ago S. Gertrude A. D. 664. S. Hildegardis in Germany A. D. 1180. and about the same time S. Elizabeth of Sconaugh all whose revelations were published and the last collected by Roger an English Cistertian and in latter times he mentions S. Brigitt and S. Catharine whose revelations he saith were opposed by some but he declares for his part that he is not at all moved with their arguments for that would diminish too much the honour due to those holy Spouses of Christ as he calls them but in truth he confesses the honour of their Church is concerned in it for saith he several Popes upon diligent examination have allowed and approved these revelations as Eugenius the third did those of Hildegardis as well as Boniface the ninth those of S. Brigitt For the argument from the contradiction of these revelations he knows not how to come off but by a charge of Forgery on the Dominican side and why might not they as well return it on the other unless Matthias a Suetia Confessor to S. Brigitt were more infallible than Raimundus or those who believed S. Catharine But this is not the only case wherein these female revelations so much approved by the Church of Rome are contradictory to each other in those things whereon the proof of a point of doctrine depends For who knows not to what end the revelation of S. Gregoryes delivering the soul of Trajan by his prayers is so frequently urged and this is confirmed by a revelation of S. Brigitt to that purpose from whence Salmeron calls it an unanswerable argument and Alphonsus Ciacconius published by the Popes authority an Apology for that revelation Yet Baronius tells us that S. Mathildis had a revelation to the contrary and if it were not contradictory to S. Brigitts it must be contradictory to it self And therefore he very fairly rejects them all but with what honour to his Church which had before approved them I can by no means understand And Bellarmin to the revelation of Mathildis wherein she desired to know what became of the souls of Sampson Solomon Origen and Trajan and God answered her that none should know what he had done with them opposes another revelation wherein the soul of Origen was seen together with that of Arius and Nestorius in Hell So infallible are these revelations even when they contradict each other How often have visions and apparitions of souls been made use of to prove the doctrine of Purgatory Witness the famous testimonies to this purpose out of S. Gregories Dialogues and Bedes History which latter is at large recited being very proper for it in the late great Legend published by Mr. Cressy under the name of a Church History who justifies the substance of the story as far as it concerns the Doctrine of Purgatory although he doth not think the person really dead but only in a Trance which is all one to our purpose as long as such arguments as these are made use of to prove matters of faith by We need not go so far back as Gabriel Biel to shew that the doctrine of Transubstantiation hath been proved by the appearance of a Child in a Host such an argument hath been lately published to the World and Bellarmin reckons up several to this purpose one wherein instead of Bread was seen real Flesh and another wherein Christ was seen in the form of a Child Which are well attended with St. Anthony of Padua 's Horse which would never have left his Provender to Worship the Host unless he had seen some notable sight there And he very doughtily proves Auricular Confession by a certain Vision of a tall and terrible man with his Book in his hand which blotted out presently all the sins which the humble Thief confessed upon his knees to the Priest but he hath not proved that terrible man did not represent the Devil who by that Ceremony might shew that he turned over the keeping of his Books of Accompts to the Priest who upon Confession might tell mens sins as well as he could do without But they have not only attempted to prove matters of Doctrine by these things but things have been defined in the Church meerly upon the credit of private revelations So the Spanish Ambassadour urges the Pope smartly upon the Revelations of St. Bridgitt That there were many of his predecessors that had determined more things in the Church partly relying upon private Revelations therein whose authority was not greater than hers were Pius 1. he saith determined the Controversie of Easter-day upon the credit of a Revelation made to Hermes Urban 4. Instituted the Festival of Corpus Christi in opposition to the denyers of Transubstantiation upon the instinct and revelation of a certain Woman Paul the Hermite was Canonized for a Saint upon the Authority of a Vision and Revelation to Anthony the one of his soul flying to Heaven the other of his being there The Feast of the apparition of the Arch-angel Michael which is constantly observed in the Church of Rome depended upon a revelation to the Bishop of Siponto and a few Drovers upon the Mountain Garganus These are things briefly touched by the Ambassadour but it will not be amiss to give a more particular account of those instances which concern the Institution of Festival Solemnities by which it will appear that they are Fanatical even in their Superstitions Pope Vrban 4. in the Bull still extant for the Celebration of Corpus Christi day mentions that as one of the great reasons of appointing it that while he was in a lower capacity he understood that a revelation had been made to certain Catholicks that this Feast should be observed in the Church This which is only intimated here is at large explained by Ioh. Diestemius Blaerus Prior of St. Iames in Liege where these things happened In an Hospital hard by the Town he tells us there was a famous Virgin called Iuliana which had many Extasies and Raptures and so Prophetical a Spirit as to discern the thoughts and intentions of her Neighbours Hearts she wrestled with Devils discoursed with the Apostles and wrought many Miracles But one thing peculiar to her was that in her Prayers she almost alwayes saw the Moon in her brightness but with a snip taken off from her roundness at which she was much troubled but by no means could get it out of her Phancy At last God was pleased to reveal it to her that the Moon signified the present Church and that fraction the want of one solemnity more to be observed in it upon which she received a command from Heaven to proclaim the observation of this solemnity For twenty years she prayed that God would excuse her and make choice of a more worthy person but none being found she communicates it to Iohannes de Lausenna and he to Iacobus de Trecis then Arch-deacon of Liege and afterwards Vrban 4. But although
or Heathenish fornication was here only reprehended as Jewish or Heathenish Idolatry But as the one is a foul sin whether it be committed by Jew Pagan or Christian so if such as profess the Name of Christ shall practise that which the Word of God condemneth in Jews or Pagans for Idolatry their profession is so far from diminishing that it augmenteth rather the hainousness of the crime About the same time came forth Bishop Downams Book of Antichrist wherein he doth at large prove That to give divine honour to a creature is Idolatry and that the Papists do give it in the Worship of Saints the Host and Images which is likewise done nearer our own times by Bishop Davenant and Dr. Jackson I shall conclude all although I might produce more with the testimony of Archbishop Laud who in his Conference saith the ancient Church knew not the adoration of Images and the modern Church of Rome is too like to Paganism in the practice of it and driven to scarce intelligible subtleties in her Servants writings that defend it this without any care had of millions of souls unable to understand her subtleties or shun her practice and in his Marginal Notes upon Bellarmin written with his own hand now in my possession where Bellarmin answers the testimony of the Council of Laodicea against the Worship of Angels by saying That it doth not condemn all Worship of Images but only that which is proper to God he replyes That Theodoret who produced that testimony of the Council expresly mentions the praying to Angels therefore saith he the praying to them was that Idolatry which the Council condemns By this we see that the most Eminent and Learned Defenders of our Church of greatest authority in it and zeal for the Cause of it against enemies of all sorts have agreed in the charge of Idolatry against the Church of Rome And I cannot see why the authority of some very few persons though of great Learning should bear sway against the constant opinion of our Church ever since the Reformation Since our Church is not now to be formed according to the singular Fancies of some few though Learned men much less to be modelled by the Caprichio's of Superstitious Fanaticks who prefer some odd Opinions and wayes of their own before the received doctrine and practice of the Church they live in Such as these we rather pity their weakness than regard their censures and are only sorry when our Adversaries make such properties of them as by their means to beget in some a disaffection to our Church Which I am so far from whatever malice and peevishness may suggest to the contrary that upon the greatest enquiry I can make I esteem it the best Church of the Christian world and think my time very well imployed what ever thanks I meet with for it in defending its Cause and preserving persons in the communion of it THE Contents CHAP. I. Of the Idolatry practised in the Church of Rome in the Worship of Images THE introduction concerning the occasion of the debate The Church of Rome makes its members guilty of Hypocrisie or Idolatry First Of the Worship of God by Images Some propositions for clearing the notion of Divine Worship It is in Gods power to determine the way of his Worship which being determined Gods Law and not our intention is to be the rule of Worship The main question is Whether God hath forbidden the worshipping of himself by an Image under the notion of Idolatry Of the meaning of the second Commandment from the terms therein used the large sense and importance of them which cannot be understood only of Heathen Idols Of the reason of that Law from Gods infinite and invisible nature How far that hath been acknowledged by Heathens The Law against Image Worship no ceremonial Law respecting meerly the Iews the reason against it made more clear by the Gospel The wiser Heathen did not worship their Images as Gods yet their worship condemned as Idolatry The Christian Church believed the reason of this Law to be immutable Of the Doctrine of the second Council of Nice the opposition to it in Greece Germany France and England Of the Scripture Instances of Idolatry contrary to the second Commandment in the Golden Calf and the Calves of Dan and Bethel Of the distinctions used to excuse image-worship from being Idolatry The vanity and folly of them The instances supposed to be parallell answered P. 49 CHAP. II. Of their Idolatry in Adoration of the Host and Invocation of Saints The Argument proposed concerning the Adoration of the Host the insufficiency of the Answer to it manifested supposing equal revelation for Transubstantiation as for Christs Divinity yet not the same reason for Worshipping the Host as the person of Christ the great disparity between these two at large discovered the Controversie truly stated concerning Adoration of the Host and it is proved that no man on the principles of the Roman Church can be secure he doth not commit Idolatry in it The confession of our Adversaries that the same Principles will justifie the Worship of any Creature No such motives to believe Transubstantiation as the Divinity of Christ. Bishop Taylor 's Testimony answered by himself To Worship Christ in the Sun as lawful as to Worship him in the Host. The grossest Idolatry excusable on the same grounds The argument proposed and vindicated concerning the Invocation of Saints practised in the Church of Rome The Fathers Arguments against the Heathens hold against Invocation of Saints the state of the Controversie about Idolatry as managed by them They make it wholly unlawful to give divine Worship to any Creature how excellent soever The Worship not only of Heathen Gods but of Angels condemned The common evasions answered Prayer more proper to God than Sacrifice No such disparity as is pretended between the manner of Invocating Saints and the Heathens Invocating their Deities In the Church of Rome they do more than pray to Saints to pray for them proved from the present most Authentick Breviaries Supposing that were all it would not excuse them St. Austin no friend to Invocation of Saints Practices condemned by the Church pleaded for it Of Negative points being Articles of faith p. 108. CHAP. III. Of the hindrance of a good Life and Devotion in the Roman Church The doctrines of the Roman Church prejudicial to Piety The Sacrament of Pennance as taught among them destroyes the necessity of a good life The doctrine of Purgatory takes away the care of it as appears by the true stating it and comparing that doctrine with Protestants How easie it is according to them for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Purgatory dreadful to none but poor and friendless Sincerity of devotion hindred by prayers in an unknown Tongue The great absurdity of it manifested The effects of our Ancestors devotion had been as great if they had said their prayers in English
The language of prayer proved to be no indifferent thing from St. Pauls arguments No universal consent for prayers in an unknown tongue by the confession of their own Writers Of their doctrine of the efficacy of Sacraments that it takes away all necessity of devotion in the minds of the receivers This complained of by Cassander and Arnaud but proved against them to be the doctrine of the Roman Church by the Canons of the Council of Trent The great easiness of getting Grace by their Sacraments Of their discouraging the reading the Scriptures A standing Rule of devotion necessary None so fit to give it as God himself This done by him in the Scriptures All persons therefore concerned to read them The arguments against reading the Scriptures would have held against the publishing them in a language known to the peâ—ple The dangers as great then as ever have been since The greatest prudence of the Roman Church is wholly to forbid the Scriptures being acknowledged by their wisest men to be so contrary to their Interest The confession of the Cardinals at Bononia to that purpose The avowed practice of the Roman Church herein directly contrary to that of the Primitive although the reasons were as great then from the danger of Heresies This confessed by their own Writers p. 178 CHAP. IV. Of the Fanaticism of the Roman Church The unreasonableness of objecting Sects and Fanaticisms to us as the effects of reading the Scriptures Fanaticism countenanced in the Roman Church but condemned by ours Private revelations made among them the grounds of believing some points of doctrine proved from their own Authors Of the Revelations pleaded for the immaculate Conception The Revelations of S. Brigitt and S. Catharin directly contrary in this point yet both owned in the Church of Rome The large approbations of S. Brigitts by Popes and Councils and both their revelations acknowledged to be divine in the lessons read upon their dayes S. Catharines wonderful faculty of smelling souls a gift peculiar to her and Philip Nerius The vain attempts of reconciling those Revelations The great number of female Revelations approved in the Roman Church Purgatory Transubstantiation Auricular Confession proved by Visions and Revelations Festivals appointed upon the credit of Revelations the Feast of Corpus Christi on the Revelation made to Juliana the Story of it related from their own Writers No such things can be objected to our Church Revelations still owned by them proved from the Fanatick Revelations of Mother Juliana very lately published by Mr. Cressy Some instances of the blasphemous Nonsense contained in them The Monastick Orders founded in Enthusiasm An account of the great Fanaticism of S. Benedict and S. Romoaldus their hatred of Humane Learning and strange Visions and Revelations The Carthusian Order founded upon a Vision The Carmalites Vision of their habit The Franciscan and Dominican Orders founded on Fanaticism and seen in a Vision of Innocent the third to be the great supporters of the Roman Church The Quakerism of S. Francis described from their best Authors His Ignorance Extasies and Fanatick Preaching The Vision of Dominicus The blasphemous Enthusiasm of the Mendicant Fryers The History of it related at large Of the Evangelium aeternum and the blasphemies contained in it The Author of it supposed to be the General of the Franciscan Order however owned by the Fryers and read and preached at Paris The opposition to it by the Vniversity but favoured by the Popes Gul. S. Amour writing against it his Book publickly burnt by order of the Court of Rome The Popes horrible partiality to the Fryers The Fanaticism of the Franciscans afterwards of the followers of Petrus Johannis de Oliva The Spiritual State began say they from S. Francis The story of his wounds and Maria Visitationis paralleld The canting language used by the spiritual Brethren called Beguini Fraticelli and Bigardi Of their doctrines about Poverty Swearing Perfection the Carnal Church and Inspiration by all which they appear to be a Sect of Quakers after the Order of S. Francis Of the Schism made by them The large spreading and long continuance of them Of the Apostolici and Dulcinistae Of their numerous Conventicles Their high opinion of themselves Their Zeal against the Clergy and Tythes their doctrine of Christian Liberty Of the Alumbrado's in Spain their disobedience to Bishops obstinate adhering to their own fancies calling them Inspirations their being above Ordinances Ignatius Loyola suspected to be one of the Illuminati proved from Melchior Canus The Iesuites Order founded in Fanaticism a particular account of the Romantick Enthusiasm of Ignatius from the Writers of his own Order Whereby it is proved that he was the greatest pretender to Enthusiasm since the dayes of Mahomet and S. Francis Ignatius gave no respect to men by words or putting off his Hat his great Ignorance and Preaching in the Streets his glorying in his sufferings for it his pretence to mortification the wayes he used to get disciples Their way of resolution of difficulties by seeking God their itinerant preaching in the Cities of Italy The Sect of Quakers a new Order of Disciples of Ignatius only wanting confirmation from the Pope which Ignatius obtained Of the Fanatick way of devotion in the Roman Church Of Superstitious and Enthusiastical Fanaticism among them Of their mystical Divinity Mr. Cressy's canting in his Preface to Sancta Sophia Of the Deiform fund of the soul a superessential life and the way to it Of contemplating with the will Of passive Vnions The method of self-Annihilation Of the Vnion of nothing with nothing Of the feeling of not-being The mischief of an unintelligible way of devotion The utmost effect of this way is gross Enthusiasm Mr. Cressy's Vindication of it examined The last sort of Fanaticism among them resisting authority under pretence of Religion Their principles and practices compared with the Fanaticks How far they are disowned at present by them Of the Vindication of the Irish Remonstrance The Court of Rome hath alwayes favoured that party which is most destructive to Civil Government proved by particular and late Instances p. 235 CHAP. V. Of the Divisions of the Roman Church The great pretence of Vnity in the Church of Rome considered The Popes Authority the fountain of that Vnity what that Authority is which is challenged by the Popes over the Christian World the disturbances which have happened therein on the account of it The first Revolt of Rome from the Empire caused by the Popes Baronius his Arguments answered Rebellion the foundation of the greatness of that Church The cause of the strict League between the Popes and the posterity of Charles Martel The disturbances made by Popes in the new Empire Of the quarrels of Greg. 7. with the Empeperour and other Christian Princes upon the pretence of the Popes Authority More disturbances on that account in Christendome than any other matter of Religion Of the Schisms which have happened in the Roman Church particularly those
Proph. Sect. 20. Speaking of Catholicks The beauty and Splendour of their Church their pompous he should have said solemn Service the stateliness and solemnity of the Hierarchy their name of Catholick which they suppose he should have said their very Adversaries give them as their own due and to concern no other Sect of Christians the Antiquity of many of their Doctrines he should have said all the continual succession of their Bishops their immediate derivation from the Apostles their Title to succeed St. Peter the flattering he should have said due expression of Minor Bishops he means acknowledging the Pope head of the Church which by being old records have obtained credibility the multitude and variety of People which are of their perswasion apparent consent with Antiquity in many Ceremonials which other Churches have rejected and a pretended and sometimes he should have said alwayes apparent consent with some elder Ages in matters Doctrinal The great consent of one part with another in that which most of them affirm to be de fide of Faith The great differences which are commenced among their Adversaries abusing the liberty of Prophecying into a very great licentiousness Their happiness of being Instruments in converting divers he should rather have said of all Nations The piety and austerity of their Religious Orders of Men and Women The single life of their Priests and Bishops the severity of their Fasts and their exteriour observances the great reputation of their first Bishops for faith and sanctity the known holiness of some of those persons whose institutes the Religious persons pretend to imitate the oblique Arts and indirect proceedings of some of those who departed from them and amongst many other things the names of Heretick and Schismatick which they with infinite pertinacity he should have said upon the same grounds the Fathers did fasten upon all that disagree from them These things saith he and divers others may very easily perswade persons of much reason and more piety to retain that which they know to have been the Religion of their Fore-fathers which had actually possession and seizure of mens understandings before the opposite professions to wit of Protestant Presbyterian Anabaptist c. had a name Thus Dr. Taylor an eminent and leading man amongst the Protestants and if he confess that these Motives were sufficient for a Catholick to retain his Religion they must be of like force to perswade a dis-interessed Protestant to embrace it unless the Protestants can produce Motives for their Religion of greater or at least equal force with these which so great a man among them confesseth that Catholicks have for theirs Here therefore you must call upon the Author of the Paper you sent me to produce a Catalogue of grounds or at least some one ground for the Protestant Religion of greater or equal force with all these And as Dr. Taylor saith divers others which he omitted viz. The Scripture interpreted by the consent of Fathers the determination of General Councils the known Maxime of Catholicks that nothing is to be believed of Faith but what was received from their Fore-fathers as handed down from the Apostles The testimonie of the present Church of no less Authority now than in St. Austins time both for the Letter and the sence of the Scripture c. Do this and the Controversie will quickly be at an end Particular disputes are endless and above the understanding of such as are not learned but in grounds and principles 't is not so hard for Reason and common sence to Iudge That you may the better do it in your case I shall desire you to take these two Cautions along with you First That the Subject of the present Controversie are not those Articles in which the Protestants agree with us and for which they may pretend to produce the same Motives we do But in those in which they dissent from us such as are no Transubstantiation no Purgatory no honour due to Images no Invocation to Saints and the like in which the very Essence of Protestant as distinct from Catholick consists What Motives they can or will produce for these I do not foresee The pretence of Scriptures being sufficiently plain hath no place here because then the foresaid Negatives would be necessary to be believed as divine Truths And for their own Reason and Learning it will be found too light when put into the scale against that of the Catholick Church for so many Ages The second Caution is That you be careful to distinguish between Protestants producing grounds for their own Religion and finding fault with ours An Atheist can cavil and find fault with the grounds which learned men bring to prove a Deity such as are the Order of this visible World the general consent of Nations c. In this an Atheist thinks he doth somewhat But can he produce as good or better grounds for his own opinion No you see then 't is one thing to produce grounds for what we hold and another to find fault with those which are produced by the contrary part The latter hath made Controversie so long and the former will make it as short let the Answerer therefore instead of finding fault with our Motives produce his own for the Articles in Controversie and I am confident you will quickly discern which carry the most weight and consequently which are to be preferred A Defence of the foregoing Answer to the Questions CHAP. I. Of the Idolatry practised in the Church of Rome in the Worship of Images The introduction concerning the occasion of the debate The Church of Rome makes its members guilty of Hypocrisie or Idolatry First Of the Worship of God by Images Some propositions for clearing the notion of Divine Worship It is in Gods power to determine the way of his Worship which being determined Gods Law and not our intention is to be the rule of Worship The main question is Whether God hath forbidden the worshipping of himself by an Image under the notion of Idolatry Of the meaning of the second Commandment from the terms therein used the large sense and importance of them which cannot be understood only of Heathen Idols Of the reason of that Law from Gods infinite and invisible nature How far that hath been acknowledged by Heathens The Law against Image Worship no ceremonial Law respecting meerly the Iews the reason against it made more clear by the Gospel The wiser Heathen did not worship their Images as Gods yet their worship condemned as Idolatry The Christian Church believed the reason of this Law to be immutable Of the Doctrine of the second Council of Nice the opposition to it in Greece Germany France and England Of the Scripture Instances of Idolatry contrary to the second Commandment in the Golden Calf and the Calves of Dan and Bethel Of the distinctions used to excuse image-worship from being Idolatry The vanity and folly of them The instances supposed to be parallel answered Madam § 1. THat
is not God and therefore that honour ought not to be given it and I am further told by them that the Church hath never determined this controversie Let me now apply this to our present case It is certain if the body of Christ be present in the Eucharist as distinct from the divine nature I am not not to adore it It is very uncertain if it be present whether I am to give divine worship to the body of Christ but it is most certain that if I worship Christ in the Sacrament it is upon the account of his corporal presence For although when I worship the person of Christ as out of the Sacrament my worship is terminated upon him as God and man and the reason of my worship is wholly drawn from his divine nature yet when I worship Christ as in the Sacrament I must worship him there upon the account of his bodily presence for I have no other reason to Worship him in the Sacrament but because his body is present in it And this is not barely determining the place of Worship but assigning the cause of it for the primary reason of all adoration in the Sacrament is because Christ hath said this is my body which words if they should be allowed to imply Transubstantiation cannot be understood of any other change than of the bread into the body of Christ. And if such a sense were to be put upon it why may not I imagine much more agreeably to the nature of the institution that the meer humane nature of Christ is there than that his Divinity should be there in a particular manner present to no end and where it makes not the least manifestation of it self But if I should yield all that can be begged in this kind viz. that the body of Christ being present his divinity is there present too yet my mind must unavoidably rest unsatisfied still as to the adoration of the Host. For supposing the divine nature present in any thing gives no ground upon that account to give the same Worship to the thing wherein he is present as I do to Christ himself This the more considerative men of the Roman Church are aware of but the different wayes they have taken to answer it rather increase mens doubts than satisfie them Greg. de Valentiâ denies not that divine honour is given by them to the Eucharist and that the accidents remaining after Consecration are the term of adoration not for themselves but by reason of the admirable conjunction which they have with Christ. Which is the very same which they say of the humane nature of Christ and yet this same person denies that they are hypostatically united to him which if any one can understand I shall not envy him Bellarmin in answer to this argument is forced to grant as great an hypostatical union between Christ and the Sacrament as between the divine and humane nature for when he speaks of that he saith it lyes in this that the humane nature loseth its own proper subsistence and it assumed into the subsistence of the divine nature and in the case of the Sacrament he yields such a losing the proper subsistence of the bread and that what ever remains makes no distinct suppositum from the body of Christ but all belong to him and make one with him and therefore may be Worshipped as he is Is not this an admirable way of easing the minds of dissatisfied persons about giving adoration to the Host to fill them with such unintelligible terms and notions which it is impossible for them to understand themselves or explain to others Vasquez therefore finding well that the force of the argument lay in the presence of Christ and that from thence they must at last derive only the ground of adoration very ingenuously yields the Consequence and grants that God may very lawfully be adored by us in any created being wherein he is intimately present and this he not only grants but contends for in a set disputation wherein he proves very well from the principles of Worship allowed in the Roman Church that God may be adored in inanimate and irrational beings as well as in Images and answers all the arguments the very same way that they defend the other and that we way Worship the Sun as lawfully and with the same kind of Worship that they do an Image and that men may be worshipped with the same worship with which we Worship God himself if our mind do not rest in the Creature but be terminated upon God as in the adoration of the Host. See here the admirable effects of the doctrine of divine worship allowed and required in the Roman Church For upon the very same principles that a Papist Worships Images Saints and the Host he may as lawfully worship the Earth the Stars or Men and be no more guilty of Idolatry in one than in the other of them So that if we have no more reason to Worship the person of Christ than they have to adore the host upon their principles we have no more ground to worship Christ than we have to worship any creature in the World § 5. 2. There are not the same motives and grounds to believe the doctrine of Transubstantiation that there are to believe that Christ is God which he affirms but without any appearance of reason And I would gladly know what excellent motives and reasons those are which so advantageously recommend so absurd a doctrine as Transubstantiation is as to make any man think he hath reason to believe it I am sure it gives the greatest advantage to the enemies of Christs Divinity to see these two put together upon equal terms as though no man could have reason to believe Christ to be the Eternal Son of God that did not at the same time swallow the greatest contradictions to sense and reason imaginable But what doth he mean by these motives and grounds to believe The authority of the Roman Church I utterly deny that to be any ground of believing at all and desire with all my heart to see it proved but this is a proper means to believe Transubstantiation by for the ground of believing is as absurd as the doctrine to be believed by it If he means Catholick Tradition let him prove if he can that Transubstantiation was a Doctrine received in the universal Church from our Saviours time and when he pleases I shall joyne issue with him upon that Subject And if he thinks fit to put the negative upon me I will undertake to instance in an Age since the three first Centuries wherein if the most learned Fathers and Bishops yea of Rome it self be to be credited Transubstantiation was not believed But if at last he means Scripture which we acknowledge for our only rule of faith and shall do in spight of all pretences to infallibility either in Church or Tradition I shall appeal even to Bellarmin himself in this
was performed to the Martyrs for neither was any Sacrifice offered up to any of them nor any other part of religious worship for thereupon he shews which is very conveniently left out in the citation that not only Sacrifice was refused by Saints and Angels but any other religious honour which is due to God himself as the Angel forbad St. Iohn to fall down and worship him All the worship therefore he saith that they give to Saints is That of love and society and of the same kind which we give to holy men in this life who are ready to suffer for the truth of the Gospel But that the worship of Invocation is expresly excluded by St. Austin appears by what himself saith on a like occasion where he shews the difference between the Gentiles worship and theirs They saith he build Temples erect Altars appoint Priests and offer Sacrifices but we erect no Temples to Martyrs as to Gods but Memories as to dead men whose Spirits live with God we raise no Altars on which to sacrifice to Martyrs but to one God the God of Martyrs as well as ours at which as men of God who have overcome the world by confessing him they are named in their place and order but are not invocated by the Priest who sacrifices And elsewhere saith Whatever the Christians do at the memories of the Martyrs is for ornaments to those memories not as any sacred Rites or Sacrifices belonging to the dead as Gods we therefore do not worship our Martyrs with divine honours nor with the faults of men as the Gentiles did their Gods Which gave occasion to Lud. Vives in his Notes on that Chapter to say that many Christians in his time what sort of Catholicks those were it is easie to guess but to be sure none of St. Austins did no otherwise worship Saints than they did God himself neither could he see in many things any difference between the opinion they had of Saints and what the Gentiles had of their Gods I cannot understand then how St. Austins answer should justifie that which he condemns He denyes that there was an Invocation of Saints but only a commemoration of them the Church of Rome pleads for any Invocation of them and condemns all those who deny it So that his answer is very far from clearing the Roman Church in the practice of Invocation and the objection we make against it that it doth parallel the Heathen Idolatry for it grants it would do so if they gave to the Saints the worship due to God of which he makes Invocation to be a part But after all this can we imagine that he should practise himself contrary to his own doctrine Yes saith he he made a prayer to St. Cyprian let Blessed Cyprian therefore help us in our prayers But is there no difference to be made between such an Apostrophe to a person in ones writing and solemn supplication to him with all the soâ—emnity of devotion in the duties of Religious worship If I should now say Let St. Austin now help me in his prayers while I am defending his constant opinion that Invocation is proper to God alone would they take this for renouncing the Protestant doctrine and embracing that of the Church of Rome I doubt they would not think that I escaped the Anathema of the Council of Trent for all this The Question between us is not how far such wishes rather than prayers were thought allowable being uttered occasionally as St. Austin doth this to St. Cyprian but whether solemn Invocation of Saints in the duties of Religious worship as it is now practised in the Roman Church were ever practised in St. Austins time and this we utterly deny We do not say that they did not then believe that the Saints in Heaven did pray for them and that some of them did express their wishes that they would pray particularly for them we do not say that some superstitions did not creep in after the Anniversary meetings at the Sepulchres of the Martyrs grew in request for St. Austin himself saith that what they taught was one thing and what they did bear with was another speaking of the customes used at those solemnities But here we stand and fix our foot against all opposition whatsoever that there was no such doctrine or practice allowed in the Church at that time as is owned and approved at this day in the Church of Rome But from St. Austin we are sent to Calvin whose authority though never owned as infallible by us we need not fear in this point and I cannot but wonder if he saw the words in Calvin or Bellarmin that he would produce them For Calvin doth there say That the Council of Carthage did forbid praying to Saints lest the publick prayers should be corrupted by such kind of addresses Holy Peter pray for us If St. Austin were present in this Council as my Adversary saith he was I wonder what advantage it will be to him from Calvins saying that the Council did condemn and forbid those prayers which were in use by some of the people But it seems he takes the peoples part against the Council and St. Austin too and thinks it enough for them to follow the practices condemned by Councils and Fathers which we are sure they do and are glad to find so ingenuous a confession of it He may as well the next time bring St. Austins testimony for worshipping Martyrs and Images because he saith he knew many who adored Sepulchres and Pictures and for the worship of Angels because he saith he had heard of many who had tryed to go to God by praying to Angels and were thought worthy to fall into delusions § 16. But the strangest effort of all the rest is what he hath reserved to the last place viz. That the charge of Idolatry against them must be vain and groundless because if I be pressed close I shall deny any one of these Negative points to be divine truths viz. that honour is not to be given to the Images of Christ and his Saints that what appears to be bread in the Eucharist is not the body of Christ that it is not lawful to Invocate the Saints to pray for us But the answer to this is so easie that it will not require much time to dispatch it For I do assert it to be an Article of my faith That God alone is to be worshipped with divine and religious worship and he that cannot hence infer that no created Being is to be so worshipped hath the name of reasonable creature given him to no purpose What need we make Negative Articles of faith where the Affirmative do necessarily imply them If I believe that the Scripture is my only rule of faith as I most firmly do will any man that considers what he saith require me to make Negative Articles of faith that the Pope is not Tradition is not Councils are not a
private Spirit is not for all these things are necessarily implyed therein And so for all particular doctrines rejected by us upon this principle we do not make them Negative points of faith but we therefore refuse the belief of them because not contained in our only rule of faith On this account we reject the Popes Supremacy Transubstantiation Infalibility of the present Church in delivering points of faith Purgatory and other fopperies imposed upon the belief of Christians So that the short resolution of our faith is this that we ought to believe nothing as an Article of faith but what God hath revealed and that the compleat revelation of Gods will to us is contained in the Bible and the resolution of our worship is into this principle that God alone is to be worshipped with divine and religious worship and therefore whether they be Saints or Angels Sun Moon and Stars whether the Elements of a Sacrament or of the World whether Crosses and Reliques or Woods and Fountains or any sort of Images in a word no creature whatsoever is to be worshipped with religious worship because that is proper to God alone And if this principle will excuse them from Idolatry I desire him to make the best of it And if he gives no more satisfactory answer hereafter than he hath already done the greatest charity I can use to those of that Church is to wish them repentance which I most heartily do CHAP. III. Of the hindrance of a good Life and Devotion in the Roman Church The doctrines of the Roman Church prejudicial to Piety The Sacrament of Pennance as taught among them destroys the necessity of a good life The doctrine of Purgatory takes away the care of it as appears by the true stating it and comparing that doctrine with Protestants How easie it is according to them for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Purgatory dreadful to none but poor and friendless Sincerity of devotion hindred by prayers in an unknown Tongue The great absurdity of it manifested The effects of our Ancestors devotion had been as great if they had said their prayers in English The language of prayer proved to be no indifferent thing from St. Pauls arguments No universal consent for prayers in an unknown tongue by the confession of their own Writers Of their doctrine of the efficacy of Sacraments that it takes away all necessity of devotion in the minds of the receivers This complained of by Cassander and Arnaud but proved against them to be the doctrine of the Roman Church by the Canons of the Council of Trent The great easiness of getting Grace by their Sacraments Of their discouraging the reading the Scriptures A standing Rule of devotion necessary None so fit to give it as God himself This done by him in the Scriptures All persons therefore concerned to read them The arguments against reading the Scriptures would have held against the publishing them in a language known to the people The dangers as great then as ever have been since The greatest prudence of the Roman Church is wholly to forbid the Scriptures being acknowledged by their wisest men to be so contrary to their Interest The confession of the Cardinals at Bononia to that purpose The avowed practice of the Roman Church herein directly contrary to that of the Primitive although the reasons were as great then from the danger of Heresies This confessed by their own Writers § 1. 2. THe second Reason I gave why persons run so great a hazard of their salvation in the communion of the Roman Church was because that Church is guilty of so great corruption of the Christian Religion by opinions and practices which are very apt to hinder a good life which is necessary to salvation But 1. This necessity I said was taken off by their making the Sacrament of Pennance joyned with contrition sufficient for salvation Here he saith That Protestants do make contrition alone which is less sufficient for salvation and our Church allowing confession and absolution which make the Sacrament of Pennance in case of trouble of conscience they being added to contrition cannot make it of a malignant nature To this I answer That contrition alone is not by us made sufficient for salvation For we believe that as no man can be saved without true repentance so that true repentance doth not lye meerly in contrition for sins For godly sorrow in Scripture is said to work repentance to salvation not to be repented of and it cannot be the cause and effect both together Repentance in Scripture implyes a forsaking of sin as it were very easie to prove if it be thought necessary and without this we know not what ground any man hath to hope for the pardon of it although he confess it and be absolved a thousand times over and have remorse in his mind for it when he doth confess it And therefore I had cause to say that they of the Church of Rome destroy the necessity of a good life when they declare a man to be in a state of salvation if he hath a bare contrition for his sins and confess them to the Priest and be absolved by him For to what end should a man put himself to the trouble of mortifying his passions and forsaking his sins if he commits them again he knows a present remedy toties quoties it is but confessing with sorrow and upon absolution he is as whole as if he had not sinned And is it possible to imagine a doctrine that more effectually overthrows the necessity of a good life than this doth I cannot but think if this doctrine were true all the Precepts of Holiness in the Christian Religion were insignificant things But this is a doctrine fitted to make all that are bad and willing to continue so to be their Proselytes when so cheap and easie a way of salvation is believed by them especially if we enquire into the explication of this doctrine among the Doctors of that Church I cannot better express this than in the words of Bishop Taylor whom he deservedly calls an eminent leading man among the Protestants where after he hath mentioned their doctrines about contrition The sequel of all he saith is this that if a man live a wicked life for sixty or eighty years together yet if in the article of his death sooner than which God say they hath not commanded him to repent by being a little sorrowful for his sins then resolving for the present that he will do so no more and though this sorrow hath in it no love of God but only a fear of Hell and a hope that God will pardon him this if the Priest absolves him doth instantly pass him into a state of salvation The Priest with two Fingers and a Thumb can do his work for him only he must be greatly prepared and disposed to receive it greatly we say according to the sense of the Roman Church for he must be
the ancient Fathers had of the usefulness of Scriptures to the people than they have in the Roman Church but we need not more to prove it since it is acknowledged by those who are against the reading the Scriptures by the people that it was otherwise in the Primitive Church so Alphonsus à Castro and Sixtus Senensis confess Espencaeus quotes many plain places from St. Austin and St. Chrysostom to prove that the people ought to be very diligent in reading the Scriptures in their own houses and that nothing should excuse them from it and confesseth that St. Pauls precept Colos. 3. let the word of God dwell richly in you was intended for the people and that they ought to have it among them not only sufficiently but abundantly The sum of this argument is that the reasons now urged against the peoples Reading the Scriptures would have held against the publishing of them in a language to be understood by the people that they saw the same inconveniencies which are objected now and yet commended the reading the Scriptures to all that in all the primitive Church the practice was not only retained but vehemently urged after all the Heresies which had risen in the Church in their time and therefore for the Church of Rome to account it wisdome to keep the people from it is to charge not only the Fathers of the Church with folly but the Apostles and our Saviour and God himself CHAP. IV. Of the Fanaticism of the Roman Church The unreasonableness of objecting Sects and Fanaticisms to us as the effects of reading the Scriptures Fanaticism countenanced in the Roman Church but condemned by ours Private revelations made among them the grounds of believing some points of doctrine proved from their own Authors Of the Revelations pleaded for the immaculate Conception The Revelations of S. Brigitt and S. Catharin directly contrary in this point yet both owned in the Church of Rome The large approbations of S. Brigitts by Popes and Councils and both their revelations acknowledged to be divine in the lessons read upon their dayes S. Catharines wonderful faculty of smelling souls a gift peculiar to her and Philip Nerius The vain attempts of reconciling those Revelations The great number of female Revelations approved in the Roman Church Purgatory Transubstantiation Auricular Confession proved by Visions and Revelations Festivals appointed upon the credit of Revelations the Feast of Corpus Christi on the Revelation made to Juliana the Story of it related from their own Writers No such things can be objected to our Church Revelations still owned by them proved from the Fanatick Revelations of Mother Juliana very lately published by Mr. Cressy Some instances of the blasphemous Nonsense contained in them The Monastick Orders founded in Enthusiasm An account of the great Fanaticism of S. Benedict and S. Romoaldus their hatred of Humane Learning and strange Visions and Revelations The Carthusian Order founded upon a Vision The Carmelites Vision of their habit The Franciscan and Dominican Orders founded on Fanaticism and seen in a Vision of Innocent the third to be the great supporters of the Roman Church The Quakerism of S. Francis described from their best Authors His Ignorance Extasies and Fanatick Preaching The Vision of Dominicus The blasphemous Enthusiasm of the Mendicant Fryers The History of it related at large Of the Evangelium aeternum and the blasphemies contained in it The Author of it supposed to be the General of the Franciscan Order however owned by the Fryers and read and preached at Paris The opposition to it by the Vniversity but favoured by the Popes Gul. S. Amour writing against it his Book publickly burnt by order of the Court of Rome The Popes horrible partiality to the Fryers The Fanaticism of the Franciscans afterwards Of the followers of Petrus Johannis de Oliva The Spiritual State began say they from S. Francis The story of his wounds and Maria Visitationis paralleld The canting language used by the spiritual Brethren called Beguini Fraticelli and Begardi Of their doctrines about Poverty Swearing Perfection the Carnal Church and Inspiration by all which they appear to be a Sect of Quakers after the Order of S. Francis Of the Schism made by them The large spreading and long continuance of them Of the Apostolici and Dulcinistae Of their numerous Conventicles Their high opinion of themselves Their Zeal against the Clergy and Tythes their doctrine of Christian Liberty Of the Alumbrado's in Spain their disobedience to Bishops obstinate adhering to their own fancies calling them Inspirations their being above Ordinances Ignatius Loyola suspected to be one of the Illuminati proved from Melchior Canus The Iesuites Order founded in Fanaticism a particular account of the Romantick Enthusiasm of Ignatius from the Writers of his own Order Whereby it is proved that he was the greatest pretender to Enthusiasm since the dayes of Mahomet and S. Francis Ignatius gave no respect to men by words or putting off his Hat his great Ignorance and Preaching in the Streets his glorying in his sufferings for it his pretence to mortification the wayes he used to get disciples Their way of resolution of difficulties by seeking God their itinerant preaching in the Cities of Italy The Sect of Quakers a new Order of Disciples of Ignatius only wanting confirmation from the Pope which Ignatius obtained Of the Fanatick way of devotion in the Roman Church Of Superstitious and Enthusiastical Fanaticism among them Of their mystical Divinity Mr. Cressy's canting in his Preface to Sancta Sophia Of the Deiform fund of the soul a superessential life and the way to it Of contemplating with the will Of passive Vnions The method of self-Annihilation Of the Vnion of nothing with nothing Of the feeling of not-being The mischief of an unintelligible way of devotion The utmost effect of this way is gross Enthusiasm Mr. Cressy's Vindication of it examined The last sort of Fanatioism among them resisting authority under pretence of Religion Their principles and practices compared with the Fanaticks How far they are disowned ai present by them Of the Vindication of the Irish Remonstrance The Court of Rome hath alwayes favoured that party which is most destructive to Civil Government proved by particular and late Instances § 1. 2. WE come to consider whether the reading the Scriptures be the cause of all the Sects and Fanaticisms which have been in England He might much better have charged the Philosophers especially Aristotle with all the disputes in the world for they not only by their writings have occasioned many but have taught men the pernicious use of reasoning without which the world might be as quiet as a Flock of Sheep If they could but perswade men to lay aside that mischievous faculty I dare undertake for them that let the people have the Bible never so much among them they shall never hurt the Church of Rome Do they not tell us that the words of Scripture are plain for Transubstantiation
This is my body Why do not then the people as readily believe that as any other proposition By which we see it is not meerly reading but a more dangerous thing called considering or reasoning which make them embrace some things as they lye in words and interpret others according to the clearest evidence which the nature of the thing the comparing with other places and the common sense of mankind will give But why are we not all of a mind I would fain know the time when men were so This variety of Sects was objected against the Philosophers and thought no argument then it was objected against the primitive Christians and thought of no force then why must it signifie more in England than ever it did in any other age or place But say they It was otherwise in England before the Scriptures came to be read by all it was and is otherwise in all Churches where they are not read therefore these Sects and Fanaticisms are the dire effects of the promiscuous reading the Scriptures This is the common and popular argument All things were well with us when we offered up Cakes to the Queen of Heaven when all joyned in the communion of the Roman Church then there were no Fanaticisms nor New Lights no Sects as there are now in England therefore why should any one make any doubt but he ought to return to the Church of Rome This necessarily leads me into the examination of these two things 1. Whether there be no danger of Fanaticism in the Roman Church 2. Whether the Vnity of that Church be so admirable to tempt all persons who prize the Churches Vnity to return to it § 2. Concerning the danger of Fanaticism in the Roman Church By Fanaticism we understand either an Enthusiastick way of Religion or resisting authority under a pretence of Religion In either sense it shall appear that the Church of Rome is so far from being cleared from it that it hath given great encouragement to it 1. As to an Enthusiastick way of Religion I shall now prove that there have not been greater Enthusiasts among us in England than have been in the Roman Church all the difference is they have been some alwayes others for a time allowed and countenanced and encouraged by those of the Church of Rome but among us they have been decryed and opposed by all the members of the Church of England I shall not insist upon the resolution of faith and the infallibility of the Church which must be carried to Enthusiasm at last but I shall prove it by plain revelations which have been made the grounds among them of believing some doctrines in dispute and the reasons of setting up a more perfect way of life which in the highest strain of their devotion is meer Enthusiasm 1. Revelations have been pleaded by them in matters of doctrine such I mean which depend upon immediate impulses and inspirations since the Canon of Scripture and Apostolical Traditions Of this we have a remarkable instance in a late controversie managed with great heat and interest on both sides viz. of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary about the ending of which a solemn Embassy was sent from the Kings of Spain Philip the third and Philip the fourth to the Popes Paul the fifth and Gregory the thirteenth and an account is given of it by one concerned himself in the management of the Theological part of it which he saith is therefore published that the world may understand upon what grounds the doctrines of faith are established among them One of the chief whereof insisted upon was some private revelations made to some Saints about the immaculate conception which being once received in the Church adds no small strength he saith to any doctrine and gives a solid foundation for a definition i. e. that the matter may be defined to be of faith and necessary to be believed by all Christians Upon this he reckons up several revelations publickly received in the Church one mentioned by Anselm being a divine apparition to an Abbot in a storm a fit time for apparitions whereby he was admonished to keep the Feast of the Conception of the blessed Virgin upon which as Baronius observes that Feast was first kept in England Which revelation Wadding tells us is publickly recited in the office for the day and was not only extant in several Breviaries of England France Spain and Italy but he had divers himself authorized by the Pope wherein it was recommended as true and piously to be believed and accordingly have been publickly sung and used in the Church about an hundred years And what saith he is the consequence of disbelieving this but to say in effect that the Pope and the Roman Church are easily cheated and abused by impostures and forgers of false revelations to institute new Festival Solemnities upon the credit of them Another revelation was made to Norbertus the founder of the Order of the Praemonstratenses in which the Virgin Mary appeared and commended her veneration to him and gave him a white garment in token of her Original Innocency which revelation is believed by all of that Order and taken as the reason of their habit Besides these there are several other revelations to S. Gertrude and others to the same purpose reckoned up by several Catholick Authors which no man ought to reject unless he intends to be as great a Heretick or therein as wise a man as Erasmus was Nay these revelations were so frequent he saith that there hath been no age since the tenth Century wherein there hath not been some made to devout men or women about this matter But above all these most remarkable were those to S. Brigitt who had not one or two but many to this purpose and the latest were of Joanna a Cruce which it seems were at first eagerly opposed but at last came out with the approbation of two Cardinals and several Bishops of the Inquisition in Spain But now who could imagine a thing so often revealed so publickly allowed so many times attested from Heaven should not be generally received but the mischief of it was the contrary doctrine had revelations for it too For Antoninus and Cajetan say S. Catharine of Siena had it revealed to her that she was conceived with Original sin What is to be done now Here we have Saint against Saint Revelation against Revelation S. Catharine against S. Brigitt and all the rest of them Here to speak truth they are somewhat hard put to it for they grant God cannot contradict himself and therefore of one these must be false but which of them is all the question Here they examine which of these doctrines is most consonant to Scripture and Tradition which is most for the benefit of the Church which were persons of the greater sanctity and whose revelations were the most approved For. S. Brigitts they plead stoutly that when they were delivered by her
properties in the Holy Trinity of the Fatherhead of the Motherhood and of the Lordship and she further saw that the second person which is our Mother substantially the same dear worthy person is now become our Mother sensual for we be double of Gods making substantial and sensual We may justly admire what esteem Mr. Cressy had of that Lady to whose devout retirements he so gravely commends the blasphemous and senseless tittle tattle of this Hysterical Gossip It were endless to repeat the Canting and Enthusiastick expressions which signifie nothing in Mother Iuliana's Revelations and one would wonder to what end such a Book were published among us unless it were to convince us of this great truth that we have not had so great Fanaticks and Enthusiasts among us but they have had greater in the Roman Church And by this means they may think to prevail upon the Fanaticks among us by perswading them that they have been strangely mistaken concerning the Church of Rome in these matters that she is no such enemy to Enthusiams and Revelations as some believe but that in truth she hath not only alwayes had such but given great approbation and encouragement to them So that among all their visions they do but mix some that confirm their particular Doctrines as the Visions of Iuliana concerning the great Worship of the B. Virgin from her son the holy Vernacle at Rome and such like fopperies these make all the rest very acceptable among them § 6. 2. That which they account the most perfect way of life hath been instituted by Enthusiastick persons and upon the credit of visions and revelations and the highest way of devotion in that Church is meer Enthusiasme 1. That the Religious orders were instituted among them by Enthusiastick persons upon the credit of their visions and revelations The most celebrated orders at this day in the Roman Church are the Benedictines Carthusians Dominicans Franciscans and Iesuites and if I can prove this concerning each of these we shall see how much Fanaticism hath contributed to the support of the Roman Church And it is a very fair way towards the proof of it that Bellarmin confesseth concerning the four first and that of Romoaldus that they were at first instituted by St. Benedict St. Romoaldus St. Bruno St. Dominick St. Francis by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost and for Ignatius Loyola if he do not appear as great a Fanatick as ever hath been in the world we shall be contented to be upbraided with the charge of Fanaticism among us It is observable in the life of St. Benedict as St. Gregory relates in the second Book of his Dialogues that he was a great hater of humane learning and that was the first occasion of his retiring from the World being very much afraid a little knowledge should have destroyed him He therefore forsook not only his Studies but his Fathers house and business being as St. Gregory saith knowingly ignorant and wisely unlearned he might as well have said ignorantly learned and foolishly wise One might have suspected it had been rather hatred of his Book than devotion at his age which made him run away from School and his Fathers house but one of his Visions in his Cave makes it more probable there was some other occasion of it But however away he goes and only an old Nurse with him and he requited her soon for it for he by his Prayers set together the winnowing Sieve which she had broken in pieces which was after hanged up before the doors of the Church to the Lombards times But this is nothing to his being three years in a Cave without the knowledge of any but St. Roman who let him down victuals by a rope and a Bell and the Devil owing him a great spight threw a huge stone and broke the Bell. Here he lay so close that he was fain to be discovered by a vision and was so devout that he had forgotten Easter day till he was put in mind of it by the person who by a vision was sent to him and was so little like a man that the shepherds took him for a beast lying in a den But at last he is brought to light and found to be a wonderful person for among superstitious people ignorance and devotion are most admired together and now many are sent to him for education having conquered his amorous passions by rowling himself naked among thornes and nettles which thorns a long time after St. Francis grafted Roses upon as Bollandus well observes which bear in the coldest part of Winter and of them Rose water is made which is sent as a present to the greatest Princes He had an admirable Sagacity in spying Devils for he saw a little black Devil which led away a Monk from Prayers and was fain to pray two dayes with Pompeianus and Maurus that God would afford them the Grace to see him too and at last Maurus being young and his sight good saw him but Pompeianus being older and wiser could not However St. Bennet sent the little Devil packing with a stroke of his rod as he did at other times with the sign of the cross and easily caused a stone to be lifted up whereon the Devil sate which could not be stirred before his coming It would take up too much time to tell of his Miracles my business is only with his visions and revelations by which he could not only foretell things to come but could discover absent things so that the Monks could not eat out of his sight but he could tell as well as if he saw the meat in their teeth when they denyed it He discovered Riggo's fraud when he came to him in Totila's habit and told Totilas how long he should raign nay if we believe St. Gregory he knew the secrets of the Divinity being one Spirit with God no wonder then the unhappy Boy could not hide one Flask of Wine nor the Monks receive handkerchiefs of the Women but he found it out but most admirable was his sight of his Sister Scholastica's soul entring into Heaven in the shape of a Dove and another time the soul of Germanus Bishop of Capua in a fiery Circle carryed by Angels to Heaven but above all was his seeing all the world under one ray of the Sun which he could not do Gregory concludes without a Divine internal light upon which a dispute hath been raised in the Schooles whether St. Benedict saw the divine Essence or no Aquinas thinks not but only that he had an extraordinary revelation Vasquez doth not seem much to oppose it but upon two grounds the one very considerable that we never read the Virgin Mary did it who ought to have the highest share in revelations and visions the other only a plain place of Scripture No man hath seen God at any time the only begotten Son of the Father he hath revealed him As
all of a mind and it is not necessary to the Unity of the Church that they should be but they have the only way of composing differences and they do not differ in matters of faith from each other and their differences lye only in their Schools and do not disturb the peace of the Church This is the utmost I can find their best wits plead for the Vnity of the Roman Church and if these be sufficient I believe they and we will be proved to be as much at Unity as they are among themselves 1. They say the Vnity of the Church doth not lye in actual Agreement of the members of it in matters of Doctrine but in having the best means to compose differences and to preserve consent which is submission to the Popes Authority So Gregory de Valentiâ explains the Vnity of their Church for actual consent he grants may be in other Churches as much as theirs and there is nothing singular or peculiar attributed to their Church supposing they were all of a mind which it is plain they are not but therein saith he lyes the Vnity of their Church that they all acknowledge one Head in whose judgement they acquiesce and therefore they have no more to do but to know what the Pope determines If this be all their Unity we have greater than they for we have a more certain way of ending Controversies than they have which I prove by an argument like to one in great request among them when they go about to perswade weak persons to their Religion viz. that it must needs be safer to be in that Religion wherein both parties agree a man may be saved than in that where one side denies a possibility of salvation so say I here that must be a safer way for Unity which both parties agree in to be infallible than that which one side absolutely denyes to be so but both parties agree the Scriptures to be infallible and all Protestants deny the Pope to be infallible therefore ours is the more certain way for Vnity But this is not all for it is far from being agreed among themselves that the Pope is infallible it being utterly denyed by some among them and the asserting it accounted Heresie as is evident in some late Books written to that purpose in France and England What excellent means of Vnity then is this among them which it is accounted by some no less than Heresie to assert § 13. But supposing they should yield the Pope that submission which they deny to be due to him yet is his definition so much more certain way of ending Controversies than the Scriptures Let them name one Controversie that hath been ended in their Church meerly by the Popes Decrees so as the opposite party hath declared that they believed contrary to what they believed before on the account of the Popes definition We have many instances to the contrary wherein controversies have been heightened and increased by their interposing but none concluded by them Do they say the Scripture can be no means of Vnity because of the various senses which have been put upon it and have they no wayes to evade the Popes definitions Yes so many that his Authority in truth signifies nothing any farther than they agree that the upholding it tends to their common interest But when onces he comes to cross the interest of any party if they do not in plain terms defie him yet they find out more civil wayes of making his Definitions of no force Either they say the Decree was procured by fraud and the Pope made it by mis-information which is the common way or he did not define it as a matter of faith sitting in Cathedrâ or the sense of his definition is quite otherwise than their Adversaries understand it or supposing that be the sense the Pope is never to be supposed to define any thing contrary to the Scriptures and Fathers and ancient Canons Of all which it were no difficult task to give late and particular instances but no one who is acquainted with the history of that Church can be ignorant of them and the late proceedings in the point of the five Propositions are a sufficient evidence of these things to any one who reads them For when was there a Fairer occasion given to the Pope to shew his Authority for preservation of the Churches unity than at that time when the matter of the five Propositions was under debate at Rome The same controversie was now revived which had disturbed their Church so often and so much before In the time of Clement 8. the heats were so great between the Iesuits and Dominicans that the Pope thought it necessary for the peace of the Church to put an end to them to that end he appointed Congregations for several years to discuss those points that he might come to a resolution in them This Pope at first was strangely prepossest by the arts of the Iesuits against the Dominicans but sending for the General of the Dominicans he told him what sad apprehensions he had concerning the peace of the Church by reason of the disputes between the Iesuits and them and therefore charges him that those of his Order should no longer molest the Iesuits about these things to whom he replyed that he assured him with as great Protestation as he was able that it was no meer Scholastical dispute between them but it was the cause of faith that was concerned which he discoursed largely upon to the Pope and made such impressions upon him that the Dominicans verily believe that had that Pope lived to the Vespers of Pentecost that year he dyed in March he had published a Bull against the Iesuits in presence of the Colledge of Cardinals and created F. Lemos Cardinal After his death the congregations were continued in the time of Paul 5. but at last were broken up without any decision at all If the Popes determination be such an absolute Instrument of peace in the Church it is the strangest thing in the world it should be made so little use of in such cases where they all acknowledge it would be of infinite advantage to their Church to have an issue put to such troublesome controversies as these were But they know well enough that the Popes Authority is the more esteemed the less it is used and that it hath alwayes been very hazardous to determine where there have been considerable parties on both sides for fear the condemned party should renounce his Authority or speak plainer truths than they are willing to hear And therefore it was well observed by Mons. S. Amour that they are very jealeus at Rome of maintaining the Authority of the decrees which issue from thence and that this consideration obliges the maker of them to look very well to the compliance and facility that may be expected in their execution before they pass any at all Which is a most certain argument they dare
so receive Indulgences as withall to satisfie God themselves for their sins i. e. in plain terms that all prudent Christians are too wise to believe them and none but Fools do rely on them For if there were any thing but fraud and imposture in them why may not a prudent Christian trust a Church which he believes infallible If the Head of the Church publishes an Indulgence wherein he remits to all that are confessed and contrite upon doing such actions of charity and piety the remaining temporal punishment of their sins I desire to know why a prudent Christian of that Church may not yea ought not to rely upon his word Doth he suspect the Head of his Church may cheat and abuse him if he doth what becomes of infallibility if he verily believes that the Pope cannot erre and will not deceive why must not his word be taken and how can his word be taken for the remitting of a debt when they take as much care of payment as if he had said nothing I know not how those things pass among the prudent Christians of that Church but to me they look like the greatest suspicion of a cheat that may be As suppose a great person out of kindness to one that is in danger of lying in Prison for debt gives him a note under his hand that upon the acknowledgment of his debt to his Attourney and paying him his Fees he will see his debt wholly discharged and a Friend of the Prisoner tells him openly he ought to receive that Favour in an extraordinary manner with all thankfulness for that person is one who can never fail of his word and he need not question his ability for he hath a vast treasure in his hands to be disposed of for such uses can we otherwise think but that the poor man would be strangely surprised with joy at it and if he hath any money left he will be sure to give it to the person imployed in so good a work But withall if he should secretly whisper him that he advises him as a Friend that he would look out all other wayes imaginable to satisfie his Creditours and that all prudent persons in his case had taken the same Course what must the thoughts of such a man be of such a large and noble offer Truly that the Gentleman was a great Courtier but a man must have a care of believing him too far and his Friend understood the world and that one thing was to be said and done in shew not to disoblige so great a person but for all that a man must mind his own business or he may be choused at last if he trust too far to such large promises This is just the case of Indulgences in the Roman Church a man is affrighted with the dreadful Prison of Purgatory as the temporal punishment of his sins which God will certainly exact from him either here by satisfactions and penances or there in the pains of that state while the man considers with himself the hardness of his condition he hears of Indulgences to be had and after he hath enquired the meaning of them is very well satisfied that if he can get one of them he shall do well enough For he is told that his Holiness is infallible and that he cannot cheat or lye or deceive like other men and therefore of all persons in the world he would soonest trust him but because many others are in the same condition with him he may a little question whether his stock will hold out or no here his Friends assure him the Treasure of the Church of which the Pope hath the Keys is so large that if it were a thousand times more he need not fear it only he must confess his sins and have contrition for them and do some charitable acts and pay some customary fees and duties and he shall have a total discharge Well sayes the man in a transport of joy this is the bravest Church in the world for a man to sin in if he may escape thus and what need I question since the Pope is infallible and the treasury of the Church is inexhaustible how am I freed now not only from the fears of Hell and Purgatory but from crabbed and hateful penances that honest and kind-hearted Gentleman the Pope hath struck a tally for me in his Exchequer and I shall have my share in my course and order without lashings and whippings and fastings and mumblings and I know not how many odd tricks besides but soft and fair saith Bellarmins prudent Christian to him be not too confident of your ease and discharge you must use as great severities with your self and undergoe as many penances and say as many Prayers as if you had no Indulgence at all Say you so I pray what benefit then have I saith he by this which you call an Indulgence what is it an Indulgence of Is there not a full remission of sins contained in it and I have been always told by that is meant the discharge of the temporary punishment due to sin either here or in Purgatory Shall I be discharged or shall I not upon it if I shall what do you tell me of that which I am discharged from if not the Indulgence is a spiritual Trapan and the Pope and Infallible Cheat. I cannot see how a man can think otherwise that made such account of the great benefit of Indulgences and at last finds they come to nothing but deceiving the people and getting money § 9. By this we see already what miserable shifts they are put to who defend Indulgences but as an honest contract but they who will justifie them as containing something divine and satisfactory for the punishment of mens sins are fain to build the doctrine of them upon such absurd and unintelligible notions that it is almost as hard to understand as to believe it It cannot be denyed that there are some in the Church of Rome whose doctrine of Indulgences is easie enough but then it marrs the whole Markett and this doctrine is therefore condemned by others as heretical in sense Which is that Indulgences are nothing else but a relaxation of the ancient severity of Church discipline according to the old Penitential Canons which doth not respect the justice of God but the Discipline of the Church over offenders This is a doctrine we have nothing to complain of the difficulty of understanding but we know not to what purpose if this be all any particular Indulgences are ever given since there is so general an Indulgence by the practice of the whole Church among them wherein they cannot pretend to observe any of the old Penitential Canons And to give a man an Indulgence to omit that which no body requires and is wholly out of use would be like the Kings giving a man a Patent not to wear Trunk-hose and Ruffs when it would be ridiculous to use them And if this were all intended
testimonies produced by him and shewed that they are so far from proving the use of one kind in the Catholick Church that Leo in that very place shewes that it was the token of an heretick not to receive in both kinds and the other Instance in the Greek Church is only of a woman in whose mouth the bread turned into a stone that she had not patience to stay to receive the Cup. So very pittyful are the proofs brought against the use of both kinds for a 1000. years after Christ which being supposed and acknowledged by some of the most learned and ingenuous of their own Church I wonder what authority the Church afterwards can have to alter what was always looked on before as an obliging Institution of Christ Might it not as well alter any other Institution on the same grounds and wholly forbid the bread to the Laity as well as the cup and I doe not at all question but as substantial reasons might be brought for one as the other I had thought the Gentlemen of the Roman Church had pretended a mighty reverence to Apostolical Traditions and the Practice of the Catholick Church for a thousand years after Christ. But it seems this signifies nothing to them when it is contrary to their present doctrine and practice Then it makes a great noise as he saith but nothing else Thus we Protestants have at last gained Antiquity of our side it is now yielded that though the Church were for us for a thousand years yet if it now decree or act otherwise this is enough for them And we are contented to have Christ and his Apostles and all the Primitive practice for so long a time on our side and to leave them to enjoy the satisfaction that follows taking the part of the Church of Rome against them all But however their opinion tends more to devotion Alas for us we doe not account it any piece of devotion to believe non-sense and contradictions such as the doctrine of transubstantiation implies we know not what devotion there can be in opposing a plain Institution of Christ and not meerly in leaving the people at liberty to receive in one or both kinds but in prohibiting the far greatest part of Christians to receive as Christ appointed we know not what devotion there can lye in worshipping a piece of bread for the Son of God and believing that when a wafer is taken into our mouths that God himself is personally entered under our Roof O horrible devotion and detestable superstition to give the same adoration to a wafer which we doe to the Eternal God and to believe Christ to goe down as personally into our bellies as ever he went up and down when he was upon earth § 12. That which followes is the Power of a Persons dispensing in oaths and marriages contrary to the Law of God which I therefore made a hindrance of the sincerity of devotion because it is apt to possess mens minds with an apprehension that Religion is only a Politick Cheat if any person shall be thought able to dispense with those things which are universally received among Christians as the Laws of God That which I meant was the Popes taking upon him to dispense with oaths of allegiance to Princes and the incestuous marriages of some great Princes And now let any one consider what his Answer signifies he saith that some kinds of oaths may be judged in some circumstances to be hurtful and not fit to be kept and the dispensation in them is no more than to judge or determine them to be so and for Marriages he addes that the Church may dispense in some degrees of Affinity and consanguinity but in nothing contrary to the Law of God But this doth not at all reach to the busines for dispensing in this way may as well be done by a Casuist as the Bishop of Rome but the Question lyes here whether those things which otherwise would be sins by the Law of God doe therefore cease to be so because of the Popes Power to discharge that obligation of conscience which lay upon the Person either in oaths or marriages Let him answer directly to this for the other is shuffling and not answering As it is granted that a subject hath an obligation of conscience upon him to obey his Soveraigne by vertue of the Law of God and the universal sense of the Church hath been that there are some degrees of consanguinity and Affinity which it is Incest to marry within I desire to know whether the Popes power can make disobedience lawful in one case and marriage in another which without that Power were utterly unlawful This he could not but know was the thing meant but not fit to be answered § 13. The last Instance is making disobedience to the Church in disputable matters more hainous than disobedience to the Laws of Christ in unquestionable things as marriage in a Priest to be a greater crime than Fornication To this he answers 1. That the Law of the Church being supposed forbidding the marriage of a Priest that is no disputable matter but it is out of Question by the Law of God that obedience is to be given to the commands or prohibitions of the Church 2. That marriage in a Priest the prohibition of the Church being supposed and a voluntary vow against it is no better than Adultery in the language of the Fathers and therefore worse than Fornication 3. That the state of single life is much more convenient for Priests than the married state is This last answer is nothing at all to the purpose for in matters of conveniency not determin'd by any Law every one is left to be his own chooser but the case I put was not between a married life and single life for we know no harm either in one or the other of these but every one is to judge as most tends to the comfort of his life and the ends of his calling which hath now far different circumstances from the Apostolical times which is a sufficient answer to the Apostles words 1 Cor. 7. 32. having a particular respect to the state of the Christian Church in that time of unfixedness and persecution but the opposition was between marriage in a Priest and Fornication whether the former were not by them made a greater crime than the latter and whether this were not dishonour to the Laws of Christ to make the breach of a constitution of the Church in a matter left at liberty by the Law of Christ a greater crime than the violation of an indisputable Law of his And S. Paul hath given a general rule which equally holds in all ages of the Church If they cannot contain let them marry for it is better to marry than to burn So that if S. Paul may resolve the case he makes no question that where there is but danger of Fornication marriage is so far from being a greater crime than that that
all wise men ever did and will do to the worlds end 4. I proved they made faith uncertain by making the Churches power to extend to the making new articles of faith This he grants to be to the purpose if it were true but he saith the Church never owned any such power in her General Councils which doth not hinder but that the Heads of their Church have pretended to it and in case it be disputable among them whether the Pope be not infallible that unavoidably leaves faith at uncertainties Yet he yields what I contend for which is that it is in the Churches Power to make that necessary to be believed which was not so before for whether it be by inventing new Articles or declaring more explicitely the Truths not contained in Scripture and Tradition it is all one to my purpose as long as men might be saved without believing them before and cannot afterwards which is to make the conditions of salvation mutable according to the pleasure of the Church which is the greatest inconveniency of inventing new doctrines 5. I shewed they made faith uncertain by pretending to infallibility in determining Controversies and yet not using it to determine those which are on foot among themselves The force of the argument did not lye in this as he imagines as though faith could not be certain unless all controversies were determined which was far from my thoughts but that pretending there can be no faith without infallibility in their Church to end Controversies they should give such great occasion to suspect that they did not believe themselves by imploying that Infallibility in ending the great Controversies among themselves of which I have spoken already and to this he gives no answer at all Thus much in Vindication of the third Argument I made use of to prove that all those who are in the Communion of the Roman Church do run so great a hazard of their salvation that none who have a care of their souls ought to embrace or continue in it § 15. I now come to the third answer to the first Question which was that a Protestant leaving the Communion of our Church doth incurre a greater guilt than one who was bred up in the communion of the Church of Rome and continues therein by invincible Ignorance and therefore cannot equally be saved with such a one Three things he objects against this Answer 1. That this makes them both damned though unequally because the Converted Catholick more deeply than he that was bred so 2. That this reflects as much upon St. Austin as them who rejected the Communion of the Manichees and embraced that of the Church of Rome upon their grounds 3. That it is contrary to our distinction of points fundamental and not fundamental To which I Reply 1. That the design of my Answer was not to pass the sentence of damnation on all who dye in the communion of the Roman Church but to shew that they who forsook a better Church for it do incurre greater guils than those who are alwayes bred up in it and live and dye in the belief of its being the true Church and therefore are not in an equal capacity of salvation with them I shall make my meaning more plain by a parallel Instance or two many in the Church of Rome have asserted the possibility of the Salvation of Heathens though some Bigots have denyed it to Protestants suppose this question were put concerning two persons Whether a Christian having the same motives to become a Heathen which one bred and born and well grounded in Heathenism hath to remain in it may not equally be saved in the profession of it and a third person should answer that a Christian leaving the communion of the Christian Church doth incurre a greater guilt than one who was bred up in Heathenism and continues therein by invincible Ignorance doth this answer imply that they must both be damned though equally or rather doth it not yield a greater possibility of salvation to one than to the other Or suppose to come nearer our case the question were put concerning one that revolted from the Church of Iudah to the ten Tribes which were guilty of Idolatry though not of the highest kind whether he were equally capable of salvation with one who was bred up in the communion of the Church of Israel all his dayes I should make no question to pronounce his condition more dangerous than the other yet not therein damn them both but only imply that it was much harder for to escape than the other For he that was bred up in the Church of Israel believing it was the true God he served and in a right manner and looking on the Church of Iudah as a Schismatical Church and seeing the greater number of Tribes on their side and wanting that instruction which was in the Church of Iudah might in the sincerity of his heart serve God in a false way and pray to him to pardon all his errours and corruptions and have a general repentance of all sins though not particularly convinced of the Idolatry of the ten Tribes I dare not say but God will accept of such a one that thus fears God and works Righteousness in the simplicity of his heart but I cannot say the same of one who revolts from Iudah where the true God was worshipped in a true manner where he had sufficient means of instruction and either wilful Ignorance or temporal ends or unreasonable prejudices makes him deliberately choose a worse and more impure Church before a better for that very sin makes his case much more dangerous than the other Our business is not to enquire into the salvation or damnation of any particular persons for that depends upon so many circumstances as to the aggravation or extenuation of their faults the nature and sincerity of their repentance the integrity and simplicity of their minds which none but God himself can know but to find out the truest way to salvation and to reject whatever Church requires that which is in it self sinful for though God may pardon those who live in it in the simplicity of their minds yet their hopes lying in their Ignorance and repentance none who have a care of their souls dare venture themselves in so hazardous a state Setting aside then the consideration of the danger common to both I say the case of a Revolter from us to the Church of Rome is much worse than of one who was alwayes bred up in it because he might far more easily understand the danger he runs into and wilfull Ignorance only keeps him from it and he doth upon deliberation choose a state of infinite hazard before one of the greatest safety 2. This doth not reflect on St. Austin or the Church in his time which was as far different from theirs as the Churches of Iudah and Israel were from each other neither can it destroy the distinction of Fundamentals and not Fundamentals
for the possibility of salvation allowed to any in their Church is built upon the supposition that they have all that is fundamentally necessary in order to it though there are many dangerous errours and corruptions in that Church whose communion they live in § 16. The Answers to the first Question being thus vindicated there remains little to be added concerning the second For he tells me that he agrees so far with me that every Christian is bound to choose the communion of the purest Church But which that Church is must be seen by the grounds it brings to prove the doctrines it teaches to have been delivered by Christ and his Apostles And to be even with him I thus far agree with him in the way of proof of a Churches purity viz. by agreement with the doctrine of Christ and his Apostles and that that Church is to be judged purest which shews the greatest evidence of that consent and that every one is bound to enquire which Church hath the strongest Motives for it and to embrace the communion of it Being thus far agreed I must now enquire into what motives he offers on behalf of their Church and what method he prescribes for delivering ours For the former he produces a large Catalogue of Catholick Motives as he calls them in the words of Dr. Taylour Liberty of Prophecy Sect. 20. And I do not know a better way of answering them than in the words of the same eminent and learned Person which he uses upon a like occasion to his demonstrating Friend I. S. But now in my Conscience saith the Bishop this was unkindly done that when I had spoken for them what I could and more than I knew they had ever said for themselves and yet to save them harmless from the iron hands of a tyrant and unreasonable power to keep them from being persecuted for their errours and opinions that they should take the arms I had lent them for their defence and throw them at my head But the best of it is though I. S. be unthankful yet the Weapons themselves are but wooden Daggers intended only to represent how the poor men are couzened by themselves and that under fair and fraudulent pretences even pious well meaning men men wise enough in other things may be abused And though what I said was but tinsel and pretence imagery and whipt Cream yet I could not be blamed to use no better than the best their cause could bear yet if that be the best they have to say for themselves their probabilities will be soon out-ballanced by one Scripture-testimony urged by Protestants and thou shalt not Worship any graven Images will out-weigh all the best and fairest imaginations of their Church But then I. S. might if he had pleased have considered that I did not intend to make that harangue to represent that the Roman Religion had probabilities of being true but probabilities that the Religion might be tolerated or might be endured and if I was deceived it was but a well meant errour hereafter they shall speak for themselves only for their comfort this they might have also observed in that Book that there is not half so much excuse for the Papists as there is for the Anabaptists and yet it was but an excuse at the best But since from me saith he they borrow their light Armour which is not Pistol-proof from me if they please they may borrow a remedy to undeceive them and that in the same kind and way of arguing for which he referrs to a letter written by him to a Gentlewoman seduced to the Church of Rome out of which I shall transcribe so much as may over-ballance the probabilities produced elsewhere by him After directions given rather to enquire what her Religion is than what her 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 c. and shewing the unreasonablness of believing the Roman to be the Catholick Church he descends thus to particulars You are now gone to a Church that protects it self by arts of subtlety 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 Oaths 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 or 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 mystery against the doctrine and practice of the primitive Church against the express 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 human Invention from Scripture to uncertain Traditions and from ancient Tradition to new pretences from Prayers which ye understood to Prayers which ye understand not from confidence in God to rely upon Creatures from intire dependance upon inward-acts to a dangerous temptation of resting too much in outward ministeries in the external work of Sacraments and 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 than that in the dayes of the Jewish Religion for the Ceremonial of the Church of Rome is a great Book in Folio You are gone from a Church where you were exhorted to read the Word of God the Holy Scriptures from whence you sound 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 unless you list any more than you need to abuse the Sacrament or Decrees of the Church or the messages of your
Resurrection 3. He saith that We expose faith to great uncertainty by denying to men the use of their Judgement and Reason as to matters of faith proposed by a Church that is we deny particular mens Iudgement as to matters of faith to be as good if not better than the Churches and to inferre from henâ—e that we make Faith uncertain is just as if on the contrary one should say that Protestants make faith certain by exposing matter of faith determined by the Church to be discussed and reversed by the Iudgement and reason or rather fancy of every private man We have good store of this kind of certainty in England But as for the use of our Iudgement and Reason as to the matters themselves proposed by the Church it is the daily business of Divines and Preachers not only to shew them not to be repugnant to any natural truth but also to illustrate them with Arguments drawn from reason But the use he would have of reason is I suppose to believe nothing but what his reason can comprehend and this is not only irrational in its self but contrary to the Doctrine of St. Paul where he commands us to captivate our understandings to the Obedience of Faith 4. He adds We expose faith to uncertainty by making the Church power extend to making new Articles of Faith And this if it were true were something indeed to his purpose But the Church never yet owned any such power in her General Councils but only to manifest and establish the Doctrine received from her Fore-fathers as is to be seen in the prooems of all the Sessions of the Council of Trent where the Fathers before they declare what is to be believed ever premise that what they declare is the same they have received by Tradition from the Apostles And because it may happen that some particular Doctrine was not so plainly delivered to each part of the Church as it happened in St. Cyprians case concerning the non-rebaptization of Hereticks we acknowledge it is in her power to make that necessary to be believed which was not so before not by inventing new Articles but by declaring more explicitely the Truths contained in Scripture and Tradition Lastly he saith We expose Faith to great uncertainty because the Church pretending to infallibility does not determine Controversies on foot among our selves As if faith could not be certain unless all Controversies among particular men be determined what then becomes of the certainty of Protestants faith who could yet never find out a sufficient means to determine any one Controversie among them for if that means be plain Scripture what one Iudgeth plain another Iudgeth not so and they acknowledge no Iudge between them to decide the Controversie As for the Catholick Church if any Controversies arise concerning the Doctrine delivered as in St. Cyprians case she determines the Controversie by declaring what is of Faith And for other Controversies which belong not to faith she permits as St. Paul saith every one to abound in his own sence And thus much in Answer to his third Argument by which and what hath been said to his former Objections it appears that he hath not at all proved what he asserted in his second Answer to the first Question viz. That all those who are in the Communion of the Church of Rome do run so great a hazard of their Salvation that none who have a care of their souls ought to embrace or continue in it But he hath a third Answer for us in case the former faile and it is § 10. That a Protestant leaving the Communion of the Protestant Church doth incurr a greater guilt than one who was bred up in the Church of Rome and continues therein by invincible ignorance This is the directest answer he gives to the Question and what it imports is this That invincible Ignorance and he doth not know what allowance God will make for that neither is the only Anchor which a Catholick hath to save himself by If by discoursing with Protestants and reading their Books he be not sufficiently convinced whereas he ought in the supposition of the Answerer to be so that the Letter of the Scripture as interpretable by every private mans reason is a most certain Rule of Faith and Life but is still over-ruled by his own Motives the same which held St. Austin in the bosome of the Catholick Church he is guilty of wilful Ignorance and consequently a lost man there is no hope of Salvation for him Much less for a Protestant who shall embrace the Catholick Communion because he is supposed doubtless from the same Rule to have sufficient conviction of the Errors of the Roman Church or is guilty of wilful Ignorance If he have it not which is a damnable sin and unrepented of destroyes salvation So that now the upshot of the Answer to the Question Whether a Protestant embracing Catholick Religion upon the same motives which one bred and well grounded in it hath to remain in it may be equally saved with him comes to this that they shall both be damned though unequally because the converted Catholick more deeply than he that was bred so And now who can but lament the sad condition of that great Doctor and Father of the Church and hitherto reputed St. Austin who rejecting the Manichees pretended rule of Scripture upon the aforesaid grounds left their Communion to embrace the Communion of the Church of Rome And what is become now of their distinction of points fundamental from not fundamental which heretofore they thought sufficient to secure both Catholicks and Protestants Salvation and to charge us with unconscionable uncharitableness in not allowing them to be sharers with us The absurdness of these consequences may serve for a sufficient conviction of the nullity of his third and last answer to the first Question As for what he saith to the second I agree so far with him that every Christian is bound to choose the Communion of the purest Church but which that Church is must be seen by the grounds it brings to prove the Doctrines it teaches to have been delivered by Christ and his Apostles That Church is to be judged purest which hath the best grounds and consequently it is of necessity to Salvation to embrace the communion of it What then you are bound to do in reason and conscience is to see which Religion of the two hath the strongest Motives for it and to embrace that as you will answer the contrary to God and your own soul. To help you to do this and that the Answerer may have the less exception against them I will give you a Catalogue of Catholick Motives though not all neither in the words of the forecited Dr. Taylor advertising only for brevity sake I leave out some mentioned by him and that in these I set down you also give allowance for some expressions of his with which he hath mis-represented them Thus then he Liberty of
could be worshipped by the work of mens hands and for changing thereby the glory due to God in regard of his infinite and incorruptible being into mean and unworthy Images thinking thereby to give honour to him § 8. And upon these grounds the Primitive Fathers disputed against the Heathen Idolatry for the making use of corporeal representations makes the Deity contemptible saith Clemens of Alexandria Origen saith That Christians have nothing to do with Images because of the second Commandment and on that account will rather dye than defile themselves with them and that it is impossible any one that knows God should pray to them That it is no sufficient excuse to say they do not take them for Gods but only for symbols or representations of them for they must be ignorant mean and unlearned persons who can imagine the work of an Artificer can be any representation of a Deity It would be too tedious at this time to transcribe all the invectives in the Writings of the Fathers upon this subject where they dispute against the Heathens from this argument and do still suppose the force of the reason of this Law to oblige Christians as much as ever it did the Iews but I purposely forbear only taking notice that after the worship of Images came in with the decay of the Primitive Piâ—ty and Learning in the Eastern Churches yet the great defenders of them still declared their abhorrence of any representation of the Divine Nature So Germanus Patriarch of Constantinople in his Epistles yet extant in the actions of that wise Synod at Nice We make saith he no kind of Image or similitude or figure or representation of the invisible Deity and that the meaning of the Commandment of the Law against Images was that the Divine Nature was invisible and incomprehensible and like to nothing we see and that we ought not to entertain any corporeal conceptions of God And Damascen saith expresly That it is the highest madness and impiety to go about to make an Image of God i. e. saith Clichtovaeus so as to think any Image to be like unto God or able perfectly to represent him to us which is likewise Bellarmins answer as though ever any men were such fools to believe an Image could perfectly represent an infinite Being or that God need to make a Law to forbid that which is utterly impossible in the very nature of the thing he might more reasonably forbid men to paint a sound to grasp all the Air in the hollow of their hands to drink up the Ocean to wear the Sun for a Pendant at their ears or to make new worlds than to command them not to make any Image which should perfectly represent his Nature And yet of this kind of Image alone of the true God Bellarmine understands the prohibition of the Law and the sayings before mentioned but all other he saith were allowed by both whether by way of History or analogical resemblance or the fashion of a man wherein he hath appeared i. e. all possible representations of God are allowed and only that which is impossible forbidden But this answer is not more weak and trifling than contrary to the meaning of Germanus Tharasius or the rest of the Nicene Fathers who do acknowledge there was no ground to make any Images with respect to the Divine Nature till the incarnation of Christ but since God appeared in humane nature there is no incongruity in representing that by an Image and by that to give honour to the invisible Godhead as long as they preserve the true belief concerning the Deity and consequently may honour God by giving worship to the Images of those Saints whom they believe to be in Heaven with God § 9. This is the substance of the Doctrine of the second Council of Nice which they justifie by fabulous stories and impertinent citations and insufficient answers For when the Fathers of the Synod at Constantinople had said that Christ came to deliver us from all Idolatry and to teach the worship of God in Spirit and in truth they bravely answer That then it is impossible for Christians to fall into Idolatry because Christs Kingdom was alwayes to continue and the gifts and graces of God are without repentance Which would as well hold against the prevalency of the Turk as Idolatry among them Those Fathers urge That the Devil now not being able to reduce the world to the former Idolatry endeavours under hand to introduce it under a pretence of Christianity bringing them again to the worship of the creature and making a God of a thing that is made when they have called it by the name of Christ. These answer That it is true the Fathers used that Argument against the Arrians who supposed Christ to be a Creature and they grant that they were guilty of Idolatry in giving Divine worship to Christ when they believed him to be a creature but the difference lyes herein that the Arrians trusted in Christ and gave properly divine honour to him which they say they did not to the Images but only worshipped them for the sake of the object represented by them But Aquinas and his followers have at large proved that where any thing is worshipped meerly for the sake of another it must have the same kind of worship given it which they give to the thing represented by it for as Aquinas observes the motion of the soul towards an Image is twofold either as it is a thing or as it is an Image the first he saith is distinct from that motion which respects the object but the second is the same so that to the Image of Christ as made of Wood or Stone no worship at all is given and therefore it being given meerly on the account of its being an Image it necessarily follows that the same worship must be given to the Image which is given to Christ himself And so they are in the same case with the Arrians whom they acknowledge to be Idolaters notwithstanding their Christianity or that the gifts and graces of God are without repentance Besides the Constantinopolitan Fathers urge The great absurdity of making an Image of Christ for worship because Christ is God and Man therefore the Image must be of God and Man which cannot be unless the Deity be circumscribed within the created flesh or there be a confusion of both natures after their union both which are blasphemies condemned by the Church The Nicene Fathers in answer to this yield That the Name Christ is significative of both natures and that an Image can only represent the visible humane nature and that it agrees only in name and not in substance with the thing represented and after many reviling expressions against their adversaries no argument of the goodness of their cause they say that if the Divine nature were circumscribed within the humane nature in the Cradle and on the Cross then it is in
an image if not in one neither is it in the other But what doth this answer signifie unless there be an equal presence and union of the Divine nature of Christ with the Image as there was with the humane nature Which union was the reason of the adoration given to the person of Christ and what ground can there be then of giving divine worship to the Image of Christ unless the same union be supposed If the humane nature without the union of the divine could yield us no sufficient reason of divine worship being given to it how much less can an Image deserve it which can only at the best represent but the external lineaments of that humane nature And if the divine nature be supposed united with the Image then the same divine honour is due to the Image of Christ which is to God himself which yet these Nicene Fathers deny and the Image then joyned with the divine nature is as proper an object of divine worship without respect to any Prototype as the person of Christ is consisting of the divine and humane nature Again they urge If the humane nature of Christ be represented in the Image of Christ to be worshipped as separate from the divine this would be plain Nestorianism To this the good Nicene Fathers not knowing what to answer plainly deny the conclusion and cry They Nestorians No they lye in their teeth they were no more Nestorians than themselves nor so much neither And now good men they say It is true they do represent Christ only by his humane nature in an Image and when they look on Images they understand nothing but what is signified by them as when the birth of the Virgin is represented they conceive in their minds that he who was born was truly God as well as man Alas for them that they should ever be charged with the worship of Images They plead for nothing now but a help to their profound Meditations by them But the Controversie was about worship what ever they think and their Adversaries argument did not lye in the Images being considered as an object of perception but of worship i. e. if the Image can only represent the humane nature of Christ as separate from the divine and in that respect be an object of worship to us then the charge of Nestorianism follows but this they very wisely pass by and their distinction of the Image from the principal cannot serve their turn since the Image receiving the worship due to the principal must have not only the name as they say but the reason of worship common with the principal which it represents After this the Fathers of Constantinople proceed to another Argument which is That all the representation of Christ allowed us by the Gospel is that which Christ himself instituted in the Elements of the Lords Supper whose use was to put us in remembrance of Christ. No other Figure or Type being chosen by Christ as able to represent his being in the flesh but this This was an honourable Image of his quickning body made by himself say they which he would not have of the shape of a man to prevent Idolatry but of a common nature as he took upon him the common nature of man and not any individuated person and as the body of Christ was really sanctified by the divine nature so by institution this holy Image is made divine through sanctification by Grace Here the Nicene Council quarrels with them for calling the Eucharist an Image contrary as they say to the Scriptures and Fathers but they are as much to be believed therein as in their admirable proofs that the worship of Images was the constant doctrine of the Church and having strenuously denyed this they suppose that to be enough to answer the argument Besides these particular arguments against the Images of Christ the Council of Constantinople useth many more against the Images of any other Because these being the chief there can be less reason for any other besides that there is no tradition of Christ or his Apostles or the primitive Fathers for them no way of consecration of them prescribed or practised no suitableness in the use of them to the design of Christian Religion which being in the middle between Iudaism and Paganism it casts off the Sacrifices of the one and not only the Sacrifices but all the Idolatries of the other and it is blasphemy to the Saints in Heaven to call in the Heathen superstitions into Christianity to honour them by that it is unbecoming their glory in Heaven to be set up on earth in dull and sensless Images that Christ himself would not receive testimony from Devils though they spake truth neither can such a Heathenish custome be acceptable to the Saints in Heaven though pretended to be for their honour That nothing can be plainer in the Gospel than that God is a Spirit and will be worshipped in Spirit and in truth to which nothing can be more contrary than the going about to honour God by worshipping any Image of himself or his Saints These and many other arguments from the Scriptures and Fathers that Council insists upon to shew the incongruity of the worship of Images to the nature of God and the design of the Christian Religion to which the Council of Nice returns very weak and trivial answers as shall more largely appear if any one thinks good to defend them And we have this apparent advantage on our side that although the Popes of Rome sided with these worshippers of Images yet the Council at Francford condemned it called together by Charles the Great Not out of misunderstanding their Doctrine as some vainly imagine because as Vasquez well proves the Copy of the Nicene Council was sent to them by Pope Adrian because the Acts of that Council were very well known to the Author of the Book written upon this subject under the name of Charles the Great and published by du Tillet at Paris about the middle of the last Century which is acknowledged by their learnedst men to have been written at the same time because the Popes Legats Theophylactus and Stephanus were present and might easily rectifie any mistake if they were guilty of it and none of the Historians of that time do take notice of any such error among them But Vasquez runs into another strange mistake himself that the Council of Francford did not condemn that of Nice which is evident they did expresly by the second Canon of of that Council published by Sirmondus And all the Objections of Vasquez are taken off by what Sirmondus speaks of the great authority and antiquity of that MS. from which he published them and from the consent of the Historians of that time that the Council of Francford did reject that of Nice and Sirmondus saith they had good reason to deny it to be an Oecumenical Council where only the Greeks met together and none of other Provinces were called
different nature from the Worship of Images 3. To the Iewes adoraâ—ion towards the Ark and the Holy of Holies where the Cherubims and Propitiatory were 1. That they only directed their Worship towards the place where God had promised to be signally present among them and signifies no more to the Worship of Images than our lifting our eyes to Heaven doth when we pray because God is more especially present there 2. That though the Cherubims were there yet they were alwayes hid from the sight of the people the High-Priest himself going into the Holy of Holies but once a year that the Cherubims were no representations of God and his Throne was between them upon the mercy seat and were Hieroglyphical figures of Gods own appointing which the Iews know no more than we do which are plain arguments they were never intended for objects of Worship for then they must not have been meerly appendices to another thing they must have been publickly exposed as the Images are in the Roman Churches and their form as well known as any of the B. Virgin 4. To bowing at the name of Iesus that he might as well have instanced in going to Church at the toll of a bell for as the one only tells us the time when we ought to go to Worship God so the mentioning the name of Iesus doth only put us in mind of him we owe all manner of reverence to without dishonouring him as the object of our Worship by any image of him which can only represent that which is neither the object nor reason of our Worship 5. To kneeling at the Eucharist that of all things should not be objected to us who have declared in our Rubrick after Communion That thereby no adoration is intended or ought to be done either unto the Sacramental Bread and Wine there bodily received or any corporal presence of Christs natural Flesh and Blood for the Sacramental Bread and Wine remain still in their very natural substances and therefore may not be adored for that were Idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful Christians To bowing towards the Altar or at entring in and going out of the Church that it is of the same nature with the putting off our Hats while we are there and is only determining a natural act of Reverence that way which the ancient Christians did use to direct their Worship CHAP. II. Of their Idolatry in Adoration of the Host and Invocation of Saints The Argument proposed concerning the Adoration of the Host the insufficiency of the Answer to it manifested supposing equal revelation for Transubstantiation as for Christs Divinity yet not the same reason for Worshipping the Host as the person of Christ the great disparity between these two at large discovered the Controversie truly stated concerning Adoration of the Host and it is proved that no man on the principles of the Roman Church can be secure he doth not commit Idolatry in it The confession of our Adversaries that the same Principles will justifie the Worship of any Creature No such motives to believe Transubstantiation as the Divinity of Christ. Bishop Taylor 's Testimony answered by himself To Worship Christ in the Sun as lawful as to Worship him in the Host. The grossest Idolatry excusable on the same grounds The argument proposed and vindicated concerning the Invocation of Saints practised in the Church of Rome The Fathers Arguments against the Heathens hold against Invocation of Saints the state of the Controversie about Idolatry as managed by them They make it wholly unlawful to give divine Worship to any Creature how excellent soever The Worship not only of Heathen Gods but of Angels condemned The common evasions answered Prayer more proper to God than Sacrifice No such disparity as is pretended between the manner of Invocating Saints and the Heathens Invocating their Deities In the Church of Rome they do more than pray to Saints to pray for them proved from the present most Authentick Breviaries Supposing that were all it would not excuse them St. Austin no friend to Invocation of Saints Practices condemned by the Church pleaded for it Of Negative points being Articles of faith § 1. I Proceeded to the Adoration of the Host and here the Argument I proposed was to take off the common answer That this could not be Idolatry because they believed the Bread to be God upon the same ground I said they who believe the Sun to be God and Worship him on that account would be excused from Idolatry too nay the grosser their Idolatry was the more excusable it would be as that of those who supposed their Images to be Gods and upon this ground their Worship was more Lawful than of those who supposed them not to be so To this he answers two wayes 1. That they do not barely suppose that the substance of bread is changed into Christs body and that he is really present under the form of Bread but that they know and believe this upon the same grounds and motives upon which they believe that Christ is God and consequently to be adored and further addes that the same argument will hold against the adoration of Christ as God as against the adoration of him in the Eucharist since they have a like Divine Revelation for his real presence under the Sacramental signes as for his being true God and man 2. Supposing they were mistaken yet it would not follow they were Idolaters which he proves from Dr. Taylors words But notwithstanding these appearances of answering that my argument still stands good will be evident by proving these things 1. That supposing there were the same revelation of Christs Divinity and of his presence in the Eucharist by Transubstantiation yet there could not be the same reason for the Adoration of the Host as for worshipping Christ himself 2. That there are not the same motives and grounds to believe that Doctrine of Transubstantiatim that there are to believe that Christ is God 3. That supposing they are mistaken in the doctrine of Transubstantiation this doth not excuse them from Idolatry 4. That the same reason which would excuse them would excuse the most gross Idolaters in the World § â— That supposing there were the same divine revelation of Transubstantiation and of Christs Divinity yet there could not be the same reason for adoration of the Host as of Christ himself 1. Because there is a plain command in Scripture for one and there is nothing like it for the other All the Angels are commanded to Worship the Son of God Heb. 1. 6. and much more all men who have greater obligation to do it All men are to honour the Son as they honour the Father Joh. 5. 23. and to his name every knee is to bow Phil. 2. 10. But where is there the least intimation given that we are to Worship Christ in the Elements supposing him present there If it be said the general command doth extend to him where-ever he is present It is
case whether there are the same motives and grounds from thence to believe Transubstantiation as there are the Divinity of Christ. In the proof of Transubstantiation his only Argument is from those words this is my body which words saith he do necessarily inferre either a real mutation of the Bread as the Catholicks hold or a metaphorical as the Calvinists but by no means do admit the Lutherans sense and so spends the rest of the Chapter against them and concludes it thus although there be some obscurity or ambiguity in the words of our Lord yet that is taken away by Councils and Fathers and so passes to them Which are a plain indication he thought the same which others of his Religion have said that the doctrine of Transubstantiation could not be proved from Scripture alone But when he proves the Divinity of Christ he goes through nine several classes of arguments six of which are wholly out of Scripture the first out of both Testaments the second only out of the Old the third out of the New the fourth from the names of the true God given to Christ the fifth from the Divine Attributes Eternity Immensity Power Wisdome Goodness Majesty the sixth from the proper works of God Creation Conservation Salvation Fore-knowing of secret things and working Miracles All which he largely insists upon with great strength and clearness so that if he may be judge the motives to believe the Divinity of Christ are far from being the same in Scripture that there are to believe Transubstantiation § 6. 3. But supposing they are mistaken in the belief of this doctrine this doth not excuse them from Idolatry To his quotation out of Dr. Taylors Liberty of Prophecying to the contrary I shall return him the opinion of their own Divines The Testimony of Coster is sufficiently known to this purpose who saith the same thing in effect that I had done If the doctrine of Transubstantiation be not true the Idolatry of the Heathens in Worshipping some Golden or Silver Statute or any Images of their Gods or the Laplanders Worshipping a red cloth or the Aegyptians an animal is more excusable than of Christians that Worship a bit of bread And our Country-man Bishop Fisher confesseth That if there be nothing but bread in the Eucharist they are all Idolaters But none is so fit to answer Dr. Taylor as himself after almost twenty years time to consider more throughly of those things and then he confesseth That the Weapons he used for their defence were but wooden daggers though the best he could meet with and if that be the best they have to say for themselves which he hath produced for them their probabilities will be soon out-ballanced by one Scripture-testimony urg'd by Protestants and thou shalt not Worship any graven Images will outweigh all the best and fairest imaginations of their Church and elsewhere That the second Commandment is so plain so easie so peremptory against all the making and Worshipping any Image or likeness of any thing that besides that every man naturally would understand all such to be forbidden it is so expressed that upon supposition that God intend to forbid it wholly it could not more plainly have been expressed By which it is clear he did not think that Idolatry did lye only in forsaking the true God and giving divine Worship to a Creature or an Idol that is to an imaginary God who hath no foundation in essence or existence which is the reason he brings why they are excused from Idolatry in Adoration of the Host because the object of their adoration is the true God for he not only makes the second command to be peremptory and positive against the Worship of the true God by an Image but elsewhere plainly determins this to be Idolatry and saith that an image then becomes an Idol when divine Worship is given to it and that to Worship false Gods or to give divine honour to an image which is not God is all one kind of formal Idolatry If therefore they cannot be excused from Idolatry who Worship the true God by an Image though the object of their adoration be right and they think the manner of it to be lawful neither can they who worship Christ upon the account of Transubstantiation in the Sacrament for not only the superstition of an undue object but of a prohibited manner or way of Worship is Idolatry even according to the opinion of him whom he produces as a testimony of their innocency § 7. 4. That if a mistake in this case will excuse them it would excuse the grossest Idolatry in the world St. Austin speaks of some who said that Christ was the Sun and therefore worshipped the Sun I desire to know whether this were Idolatry in them or no They had Scripture to plead for it as plain as This is my body for he is not only called the Sun of Righteousness but the Vulgar Latin which they contend to be the only authentick version reads that place Psal. 19. 6. in sole posuit tabernaculum suum he hath placed his Tabernacle in the Sun and that this is to be understood of Christ may be proved from the Apostles applying the other words their line is gone out through all the earth to the Apostles Preaching the Gospel Rom. 10. 18. And the Manichees did believe that Christ had his residence partly in the Sun and partly in the Moon and therefore they directed their prayers alwayes to the Sun Let us now consider two persons equally perswaded that the Sun is now the Tabernacle of Christ and that he is really present there and dispenses all the comfortable influences of heat and light to the world he being so often in Scripture called the true light 1 Joh. 8. 9. and another that he is really present by Transubstantiation in the Sacrament I would fain understand why the one should not be as free from Idolatry as the other If it be said that all those places which speak of Christ as the Sun are to be understood metaphorically that is the same thing we say to them concerning those words of Christ this is my body and if notwithstanding that they are excused by believing otherwise so must the other person unavoidably be so too It is to no purpose to alledge Fathers and Councils for the opinion more than for the other for the question is not concerning the probability of one mistake more than of the other although if they be strictly examined the absurdities of Transubstantiation are much greater but we suppose a mistake in both and the question is whether such a mistake doth excuse from Idolatry or no and we are not to enquire into the reasons of the mistake but the influence it hath upon our actions And then we are to understand why a mistake equally involuntary as to the real object of divine adoration may not excuse from Idolatry as well as to the wrong
application of Worship due to a real object of adoration i. e. whether a man giving adoration to what he believes to be God which is not so in it self be not as excusable as believing a true object of adoration in general but giving divine worship to that which is not it as whether the Worshipping false Gods supposing them to be true be not as venial a fault as Worshipping that for the true God which is not so as for instance suppose the Aegyptians Worshipping the Sun for God and the Israelites the golden Calf believing it was the true God which brought them out of the Land of Aegypt or let us take one of the Inca's of Peru who believed by a Tradition supposed infallible among them that the Sun was their Father and the visible God by which the Invisible did govern the World and therefore they ought to give all external adoration to the Sun and internal only to the Invisible Deity upon what account shall these be charged with Idolatry if an involuntary mistake and firm belief that they worship the true God doth excuse from it Nay the most stupid and senseless of all Idolaters who worshipped the very Images for Gods which the wisest among them alwayes disclaimed and pretended only such a relative worship as he pleads for were in truth the most excusable upon this ground for supposing that it be true which they believed they did a very good thing and which every person else ought to do upon the same belief Which is the utmost can be said for the Papists adoration of the Host supposing the doctrine of transubstantiation were as true as it is false and absurd § 8. 3. As to invocation of Saints I found the chief answer given was this That they did not attribute the same kind of excellency to Saints which they give to God but suppose only a middle sort of excellency between God and us which they make the foundation of the worship which is given to them And as to this my argument was thus framed If the supposition of a middle excellency between God and us be sufficient ground for formal invocation then the Heathens worship of their inferiour Deities could be no Idolatry for they still pretended they did not give to them the worship proper to the supream God which is as much as is pretended by the devoutest Papists in justification of the Invocation of Saints To this he answers two wayes 1. By shewing the disparity of the Heathens worship from theirs in two things 1. In the object 2. In the manner of their worship 1. The persons whom they worship he saith are such as are endowed with supernatural gifts of grace in this life and glory in Heaven whose prayers by consequence are acceptable and available with God but the Supream Deity of the Heathens is known to be Jupiter and their inferiour Deities Venus Mars Bacchus Vulcan and the like rabble of Devils as the Scripture calls them and therefore there can be no consequence that because the Heathens were Idolaters in the worship of these though they pretended not to give them the worship proper to Jupiter the supream God therefore the Catholicks must be guilty of Idolatry in desiring the servants of the true God to pray for them to him 2. As to the manner of worship he saith If any of them did attain as the Platonists to the knowledge of the true God yet as St. Paul sayes they did not glorifie him as God but changed his glory into an Image made like to corruptible man adoring and offering sacrifice due to God alone to the Statues themselves or the inferiour Deities they supposed to dwell or assist in them which St. Austin upon the 90. Psalm proves to be Devils or evil Angels because they required sacrifice to be offered to them and would be worshipped as Gods But all he means by formal Invocation he saith is desiring or praying the Saints to pray for them And if this were Idolatry we must not desire the prayers of a just man even in this life because this formal invocation will be to make him an Inferiour Deity 2. He answers that the same calumny was cast upon the Catholicks in St. Austins time and is answered by him and his answer will serve as well now as then in his twentieth Book against Faustus Chap. 21. who himself held formal Invocation a part of the worship due to Saints as is evident from the prayer he made to St. Cyprian after his Martyrdom l. 7. de bapt c. Donat. c. 1. and Calvin confesseth he saith it was the custom at that time to say Holy Mary or Holy Peter pray for us This is his full answer in which are two things to be examined 1. Whether the disparity between the Heathen worship and theirs be so great as to excuse them from Idolatry 2. Whether the answer given by St. Austin doth vindicate them and whether Invocation of Saints as it is now practised in the Church of Rome were allowed or in use then § 9. 1. Concerning the disparity 1. As to the object of worship Far be it from me to parallel the Holy Angels and Saints with the impure Deities of the Heathens as to their excellencies but the true state of the Question is whether the Heathens were only too blame in making an ill choice of those they worshipped as in worshipping Iupiter and Venus and Vulcan who are supposed to have been wicked wretches or else in giving divine worship to any besides the true God And if their Idolatry lay not only in the former but the latter then this disparity cannot excuse them There were two Questions in debate between the Primitive Fathers of the Christian Church and the Heathen Idolaters The first was more general and in thesi whether it were lawful to give divine worship to any besides the true and Supream God The second was more particular and in hypothesi whether on supposition that were lawful those whom the Heathens worshipped were fit objects for such adoration In this latter they triumph over them with a great deal of eloquence laying open the impiety of those whom they commonly worshipped but withal knowing that the wiser among them had another notion of these Deities under the common names than the Vulgar had they therefore charge them with Idolatry in giving the worship proper to God to any creature let it be never so excellent and serviceable to mankind and that it was the property of the Christian Religion to give divine worship to none but God himself and his Son Christ Iesus without ever making any distinctions of absolute and relative worship which they must have been driven to in case they had given Religious worship to any besides Thus Iustin Martyr tells the Heathen Emperours to whom he makes his Apology for the Christians that Christ did perswade men to worship God alone by saying this is the great Commandment thou shalt worship the Lord thy God
is a thing no man would believe who suffered in such a case He might indeed say that he did not exercise the utmost rigour of Iustice but would hardly be brought to magnifie the infinite clemency and kindness of his Creditor But we that desire to understand the way of salvation as it is delivered by our Lord Iesus Christ and to be saved in that way cannot for our hearts understand any more by his doctrine but that men shall be saved if they believe and obey his doctrine and shall be condemned if they do it not We find nothing of half saving and half damning men such as the state of Purgatory is believed to be in the Church of Rome For the pains of person therein are said to be as great as the damned in Hell and yet all this while God is their Friend and they are sure to be saved They had need in such a case call in the help of their Friends on earth if God be so ill a Friend in Heaven And can he not believe that it is a far greater encouragement to a Spend-thrift to be told indeed of a dreadful Prison but such as if he leaves but money behind him to imploy his friends in begging his pardon he shall be surely delivered than to be assured if he continues his folly there will be no redemption or hopes of deliverance when he is once cast into it I dare appeal to any one who can but understand what we speak of whether of these two is the more probable way of reclaiming a man from riotous courses but that which is beyond this is that the one is most certainly true the other but a meer figment of the brains of men who have contrived a way to bring wicked men to Heaven at last although somewhat the farther way about and it must cost them dear for their Friends to help them through § 3. 3. After I had shewed how much the necessity and care of a good life were obstructed by the principles of the Roman Church I proceeded to shew how the sincerity of devotion was hindered among them by several particulars 1. By prayers in a language which many understand not To this he answers If I speak of private prayers all Catholicks are taught to say them in their Mother Tongue If of the publick prayers of the Church he understands not why it may not be done with as much sincerity of devotion the people joyning their intention and particular prayers with the Priest as their Embassadour to God as if they understood him he is sure the effects of a sincere devotion for nine hundred years together which this manner of worship produced in this Nation were much different from those we have seen since the reducing the publick Liturgy into English for which he instances in building and endowing Churches Colledges Religious Houses and the conversion of several Nations by English Missionaries But this he saith is a matter of Discipline and not to be regulated by the fancies of private men but the judgement of the Church and withal is confessed by some Protestants that most Sects of Christians have the Scriptures Liturgies and Rituals in a Tongue unknown but to the Learned and therefore according to St. Austin it is insolent madness to dispute that which is frequented by the whole Church through the world For our more distinct proceeding in answer to this three things are to be considered 1. Whether praying in a known or unknown tongue do more conduce to devotion 2. Whether this whole matter be a thing left in the power of the Church to determine 3. Whether prayers in an unknown tongue be universally received in all other parts of the Christian world 1. Whether of these conduce more to devotion is our main enquiry And if praying in an unknown tongue doth so I wonder he tells us that all Catholicks are taught to say them in their Mother-tongue Why so I pray Is it that by understanding what they speak their minds might be more attentive and their affections more raised in the desires of the things they pray for And will not the same arguments more hold for publick prayer wherein all the Congregation are to joyn together So that their private prayers condemn their publick unless Latin in the Church be of greater force than uttered in a Closet But can it enter into the minds of any men who consider what the end of meeting together to pray is that such an end should as much or more be attained where people know not what they say as where they do If all the business of Christian worship were only to patter over a few words as if there were no difference between prayers and charms what he saith were to some purpose but that is so dishonourable a thing to Christian Religion that it is hard to say whether they have more corrupted the doctrine or the devotion of the Christian Church If I saw a company of Indians met together with their Priest among them using many antick gestures and Mimical postures and speaking many words which the people muttered after him but understood not what they said I might probably suspect they were conjuring but should hardly believe them if they called that praying I could not but enquire of them what they meant by praying If they told me saying so many hard words which they understood not I had done with them but should shrewdly suspect the knavery of their Priests If they told me by praying they meant expressing their desires of the things they stood in need of to the God they worshipped I could not but ask of them whether it were not necessary for them to know what it was they asked or how could they desire they knew not what Or whether the God they worshipped understood only that one tongue and so they were fain to speak to him in his own language This I confess were a sufficient reason and in that case the people were to be pittied if they could not learn that tongue themselves But supposing all languages equally known to him we make our addresses to why should not the people use that which they understand themselves Are their prayers like counterfeit Iewels that the less they understand them the better they like them It may justly give men some suspicion that there are not fair dealings where so little light is allowed to judge by and that devotion commended most which Ignorance is the Mother of We think it as unreasonable to desire the people to say Amen to prayers they know not the meaning of as for men to set their hands to Petitions without reading what is contained in them It is a great chance if they do not mistake to their own great prejudice and do what they repent of afterwards We declare that our meeting together to worship God is to joyn together our hearty prayers which the more the people understand the better their minds are satisfied in what they desire
of Sacraments doth not depend upon the preparation of the receiver but the bare administration or the external work done I need not add much to shew how much this doth obstruct the sincerity of devotion It had been an opinion long received in the Schools although with different wayes of explication that the Sacraments of the new Law differed from those of the old in this that the efficacy of those of the old Law in conferring grace did depend upon what they called opus operantis i. e. the faith and devotion of the receiver of them but that the Sacraments of the new Law did confer grace ex opere operato i. e. by the thing it self without any dependence therein upon the internal motion or preparation of mind in him that did partake of them This doctrine began to be in a particular manner applyed to the Mass because that contained Christ in a more especial way than any other Sacrament thence it was believed and asserted that it did produce saving effects as remission of sins and true grace although we should suppose an impossible thing that no man in the world had any true Grace as Baptism takes away original sin and gives grace to the Infant baptized whatever the sins of men are These are the expressions of one of their profound Doctors And therefore they distinguished the efficacy of the work done not barely from the dignity of the Priest and the merit of the receiver but from the devotion and preparation of mind which the receiver came with Which Bellarmin himself cannot deny only two things he saith to take off the odium of it One is That they do not wholly exclude them but only from the efficacy of Sacraments which he saith is effectually proved by the case of Infants that it doth not depend upon any quality of the receiver the Other that though the Mass as a Sacrament may not profit those who are not duly prepared yet as a Sacrifice it may By which these things are evident 1. That the efficacy of the Sacraments in conferring grace doth not at all depend upon the qualification of the receiver 2. That although upon other accounts some dispositions are required in adult persons to receive the benefit of them as Sacraments yet the effect of the Mass as a Sacrifice is not at all hindered by want of them If it were a thing possible I would willingly understand what they mean by Sacraments conferring grace ex opere operato which are not only the express terms of the Council of Trent but an Anathema is denounced against any one who denyes it For the manner of it is declared by themselves to be unintelligible and no wonder for they suppose Grace to be contained in the Sacrament and it is defined with an Anathema by the Council of Trent and by the Sacrament of it self it is conveyed into the heart of a man but whether it be contained as in an univocal cause as in an instrument or as in a sign Whether it be conferred by the Sacraments as Physical or as Moral Causes whether by a power inherent in the Sacraments themselves or a power assistent concurring with the Sacraments whether it be conveyed as Physick in a Cup or as Heat to Water by a red hot Iron or as healing to the person who touched the hemm of our Saviours Garment whether they produce only a next disposition to grace or not the grace it self but the union of grace with the soul or which is the most common opinion that Physical action whereby grace is produced which doth truly really and physically depend upon the Sacraments meaning thereby the external action of administring them These are looked on as great Riddles among them and so they ought to be but these things say they need not be determined nor the manner of the thing be understood no more than those who were miraculously healed did the manner of the cure a very proper instance if the matter of fact were as evident in one as it is the other But if I should say that the wearing a Cap of a certain figure would certainly convey wit and understanding into a man and the meer putting it on was enough to produce the effect and a person should tell me it was an unintelligible thing were it enough think you as Bellarmin doth in this case to run to other mysteries of faith and nature which are as hard as that By this consequence no man ought to be charged with believing absurd and unreasonable things and the Trinity and resurrection shall serve to justifie the Fables of the Alcoran as well as the doctrine of Transubstantiation and the efficacy of the Sacraments ex opere operato We could easily dispense with the barbarous terms and ungrammaticalness of them if there were any thing under them that were capable of being understood but that is not the greatest quarrel I have with this doctrine for I say still notwithstanding all the tricks and arts which have been used to palliate it it doth obstruct the sincerity of devotion by making the exercise of it by the preparation of our minds for the use of Sacraments to be unnecessary For if Grace be effectually conferred by the force of the bare external action which is acknowledged by them all what need can there be of a due preparation of mind by the exercise of faith prayer repentance c. in order to the receiving the benefit of them Yes say they the internal disposition of the mind is necessary to remove impediments and to make a subject capable of receiving it as driness in Wood to make it burn but what do they mean by this internal disposition of mind the exercise of the graces and duties I mentioned by no means but that there be no mortal sin unconfessed that there be no actual opposition in the Will to the Sacrament as for Instance if a man when he is going to be baptized resolves with himself that he will not be baptized or while he is baptizing that he will not believe in Father Son and Holy Ghost nor renounce the Devil and all his works This indeed they say hinders the efficacy of Sacraments but not the bare want of devotion and if want of devotion doth not hinder Grace being received what arguments can men use to perswade persons to it Who will undergo so strict an examination of himself and endeavour to raise his mind to a due preparation for the participation of Sacraments if he knows before hand that he shall certainly receive Grace by the Sacraments without it And surely they will not say but what doth obstruct the exercise of these things doth very much hinder devotion If men had a mind to banish it out of the world they could never do it under a fairer pretence than that Grace and consequently the effects of it may be obtained without it and I do not question but this doctrine hath been one of the great causes of
8. Febr. 4. A. D. 1625. not long after he comes into England and was received with so great kindness by their party here as made the Iesuits who are friends to none but themselves soon to become his enemies especially when he began to exercise his Episcopal jurisdiction here in laying restraints upon the Regulars which the Iesuits with other Regulars grew so impatient of that they soon revived the old quarrel concerning the authority and jurisdiction of Bishops and managed it with so great heat and fierceness that the titular Bishop was fain to leave the field and withdraw into France The bottom of the quarrel was they found the kindness of their party to them abated since the Bishops coming who before had sway'd all and lived in great plenty and bravery when the poor Seculars got scarce bread to eate as Watson very sadly laments in his answer to Parsons but now the necessary support of the dignity of a Bishop made the charity of their party run in another channel which the Provincial of the Iesuits complains of in a Letter to the Bishop of Chalcedon Therefore they endeavour all they can to make a party against him among the people too which they did so effectually as amounted to his withdrawing a more civil word for his exile And now both parties being sufficiently heated the battel begins in which not only England and Ireland but France and Flanders were deeply engaged The first who appeared was Dr. Kellison Professour of Doway in a Book in Vindication of the Bishops Authority to whom Knot then Vice-Provincial of the Iesuits returned his Modest and brief discussion c. under the name of Nicholas Smith a Iesuite then dead Soon after came out another written to the same purpose under the name of Daniel of Iesu whose true name was Iohn Fluide which the other writing Ioanes for Iohn was the Anagram of he was a Iesuit too and Professour at St. Omars which Books were first censured by the Arch-bishop of Paris then by the Sorbonne and at last by the Bishops of France in an Assembly of them at Paris but the Iesuits were so far from giving over by this that they new set forth their Books in Latin with large approbations of them and publish a Remonstrance against the Bishop of Chalcedon in the name of the Catholick party in England which was disowned by the greatest number of them and cast wholly upon the Iesuits the same year 1631. three Books were published by the secular Clergy here in opposition to the Iesuits Who were so far from quitting the Field by the number of their enemies that they begin a fresh charge against both the Sorbonne Doctors and the French Clergy under the fained name of Hermannus Loemelius whose chief Author was the fore-named Iesuite Lloyd with the assistance of his Brethren as the diversity of the style shews and another Book came out against the Faculty of Paris in Vindication of Knot or Nicholas Smith with many approbations of Bishops Vniversities and private Doctors and in Vindication of the Propositions of Ireland likewise censured at Paris another Book came forth under the name of Edmundus Vrsulanus whose true name was Mac-mahone Prior of the Franciscan Convent in Lovain About the same time the Iesuits published their Censure of the Apostolical Creed in imitation of the censures at Paris against their Doctrine as though their Doctrines were as certain as that and themselves as infallible as the Apostles wherein they charge the Bishops their enemies with reviving old Heresies and broaching new ones The Iesuits having now done such great things triumph unreasonably in all places as having utterly overthrown their enemies and beaten them out of the field when in a little time after Hallier and le Maistre two Doctors of the Sorbonne undertake the quarrel against them but none was so highly magnified and infinitely applauded by the French Clergy as a person under the disguised name of Petrus Aurelius whose atchievements in this kind they celebrate next to those of the Pucelle d' Orleans and Printed all his Works together at their own charge and writ a high Elogium of him which is prefixed before them And the secular Clergy of England sent him a letter of Congratulation for his Triumphs subscribed by Iohn Colleton Dean of the Chapter and Edmond Dutton Secretary wherein they sadly lament the discords that have been among them here and the Heresies broached by their Adversaries by occasion of them The main of-this Controversie did concern the dignity necessity and jurisdiction of the Episcopal Order as appears by the Censures of the Bishops of France and by Aurelius who saith that although the Dispute began upon occasion of the Bishop of Chalcedon and the English Clergy yet it was now carried farther whether the Episcopal Order was necessary to the Being of a particular Church Whether it was by divine right or no Whether confirmation might be given without Bishops Whether the Episcopal Order was more perfect than the Monastical Whether the Regulars were under the jurisdiction of Bishops And therefore the Iesuits are charged by their Adversaries with a design to extirpate and ruine the whole Order of Episcopacy Have not these men now great reason to insult over us that some of these questions have caused great differences among us when the Iesuits in England had laid the foundation of them by their quarrels of the same kind but a little before and furnished the enemies to Episcopacy and the Church of England with so many arguments to their hands to manage their bad cause with But what becomes of the Court of Rome all this while do the Pope and Cardinals only stand still to see what the issue of the Battel will be without ever offering to compose the difference between the two parties No. The Iesuits finding how hard they were put to it make their address to Rome as their greatest Sanctuary and A. D. 1633. obtained a Decree of the Sacred Congregation for suppressing the Books on both sides without judging any thing at all of the merits of the cause or giving any censure of the authority on either side And is not now the Popes authority an excellent remedy for all divisions in the Church When in so great a heat as this was the Pope durst not interpose at all in the main business for fear of losing either side which is a plain argument that they themselves look on his Authority as so precarious a thing that they must by no means expose it where it is like to be called in Question Were not here Controversies fit to be determined To what purpose is that authority that dare not be exercised when there is most need of it and when could there be greater need than in such a time when the Church was in a flame by these contentions And yet so timerous a Decree as this was could find no acceptance For at Paris immediately comes out a disquisition upon it shewing
Vnity they look after all such who hold opinions contrary to their Interest must be proceeded against and condemned but for others let them quarrel and dispute as long as they will they let them alone if they touch not the Popes Authority nor any of the gainful opinions and practices which are allowed among them And supposing their Interest be kept up which the Inquisition is designed for the Court of Rome is as great a Friend to toleration as may be only what others call different perswasions they call School points and what others call divisions they call disputes the case is the same with their Church and others only they have softer names for the differences among themselves and think none bad enough for those who cast off the Popes Authority and plead for a Reformation Here then lyes the profound mystrey of their Vnity that they are all agreed against us though not among themselves and are not we so against them too May not we plead for the Vnity that they have on the same grounds We are all agreed against Popery as much as they are against Protestants only we have some Scholastick disputes among us about indifferent things and the Episcopal Authority as they have we have some zealous Dominicans and busie and factious men such as the Iesuits among them are but setting aside these disputes we are admirably well agreed just as they are in the Roman Church § 15. 2. They say they doe not differ in matters of faith But this is as true as the other for are they agreed in matters of faith who charge one another with heresie as we have already seen that they doe But if they mean that they doe not differ in matters of faith because those only are matters of faith which they are agreed in they were as good say they are agreed in the things they doe not differ about for the parties which differ doe believe the things in difference to be matters of faith and therefore they think they differ from one another in matter of faith But they are not agreed what it is which makes a thing to be a matter of faith and therefore no one can pronounce that their differences are not about matters of faith for what one may think not to be de fide others may believe that it is we see the Popes personal infallibility is become a Catholick doctrine among the Iesuits and declared to be plain heresie by their Adversaries The deliverance of souls from Purgatory by the prayers of the living is generally accounted a matter of faith in the Roman Church but we know those in it who deny it and say it was a novel opinion introduced by Gregory 1. against the consent of Antiquity It is a matter of faith say the Dominicans and Iansenists to attribute to God alone the praise of converting grace and that grace efficacious by it self was the doctrine of Fathers and Councils and the Catholick Church and is it not then a matter of faith in their opinion wherein the Iesuits and they differ from each other To which purpose it was well said by the author of a Book printed at Paris A. D. 1651. containing essayes and reflections on the state of Religion that because of the Controversies between the Iansenists and the Iesuits it might with more reason be affirmed now than in the time of Arrianism it self that the whole Church seems to become heretical For admitting saith he what is most certain that the Church hath decreed Calvinism Pelagianism and Semipelagianism to be heresies and that the Doctors are those who sit in the Chair to be consulted withall upon points of Religion all Catholicks are reduced to a most strange perplexity For if a man shall address himself to those of the Iansenian party they will tell him that those who are termed Molinists are Pelagians or at least Semi-pelagians and on the other side the Molinists will bear him down that their Adversaries are Calvinists or else Novatians Now all the Doctors of the Catholick Church a very few excepted are either of the one or the other party I leave you then to consider to what prodigious streights mens minds are reduced since this is held as a general Maxime that whosoever fails in one point of faith fails in all It is a matter of faith say the Dominicans that all persons Christ only excepted were born in sin and therefore the contenders for the immaculate conception must in their judgment differ in a point of faith from them But if this distinction should be allowed to preserve the unity of their Church why shall it not as well cure the divisions of ours The most considerable in all respects of the dissenters from the Church of England declare that they agree with us in all the articles of doctrine required by our Church will this be enough in their opinion to make us at unity with each other if not let them not plead the same thing for themselves which they will not allow to us I cannot understand that the controversies about Ceremonies considered in themselves among us are of any greater weight than the disputes among the Fryars concerning their habits have been and yet this controversie only about the size of their hoods lasted in one Order almost an Age together and was managed with as great a heat and animosity as ever these have been among us and was with very much adoe laid asleep for a time by the endeavours of 4. Popes successively But if this signifies nothing to unity to say that the matters are not great about which the Controversies are if the disturbances be great which are caused by them that will reflect more sharply on their Church than on ours which hath so many differences which they account not to be about any matters of faith But if these differences in point of doctrine among them prove to be none in matters of faith it would be no difficult task upon the same grounds to shew that they have no reason to quarrel with us for breaking the unity of their Church because then we may differ from them as little in matters of faith as they doe from one another This I need not take upon me to shew at large because I find it already done to my hand by F. Davenport al. Sancta Clara in his paraphrastical exposition of the 39. articles of our Church about half of them he acknowledges to be Catholick as they are without any further explication The first he meets with difficulty in is that about the number of Canonical books point blank against the Council of Trent but he acknowledges that Cajetan and Franciscus Mirandula fully agree with our Church in it who quote Hierom Ruffinus Antoninus and Lyra of the same opinion as they might have done many others but because our Church doth not cast them wholly out of the Canon he dares not say it is guilty of heresie simply and the rather because Waldensis and Driedo
do hold that it is only in the power of the whole Church successively from the Apostles to declare what books are Canonical and what not For the 11. article about justification he saith the Controversie is only about words because we are agreed that God alone is the efficient cause of Justification and that Christ and his passion are the meritorious cause of it and the only question is about the formal cause which our Church doth not attribute to the act of faith as he proves by the book of Homilies but only makes it a condition of our being justified and they believe that by faith we obtain our righteousness by Christ so that he can find no difference between them and us in that point He saith the Controversie about merit may be soon ended according to the doctrine of our Church for they deny as well as we article 1. 3. that any works done before the Grace of Christ and Inspiration of his Spirit can merit any thing and when we say article 12. that good works which follow justification are pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ if by that we mean that they are accepted by Christ in order to a reward by vertue of the promise of God through Christ that is all the sense of merit which he or the school of Scotus contends for For works of supererogation article 14. he saith our Church condemns them upon that ground that men are said to do more by them than of duty they are bounden to do which being generally understood they condemn he saith as well as we because we can doe no good works which upon the account of our natural obligation we are not bound to perform though by particular precept we are not bound to them In the 19 article where our Church saith that the Church of Rome hath erred not only in their living and manner of ceremonies but also in matters of faith he distinguisheth the particular Church of Rome from the Catholick Church which is frequently understood by that name and he saith it is only a matter of faith to believe that the Catholick Church hath not erred and not that the particular Church of Rome hath not In the 20. article our Church declares that the Church ought neither to decree any thing against holy writ so besides the same it ought not to enforce any thing to be believed of necessity to salvation this he interprets of what is neither actually nor potentially in the Scriptures neither in terms nor by consequence and so he thinks it orthodox and not against traditions Article 21. wherein our Church determins expresly against the infalibility of general Councils he understands it only of things that are not necessary to faith or manners which he saith is the common opinion among them The hardest article one would think to bring us off in was the 22. viz. that the Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory Pardons worshipping and adoration as well of Images as of Reliques and also Invocation of Saints is a fond thing vainly invented and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture But we need not despaire as long as one bred up in the Schools of Scotus designes our rescue he confesses it to be a difficult adventure but what will not subtilty and kindness doe together He observes very cunningly that these doctrines are not condemned absolutely and in themselves but only the Romish doctrine about them and therein we are not to consider what the Church of Rome doth teach but what we apprehend they teach or what we judge of their doctrine i. e. that they invocate Saints as they doe God himself that Purgatory destroys the cross of Christ and warms the Popes Kitchin that Pardons are the Popes bills of Exchange whereby he discharges the debts of what sinners he pleases that they give proper divine worship to images and reliques all which he saith are impious doctrines and we doe well to condemn them So that it is not want of faith but want of wit this good man condemns us for which if we attain to any competent measure of whereby to understand their doctrine there is nothing but absolute peace and harmony between us This grand difficulty being thus happily removed all the rest is done with a wet finger for what though our Church Art 24. saith that it is a thing plainly repugnant to the word of God and the custome of the primitive Church to have publick prayer in the Church or to Minister the Sacraments in a tongue not understood of the people Yet what can hinder a Scotist from understanding by the Scripture not the doctrine or command of it but the delivery of it viz. that the Scripture was written in a known tongue nay he proves that our Church is for praying in Latin by this Article because that either is a known tongue or ought to be so it being publickly lickly taught every where and if it be not understood he saith it is not per se but per accidens that it is so I suppose he means the Latin Tongue is not to blame that the people do not understand it but they that they learned their lessons no better at School But what is to be said for Women who do not think themselves bound to go to School to learn Latin He answers very plainly that S. Paul never meant them for he speaks of those who were to say Amen at the Prayers but both S. Paul and the Canon Law he tells us forbid women to speak in the Church The case is then clear S. Paul never regarded what language the Women used and it was no great matter whether they understood their Prayers or not But what is to be said to the Council of Trent which pronounces an Anathema to those who say that Prayers are to be said only in a known Tongue This doth not touch our Church at all he thinks because in some Colledges the Prayers are said in Latin but although that be a known tongue there it is no matter as long as the Council of Trent hath put in the word only that clears our Church sufficiently Besides the Council of Trent speaks expresly of the Masse which our Article doth not mention but only publick Prayers and the Council of Trent speaks of those who condemns it as contrary to the institution of Christ but our Church only condemns it as contrary to the institution of the Apostle but all the commands of the Apostles are not the commands of Christ therefore our Church declares nothing against faith in this Article Are not we infinitely obliged to a man that uses so much subtlety to defend our Church from errrour in faith But that which is most considerable is what he cites from Canus that it is no Heresie to condemn a custome or Law of the Church if it be not of something necessary to salvation especially if it be a custome introduced since the Apostles times as most certainly this was For the five Sacraments rejected
they are expressed and that they are not equal to all but it was not fit to express it so because this would hinder peoples esteem of the Indulgence Which in plainer terms is that it is necessary to cheat the people or else there is no good to be done by Indulgences Thence Petrarch called them nets wherein the credulous multitude were caught and in the time of Boniface 9. the people observing what vast summs of money were gathered by them cryed out they were meer cheats and tricks to get money with upon which Paulus Langius a Monk exclaims O God to what are these things come Thou holdest thy peace but thou wilt not alwayes for the day of the Lord will bring the hidden things of darkness to light Conrad Vrspergensis saith that Rome might well rejoyce in the sins of the people because she grew rich by the compensation which was made for them Thou hast saith he to her that which thou hast alwayes thirsted after sing and rejoyce for thou hast conquered the world not by religion but by the wickedness of men Which is that which draws them to thee not their devotion and piety Platina saith the selling Indulgences brought the Ecclesiastical Authority into contempt and gave encouragement to many sins Vrspergensis complains that plenary Indulgences brought more wickedness into the world for he saith men did then say Let me do what wickedness I will by them I shall be free from punishment and deliver the souls of others from Purgatory Gerson saith none can give a pardon for so many years as are contained in the Popes Indulgences but Christ alone therefore what are they but cheats and impostures In Spain Indulgences were condemned by Petrus de Osma a Divine of Salamanca and his followers as appears by the Popes Bull against them A. D. 1478. In Germany by Iâ—hannes de Vesaliâ a famous Preacher of Mentz for Serrarius reckons this among the chief of his opinions that Indulgences were only pious frauds and wayes to deceive the people and that they were fools who went to Rome for them About the same time flourished Wesselus Groningensis incomparably the best Scholar of his Age and therefore called Lux mundi he was not only skilled in School Divinity almost the only learning of that time but in the Greek Hebrew Chaldee and Arabick having travelled into Greece Aegypt and been in most Vniversities of Europe and read the most ancient Authors in all kinds of learning on the account of his learning he was much in favour with Sixtus 4. and was present and admired at the Council of Basil but he was so far from being a friend to Indulgences that in his Epistles he saith that no Popes could grant an Indulgence for an hour and that it is a ridiculous thing to imagine that for the same thing done sometimes an Indulgence should be granted for 7 years sometimes for 700 sometimes for 7000 and sometimes for ever by a plenary remission and that there is not the least foundation in Scripture for the distinction of remitting the fault and the punishment upon which the doctrine of Indulgences is founded That the giving them was a design of covetousness and although the Pope once sware to the King of France's Embassadour that he did not know the corruptions of the sellers of Indulgences yet when he did know them he let them alone and they spread farther That God himself doth not give plenary remission to contrition and confession and therefore the Pope can much less do it But if God doth forgive how comes the Pope to have power to retain and if there be no punishment retained when God forgives what hath the Popeâ— to do to release Against him writes one Iacobus Angularis he confesseth there is nothing in Scripture or Antiquity expresly for Indulgences but that ought to be no argument for there are many other things owned in their Church as necessary points which have as little foundation as this viz. S. Peters being at Rome and Sacramental confession and therefore at last he takes Sanctuary in the Popes and Churches authority To this Wesselus answers that Indulgences were accounted pious frauds before the time of Albertus and Thomas that there was a great number of Divines did still oppose the errours and practices of the Court of Rome in this matter that supposing the Church were for them yet the authority of Scripture is to be preferred before it and no multitude of men whatsoever is to be believed against Scripture that he had not taken up this opinion rashly but had maintained it in Paris thirty three years before and in the Popes poenitentiary Court at Rome and was now ready to change it if he could see better reason for the contrary That the doctrine of Indulgences was delivered very confusedly and uncertainly by which it appeared to be no Catholick doctrine that it is almost impossible to find two men agree in the explication of them that the doctrine of Indulgences was so far from being firmly believed among them that there was not the strictest person of the Carthusian or other orders that should receive a plenary Indulgence at the hour of death that yet would not desire his Brethren to pray for his soul which is a plain argument he did not believe the validity of the Indulgence that many in the Court of Rome did speak more freely against them than he did That the Popes authority is very far from being infallible or being owned as such in the Church as appeared by the Divines at Paris condemning the Bull of Clement 6. about Indulgences wherein he took upon him to command the Angels and gave plenary remissions both from the fault and punishment Which authentick Bulls he saith were then to be seen at Vienne Limoges and Poictou It is notorious to the world what complaints were made in Germany after his time of the fraud of Indulgences before any other point of Religion came into dispute and how necessarily from this the Popes authority came to be questioned that being the only pretence they had to justifie them by and with what success these things were then managed it is no more purpose to write now than to prove that it is day at Noon The Council of Trent could not but confess horrible abuses in the sale of Indulgences yet what amendment hath there been since that time Bellarmin confesseth that it were better if the Church were very sparing in giving Indulgences I wonder why so if my Adversaries experience and observation be true that they prove great helps to devotion and charity Can the Church be too liberal in those things which tend to so good an end § 8. But Bellarmin would not have the people too confident of the effect of Indulgences for though the Church may have power to give them yet they may want their effect in particular persons and therefore saith he all prudent Christians do
Treasure too Is not this worse than to light a Candle to help the Sun to suppose Christs satisfaction so infinite as to be sufficient to redeem more worlds and yet not enough to deliver from temporal punishment without the satisfactions of the Saints 11. How come the Saints to make such large satisfactions to the justice of God if the satisfaction of Christ were of so infinite a nature and if they did make satisfactions were they not sufficiently rewarded for them if they were how come those satisfactions to help others which they were so abundantly recompensed for themselves 12. If the satisfaction of Christ doth only obtain grace for the Saints to satisfie themselves for the temporal punishment of their sins how can the application of this satisfaction by Indulgences free any from the temporal punishment of their sins Or have the satisfactions of Saints being joyned with Christs greater power now in common penitents than the satisfaction of Christ alone in the greatest Saints 13. Why the satisfaction of Christ may not serve without the Saints to remit only the temporal punishment of sins when it was sufficient alone to remit both eternal and temporal in the Sacrament of Baptism or was the force of it spent then that it needs a fresh supply afterwards but if then it could be applyed to a higher end without any other help why not where it is to have far less efficacy 14. If satisfaction be made to God for the temporal punishment of penitents by Indulgences I desire to know when and by whom the payment is made to God If it was made by the persons whose satisfactions make the Churches treasure for that end what hath the Pope to do to dispense that which God hath accepted long agoe for payment If it be made by the Pope in what way doth he make it doth he take out so much ready cash of the Churches treasure and pay it down upon the nail according to the proportion of every ones sins or doth he only tell God where such a treasure lyes and bid him go and satisfie himself for as much as he discharges of his dâ—bt 15. How came this Treasure of the Church into the Popes Keeping who gave him alone the Keys of it if there were any such thing methinks those who are trusted with the greater treasure of Christs necessary satisfaction for the remitting of eternal punishment as every Priest is by their own doctrine in the Sacrament of Penance should not be denyed the lesser of the Superfluities of Christ and the Saints sufferings for the remitting only temporal punishment When I once see these questions satisfactorily answered I may then think better of this doctrine than I doe at present for the best I can think of it now is that there never was a doctrine more absurd in the ground of it or more gainful in the practice than this of Indulgences in the Roman Church and therefore ought to be accounted one of the most notorious cheats that ever was in the Christian world § 10. But let us suppose it otherwise and then we are to enquire whether this would tend to promote or obstruct that very way of devotion which is most in request in the Roman Church there are but two ways to judge of this either by experience or the nature of the doctrine it self For experience my Adversary alledges his own and that he hath seen great devotion caused by them but by his favour the question is not what outward acts of devotion may be performed by some ignorant and silly people who are abused by great hopes of strange benefits by Indulgences and therefore prepare themselves with some shew of devotion to receive them especially when they are unusual but the question is whether they have these effects upon those who understand the nature and designe of them and the doctrine of their Church about them For as Durandus resolves it the validity of the Indulgence doth not depend on the devotion of the receiver for then saith he the Indulgence would contain a falsity in it which is that whosoever doth such a thing as going to the 7. Churches shall have plenary remission of his sins therefore saith he whoever doth the thing shall have the whole benefit of the Indulgence or else the Indulgence is false And to his experience I shall oppose that of greater observers of the world than he hath been I have already mentioned the testimony of Vrspergensis and others concerning the effects of plenary Indulgences in their times how men encouraged themselves to sin the more because of them Polydore Virgil observes that when Indulgences were grown common many men did abstain less from doing evil actions The author of the book called Onus Ecclesiae saith that they take men off from the fruits of repentance and are profitable only to the idle and wicked The Princes of Germany in the Diet of Norimberg among the grievances represented to the Pope by the consent of them all upon the mention of Indulgences reckon as the least bad consequence of them that the people were cheated of their money by them but that they say was far more considerable that true Christian Piety was destroyed by them and that all manner of wickedness did spring frâ—m thence and that men were afraid of committing no kind of sin when at so cheap a rate they could purchase a remission of them But setting aside the experience of these things let us consider what the nature of the doctrine it self tends to to those who believe it The least benefit we see allowed them is a freedom from enjoyned penances and what are these penances accounted among them but fruits of true repentance a severe mortification fasting frequent prayers and Almes so that the short of this doctrine is that men by Indulgences are excused from doing the best parts of their Religion and if this be a way of promoting devotion I leave any one in his senses to judge § 11. I proceed now to the denying the Cup to the Laity contrary to the practice of the Church in the solemn celebration of the Eucharist for a thousand years after Christ. To which he answers 3. ways 1 that the receiving in one or both kinds was ever held a matter of liberty in the Church 2 that it was as much in the Churches power to alter it after a 1000. years as in the first or second century 3 that the believing whole Christ to be present in one kind tends more to excite devotion than receiving both elements without that belief This is the substance of his answer But I have else where at large proved and need not repeat it here that the Institution of Christ as to both kinds was of an universally obligatory nature not only from the will of the first Institutor but from the universal sense of the Church concerning the nature of that Institution And there I have largely answer'd those very
Fornication Indeed he saith that this falling from that holy chastity which was vowed to God may in some sense be said to be worse than Adultery but he never imagined such a construction could be made of his words as though the act of Fornication were not a greater falling from it than meer marriage could be So much shall suffice for the Instances produced in the Roman Church of such things which tend to obstruct a good life and devotion § 14. The 3. argument I used to prove the danger a person runs of his salvation in the communion of the Roman Church was because it exposeth the faith of Christians to so great uncertainties which he looks on as a strange charge from the Pen of a Protestant As strange as it is I have at large proved it true in a full examination of the whole Controversie of the Resolution of faith between us and them to which I expect a particular Answer before this charge be renewed again To which I must refer him for the main proof of it and shall here subjoyn only short replyes to his Answers or references to what is fully answered already 1. His distinction of the authority of the Scripture in it self and to us signifies nothing for when we enquire into the proofs of the Authority of Scripture it can be understood no otherwise than in respect to us and if the Scriptures Authority as to us is to be proved by the Church and the Churches Authority as to us to be provved by the Scripture the difficulty is not in the least avoided by that distinction And as little to the purpose is the other that it is only an argument ad hominem to prove the Infallibility of the Church from Scriptures for I would fain know upon what other grounds they build their own belief of the Churches Infallibility than on the Promises of Christ in the Scripture These are miserable evasions and nothing else For the trite saying of S. Austin that he would not believe the Gospel c. I have at large proved that the meaning of it is no more than that the Testimony of the Vniversal Church from the Apostles times is the best way to prove the particular books of Scripture to be authentical and cannot be understood of the Infallibility of the present Church and that the testimony of some few persons as the Manichees were was not to be taken in opposition to the whole Christian Church Which is a thing we as much contend for as they but is far enough from making the Infallibility of our faith to depend on the Authority of the present Church which we say is the way to overthrow all certainty of faith to any considering man 2. To that of overthrowing the certainty of sense in the doctrine of transubstantiation he saith that divine revelation ought to be believed against the evidence of sense To which I answer 1. that divine revelation in matters not capable of being judged by our senses is to be believed notwithstanding any argument can be drawn from sensible experiments against it as in the belief of God the doctrine of the Trinity the future state of the soul c. 2. that in the proper objects of sense to suppose a Revelation contrary to the evidence of sense is to overthrow all certainty of faith where the matters to be believed depend upon matters of fact As for Instance the truth of the whole Christian doctrine depends upon the truth of Christs resurrection from the dead if sense be not here to be believed in a proper object of it what assurance can we have that the Apostles were not deceived when they said they saw Christ after he was risen If it be said there was no revelation against sense in that case that doth not take off the difficulty for the reason why I am to believe revelation at any time against sense must be because sense may be deceived but revelation cannot but if I yield to that principle that sense may be deceived in its most proper object we can have no infallible certainty by sense at all and consequently not in that point that Christ is risen from the dead If it be said that sense cannot be deceived where there is no revelation against it I desire to know how it comes to be deceived supposing a revelation contrary to it Doth God impose upon our senses at that time then he plainly deceives us is it by telling us we ought to believe more than we see that we deny not but we desire only to believe according to our senses in what we doe see as what we see to be bread that is bread that what the Apostles saw to be the body of Christ was the body of Christ really and substantially and not meerly the accidents of a body Besides if revelation is to be believed against sense then either that revelation is conveyed immediately to our minds which is to make every one a Prophet that believes transubstantiation or mediately by our senses as in those words this is my body if so than I am to believe this revelation by my senses and believing this revelation I am not to believe my senses which is an excellent way of making faith certain All this on supposition there were a revelation in this case which is not only false but if it were true would overthrow the certainty of faith 3. To that I objected as to their denying to men the use of their judgement and reason as to the matters of faith proposed by a Church when they must use it in the choice of a Church he answers that this cannot expose faith to any uncertainty because it is only preferring the Churches judgement before our own but he doth not seem to understand the force of my objection which lay in this Every one must use his own judgement and reason in the choice of the Church he is to rely upon is he certain in this or not if he be uncertain all that he receives on the Authority of that Church must be uncertain too if the use of reason be certain then how comes the Authority of a Church to be a necessary means of certainty in matters of faith And they who condemn the use of a mans reason and judgement in Religion must overthrow all certainty on their own grounds since the choice of his Infallible Guide must depend upon it Now he understands my argument better he may know better how to answer it but I assure him I meant no such thing by the use of reason as he supposes I would have which is to believe nothing but what my reason can comprehend for I believe an Infinite Being and all the Doctrines revealed by it in Holy Scriptures although I cannot reconcile all particulars concerning them to those conceptions we call reason But therefore to argue against the use of mens judgements in matters of faith and the grounds of believing is to dispute against that which
friend or the Letters you receive or the Laws of the Land all which are lyable 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 blindness 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 lyable to be abused by him as he please without remedy You are gone from us where you are only 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 V. 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 in the Collyridians who offered a Cake to the V. Mary A Candle and a Cake make no difference in the Worship and your joyning God and the Saints is like the device of them that fought for King and Parliament the latter destroys the former To which he subjoynes that the points of difference between us and the Church of Rome are such as do evidently serve the ends of Covetousness and Ambition in them and that very many of her Doctrines are very ill Friends to a good life and that our Religion is incomparably beyond theirs in point of safety as in point of Praying to God alone and without Images relying on God as infallible which are surely lawful but it is at least hugely disputable and not at all certain that any man or society of men can be infallible that we may put our trust in Saints or Worship Images c. From whence he concludes So that unless you mean to preferr a danger before safety temptation to unholiness before a severe and holy Religion unless you mean to lose the benefit of yours prayers by praying what you perceive not and the benefit of the Sacrament in great degrees by falling from Christs Institution and taking half instead of all unless you desire to provoke God to jealousie by Images and man to jealousie in professing a Religion in which you may in many cases have leave to forfeit your faith and lawful trust unless you will choose a Catechism without the second Commandment and a faith that grows bigger or lesser as men please and a hope that in many degrees relyes on men and vain confidences and a Charity that damns all the world but your selves unless you will do all this that is suffer an abuse in your Prayers in the Sacrament in the commandments in faith in hope in Charity in the Communion of Saints and your duty to your Supream you must return to the bosome of your Mother the Church of England and I doubt not but you will find the comfort of it in all your life and in the day of your death and in the day of Judgement Thus far that excellent person and I leave you now to judge between the Motives on both sides as they are laid down by him whom my Adversary appeals to and I must thank him for the kindness of mentioning him against me without which I had wanted so good a representation of the Motives of either side and so full an Answer to the pretences brought for the Church of Rome The other Motives which he adds of Fathers Councils and Tradition he knows are utterly denyed by us and I wonder he should insist upon them since in the matters of our debate Antiquity is so evidently of our side as against Worship of Images and Saints against Purgatory Transubstantiation Prayers in an unknown tongue and he thinks it no great matter to allow us a thousand years against communion in one kind and yet all this while Scripture Fathers Councils and Tradition are all on their side For the testimony of the present Church we deny that S. Austin speaks of it as of it self sufficient and though he did that concerns not the Roman Church any more than other parts of the Catholick Church and he may assoon prove Tyber to be the Ocean or S. Peters at Rome to have been before the Temple at Hierusalem as prove the Roman Church to be the Catholick Church or the Mother of all others § 17. But I must conclude with the method he prescribes to you for satisfaction from me which is not to meddle with particular disputes which we know very well the reason of but to call upon me for a Catalogue of our grounds and to bring things to Grounds and Principles as they have learnt to Cant of late and then he saith Controversie will soon be at an end I should be glad to see it so notwithstanding his Friend I. S. accounts it so noble a Science unless he hath changed his mind since for so many years now he hath failed in the Defence of his Demonstrations But to satisfie the men of Principles and to let them see we can do more than find fault with their Religion I shall give an account of the faith of Protestants in the way of Principles and of the reason of our rejecting their impositions which is all we can understand by Negative Points and if we can give an account of the Christian faith independently on their Churches Authority and Infallibility it evidently follows that cannot be the foundation of faith and so we may be very good Christians without having any thing to do with the Church of Rome And I know no other Answer necessary not only to this present demand but to a Book called Protestants without Principles the falsity of which will appear by what follows Principles Agreed on both sides 1. THat there is a God from whom man and all other Creatures had their Being 2. That the notion of God doth imply that he is a Being absolutely perfect and therefore Justice Goodness Wisdom and Truth must be in him to the highest degree of perfection 3. That man receiving his Being from God is thereby bound to obey his will and consequently is lyable to punishment in case of disobedience 4. That in order to mans obeying the will of God it is necessary that he know what it is for which some manifestation of the will of God is necessary both that man may know what he hath to do and that God may justly punish him if he do it not 5. Whatever God reveals to man is infallibly true and being intended for the rule of mans obedience may be certainly known to be his Will 6. God cannot act contrary to those essential Attributes of Justice Wisdom Goodness and Truth in any way which he makes choice of to make known his will unto man by These thing being agreed on both sides we are now to inquire into the particular wayes which God hath made choice of for revealing his will to mankind 1. AN entire