called upon them to speak something against your religion from Scripture or right reason or Universal Tradition you had been secure as a Tortoise in her shell a Cart pressed with sheaves could not have oppressed your cause or person though you had confessed you understood nothing of the mysteries of succession doctrinal or personal For if we can make it appear that our religion was that which Christ and his Apostles taught let the truth suffer what eclipses or prejudices can be supposed let it be hid like the holy fire in the captivity yet what Christ and his Apostles taught us is eternally true and shall by some means or other be conveyed to us even the enemies of truth have been conservators of that truth by which we can confute their errors But if you still ask where it was before Luther I answer it was there where it was after even in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament and I know no warrant for any other religion and if you will expect I should shew any society of Men who professed all the doctrines which are now expressed in the confession of the Church of England I shall tell you it is unreasonable because some of our truths are now brought into our publick confessions that they might be oppos'd against your errors before the occasion of which there was no need of any such confessions till you made many things necessary to be professed which are not lawful to be believed For if we believe your superinduc'd follies we shall do unreasonably unconscionably and wickedly but the questions themselves are so useless abstracting from the accidental necessity which your follies have brought upon us that it had been happy if we had never heard of them more than the Saints and Martyrs did in the first ages of the Church but because your Clergy have invaded the liberty of the Church and multiplied the dangers of damnation and pretend new necessities and have introduc'd new articles and affright the simple upon new pretensions and slight the very institution and the Commands of Christ and of the Apostles and invent new Sacramentals constituting Ceremonies of their own head and promise grace along with the use of them as if they were not Ministers but Lords of the Spirit and teach for doctrines the commandments of men and make void the Commandment of God by their tradition and have made a strange body of Divinity therefore it is necessary that we should immure our Faith by the refusal of such vain and superstitious dreams but our faith was completed at first it is no other than that which was delivered to the Saints and can be no more for ever So that it is a foolish demand to require that we should shew before Luther a systeme of Articles declaring our sense in these questions It was long before they were questions at all and when they were made questions they remained so a long time and when by their several pieces they were determined this part of the Church was oppressed with a violent power and when God gave opportunity then the yoke was broken and this is the whole progress of this affair But if you will still insist upon it then let the matter be put into equal ballances and let them shew any Church whose confession of Faith was such as was obtruded upon you at Trent and if your Religion be Pius Quartus his Creed at Trent then we also have a question to ask and that is Where was your Religion before Trent The Council of Trent determined that the souls departed before the Day of Judgment enjoy the Beatifical Vison It is certain this Article could not be shewn in the Confession of any of the ancient Churches for most of the Fathers were of another opinion But that which is the greatest offence of Christendom is not only that these doctrines which we say are false were yet affirmed but that those things which the Church of God did always reject or held as uncertain should be made Articles of Faith and so become parts of your religion and of these it is that I again ask the question which none of your side shall ever be able to answer for you Where was your Religion before Trent I could instance in many particulars but I shall name one to you which because the thing of it self is of no great consequence it will appear the more unreasonable and intolerable that your Church should adopt it into the things of necessary belief especially since it was only a matter of fact and they took the false part too For in the 21. Sess. Chap. 4. it is affirmed That although the holy Fathers did give the Sacrament of the Eucharist to Infants yet they did it without any necessity of salvation that is they did not believe it necessary to their salvation which is notoriously false and the contrary is marked out with the black-lead of every man almost that reads their Works and yet your Council says this is fine controversiâ credendum to be believed without all controversie and all Christians forbidden to believe or teach otherwise So that here it is made an Article of Faith amongst you that a man shall neither believe his reason nor his eyes and who can shew any confession of Faith in which all the Trent doctrine was professed and enjoyned under pain of damnation and before the Council of Constance the Doctrine touching the Popes power was so new so decried that as Gerson says he hardly should have escaped the note of Heresie that would have said so much as was there defined so that in that Article which now makes a great part of your belief where was your Religion before the Council of Constance and it is notorious that your Council of Constance determined the doctrine of the half-communion with a Non obstante to Christ's institution that is with a defiance to it or a noted observed neglect of it and with a profession it was otherwise in the Primitive Church Where then was your Religion before John Hus and Hierom of Prague's time against whom that Council was convened But by this instance it appears most certainly that your Church cannot shew her confessions immediately after Christ and therefore if we could not shew ours immediately before Luther it were not half so much for since you receded from Christ's Doctrine we might well recede from yours and it matters not who or how many or how long they professed your doctrine if neither Christ nor his Apostles did teach it so that if these Articles constitute your Church your Church was invisible at the first and if ours was invisible afterwards it matters not For yours was invisible in the days of light and ours was invisible in the days of darkness For our Church was always visible in the reflections of Scripture and he that had his eyes of faith and reason might easily have seen these truths all the way which constitute our Church But
his and their imployment so profitable his meekness so incomparable his passions without difference save only where zeal or pity carried him on to worthy and apt expressions a person that never laughed but often wept in a sense of the calamities of others he loved every man and hated no man he gave counsel to the doubtful and instructed the ignorant he bound up the broken hearts and strengthened the feeble knees he relieved the poor and converted the sinners he despised none that came to him for relief and as for those that did not he went to them he took all occasions of mercy that were offered him and went abroad for more he spent his days in Preaching and healing and his nights in Prayers and conversation with God he was obedient to Laws and subject to Princes though he was the Prince of Judaea in right of his Mother and of all the World in right of his Father the People followed him but he made no conventions and when they were made he suffered no tumults when they would have made him a King he withdrew himself when he knew they would put him to death he offered himself he knew mens hearts and conversed secretly and gave answer to their thoughts and prevented their questions he would work a miracle rather than give offence and yet suffer every offence rather than see God his Father dishonored he exactly kept the Law of Moses to which he came to put a period and yet chose to signify his purpose onely by doing acts of mercy upon their Sabbath doing nothing which they should call a breach of a Commandment but healing sick people a charity which themselves would do to beasts and yet they were angry at him for doing it to their brethren In all his life and in all his conversation with his Nation he was innocent as an Angel of light and when by the greatness of his worth and the severity of his doctrine and the charity of his miracles and the noises of the people and his immense fame in all that part of the World and the multitude of his disciples and the authority of his Sermons and his free reproof of their hypocrisie and his discovery of their false doctrines and weak traditions he had branded the reputation of the vicious Rulers of the People and they resolved to put him to death they who had the biggest malice in the World and the weakest accusations were forced to supply their want of articles against him by making truth to be his fault and his office to be his crime and his open confession of what was asked him to be his article of condemnation and yet after all this they could not perswade the competent Judge to condemn him or to find him guilty of any fault and therefore they were forced to threaten him with Caesar's name against whom then they would pretend him to be an enemy though in their charge they neither proved nor indeed laid it against him and yet to whatsoever they objected he made no return but his silence and his innocence were remarkable and evident without labour and reply and needed no more argument than the Sun needs an advocate to prove that he is the brightest star in the firmament Well so it was they crucified him and when they did they did as much put out the eye of heaven as destroy the Son of God for when with an incomparable sweetness and a patience exemplar to all ages of sufferers he endured affronts examinations scorns insolencies of rude ungentle Tradesmen cruel whippings injurious unjust and unreasonable usages from those whom he obliged by all the arts of endearment and offers of the biggest kindness at last he went to death as to the work which God appointed him that he might become the Worlds sacrifice and the great example of holiness and the instance of representing by what way the World was to be made happy even by sufferings and so entring into heaven that he might I say become the Saviour of his Enemies and the Elder Brother to his friends and the Lord of Glory and the fountain of its emanation Then it was that God gave new testimonies from Heaven The Sun was eclipsed all the while he was upon the Cross and yet the Moon was in the full that is he lost his light not because any thing in nature did invest him but because the God of nature as a Heathen at that very time confessed who yet saw nothing of this sad iniquity did suffer The rocks did rend the veil of the Temple divided of it self and opened the inclosures and disparked the Sanctuary and made it pervious to the Gentiles eye the dead arose and appeared in Jerusalem to their friends the Centurion and divers of the People smote their hearts and were by these strange indications convinced that he was the Son of God His garments were parted and lots cast upon his inward coat they gave him vinegar and gall to drink they brake not a bone of him but they pierced his side with a Spear looking upon him whom they had pierced according to the Prophecies of him which were so clear and descended to minutes and circumstances of his passion that there was nothing left by which they could doubt whether this were he or no who was to come into the World But after all this that all might be finally verified and no scruple left after three days burial a great stone being rolled to the face of the grave and the stone sealed and a Guard of Souldiers placed about it he arose from the grave and for forty days together conversed with his followers and Disciples and beyond all suspicion was seen of 500. Brethren at once which is a number too great to give their consent and testimony to a lye and it being so publickly and confidently affirmed at the very time it was done and for ever after urged by all Christians used as the most mighty demonstration proclaimed preached talked of even upbraided to the gain-sayers affirmed by eye-witnesses perswaded to the kindred and friends and the relatives and companions of all those 500. persons who were eye-witnesses it is infinitely removed from a reasonable suspicion and at the end of those days was taken up into Heaven in the sight of many of them as Elias was in the presence of Elisha Now he of whom all these things are true must needs be more than a meer man and that they were true was affirmed by very many eye-witnesses Men who were innocent plain men men that had no bad ends to serve men that looked for no preferment by the thing in this life Men to whom their Master told they were to expect not Crowns and Scepters not praise of men or wealthy possessions not power and ease but a voluntary casting away care and attendance upon secular affairs that they might attend their Ministery poverty and prisons trouble and vexation persecution and labour whippings and banishment bonds and death and for a
prevail against his Church which Prophecie is made good thus long till this day and is as a continual argument to justifie the Divinity of the Author The continuance of the Religion helps to continue it for it proves that it came from God who foretold that it should continue and therefore it must continue because it came from God and therefore it came from God because it does and shall for ever continue according to the word of the holy Jesus But after our blessed Lord was entred into glory the disciples also were Prophets Agabus foretold the dearth that was to be in the Roman Empire in the days of Claudius Caesar and that S. Paul should be bound at Jerusalem S. Paul foretold the entring in of Hereticks into Asia after his departure and he and S. Peter and S. Jude and generally the rest of the Apostles had two great predictions which they used not only as a verification of the doctrine of Jesus but as a means to strengthen the hearts of the Disciples who were so broken with persecution The one was that there should arise a Sect of vile men who should be enemies to Religion and Government and cause a great Apostasie which happened notoriously in the Sect of the Gnosticks which those three Apostles and S. John notoriously and plainly do describe And the other was that although the Jewish Nation did mightily oppose the Religion it should be but for a while for they should be destroyed in a short time and their Nation made extremely miserable but for the Christians if they would fly from Jerusalem and go to Pella there should not a hair of their head perish the verification of this Prophecy the Christians extremely long'd for and wondred it staid so long and began to be troubled at the delay and suspected all was not well when the great proof of their Religion was not verified and while they were in thoughts of heart concerning it the sad Catalysis did come and swept away 1100000. of the Nation and from that day forward the Nation was broken in pieces with intolerable calamities they are scattered over the face of the earth and are a vagabond Nation but yet like oyl in a vessel of wine broken into bubbles but kept in their own circles and they shall never be an united people till they are servants of the holy Jesus but shall remain without Priest or Temple without Altar or Sacrifice without City or Country without the Land of Promise or the promise of a blessing till our Jesus is their high Priest and the Shepherd to gather them into his fold And this very thing is a mighty demonstration against the Jews by their own Prophets for when Isaiah and Jeremiah and Malachi had Prophesied the rejection of the Jews and the calling of the Gentiles and the change of the old Law and the introduction of a new by the Messias that this was he was therefore certain because he taught the World a new Law and presently after the publication of this the old was abrogate and not only went into desuetude but into a total abolition among all the World and for those of the remnant of the scattered Jews who obstinately blaspheme the Law is become impossible to them and they placed in such circumstances that they need not dispute concerning its obligation for it being external and corporal ritual and at last made also local when the circumstances are impossible the Law that was wholly ceremonial and circumstantial must needs pass away and when they have lost their Priesthood they cannot retain the Law as no man takes care to have his beard shaved when his head is off And it is a wonder to consider how the anger of God is gone out upon that miserable people and that so great a blindness is fallen upon them it being evident and notorious that the old Testament was nothing but a shadow and umbrage of the new that the Prophecies of that are plainly verified in this that all the predictions of the Messias are most undeniably accomplished in the person of Jesus Christ so that they cannot with any plausibleness or colour be turned any other way and be applied to any other person although the Jews make illiterate allegations and prodigious dreams by which they have fool'd themselves for 1600. years together and still hope without reason and are confident without revelation and pursue a shadow while they quit the glorious body while in the mean time the Christian prays for his conversion and is at rest in the truth of Jesus and hath certain unexpressible confidencies and internal lights clarities of the holy Spirit of God and loves to the holy Jesus produc'd in his soul that he will die when he cannot dispute and is satisfied and he knows not how and is sure by comforts and comforted by the excellency of his belief which speaks nothing but holiness and light and reason and peace and satisfactions infinite because he is sure that all the World can be happy if they would live by the Religion of Jesus and that neither societies of Men nor single persons can have felicity but by this and that therefore God who so decrees to make Men happy hath also decreed that it shall for ever be upon the face of the earth till the earth it self shall be no more Amen Now if against this vast heap of things any Man shall but confront the pretences of any other Religion and see how they fail both of reason and holiness of wonder and Divinity how they enter by force and are kept up by humane interests how ignorant and unholy how unlearned and pitiful are their pretences the darknesses of these must add great eminency to the brightness of that For the Jews Religion which came from Heaven is therefore not now to be practised because it did come from Heaven and was to expire into the Christian it being nothing but the image of this perfection and the Jews needed no other argument but this that God hath made theirs impossible now to be done for he that ties to Ceremonies and outward usages Temples and Altars Sacrifices and Priests troublesome and expensive rites and figures of future signification means that there should be an abode and fixt dwelling for these are not to be done by an ambulatory people and therefore since God hath scattered the People into atomes and crumbs of society without Temple or Priest without Sacrifice or Altar without Vrim or Thummim without Prophet or Vision even communicating with them no way but by ordinary providence it is but too evident that God hath nothing to do with them in the matter of that Religion but that it is expired and no way obligatory to them or pleasing to him which is become impossible to be acted whereas the Christian Religion is as eternal as the soul of a Man and can no more cease than our spirits can die and can worship upon Mountains and Caves in Fields and Churches in