record never to be forgotten or forgiven so long we have clear evidences of strong resistance made to the Romish Religion before the times of Luther And in most Countries and times where and when the Romish corruptions began from small and obscure beginnings to be gross and plain some or other in greater or lesser numbers began to Renounce and Protest against them What though some of these early Reformers might hold some erroneous Opinions which we our selves condemn yet however they opposed the Romish Church in her corruptions and these tended to a Reformation which was compleated only by degrees and 't is no wonder some Stumbled in such a night of Ignorance And have not the Agents of Rome destroy'd the Papers and Records disguiz'd their Adversaries and falsify'd their Opinions to serve the Power and Interest of their great Mistriss They therefore branded the Waldenses with the name of Manichaism and that they affirm'd two Principles or Originals of all things because they asserted that the Emperour was Independent of the Pope and that they deny'd Christ to be the Son of God because they could not believe a crust of Bread to be Christ And they have fram'd as lewd stories against many excellent Men of the later Ages who withstood the approches of their Doctrine and Government which we certainly know and the more Ingenuous among them confess to be Notoriously false Though we have reason to believe because of the severity and industry of the Romish Factors ever warm against those who oppos'd her practises a great number of Honest and Learned Men as those Ages would afford are buried in obscurity and their names unknown there being an Expurgatorian Index for the merits of such Men as well as Books and Editions yet we have a sufficient Catalogue of them who kept up the Title and claim of old Christianity and would not suffer their new Errors to plead prescription 2. By shewing what Errors and Mistakes are included in the Question 1. That these new Errors of Rome are absolutely necessary to the being of a Christian Church For though we believe all that Christ and his Apostles taught all things that are contain'd in the Holy Scriptures all things that undoubted Tradition or good Reason proves to derive themselves from both or either yet because we do not Assent and Subscribe to the new Articles of Faith that Rome hath invented for us we cease to be a Christian Church are markt for Hereticks which are worse than Pagans with them and must be certainly Damn'd Nay should we embrace all the other Doctrines of Rome and deny only the Popes Authority and Supremacy that Epitome of their Christianity it would avail us little we are Heathens still Should we reject but one Article of Pope Pius's Creed suppose the Doctrine of Purgatory or Merit yet because this Questions Infallibility the centre of all their Religion we are in the State of Damnation still Should we receive their Doctrines as probable and in a larger and more favourable meaning yet because we do not entertain them as Articles of Faith in the fense of the Church our case is not mended we shall meet with Fires here and hereafter for our reward Should we wink and swallow them all down with a good Catholick Stomach yet if the Bishop of Rome should give out a new Edition of Faith enlarg'd with many more Monstrous Doctrines and Opinions yet if we bogle and keck at them all our former righteousness shall not be remembred we are Apostates worse than Turks and Infidels and who can tell what this Infallible and Powerful Guide of Christendom will do For when things obscure or of an Indifferent Nature when things wherein they differ among themselves and only serve a Temporal Interest when Opinions which they can dispense withal upon occasion when only the modes and manner of Truth when contradictories and Doctrines directly leading unto Impiety and things Barbarous and Blasphemous have been Christen'd Articles of Faith and Fundamentals of Religion have we not just reason to suspect as ill or worse may be done again And the intrigues of Trent be acted once more and as many new Articles of Faith as Titular Bishops by the same Spirit moving in the same manner were not the first and early Christians sound Members of Christs body though they never thought of such wild Opinions as these and publisht Truths directly contrary to them And could I suppose them to have known these Innovations out of Zeal and Fidelity to their trust would have detested amd abhor'd them Was Christ negligent in the discharge of his mighty office and his Apostles defective in their duties and Ministry not to accquaint the first Christians with these great Truths and were they reveal'd in the Tridentine Council only to us upon whom the ends of the World are come These Primitive Disciples of Christ thought themselves secure of Heaven by this short Creed that Jesus was the Christ the son of God And the contrary was the Character of the Man of Sin that deny'd that Jesus was come in the Flesh that he was the God incarnate and the true Messiah and were Scandaliz'd at his meanness and obscurity St. Paul told the Jaylor that certainly he would be sav'd if he believed that Jesus was the Christ all other Fundamentals of Christianity one way or other being necessarily included in that belief And thought that he made sincere and sound Disciples if they believ'd what he Preacht only Jesus and the Resurrection in their full compass and latitude Though we believe all this in a more express and explicit sense all that is contain'd in Scripture in the Apostles Creed or the two other Creeds drawn up by the Church to explain the Christian Religion in some Articles and to oppose the Doctrines of Hereticks yet the first Christians shall be Sav'd and we shall be Damn'd they shall be the elect and the Church of God we must be Reprobates and the Synagogue of Satan Or let Rome shew her wonted Charity and say She doubts also of their Salvation Or did Christ connive at that time of Ignorance or had he as a Lawgiver forgot to declare some part of the will and pleasure of God and upon better remembrance after so many hundred years suggested it to his careful Vicar Or did Christ knowing their Nature and Circumstances of it that they could not bear them at that time therefore delay the discovery so long Or did these new Articles lye hid so long conceal'd by his Apostles or buried by some lewd Hereticks in the rubbish of those Churches they pull'd down but afterwards found as they say the Cross was and now restored to light Or are these new Articles some way or other contain'd in the Ancient Creeds which we believe and by easy and natural consequences deduc't from them Some such fine reasons as these must be pretended otherwise we can safely conclude that our Church is truly Ancient and Apostolical though She disowns
A DISCOURSE About the Charge of NOVELTY Upon the Reformed Church of England MADE By the PAPISTS asking of us the Question Where was our Religion before LUTHER LONDON Printed for Robert Horn at the South Entrance of the Royal Exchange and Fincham Gardiner at the White Horse in Ludgate-street 1683. A DISCOURSE About the Charge of NOVELTY Upon the Reformed Church of England made by the Papists c. THe Christian Doctrin was once by the way of trust delivered by Christ and his Apostles unto the Saints Men of Care and Honesty and who should preserve it in its first purity and Spiritual intention only to prescribe methods unto Men by Faith and an Honest Conversation how they might arrive at Heaven that this Religion might make a deeper impression upon their minds and memories and be more faithfully kept it was set down in plain and significant Terms and reduced into short summaries called a Form of sound Words that good thing that Form of Doctrin a depositum or trust and by the Church afterwards a Creed That it might be believed and valued it was in its own Nature of the greatest importance confirmed with variety of the best of arguments miracles prophecies innocent carriage and Death of its numerous Disciples and severe Curses denounc't against any that should add to or take from it till their great Master and its Author Jesus should come from Heaven again Yet notwithstanding all this by the Malice and Subtilty of the Devil the Designs and Passions of Men the Ignorance and Negligence of some the Cunning and Industry of others this plain and simple Religion began by degrees to be Corrupted by the mixtures of Philosophy and niceness by the Rules of State Craft and Policy by idle Traditions and Inventions by the Melancholy of some and the gayety of others and the natural Face of it was so strangely changed that it seem'd another Gospel and you might seek Christianity in the Christian World and yet scarce find it Many Kingdoms and People were to blame in this being Treacherous to their Master and false to their trust suffering so Pure and Chast a Religion to be Corrupted or Stolen away but the Church of Rome seems the most Guilty of them all especially upon her own grounds her Bishop being the Infallible Vicar of Jesus to whom are committed the Oracles of God once indeed renowned for her Faith and Pious Governours but now as famous for their Degeneracy as well in Religion as in their lives Whose Ambition or Interest prostituted the Faith to those Designs and made it Earthly and Sensual or their Negligence and Stupidity suffered the Enemy in the night of Ignorance to sow the tares which so grew up and choakt the Wheat that Faith was turn'd into Fables and Lyes Foppery and Superstition were nicknam'd Devotion Ridiculous Gestures and Habits past for Repentance and Mortification the Bible was shut up and contemned and the Legends open'd and praised Honest and Good Men were butchered and unknown Persons and Malefactors Canonized Saints with their Pictures and Reliques were made Rivals to Christ in Mediation and Intercession Good Works were spoil'd by Merit and Arrogance or done by way of composition for vices the fear of Hell was abated by the invention of Purgatory Christ was fetcht from Glory by the Magick of a Priest and put into a Wafer or into a more sordid place riddles and quirks of their Schools were made Articles of Faith in short old truths were rooted up or new errors grafted on them Power and Profit were Stiled the Church the Court of Rome was brought into the Temple and called the Holy of Holies Such errours as these in the Christian Faith came from Rome and infected our Ancient British Church not at first planted by the Labours of the Romish Bishops of old but Corrupted by their later Emissaries and lasted a long time among us being supported by Power twisted with Interest sutable to the pleasures and vices of Men incorporated into the Government having put out Mens reason to try and discern between Truth and Error and at length became Fashionable Legal Terrible with Fires and Censures which made us Sick unto Death absolute almost and beyond recovery Such was our condition here of Slavery and Ignorance but it pleased him that dwells between the Golden Candlesticks to dispel our Darkness and restore the Ancient light of Primitive Christianity His Wisdom and Goodness improving the passions and inclinations of the some in temporal changes and concerns to Spiritual purposes encouraging the secret groans and desires of others putting many more upon search and enquiry after Truth and infusing courage for it at length came to a resolution of Arguing and Debating the Errors of the Romish Faith and manners of reforming the abuses in Discipline and Devotion and to call back True Christianity again and being dispossest of the Spirit of Rome which oft tore them and rent them till they foamed again are now cloth'd and in their Wits once more upon this account the Friends of Rome call us Hereticks Schismaticks and Innovators Discharge Censures and Excommunications and Eternal Damnation against us are full of Wrath and Indignation and to shew a little Wit in their Anger And pretended reason pertly ask the Question where was our Religion before Luther This is the common and trite Objection against our Religion very frequent not only in the Mouths of their more Ordinary Disciples but also of their more Learned Writers who whatever strength they really Fancy may be in the Argument it self think it a very proper Weapon to attempt the vulgar and the Weak withal to amuse and dazle the less discerning Eye at least when backt and set off with the stately names of Infallibility Succession Antiquity and the like and they tell us roundly our Faith was but yesterday our Religion is new and upstart as only Henry the Eighths and Cromwells contrivance they may truly say as much as their Treason was Cecils Plot. That our Faith began only in the year 1517. in Saxony by one Martin Luther an Apostate Fryar who for the Sake of a faire Nun and other designs renounc't the Ancient Faith and set up his new Device of Protestantism at Spires which did not quietly last much above seven years for in the year 1525. starts up Zuinglius and after two years more the Anabaptists who change and correct Luther's Religion and draw great numbers of his Disciples from him and himself for his reward dyed a strange Death great Noises and Crackings were heard in his Tomb which being opened neither Body nor Bones were found and the smell of Brimstone was ready to stifle the standers by And therefore they say we ought to look from whence we are faln to repent of our Heresy and return to our first Love and not stick so close to our Religion the new invention of so ill a Man That we may therefore keep those firm that are members
began to favour his new Faith and Innovation And so errors once superinduc't upon the Truth will become by Age Truth it self and are never to be mended for fear of this pert Question and charge of Innovation on And it 's plain that new and old are but uncertain Characters to Judge of Truth and falshood by there being sometimes a new Truth that is lately discover'd to be so but really old and an old error kept up a long time by Force of Art and Walking in the Garb of Truth but truly new having come in after the Truth it vies with Time like a River many times bringing down straw and trash and leaving weighter things behind which when they come to be retriev'd are call'd new Fashions and Inventions When Abraham restored the true Worship of God and stript it of Idolatry and Superstition the Chaldean Priests whose Power and Interest was shaken by it were very brisk and ready to charge this Pious and Mighty Man from the East with Novelty and Singularity in his Religion the false service of God in these Countries being then ancient and almost Universal though the Patriarchs Religion did derive it self from a very ancient stock that of Adams in Paradise kept up by an Enoch and a Noah in single Families when all Flesh had corrupted their ways and now deliver'd unto Abrabam and now all the sticklers for a false Religion began to upbraid the Sons and Followers of Abraham's Faith with Novelty and ask them where was your Religion before the times of Abraham who set up his but yesterday and Scorns and Uncharitably Damns all his Forefathers who of old liv'd beyond the River in our Religion The same Objection might have been cast in the teeth of Moses when he was setling a Religion deliver'd to him by God in opposition to the Idolatries and false Devotions of the World and to serve his further designs of providence that he affected Novelty and Singularity that all the World stood against him in this and one of his Disciples afterwards was Inhumane and Vncharitable in praying God to pour out his Indignation upon the Heathen who had not known his Laws And his Successor Joshua might have met with the same fare when he bids his People choose whom they will serve either the Gods beyond the Flood and in Egypt or the Gods of the Amorites Old and great Nations who might have had this Objection in its full strength on their side or the God of Abraham and stoutly tells them let that plausible argument weigh with them what it will as for himself and his Family they would serve the Lord. And as this Religion might degenerate in descending Ages so any restorer of it might be set upon by the same frivolous Objection and so it hapned to our Messias and his fore-runner who was to restore all things who when he began to reform the false glosses and corrupt senses which the Scribes and Pharisees had put upon the Law of Moses and cry down their Traditions which made the Commands of God of none effect was lookt upon as an Enemy to Moses a Blasphemer of the Law a Prophaner of the Temple and a Changer of all their Religion whose design was only to fill up their Law and restore it to its Natural Beauty and Perfection and before Abraham was I am not only in his Divine Nature and designation to his office but in his Religion also which now he was going to teach the Few and Gentile too And now the times of a general Reformation being come and the Apostles were Preaching this excellent Religion unto all the World Jew and Gentile comspire together in the same Language and call them setters forth of strange Gods and new Heresies Heads and Contrivers of new Sects and ways and are whipt for Vagrants and Impostors who would cheat the World out of their old paternal Religions that were entail'd upon them teach them to speak ill of the Gods of their Fathers and Predecessors and to think they all dyed in a false Religion and to embrace a new-fangled Faith of a few illiterate and rambling fellows who had turn'd the World upside down And had this argument prevail'd then as much as the Romanists do desire if should now we should have had no Christianity among us the Idol-Gods of our Ancestors in this Island their Woodens and Twisters would have prescribed against Christ himself 3. To turn the Question upon them and ask them some others of the like Nature Men that are insolent and ever boasting of the Antiquity of their Family and upbraiding others with their obscure Birth and extraction do many times meet with some cross Questions about the Head and Fountain of their Families which many times proves only to be a Shepherd or meaner Original made Glorious with arrogant Titles and borow'd Names Searching into the pedigree of Romes Religion we do not find Christ or St. Peter or any of his Apostles to be the Authors of it but Pride Interest and Design old Vices indeed but new Fathers of a Christian Church which brought in a late and new generation of opinions and additions to Christs Religion Clothing them with the venerable Names of Primitive and Apostolical Where was the Romish Religion before the Council of Trent concluded only about the year 1563. of a later date then when Luther first began which Legitimated all their Innovations the Issue of Scholastick Wranglings pretended Dreams and Visions Forc't and Unnatural Senses of Scripture Ambition and Profit the Exchequer of Rome to be made Sons of the Church and Fundamentals of the Christian Faith Many of their own Writers confess that for 1400. or 1500. years the Pope was not believ'd to be Infallible till of late some of their flaming Zealots have invested him with Infallibility whereby the Roman Church is sick unto Death and no cure is to be apply'd because She is so certain and sure that She is well Their lewd Doctrine of Transubstantiation was not made an Article of Faith till the Council of Lateran under Innocent the Third above 1200 years after Christ and many of their own Writers are still dissatisfied about it The Title of Vniversal Bishop was obtain'd by Pope Boniface the Third not till about 600 years after Christ fearing a powerful Rival the Constantinopolitan Bishop who affected the same and therefore by the Popes themselves was declaim'd against as Proud and Antichristian but now by Hypocrisie and base complyance with the Wicked Phocas who was Guilty of Treason and Murder against the Emperour Mauritius Rome gain'd the delicious point and has made it a Fundamental Article of her new Religion Though the Popes came not up to their Swaggering Temper and Power of Hectoring Christian Princes some hundreds of years afterwards The Doctrine of Purgatory which some derive from the Platonick Fancies of Origen the Montanism of Tertullian pretended Visions and Pagan Stories Rhetorical Flourishes and doubtful expressions of the
of Christ and his Apostles and therefore were to be amended and weeded up notwithstanding the common question where was our Harvest of Wheat before the Weeders our Reformers came for the Church of England finding old Christianity strangely over-grown with the new Doctrines and Creeds of Rome contrary to the Offices of Christ the design of his undertaking for Mankind and the True Spirit of his Religion it became a Duty as much as they lov'd their Souls and would be True and Loyal unto Christ to shake off these New and Sinful Impositions and restore True and Primitive Christianity Had our differences with Rome consisted only in things less fit and proper used by them in their Religious offices or in Rituals or Gestures not so decent they might have had some pretence to roar against us for breaking off Communion with her but when they Plow up the very Foundation as one of her Pagan Captains did the Walls of Jerusalems Temple and lay all waste before them their new additions Eating out the very Heart of old Religion to thunder out Damnation against us because we renounce her Communion in this is to add Uncharitableness and other gross Vices to their former Sin as though they could not preserve Christianity but by defacing of it more Our Prince being constituted by God a Nursing Father of the Church and our Bishops in their Episcopal Power being coordinate with him of Rome or any other in the Christian World ought under the penalty of Damnation and did accordingly Reform the Romish Corruptions which had tainted the Vitals of Christianity an indispensable Duty it was to preserve the Primitive Faith like a chast Virgin and not suffer it to be longer prostituted to the Designs and Passions of Men by a Solemn Vow and our Souls were at stake we had engag'd to preserve it pure and undefil'd and therefore with all just and proper ways and methods we were bound earnestly to contend for it In Duty therefore to our Lord and Masters Command at such a time we began our reformation but wish that it had been promoted and compleated many years before though the same Question would have been as fitly asked then or any other time except they think that errors must be immortal and the Gates of Heaven shall not prevail against them The Goodness and Wisdom of our Reformation would be readily acknowledg'd and imitated did not Fame and Ambition Power and Secular Interest infect the Eye and change the Natural shape and colour of things and 't is a sign the cause of Rome wants strength when such a trifling only popular Objection against our Reformation is made so powerful to preserve their Disciples in their Communion and amuse our own And we need say no more against it but this and 't is no Roman Uncharitableness and rigor That if Rome notwithstanding all the clear evidence against her new and upstart opinions shall obstinately defend them and contemn a Wise and Pious Reformation let her suffer the just punishment of her wilful errors He that will prefer an Old Disease before a New Cure let him be for ever Sick For we have Healed Babylon and She was not Healed FINIS 2 Tim. 1.13 14. Rom 6.17.1 Tim. 6.20 Gal. 1.8 9. Rev. 22.18 2 Cor. 11.2 Cyp. Epist Ox. Edit p. 5 6. Rom. 18. Platina vitâ Bon. 7. p. 159. vide quaeso quantum degeneraverint c. Bellarm. Campian Smith Bellar. Tom. lib. 4. p. 287. Acts. 11.26 Mat. 13.4 6. 2 Chron. 30. ◠Baren Tom. 10. p. 256. Luke 18.8 Micha 7.2 Ps 12.1 1. Kings 19.10 Ver. 18. Rev. 12.6.11.7 1 Cor. 3.12 Cypr. Epist p. 59. Ox. Edit aspice totum orbem pene vastatum c. Mat. 16.18 John 16.13 Mat. 28.20 Mat 18.20 Archbish Laud against Fisher 272. Fowlis Hist Preface p. 1. Vrbs aeterna immobile saxum Grot. in Apoc. c. 17. Isaiah 41.2 Psalm 79.6 Josh 24.15 Heb. 9.10 Acts. 24.14 Acts. 28.22 Beliar Tom. 2. p. 286. Eph. 4.14 Mat. 13.24 25. Jude 4. 2 Cor. 11.2