A DEFENCE OF THE CONFUTER OF BELLARMIN's Second Note of the Church ANTIQUITY AGAINST THE CAVILS of the ADVISER IMPRIMATUR May 31. 1687. HEN. MAVRICE LONDON Printed for Ric. Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Church-yard MDCLXXXVII A Defence of the Confuter of Bellarmin's Second Note of the Church Antiquity c. I Apprehend by this Author's Genius that 't is much easier for some Men to write Farce than Controversy And tho I cannot say whether or no any man ever undertook the Confutation of Bellarmin over a Pot as our Author elegantly begins his Advice yet he seems to me by his ludicrous Behaviour to have engaged in his Defence in that sort of humour He may think it Vanity if he pleases in the Reverend and Learned Author of the Piece he attaques to assail the Roman Champion himself yet even I who never enter'd the Field of Controversy before shall presume to engage with such a Smatterer in the Noble Science as his Second And yet immediately after this fit of Rhetorick he do's not pretend that the Pot-qualifications are the case of him who has undertaken to answer Bellarmin ' s Marks of the Church No Why then do's he commence his Advice with such a Suggestion Did he think fit to publish to the World that he had a mind to be impertinent An humour especially in Conjunction with Buffoonry in serious Affairs I would advise him against for the future if the powerful Influence of an ill habit has not totally over-rul'd his Liberty in the matter And thus after the witty Introduction to his little good Will little enough I dare say we come now to receive the Advice of this grave controversial Counsellor in the Case depending First Then he pretends for I 'le relate his Advice in short-hand as much as I can till I find something worth the transcribing that Bellarmin never meant what his Adversary undertakes to prove that the Plea of bare Antiquity is proper to the Church No! but this Gentleman must own that he did when I have told him only that by bare Antiquity his Adversary understands Antiquity abstracted from the Consideration of Truth those Ancient Truths deliver'd in the Scriptures Now I presume he will not say that Bellarmin any where expresly in his Book of Notes muchless in this Chapter makes the consent of Doctrines with the written Word which is not bare but true Antiquity a Note of the Church tho indeed such is the force of Truth he can hardly keep off of that Argument In his ninth Chapter he makes agreement in Doctrine with the Ancient Church a sixth Note of the Church Ancient he farther explains by Apostolic telling us likewise out of Tertullian that a Church is so call'd as for other Reasons so for her conspiring with the Apostles in their Doctrines and yet after all most pitifully slides off to quite another thing as will appear to any one who shall examine that Chapter But it may be almost worth a man's while to read the Adviser's Comment upon Bellarmin's Text tho I hate transcribing He says indeed says my Author that whoever at this time will find out the Catholick Church profess'd in the Creed amongst so many pretenders must not apply himself to any upstart Congregation which was never visible in the World but of late years but to such a Church which has been of as long standing as ever since Christ and the Apostles days and consequently such a Church to which Antiquity of necessity at this time belongs This Bellarmin asserts Where I observe First that by this last Expression he Represents his own flourishing Gloss as Bellarmin's Words which they are not a thing that looks a little towards a design of putting a trick upon his Readers 2ly That we are here shrewdly directed to find out the Catholick Church by finding out a particular to which we must stick without farther enquiry 3ly That this Man passes a genere ad genus from Antiquity to Visibility which the better Logick of his Master Bellarmin would not probably have suffer'd him to have done And lastly after all that he unluckily says the same thing in substance with what he disproves in his Adversary for what do's all his Gloss amount to but to this That he who would find out the true Church must overlook all such as boast not of Antiquity at all adventures without any regard had to the true Antiquity of their Doctrines or any thing else they pretend to and pitch upon that without any more ado which has been of as long standing of as long standing barely without any farther respect as ever since Christ and the Apostles days And what is such a standing as this but bare Antiquity Unless he can prove a necessary entail of Truth upon a long Succession which all the World can never do And therefore hoping he may be a little more happy in following than in giving Advice I present him with his own and the second he gives That when he would confute his Adversary he say not the same thing that he do's and withal desire him to attend for the future more diligently to the Sense than to the Expression of a Period But wherein do's the Confuter of Bellarmin thus unluckily jump with him Why in explicating and proving the same Antiquity to be a Note of the Church which Bellarmin affirms to be such To which I answer first that if Bellarmin by Antiquity meant such as his Confuter explains p. 45. as is pretended then he understood by that word an agreement in Doctrine with Christ and his Apostles for so 't is plain his Adversary meant but we have shown before that that could not be Bellarmin's Intention 2ly That if the Cardinals Discourse upon this Note do's really tend to prove not Antiquity but as the Confuter compendiously distinguishes Priority to belong to the Church as it seems to do then 't is demonstrable to me that he presently grew weary of his Note which he could not manage without blending and confounding it with another more proper and pertinent to his business tho besides his design The third Inconsistency which he thinks he has found in the Confuter of Bellarmin is this That having prov'd Antiquity not to be a proper Note of the Church because it did not always belong to it as a proper Characteristick of a thing ought to do there being a time when the Church was new p. 42. He should nothwistanding in the 45 p. assert that the holy Scriptures are the true Antiquity there being a time when they were new likewise and here he thinks he has undoubtedly caught him But alas his Pen was more nimble than his thoughts were deep If indeed Bellarmin's Adversary in this point had advanc'd this Proposition That Antiquity is a proper Note or inseparable Property of the Scriptures or written Word and had after this undertaken to prove that Antiquity could not be such a Note of the Church because the Church was
Laughter or Indignation of every Reader as he is in Humour when he meets with it for he who would vouchsafe such stuff any other Reply might justly be thought guilty of as great trifling in refuting as he in advancing it His Remarks upon the Confuter's Conclusion are a pure Declamation and I have no great appetite to encounter a School-Boys Exercise He tells us He cannot possibly make sense of what the Confuter says in reference to the Church of England That her Religion by Law established is the true Primitive Christianity for so run his Words and what then Is the Confuter bound to find him in understanding He might have enough to do at that rate I thought he had explain'd himself in the next Page and that very pertinently too by telling him That our Religion is as old as Christ and his Apostles with whom whosoever agrees they are truly ancient Churches tho of no longer standing than yesterday As they that disagree with them are new tho they can run up their Pedigree to the very Apostles and this he farther confirms by Tertullian's Authority Now if the Adviser had had a mind or ability to have spoke pertinently to the matter in hand he should have endeavour'd to have shewn either that Conformity with Primitive and Apostolic Doctrine does not make a Church truly Ancient and Apostolic or that the Doctrines of the Church of Engl. have no such Conformity for if they have 't will be found that Christ and his Apostles have a greater hand in the Constitution of this Church than in that of Rome notwithstanding his trifling harangue to the contrary The World knows very well he tells us when this Church was first establish'd by Law and so does the World know too when Christianity was first seated in the Throne and protected by the secular arm and yet I believe the Christians of those days thought no worse of their Religion for that nor I believe would the Adviser think worse of his if the Laws were on its side But where this Church was before 't was establish'd by Law that is not so easie to tell Why truly in my mind 't was much in the same state with the Jewish Church under the Dominion of Pharoah in Aegypt the one being born down and enslaved by a Temporal Tyranny the other by both a Temporal and Spiritual Usurpation till God was pleased as to rescue the one so the other too out of the House of Bondage After this he whissles and plays about the separation and novelty of this Church To which I shall only return That if he pleases to be but so kind to himself and to us as to lay aside the Buffoon and Declamator for a while and condescend for once to speak to the purpose upon that or any other subject he needs not fear a suitable reply from some or other In the last place he is for finding out the Confuter some work in Relation to the proof of our adequate belief of the Creed and in the same sense in which it was taught by the Apostles and professed by the Primitive Church No man who knows the Reverend and Learned Confuter can doubt of his Abilities for a much harder Task than what the Adviser would set him but I presume he knows how to dispose of his time much better than to lay it out in refuting the Suggestions of every incompetent Adversary and since he has thought fit to fling out this Surmise about the belief of the Church of England in my Apprehension 't would much more become him to make it out in the first place and then perhaps he may hear of the Confuter if he chances to write any thing worth his Confutation He tells us in one place of the forwardness of the beardless Divines of the Church of England I must confess I know not whether the Down is still upon his own Chin or no but if not I must needs tell him that for ought I find in his friendly half Sheet of Paper the Beard contibutes no more to the making of the Divine than it do's to the making of the Philosopher and therefore I shall conclude with one piece of Advice to him and that which may do him more true Service than all he has given the Confuter can ever do him and that is That if it be really his hard fate not to be able to write more to the purpose than what he has hitherto done he would give over writing in this kind and for the future follow the bent of his Genius which seems to lead him rather to the Comical Humour of the Stage than into the Field of Controversy FINIS
of them then 4thly Were there no other method for Errors to spread in the Church than by what the Adviser seems to Dream of by appearing in open Contradiction and Defiance to the true Church condemning its Doctrine and opposing the Articles of her Faith as Erroneous and Heretical as he tragically expresses it then his inference might probably hold good unless we will suppose such Errors to have appear'd in a very dark and supine Age indeed and even in a more cautious 't is possible Records might be lost but alas since they usally grow up and advance after a quite different manner pedetentim by little and little as Fisher Bishop of Rochester owns the Doctrine of Purgatory did or it may be under the Colour of greater Piety and Devotion or the like as the Doctrines of Image and Saint-worship and thereby draw in the Pastors of the Church themselves for their Maintainers and Abetters his Argumentation falls to the Ground 5thly He ought to distinguish betwixt such Errors as immediately confront the prime Foundations of the Christian Faith and that Apostasy the Spirit hath foretold should be brought in by such as speak lies in Hypocrisy 1 Tim. 4. 1 2. of the first sort were the early Heresies concerning the Person of our Saviour His Divinity and Humanity The Resurrection of the Body and the like such as these indeed did not nor cannot well be suppos'd to appear in the Church without a mark upon the time of their rise their Authors and open Embracers The other is a mystery of Iniquity and may be advanc'd by specious and almost imperceptible methods as is hinted above without any great stir or din about them 6thly To the single Instance of the Confuter concerning an acknowledg'd change the rise whereof they themselves cannot account for the half Communion I shall add two more the Doctrines of Purgatory and Indulgences both own'd by Fisher Bishop of Rochester and Cardinal Cajetan to be of uncertain Original thereby acknowledging them not to be of the number of those Ancient Truths we contend for and yet are not able to tell who first brought them in To his two Instances of Alteration in Religion the Papal Authority and the worship of Images which we can account for according to the Adviser's Directions I add one more The great Burning Article of Transubstantiation whose Rise Progress and Opposers they have lately been told of See Disc against Transubst remitting the Adviser to Polydore Virgil for farther Instruction in this matter if he desires it After all which I must farther presume briefly to remind him of the several new Definitions of the Trent Council and of others which from Doctrines formerly taught sprang up presently in that prolifick Soil of Religion into Articles of Faith and sure 't is a considerable Alteration in Religion to make the belief of Points necessary to Salvation which were not so before And yet I hope we are able to name the who the where and the when of those Alterations But Lastly I must tell the Adviser that tho out of complaisance to him and his Betters I have so far enlarg'd upon this Argument yet as stated by himself with reference to the publick Appearance of Corruptions 't is answer'd in one word by the same curt Ratiocination as it was before when consider'd with Relation to their first rise only For tho we could give no account of the open Maintainers Embracers and Abetters nor of the Opposers of any Doctrine or Practice prevailing in the present Church of Rome yet if we are able to demonstrate that such Doctrine or Practice manifestly differs from what was at first establish'd in the Church by Christ and his Apostles or going yet farther can show out of unquestionable Records that no such thing as for instance the present Papal Authority was ever own'd in the Church for such a time 600 years for example do's it not inevitably follow That a change however has been made both from the true Antiquity the Scriptures and the subordinate Antiquity of so many Centuries of the Church tho we could not name the place where the time when and the Persons by whom such Corruptions were publickly maintained and abetted I can scarce for my own part believe that men are in earnest when they oppose such a wretched piece of Sophistry to the unanswerable argument of matter of Fact and the plainest experience in the World. We come now to his Remark upon the Confuter's instance of Communion in one kind and his advice to him here is to prove in his next That a diversity of practise is an alteration in Religion and especially of such a practise which Christ left indifferent in respect of the Laity and without any positive command of their receiving it in both kinds But since he has not thought fit to prove this at all which was his proper province in this place unless by two or three frivolous Citations of which afterwards I shall still take the contrary for granted being well assured first That he can show no positive command to the Clergy to receive it in both kinds which does not equally include the Laiety and secondly That they being equally interested with the Clergy in the benefits that accrue to mankind from the effusion of our Saviour's Blood and the Sacrament of the Eucharist being instituted in Commemoration of this effusion of his Blood as well as of the breaking of his Body the drinking of the Cup as well as the eating of the Bread becomes as necessary a part of this Sacrament in relation to the Laiety as it is to the Clergy they who equally partake of the benefits of both being equally concern'd in the Commemoration of both And a thousand years constant practice accordingly is a good exposition of our Saviour's Design in the institution and can then the refusing the Cup to the Laiety be called a diversity of Practice only of administring it to them Or is the abolishing of a practice of such Divine Authority and of so long a continuance in the Universal Church in relation to such Myriads of People only a differing modus of exercising it A familiar Instance will illustrate the matter though it seems sufficiently to discover it self by its own natural absurdity Suppose then some friend of the Advisers should by his last Will and Testament leave so much Beer and so much Bread to be distributed every Week for instance to the Poor of the Parish where he had lived and the Adviser his Executor should for a long time take care to have both the Beer and the Bread faithfully distributed according to the Testator's Will but yet at last for some private reason of his own should deprive them of their portion of Beer and confine them to Bread only does he imagine he could sham off the Wotld and the Poor People concern'd with this piece of Sophistry That what he did was only a diversity of Practice in fulfilling the Will of the Deceased