St. Chrysostom affirmed concerning St. Paul that the whole World or the World of the Roman Empire was his Diocese You will reply that he promised on him particularly upon this Rock or Stone this Kipha a Syriac Word of the Masculine Gender this Peter to build his Church I answer the Ancients took the Word as Feminine and understood it rather of his Confession than of his Person If it was spoken of his Person it was spoken by way of Emphasis not Exclusion for there were twelve Foundations of these he might be called the first having first preached the Gospel to Jews and Gentiles the Eleven standing up with him and he speaking as the Mouth of the Apostolical Colledge We cannot by the strictest ennumeration find out any living infallible Guide existing in any Age after St. Peter in the Christian Church 1. This Guide could not be the Church diffusive of the first Ages For the suffrages of every Christian were never gathered And if we will have their sense they must rise from the dead and give it us 2. This Guide cannot be the Faith as such of all the Governours of all the Primitive Churches The sum of it was never collected There were anciently general Creeds but such as especially related to the Heresies then on foot and who can affirm upon grounds of certainty that each Bishop in the World consented to each Article or to each so expressed 3. This Guide is not a Council perfectly free and universal For a Guide which cannot be had is none If such a Council could assemble it would not err in the necessaries of Faith For there cannot be a regular Flock without a Shepherd and if all the Spiritual Shepherds in the World should at once and by consent go so much astray the whole Flock of the Church Catholick would be scattered And that would contradict the promise of Christ the Supreme Faithful Infallible Pastor But there never was yet an universal Council properly so called Neither can we suppose the probability of it but by supposing the being of one Temporal Christian Monarch of the World who might call or suffer it In the Councils called General if we speak comparatively there were not many Southern or Western Bishops present at them It was thus at that first Oecumenical Council the Council of Nice though in one sacred place as Eusebius hath noted there were assembled Syrians and Cilians Phoenicians and Arabians Paloestinians Egyptians Theboeans Libyans Mesopotamians a Persian a Scythian Bishop and many others from other Countries But there was but one Bishop for Africa one for Spain one for Gaul two Priests as Deputies of the infirm and Aged Bishop of Rome Whilst for Instance sake there were seventeen Bishops for the small Province of Isauria yet such Councils are very useful such we reverence but God did not set them up as the only and the infallible Guides of Faith If these were such Guides what Guided the Church which was before them By what rule was Ebion judged before the Council of Nice How can we be infallibly Guided by them in Controversies of Faith not determined by them nay not brought before them nay scarce moved till these latter days Such for the purpose are the Controversies about the vertue of the Sacrifice of Christ and of Justification by the Faith of mere recumbence upon his Merits Or how shall a private Man who errs in the Faith be deliver'd from his Heresy seeing he may die some years ere a Council can assemble or being assembled can form its decrees Arius vented his Heresy about ten years before the Council of Nice was called for the suppressing of it And soon after he had given vent to it it spread throughout Egypt and Lybia and the upper Thebes as Socrates has reported And in a short time many other Provinces and Cities were infected with the contagion of it And in the pretended Council of Trent no less than five Popes were successively concerned and it lasted in several places longer than two legal lives of a Man There was indeed a Canon in the Western Church for the holding of a Council once in the space of each ten years But that Canon has not been hitherto obeyed and as affairs stand in the Church it is impracticable For the Pope will exclude all the Greek and Reformed Bishops he will crowd the Assembly with Bishops of his own Creation and with Abots also he will not admit of former Councils unless they serve his purpose not so much as that of Nice it self He will be the Judge though about his own Supremacy He will multiply Italians and others who upon Oath owe their votes to him He will not hold a Council upon the terms approved by all Romish Princes Nor did they agree at their last Council the Emperour would not send his Bishops to Bologna nor the French King his to Trent And though the French Church believed the Doctrines of that Synod yet they did not receive them from the Authority of it but they embraced them as the former Doctrines of the Roman Church And the Parisian Faculty prepared the way to the Articles of Trent Notwithstanding all this we firmly believe that at least the first four general Councils did not err in Faith and it is pious to think that God would not suffer so great a temptation in the Church on Earth Yet still we believe those Councils not to be infallible in their constitution but so far as they followed an infallible rule For the greatest Truth is not always with the greatest number And great numbers may appear on contrary sides The Council of Constantinople under Constantine Copronymus consisting of three hundred thirty eight Bishops decreed against the use of Images in Churches Yet the second Synod of Nice consisting of about three hundred and fifty Bishops determin'd for it And a while after in the West the Council of Frankford consisting of about three hundred Bishops reversed that decree And after that the Council of Trent did re-establish it though there the voting Persons were not fifty With such uncertain doubts of belief must they move who follow a Guide in Religion without reference to a further rule But here there is offered to us by the Guide in Controversies an Objection of which this is the sum The fifth Canon of the Church of England does declare that the thirty nine Articles were agreed upon for the avoidance of the diversities of opinions and the establishing of consent toucâ—ing true Religion Consent touching true Religion is consent in Matter of Faith Establishing of consent relateth both to Layety and Clergy The third and fourth Canons of 1640. decree the Excommunication of those who will not abjure their holding Popery and Socinianism The Reâ—ormed Churches in France teach the like Doctrine threatning to cut them off from the Church who acquâ—eâ—ce not in the resolution of a National Synod
The same course was taken with the Remonstrants in the Synod of Dorâ— Wherefore Protestants ought not to detract from the Authority of general Councils whilst they assume to themselves so great a Power in their particular Synods The force of this Objection is thus removed Every Church hath Power of admitting or excluding Members else it hath not means sufficient to its end the order and concord of its Body Every particular Church ought to believe that it does not err in its definitions for it ought not to impose any known error upon its Members But though it believes it does not err it does not believe it upon this reason because God hath made it an infallible Guide but rather for this because it hath sincerely and with Gods assistance followed a rule which is infallible And upon this supposition it imposeth Doctrines and excludeth such as with contumacy dissent from them 4. This Guide is not the present Church declaring to particular Christians the sense of the Church of former Ages How can this declaration be made seeing Churches differ and each Church calls it self the true one and pretendeth to the Primitive pattern The Church of Rome hath on her side the suffrages of all the Councils and Fathers the first the middle the last if Campian the Jesuite may be believed On the other hand Monsieur Larroque hath Written a Book of the Conformity of the Protestant Churches in France with the Discipline of the Christian Ancient Church taking it for granted that their Doctrine was Catholick And we likewise pretend both to the Doctrine and Discipline of it All of us cannot be in the right The Roman Church without any proof calleth her self the Church Catholick and she pretendeth to conveigh to us the sense of the Ancient Fathers and Councils which sense was that they understood formerly by the word Tradition And in this sense a Romanist said of Pope Honorius that he had broken the rule of Tradition But how can we esteem that Church a faithful representer of the sense of the Ancients whilst the Reformed consult the Ancients with equal ability and find a contrary sense in them Whilst the Church of Rome by a kind of Ecclesiastical Coinage stampeth Divine Authority upon Books esteemed by the Councils and Fathers to be Apochryphal Whilst it hath forged decrees of Popes and like a deceitful Gibeonite rendred that which was really new in appearance old and mouldy on purpose to promote imposture How doth it give us the sense of the Ancients when it owneth what it formerly disowned as Canonical the Epistle to the Hebrews When it taketh away the Cup which Pope Gelasius called a grand Sacrilege When it now rejecteth the Communicating of Infants which in former times was esteemed by many a very necessary point When a former Pope Gregory condemns the Title of Universal pastor as Anti-Christian and a latter insists upon it as the choicest flour in the papal Prerogative When St. Austin and from him the very Breviary shall expound Christs promise of being always with his Church of the presence of his Divinity and of his Spirit and not of his Body And Pope Innocent the third shall interpret them as meant also of his corporal presence And if the Roman Church falsifyeth written Tradition how shall we trust her for Oral And how and at what time did that Oral Tradition remove from Greece to Rome where the Greek Church which it alloweth to have been once possessed of the true Tradition is accused of Heresie At the same time I suppose that the Chappel of the Virgin removed from Nazareth to Loretto This principle of Oral Tradition is most uncertain to their Judges and to those to whom they offer it it is most obscure It is a principle on which they can serve a purpose in justifying novel Doctrines as Oral Traditions not known to any but the Roman Church which pretendeth to the custody of them 5. God hath not set up any one Person in the Catholick Church in the Quality of an unerring Guide in the Christian Faith The Bishops of Rome who pretend to this Prerogative do but pretend It is a tender point and the Pope's Legates in the Council of Trent were enjoyned to give forth this Advertisement that the Fathers upon no account whatsoever should touch it or dispute about it They who examine it will soon reject it as false and useless And 1. Whether the Pope be or be not the Guide the Men of the Roman Communion are exposed to dangerous uncertainty For it is not yet determined amongst them whether they are to follow the Pope with or without or against a Council Yet a Pope hath owned a Council which deposed other Popes and by decree set it self above them or rather vindicated the superiority due to it Thus Martin the fifth received the Papal Mitre from the Council of Constance after it had deposed Gregory the twelfth Benedict the thirteenth and John the twenty third Again there have been by the account given us in their own Historians more than twenty formed Schisms in that Church two or more Popes pretending at the same time to the infallible Chair and each of them not being without their followers and giving Holy Orders And at this time there is risen an Apologist for Mauritius Burdin or Gregory the eighth though he was ejected by the Roman Church which received Gelasius into his place Burdin being disliked by them as a Creature of Henry the Emperour This Schism saith St. Bernard distracted that Church and gave it a wound only not incurable And Baluzius professeth that it was then difficult to understand which of the two Gregory or Gelasius was the Legitimate successour of Pope Paschal Now how useless to them is the pretence of a Guide when they want some other Guide who should tell them which of the pretenders they may securely follow Secondly the Popes themselves in their Solemn Profession suppose themselves liable to the misleading of the People even in Matters of Faith For having owned the Faith of the Six general Councils They further profess themselves and others to be subject to an Anatâ—ema if they advance novelty contrary to the aforesaid Evangelical Tradition and the integrity of the Orthodox and Christian Faith Thirdly If the Pope challengeth this Power of infallible Guidance he must lay claim to it by his succeeding of St. Peter in the Chair Apostolical But then by equal reason the successors of each Apostle may challenge the office of an infallible Guide For the Power which Christ gave to St. Peter he gave to the rest It was not special And for the Bishops of Antioch who first succeeded St. Peter they have a much fairer pretence than those of Rome The Truth is Hierusalem was properly the Mother-Church Though Rome was the Imperial City and if by this means the Popes had not
require this belief for to all the Gospel is not preached and where it is preached there are Infants and Persons of Age so distempered in Mind as to remain unavoidably Children in understanding And though the same Sum of Doctrines is generally necessary to Salvation yet the Creed of all Men is not of equal length seeing they have unequal capacities But wheresoever there is a particular Society of Men who call themselves a Church yet err actually in the necessary Articles of the Faith it is certain they were not forced into that error for want of external means For the Just Judge of the World would never have required Unity in the Faith upon pain of his Eternal displeasure if he had not given to Men Power sufficient for such Unity No Tyrant on Earth has been guilty of such undisguised injustice as that is which maketh a Law for the punishment of the Blind because they miss their way The Artâ—cles of Christian Religion come not to the Mind by natural reason but by Faith and Faith comes by hearing or reading and where these means are not offered a Man is rather an Ignorant Person than an Unbeliever Wherefore our Saviour told the perverse Jews that if the Messiah had never been reveal'd to them they had not been answerable for the Sin of Infidelity But that since he was come to them and by them despised their Infidelity was blackned with great aggravation The means then are sufficient wheresoever the end is absolutely required but whatsoever those means are the Act of Assent is to be ultimately resolved into each Mans Personal reason For no Man can believe or assent but upon some ground or motive which appears credible to him He could not believe unless he had some reason or other why he believed When all is done said Mr. Thorndike Men must and will be Judges for themselves I do not quote the saying because it is extraordinary but because that Learned Man said it who was careful to pay to Authority its minutest dues If a Man believes upon Authority he hath a further reason for the believing of it He is not willing to take Pains in examining that which is proposed to him or he thinks himself of less Ability in understanding than those from whom he borrows his Light If he desireth another to judge for him his choice is determined by the Opinion he hath conceived of him Every Man has his reason though it be a weak one and such as cannot justify it self or him Something at last turns the Ballance though it be but a Feather This the Romanists own as well as the Reformed till it toucheth them in the case of a new Convert To induce a Man of another particular Church to embrace their Communion they submit these weighty points to his private Judgment What is a True Church and which are the marks of it What is the Roman Church And whether the marks of the True Church do only belong unto the Roman What Men or what Books speak the sense of that Church They tell us That the Light of a Man 's own reason first serves him so far as to the discovery of a Guide Also that in this discovery the Divine Providence hath left it so clear and evident that a sincere and unbyassed quest cannot miscarry But when once this Guide is found out the Man is afterwards for all other things that are prescribed by this Guide to subject and resign his reason As if it were not as difficult to judge of such a Guide as of his direction It seems the Roman Church is like a Cave into which a Man has Light enough to enter but when once he is entred he is in thick Darkness But how subservient soever our reason may be to our Faith The means which God hath given us towards the certain attaining of it is not the Authority of any infallible Guide on Earth This will not be disbelieved by those who weigh well the following considerations First God did not set up such a constant infallible Guide among the Jews though at first he gave Assurance to them by Miracle that Moses had received his Commission from him and had brought to them the Tables which he had Written for their direction with his own finger Some of the Sanedrim were of the Sect of the Sadduces who erred in the Fundamental point of a future State Most of them erred in the Quality of the Messiah not considering their Scriptures so much as their Traditions And of the errors of the Levitical Priesthood there is in the Old Testament frequent mention and great complaint And the Prophet Malachy as soon as he had said The Priests lips shall preserve Knowledge he adds this reproof but ye are departed out of the way It is true the Israelites were by God directed in difficult cases to an Assembly of Judges But they were not Judges of controversies in Doctrine but in Property To their sentence the People were to submit as to an expedient for Peace though Judgment might be perverted or mistaken It must be also confessed that God spake to them by the Oracle of Vrim and that the voice of it was infallible But its answers concerned not the necessary Rudiments of the Mosaick Law but emergencies in their civil affairs those especially of Peace and War But if we admit that there was under Judaism a living infallible Guide it does not thence follow that it must be so under Christianity For their small precinct the People of which were thrice in a year to come up to the Temple was much more capable of such a judge than the Christian Church which is as wide as the World Also the new Revelation is more clear and distinct than the old one was and stands not in such need of an Interpreter Secondly God hath no where promised Christians such a judge He hath no where said that he hath given such a one to the Christian Church And seeing such a one cannot be had without Gods supernatural assistance the most knowing amongst Men being subject both to Error and to Falshood it is great arrogance whilst the Scripture is silent to say he is in being And to affirm that if there were not such a Guide God would be wanting in means sufficient for the maintenance of Peace and Truth is presumptuously to obtrude the schemes of Mans fancy upon God's Wisdom He can Govern his Church without our methods Now God hath no where promised such a judge to Christian Men though he hath promised help on Earth and assistance from Heaven to Men diligent and sincere in their inquiries after Truths which are necessary for them There are two places of Scripture which are by some taken for Promises of such a nature though they were not by the Divine Wisdom so intended Of these the First is that which was spoken by Christ unto St. Peter The Gates of Hell shall not
was hortatory and not compulsive It is true he erred not as Head of the Church for such he was not neither as such was he owned But he erred as a publick person and with Heretical obstinacy For Pope Leo as he noteth said concerning him that he had made it his business to betray and subvert the Holy Faith Now this matter of Fact sufficeth for the refuting all the fallacious reasonings of the patrons of Papal infallibility For all must agree that they are not unerring Guides who actually err The Sieur de Balzac mocks at the weakness of one of the Romish Fathers who offered four reasons to prove that the Duke D' Espernon was not returned out of England And offered them to a Gentleman who had seen him since his return There seemeth no sitness in the constituting of such a Guide nor any necessity for it Had it been agreeable to Gods Wisdom his Wisdom would not have been wanting to it self God having made Man a Reasonable Creature would not make void the use of deliberation and the freedom of his judgment There is no vertue in the Assent where the Eye is forced open and the Light held directly to it It is enough that God the rewarder of them who believe hath given Men sufficient faculties and sufficient means And seeing Holiness is as necessary to the pleasing of God and to the peace of the World as Union in Doctrine to which there is too frequently given a lifeless Assent seeing there must be Christian Obedience as long as there is a Church seeing as the Guide in Controversy himself urgeth the Catholick Church and all the parts of it are believed in the Creed to be Holy as well as Orthodox We ask not the Romanists an impertinent Question when we desire them to tell us why a means to infallibility in the judgment rather than irresistibleness in the pious choice of the Will is to be by Heaven provided in the Church Both seem a kind of Destination of equal necessity But though the Reformed especially those of the Church of England see no necessity for an infallible Guide nor believe there is one on the face of the Earth yet they do not reject all Ecclesiastical Guidance but allow it great place in matters of Discipline and Order and some place also though not that of an unerring Judge in Matters of Faith At the beginning of the Reformation the Protestants though they refused the judgment of the Pope their Enemy yet they declined not the determination of a Council And in the Assembly at Ausburgh the Romanists and Protestants agreed in a Council as the Umpire of their publick difference At this the Pope was so alarumed saith the Sieur de Mezeray that he wrote to the Kings of France and England that he would do all they would desire provided they hindred the calling of a Council In the Reformation of the Church of England great regard was had to the Primitive Fathers and Councils And the aforesaid French Historian was as much mistaken in the affairs of Our Church when he said of our Religion that it was a medly of the Opinions of Calvin and Luther as he was afterwards in the affairs of our State when he said King James was elected at the Guild-hall King of England The Romannists represent us very falsly whilst they fix upon us a private Spirit as it stands in opposition to the Authority of the Catholick Church Mr. Alabaster expresseth one motive to his conversion to the Roman Church in these Words Weigh together the Spouse of Christ with Luther Calvin Melancthon Oecumenical Councils with private opinions The Reverend and Learned Fathers with Arius Aetius Vigilantius Men always in their time Burned for Hereticks of which words the former are false reasoning the latter are false History The Bishop of Meaux reasons after the same fallacious manner Supposing a Protestant to be of this perswasion that he can understand the Scriptures better than all the rest of the Church together of which perswasion he saith very truly that it exalteth Pride and removeth Docility The Guide in Controversies puts the Question wrong in these terms Whether a Protestant in refusing the submission of his judgment to the Authority or Infallibility of the Catholick Church in her Councils can have in several Articles of necessary Faith wherein the sense of Scripture is controverted as sure a Foundation of his Faith as he who submits his judgment to the foresaid Authority or also Infallibility Here the Catholick Church is put in place of the Roman Authority and Infallibility are joyned together and it is suggested dishonestly concerning the Reformed that they lay aside the Authority of the Catholick Church in her general Councils Authority may be owned where there is no infallibility for it is not in Parents Natural or Civil Yet both teach and govern us If others reject Church-Authority let them who are guilty of such disorderly irreverence see to it The Christians of the Church of England are of another Spirit Of that Church this is one of the Articles The Church hath power to decree Rites and Ceremonies and Authority in Controversies of Faith There is a Question saith Mr. Selden about that Article concerning the power of the Church whether these words of having power in Controversies of Faith were not stolen in But it 's most certain they were in the Book of Articles that was confirmed though in some Editions they have been left out They were so in Dr. Mocket's but he is to be considered in that Edition as a private Man Now this Article does not make the Church an infallible Guide in the Articles of Faith but a Moderator in the Controversies about Faith The Church doth not assume that Authority to it self in this Article which in the foregoing it denied to the Churches of Jerusalem Alexandria Antioch and Rome When perverse Men will raise such Controversies who is so fit for Peace sake to interpose as that Church where the Flame is kindled There can be no Church without a Creed and each particular Church ought to believe her Creed to be true and by consequence must exercise her Authority in the defence of presumed Truth Otherwise she is not true to her own constitution But still she acts under the caution given by St. Augustine You bind a Man on Earth Take heed they be just bonds in which you retain him For Justice will break such as are unjust in sunder And whilest the Church of England challengeth this Authority she doth not pretend to it from any supernatural gift of infallibility but so far only as she believes she hath sincerely followed an infallible Rule For of this importance are the next words of the Article before remembred It is not Lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to Gods word written And besides the same it ought not to enforce any thing to