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
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-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
it be once admitted that by such tradition there can be had in all ages a compleat and true knowledg of what Christ taught it cannot be denied but that it is an easier and better rule to guide our understanding in the affairs of Religion then to resort for that end to the Scripture alone And that such tradition is infallible I have endeavoured to prove in another discourse which your Lordship hath so that I will not trouble you here with any repetitions upon that Subject Now when I wrote to your Lordship my opinion of the use to be made of reading the Fathers relying upon them more for what they were taught then for what they teach it was as taking them for faithful Collectors of the tradition that they found general through the Church in their times and sincere conveyers of them to us And this course you shall finde even among the ancientest of them When St. Austin will establish the doctrine of praying for the dead he telleth that it hath been the practise of the whole Church from the Apostles time The like he doth against the Pelagians and upon several other occasions and directeth us to enquire what faith is professed in the Churches established by the Apostles from whom he reckoneth on the uninterrupted succession of Pastors unto his time And by them he deriveth the present Doctrine from the first preachers who had it immediately from Christ Tertullian when he prescribeth against Heresie giveth you a Catalogue of the Bishops of several Churches from the several Apostles that planted them and with the successions of the persons urgeth the succession in those Churches of the Doctrine he seeketh to establish Irenaeus doth the like and generally all of them which they do not onely when they use those formal positive words that the whole Church hath received from the Apostles and holdeth generally such and such a Doctrine but at other times also when they do but intimate it in their discourses which intimation is such as is easily perceptible to whosoever of judgement shall read them impartially Therefore to summon up as short and as plainly as I can the use as I conceive is to be made of reading the Fathers I say that letting pass what they writ as Commentors upon the Scriptures and as Phliosophers and all which is but as Divines and Schollers we are generally to take hold of what they deliver us as Pastors of the Church which appeareth chiefly by what they writ against those they brand with Heresie which they could not do were not those points which they censure against the known and general tradition of the Church And next when they deliver us dogmatically and professedly any doctrine in such sort as we may reasonably conceive they intended we should take it as matter of faith not giving it as conceptions of their own which they bring onely learned arguments on texts of Scripture to maintain In all which a free good judgement will easily discern by reading them which way to incline which I knowing your Lordship to be do beseech you to apply it a little industriously to collect throughout their sense and by what they say to frame a model of the Government Beleif and practise of the Church wherein they lived and then tell me whether it be like yours or ours It is worth the while Criticks labour to get some knowledge of the manners and customes of Ages long since past by little fragments of antiquity that have hardly scaped into their hands And Lawyers get a knowledge of the Government and frame of the State in Kings raigns long agoe by broken and disjoynted Records that they meet with scattered in several Files And these maimed evidences by chance fallen into their Hands do serve to beget a fairer body of knowledge when they know how to make a right use of them and such as will convince an indifferent and equal hearer much more certainly the Fathers works that handle professedly and at large the affairs of the Church and Religion and whereof we have such plenty will fairly inform a rational and discoursing man of the true state of them in their times and what they conceived and had been taught imported Heaven or Hell in mans belief and practise which I am sure your Lordship will allow to carry a great stroke in ours and from which it is madness if not impiety to depart upon less grounds then a demonstration to convince the contrary Though I have already too much trespassed upon your Lordships patience by my tedious Letter yet I may not conclude it till I have said a word or two to the foure instances your Lordship giveth toward the latter end of yours First for the use of Images I doe not conceive it to be a precept given by Christ but since introduced by the Governors of the Church as a thing convenient to raise devotion in the people Now things of that nature may be convenient at one time and unfit at another When I dolatry was fresh in the memory and practise of the world it was dangerous to admit it therefore in the primitive times Justin and Tertullian might have reason to cry it down But because there was no precept of Christ in that behalfe conserved in the Church you see they urge not the authority of Tradition of the Church to beat down their use but arguments of their own and Texts of Scripture produced by them whereas now in times secured from that danger and a great good appearing in them they being as a Father said the bookes of unlettered persons to beget knowledge and stirre up devotion in them as strong arguments and as pregnant Texts of Scripture are produced for their use and to justifie the Governours of the Church in recommending them to the people Your second instance is of Tertullians affirming Christs descent to free the Patriarkes which I conceive not onely he but all the Fathers that ever spake of that particular deliver it in a matter of faith and so it hath been ever held by the Church which word of Descent I take it is to be understood as we all doe the Article of the Creed He descended into Hell that is by his power and operation at least by which he confounded the damned comforted the soules in Purgatory and brought to the sight of God those in Abrahams bosome that is a place of rest where yet they enjoyed not the beatificall vision For to give other motion and place to a soule is a question in Philosophy and concernes not faith and such was the assertion of the Angels copulation with women for many or rather most of the Fathers were of opinion that they were not pure Spirits but had very subtile immortall bodies the contrary of which was never yet delivered as matter of faith howbeit by force of Argument now the corporiety of Angels is exploded out of the Schools and thus supposing that opinion the way is obvious enough in commenting
one partie is sure and firm setled when ever the other falls as certainly as in natural generation the decay of one thing is infallibly the parent of another And therefore in point of wrong and unfitting superstructures such as most of the Romish Tenents are which we lay battery to it may suffice to pull down those being demolisht what 's rightly built will stand fast of it self since both suppose a foundation Now for the second part of your direction namely that I should strictly examin the reason of my own belief I have obeyed you to the full And that you may be able to judg whether they be well weighed or no take here a sum of my belief I believe the unity and Omnipotence of God and an inexplicable Trinity in that unity I beleeve the incarnation of the second person of that Trinity that 's Gods assumption of perfect humanity from the womb of a Virgin And that he humbled himself not onely to manhood but also to mortallity that after he had set our practice an exact pattern by his life and by his words imbued our Theory with all necessary documents he might purge our staines with his blood redeem our forfeitures by the price of his passion and present a plenary satisfaction to his Fathers Justice for all our misdeeds I beleeve further that to make us capable of the effects of his merits Beatitude he illuminates our understanding by the gift of the holy Ghost by whom is created in us that divine faith by which these misteries are to be apprehended I beleeve also that our blessed Saviour gave his Apostles commission to preach to all the world his saving Doctrine who did accordingly and have left to posterity both written records and living ones in successions of the faithfull that shall preserve even to the end of the world these and all other articles necessary to salvation I likewise beleeve that the Apostles established Pastors in several Churches whom we are to hearken unto with reverence and to receive of them the Sacraments of regeneration to Christ and of Communion with him both which by Gods grace have a divine and supernatural effect in the cleansing us from sin I beleeve that heaven shall be the reward of the good and hell of the wicked and lastly in a word to supply whatsoever may have been omitted I firmly beleeve whatsoever is evidently contained in the Creed or Scripture or clearly deduceable from either I am perswaded that you will yeild that the reasons upon which these are built will abide the strictest examination None of these assertions I hope betrayeth its own weakness And yet these are the only opinions which I have been imbued with these are the parts of faith that integrate my Religion in these are comprised al points that I think necessary to be believed And he that believes any thing more if he have but his share of good works is safe in my opinion for he hath faith of supererrogation my firm and resolute settlement in these verities defends me from being at all concerned in those severall imputations which towards the close of your letter you do most judiciously and justly lay upon Sciolous and Sapticall witts that floating in uncertainty would fain reduce every thing to that pass seeking rather to puzle and imbroil an adversary then weightily to establish a solid truth 'T is that solid truth and such as bears no dispute that I wish we might all stick to and let pass those quillets and niceties imposed by the Church of Rome for Articles of importance and which her adherents dwell upon with too scrupulous a diligence such as admit arguments on both sides and are fitter for a declamation then a Catechism in which whilst men vainly busie themselves they let slide away many times unnoted as you say that great deal which is uncontroulable and plain points which can be thought at best but at the skirts none belonging to the main body of religion doctrines for the most part at the least in my judgement so little material that I applaud the Fathers for spending so little time or labour on them such as I am so far from delighting to make objections in that where ever I have touch'd upon particulars it hath been a Contrecoeur and onely to disperse such dust as others raise for I swear there is no man living hath a stronger aversion then my self from all cavils in Religion it being justly to be feared as our great Prelate Arch-Bishop of Cant. in his Epistle to his Majestie sayes that Atheism and irreligion gathers strength while the truth is thus weakned by an unworthy way of contending for it and I am perswaded that moâ—â— men while their thoughts are so busied in chicanes of controverted points grow negligent of those more weighty ones that neerlyer import salvation and so runne out of the most essentiall good of their soules as impertinently as many a peevish freeholder that wasts a solid estate in endless law suits for a trifle as I think these points little important for use so I concur with you in esteeming both these and all other matters of Religion very unfit to be argued on for ostentation or applause which I am sure I am as farr from aiming at in this subject as I shall be farr from attaining it 'T is true the condition of the knowing ignorant is usually quite contrary to the Lords servants in the Gospel there he that had least wrapt up his single talent in a Napkin but amongst men now a-daies that pretend whoever hath least it is he longs most to shew how much he hath and so publishes how little yet thus far they oftentimes both agree that neither improve their store and thus by my ignorance unless you be charitable I confess my self liable to be suspected guilty of the vain appetite of oftentation that usually accompanies it but as my Ignorance exposes me to the suspition so my consciousness of it the sole knowledge that I can brag of frees me from the Ambition suspected and layes upon me a necessity of concluding with a huge Apologie for presuming to give you so much trouble and I fear so little satisfaction I confess I ought to have been restrained from venturing at all upon this Debate the Subject it self being so farr above the pitch of my literature And the Person with whom I presume to argue the difference of Opinion confestly my superiour in all advantages both of Nature and Acquisition beyond all hopes of comparison Considerations either of them able to deterr a much considenter man then my self But Friendship which always findes or makes men equall hath long since licenc't me from the latter and hardened me to impart my conceptions how low so ever as freely to you as I could doe to any inferiour Wit of mine own levell And for the first I have neglected it upon this perswasion that I shall be better able to answer to the Divines a young a Lay and ignorant mans adventuring to treat of their Business then to you and to my self so womanish a wrong as not subscription to the Dictamens of your strong and powerfull Soul without yeelding my reasons for the variance which how light soever they may be found when pondered by your excellent judgment yet being really such as are most convincing to mine they will serve to excuse me to you to justifie me to my self and I hope to make my Errours even pardonable with God who when by St. Peter he bids us be able to give a Reason of the hope that is in us I am confident he expects it no better then proportionable to the capacities that his goodness hath endowed us with Answerable to them is this Discourse weak I confess disjoynted and without Nerves and yet I doubt not but it may be so evictuated by Truth and the goodness of my Cause that I shall not be ashamed to have encountred a GOLIAH with a Sling A Straw kept in a right Line might batter a tower from which right line of truth and reason I may safely protest I have not so much as once voluntary swarved in this Treatise through any partaking passion or forelaid designe neither have I suffered my self herein to be so far wrought upon by civility as to forbear a free and round expression of my sense where ever it differed from yours and truly there was no cause why I should since in our disputes the strongest opposition that I or the best wit for me can possibly make to your opinions will derogate no more from your unquestionable exellency of judgement then it would conclude either of us ill-sighted should you affirm such a Garment to be red and I that it were green the object being a changeable Taffaty and we seated in contrary lights or looking through mediums diversly tincted a like affect upon the soul to these upon the sense hath diversity of education and discrepance of those principles wherewith men are at the first imbued and whereon all our after reasonings are founded Conformity and uniteness of minde as rarely flowing from contrary Educations as the same River from opposite springs sweet happy and I think sole is the self-sameness which arises from pure principles of nature never sophisticated by the artifices of our breeding but little derivation from those Fountaines hath this or that Sect of Religion so no marvel if we agree not therin to be one as we do in the other most true prime Emanation of nature Friendship which on your part to me I am confident must needs spring from thence since my small merit affords no other motive and for mine to you I am sure it is impossible without an intire concurrence of all the forces of Sympathy for any man to reverence admire and love another with that Ardour as I do you dearest Cousin and which you cannot but own in SHERBORN March 30. 1639. Your most faithful and most Affectionate Servant G. D. FINIS
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.
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
the Church universal Such were their Symboles such Irenaeus his unity of Faith in lib. 1. cap. 2. such Origens introduction to his book de principiis such Tertullians rule of Faith in his prescription against Hereticks such Epiphanius his conclusion of his work which he calls the settlement of truth assurance of immortality such likewise to fit you with some of all ages was that work of Gennadius written within these two hundred years De rectâ Christianorum Fide I will not say in some of which but in all which together there is not one Article of Faith received by the Church of Rome and rejected by us so much as mentioned save only in Epiphanius of Christs discent into Hel a Point variously and uncertainly understood among the Fathers as shall in another place be demonstrated Now for farther proof of the little agitation or great neglect of our controverted points in the Primitive times although it will follow of consequence to what hath been allready alledged yet I beseech you let me appeal to your own observation Do you know of any of the Fathers for the first four hundred years that hath purposely and of designe composed the least Treatise of any one of our questions or in some other tract handled them so much as in a formal digestion Inform me I beseech you for I profess all the works that ever I have met with of them appear to have been wholy directed either to deride the Pagans to confute Philosophers to convince the Jewes to confound prodigious Heresies or deliver precepts of good life or else to expound some passages of Scripture most useful to the same ends These appear to me to have been the sole objects both of their wills and abilities to combate And shall we venture to give sentence in our intricate disputes upon words or passages that by the by may seem to concern them either casually let fall or directed to other purposes in most of which in my conscience we finde our own opinions as rationally as Whittington his turn Lord Major of London in the ring of bells or some melancholy Lover his Mistrisses picture in the graine of Wainscote and their intentions as rightly as Eudocia Homers and another Virgils when they made him Evangelize so little do I regard what they say in this our case but to their silence I attribute much and think it strongly expressive but nothing to the advantage of those that impose for necessary Articles of Faith Doctrines that those renowned Oracles of the Church either never heard of or thought not worth their mentioning Thus noble Cousin I have laid before you the principal reasons that led me to deny the Fathers Testimonies to have such a validity whereon we may justly pass a verdict in our questions of Religion which I beseech you not to take as meant in a way of further derogation from them then in those very particulars for there is no man living that in the general payes them more reverence then my self in the highest admiration of their erudition and piety And therefore where I have mark'd out their heates against one another and contradictions let them be understood to have sprung from holy fervor and zeal in whatsoever they were for the time perswaded was good and true when I note their variance from themselves let it recommend their ingenuity that would so clearly avow their own fallibility when I tax them for dissenting from us all in this age although S. Austin when the Donatists press him with antiquity sticks not to say that the younger Doctors are sharper sighted yet let not my words be driven farther then this modest since you so call it flattery to our selves not of seeing clearer or sharper then they but onely by their helps further as dwarfs upon Gyants shoulders And lastly when I deny them the ability to determine our points of controversies let it be of no more derogation from their learning and judgement then it were of lessening to an Ambassador or of flattery to his followers to say that at a publike audience some of them could give a good account of the things in the lower end of the room when he himself could say little or nothing of them having onely past them by with his attentions intirely fixt upon the higher and more noble objects These were the Considerations that possest me when I wrote my former Letter although I had then the leisure but to point at a few of them and since I cannot speak to you but with truth and freedom I must here profess they remain in full force with me still your Letter having given me great contentment but little satisfaction for I can by no means yeeld that there is any Assurance much less infallibility in the Rule which you at the first prescribed and still insist on of judging our Controversies by the Fathers namely to use our liberty of reason only in what they teach of themselves with confirmations out of Scripture or probable Arguments but to resign it up in an entire and implicite Assent to what they tell us they were taught and deliver to us as delivered to them for the received sense of the Church which is to be understood you say not only when they use these formall positive Words That the Church hath received from the Apostles and holdeth generally such and such a Doctrine but at other times also when they do but intimate it in their Discourses where by the way I must needs tell you I ever thought intimations likelyer to beget Disputes then to end them If in this positive Rule you reserve a Liberty to except some particulars so delivered or some Catholick Fathers so delivering them Then without more adoe it is evident that this Way nothing can be decided for your Adversaries will claim in what thwarts them the like liberty of excepting If you lay the Rule absolutely generall to wit that what Article soever is delivered directly or by imtimation from the Fathers to have been a received Doctrine of the Church ought to be swallowed for an infallible verity it will easily be made appear that this method must betray you not only into some Protestant Tenents but also into Beliefs on both sides confessed to be erroneous It must draw you to be a Millenary it must draw you to hold a necessity of Childrens partaking the Eucharist it must draw you to abhorr that use of Images as Idolatrous and finally it must force you to reject out of the Canon those Books which we esteem Apochryphall for all these doe the Fathers deliver with somewhat more then intimations that they were taught to them as derived from the Apostles and from generall receptions of the Catholique Church First for the doctrine of the Millenaries I conceive you make a right judgement of the originall thereof from Papias whom St. Jerome the best Critick in Ecclesiasticall Antiquity sayes to have been the first Authour of it which error it is probable the
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
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
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
and consequently the insufficiency of your rule of faith tradition hath been made appeare it will be fit to vindicate the sufficiency of that rule which we relie upon In which work the first hinderance that I meet with is this objection of yours That the particular books of Scripture were written for other particular ends and not to give us a compleat body of faith To which I answer that if by particular books of Scripture you understand each book a part severed from its relation to the whole I then agree with you that every particular book was no more intended for a compleat body of Faith then every particular Chapter for a compleat body of the book or then a Window or a Door to be a compleat body of a House but as the one was designed to give entrance the other light to some room or passage of the Edisice so the several books of Scripture were written some to give entrance to Christianity some to illustrate dark places of the whole some to inform us of matters of fact that we might understand in what chiefly to praise God some to discipline us in matters of practice that we might know how aptliest to serve and please him And others to instruct us in matter of belief that we might learn to relie upon him But on the other side if you remit the least of this abstract and Independent consideration of the particular books of Scripture I must then profess that I stedfastly beleeve that they were all designed to this chief and primary end of composing that compleat body of Faith whereon Christs perfect Church should be built as certainly as so many several parts of a building having each a particular end besides of their erection are yet in the general and main intention all destin'd to the making up of one compleat and intire Fabrick yea further without urging the comparison till it halt I am perswaded that as the Master Architect having an Idaea form'd of the whole directs many a part to the perfection of that when the subordinate workman that frames it thinks of nothing farther then of the peice he is in hand with So oftentimes the Almighty Architect when his Ministers perhaps never look'd further then that service in particular wherein they were imployed some perhaps in a Gospel in an Epistle some he by his infinite Wisdom directed each particular to the making up of the whole and compleat body and rule of Faith the written Word which by his admirable providence he hath and will I am consident ever preserve intire and uncorrupt in all parts necessary to its own perfection and harmony and to mans eternal safety and direction Insomuch that I cannot but think it at the best loss of time to be solicitous after any other rule and irreverence if not impiety to question the sufficiency of this But because my opinion is little considerable with one of so far a better Judgment take in this Point the Opinion of the Fathers which you so much relie upon To begin with Tertullian these are the last words of his 22. Chapter against Hermogines Scriptum esse doceat Hermogenis officina If it be not written saith he let him fear the Woe destin'd to such as shall adde or take away Can any thing be inferred more rightly then from this passage the sufficiency of Scripture and the superfluity of any other rule But take yet somewhat more direct from †Oratio ad Gentiles towards the beginning Athanasius The holy and from God inspired Scriptures saith he are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of themselves sufficient to the discovery of truth I appeal to St Basil himself of all the Fathers the greatest attributer to Tradition in all things wherein regard is justly due unto it Hear what he sayes handling a point wherein Scripture I think is as dark as in any necessary one whatsoever I mean that of the Trinity Believe what 's written saith * Hom. 29. advers Calum stan Trin. page 623. he what is not written seek not And in another place It is a manifest falling from the Faith sayes †De vera ac Pia side page 251. he and an argument of Arrogance either to reject any of those things that are written or to introduce any that are not of the written And lastly to sum up all that can be said by a Protestant in one sentence of a Father of greatest Learning and authority Listen but to St. Augustine De doctrina Christian lib. 2. cap. 9. In its quae appertè in Scriptura positasunt inveniuntur illa omnia quae continent fidem moresque vivendi He had need be a confident Sophister that would undertake to evade these Authorities but yet if they may not be admitted let Scripture be heard for it self It is a priviledge and preeminence solely peculiar to that sacred Volume to be Witness Advocate and Judge in its own cause Surely the Spirit spake in St. Paul when he told Timothy That holy Writ was able to make him wise unto salvation 2 Tim. 3. in fine And when numbring up almost all the particular parts that can be required to the compleat Institution of a Christian he concludes that in these by Scripture the man of God is made perfect and fitted to every good work And I am confident by the same Spirit he spake his own minde when he spake ours so directly to the Corinthians Vt dicsatis in nobis supra id quod scriptum est non sapere Epist 1. cap. 4. Where by the way it is to be noted that the Apostle applies this doctrine as an Antidote to that very inconvenience which I have heard some Papists object against the reliance on the search and use of Scripture namely that by it those of greater capacity were lkely to be blown up and to glory in their clearer discerning over weaker whereas the guidance of the Church and Tradition was equaller to all To this I say 't is worth observing what he delivers as it were by way of reason for the contrary Doctrine to wit of confining our selves to Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I profess Consin that these and many other passages of Scripture which for brevities sake I note only in the * Deut. cap. 4. cap. 12. Epist ad Gal. cap. 1. Margent prenounce to me in as clear a sense as may be the sufficiencie of Scripture and supersluity of relying on tradition for a rule of faith And yet I sweare I am none of those of whom St. Basil speaks p. 621. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 How they may sound or what other sense they may bear to you I know not since now adayes Gods Word proves to men of divers opinions as the Apostles language when the devided tongues had sat upon them in Dr. * This was likewise the fantastique opinion of the Authour of the book de Spiritu sancto fathered upon Cyprian Alabasters conceit to severall Nations at one and the same