far modester than you and profest as he did dislike my opinions so he dissented no otherwise than as one Divine does from another and had never descended to censure any of them Perhaps of this point you may have heard the contrary but I have it under his own hand The second mistake is that he admonish't me of this point for he never descended to any particular and this you might understand as partly the other out of my Dedicatory of my Ratio villicationis written to him and presented in his lifetime The third that I had fore-prepar'd my Book of the Middle State and presently sent it him For the reason of my composing it was the many popular noises rais'd against me by persons some ignorant some malicious as if I were an Heretick which forc't me to write the Treatise in mine own defence and I dedicated it to my Lord though I knew no particular Exception of his against this point but judged he might have some because the greatest cry was against it The Translation as far as came to my knowledge was not made by any design upon earth though by the event I perceive it was out of speciall Providence in Heaven How things passed on your side and what were the true motâ—ves of your publishing the Bull and that Testimony of the Council I can onely collect from the phaenomena of all concurrent circumstances of which you may perhaps hereafter hear more You say the Publishers of the Bull had no respect to the Letter of Vindication I think you aym at one I wrote in Latin to a Person of Honour which was presented Him and by him shew'd to some Jesuits that frequented his House and they can be witnesses of the Truth between us This afterwards as I hear was translated into English and printed If this be the Letter you speak of I would gladly understand why you imagin the Author conceits himself inspir'd with the Genius of Mont-alt whose spirit I confess I take to be very solid and pious and generously adhering to persecuted Truth Nor do I find it unlawfull that any should wish to be inspir'd with it but truly conceive my self far below the hope of such Excellences What you heard well observ'd that all the Protestant Divines of England would subscribe to the same Protestation which is in that Letter I beleeve purely upon your report But tell me first may a Catholick protest nothing that a Protestant will subscribe to or can a Protestant profess nothing but what he will perform Again will any Protestant profess to renounce any Doctrin found to contradict any Authority constantly acknowledg'd for Infallible in the Catholick Church meaning the same by Catholick Church as my writings declare me to do that is all those who adhere to Tradition Will any Protestant be content to have lost his cause if any decree of a Pope be expresly repugnant to him which I there also profess How maliciously blind then was the observer you follow who could not see such distinctive expressions How uncharitable your self who catch at and magnifie every rash cavill out of a tooth to disgrace and abuse him that never did you injury Your calumny of my denying Decrees of Popes and Councils shall be answer'd in its due place You say the Publishers intended not to enter into the lists of Disputation which I easily beleeve and that they were perswaded the very reciting the Bull and Canon would have knockt down the Book which you say was the occasion of their setting them forth beyond all Reply How weak a conceit was this for men that saw both Bull and Canon cited and explicated in that very book and could not be ignorant that in many private Conferences the same Authorities had been debated You thought your Capitall Letters would have dazled the understanding of the adverse party so that none would have dar'd to look further into the meaning of those Authorities But God provided that al should not be so light of belief nor his Church led into Error by such a misgrounded Interpretation of its Decrees You complain much in your tenth Section that this pious intention of the Dispensers was wrong'd As though you did not know that Intentions are secret and must expect their reward from him that sees the heart Men judge of Actions and your self confess the effect was that pious that is credulous persons received satisfaction that is were seduced into Errour by that cuning practice and yet you think it not occasion enough for an understanding man to discover so prejudiciall an Interpretation forc't on the Church and would needs have it a wrong to you that one unknown not intended to be hurt by you should take this pains as if every honest and ableman were not interessed in the Churches quarrell of so high a nature as to set up an Opinion that may prove when examin'd erroneous for an Article of Faith In your eleventh Section you begin to produce your Arguments whereof the first is that all Orthodox writers who have treated this Subject of the State of separated Souls since the promulgation of the Bull a foresaid suppose it as a certain Truth But how many such do you cite Surely of five hundred which have written since those dayes your Readers might civilly expect at least half a score that positively assert it as an assur'd doctrin of the Church But such is the irregular way of discoursing your eminent Scholars use that when they have audaciously advanc't a proposition whereof they know nothing certain if it be deny'd against all Rules of Discourse and Logick they put the Defendant to prove the contrary which peradventure concerns not him a pin whether it be true or no As in the present what concerns it my Faith whether many or few interpret the Bull and Councill as you or I say To make a new Article of Faith the definition must be so clear that none can doubt of it And ipso facto that it needs Interpretation 't is evidently insufficient to make a new obligation of Faith Again suppose your Antecedent be true does any number of Interpreters lock up the understandings of those that follow that they may not see more than their Fore-goers If you say yes shew us some seal of Infallibility in their foreheads by which we may know so much or else your Faith will be but probable but a peradventure I peradventure no and Interest or Passion must supply the rest And such I beleeve is your Faith of this your new-born Article though somewhat an older Opinion In your twelfth Section you enquire into the state of the Question and when you have recited it out of the Bul you presently cry Victory without ever looking into the words and sence that one may note in you the wonted disposition of your great Masters to read the words but seldom take pains to understand them The Bull then sayes that in the dayes of the Popes Predecessor there rose a Question
prudently foyl'd you in every encounter in this Question that he hath left nothing for me but to discover your falshood in such by-questions as you thrust in to stuff out your Volume FOURTH DIVISION Containing an Answer to his seventeenth Section The Authours Doctrin of Councils explicated This new opinion of Purgatory in likelihood later than Saint Gregory IN your seventeenth Section you first put upon me that I am arm'd against the Authority of Popes and Councils and then you run headlong on with declamatory invectives upon that supposition But as the world is curious I conceive some will light on my defence as well as on your calumny to whom I thus explicate the true state of the question It is known to all Christians that Christ and his Apostles taught the world the Christian faith It is known to all Catholicks that this same faith has continued in the Catholick Church now fifteen ages It is known to the same that the means of continuing this faith hath been by Pastours and Fathers teaching their Children what themselves had learn'd by the same way It is likewise known that in divers ages there arose up divers Hereticks who endeavour'd to bring in Doctrins contrary to the received Faith and that Bishops sometimes in particular especially the Bishop of Rome sometimes in Collections or Councils with-stood and confounded such Hereticks confirming the old belief and rejecting all new inventions It is evident that to do this it fuffices to have veracity enough to attest what the old Doctrin was and power enough to suppress all such as stir against it Thus far all goes well Of late Ages among our curious School-men some have been so subtle that the Old faith would not serve them but they thought it necessary to bring in new points of Faith and because what was not of Faith could not become of Faith without a new revelation they look't about for a new revelation and finding the two supreme Courts of Christian discipline seated in General Councils and the Pope they quickly resolv'd to attribute the power of encreasing Christian Faith to these two Springs of Christianity Now the first difference betwixt the two parties engag'd in the present controversy is whether the Faith deliver'd by the Apostles be sufficient to govern the Church by or there be necessary fresh Additions of such points as cannot be known without a new revelation In which they whom I follow hold the negative they whom I suppose you follow the affirmative Out of this question springs a second whether in the Councils and in the Pope is to be acknowledg'd a Prophetical kind of Spirit by which towards the ordinary government of the Church they have a gift to reveal some things not before revealed nor deducible out of things already revealed by the natural power of discourse which God has left to mankind to govern it self by In which point also I follow them that deny you and your eminent learned men stand up for the Affirmative I hope by this any ingenious Reader will perceive that if the Faith deliver'd by Jesus Christ joyn'd with the natural power of discoursing be sufficient to govern the Church of God then those who give power to Councils and Popes sufficient to govern by this way give them as much as is necessary for the Church But if new Articles be necessary to the government of the Church then and onely then they fall short So that no understanding person reading these lines can doubt but the true question is this whether the Faith deliver'd by Christ be sufficient for the government of the Church or that we must expect new additions to our Faith every age or when occasion presents it self Whence it will easily appear that all the great noyse you make and furious Rhetorick you use of my denying the Authority of Councils my being arm'd against them and such like angry stuff are but uncharitable uncivil and highly injurious clamours without any true cause or ground at all But we shall hear more of these hereafter Now any prudent Christian that shall with moderate attention have read but so far will judge the question already decided For who dare maintain Christ's Doctrin was imperfect And indeed all that have any little modesty on your side will not say new Articles of Faith are necessary but that whatsoever the Church defines was before revealed though when they come to declare themselves they demand really new Articles onely calling them Explications of the former or Deductions from them And if they would justify that they were but such Deductions as natural reason can deduce there would remain no controversy which in very deed the Churches practise shews to be the truth In the first Council it being recorded that there was Conquisitio magna and all Councils and Popes ever since proceeding in the same style But here I must remember you what you said in the beginning concerning Pargatory that the reason why you write against my opinion was because it was translated into English And so I now protest that you are the cause why I write of this subject in English My books generally are to debate what I think in the points I write of with learned men whose care it is to divulge truths to the people dispensing to every one the quantity he is capable of not to raise any new thoughts in ignorant heads Your crying out against me forces me to a necessary defence before the people wherefore if any disputings concerning this matter displease any person of Judgment let it light upon your head who are the provoker and compeller of me into this new task which both age and other thoughts make me slowly and unwillingly undertake But I must not be mine own chuser but follow God As to what you say against this Doctrin first you desire your Reader to consider that if these grounds to wit that the Pope and the Council can err without distinguishing in what either matter or manner of proceeding Christian Faith is a meer mockery I confess the proposition grave in words but in sence not worthy a School-boy For first I ask you whether you mean in necessary points or unnecessary ones If you say in both I doubt your whole School will desert you For who is there that hath an ounce of brains who will give authority to the Church to determin all the subtle quirks of the School But if you say onely necessary ones then before you went farther against me you should have prov'd that the verities come by inheritance from Jesus Christ are not all that are necessary which question you never think on and so brandish your Logick against the apparitions in the clouds Secondly I ask you whether without counsel or with it If you say without it again your School will desert you If you say with it I ask you how much counsell and to what period In all which you will be at a loss Must it hold till by reason they
against Grammar against Logick and against Divinity and if this be not accepted of you cry the Church has err'd Your Interpretation is against Grammar by your own confession complaining of your Adversary for demanding an Is or Is not which is a plain acknowledgment that your sence is not formally in the words It is against Logick because you put the subject to be part of the predicate Against Divinity because you would make the grace of God and heavenly benefits be bought like Salads in the market by him that has most mony Besides other inconveniences whereof I have explicated some in my Book of the Middle State and may have occasion to say more hereafter And yet forsooth if this sweet Interpretation be not gratis admitted of the Church has err'd the Church has err'd and all 's undone well a day well a day You go farther and press that my rule of faith failes me in this very point And first you appeal to the consciences of all illiterate Persons whether this be not their present faith Yau have found out a Tribunal very fit to gain your cause in But I wonder you are so little skill'd in spirituall direction that you do not know most illiterate men never reflect upon their inward acts or farther then what belongs to the fancy not one amongst ten thousand And you deceive me if you hold faith to be an act of the fancy Yet I dare not be too bold for I have heard of one that wore a plush cloak and could neither read nor write Wherefore it is enough for me to deny it whether it be your opinion or no Besides do you not know that even literate Persons unless Divines are not to mince the doctrin taught them by their Pastours so far as to distinguish what is deliver'd for faith what as necessary to the explication of it or to the Practise of Christian life Further you may know that many even of your own eminent Divines differ not only in what points are of faith what not but in what makes them to be of faith what not Though I think they all agree that an explication against Grammar and Logick does not rayse a position into an Article of faith though the explication be of a Popes Bull Next you tell your adversary that Master White him self says Saint Gregory the great was the first founder of that faith I know well you accompt Master White a kind of a mad man that dares advance such propositions as he cannot but foresee what strong opposition they were like to stir up against him But I did not think he was so mad as holding no doctrin to belong to faith which began since the Apostles daies who are the last revealers of publik faith that he knows of and besides professing this doctrin so far from faith that it is not true yet should tell you that Saint Gregory founded this faith As far as I remember what I sayd was that Saint Gregory reported this novelty first broke out in his dayes by the means of certain revelations And this I sayd upon the authority of Venerable Bede who attributes the book of Dialogues to Saint Gregory But now I must tell you that upon fuller consideration I rather believe Venerable Bede's information was defective then to attribute so unworthy a book to so grave and learned a Pope nothing like such winter tales as are told in that book being found in his most worthy and learned works And I will make your self whom I know a great admirer of that learned and pious Doctour Judg of the controversy Do you think there is in the next world Excommunications and restorings to communion as is exprest in one of those Revelations Do you think that one who dy'd obstinate in schism was sent to Purgatory because he did many Alms as is reported in another Revelation do you think it is not the fancy of an Idle brain to imagin Souls are sent to bathes to scrub and rub men there to be acquitted of their sins Other things there are in the same book worth the noting but these are enough to shew it unworthy of St. Gregory as indeed it is for so great a Doctour and Prelate to spend his time in gathering together private storyes of obscure and petty Relaters This will set this Doctrin an hundred years later and into an age one of the least cultivated since the beginning of the Church of God Nor is it true that this carries after it a practise testified by Foundations Prayers Masses Almes c. For all these were in the Church before this Doctrin as may appear in Antiquity The Church of Afrik made a Canon to force the laity to contribute to Prayers for the dead about Saint Austins time who yet testifies that the question whether Souls were deliver'd out of Purgatory before the day of Judgment had not yet been moved Now Foundations contradict this Doctrin rather then promote it For he that makes a Foundation intends it without limit of time and so must imagin the Soul needs the assistance of that charity so long which would much cool the devotion you pretend and we see practis'd before our eyes to get Masses enow in a morning to send a Soul to Heaven to dinner Shew me but one ancient Instance where two or three thousand Masses have been by Legacy procur'd to be said the very next morning after the Testator's departure and little or nothing after that morning and I will ingenuously confess it the best argument you have produc'd in the whole managing of your cause After the Author of the Dialogue there was no more news of this opinion till Odilo a Monk of Cluny's time who being a kind of a Generall of many Monasteries dilated this Doctrin in them upon a goodly ground to build a matter of Faith on to wit the report of a French Pilgrim who sayd he had met with an Hermite I think a French man who perswaded himself he had Visions of Souls being deliver'd out of Purgatory by the Prayers of the Monks of Cluny Upon this ground the good Saint recommended the devotion for the dead warmly to his subjects and they to the people who frequented their Monasteries and hence this Doctrin came to be common where his order was in esteem And so being a pious credulity stay'd about one hundred years till the School began Which finding it very common easily favour'd it with such reasons and explications as they thought fit though not universally for some are found to have contradicted it and so it was exalted to a probable opinion In which state the Council of Florence found it and practis'd it giving communion 'to the Greeks who as is before declar'd left it out of their confession after the Latins had put it in theirs And in this quality it persever'd till my book de medio statu was turn'd into English Then it began first to be a matter of faith by the power of the great letters
you put in the Edition of the Bull of Benedictus and the Council of Florence For before that even the consorts of your Tenet held it no otherwise then for the common opinion of Divines LAST DIVISION Containing an Answer from Section the eighteenth to Section the two and twentieth The Catholick Rule of Faith defended The Vindicators weakness in making the unlearned Judges of Controversy His frequently mis-representing my Doctrin and manifold failings in his new attempts from the Bull and Council YOur eighteenth Section you begin with saying my Doctrin which is a close adhering to Tradition is the way to make fools stray You follow still the same truantly humour of using words without looking into the sence For if Tradition signify the delivery of the Doctrin preach't and taught by our forefathers your proposition signifies that to follow what we are taught by our forefathers is the way to make fools go astray Neither do I deny but that you speak consequently if first you make the Popes veracity the veracity of the whole Church and that all the Church but he can err and consequently he may correct the Doctrin which was believ'd by the Church in the age immediatly going before him then 't is true that to prefer the Belief of the former age before the Popes word will lead fools astray But for my part I desire to be one of those fools and to go so astray You run on in a full careere and tell us of the Authority of the Church and Councils in common and that things settled by them must not be brought in question not seeing because you will not that what the Church believ'd in the last Age is more the Church's decree then what she speaks either by Pope or Council unless she speaks the same that she believed the last Age and so you continue your discoursing with words not taking their meaning along with you In your nineteenth Section you come so home as to judge and condemn me by mine own Doctrin a great shame to me I confess if you make it good You argue therefore what have we seen but Masses Dirges Almes c. so far is almost true but why did you not put in by which in express terms we pray'd for the welfare of the Souls at the day of the General Judgment but you had reason to leave that out for it would have set a shrewd puzzell in your Argument We have heard constantly say you that Souls are deliver'd out of Purgatory by these powerfull helps before the day of Judgment In this part you have mended your former fault for there you sayd too little to serve your purpose if you had prov'd all you said and here you say more then can be prov'd to serve your purpose do you mean that your way was preach't constantly that is as a certain and establisht Doctrin of faith or that for a long time they preacht it as a probable truth or without engaging at all into the degree of its assuredness but perhaps you proceed more nicely since you onely said you heard it constantly not that it was preach'd constantly For to say a thing constantly imports that the speaker teaches it to be certain and it is not enough if for a long time he tells you it is likely to be so Now so far as concerns the delivery of Souls from Purgatory by the potent means you speak of was ever constantly taught but that the delivery should be made before the day of Judgment was taught but as a pious opinion if the Preacher understood the sence of the Doctours of the Schools themselves who add no such qualification because their principles being either Authority or Reason they find in Authority neither Fathers nor Councils nor Popes express in the point and Reasons much less favourable and to say the truth though they are apt enough to dispute whether there be a God a Trinity an Incarnation c. Yet I do not remember to have heard of any one who hath treated of his proposition so directly as to dispute it pro and con Which being so what certainty can we expect a Preacher should fix upon this Doctrin But to declare what I think those whom you appeal to will answer I beleeve it is that they never reflected to make any difference of the things the Preachers deliver'd them and much less upon the degrees of assent they gave to this or that point and as far as they can tell they gave the same assent to any place of Scripture the Preacher explicated as they did to this point unless some particular occasion put them in mind to qualify one and not the other But as they found by experience in other things that if any rub came to make them doubt of any thing a Preacher sayd then first they began to consider on what grounds they were bound to believe the point proposed so they have done in this and of those who have spent any competent time in examining both sides many have discover'd your grounds unsafe to build any certainty on and some confest them too weak to sustain even so much as a probability What the Gentleman whose letter you cite and with some imprudent circumstances will say why he was carryed away with your Arguments I know not but had he read my Books as much as I esteem his learning and vertue he would surely have met with full answers to your very objections which they who read yours cannot do nor so much as hear of the Arguments I use to maintain my opinion you on set purpose concealing them and proposing in their stead as my whole grounds a discourse made to a meer Philosopher or Heathen where the method of a regular writer oblig'd me to abstract from Revelation But that this answer I set down is for the greatest part of those that follow this opinion a true one is not onely manifest to all that reflect upon what passeth within them on the like occasions but experience hath taught me it in every country where I have conversed since the publishing this Doctrin In all which I have found divers who upon hearing of it acknowledg'd that before they had in their hearts a certain dislike of your opinion but they knew not why it having a kind of an uncouth semblance yet they could not pitch upon any thing to say solidly against it One passage I will intreat your patience to let me tell you Before I printed it I communicated this point to one of the greatest Divines of Christendome and confest to be so He presently reply'd it was against the Council of Florence and went immediately to his Chamber and fetcht down the Council when we had a little debated the text and he saw it did not reach home he shut up the Book with these words Look to it you will draw all the Regulars upon your back meaning all such of them as found great profit by perswading the people they should procure a sudden
see a necessary connexion with the deliver'd Faith if you say so you desert your vertue of prophesying and come over to our School which you so abominate as rational and faithless yet this experience teaches us is the way that Popes and Councils use to take If you say their consulting must not hold till they see it by reason then tell me what Oedipus or Geometrician can guess or fix the terminating line of counsell prerequisite These points a Scholar would have setled You distinguish nothing but jumble all your Bells together into a confused noise and deafen more then instruct your Hearers Now 't is to much purpose to talk of the force of the word Anathema whilest you have not settled a matter in which the Church hath a power to impose it What an inconsiderate manner of arguing is this You say Catholiks require no other assurance of their Faith then upon this firm foundation that our holy Mother the Church is their infallible directress The proposition is the very Tenet we mainly advance and stick to Go but consequently to this and we shall have no quarrell You add another ground that the Councils her mouth are the unerring deliverers of truth This also is very true and never deny'd by us But there rises a great question whether Councils be perpetually and in all cases the mouth of the Church look upon Cariolanus his abridgment of the Councils and read his division of General Councils into approbata and reprobata and ex parte approbata and ex parte improbata and see how ignorantly you go to work even in the grounds of your own eminent learned men who will oppose you peradventure more then I and yet you preach Christian Religion is a mockery if this be taken away I desire not to look into particulars unless you force me to it For I cannot discover even your Errours without discovering too the vanity of that School which you nickname the Church and confidently take upon you to be one of her Masters I doubt not if you attentively consider your eminent Scholars you will find many of them speak indeed gloriously of Councils but unless I be strangely deceiv'd they give them less of inward and reall Authority then I while they make them in effect but Cyphers to the Pope without whom they signify nothing though added perhaps to him they increase his signification yet surely not very much since in many of those Masters opinion he alone is infallible and I think in every ones opinion all together are not much more Whereas the Doctrin I follow gives them an absolute Inerrancy in testifying receiv'd truths which is clearly sufficient to conserve and propagate the Faith of the Church I beleeve you mistake the meaning of that grave and worthy Person whom without any ground at all for your conceit you call my Scholar since he seriously protests he never gave his mind that way nor ever read over any considerable part of my Books nor particularly this of the Middle State his true meaning I conceive is we may know when Councils and Consistory's apply themselves right by examining not Tradition it self for that's evident in the sence of the Faithfull but their proceedings by Tradition whether they be conformable to it Which is not onely a maintainable but excellent truth And by this method the Divines of those dayes examin'd the Doctrin of John 22. For Tradition is the Law of Christ planted in the hearts of all Christians not to be examin'd it being to be read fair written there by their externall words and conversations Now if a Pope or Council be supposed to delver Doctrin against this 't is past darkness and examining since all the Christian world cannot choose but resent it and know it to be against their Faith and Judgment So that you plainly misunderstand the meaning of Tradition which is no hidden thing but the publick and settled belief of the Christian world You will say 't is impossible a Pope or Council should proceed so grosly I wish there were no examples of it But the truth is if instead of a Pope consider'd onely personally you take him as presiding in his Church and Seat and joyn'd with it which is a kind of more then a Provinciall Council but much more if you take a General Council without extraordinary violence without or within both mainly visible this cannot happen and so they have infallibility in attesting the received Doctrins most absolutely sufficient to secure the Church against being mis-led by them By the same Errour you look to determin Faith by Inquest not knowing it cannot be unknown in a Catholick Country to them that live there See the story of Luther Were men doubtfull of their Faith before he and his fellows in iniquity set themselves to snarl at it Therefore Inquest may be made how to answer their Argumments but not to understand what the Church held before opposition rose How much mistaken is all your discourse about the proceeding to higher Tribunals after so great diligence of scrutiny There is no such thing as scrutiny necessary to find out Faith nor ever was the Church to seek her Faith Since she once receiv'd it from Jesus Christ she never lost it and so is to look into it not for it If any thing be to be look for it is not faith it may be some Theologicall Verity not faith Your discourse therefore is wholly out of the way No wonder then you find your self at a loss and cry out like a blind man for a hand to guide you since instead of Christs faith you look for a new faith One would have it an Article of our Christian faith that his Order is a true Religious Order Another that one hang'd for treason is a true Martyr others seek some private revelation that brings in profit to be canoniz'd for faith and other such fine questions to be put in the Creeds of the Church and if it be not yeelded there 's a power in the Church to impose such beliefs upon men presently the denying Doctrin is an Exterminating School and pulls up by the roots all the foundations of Christian Religion Nor will there want some to say that though these things be true they are not to be published but Catholicks are to be left in ignorance of such tender points But will not the mischief by degrees grow intolerable if once it should come to that height that the People by a preoccupated credence be apt to be stirr'd seditiously against their naturall and lawfull Governour by any surreptitious Rescript fetch't from beyond Sea freshly seal'd with the new stamp of faith and to believe all Christianity is rain'd if such a Rescript nay the Interpretation of the procurers be any way doubted of O strange unhappy times You press farther that according to me the Church hath de facto erred in the Bull and Council so long treated of What a strange boldness is this you bring an Interpretation
the words he speaks You will say you scorn these Grammatical Lectures and I believe you but such pride hath brought you to call the principall Fathers of the Church and her best Divines Imps of Hell for all these say the same I do in this point You must have some miscreants to accompany your Imps Therefore you would have a miscreant teach that a moderate affection to a Concubine is a less crime then an immoderate love to a Wife and because this latter is no breach of Gods Commandments as your Discourse imports therefore he must be a miscreant that should say it O what want had Solomon of such a Ghostly Father to tell him that to love his Wives immoderately was no breach of the Commandments And that to love them so as out of that love to fill Hierusalem with Idols and Idolatrous Worship was not far worse then a moderate or rather an ordinary for none is moderate none but is sinful enough love of a Concubine Surely you have quite forgotten that excellent sentence of our Saviour He that hates not his Wife can be none of his Disciple or as it is expres't in another place he that loveth his Wife more then him For I have heard say that by these words is signified as much as he that loves his Wife immoderately Surely he was no miscreant that preach't to men to loavo their Wives if they would not let theâ— serve God quietly After this in your 22 Sect. you arm up your Fathers and set St. Austin in front to make a great shew with his name For in his words nothing is to be found for your purpose And indeed it is an imprudence to cite him for your opinion who professes expresly ad Dulcit quaest. 1. the question had not yet been handled before his time but might hereafter but that he knew not whether side would prove true Yet you will give him a paper in his hand to hold forth though it contains nothing but the profession of your Adversary And â—ot to take notice of the doubtfulness of the two latter Books you cite there is nothing in them that your Adbersary will deny but has already explicated them But if you fail in Saint Austin you will help it out by Origen who sayes too much for you being known to speak heretically when he uses those phrases you cite out of him For his opinion was that Purgatory began after the day of Judgment and the sentence given by Christ according to which some were to be longer some shorter in torments but all to be freed at last And this he expresses by the words you cite and you should have brought some words by which it might appear he spake of Souls before the day of Judgment But you have a salve against this saying he wrote this before he was an Heretick By which it is clear you speak at randome for he fell not to be an Heretick by a set occasion as some others did but as long as he liv'd was accounted a great Doctor of the Church and his Heresies not discover'd untill after his death and even then defended to be none of his but to have been foysted in by Hereticks Your next Author is St. Gregory of Nyssa a man of very great worth and auâ—hority of whom Petavius that famous Jesuit sayes that some in his time more piously then either truly or wisely striv'd to explicate some places of his which did savour of Origenism But Germanus Bishop of Constantinople ancienter then Photius defends this great man yet not without admitting the Origenists had mingled some sentences of their own here and there in his works Now this Germanus his Book is not extant and therefore such places as use the Origenists phrases are suspected ones Specially the Book you cite is excepted against Possevinus rejects it absolutely others object against it that 't is corrupted by the Origenists in divers other points so that it is neither certain the book you cite is his nor if it be that it can carry authority where the phrase is Origenical as this word Ignis Purgatorius is and avoided much by Greek Fathers because it is so notorious in Origen I have not the Book and so I cannot speak expresly to the words In conclusion you make the Judgment of the Ages before those strange Revelations which Gregorius Dialogus as the Greeks call him and say him to be the Pope whose successour was Zacharias who lived about the midst of the eighth Age hath left us or rather Odilo who lived about six hundred years agoe out of three Fathers whereof one sayes nothing special for your Doctrin and is certainly against it The second was notoriously an Heretick and the words you cite pertinent to the explication of his Heresy The third's words are certainly corrupted by the followers of the second and the Book out of which you cite the place rejected by learned Catholicks yet this you call the consent of Fathers and the apprehension of those ages to which I appeal But now comes such an impiety as should make a Christian sink for shame to wit that I say Virgils Purgatory is more rational then yours But what would you have me do I did not know that all the light of Christianity consisted in certain private Revelations quarum nox conscia sola est Now that you have told me so I will mend as soon as I shall believe you mean while till then I may conceive a man of wit may conjecture or feign likelier thing then we find in such visions as go generally accompany'd with some circumstance against the nature of Christian life Nor do I fear your exposition of the Councils will stand canonised in Christian Creeds however you assume the confidence to nickname such shallow conceits of your own Catholick Faith all over your Book You follow the same matter by citing places out of the publick Liturgies of which all but one are purely indifferent to both parties even in the very out side of the words and that one easily explicable in a sence consistent with mine You brave me to find out a new construction of Ante diem rationis and I tell you I have found one of which I never heard before and 't is in your book and in this very place pag. 83. wherein striving to apply that excellent Hymn to your purpose you mistake it I think as much as 't is possible First you make the Priest speak in the person of the dead whereas the whole style of the Hymn runs clearly in the person of him that prayes and in the singular Quid sum miser tunc dicturus c. supplicanti parce Deus Contremisco mei finis With which person suit these words best that of the dead or of the Priest Secondly your Argument must suppose him to pray for delivery from Purgatory let 's see how you hit it in this Ne perenni cremer igne can these words agree with Purgatory Thirdly you bring this
I ever said the People should have it The same I conceive hath ever been in the Church in a certain degree Of which there are manifest signs in Saint Denys the Areopagite Saint Basil Saint Gregory Nazianzen and others as also in the Latin Church specially in Saint Austin Boetius Saint Auselm and others But I conceive demonstration will be both in its matter and in Divines much more diffus'd then it is yet So that in the Church will ever march together Science and Faith though in diverse measures Some other little nibblings at my Doctrin or rather at little bits of it snatcht from the Context as your custom is because taken entire 't is too difficult for your teeth interlace your jollity in these your Sections of mirth and raillery As that of a dispossest Governour which you deform in the worst manner you can by leaving out the Antecedents and Consequents which would have let you see that my discourse proceeds in the case that onely his own private interest or particular good be oppos'd and counter-ballanc't to the publike not if the publick good be for his restorement For then my whole Book favours him Wherefore to make my Doctrin invidious against the Person you mean you must first subsume that his re-entry is against the common good otherwise I say nothing against him but all for him and if you subsume this I believe you will deserve no great thanks for your officious mistake but approve your self his greatest enemy Next you are hugely troubled that in Rushworth's Dialogues which you say are mine I make the letter of the Scripture so uncertain And this objection I may conceive you borrow'd from Doctor Hammond whose Book in which he has something against me and as I am told this very passage was extant long before yours and I doubt not but you read very diligently whatever opposes me Unless perhaps good wits jump't in their observations which also may be likely for you agree much taken as Scholars in your method of seeking for Truth I must profess therefore to answer both in one that you are two of the prettiest men that ever I met with and most hard to please with reason Neither of you can endure I should attempt profess certainty and evidence in things capable of it that is in matters scientifical nor yet profess uncertainty in matters not capable of certitude as in our present point about the delivery of words by way of transcriptions of Copists or Scriveners relying upon their own human diligence which 't is impossible to secure against over-sight besides divers other miscarriages which the Fathers as well as I complain the Letter of the Scripture was lyable to But to satisfie your tender Conscience and other Catholikes like yours I profess that that place speaks of the Letter of Scripture as left to multitudes of human contingencies and imbecillities and as taken abstractedly from and unassisted by Tradition or the Churches living voice and practice to guide securely the delivery of it downwards But I ever profess that this guidance of Tradition did efficaciously preserve the Letter untainted in all that was coincident with Christian Tradition that is in all points necessary to mankinds salvation and not onely so but so far the rest of the Scripture's Letter too that nothing evidently contrary to the doctrin of Tradition or Christian Faith could light into it So that Catholiks may with all security accept it and hold to it And yet notwithstanding the aid of tradition formerly above 2000 faults were corrected in it by our late Pope's since the beginning of the Council of Trent and more still remain to be a mended as the Preface to the same Bible grants nor is any person living able to stint us the ultimate compleating of the true copy Thus much to you How I can satisfy Doctor Hammond who holds Tradition onely then when he can serve his turn of it and otherwhiles impugns it by what way in his grounds he can be certain of one little of it I know not and therefore must leave him to the Fruits of his Labour in impugning Tradition that is to a perfect uncertainty of any thing that can concern his Faith In a word to a Catholik my position onely signifies that we are beholding to the living voyce of the Church even for any Certainty of the true Copy of the Scripture which why it deserves more exception that Saint Austin's noted saying of Evangelio non crederem c. I should be glad to learn But you think Rushworth has made too long a Catalogue of uncertainties To which I answer that if you please to scan the occasions of that long Catalogue and then tell us how many we may safely abate I shall in his behalf remain very much oblig'd to you If not 't is plain you do not know we can abate any or that his Catalogue is longer then it should be in his case After this you give a wipe at my denying the Popes personall Infallibility and as for the point you well know 't is held but a probable opinion and that many learned Authors hold the same opinion with me As for my censuring it I shall hope the reasons given for it in Tabulae Suffragiales will stand to justify me till something of greater force than clamour appears to overthrow them that is till it can be shown less than Archi-hereticall to say that an opinion which confessedly is no more but probable can be a sufficient ground to build Christian Faith upon Your next piece of Gallantry is your old and oft repeated clamour of my denying the Infallibility of Councils which forces me to lay open to the world how far your Malice is above your Conscience in writing against me To do which I offer the Reader those few notes First that you onely cite here three words non est impossible to prove confusedly that I deny all Authority of Councils whereas in my Tab. suffrag. p. 277. the place where it is found which had you quoted the Reader might have rectify'd himself it follows immediately ut Concilium tentet hoc facere tentando in errorem incidat It is not impossible a Council should attempt This and so err Now what this word This relates to is to be seen in the Paragraph immediately foregoing to wit to the making new Articles of Faith so that I put Councils errable onely in such a matter that is in creating us a new Faith you by maiming purposely my words make me hold them to have no Authority in any thing Can this consist with honesty or fair dealing Next is to be noted that in the same Discourse there which gives account of my Doctrin professedly concerning Councils I maintain in express terms that Councils are of Infallible Authority in declaring Articles of Faith that the Pope declaring ex cathedra concerning a matter of Faith is infallible and that the same is to be said of Generall and even Provinciall