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
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
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.
G. D. My Noblest Lord and most honoured Friend MY unsteady abode in the town and frequent suddain excursions out of it of late have cast me so far behinde-hand with your Lordship not onely for what civility requireth of me but for what duty bindeth me unto as I was grown to a belief that I could make no other amends for my long silence but by coming on purpose to Sherburn to you to excuse it And therefore out of an ill bashfulness I forbore acknowledging my fault by Letter referring that till I was in state to repair it by mine own personal attendance But that being not likely to fall out so soon I being to go to morrow to my Mothers and thence to my own house for some weekes and I having lately received a picture from my Lord Russel with command to send it as soon as I could to your Lordship I durst not make that a prisoner till I got liberty my selfe to wait upon you By which means I am engaged without being able to defer it any longer to give you humble thanks for your letter of the second of November and to crave your pardon that I came thus late to doe it So sudden and distracted an houre as I have now to write in would deterre me from offering at any return to so obliging and judicious a Letter till I had a greater freedom both of time and thoughts But I can never be taken unprovided for the first part my sincere affection to your Lordship and sence of your favours ever outweighing any other humane object that may busie my mind for the second of answering your judicious objections I shall confide more for the solution of them in your owne calme and impartiall reflections upon them then in ought I shall be able to reply Therefore had I never so much time I would for this intent imploy it onely in reducing the matters into your remembrance and intreating you to commit the appearances on both sides fairly one against another into the balances and let your owne Reason hold the Scale which I must acknowledge with excesse of joy to be the strongest and most sincere that I know in any man I should begin the performance of this task with complaining to your Lordship in the Fathers behalfe and representing their grievances to your Lordship that you are so rigorous to them as to exclude them from being witnesses in matters of Religion Their humility as well of understanding as of manners will not let them be troubled when they are recused as Judges They never pronounce any thing out of their own breasts unto which they will confine other mens assents But when they tell you plainly what they were taught and what they sinde believed and practised generally throughout the whole Church have they not reason to take it unkindly to be rejected If you will examine their veracity by al those circumstances that are usually considered in taking mens depositions you will find them strong on their side They were right honest men not onely believed but known to be such by all the world They are acknowledged on all hands to be so judicious as would more blemish ones owne judgement then theirs but to cal it in question What they wrote of are matters belonging to their own Art and Trade in which surely they would have great care and attention not to mistake since their own and their posterities eternall salvation depended on it Since then there is will and ability to inform us of truth why should we suspect them What can appeare stronger to us in opposition of what they deliver as witnesses to make us doubt their evidence and consequently to brand them with the imputation of falshood and ignorance flattering our selves that new and clearer lights shine to us and that we know more then they Their private opinions for the establishing of which your Lordship saith you discover too prone a Bias in most of their evidence doe not interest our beliefs in such poynts we are as free as they Nor can I believe so ill of any of them as to make those to passe for currant they would stamp upon them the seale of being taught from hand to hand and of tradition from Christ and his Apostles and of the generall and uncontrouled beliefe and practise of the Church or if they did certainly their numerous adversaries would not have let such foul play scape their note It is true they were ever as your Lordship observes earnest and severe against them who were such as if they had been mild against their Heresies they would never have gained the name of Fathers and Pillars of the Church nor have been reverenced as Saints by succeeding Ages The faction and sectary-passion that your Lordship remarketh even neer the springs of verity belongeth onely to their adversaries their warmth is just and due zeale And for those three Fathers of whom your Lordship sayes that we as well as you may allow them an Expurgator I professe my slender reading never met to my best remembrance with any doctrine of faith in them that I doe not entirely assent unto In the next place my Lord I must cleare what I mean by the infallible Authority from whence the Fathers derived what they were taught which I distinguished against what of themselves they teach Of this later sort are the reflections that they make upon the Scriptures when in their Comments or Sermons they deliver to us what occurred to them in the interpretation of the Texts of it And when they are but barely such I conceive they are to have no more weight with those that have ability to examine them then the reasons wherewith they are accompanied do give them But the other points of Doctrine I take to have been taught by Christ to his Apostles and by them preached through the world and then again delivered to the ensuing age by them that had these points inculcated into their hearts by the Apostles and in this manner with care and every where handed over from age to age which upon particular occasions the Fathers used to sum up and produce against Innovators that would make breaches upon the ancient and generally received Faith of the Church Doctrines thus delivered I conceive to be derived from infallible Authority as well as the Scriptures and withall that it is so safely conveyed to us as we are as deeply obliged to beleeve it as what the Scriptures teach us and in governing the tenor of our Faith to give them much the precedency Because by such Tradition we are fully plainly and practically taught how to understand it and the business and errand of it is to deliver it so unto us whereas the causes of writing the particular Books of Scripture were for other particular ends and not to give us a compleat body of Faith And those Articles of it that they do deliver us are not so plainly expressed that every body can understand them So that if
designe both of that and this It was to express unto you in the generall industriously avoiding particular questions how little certainty or satisfaction I think can be found on either side that shall rely on the Fathers testimonies for a clear determination of our differences I confess I lancht into the Ocean of them with eager hopes of such a discovery and from them at length can draw just as certain conclusions as Sea-men of the Soyle and dimensions of old Brasill The reasons prevalent with me of the uncertainty or rather in my conceipt impossibility of drawing out of the Fathers any such proofs either way in our controversies whereon an inquiring and judicious person should be obliged to relie and acquiesce are so amply and so learnedly set down by Mr. Dailby in Emploides peres that I think little of material or weighty can be said on this Subject that his rare and pierceing observation hath not anticipated But because you will expect from me somewhat more then a bare reverence take in short the chief inducements I will set down as briefly and perspicuously as I can not to insist upon the more frequent ones namely the few writings extant of the Primitive Doctors of the first second and third ages after Christ The many supposititious children that bear the name of Fathers they do not so much as Ore refer the alterations rasures and insertions which through ignorance fraud or maliciousness have defaced maimed and corrupted even those few monuments that remain of venerable antiquity I say not to dwell upon these supposing that in your fair and noble way of ratiocination you will not draw arguments from any but such as are on both sides received for intire and ligitimate pieces differences being rightly reconcileable only by such mediums as both parties consent in those which seem of greatest force with me to invalidate their authority in our questions are these Four First Their contradictions to one another Secondly their variance from themselves Thirdly their repugnances both to Papists and Protestants Fourthly and lastly Their want of ability in many points of our controversies in most of will to decide them Their thwartings of one another both in their writings and votes in Councels will easily appear to any man that shall but with indifferent observation survey their works and this in matters of government of practise and of belief which are the three particulars wherein you advise me out of the Fathers to judge the conformity of your Church or ours to antiquity For their Clashings in point of government to name the superiority of the Sea of Rome will be enough to call to your memory the Epistles of * Epist 53. ad Anatol. 54. ad Martian 55. ad Pulâ—her 59. ad Martian 61. ad Juvenal Leo contrary to the 28. Canon of the Fathers of the Councel of Calcedon who had elevated that of Constantinople to an equal height with the other And likewise those Epistles of Gregory the great 32. ad Maurit 34. Constant L. 4. wherein he enveighs in sharpe terms against whosoever should take upon him the title of Universal Bishop hardly reconcilable with those passages of the Fathers that the Roman Doctors cite for the Popes supremacy and least of all with the practice of Boniface the 3d that soon after assumed the Appellation To name the question of Appeals to Rome will suffice to draw an acknowledgment from you of the great contestations between the Affrican Bishops and the Roman condemning that point which was likewise oppositely decreed by the Synods of Sardis and Calcedon Concil Sard. Can. 3. 2 Concil Calced Can. 9. To name the election of Bishops will be sufficient to recal to your thoughts the direct opposition in that point of the Fathers of the eighth General Councel in their two and twentieth Canon against what * Epist 68. p. 166 Cyprian taught at large to be Apostolick tradition to wit that the people should have their votes also in the choice of Bishops And lastly not to dwell too long upon the least material point you will easily be put in minde how that which is delivered by many and particularly by Epiphanius p. 908. against Arrius for a received sense of the Church touching the preeminence of a Bishop above a Presbyter is flatly impugned by S. Jerom. Ep. ad Occan. 83. p. 614. and others Their clashings about matters of practice are altogether as obvious Call but to minde Victors heats against the Bishops of Asia touching the observance of Easter day Tatianus and Tertullian's tenents concerning marriage against the opinion of so many Fathers as would be endless to name But because the first was declared an Heretick for holding all marriage pollution the last for esteeming the second unlawful I beseech you turn over S. Jerom's Epistles to Furia to Agerachia and weigh some passages in his first book against Jovinian And then tell me not how far he is from making Marriage a Sacrament of the Church but how far his words are from importing the others Heresy Cast but your Eie upon that passage of Origen Cont. Cels l. 5. to p. 479. Where speaking of Angels he saith that in consideration of their divine nature they are sometimes in the Scriptures called gods but not so as that we should be commanded to adore them or worship them with divine honors although they be the conveyers of Gods gifts unto us for al desires al prayers al deprecations al thanksgivings are to be sent up to God the Lord of all things by the high Priest who is above all Angels who is the living word and God Be pleased likewise to consider the 394. pag. of Athanasius in his first Oration against the Arrians where he teaches that God onely is to be worshipped c. And inform me how I shall comprimise the matter betwixt them and those passages of other Fathers alledged by Bellarmine for the worship and invocation of Saints L. de Beatitudine sanctorum c. 13. Where those which he cites out of Justine and Augustine are not like the rest so impertinent but they may stand in some opposition with the two above mentioned Let me but remember you of the opinion that Hereticks ought to be baptized so contradicted by Optatus by Austine and generally by all that impugne the Donatists which was notwithstanding most peremtorily maintained by Tertullian Cyprian Ep. ad Pompeium Firmilian so far as that Cyprian for this cause brake into most notorious heats against Stephanus Bishop of Rome both Stephanus and Cyprian urging tradition for contrary Doctrines and Firmilian against all the Roman Church in general saying in an Epistle of his which is the seventy fifth among Cyprian's works that Rome did not in all things observe the tradition of the Apostles and in vain boasted of their Authority Accord I beseech you that passage of S. Austin Serm. 17. de verbis Apost Injuria est pro Martyre orare with the practise of the Church in that
said Papias ran into either by a flattery to win upon the Jewes or else as you say by the grosse understanding of a Text in the twentieth of the Apocalypse himselfe being one but of a dull and easie spirit which being taken from him by those that reverenced the antiquity and piety of the man was delivered with recommendation to their successors and so took possession of most of the Doctors of the following Ages As for that of Cerinthus I believe with Sextus Senensis that it was a distinct heresie which fed carnall men with hopes of beastly and sensuall delights for it is not likely that a doctrine taken from such an arch Heretick as Cerinthus could have found such reception among the Catholick Fathers and least of all is it probable that Cerinthus could have fathered it upon St. John whom the Apostle is said to have detested so much that Iraeneus lib. 3. cap. 3. advers haeres a chiefe Champion of the Millenaries in that very Chapter where as you say he reckons up the successions of Bishops in divers Churches relates that when St. John was entring into a Bath where Cerinthus washed himselfe St. John no sooner saw him but he stept back crying out Let us forsake the place lest that enemy of truth draw down the house upon our heads a fit Authour for so foule a Doctrine but one very unlikely to be believed acquainted with Christs whispers to St. John But as this enormous part which passes also with most under the name of Millenaries heresie was generally condemned so the other more spirituall of Papias was and is farre from being approved at this day either by your Church or ours much more from finding so firm and entire assent as you will be obliged to give it by your rule of swallowing for unquestionable and infallible what doctrine soever the Fathers deliver as taught unto them and to be the generall sense of the Christian Church in their times And for proofe that it was delivered for such by Papias who gloried in nothing more then in being a carefull collector of the doctrines taught by the Apostles viva voce I referre you nlyto Nicephorus Calistus Hist Eccles lib. 3. c. 20. That Justine Martyr p. 307. delivered it for such a passage in his Dial. with Tryphon will easily testifie where he saith that he and all in all parts orthodox Christians held it and calls them Christians onely in name with many other circumstances of aggravation that denied it It is true as you say hee confesses a little before that some good and honest Christians did not acknowledge it but this may be an argument how carelesse and oftentimes repugnant to themselves some of the Fathers were in their writings or else how little scrupulous of setting to doubtfull doctrines that seale which you account so sacred but it can no way salve him from having taught it with those circumstances which you esteeme the notes of infallibility That Iraeneus took it and taught it to be of tradition from Christ I think is so manifest that it were superfluous to insist upon particular passages in that Authour And lastly to omit Tertullian and others who clearly me thinks imply as much though not in the very terms What can expresse more a doctrine rightly delivered and generally received then Lactantius lib. 7. Institut c. 26. his conclusion of his long discourse upon this subject haec est doctrina sanctorum Prophetarum quam Christiani sequimur hoc est Christiana sapientia Secondly For the necessity of childrens partaking of the Eucharist although the evident practise of the Church for the first six hundred years according to all our records of antiquity might excuse me from proving by any particular instance that some of the Fathers taught the necessity of it for a received tradition yet take this of St. Austin lib. 1. de peccat mer. remiss c. 24. rightly saith he do the Punick Christians call Baptisme by no other names but health and safety nor the Sacraments of Christs body by no other then life unde nisi ex antiquâ ut existimo et Apostolica traditione qua Ecclesiae Christi insitum tenent praeter Baptismum et participationem Dominicae mensae non solum non ad Regnum Dei sed nec ad salutem et vitam aeternam posse quemquam hominum pervenire So direct a passage that I see not how in this point you can avoid the necessity either of retracting your rule of assurance or of incurring an Anathema of the Councel of Trent Sess 21. cap. 4. Can. 4. against any that should hold this very opinion which you finde so delivered and so Majestically sealed by Saint Austin * Tertul. lib. de Idololatria Orig. lib. 7. Cont. Cels Arnob. lib. 6. Lactan. lib. 2. cap. ult Epihan Ep. ad Johan Hierosol inter oper Hier. Epist 60. Ambr. de suga Secul cap. 5. August de fide cap. 7. Thirdly for the use of Images a point likewise of my former letter to which you say that the Fathers do not use the Authority or Tradition of the Church to beat it down I am confident you will confess that affirmation a slip of observation or memory when you shall but cast your Eyes upon those passages of the Fathers for brevity sake quoted onely in the Margin where doubtless in some at least you will finde the interdiction of them so deeply stampt with your supposed great seal of Christianity that if you stick to your own rule it will not be enough to speak indifferently of the matter with the Moderator on your side but you must be as rigid and severe against them as you can imagine any warm brother would be at Edenbourgh for I do not think any Zealot of them all can be more invective in this point then most of those Fathers were many to the abhorring of the very Trade of Imagery but because you do insist somewhat upon justification of the contrary practise at this day in the Romish Church I must beg leave to run over your Allegations and to acquaint you freely how unsatisfied I am in the particulars In the first place you evade the Authority of the Primitive Fathers voucht formerly by me namely of Justine and Tertullian by saying In regard that Idolatry was then fresh in the memory and practice of the world they might well think it dangerous to admit that which the following Governours of the Church might afterwards introduce upon a good ground of raising devotion in the people since things of that nature you say may be convenient at one time and unfit at another And in the next you labour to justifie the use of Images now by saying First that as strong Arguments and as pregnant passages of Scripture are produced for it as formerly against it Secondly by alledging that these times are secure from the danger of Idolatry And lastly by affirming that a great good appeares in them To your infirming of those Ancient
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
Convenient as it had need since under a less pretension then Necessarie it is hard imposing new duties upon the multitude And the step being so easie though so great from necessarie to absolutely necessary 't is no marvaile that all or most of the Pastors should have delivered it for such to their Flockes and applied to it the seale of most Authority with the multitudes Tradition and so they have swallowed that according to the expression for a necessary duty and given it the generall voague of such in the Church which was farre from being truly so in its first and after so long a progresse untraceable originals So likewise of Christs descent into Hell concerning which I suppose all antiquity agrees in the shell of the Article Descendit ad Inferos though Ruffinus in Symb. says it was left out of the Symbole of the Church of Rome few of the Fathers in the kernell or inward sense that is what was understood by Inferi and how and why Christ descended thither Some taking the Inferi to be a part of Hel others understanding it with a little more colour of reason that resting place called Abrahams Bosome and a part of Heaven Some thinking and rightly as I conceive that he descended virtually onely to triumph over the damned Others that locally yea so farre as to preach in hell and convert there such was the extravagant opinion of Clemens of Alexandria Strom. lib. 6. p 639. one of the learnedest of the pack but all agreeing I say in this outside Descendit ad Inferos or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 No marvell that the more grosse and literall sense should be swallowed by the multitude and gain the name though an errour of common reception handed to them from their Forefathers so that it may be collected out of what hath been said that falshoods may creep into the Church either by want of exact fidelity in the Teachers which want may be generall when the collaterall considerations are generall and the poynts themselves not thought so important as others they serve to Or by the frequent misapprehension of the teached the matter often taking possession of them when the manner of the doctrine usually most considerable is either let slip or supplanted or else by leisurable yea and at first insensible mistakes either in Teachers or Learners which notwithstanding in long progress of time grow manifest and vast like the ebbings and flowings of the Sea which at the end of some houres make so great a difference when at the brink no man can perceive how much ground each wave doth gain or lose What then shall those discern that look upon the severall billows at a remote and dazzeling distance Nor can your arguments taken from humane Natures prime appetence of Truth serve to conclude an infallibility in whatsoever shal be imbrac'd for a truth by a vast multitude of men of variety of natures dispositions and interests First because no number whatsoever of Individuals but that which makes up the universall can be considered as other then a part wheras your argument is not colourably applied to lesse then the whole It is the infrustrable appetence of truth an appropriate of humane nature in the generall that you insist upon which is not made vain by any multitudes which how great soever is still but a part entertaining of a falshood Secondly because if we admit of your Argument it will conclude for Heretickes once grown numerous as the Arrians were as well as for the best Catholickes since naturall Appetences are not to be suppos'd more frustrate in the one then in the other * Lactantius Divin Inst lib. 5. cap. 13. An boni nostri qualitas ex populi potius pendebit erroribus quam ex conscientia nostra judicio Dei. Thirdly because though I grant your Argument I am never a whit the surer of truth where I finde many professors of a doctrine held as by tradition since the prime naturall appetence of truth whence you draw your ratiocination is to the knowledge of truth not the teaching of it Now in our question this is as much or more requisite in the deliverers then the other in the receivers since they look no further then the hands they had it from and to hold fast in truth what they presented them for such and for so conveyed by their preceders to them And lastly your argumentation cannot be usefull because you extend it only to prove that multitudes cannot agree together on an untruth to complot it whereas to overthrow your imagined infallibility it is enough that they agree in or to an untruth to believe it Between which two there is so great a difference that I think the first very improbable the other very frequent Nay farther I do conceive the very frequencie and if I may so say aptness in Individuals whether few or many which makes a multitude to be led into errors to result from mans natural affection to truth which is such and so transporting that we are glad to embrace and hug the very shadowes of it And being rarely able in our imperfect and deprest condition here to arive to a solid enjoyment of that prime essence of Intellectual delight we grow fond of the appearances and cleave close to what is like it Mans affection to this transcendent expressing it self after the same manner that it usually doth to the other prime fellow appetence of our Nature good which our soul here below interially and naturally aims at in all its pursuances But the onely true good being too farr elevated for it to ascend to a full enjoyment thereof whilst it beares the clogg of flesh upon it our ardor directs it self to what we think of nearest derivation from it But alas we misse even of that and embrace false shadowes for it easily conceiting any thing the same that 's but clad like unto what we love whilst almost all mankind courts pursues and enjoyes what 's ill yet seldome or never but sub ratione boni And thus by easily believing what we fain would have by a naturall passion both to good and truth we are betraid to a mistaking credulity in both Thus Cousin I have presumed to give you an Answer in my immethodical and unpollisht way to what I finde repugnant to my understanding in the discourse to which you refer'd me for proofe of infallibilitie in all the Traditions of the Church of Rome To discusse that learned and eloquent Discourse throughout in any correspondency to its weight and beauty belongs I consesse to farre greater eminence then I have vanity to aim at And therefore what I have ventured upon hath been onely to shew you that although I am in the highest measure delighted yea even ravished with that excellent piece I am nothing a paid therewith in this particular which may serve for an argument that goodnesse many times delights the soul in spite of truth and so proves a transcendent above it Now that the fallibility