the Council of Constance that decreed That Princes were not bound to keep their Faith to Hereticks tho' it must be acknowledged that we have extraordinary Memories if we can forget such things and more extraordinary Understandings if we do not make some Inferences from them I will not stand upon such inconsiderable Trifles as the Gunpowder-Plot or the Massacre of Ireland but I will take the liberty to reflect a little on what that Church has done since those Laws were made to give us kinder and softer thoughts of them and to make us the less apprehensive of them We see before our eyes what they have done and are still doing in France and what feeble things Edicts Coronation Oaths Laws and Promises repeated over and over again prove to be where that Religion prevails and Louis le Grand makes not so contemptible a Figure in that Church or in our Court as to make us think that his Example may not be proposed as a Pattern as well as his Aid may be offered for an Encouragement to act the same things in England that he is now doing with so much applause in France and it may be perhaps the rather desired from hence to put him a little in countenance when so great a King as ours is willing to forget himself so far as to copy after him and to depend upon him so that as the Doctrine and Principles of that Church must be still the same in all Ages and Places since its chief pretention is that it is infallible it is no unreasonable thing for us to be afraid of those who will be easily induced to burn us a little here when they are told that such fervent Zeal will save them a more lasting burning hereafter and will perhaps quit all scores so entirely that they may hope scarce to endure a Singing in Purgatory for all their other Sins IV. If the severest Order of the Church of Rome that has breathed out nothing but Fire and Blood since its first formation and that is even decried at Rome it self for its Violence is in such credit here I do not see any inducement from thence to persuade us to look on the Councils that are directed by that Society as such harmless and inoffensive things that we need be no more on our guard against them I know not why we may not apprehend as much from Father Petre as the French have felt from Pere de la Chaise since all the difference that is observed to be between them is that the English Jesuit has much more Fire and Passion and much less Conduct and Judgment than the French has And when Rome has expressed so great a Jealousie of the Interest that that Order had in our Councils that F. Morgan who was thought to influence our Ambassadour was ordered to leave Rome I do not see why England should look so tamely on them No reason can be given why Card. Howard should be shut out of all their Councils unless it be that the Nobleness of his Birth and the Gentleness of his Temper are too hard even for his Religion and his Purple to be mastered by them And it is a Contradiction that nothing but a Belief capable of receiving Transubstantiation can reconcile to see Men pretend to observe Law and yet to find at the same time an Ambassadour from England at Rome when there are so many Laws in our Book of Statutes never yet repealed that have declared over and over again all Commerce with the Court and See of Rome to be High Treason V. The late famous Judgment of our Judges who knowing no other way to make their Names immortal have found an effectual one to preserve them from being ever forgot seems to call for another Method of Proceeding The President they have set must be fatal either to them or us For if twelve Men that get into Scarlet and Furs have an Authority to dissolve all our Laws the English Government is to be hereafter lookt at with as much scorn as it has hitherto drawn admiration That doubtful Words of Laws made so long ago that the Intention of the Lawgivers is not certainly known must be expounded by the Judges is not to be questioned but to infer from thence that the plain Words of a Law so lately made and that was so vigorously asserted by the present Parliament may be made void by a Decision of theirs after so much Practice upon them is just as reasonable a way of arguing as theirs is who because the Church of England acknowledges that the Chuurch has a Power in Matters of Rites and Ceremonies will from thence conclude that this Power must go so far that tho' Christ has said of the Cup Drink ye all of it we must obey the Church when she decrees that we shall not drink of it Our Judges for the greater part were Men that had past their Lives in so much Retirement that from thence one might have hoped that they had studied our Law well since the Bar had called them so seldom from their Studies and if Practice is thought often hurtful to Speculation as that which disorders and hurries the Judgment they who had practised so little in our Law had no byass on their Understandings and if the habit of taking Money as a Lawyer is a dangerous Preparation for one that is to be an incorrupt Judge they should have been incorruptible since it is not thought that the greater part of them got ever so much Money by their Profession as paid for their Furs In short we now see how they have merited their Preferment and they may yet expect a further Exaltation when the Justice and the Laws of England come to be in Hands that will be as careful to preserve them as they have been to destroy them But what an Infamy will it lay upon the Name of an English Parliament if instead of calling those Betrayers of their Country to an account they should go by an after-game to confirm what these Fellows have done VI. The late Conferences with so many Members of both Houses will give such an ill-natured piece of Jealousie against them that of all Persons living that are the most concern'd to take care how they give their Votes the World will believe that Threatnings and Promises had as large a share in those secret Conversations as Reasoning or Persuasion and it must be a more than ordinary degree of Zeal and Courage in them that must take off the Blot of being sent for and spoke to on such a Subject and in such a manner The worthy Behaviour of the Members in the last Session had made the Nation unwilling to remember the Errors committed in the first Election and it is to be hoped that they will not give any cause for the future to call that to mind For if a Parliament that had so many Flaws in its first Conception goes to repeal Laws that we are sure were made by Legal Parliaments it will
Author and some others have often given it out as if I had Betrayed a Master and I may expect the next time that they will say that I Murdered my Father for the one is as true as the other I never had a Master but the King for the whole course of my Life raised me above the serving of any Subject A design proposed to me by one that is now Dead and therefore shall not be named by me of bringing in an Army out of Scotland for the Spoiling and Subduing of England gave me a just horror at the Proposition and I did all I could to withstand it The same great Person did quickly take up such a Jealousy of me that he did all he could to ruin me tho His present Majesty who had then the Goodness for me to endeavour to Pacify him owned to me that he could see nothing in his hatred of me but a violent Passion Yet he was resolved to throw me in a Prison where very probably I had languished away the rest of my Life if the King that now is had not been so gracious to me as to warn me of my Danger which made me leave Scotland and after I had suffered near two years all that Wrath armed with Power could do to me at last while I was under one of the sharp effects of that great Minister's anger I told a Person of Honour that which I believed was one of the grounds of it The Gentleman set this so about that as he himself was a Member of the House of Commons so it was known to a great many others upon which I was sent for by the House I declined for four several times to say what had been proposed to me and at last being threatned to be prosecuted by the House of Commons as an Enemy to the Nation I was thus unwillingly brought to own it But that Great Man fell no sooner under an Eclipse of Favour then tho I had felt the weight of his Credit for seven years together I made not only all the steps necessary for a Reconciliation but I engaged some then in Favour so far into his Interests that he expressed a very thankful acknowledgment of it and a perfect Reconciliation with me Tho upon some Reasons of his own our Meeting was not thought convenient and his own Nephew who being now of the Roman Communion is a Witness to whom I may the more freely appeal brought me very kind Messages from him and signified them to me after his Death As for all the other things that can be objected to me I pass them over as things which can very little hurt me The Author it seems pities Varillas's defeated Condition who as my Friends from Paris write to me does not so much as pretend to justify himself of all those gross Errors of which I have discovered him Guilty but says he has received an Order from the King to insist no more in the Dispute in which he and I were engaged Our Author will be a very fit Person to succeed to that Despicable Writer who fancies that I contradict my self in setting forth Q. Maries Clemency in one place and yet shewing in another how Unmerciful she shewed her self towards those that were condemned of Heresy The best Natures in the World can be corrupted by a false Religion and they being once possessed with cruel Principles the more Pious they are they will be the more true to the Doctrines of their Church and by consequence they will execute all its severe Decrees with an unrelenting Rigour And we have clear Instances of this in the Age in which we live of Princes whose Inclinations to Clemency are as well known as the Severities to which the Credit of the Society has carried them are Deplorable There is another spiteful Insinuation with which I shall conclude my Apology This Author finding that the Matters of State of which he had accused me were not like to Blemish me much resolved to try what he could do in a Subject of another Nature which was indeed above him for tho it seems he is entertained to Scribble upon the Politicks yet the matters of Divinity probably do not lie within his Province but it seems he thought that any thing was to be ventured on that might Defame me He represents me as an Enemy to the Divinity of Jesus Christ because of the various readings of a verse in St. John's Epistle that I gave from some Ancient Manuscripts which I saw in my Travels And these men who have of late studied to make all the World either Deists or Socinians if they cannot make them Papists by representing that unless we believe the Infallibility of the Church we cannot upon good grounds believe either the Christian Religion or the Mysteries of it and this with so much Heat and Industry as if their design were to have us to be any thing rather than Protestants yet will accuse some of our Church of those Doctrines against which we have writ with greater force than any of our Calumniators For we have Accusers of the other side too All the Fathers that writ against the Arians believed those Mysteries tho they never cited that Passage from which it was reasonable to conclude that it was not in their Bibles otherwise it is not to be imagined that such Men as St. Athanase and St. Austin should not have mentioned it now the many other places of Scripture that determine me to believe the Divinity of the Saviour of the World are so clear that I believe it equally well whether this passage be acknowledged to be genuine or not But having for some years taken pleasure to compare Manuscripts those of the Holy Scriptures were naturally the most looked into by me and since a Man that has but a transcient View of M. SS cannot stay to examine them in many Passages that Passage being the most Important of all that are controverted I turned always to it and have given the account of what I saw sincerely both for it and against it For I have learned from Job not to lye for God since truth needs no support from falshood And I may well forgive those of a Church who have built so much upon Forgeries and Counterfeit Pieces to be angry with me for giving so sincere an account as I did of a Matter of Fact. But that Divine Saviour whom I adore daily as God equal with the Father knows the Injustice that is done me in this as well as in the other false Accusations with which my Enemies study to blacken me I can assure them that I have that Detestation of all Idolatry and of theirs in particular that I should never adore him as I do if I did not think him to be by Nature God over all blessed for ever And now to conclude if Men will not receive this Vindication of my self with the Justice that is due to me I humbly commit my Cause to him who judges righteously who
once both body and Soul. He charges Dr. Stillingfleet as the great Founder of this and all other Anti-catholick and Anti-christian and uncharitable Principles among us and that the TEST is the Swearing to the Truth of his unlearned and Phanatick Notion of Idolatry pag. 130 135. and the result of all is That Idolatry made the Plot and then the Plot made Idolatry and that the same persons made both He has also troubled the Reader with a second impertinence to shew his second-hand Reading again upon the Notion of Idolatry but all this falls off with a very short Answer if he is of the Church of England and believes that the Homilies contain a Godly and Wholesom Doctrine all this Clamour against Idolatry turns against himself for he will find the Church of Rome charged with this almost an Age before Dr. Stillingfleet was Born and tho perhaps none has ever defended the Charge with so much Learning as he has done yet no malice less Impudent than his is could make him the Author of the Accusation It will be another strain of our Author's modesty if he will pretend that our Church is not bound to own the Doctrine that is contained in her Homilies he must by this make our Church as Treacherous to her Members as Sa. Oxon is to her for to deliver this Doctrine to the People if we believe it not our selves is to be as impudent as he himself can pretend to be A Church may believe a Doctrine which she does not think necessary to propose to all her Members but she were indeed a Society fit for such Pastors as he is if she could propose to the People a Doctrine chiefly one of so great Consequence as this is without she believed it her self So then he must either Renounce our Church and her Articles or he must Answer all his own Plea for clearing that Church of this Imputation which is so slight that it will be no hard matter even for such a trifling Writer as himself is to do it As for what he says of Stabbing and Cut-throat Words he may charge us with such words if he will but we know who we may charge with the Deeds I would gladly see the List of all that have been murder'd by these Words to try if they can be put in the Ballance either with the Massacre of Ireland or that of Paris upon which I must take notice of his flight way of mentioning Coligny and Faction and telling us in plain words pag. 45. That they were Rebels This is perhaps another instance of his kindness to the Calvinist Prince that is Descended from that Great Man. If Idolatry made our Plot it was not the first that it made but his malignity is still like himself his charging Dr. Stillingfleet who he says is the Author of the Imputation of Idolatry as if he had suborned the Evidence in our Plot. I should congratulate to the Doctor the Honour that is done him by the Malice of one who must needs be the object of the hatred of all good Men if I did not look upon him as so contemptible a person that his love and his hatred are equally insignificant If he thinks our Church worse than Canibals I wish he would be at the pains to go and make a trial and see whether these Salvages will use him as we have done I dare say they would not Eat him for they would find so much Gall and Choler in him that the first bit would quite disgust them A second Part of the ENQUIRY into the Reasons offered by Sa. Oxon for Abrogating the TEST Or an Answer to his Plea for Transubstantiation and for Acquitting the Church of Rome of IDOLATRY THE two seemingly contrary Advices of the Wise man of Answering a Fool according to his Folly and of not Answering him according to his Folly are founded on such Excellent Reasons that if a man can but rightly distinguish the Circumstances he has a good Warrant for using both upon different occasions The Reason for Answering a Fool according to his Folly is lest he be wise in his own eyes that so a haughty and petulant humour may be subdued and that a Man that is both blinded and swelled up with self-conceit may by so severe a Remedy be brought to know himself and to think as meanly of himself as every Body else does But the reason against Answering a Fool according to his Folly is lest one be also like unto him and so let both his mind and stile be corrupted by so Vicious a Pattern Since then in a former Paper I was wrought on to let our Author see what a severe Treatment he has justly drawn on himself and to write in a stile a little like his own I will now let him see that he is the Man in the World whom I desire the least to resemble and so if I writ before in a stile that I thought became him I will now change that into another which I am sure becomes my self In the former I examined his Arguments for abrogating the Test in a strain which I thought somewhat necessary for the Informing the Nation aright in a matter of such Consequence that the Preservation of our Religion is judged to depend upon it by the Presumptive Heir of the Crown but now that I am to argue a point which requires more of a Gravity than of an acrimony of stile I will no more consider the Man but the Matter in hand In a word He would persuade the World that Transubstantiation is but a Nicety of the Schools calculated to the Aristotelian Philosophy and not defined positively in the Church of Rome but that the Corporal and Real Presence of the substance of Christ's Body and Blood in the Sacrament was the Doctrine of the Universal Church in the Primitive Times and that it is at this day the generally received Doctrine by all the different Parties in Europe not only the Ro. Catholicks and Lutherans but both by the Churches of Switzerland and France and more particularly by the Church of England so that since all that the Church of Rome means by Transubstantiation is the Real Presence and since the Real Presence is so Universally received it is a heinous thing to renounce Transubstantiation for that is in effect the renouncing the Real Presence This is the whole strength of his Argument which he fortifies by many Citations to prove that both the Ancient Fathers and the Modern Reformers believed the Real Presence and that the Church of Rome believes no more But to all this I shall offer a few Exceptions I. If Transubstantiation is only a Philosophical Nicety concerning the manner of the Presence where is the hurt of renouncing it and why are the Ro. Catholicks at so much pains to have the Test repealed for it contains nothing against the Real Presence indeed if this Argument has any force it should rather lead the Ro. Catholicks to take the Test since according to
heaviest Imputations that they could give it They objected to them the believing a God that was born and that died and the Resurrection of the Dead and many lesser matters which seemed absurd to them they had malice enough to seek out every thing that could disgrace a Religion which grew too hard for them but they never once object this of making a God out of a piece of Bread and then eating him if this had been the Doctrine of those Ages the Heathens chiefly Celsus and Porphiry but above all Julian could not have been Ignorant of it Now it does not stand with common sense to think that those who insist much upon Inconsiderable things could have passed over this which is both so sensible and of such Importance if it had been the received belief of those Ages 3. It is also of weight that there were no disputes nor Heresies upon this point during the first Ages and that none of the Hereticks ever objected it to the Doctors of the Church We find they contended about all other Points now this has so many difficulties in it that it should seem a little strange that all mens understandings should have been then so easy and consenting that this was the single point of the whole Body of Divinity about which the Church had no dispute for the first Seven Centuries It therefore inclines a Man rather to think that because there was no disputes concerning it therefore it was not then broached since we see plainly that ever since it was broached in the West it has occasioned lasting Disputes both with those who could not be brought to believe it and with one another concerning the several ways of explaining and maintaining it 4. It is also a strong Prejudice against the Antiquity of this Doctrine that there were none of those rites in the first Ages which have crept in in the latter which were such natural consequences of it that the belief of the one making way for the other we may conclude that where the one were not practised the other was not believed I will not mention all the Pomp which the latter Ages have Invented to raise the lustre of this Doctrine with which the former Ages were unacquainted It is enough to observe that the Adoration of the Sacrament was such a necessary Consequence of this Doctrine that since the Primitive Times know nothing of it as the Greek Church does not to this day it is perhaps more than a Presumption that they believed it not 5. But now I come to more Positive and Convincing proofs and 1. The language of the whole Church is only to be found in the Liturgies which are more severely composed than Rhetorical Discourses and of all the parts of the Office the Prayer of Consecration is that in which we must hope to find most certainly the Doctrine of the Church we find them in the 4th Century that in the Prayer of Consecration the Elements were said to be the Types of the Body and Blood of Christ as St. Basil Informs us from the Greek Liturgies and the Figure of his Body and Blood as St. Ambrose Informs us from the Latine Liturgies The Prayer of Consecration that is now in the Canon of the Mass is in a great part the same with that which is cited by St. Ambrose but with this Important difference that instead of the words which is the Figure of the Body and Blood of Christ that are in the former there is a petition added in the latter that the gifts may be to us the Body and Blood of Christ If we had so many of the Masses of the Ancient Liturgies left as to be able to find out the time in which the Prayer of Consecration was altered from what it was in St. Ambrose's days to what it is now this would be no small Article in the History of Transubstantiation but most of these are lost since then the Ancient Church could not believe otherwise of the Sacrament than as she expressed her self concerning it in the Prayer of Consecration It is plain that her first Doctrine concerning it was that the Bread and Wine were the Types and the Figure of the Body and Blood of Christ 2. A second proof is from the Controversy that was began by the Apollinarists and carried on by the Eutichians whether Christ's humanity was swallowed up of his Divinity or not The Eutichians made use of the General Expressions by which the change in the Sacrament seemed to be carried so far that the Bread and Wine were swallowed up by it and from this they inferred that in like manner the human nature of Christ was swallowed up by his Divinity but in opposition to all this we find Chrysostome the Patriarch of Constantinople Ephraim the Patriarch of Antioch Gelasius the Pope Theodoret a Bishop in Asia the lesser and Facundus a Bishop in Africk all within the compass of little more than an Age agree almost in the same words in refuting all this asserting that as the human nature in Christ remained still the same that it was before notwithstanding its union with his Divine Nature even so the Bread and Wine retained still their former Nature Substance and Form and that they are only sanctified not by the change of their Nature but by adding Grace to Nature This they do in terms plain and beyond all exception and Theodoret goes over the matter again and again in two different Treatises so that no matter of fact can appear more plainly than that the whole Church East and West and South did in the fifth and sixth Centuries believe that the Sanctification of the Elements in the Sacrament did no more destroy their natures than the union of the two Natures in Christ did destroy his humane nature A Third proof is taken from a practice which I will not offer to justify how Ancient soever it may have been It appears indeed in the Ancientest Liturgies now extant and is a Prayer in which the Sacrament is said to be offered up in honour of the Saint of the day to which a petition is added that it may be accepted of God by the Intercession of the Saint This is yet in the Missal and is used upon most of the Saints days Now if the Sacrament was then believed to be the very Body and Blood of Christ there is nothing more crude not to say prophanc to offer this up to the honour of a Saint and to pray that the Sacrifice of Christ's Body may be accepted of God through the Intercession of a Saint Therefore to give any tollerable sense to these words we must conclude that tho these Prayers have been continued in the Roman Church since this Opinion prevailed yet they were never made in an Age in which it was received The only meaning that can be given to these words is that they made the Saints days days of Communion as well as the Sundays were and upon that they prayed that the Sacrament which
near the Age of the Apostles contrary Traditions touching the Observation of Easter from which we must conclude that either the Matter of Fact of one side or the other as it was handed down was not true or at least that it was not rightly understood A Tradition concerning the Use of the Sacraments being a visible thing is more likely to be exact than a Speculation concerning their Nature and yet we find a Tradition of giving Infants the Communion grounded on the indispensible necessity of the Sacrament continued a thousand years in the Church A Tradition on which the Christians founded their Joy and Hope is less like to be changed than a more remote Speculation and yet the first Writers of the Christian Religion had a Tradition handed down to them by those who saw the Apostles of the Reign of Christ for a thousand year upon Earth and if those who had Matters at the second hand from the Apostles could be thus mistaken it is more reasonable to apprehend greater Errors at such a distance A Tradition concerning the Book of the Scriptures is more like to be exact than the Exposition of some Passages in it and yet we find the Church did unanimously believe the Translation of the 70. Interpreters to have been the effect of a miraculous Inspiration till St. Jerome examined this Matter better and made a New Translation from the Hebrew Copies But which is more than all the rest it seems plain That the Fathers before the Council of Nice believed the Divinity of the Son of God to be in some sort Inferior to that of the Father and for some Ages after the Council of Nice they believed them indeed both equal but they consider these as two different Beings and only one in Essence as three Men have the same humane Nature in common among them and that as one Candle lights another so the one flowed from another and after the fifth Century the Doctrine of one individual Essence was received If you will be farther informed concerning this Father Petua will satisfy you as to the first Period before the Council of Nice and the Learned Dr. Cudworth as to the second In all which particulars it appears how variable a thing Tradition is And upon the whole Matter the examining Tradition thus is still a searching among Books and here is no living Judg. XII If then the Authority that must decide Controversies lies in the Body of the Pastors scattered over the World which is the last Retrenchment here as many and as great Scruples will arise as we found in any of the former Heads Two difficulties appear at first View the one is How can we be assured that the present Pastors of the Church are derived in a just Succession from the Apostles there are no Registers extant that prove this So that we have nothing for it but some Histories that are so carelesly writ that we find many mistakes in them in other Matters and they are so different in the very first links of that Chain that immediately succeded the Apostles that the utmost can be made of this is that here is a Historical Relation somewhat doubtful but here is nothing to found our Faith on So that if a Succession from the Apostles times is necessary to the Constitution of that Church to which we must submit our selves we know not where to find it besides that the Doctrine of the necessity of the Intention of the Minister to the Validity of a Sacrament throws us into inextricable difficulties I know they generally say That by the Intention they do not mean the inward Acts of the Minister of the Sacrament but only that it must appear by his outward Deportment that he is in earnest going about a Sacrament and not doing a thing in jest and this appeared so reasonable to me that I was sorry to find our Divines urge it too much till turning over the Rubricks that are at the beginning of the Missal I found upon the head of the Intention of the Minister that if a Priest has a number of Hosties before him to be consecrated and intends to Consecrate them all except one in that case that vagrant Exception falls upon them all it not being affixed to any one and it is defined that he Consecrates none at all Here it is plain that the secret Acts of a Priest can defeat the Sacrament so that this overthrows all certainty concerning a Succession But besides all this we are sure that the Greek Churches have a much more uncontested Succession than the Latins so that a Succession cannot direct us And if it is necessary to seek out the Doctrines that are universally received this is not possible for a private Man to know So that in ignorant Countries where there is little Study the People have no other certainty concerning their Religion but what they take from their Curate and Confessor since they cannot examine what is generally received So that it must be confessed that all the Arguments that are brought for the necessity of a constant Infallible Judg turn against all those of the Church of Rome that do not acknowledg the Infallibility of the Pope for if he is not Infallible they have no other Judg that can pretend to it It were also easy to shew That some Doctrines have been as universally received in some Ages as they have been rejected in others which shews that the Doctrine of the present Church is not always a sure measure For five Ages together the Doctrine of the Popes Power to depose Heretical Princes was received without the least Opposition and this cannot be doubted by any that knows what has been the State of the Church since the end of the Eleventh Century and yet I believe few Princes would allow this notwithstanding all the concurring Authority of so many Ages to fortify it I could carry this into a great many other Instances but I single out this because it is a Point in which Princes are naturally extream sensible Upon the whole Matter it can never enter into my mind that God who has made Man a Creature that naturally enquires and reasons and that feels as sensible a pleasure when he can give himself a good account of his Actions as one that sees does perceive in Comparison to a blind Man that is led about and that this God that has also made Religion on design to perfect this humane Nature and to raise it to the utmost height to which it can arrive has contrived it to be dark and to be so much beyond the Penetration of our Faculties that we cannot find out his mind in those things that are necessary for our Salvation and that the Scriptures that were writ by plain Men in a very familiar Stile and addrest without any Discrimination to the Vulgar should become such an unintelligible Book in these Ages that we must have an Infallible Judg to expound it and when I see not only Popes but even
and the Act was so little acceptable to him whom he calls its Author that he spake of it then with Contempt as a Trick of the Court to lay the Nation too soon asleep The Negotiations beyond Sea were too evidently proved to be denied and which is not yet generally known Mr. Coleman when Examined by the Committee of the House of Commons said plain enough to them that the Late King was concerned in them but the Committee would not look into that matter and so Mr. Sacheverill that was their Chair-man did not report it yet the thing was not so secret but that one to whom it was trusted gave the late King an Account of it who said That he had not heard of it any other way and was so fully convinced that the Nation had cause given them to be jealous that he himself set forward the Act and the rather because he saw that the E. of S. did not much like it The Parliament as long as it was known that the Religion was safe in the King 's Negative had not taken any great care of its own Constitution but it seemed the best Expedient that could be found for laying the Jealousies of His late Majesty and the apprehensions of the Successor to take so much care of the two Houses that so the Dangers with which men were then allarm'd might seem the less formidable upon so effectual a security and thus all the stir that he keeps with Perjury and Imposture ought to make no other impression but to shew the wantonness of his own Temper that meddles so boldly with things of which he knew so little the true Secret For here was a Law passed of which all made great use that opposed the Bill of Exclusion to Demonstrate to the Nation that there could be no danger of Popery even under a Prince of that Religion but as he would turn the matter it amounts to this That that Law might be of good use in that season to lay the Jealousies of the Nation till there were a Prince on the Throne of that Communion and then when the turn is served it must be thrown away to open the only door that is now shut upon the Re-establishment of that Religion This is but one hint among a great many more of the state of Affairs at the time that this Act of the TEST was made to shew that the Evidence given by the Witnesses had no other share in that matter but that it gave a rise to the other Discoveries and a fair Opportunity to those who knew the secret of the late King's Religion and the Negotiation at Dover to provide such an effectual Security as might both save the Crown and secure the Religion and this I am sure some of the Bishops knew who to their Honour were faithful to both The third Reason he gives for Repealing the Act is the Incompetent Authority of those who Enacted it for it was of an Ecclesiastical nature and here he stretches out his Wings to a Top-flight and charges it with nothing less than the Deposing of Christ from his Throne the disowning neglecting and affronting his Commission to his Catholick Church and entrenching upon this sacred Prerogative of his Holy Catholick Church and then that he might have occasion to feed his spleen with railing at the whole Order he makes a ridiculous objection of the Bishops being present in the House of Lords that he might shew his respect to them by telling in a Parenthesis that to their shame they had consented to it But has this Scaramuchio no shame left him Did the Parliament pretend by this Act to make any Decision in those two Points of Transubstantiation and Idolatry Had not the Convocation defined them both for above an Age before In the 28th Article of our Church these words are to be found Transubstantiation or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine in the Supper of the Lord cannot be proved by Holy Writ but it is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture overthrows the nature of a Sacrament and hath given occasion to many superstitions and for the Idolatry of the Church of Rome that was also declared very expresly in the same body of Articles since in the Article 35 the Homilies are declared to contain a godly and wholesom Doctrine necessary for those times and upon that it is judged that they should be read in the Churches by the Ministers diligently and distinctly that they may be understood of the People And the Second of these which is against the Peril of Idolatry aggravates the Idolatry of that Church in so many particulars and with such severe Expressions that those who at first made those Articles and all those who do now sign them or oblige others to sign 'em must either believe the Church of Rome to be guilty of Idolatry or that the Church of England is the Impudentest Society that ever assumed the Name of a Church if she proposes such Homilies to the People in which this Charge is given so home and yet does not believe it her self A man must be of Bays's pitch to rise up to this degree of Impudence Upon the whole matter then these points have been already determined and were a part of our Doctrine enacted by Law All that the Parliament did was only to take these out of a great many more that by this Test it might appear whether they who came into either House were of that Religion or not and now let our Reasoner try what he can make out of this or how he can justify the Scandal that he so boldly throws upon his Order as if they had as much as in them lay destroyed the very being of a Christian Church and had profanely pawned the Bishop to the Lord and betrayed the Rights of the Church of England as by Law Established in particular as well as of the Church Catholick in general p. 8 9. All this shews to whom he has pawned both the Bishop and the Lord and something else too which is both Conscience and Honour if he has any left When one reflects on two of the Bishops that were of that Venerable Body while this Act passed whose Memory will be blessed in the present and following Ages those two great and good Men that filled the Sees of Chester and Oxford he must conclude that as the World was not worthy of them so certainly their Sees were nor worthy of them since they have been plagued with such Successors that because Bays delights in figures taken from the Roman Empire I must tell him that since Commodus succeeded to Marcus Aurillius I do not find a more incongrous Succession in History With what sensible regret must those who were so often edified with the Gravity the Piety the Generosity and Charity of the late Bishop of Oxford look on when they see such a Harleguin in his room His Fourth Reason is taken from the uncertainty and falsehood of the matters contained in
the Declaration it self pag. 9. for our Comedian maintains his Character still and scorns to speak of Establish'd Laws with any Decency here he puts in a paragraph as was formally marked which belonged to his Second Reason but it seems some of those to whom he has pawn'd himself thought he had not said enough on that head and therefore to save blottings he put it in here After that he tells the Gentry that Transubstantiation was a Notion belonging to the School-men and Metaphysitians and that he may bespeak their Favour he tells them in very soft words That their Learning was more polite and practicable in the Civil Affairs of Human Life to understand the Rules of Honour and the Laws of their Countrey the Practice of Martial Discipline and the Examples of Great Men in former Ages and by them to square their Actions in their respective Stations and the like But sure the Bishop is here without his Fiocco yet at least for Decency's sake he should have named Religion and Virtue among the proper Studies of the Gentry and if he dares not trust them with the reading the Scriptures yet at least they might read the Articles of our Church and hearken to the Homilies for tho it has been long one of the first Maxims that he has infused into all the Clergy that come near him that the People ought to be brought into an ignorance in matters of Religion that Preaching ought to be laid aside for a Preaching Church could not stand that in Sermons no points of Doctrine ought to be explained and that only the Rules of Human Life ought to be told the People yet after all they may read the short Articles and tho they were as blindly Implicit as he would wish them to be yet they would without more Enquiry find Transubstantiation to be condemned in them Next he Triumphs over the renouncing of it pag. 11. as too bold and too prophane an Affront to Almighty God when men Abjure a thing which it is morally impossible for them to understand And he appeals to the Members of both Houses whom in a fit of Respect he calls Honourable after he had Reproach'd them all he could if they have any distinct Idea or Notion in their minds of the thing they here so Solemnly Renounce I do verily believe none of them have any distinct Notion of Transubstantiation and that it is not only Morally but Physically impossible for them to understand it But one would think that this is enough for declaring that they do not Believe it since the TEST contains no declaration concerning Transubstantiation it self whether it is a True or a False Doctrine but only concerning the Belief of him that takes it And if one can have no distinct Notion of it so that it is morally impossible for him to understand it he may very well declare That he does not believe it After a Farce of a slight Story he concludes that there seems to be nothing but a Prophane Levity in the whole matter and a shameless abuse put upon God and Religion to carry on the Wicked Designs of a Rebel-Faction For he cannot for his heart abate an ace of his Insolence even when he makes the King Lords and Commons the subject of his Scorn Certainly whatever his Character is it ought not to be expected that a man who attacks all that is Sacred under God and Christ should not be treated as he deserves it were a feeble weakness to have so great a regard to a Character that is so prostituted by him He tells us pag 47. That all parties agree in the thing and that they differ only in the word and manner and here he makes a long excursion to shew his Learning in tacking a great many things together which passes with Ignorant Readers as a mark of his great Reading whereas in this as well as in all his other Books in which any shews of Learning appear those who have searched into the Fountains see that he does nothing but gather from the Collection of others only he spoils them with the Levities of his Buffoon Stilo and which is worse with his Dis-ingenuity I leave all these matters to be examined by those who have leisure for it and that think him worth their pains But as for Transubstantiation the words that I have cited from out of our Articles shew plainly that it is rejected in our Church so that he is bound either to renounce it or to renounce our Church therefore all that shew he makes with our History comes to nothing since whatever he may say with relation to Edward the Sixth's Reign it cannot be denied but they were Enacted by the Convocation in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's Reign and they have been ever since the Doctrine of our Church so that without going further this is now our Doctrine and since Sa. Oxon carries the Authority of the Convocation so high he will find the Original Record of these Articles in Corpus-Christi Colledg in Cambridge subscribed by the Members of both Houses in which there is a much more Positive Decision than is in the Prints not only against Transubstantiation but against any Corporal or Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament And if he will give himself scope to rail at those who suppressed this I leave him to his Liberty But here is the formal decision of this Church and the pretending that there was no Evidence of Cranmer's Opinion but in an unknown Manuscript or a Famous Invisible Manuscript p. 49 47. when there are two Books writ on this matter by Cranmer himself and when all the Disputes in Queen Mary's time besides those that were both in Oxford and Cambridge in King Edward's time shew so clearly That this was his Doctrine is a strain becoming his Sincerity that gives this among many other Essays of the Trust that is due to him But it seems he thought that Dr. Tillotson Dr. Stillingfleet and Dr. Burnet besides some others whom he does not Name had not Reputation enough in the World and therefore he intended to raise it by using them ill which is all the effect that his Malice can have He had set on one of his poor underworkmen some years ago to decry the Manuscript which Dr. Stillingfleet had in his keeping for above Twenty Years and which Dr. Burnet had in his Hands for many months and which they shewed to as many as desired to see it but that had turned so much to his Shame that first vented the Calumny that it seems he summoned Sa. Oxon to appear his second in the Slander and he whose Brow is of so peculiar a Composition will needs bring it here tho ever so impertinently But I forgive the Hatred that he bears both to that Manuscript and to those Doctors since nothing could be less to the satisfacton of those for whom he published his Book than to see the Mature and Regular Methods in which the Reformation
followed their Decisions and which was Imployed in the Execution of them makes it appear rather a stranger thing that so many opposed them than that so many submitted to them When Inquisitors or Dragoons manage an Argument how strong soever the Spirit may be in opposing it it is certain the Flesh will be weak and will ply easily When Princes were threatned with Deposition and Hereticks with Extirpation and when both were executed with so much rigour the success of all the Doctrines that were established in those days ought to make no Impression on us in its favour VII It is no less plain that there was a great and vigorous opposition made to every step of the progress of this Doctrine When the Eutichians first made use of it the greatest men of that Age set themselves against it When the Worshippers of Images did afterwards deny that the Sacrament was the Image of the Body and Blood of Christ a General Council in the East asserted according to the Ancient Liturgies the Contrary Proposition When Paschase Radbert set on Foot the Corporal Presence in the West all the great men of the Age writ against him Berenger was likewise highly esteemed and had many secret Followers when this Doctrine was first decreed and ever since the time of the Council of the Lateran that Transubstantiation was established there have been whole bodies of men that have opposed it and that have fallen as Sacrifices to the Rages of the Inquisitors And by the Processes of those of Tholouse of which I have seen the Original Records for the space of Twenty years it appears that as Transubstantiation was the Article upon which they were always chiefly examined so it was that which many of them did the most constantly deny so far were they on both sides from looking on it only as an Explanation of the Real Presence VIII The Novelty of this Doctrine appears plainly by the strange work that the Schools have made with it since they got it among them both in their Philosophy and Divinity and by the many different methods that they took for explaining it till they had licked it into the shape in which it is now which is as plain an Evidence of the Novelty of the Doctrine as can be imagined The Learned Mr. Alix has given us a clear Deduction of all that confusion into which it has cast the Schoolmen and the many various Methods that they sell on for maintaining it First they thought the Body of Christ was broken by the Teeth of the Faithful then that appearing absurd and subjecting our Saviour to new sufferings the Doctrine of a Bodies being in a place after the manner of a spirit was set up And as to the change some thought that the Matter of Bread remained but that it was united to the Body of Christ as nourishment is digested into our Bodies others thought that the Form of Bread remained the Matter only being changed And some thought that the Bread was only withdrawn to give place to the Body of Christ whereas others thought it was Annihilated While the better Judges had always an eye either to a Consubstantiation or to such an Assumption of the Bread and Wine by the Eternal Word as made the Sacrament in some sense his Body indeed but not that Body which is now in Heaven All these different Opinions in which the Schoolmen were divided even after the Decision made by Pope Innocent in the Council of the Lateran shew that the Doctrine being a Novelty men did not yet know how to mould or form it but in process of time the whole Philosophy was so digested as to prepare all Scholars in their first formation to receive it the more easily And in our Age in which that Philosophy has lost its credit what pains do they take to suppress the New Philosophy as seeing that it cannot be so easily subdued to support this Doctrine as the Old one was And it is no unpleasant thing to see the Shifts to which the Partisans of the Cartesian Philosophy are driven to explain themselves which are indeed so very ridiculous that one can hardly think that those who make use of them believe them for they are plainly rather Tricks and Excuses than Answers IX No man can deny that Transubstantiation is the Doctrine of the Church of Rome but he that will dispute the Authority of the Councils of the Lateran and Trent Now tho some have done the first avowedly yet as their number is small and their Opinion decried so for the Council of Trent tho I have known some of that Communion who do not look upon it as a General Council and tho it is not at all received in France neither as to Doctrine nor Discipline yet the contrary opinion is so universally received that they who think otherwise dare not speak out and so give their Opinion as a secret which they trust in confidence rather than as a Doctrine which they will own But setting aside the Authority of these Councils the common Resolution of Faith in the Church of Rome being Tradition it cannot be denied that the constant and general Tradition in the Church of Rome these last Five hundred years has been in favour of Transubstantiation and that is witnessed by all the Evidences by which it is possible to know Tradition The Writings of Learned Men the Sermons of Preachers the Poceedings of Tribunals the Decisions of Councils that if they were not general were yet very numerous and above all by the many Authentical Declarations that Popes have made in this matter So that either Tradition is to be for ever rejected as a false conveyance or this is the received Doctrine of the Church of Rome from which She can never depart without giving up both her Infallibility and the Authority of Tradition X. There is not any one point in which all the Reformed Churches do more unanimously agree than in the rejecting of Transubstantiation as appears both by the Harmony of their Consessions and by the current of all the Reformed VVriters And for the Real Presence tho the Lutherans explain it by a Consubstantiation and the rest of the Reformed by a Reality of Virtue and Efficacy and a Presence of Christ as crucified yet all of them have taken much pains to shew that in what sense soever they meant it they were still far enough from Transubstantiation This demonstrates the wisdom of our Legislators in singling out this to be the sole point of the Test for Imployments since it is perhaps the only point in Controversy in which the whole Church of Rome holds the Affirmative and the whole Reformed hold the Negative And it is as certain that Transubstantiation is the Doctrine of the Church of Rome as that it is rejected by the Church of England it being by name condemned in our Articles And thus I hope the whole Plea of our Author in favour of Transubstantiation is overthrown in all its three Branches which