consequent of it They that fall on this stone shall be broken in pieces but they on whom it shall fall shall be grinded to powder And if we should consider things but prudently it is a great argument that the sons of our Church are very conscientious and just in their perswasions when it is evident that we have no temporall end to serve nothing but the great end of our souls all our hopes of preferment are gone all secular regards only we still have truth on our sides and we are not willing with the losse of truth to change from a persecuted to a prosperous Church from a Reformed to a Church that will not be reformed lest we give scandall to good people that suffer for a holy conscience and weaken the hands of the afflicted of which if you had been more carefull you would have remained much more innocent But I pray give me leave to consider for you because you in your change considered so little for your self what fault what false doctrine what wicked or dangerous proposition what defect what amisse did you find in the Doctrine and Liturgy and Discipline of the Church of England For its doctrine It is certain it professes the belief of all that is written in the Old and New Testament all that which is in the three Creeds the Apostolical the Nicene and that of Athanasius and whatsoever was decreed in the four General Councels or in any other truly such and whatsoever was condemned in these our Church hath legally declared it to be Heresie And upon these accounts above four whole ages of the Church went to Heaven they baptized all their Catechumens into this faith their hopes of heaven was upon this and a good life their Saints and Martyrs lived and died in this alone they denied Communion to none that professed this faith This is the Catholick faith so saith the Creed of Athanasius and unlesse a company of men have power to alter the faith of God whosoever live and die in this faith are intirely Catholick and Christian So that the Church of England hath the same faith without dlspute that the Church had for 400 or 500 years and therefore there could be nothing wanting here to saving faith if we live according to our belief 2. For the Liturgy of the Church of England I shall not need to say much because the case will be very evident First Because the disputers of the Church of Rome have not been very forward to object any thing against it they cannot charge it with any evil 2. Because for all the time of K. Ed. 6 and till the eleventh year of Queen Elizabeth your people came to our Churches and prayed with us till the Bull of Pius Quintus came out upon temporal regards and made a Schism by forbidding the Queens Subjects to pray as by Law was here appointed though the prayers were good and holy as themselves did believe That Bull enjoyned Recusancy and made that which was as an act of Rebellion and Disobedience Schisme to be the character of your Roman Catholikes And after this what can be supposed wanting in order to salvation We have the Word of God the Faith of the Apostles the Creeds of the Primitive Church the Articles of the four first generall Councels a holy Liturgy excellent Prayers perfect Sacraments Faith and Repentance the ten Commandements and the Sermons of Christ and all the precepts and counsels of the Gospel We teach the necessity of good works and require and strictly exact the severity of a holy life We live in obedience to God and are ready to die for him and doe so when he requires us so to doe We speak honour of his most holy Name we worship him at the mention of his Name we confesse his Attributes we love his Servants we pray for all men we love all Christians even our most erring Brethren we confesse our sinnes to God and to our Brethren whom we have offended and to Gods Ministers in cases of Scandall or of a troubled Conscience We commnicate often we are enjoyned to receive the holy Sacrament thrice every year at least Our Priests absolve the penitent our Bishops ordain Priests and confirm baptized persons and blesse their people and intercede for them and what could here be wanting to Salvation what necessity forced you from us I dare not suspect it was a temporal regard that drew you away but I am sure it could be no spirituall But now that I have told you and made you to consider from whence you went give me leave to represent to you and tell you whither you are gone that you may understand the nature and conditions of your change For doe not think your self safe because they tell you that you are come to the Church You are indeed gone from one Church to another from a better to a worse as will appear in the induction the particulars of which before I reckon give me leave to give you this advice if you mean in this affair to understand what you do it were better you enquired what your Religion is then what your Church is for that which is a true Religion to day will be so to morrow and for ever but that which is a holy Church to day may be heretical at the next change or may betray her trust or obtrude new Articles in contradiction to the old or by new interpretations may elude ancient truths or may change your Creed or may pretend to be the Spouse of Christ when she is idolatrous that is adulterous to God Your Religion is that which you must and therefore may competently understand You must live in it and grow in it and govern all the actions of your life by it and in all questions concerning the Church you are to choose your Church by the Religion and therefore this ought first and last to be enquired after Whether the Romane Church be the Catholique Church must depend upon so many uncertain enquiries is offered to be proved by so long so tedious a method hath in it so many intrigues and Labyrinths of Question and is like a long line so impossible to be perfectly strait and to have no declination in it when it is held by such a hand as yours that unlesse it be by material enquiries into the Articles of the Religion you can never hope to have just grounds of confidence In the mean time you can consider this if the Roman Church were the Catholike that is so as to exclude all that are not of her communion then the Greek Churches had as good turn Turks as remain damned Christians and all that are in the communion of all the other Patriarchal Churches in Christendome must also perish like Heathens which thing before any man can beleeve he must have put off all reason and all modesty and all charity And who can with any probability think that the Communion of Saints in the Creed is nothing but the Communion of Roman
the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament and I know no warrant for any other religion and if you will expect I should shew any society of men who professed all the doctrines which are now expressed in the confession of the Church of England I shall tell you it is unreasonable because some of our truths are now brought into our publick confessions that they might be oppos'd against your errors before the occasion of which there was no need of any such confessions till you made many things necessary to be professed which are not lawfull to be believed For if we believe your superinduc'd follies we shall do unreasonably unconscionably and wickedly but the questions themselves are so uselesse abstracting from the accidental necessity which your follies have brought upon us that it had been happy if we had never heard of them more then the Saints and Martyrs did in the first ages of the Church but because your Clergy have invaded the liberty of the Church and multiplyed the dangers of damnation and pretend new necessities and have introduc'd new articles and affright the simple upon new pretensions and slight the very institution and the Commands of Christ and of the Apostles and invent new Sacramentals constituting Ceremonies of their own head and promise grace along with the use of them as if they were not Ministers but Lords of the Spirit and teach for doctrines the commandments of men and make void the Commandment of God by their tradition and have made a strange body of Divinity therefore it is necessary that we should immure our Faith by the refusal of such vain and superstitious dreams but our faith was completed at first it is no other then that which was delivered to the Saints and can be no more for ever So that it is a foolish demand to require that we should shew before Luther a systeme of Articles declaring our sense in these questions It was long before they were questions at all and when they were made questions they remained so a long time and when by their severall pieces they were determined this part of the Church was oppressed with a violent power and when God gave opportunity then the yoke was broken and this is the whole progresse of this affair But if you will still insist upon it then let the matter be put into equall ballances and let them shew any Church whose confession of Faith was such as was obtruded upon you at Trent and if your Religion be Pius Quartus his Creed at Trent then we also have a question to ask and that is Where was your Religion before Trent The Councel of Trent determined that the souls departed before the day of Judgment enjoy the Beatificall Vision It is certain this Article could not be shewn in the Confession of any of the ancient Churches for most of the Fathers were of another opinion But that which is the greatest offence of Christendome is not only that these doctrines which we say are false were yet affirmed but that those things which the Church of God did alwayes reject or held as Uncertain should be made Articles of Faith and so become parts of your religion and of these it is that I again ask the question which none of your side shall ever be able to answer for you Where was your Religion before Trent I could instance in many particulars but I shall name one to you which because the thing of it self is of no great consequence it will appear the more unreasonable and intolerable that your Church should adopt it into the things of necessary belief especially since it was onely a matter of fact and they took the false part too For in the 21. Sess Chap. 4. it is affirmed That although the holy Fathers did give the Sacrament of the Eucharist to Infants yet they did it without any necessity of salvation that is they did not believe it necessary to their salvation which is notoriously false and the contrary is marked out with the black-lead of every man almost that reads their Works and yet your Councel sayes this is sine controversiâ credendum to be believed without all controversie and all Christians forbidden to believe or teach otherwise So that here it is made an Article of Faith amongst you that a man shall neither believe his reason nor his eyes and who can shew any confession of Faith in which all the Trent doctrine was professed and enjoyned under pain of damnation De potest Eccles cons 12. and before the Councel of Constance the doctrine touching the Popes power was so new so decried that as Gerson sayes he hardly should have escaped the note of Heresie that would have said so much as was there defined so that in that Article which now makes a great part of your belief where was your Religion before the Councel of Constance and it is notorious that your Councel of Constance determined the doctrine of the half communion with a Non obstante to Christs institution that is with a defiance to it or a noted observed neglect of it and with a profession it was otherwise in the Primitive Church Where then was your Religion before John Hus and Hierom of Pragues time against whom that Councel was convened But by this instance it appears most certainly that your Church cannot shew her confessions immediately after Christ and therefore if we could not shew ours immediately before Luther it were not halfe so much for since you receded from Christs Doctrine we might well recede from yours and it matters not who or how many or how long they professed your doctrine if neither Christ nor his Apostles did teach it so that if these Articles constitute your Church your Church was invisible at the first and if ours was invisible afterwards it matters not For yours was invisible in the dayes of light and ours was invisible in the dayes of darknesse For our Church was alwayes visible in the reflections of Scripture and he that had his eyes of faith and reason might easily have seen these truths all the way which constitute our Church But I adde yet farther that our Church before Luther was there where your Church was in the same place and in the same persons for divers of the errors which have been amongst us reformed were not the constituent Articles of your Church before Luthers time for before the last Councels of your Church a man might have been of your Communion upon easier terms and Indulgences were indeed a practice but no Article of Faith before your men made it so and that very lately and so were many other things besides So that although your men cozen the credulous and the simple by calling yours The old Religion yet the difference is vast between Truth and their affirmative even as much as between old Errors and new Articles For although Ignorance and Superstition had prepared the oare yet the Councels of Constance and Basil and Trent especially
Subjects and the Article of the Catholike Church was made up to dispark the inclosures of Jerusalem but to turn them into the pale of Rome and the Church is as limited as ever it was save onely that the Synagogue is translated to Rome which I think you will easily beleeve was a Proposition the Apostles understood not But though it be hard to trust to it it is also so hard to prove it that you shall never be able to understand the measures of that question and therefore your salvation can never depend upon it For no good or wise person can beleeve that God hath tyed our Salvation to impossible measures or bound us to an Article that is not by us cognoscible or intends to have us conducted by that which we cannot understand and when you shall know that Learned men even of the Romane party are not agreed concerning the Catholique Church that is infallibly to guide you some saying that it is the virtual Church that is the Pope some that it is the representative Church that is a Councel Some that it is the Pope and the Councel the virtual Church and the representative Church together Some that neither of these nor both together are infallible but onely the essentiall Church or the diffusive Church is the Catholique from whom we must at no hand dissent you will quickly find your self in a wood and uncertain whether you have more then a word in exchange for your soul when you are told you are in the Catholique Church But I will tell you what you may understand and see and feel something that your self can tell whether I say true or no concerning it You are now gone to a Church that protects it self by arts of subtilty and arms by violence and persecuting all that are not of their minds to a Church in which you are to be a Subject of the King so long as it pleases the Pope In which you may be absolved from your Vows made to God your Oathes to the King your Promises to Men your duty to your Parents in some cases A Church in which men pray to God and to Saints in the same Form of words in which they pray to God as you may see in the Offices of Saints and particularly of our Lady a Church in which men are taught by most of the principal Leaders to worship Images with the same worship with which they worship God and Christ or him or her whose Image it is and in which they usually picture God the Father and the holy Trinity to the great dishonour of that sacred mysterie against the doctrine and practice of the Primitive Church against the expresse doctrine of Scripture against the honour of a Divine Attribute I mean the immensity and spirituality of the Divine Nature You are gone to a Church that pretends to be Infallible and yet is infinitely deceived in many particulars and yet endures no contradiction and is impatient her children should enquire into any thing her Priests obtrude You are gone from receiving the whole Sacrament to receive it but half from Christs Institution to a humane invention from Scripture to uncertain Traditions and from ancient Traditions to new pretences from prayers which ye undestood to prayers which ye understand not from confidence in God to rely upon creatures from intire dependence upon inward acts to a dangerous temptation of resting too much in outward ministeries in the externall work of Sacraments and of Sacramentals You are gone from a Church whose worshipping is simple Christian and Apostolical to a Church where mens consciences are loaden with a burden of Ceremonies greater then that in the dayes of the Jewish Religion for the Ceremonial of the Church of Rome is a great Book in Folio greater I say then all the Ceremonies of the Jews contained in Leviticus c. You are gone from a Church where you were exhorted to read the Word of God the holy Scriptures from whence you found instruction institution comfort reproof a treasure of all excellencies to a Church that seals up that fountain from you and gives you drink by drops out of such Cisterns as they first make and then stain and then reach out and if it be told you that some men abuse Scripture it is true for if your Priests had not abused Scripture they could not thus have abused you but there is no necessity they should and you need not unlesse you list any more then you need to abuse the Sacraments or decrees of the Church or the messages of your friend or the Letters you receive or the Laws of the Land all which are liable to be abused by evil persons but not by good people and modest understandings It is now become a part of your Religion to be ignorant to walk in blindnesse to believe the man that hears your Confessions to hear none but him not to hear God speaking but by him and so you are liable to be abused by him as he please without remedy You are gone from us where you were onely taught to worship God through Jesus Christ and now you are taught to worship Saints and Angels with a worship at least dangerous and in some things proper to God for your Church worships the Virgin Mary with burning incense and candles to her and you give her presents which by the consent of all Nations used to be esteemed a worship peculiar to God and it is the same thing which was condemned for Heresie in the Collyridians who offered a Cake to the Virgin Mary A Candle and a Cake make no difference in the worship and your joyning God and the Saints in your worship and devotions is like the device of them that fought for King and Parliament the latter destroys the former I will trouble you with no more particulars because if these move you not to consider better nothing can But yet I have two things more to adde of another nature one of which at least may prevail upon you whom I suppose to have a tender and a religious Conscience The first is That all the points of difference between us and your Church are such as do evidently serve the ends of covetousnesse and ambition of power and riches and so stand vehemently suspected of design and art rather then truth of the Article and designs upon Heaven I instance in the Popes power over Princes and all the world his power of dispensation The exemption of the Clergy from jurisdiction of Princes The doctrine of Purgatory and Indulgences which was once made means to raise a portion for a Lady the Neece of Pope Leo the tenth The Priests power advanced beyond authority of any warrant from Scripture a doctrine apt to bring absolute obedience to the Papacy but because this is possibly too nice for you to suspect or consider that which I am sure ought to move you is this That you are gone to a Religion in which though through Gods grace prevailing over the follies
were the forges and the mint Lastly if your men had not by all the vile and violent arts of the world stopped the mouths of dissenters the question would quickly have been answered or our Articles would have been so confessed so owned and so publick that the question could never have been asked but in despite of all opposition there were great numbers of professors who did protest and professe and practise our doctrines contrary to your Articles as it is demonstrated by the Divines of Germany in Illyricus his Catalogus testium veritatis and in Bishop Mortons appeale But with your next objection you are better pleased and your men make most noise with it For you pretend that by our confession salvation may be had in your Church but your men deny it to us and therefore by the confession of both sides you may be safe and there is no question concerning you but of us there is great question for none but our selves say that we can be saved I answer 1. That salvation may be had in your Church is it ever the truer because we say it If it be not it can adde no confidence to you for the proposition gets no strength by our affirmative But if it be then our authority is good or else our reason and if either be then we have more reason to be believed speaking of our selves because we are concerned to see that our selves may be in a state of hope and therefore we would not venture on this side if we had not greater reason to believe well of our selves then of you And therefore believe us when it is more likely that we have greater reason because we have greater concernments and therefore greater considerations 2. As much charity as your men pretend us to speak of you yet it is a clear case our hope of your salvation is so little that we dare not venture our selves on your side The Burger of Oldwater being to passe a river in his journey to Daventry bad his man try the ford telling him he hoped he should not be drowned for though he was afraid the River was too deep ye he thought his horse would carry him out or at least the boats would fetch him off Such a confidence we may have of you but you will find that but little warranty if you remember how great an interest it is that you venture 3. It would be remembred that though the best ground of your hope is not the goodnesse of your own faith but the greatnesse of our charity yet we that charitably hope well of you have a fulnesse of assurance of the truth and certainty of our own way and however you can please your selves with Images of things as having no firm footing for your trifling confidence yet you can never with your tricks outface us of just and firm adherencies and if you were not empty of supports and greedy of bulrushes snatching at any thing to support your sinking cause you would with fear and trembling consider the direct dangers which we demonstrate to you to be in your religion rather then flatter your selves with collateral weak and deceitful hopes of accidental possibilities that some of you may escape 4. If we be more charitable to you then you are to us acknowledge in us the beauty and essential form of Christian Religion be sure you love as well as make use of our charity but if you make our charity an argument against us remember that you render us evil in exchange change for good and let it be no brag to you that you have not that charity to us for therefore the Donatists were condemned for Hereticks and Schismaticks because they damn'd all the world and afforded no charity to any that was not of their Communion 5. But that our charity may be such indeed that is that it may do you a real benefit and not turn into Wormwood and Colliquintida I pray take notice in what sense it is that we allow salvation may possibly be had in your Church We warrant it not to any we only hope it for some we allow it to them as to the Sadduces in the Law and to the Corinthians in the Gospel who denied the resurrection that is till they were sufficiently instructed and competently convinced and had time and powers to out-wear their prejudices and the impresses of their education and long perswasion But to them amongst you who can and do consider and yet determine for error and interest we have a greater charity even so much as to labour and pray for their conversion but not so much fondnesse as to flatter them into boldnesse and pertinacious adherencies to matters of so great danger 6. But in all this affair though your men are very bold with God and leap into his judgment-seat before him and give wild sentences concerning the salvation of your own party and the damnation of all that disagree yet that which is our charity to you is indeed the fear of God and the reverence of his judgments we do not say that all Papists are certainly damn'd we wish and desire vehemently that none of you may perish but then this charity of judgment relates not to you or is derived from any probability which we see in your doctrines that differ from ours but because we know not what rate and value God puts upon the article It concernes neither you nor us to say this or that man shall be damn'd for his opinion for besides that this is a bold intrusion into that secret of God which shall not be opened till the day of judgment and besides that we know not what allayes and abatements are to be made by the good meaning the ignorance of the man all that can concern us is to tell you that you are in error that you depart from Scripture that you exercise tyranny over souls that you leave the Divine institution and prevaricate Gods Commandement that you divide the Church without truth and without necessity that you tie men to believe things under pain of damnation which cannot be made very probable much less certain and therefore that you sin against God and are in danger of his eternal displeasure but in giving the finall sentence as we have no more to do then your men have yet so we refuse to follow your evil example and we follow the glorious precedent of our Blessed Lord who decreed and declared against the crime but not against the Criminal before the day He that does this or that is in danger of the Councel or in danger of judgment or liable and obnoxious to the danger of hell fire so we say of your greatest errors they put you in the danger of perishing but that you shall or shall not perish we leave it to your Judge and if you call this charity it is well I am sure it is plety and the fear of God 7. Whether you may be saved or whether you shall be damned for