to represent Christ dead and not united under one Symbol And to whomsoever he gave the Body represented by the Bread the same person received the Blood signified by the Wine contained in the Cup As it appears upon the view of Christs own institution If it be Objected upon the grant of this which none can deny that the Apostles then only received And that the Romanists themselves allow it to the Priests It may from thence with a greater colour be argued that the whole Sacrament ought only to be continued to the Clergy And that the Laity should not receive so much as a part And then the argument will sooner deprive them of all than any one part of it But that I may totally invalidate this scruple and at the same time prove the Papists to be erroneous Let us view the institution as repeated by S. Paul who has in this proved Rome to have err'd and clearly frees us from their imposture Though S. Peter sayes nothing of it 1 Cor. 11.23 I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks he brake it and said Take eat this is my Body which is broken for you this do for a remembrance of me After the same manner also he took the Cup when he had supped saying This Cup is the New Testament in my Blood This do ye as oft as ye drink it in remembrance of me Now the whole design of this repetition of the first Institution is to rebuke those disorderly practices of the whole body of the Church of Corinth and to regulate all by the Institution of our Saviour And all together as well people as Clergy are told that as often as they eat this Bread and drink this Cup they shew forth the Lords death till he come If this then is to be continued in the Church as a Memorial of Christs Death till his coming again to judge the World which the Church of Rome will not deny It must be an error thus to depart from the first Institution of Christ and the succeeding practice of his blessed Apostles to say nothing of other Ages of the Church to give to the people an half Communion which the Priests will not be contented with themselves and to deliver them only a part of the Sacrament This certainly is such an error as does not only void their infallibility but a crime too Unless the greatest Sacriledge be a vertue And in plain language it certainly concludes that either the Scriptures or the the Romanists are not infallible Secondly I instance in their Prayer in an unknown tongue I mean a language unknown to the people I cannot but wonder if we had no directions in the Book of God concerning this matter that any persons should be so stupid as to petition from God they know not what and to offer that under the notion of a reasonable service which they do not understand For how can that be presented with Faith which they know not whether it be such as God will accept and as becomes them to offer The Priest here may curse the people in the name of the Devil when they think they are bless'd in the name of God But not to prosecute any absurdities consequential to this irrational practice besides what the Scriptures mention designing not at present to handle these things at large 'T is a direct contradiction to that of S. Paul 1 Cor. 14. Chap. 14 15. and 16 Verses For the Apostle having laid down this general direction that all things in the publick Worship should be done to edification He affirms that praying and blessing in unknown tongues did not accomplish this end vers the 12 th and 17 th 1. Because he that prayes in an unknown tongue though he understands it himself becomes unprofitable unto others v. the 14. 2. Because no man that understands not can give his assent or breath forth a wish by saying Amen to a Prayer or Blessing in an unknown tongue ver the 16 th And the Apostle from the whole inferrs this as a rule unto himself That when he prays with the Spirit i. e. in an unknown tongue which was then an immediate gift of the Spirit he would pray with understanding also i. e. so as he understanding it himself might become fruitful unto others by giving them its just interpretation that they who understood not divers languages might be able to say Amen when they were rendered into their own So that it must be an error in the Church of Rome to enjoyn their publick Prayers to be made in an unknown tongue Unless they will invalidate the Scriptures of S. Paul by a blind and unwritten authority from S. Peter Lastly They have lost their pretended infallibility by determining that monstrous and absurd Doctrine of Transubstantiation It cannot be expected when I introduce this point as a proof of another that I should expatiate upon all the absurdities that attend so prodigious a determination As that the same Body may be in a thousand places at once that there may be admitted a penetration of dimensions That a Body may be somewhere where it was not before without changing its place That the whole Body of Christ may be contain'd within the small compass nay in every little part of a Wafer That it may be eat every day yet remain the same still That an irrational creature a Mouse for example may feed upon the Body of our Lord That one thing may be chang'd into another thing which did exist before That a Body may be in a place after the manner of a Spirit Nay that Christ may give his own Body to be eaten by his Disciples whilst yet he remained alive and entire at the Table These and such like are the absurd consequences of Transubstantiation which men must swallow with the substantial Body and Blood of Christ in the Roman Sacrament of the Lords Supper And they require too large a discourse for me to expatiate upon each severally and apart I shall therefore instance in one absurdity or rather a foundation of great impiety such as destroys the authority of the Gospel if this Doctrine of Transubstantiation proves true and is not an error And that is That it destroyes all the certainty of our senses For if that which has the colour and appearance of Bread That which my taste informs is such That which by touching and handling of it seems to be Bread by as great an evidence as can appear to
upon those heads that are always soft and therefore fit to receive any Who have no notions of things fixed and setled but the images and representations that are the Book in which they read all their Propositions interfere with each other and are either confused or else are crumbled and broken in pieces Besides Religion is of that nature that if we play with it as a thing indifferent or change the true Principles for those that are false We either lose it quite in the midst of variety or 't is with great difficulty if ever we recover it This the Apostle plainly tells us Heb. 6.4 It is impossible or as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there signifies very difficult for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted of the good word of God and the powers of the world to come If they shall fall away to renew them again unto repentance Hence is it that our Saviour charges men to take heed what they hear Mar. 4.24 And S. Paul exhorts men to hold fast the form of sound words 2 Tim. 1.13 And S. Jude urges that we should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the Saints third ver of his Epistle Let us therefore that are grounded in our Religion behave our selves as men that are resolved And not by any means be frightned from our Faith by the ghastly looks the bold threats or the pretences of new Revelations from any But let those Scriptures we have already received and our shorter Creeds drawn from them be the standing and perpetual Rule of our Faith For variety will disturb us while we live and almost distract us when we come to die and in all probability deprive us of our future happiness We cannot but be sensible of the dreadful condition of those men that are ready to depart out of this before they have prepared for another world Who have all their guilts standing round about them and affrighting them with their gastly appearances when they are toss'd and tumbled upon a Bed of sickness when they can see nothing but death before them and the dismal prospect of a blacker and worse state beyond it And when to all this miserable and frightful scene of things shall be added inward pangs and convulsions of mind doubled and heightned either by the falshood or uncertainty of those Principles by which we direct our eyes in this view How tragical and horrid must our condition be When our Spirits that should support us under the infirmities of our bodies are so wounded within us that they are a torment to themselves and our own doubts and vexatious uncertainties about those Principles of Religion that can only guide us through the Chambers of death and let in the light from some glorious Regions beyond the grave so increase upon us that we are miserably tortured betwixt hope and fear when our setled belief of future things can only render our passage pleasant and our condition tolerable Now since a settlement of our Principles in matters of Religion is of greater concernment to us than the settlement of our Estates Because these only serve to defray the charges of our Bodies whilst they ride Post through a shorter stage when those prepare us for and enter us into Heaven and must maintain us through all the Ages of an endless Eternity And since the Principles of Christianity are the most excellent in themselves and have the best evidence of their Divine Authority of any precepts of Religion extant in the World And we have exhibited in Sacred Writ a method to find out what has been revealed from Heaven Let mens pretences be what they will under whatsoever plausible denomination Who that is rational will not conclude it to be both his duty and his interest if he has a veneration for God or a due reverence and regard to his own being to settle himself upon the foundations of Christianity and upon these to build his belief and practice till at last through the merit of the great Redeemer of men he reaches Heaven Not to pluck the Stars out of the Firmament but by the will and favour of Almighty God to ascend above them and enjoy an happiness suitable to mans glorified capacity in those blisful Regions that can neither admit of a decay or period but shall continue their state and to true Christians their happiness in them through all the endless unmeasurable spaces of a boundless and incomprehensible Eternity And now to conclude this exhortation with Arnobius's Argument and persuading Rhetorick at the latter end of his First Book against the Gentiles If men have gentle souls capable of impression they cannot under pretence of other rules offer any injury to Christ nor reproach his Religion but embrace both if but upon this account only that they promise to them prosperous things Things to be wished for and earnestly desired Can any one refuse to give honour and obedience to the Son of God who was the Messenger of glad tidings who vanquished the shades and darkness of the grave and brought life and immortality to light Who alwayes preached such Doctrines as cannot hurt the minds of any but fill them with a more secure expectation O ingratum impium seculum as he goes on O ungrateful and wicked Generation If a Physician should come to you out of a far Country and should promise you such an universal Medicine that would infallibly cure you of all diseases would you not presently run after him pay all the signals of Courtship and Honour and receive him with all kindness and hospitality Would ye not wish his Medicines to be infallible by the application of which you are promised freedom from those miseries that attend your bodies even to the utmost period of your age Nay though the thing were yet doubtful would you not being inflamed with the love of your own welfare commit your selves to his conduct and not obstinately refuse to drink even his unknown potion in hope of your own health and safety Eluxit atque apparuit Christus rei maximae nunciator c. Christ the proclaimer of great tidings has now shined and appeared in the World What cruelty then what barbarous inhumanity what insuperable pride is it with a supercilious disdain to contemn him who brings such glad tidings unto men Let us embrace therefore his joyful Message give credit to that which affords such hope and pay all reverence and honour to him who is the messenger of him that made us Who came into the World to seek and to save that which was lost And to give to us eternal life Men may if they please contradict the kind promises of our Saviour and suppose a future state impossible But 't is more impossible for any man to prove his denial Or with any certainty to convince himself that there is no such state of men hereafter Since
Doctrines upon the World as Rules for all to submit unto without any farther examination And if they must be examined at all it must be by something of greater credit and authority in the World Now that the Prophets of old were to be tryed whether true or false is plain to any that will give themselves leisure to consider not only that otherwise there could be no such thing as a false Prophet in the determination of men true and false having the same evidence but that God himself gave directions under the Old Testament how to know the one from the other Deut. 13.1 and chap. 18.22 which rules had been vain and insignificant if by these men were not to try them Hence is it that those that attribute great authority to Christian General Councils do not think their Canons obligatory unless the things included in them bind antecedently by their own nature or a superiour Law till they are received in those Nations and Churches to which they are sent 2. As the Doctrines of the Prophets were to be examined so were also those of the Apostles Hence was it that S. Paul who was extraordinarily called to be an Apostle God himself supplying him with Unction and Ordination by giving him authority from Heaven and our Saviour descending by an apparition from the Clouds to invest him with dignity and power Hence it was I say that this great Apostle in his Call dignified beyond his Brethren commends the Bereans Acts 17.11 because they searched and examined his Doctrines whether they were true or false by those Scriptures they had already received and by comparing his Doctrines with the Natural Religion of Mankind with what our Saviour and other Apostles preached and most probably with the Scriptures of the Old Testament that they might be assured that what he delivered was consonant to that which was there exhibited concerning the Messias And therefore these were of more pliable and ingenuous and gentile tempers than those of Thessalonica who were more regardless of these concerns as S. Chrysostom comments upon this Text. 3. The Doctrines even of our Saviour himself though never man spake like him were lyable to examination by those that heard before they entertain'd them And certainly if any might recommend propositions upon his own authority he might who was the Wisdom of the Father in whom all fulness dwelt Nay the fulness of the Godhead was as it were inclosed in his own body Yet he bids the Jews to search the Scriptures and to consider how well his Person and his Doctrines agreed with the antient Predictions in relation to him and accordingly either to receive or reject him For these sayes he are they which testifie of me And in them ye think ye have eternal life John 5.39 So that it is plainly evident from the beginning that no Doctrines under pretence of what inspiration soever were to be received by men without examination But as those of the Apostles were to be compared with what our Saviour delivered his again to be measured not only by his own divine authority but this also was to be proved by the Law and the Prophets and the Prophets themselves by those Rules which God had given to the Jews to judge by So is there not reason that the doctrines of men pretending to Christianity under what authority soever they are published should still be examined by a superiour Rule even by what the primitive Planters of our Religion have left for our perusal and direction viz. the doctrine of Christ and his holy Apostles which priviledge whatever Romanists plead for themselves to hide from or deny to others is the greatest cruelty and irreligion Enough it is to render any doctrine suspected that thus hides and runs to corners and avoids all the tryals of men And we have great reason to mistrust those who take away mens judgement of discretion valuing them only like Beasts that perish whilst they are not perswaded but whip'd to their work and many times cripled under their burden when yet they know not what they carry Thus I have though more largely than my first thoughts designed not only stated the use and authority of the Church in her Synods and Councils in the examination of Doctrines and Opinions but shewed you withal that as their Decrees are not infallible so neither are they the highest Rules by which we judge of the Doctrines of men Had it been otherwise when our Saviour came to plant his Gospel the infallibility of the Jewish Sanhedrim had justly condemned him for an Impostor and all the Christian Religion deliver'd and authorized by him had proved only a Fable and a Dream CHAP. VII THe most considerable Adversaries that oppose this way of stating the Churches Authority in determining points of Faith seem to many to be the Romanists and therefore this Chapter will briefly confute their high pretences to a strange Infallibility by which they have introduced as strange Doctrines into the Christian Religion And indeed there was never a Law yet so plainly penn'd but that the inventions of men who make it their business to render Laws both Divine and humane subservient to their Secular interests will blunt its edge and endeavour to make it their own property by altering or over-urging its design The same use has been made of Texts of Scripture by the two Opponents of the Church of England enlarging or diminishing the Infallibility promised to the Apostles that it may the better countenance their own pretences Some restraining the promises expressing the holy Spirits miraculous assistance in the guiding the Sacred Pen-men of the Gospel to the Roman Church And others extending it to every man of their own persuasion or at least to the Ministers and Elders of their Churches I shall here therefore spend a few leaves to shew that the Papists can have no ground in the Scripture to build their infallible determinations on nor any reason at all to maintain their infallibility I know not how it comes to pass that other Churches must forfeit their interests in the promises of the Gospel that the Romanists may proudly arrogate them to themselves Or any reason why the right of others must sneak or stoop to their bold usurpations As if their Church could not well be Head of the World unless we allow it to have all the Brains too and dash them out of the Sculls of others to fill their head till their understandings become incomprehensibly infallible that all the race of Christians in the world may receive Rules only from them and give up the natural freedom of their minds to enlarge the Pope's Empire and Authority As if they only were like the Jews of old to whom were committed the Oracles of God And these they might either keep to themselves or allow them to others as they see occasion This makes a reproof to them like Rebellion against a Prince a crime so great that nothing but death can sufficiently expiate Among them