examine whether his complaints bee true or false since he does not shew there was no other remedy but division and much more since it is known if the authority be of Christs institution no just cause can possibly be given for its abolishment but most because all other Catholick Countries might have made the same exception which England pretends yet they remain still in communion with the Church of Rome whose Authority you cry out against as intolerable nay the former Ages of our Countrey which your selfe cite had the same cause to cast the Popes supremacy out of the land yet rather preferred to continue in the peace of the Church then attempt so destructive an innovation as Schism draws after it Neither nâ—w after we have broke the ice do our neighbour Nations think it reasonable to follow our example and drown their unity in the waters of Contradiction Lastly the pretences on which the English Schism was originally made were far different from those you now take up to defend it there was then no talk of imposing new Creeds as the conditions of Communion no mention of the abominations of Idolatry and Superstition which now fill your Pulpits nor indeed any other original quarrel but the Popes proceeding according to the known Lawes of the Church which unfortunately happen'd to bee contrary to the tyrannical humour of the King The other point of due moderation is a very pleasant Topick had I a mind to answer at large his Book The first part of moderation is the separating themselves from their Errours not their Churches this signifies to declare them Idolaters superstitious wicked and neverthelesse communicate with them reconciling thus light to darkness and making Christ and Antichrist to be of the same society I confesse this a very good moderation for him that has no Religion in his heart or acknowledges his own the worst there being no danger for him to fear seducing by communication with others But whoever is confident of his own by this very fact implicitely disapproves others I cannot say mine is true but I must say the opposite is false mine is good but the opposite I must say is naught mine necessary but I must judge that which is inconsistent carries to damnation though I am bound both to pity and love the person that disâ—ents Therefore who does not censure a contrary Religion holds not his own certain that is hath none The second part of moderation hee places in their inward charity which if hee had manifested by their external works we might have had occasion to beleeve him Our Saviour telling us the tree is known by the fruit it bears The third part therefore hee is pleased to think may bee found in that they onely take away Points of Religion and adde none Wherein is a double Errour For first to take away goodnesse is the greatest evil that can be done What more mischievous than to abrogate good lawes good practises Let them look on the Scotch Reformation who have taken the memory of Christ from our eyes by pulling down Pictures and Crosses the memory of His principal actions by abolishing Holydayes the esteem of vertue by vilifying his Saints and left him onely in the mouths of babling Preachers that disfigure him to the people as themselves please What if they took away the New Testament too and even solemn Preaching and left all to the will of a frantick Teacher were not this a great moderation because they added nothing The second abuse is that he who positively denies ever adds the contrary to what hee takes away Hee that makes it an Article there is no Purgatory no Mass no prayer to Saints has as many Articles as he who holds the contrary Therefore this kind of moderano is a purefolly The last Point hee deems to be a preparation of mind to beleeve and practise whatever the Universal Church beleeves and practises â— and this is the greatest mock-fool Proposition of all the rest First they will say there is no Universal Church or if any indeterminate that is no man knowes which it is and then with a false and hypocritical heart professe a great readiness to beleeve and obey it Poor Protestants who are led by the nose after such silly Teachers and Doctrines who following the steps of our old mother Eve are flatter'd with the promses of knowledge like the knowledge of God but paid onely with the pure experience of evil In his seventh Chapter hee professes that all Princes and Republicks of the Roman Communion doe in effect the same things which the Protestants doe when they have occasion or at least plead for it What non sense will not an ill cause bring a desperate man to All this while hee would perswade the World that Papists are most injurious to Princes prejudicing their Crowns and subjecting their Dominions to the will of the Pope Hee has scarce done saying so but with a contrary blast drives as far back again confessing all hee said to be false and that the same Papists hold the very doctrine of the Protestants in effect and the difference is onely in words So that this Chapter seems expresly made to justifie the Papists and to shew that though the Popes sometimes personally exceed yet when their passion is over or the present interest ceases then they acknowledge for Catholikes and Orthodox those who before oppos'd them as also that the Catholike Divines who teach the doctrine of resisting the Pope in such occasions are not for that cast out of Communion which is as much as to say it is not our Religion or any publick Tenet in our Church that binds any to those rigorous assertions which the Protestants condemn If this be so what can justifie your bloody Lawes and bloodier Execution for the fourscore years you were in power Why were the poor Priests who had offended no farther than to receive from a Bishops hands the power of consecrating the body of Christ condemned to die a Traitors death Why the Lay-man that harboured any such person made liable to the same forseiture of estate and life Why were Baptisms Churchings Burials Marriages all punished Why were men forced to goe to your Synagogues under great penalties Seldom any lawful conviction exacted but proceeding upon meer surmises A Priest arrested upon the least suspition and hurried before the Magistrate was not permitted to refer his cause to witnesses but compelled to be his own Accuser and without any shadow of proof so much as enquir'd after if he deny'd not himselfe immediatly sent to prison as a Traitor A Priest comming to his Trial before the Judges was never permitted to require proof of his being a Priest It sufficed that having said Mass or heard a Confession he could not prove himselfe a knave What shall I say of the setting up of Pursuivants to hare poor Catholikes in all places and times I have seen when generally they kept their houses close-shut and if any knock't there was a sudden
reciprocal action or passion it must signifie an act of dividing exercised upon himself who therefore is the thing divided and since divisio est motus ab unitate ad pluralitatem division i◠a progress or motion from unity to plurality its proper and formal effect is to make that which it works upon more of one but that which it works upon saith the Doctor is himself the Schismatick therefore it cuts the Schismatick in two and either kils or mangles him as the Critick pleases See to what a pittifull case the Doctors acuteness hath brought a poor Schismatick from the too quaint notation of the killing letter of the Hithpael-like verb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I crave the Readers pardon for transgressing so long upon his patience to lay open a foolery but I did it to the intent Mr. Dr. and his friends may see how ridiculous and sometimes unsecure a thing it is to stand shewing ones skill in Grammar or letting the world see they understand a little Greek and Hebrew or interlarding their discourse with so many scraps of exotick languages to amuse the vulgar and in the mean time very little and very weakly to close with their adversary in the point in controversie with rigorous discourses solid pregnant and convincing reasons only which and not Greek and Criticisms are expected in so grave and concerning a Treatise But the former impertinences with sayings indifferent to both parts intermingled with some few glean'd citations and blind stories sawced with some pretty expressions sugar'd over with Scripture-phrase and then dish'd up handsomly with the help of a learned distinction will serve to make up several paragraphs Paragraphs Chapters Chapters a Book Iamque opus exegi c. and the work is done which if none thinks worth the pains of a reply all the substantial part being already confuted an hundred times over and only the cooking it up changed presently with the loudest Trumpet of Fame it is proclaimed unanswerable as this book hath been and hath a solemn triumph sounded in its behalf whereas only its contemptibleness made it victorious But to proceed all he concludes from his Criticism is this that Schisme is a voluntary recession from the Church and might not plain sence have told us this without critically straining and spoiling a word to prove it from Grammar For what man in his wits could possibly imagin Schisme being such an horrid sinne that one might perhaps fall into it whether he would or no and so become a Schismatick against his will There needs neither Greek nor Hebrew to understand this Every child knows by the very first principles of Nature that no man sins if he cannot help it Yet Mr. Hammond goes on a whole leaf and with most potent Argument◠overthrows that which would fall of it self like him that all-to-be-bang'd the dead Bear not the least hair of an objection bristling it self against him to fright him from his Conquest He maintains therefore that the actual Excommunication used by the Governors of the Church is not the crime of Schisme as if he should go about to prove that the sentence of a Judge when he condemns a murderer or a thief is neither the sin of murder nor the every For Excommunication as all men know is the Churches condemnation or punishment of the crime of Schisme as the Iudges last sentence of death is of the aforesaid delinquencies Who will not grant him this at the first word yet nevertheless he will needs prove it with many But Governors you say being men may possibly erre and so censure and excommunicate the innocent If what you say here may be you prove to have been I shall grant you have acquitted your self well In the mean time what onely may be may also not be and till such time as you can evidence an immunity from error in the governed as well as pretend a liableness in the Governors the whole oeconomy of the world gives it that the opinion of right shall stand on the Governors side For surely the order of the Politick World were a very pitiful slack thing if every frivolous and probable exception of Subjects should be held a sufficient cause to break asunder the well compacted Frame and dissolve the strongest Nerves of a long-setled Government even in may-be's then you are worsted What will become of you when we come to demonstrate to you hereafter that however in some private proofs of a particular fact the Governors may be mistaken yet in such publick misbehavior as your few new-fangled Predecessors used when they opposed themselves to the ever-self-constant Church it was impossible the Governors should be mistaken in judging you to be truly-named Schismaticks and consequently did well in treating you accordingly That there may be a continuance out of actual Communion without Schism as also That unjust Excommunication hurts no man would have been granted you for one word in plain English without the citing of so much Greek to so little purpose Onely we desire you would grant us in recompence what in all reason is due That a voluntary continuance in a just Excommunication makes the thus excommunicated Schismaticks Which part of the distinction being counterpois'd to those others you mentioned of actual continuance out of the Church and unjust Excommunication hurting no man and most neerly concerning the Question being objected by us to be your guilt whereas the other you treat are out of controversie between us it could not stand with the sincere treating a Question wholly to omit it and pass it over in silence But the seeming exactness of your method can yet easily over-slip that part of the distinction which sounds dangerously and is hard to be confuted though the main of the Question onely stands upon it and mention onely that which is easily excused because none objects it and very facile to be proved because none denies it Scilicet isthuc est sapere Your other testimonies here alledged tending onely as I conceive to prove That unjust Excommunication hurts no man are very currant and allowable And I could have helped you to twenty more as good as these to the same purpose some of them In Greek too which would have made a fine show Your interpretative Excommunication runs upon the same strain and so needs no further Answer besides that which the following Section affords it SECT 3. Concerning Dr. Hammond's Plea of a Weak Conscience not suffering him to subscribe to the Churches Doctrine against his present perswasion BUt now the Doctor hath got a new cloak for his Schism to wit the pretence of a weak Conscience which makes him think he ought not to communicate with the Church but is excused for not-communicating because the conditions of the Communion contain in them a sin And what sin should this be But to subscribe to things which their Conscience tells them is false Nay even saith the Doctor though the truth be on the Churches side yet
in the 23 Section that this is affirmed and intended by Balsamon to all Canons in general as the judgement of learned men in his notes on the sixteenth Canon of the Council of Carthage hath already been answered and shown that it is not Balsamon who affirms it but other men neither doth he call them learned men as the Doctor here imposes on him but onely says that some men say the Emperor can do such and such things And he adds that those persons proceed upon this ground that the Emperor may do lawfully whatever he lists His last Paragraph for which as his former custom was he reserves the best of his strength proves that this right of Kings to be head in Ecclesiastical affairs cannot be alienated by prescription The testimony he introduces is of one Sayr a late Monk who wrote his Book at Rome a man likely to speak much in the Doctors behalf whose opinion in case he should say any thing against us being but of a private Casuist may with the like facility be rejected as alleadg'd But what says honest Sayr he tells us that when prescription is neither of the Law of Nature nor the divine Law nor the Law of Nations but onely the civil and Canon Law there it extends no farther then every supreme Prince in his Realm by his Law is supposed to will that it shall be extended and therefore that no subject can prescribe exemption from making appeal to his King or that his Prince may not punish him when Reason and Iustice requires Let the testimony it self be what it will what was the Doctor dreaming on when he produced it Marry he dreamt two things First that the Pope had heretofore prescribed against the Kings of England in their pretended right of being head in Ecclesiastical matters next this prescription of the Pope hath not its force from any thing but a Canon or Civil Law These two points the Doctor dreamingly supposes to be certain principles and it is discourtesie in us not to grant them gratis for fear we should spoil his learned Conclusion What a shame is this for a Doctor of Divinity whereas every boy that hath been but two years at Cambridge knows he is first to establish his premises firmly ere he can claim any certainty of truth in his Conclusion to suppose his premises true and upon that grant kindly made by himself to himself conclude at pleasure what he lists And what an unconscionable piece of affected ignorance is this to bring a Testimony which could not possibly be applyed to his purpose without proving the two former self-made suppositions and yet to neglect that necessary task and conclude in these vain words It were easie to apply this distinctly to the confirming of all that hath been said but I shall not expatiate It is now become an old excuse with the Doctor to cry he is out of his way when he comes to a passage he cannot get over but all-to-be-labours things frivolous and which his self-laid grounds once supposed would be out of question Thus you see an end of his sixth Chapter which was totally built upon this ground that the Authority of Head of the Church was no more then Patriarchal and consequently needed in rigour of dispute no other reply but onely to deny the supposition and bid him prove it What has been answered to each particular was onely to let the Reader see how inconsequently and weakly he builds even upon his own foundations SECT 8. A Reply to Doctor Hammonds Narrative Confession of his Schism THe Doctor having laid his tottering grounds for the Kings Supremacy in Ecclesiastical affairs by alleadging some Testimonies expresly against himself and his cause and not one expresly for them but what his fellow-schismaticks afforded him Next having supposed upon his own strongly-dreaming imagination without one direct place of any Authentick writer against clouds of most plain Testimonies from Fathers and Councils frequent in our Controvertists and not touched by him in way of answer against the most visible practice and universal belief of the whole Catholick world that the Pope is onely a private Patriarch and hath no right of Jurisdiction over the universal Church And lastly out of a few Testimonies witnessing de facto that Kings did erect and remove Patriarchates without any word excluding the Churches precedent orders having concluded that such a power belonged de jure to Kings and was annext to a Crown These three things most gravely supposed he goes about to clear the Church of England from the imputation of casting off obedience to the Bishop of Rome at the Reformation which is the intent of this Chapter But first he lays down at large the whole history of Schism ommitting onely the main things that might disgrace it and by what degrees or steps this miserable Kingdom and Church came to renounce the obedience to those Ecclesiastical superiors who had by their own confession for eight or nine hundred years steered that-then-secure Barque in a calm unity of Faith and which Authority all the then present world except King Henry's now friend but late Antagonist Luther acknowledged and submitted to First he tells us this was done by the Clergy in a Synod recognizing the King to be supreme Head of the Church of England Secondly By their submitting themselves to the King and thirdly the definition of the Universities and Monasteries after debate that the Pope had nothing to do more in England then any other extern Bishop that is nothing at all And all this in this sort concluded subscribed and confirmed by their corporal oaths which word corporal was well put in for their Souls and Consciences never went along with it was afterwards turn'd into Acts of Parliament in which it was resolved upon the question to defie the Pope and all his works In answer to which though a bare narration how a Schism was made deserve none yet to devoid it of al excuse it may pretend to I object first that it did not originally spring from Conscience no not even an erroneous one but from manifest malice and viciousness Next that the Kingdoms assent to this il originiz'd breach was not free And thirdly that though both these were granted yet this act of theirs so largely laid out by Doctor Hammond is truly and properly a Schism and entitles them schismaticks nay the more the Doctor dilates upon it the more schismatical he makes the breach of which the two latter himself though never so loath must acknowledge unless he will deny his own words To begin with the first all the world knows that till King Henry violenced the breach all England both Clergy and Laity were as equally and as peaceably conjoyned to the Catholike Church under the government of her supreme Pastour the Bishop of Rome as either France or Spain are now neither did they ever express any scrupulosity that they had remained under such a Government ever since the Conversion of their first Fore-fathers nor were scandalized at the then received Doctrine of the Church holding
Christs Church Re-acknowledge a certainty in Faith which is now brought by your professed uncertainty to the very brink of Atheism Return to the never-erring Rule of Faith the voice of the Church which held you for eight or nine hundred yeares in the firm and undivided Unity of the same beleef Doe I say this efficaciously and then you shall be freely cordially and with open armes received into Communion by them who would willingly though they lovingly reprehend you to make you reflect on your errours not onely spend empty words but even lay down their lives to procure your Salvation Sixthly the Doctor charges us that the only hindrances which obstruct external Communion are wholly imputable to us which hee proves first because the Pope excommunicated all those Catholikes that went to the Protestant Assemblies in the tenth year of Queen Elizabeth And was it not well done think you This has ever been the constant practice of Gods Church to enjoyn the Faithful to abstain from the Communion of those who maintained a different that is an heretical doctrine The simpler sort of Catholikes were gull'd by you to beleeve you had onely turn'd into English what was in Latine before and therefore out of an unwariness went to your Churches which lately had been theirs and not out of love to your new reformed doctrine Till at length the Father of the Church thought fit to disabusethem from the errour into which your false perswasions had led them and forbid them the same room who were not of the same company And I wonder how it can stand with reason or sence that holding you hereticks we should let the poore people goe to your Assemblies to bee taught false doctrine Nay even Nature it selfe seems to interdict such an unnatural commerce that Catholikes who held the Bishop of Rome's Supremacy of Divine Institution Mass and the rest of our doctrines from which you receded sacred should goe to your Congregations to hear the first rail'd against as Antichristian the second as Idolatrous and a blasphemous fiction the rest as erroneous and pernicious deceits Blame not then Mr. Hammond Nature Reason and the Pope for hindering this confusion which you call external Communion but rather blame your selves for introducing new doctrines whence result such incompossible and inconsistent practices Yet the Doctor tells us that from this prohibition proceeding from the Popes Excommunication it is visibly consequent that they were cast out and cannot be said to separate Sure it must bee a temper of shame above brazen to tell us this now in the tenth year of Queen Elizabeth whereas himself hath laid out knot by knot how the Unity of the Church in which they were formerly was unloosed or rather violently broken in the time of King Henry the eigthth King Edwards Protectour and all the first ten yeares of this Queen To which though enough and more then enough has been said yet I will once more presse it home to the Dr. and then leave him to his wordish shifts and the Reader to be his Judge You and your King also were once members of the Roman Catholike Church and subject to the Authority of the Pope This Authority you confess C. 7. S. 5. you cast out of this Island But a rejection of an Authority is a recession from that Authority therefore you are guilty of a recession from the formerly-acknowledg'd Authority So far for Government Now for Doctrines and Practices You once beleeved and practised as the Roman Catholike Church to wit when you were in her That you reformed you confess and C. 7. S. 14. call your reformations recessions from the doctrines and practises of Rome A recession therefore was made by you both from the former Government as also the former doctrines and practises But a recession is a voluntary departure as plain sence evidences therefore you made a voluntary departure from the formerly-acknowledg'd government doctrines and practises of Rome Now then to tell us so long after and after so large a narrative confession of your own to the contrary that you departed not but were cast out as if nothing had been done by you till the tenth year of Queen Elizabeth is such a piece of forgetfulness as could onely be peculiar to Dr. Hammond But I perceive the Doctor thinks there is no Schism till the Pope have actually excommunicated as if there might not bee a criminal departure from the former Faith its Rule Sacraments and the Churches Government before the Church comes with her spiritual rod of Excommunication to whip the Offender From all these I have already manifested that you had divided and by so doing made your selves uncapable of Communion with the former Faithful Upon this it was necessary to separate the Faithful from you in divine offices and therefore both just and fitting to excommunicate you as well to punish you who were long before schismaticks for your crime as to warn the sounder flock to abstain from your contagious communion Neither can you blame us for excommunicating you whom your own grounds here delivered clear in that point from any imputation of Rigour Your selfe confessing that you rejected Roman Catholikeâ— from your assemblies and censur'd them upon theiâ— avowed contumacy against the orders of your Church Let us know then why our Church might not doe the same and with much more reason to you who were once members of her and whose recession from her orders and contumaciouâ— persisting still your selfe will witness shew us I say why she had not as great Authority â—ver those who were once hers as yourâ— claimes over those who were never yours oâ— if you cannot then grant you were justlâ— excommunicated by her once and remain aâ— justly excommunicated still until you disavoâ— that contumacy which obstructs your Communion His second Reason why wee hindred the external Communion as he calls that confusion is our imposing such conditions on our Communion that they cannot subscribe without sinning or seeming to sin against conscience And what sin or seeming to sin is this think you the beleefe of Doctrines or Approbations of Practises which they neither beleeve nor approve of The question is not Mr. Doctor whether you beleeve or approve of them or no but whether it were your own sinful pride of understanding which made you and your first reformers disbelieve all their teachers and think themselves understood more of Gods mind than all the world before them and yet when they had done acknowledg'd themselves but fallible in their contrary beleefe that is uncertain whether they or their teachers were in the right and is not this a wise ground for any schollar to disbelieve his Master or any child to disobey his father and mother If it were pride which made you think otherwise as truly no man knowing the grounds you build your reformation upon and how the greatest and most learned authority this world could shew opposed you can in reason judge any other then it
is not innocency in you nor a sufficient excuse for your not-Communion that you doe not believe these doctrines but it is your sin and the root of all your misery and schism that you correct not that vice and so leave off that erroneous judgement which misleades you from the truth usurping the office of your spiritual guide the holy Catholick Church Free the soul then first of that vice and then you 'l stand in no need to offer violence to your minds nor be afraid to make an unsound confession the feare of which you pretend for your excuse But of this I have said already more then was needful Yet Mr. Hamond is ready to contest and maintain his negatives by grounds that all good Christians ought to be concluded by I hear again a sound of words in general hovering in the aire But what are those grounds in particular by which he will contest his doctrines he tells us in his last Paragrapraph that they are proofes from Scriptures or the first Writers those of the first 300. yeares or the four General Councils But let us ask first by whose interpretation of Scripture he will contest his Negatives hee will tell you by his own or some few others like himselfe which not professing themselves Infallible he must tell you also hee is uncertain whether it be right or no And is not this a wise ground to contest his Negatives by against the positive doctrine of Gods Church But let us ask whether he thinks our Saviours command to hear the Church bee a ground by which all Christians ought to bee concluded Perhaps after much shaking his head between loathness to reject our Saviours words and unwillingnesse to grant any thing to the Church he will answer yes the Church of the first 300. yeares Then ask him again who taught all good Christians that they should hear the Church of the first 300. years onely and then stop their ears against her perpetually for the future hee is gravell'd Again ask him whether those first three century of yeares treat of all late sprung Negatives Hee must tell you No they do not treat all our nâ—w controversies but he will praise them notwithstanding to put you â—ft your question and tell you they are the purest and most primitive times Ask him next why hee recurs to such obscure times and stark dumb in our present controversies and hee must answer if he will speak out candidly that durum telum necessitas necessity drives him to adhere to them All the following Ages except that holy year in which was celebrated the Council of Chalcedon inveighing most impurely against his new doctrine Thus the Dr. chuses obscurity for the Patron of his cause which can bee no Sun to reveal truth though it may serve for a dark hole to hide falshood Neither can hee from his grounds pretend otherwise to contest his Negatives than by meer negative arguments so as the inference must bee this Our points of doctrine were not contradicted by the Writers of the first 300. yeares therefore they are true This is the utmost he can conclude thence whereas to make this illation valid he must first prove that all truths about Faith were debated in those dayes next that all which was debated then is come downe certainly to our times Neither of which he will bee able to manifest Will not any judicious Reader think such Rules as these like to binde all good Christians to bee concluded by them Dr. Hammonds interpretations of Scripture Councils and Fathers that say nothing or else very litle on the by concerning the question And lastly negative arguments To omit that the Writers of those his primitive times speak as much and as efficaciously against the Doctors cause as is imaginable their present circumstances should invite or give them occasion To end then this Chapter with the Doctors words something alter'd these pitiful evasions and unwarrantable shifts put together and applied to this matter will manifestly charge him with an apparent guilt of this second branch of the second sort of Schism SECT 5. Our pretended Uncharitableness in judging and despising others retorted upon the Objecters IN his tenth Chapter hee gives us a short Sermon concerning the third species of Schism which is against mutual charity divided by him into two Heads of judging and despising others both which hee very charitably disclaimes in behalfe of their Church and would very courteously present us with them But to omit his pious formalities and come to grounds Doe you think it is uncharitablenesse to judge as our Saviour judg'd that is to beleeve what he said to be true Our Sauiours judgment is that if any one doe not heare the Church let him be to thee as a heathen or a publican If therefore we see with our eyes that you acknowledge no Church to be heard and yet proceed not to such harsh termes as our Saviour himselfe hath laid down to us I hope you will impute it to us as a great moderation and not as uncharitablenesse Now that you did not hear the Church when you broke from ours and much lesse since is most evident For your first Reformers most manifestly receded from the former acknowledged Government Rule of Faith Sacraments Doctrines and practises of the Roman Catholike Church of which you were then a member as hath been shewn and acknowledg'd and she teaching them the contrary then it could not bee said they heard her when they began their Reformations Neither did they joyn themselves with any other Church whom they might bee said to hear nor was this doctrin taught by the very Church of England it selfe in the former age since their Forefathers held and taught them a contrary beleefe Evident then it is that those few who in the time of King Henry the 8th adhered to his lust-born Reformation neither communicated with nor heard any Church at all but began a new Church a new Government a new Faith and new practises both without and against the command of that Church which both they and their Forefathers ever since that Church first taught them Christianity held to be the onely true Christian Congregation How can we then seeing evidently they heard not any Church judge otherwise then that our Saviours words are true that is that they are in a sad condition and you much fadder who have not returned whence they receded but followed their steps and have made the breach wider unlesse perhaps you think or hope the crime is lesse because there is now a greater multiplicity of offenders which harden one another to obstiâ—acy by their number Next is it uncharitablenesse not to renounce that Rule of Faith in which clearly is founded â—ll the Certainty we have of Christs Law and all the hopes of our salvation to wit the inerrability of our Church beleeved by our Ancestors ever since Christs doctrine first dawn'd to the dark world Yet this which witnesses your doctrine heretical wee must
to overload a weak patience and every small discountenancing makes those that have enjoy'd a long case cry out persecution I see your parchment Church shrinks and â—naâ—kles at the sight of the fire while the Catholike remaines firm and unconsum'd nay growâ— clearer in the midst of it And yet I doe not intend to deny many of you have been very great losers by these late Revolutions but onely to say your sufferings are to bee refer'd to a civil not religious account or at least that nothing even in your own judgment essential to Religion is persecuted or so much as deny'd in England for Bishops and Service-book and Kings Supremacy you must not call essential without contradicting your own both profession and practise since you can so kindly embrace your Sister-Churches and communicate with them who deny those points as zealously as the fiercest Anabaptist Lastly our literal sound of Hoc est Corpus meum which the Doctor calls our principal espoused doctrine of Transubstantiation Indeed wee had rather wed our beleefe to that sence of Gods word which Fathers Councils and the perpetual doctrine and practise of Gods Church hath recommended to us as the Virgin-daughter of him who is the Truth than to a loose Polygamy of 40. several interpretations Minerva's born of your own heads whose mutually-contradicting variety â—hews them to come by the paternal line from him who is the Father of all falshood For these prejudices instill'd into the hearts of Catholikes the Doctor and his Church spare us very charitably and are far from casting us out of the Church For Gods sake Mr. Dr. whither would you have cast us Would you throw the house out of the windowes I mean the Church Gods house out of the window of Schism which you broke in the side of it Again let us but see how artificial nay incomparable nonsence this Dr. speakes I conceive nothing can bee cast out of a thing that was never in it shew us then that there was once a constituted Church of Protestants govern'd by the King as Supreme Head and holding their doctrines and practises in which the Roman Catholike once was but receded from that Doctrine and Government and invented this new Religion which hee holds at present Unlesse the Catholikes were once thus in you how could you cast them out What a weakness is this to think that Robin Hood Little Iohn and a few Outlawes doe King Richard and all England a great deal of favour in not casting them out of their Rebel-commonwealth as no true members of it and denying them the protection of their seditious counter-lawes under which Lawes and in which Common-wealth neither the King nor his good subjects were ever reputed One word more ere I leave this point to let the rational Reader see whether the Protestants or we bee more chargeable of judging and despising others Suppose Mr. Doctor wee who are sons of the Catholike Church had both judged and despised you upon our own private heads it had been but to judge and despise our equals But your Reformation had been impossible unlesse you had first both judged despised and prefer'd your selves above your Supreme Governours the Church and all your Forefathers The chief Government impower'd actually over you in Ecclesiastical Affaires you rejected and cast out of this Island Next many of your wise Brethren since preaching teaching and writing whole Bookes to shew that that Governour is Antcichrist the Beast in the Apocalypse and what not Could these things bee done without judging and despising You made Reformations and recessions from the former Churches doctrine cry'd out she had erred was a Strumpet the Whore of Babylon impious sacrilegious idolatrous Was not this the most rash judging the most venemous railing at and reviling of Gods sacred Spouse formerly your Mistresse and Mother that ever was foam'd out of the mouth of madness it selfe Again the whole world whom you esteemed before good Christians and all your Ancestors in England condemned by their contrary beleefe your new Reformed Doctrine And doe you think your innovators could have broach't their opposite doctrines without both judging and despising all this vast Authority Your Charity then Mr. Doctor in this point can bee onely imagin'd to consist in this that you have not judged and despised your selves for all else that you thought formerly to deserve any Authority you both judged despised rejected revil'd and condemned In a word our judging you is our subscribing in our own thoughts to that Verdict which the Church has past against you whose tribunal was held by all the whole Christian world and your selves also till you became guilty to be the most high and sacred that ever gave sentence since the world's Creation As for despising your persons we deny it as a meer calumny and professe our selves bound to honour every one according to his quality and degree the reasons indeed which you produce to clear your selfe from Schism we despise as worse than ridiculous A Paradox in a matter indifferent if maintain'd ingeniously deserves its commendations but the most manifest absurdities that can bee imagin'd and in which are interessed mens salvations such as is the renouncing an Authority granted to bee the most ancient most sublime most sacred in the world upon fallible incertain and unevident grounds and onely sustain'd by plain contradictions false and self-â—eign'd suppositions ID ESTS of our own adding the best proof not arriving so high as a probability These I say Mr. Doctor have nothing to secure them from our despising unlesse perhaps it bee their falling below ouâ— contempt Of the mixt temper of these is the constitution of your Book which shews that you have been used to row at your own dull pleasure in the shallow and softly-murmuring current of a Sermon but never launch't with a well rigg'd Ship of Reason into the â—oysterous Maine of deeper controversies Thus the Doctor concludes his Treatise of Schism closing up his tenth Chapter with these words I foresee not any objection which may give mee temptation or excuse further to enlarge on this matter No truly I could never yet discern you guilty of that fault that objections gave you any great temptation to answer them since I have not seen you put one Objection or Argument of ours worth a straw from the beginning of the Book to the end On the contrary when you light on a wrong supposition of your own as that the Pope is onely a private Patriarch that the Papal Authority in this Island came to the Pope from the Title of its Conversion or from Concession of our Kings then I observe a very strong temptation in you to enlarge a whole Chapter upon that which no body objects except your own fancy Hee adds that he professes not to know any other branch of Schism or colour of fastning that guilt upon our Church made use of by any which hee hath not prevented Yes Mr. Doctor I told you before how you
Whole by Order and as much depend upon Spiritual Superiours having power to teach and preach Christs Law as the Common-wealth doth on Secular Magistrates to preserve their temporal Lawes and govern according to them without this order the Whole is dissolved the Body is lost the Church is gone Doubtless Mr. Doctor it is not the fault or choice of the present Protestants that they are thus bassled and persecuted which yet you have spent this whole Chapter except onely the first Paragraph to prove so needs no such great and large disproose to manifest that that which is so much against mens wills should bee their Choice and Crime Yet wee may justly impute your Churches ruine to the sandiness of her foundation which being the Authority of the secular Governors must render her liable to change as often as the unconstant wind of temporal circumstances shall alter the former Government or as oft as the former Government yet remaining shall see it necessary for the present peace or conveniences of the Common wealth to introduce or admit the more prevailing sway of a new Religion But I foresee that the Doctor to avoid this objection will cling in with us and call the Antichristian and Idolatrous Romanists their dear Brethren and tell them they acknowledge their Iurisdiction and Mission to come from them desiring them not to reject them now in their greatest necessity but let them seem to have an Authority deriv'd from the Apostles by their meanes proffering that they in courteons recompence will acknowledge Rome to bee a true Church This indeed is ordinary with them but yet as frivolous still as the former For the Authority which our Church could give you was onely to teach and preach Catholike Doctrine and ordain others to doe the same to govern the Catholike flock and to preserve them in the anciently received Unity of Faith The Authority to doe these could come indeed from us and so if any who pretend to have received Iurisdiction from us continue to execute and govern themselves by that Commission so far they are warranted by the former Authorization but if they went beyond their Commission nay more acted quite contrary to their Commission I wonder what Iurisdiction or Mission they can pretend as derived from us Our question then is of such a power as your Bishops pretend to and exercised that is of bearing the Ensign of a Squadron of the Churches Enemies Preaching an opposite Doctrine to the Church which you pretend to have impower'd you and ordaining others to doe the same Evident it is that the Roman Catholike Church which is the only spiritual power you can think to have any Iurisdiction or Mission from never gave you this Authority wherefore it must come to you from the meer secular Power on this Power therfore is built all the Authority you have to act as Protestants or in order to the Protestant Church and consequently the whole building of your Church was erected onely and solely upon this uncertain and sandy foundation This made Mr. Hooker one of the best and perhaps the most prudent Writer of all that profession affirm of their Church that it was not likely to continue more than fourscore years nor could he judge otherwise seeing it bear evidently the Principles of corruption and mutability in its very constitution to wit the materia prima of a secular Basis which continually exposed it to a mortality as the formes of Government should have their ever-limited period and discovering the professors and Governours of it to bee none of those to whom our Saviour promised his perpetual assistance to the end of the world How much happier then would you be if leaving this fleeting and unbodied shadow you would return and unite your selves to the Catholike Church Which enjoying this promise from our Saviour of an indefectible perpetuity not onely experiences the certain faithfulness of that promise in a large continuance of 1600. yeares but also sees with Evidence perhaps more than scientifical that the walls of this Hierusalem are built upon such strong foundations that the Church and the Authority and Jurisdiction of her Governours can never fail or decay since they rely not on the slippery and weak prop of the temporal power for their Authority but on those who received it from the eternal never-altering Fountain of all power with Commission to delegate and transmit it with an uninterrupted succession to the future Governours of the Church till wee all meet in the Unity of Glory Nor is the means of transmitting this Heavenfounded Jurisdiction to Posterity less certain than is the law of grace written in the hearts of the faithful in indelible characters that inviolable Rule of Faith a Rock too adamantine to be undermin'd by human policy Let then her enemies though even Princes rage as much as they please nay even bandy and conspire together to subdue this free-born Kings Daughter to their prophane yoke her Jurisdiction as it ever hath so will it ever remaine secure and inviolate being independent of them and by reason of the state of Eternity her end and aym of a superiour order to their Authority which was instituted only for the rightly dispencing the transitory goods of this world Your parallel of the Jews suffering under the Zelot's fury or the old Roman yoke which you make account is so evident that the Reader will supercede all necessity of making it up I conceive to aym very little or nothing at your purpose For though they intruded unfit men into the Priestly dignity yet they did not actually neither could they possibly take away the Jurisdiction of the High Priest because this Jurisdiction was not given them by those secular powers but by God himself the contrary of all which happens in your case as has been shewn For the Jurisdiction of your Bishops may be taken away by the same Parliamentary power that set it up That it was not their guilt nor yours neither wee willingly grant and I wonder you could imagine us so unwise as to object that to be your voluntary Crime which you cannot but know we hold to bee your involuntary punishment Your wishes and prayers for peace and communion among all who are called Christians are no less ours and this not in words only but in efficacious endeavours and in several Nations with daily labours and extreamest hazards to reduce the straying flock to their safely-guarded fold Nay this Communion is so vehemently desired and thirsted after by us that we are ready to buy it at any rate except the forfeiture of the Certainty of Faith and its Rule the forfeiture of which is the loss of our own Communion also If Mr. Hammond can perswade himself and his friends to return to this Rule of Faith the Churches Infallibility which onely can unite us in the same stedfast belief of Christs Doctrine and to acknowledg the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome in the acknowledgment of which consists the constant
Christians may be now said to doe since the sole root of unity Protestants can pretend is onely their agreement in certain general Points which most of the old Hereticks profess'd and even Turks and Iewes beleeve some part of the Christian Faith As for the Protestant distinction that all are of one Communion who agree in fundamentals 't is no better than a meer shift til they exhibit a list of such Points and prove them obligingly and satisfactorily to all the rational people of the World that they and they onely are essential to Christian Communion His eighth Chapter would fain be thought to prove the Pope and Court of Rome guilty of Schism First because shee takes upon her to bee Mistress where shee is but Sister to other Churches It is their saying and our denying it till they have proved what they affirm The second Argument is a meeâ— calumny that shee obtrudes new Creeds and unjustly excommuicates those who will not receive them At the third blow hee layes the Axe as he sayes to the root of Schism but if I understand his words it is to his own legs The Papacy sayes â—ee qua talis which hee interprets as it is maintain'd by many Good-night my Lord of London-Derry for certainly your wits are in the dark If you once begin to say as it is maintain'd by many you imply it is not maintain'd by all and therefore not the Papacy qua talis for so Catholikes have not the least difference amongst them If you will dispute against private Opinions cite your Authors and argue against them not the Church whose beleefe is contain'd in the Decrees of Councils and universal consent of Fathers and Doctors His fourth Charge is that the Popes hold themselves to bee Bishops of every particular See which is a more gross and false imputation than any of the rest Other two branches he offers at but confesses them not to be decided in our Church and therefore can make nothing for him His ninth Chapter pretends to solve the Romanists Arguments and first that grand one of Schism which hee maintaines to be so clearly unimputable to Protestants that he sayes they hold Communion with thrice as many Christians as wee doe And truly if by Christians he meanes those who lay claim to the name of Christ I neither deny his answer nor envy him his multitude For Mâ—â—ichees Gnosticks Carpocratians Arians Nestorians Euâ—yâ—hians c. without number all â—surp to themselves the honour of this Title and I most faithfully protest I do not think his Lordship has any solid reason to refuse Communion to the worst of them But if he meanes by Christians those who never changed the doctrine which their Fathers taught them as received from the Apostles so let him shew me one who is not in communion with the Roman Church and I also shall be of that one's Communion The second Argument hee undertakes is That Protestants admit not the Council of Trent To which hee replies it was not General because the Heretical Patriarchs were not called many Bishops were absent too many Italians there fewer Bishops present at the determination of weightiest Points than the King of England could assemble in a moneth What trivial stuff is this Is not a Parliament the General Representative of the Nation unless every Lord though a known and condemn'd Rebel be summon'd or unless every Member that has a right to sit there bee present Who is so impertinent as to quarrel at the generalness of a Parliament if some Court Lords bee admitted to their Voices or if the number of Voters in some Parliaments bee fewer than in others What 's this to the purpose if none that have a true right be excluded Yet these are the grand Exceptions only in some words wherein hee expresses his anger Passion made him quite forget they might possibly be retorted upon his own condition else what a blindness is it to call the Bishops of Italy hungry parasitical Pensioners It seemes my Lord you keep a good Table speak the truth boldly and have great Revenues independent of any As for the instance of the French Churches non-admittance of the Council of Trent your selfe confesses it is there received for matters of doctrine and I confesse that for other Canons the execution of them may be omitted unlesse the true Superiours presse their observance Secondly he sayes it was not free A false and injurious calumny taken out of Sleidan accounted by our part a frank lyar and forger Thirdly he seigns an Objection to himself their breaking from the Patriarchat which already wee have clear'd is not the question and himself though weakly and sillily endeavours to prove cannot stand with the claim of Papal Authority from Christ. After these he descends to consider such of our Arguments as hee is pleas'd to think of lesser importance As first That Protestants have no Clergy because no Priests For the notion of a Priest is to bee a Sacrificer and their Reform renounces all truly called Sacrifice This he hides in obscure and common terms of matter and form and shuffles likewise certain common words in Answer Secondly because their Ministers whom they term Priests were made by no Bishops The Controversie is largely treated by Doctor Champney against Mason Hee answers it with childish and impudent words Father Oldcorn whom he cites was known to be a weak and timorous man who might bee easily surprised I could never hear that any Catholike esteemed judicious was ever admitted to a free perusal of their Registers but know wel that the Contemporaries protested against any lawful Ordination of their first Bishops and were answer'd by silence He sayes they hold no spiritual Jurisdiction from the Crown But the Statutes of the Nation and their own Oaths say the contrary Let him dispute it with the Lawyers The tenth Chapter containes what he expects to be the result of his Book Hee first complaines of hard usage and thinks the very Turk not so cruel as those who now persecute Protestants in England Truly no good man I beleeve wishes his Party harm But mee thinks he might remember they suffer not so much as themselves have done in their Reign against those who in respect of them were Aborigines whose possession was the same that Christian Religion had among us And would to God they could even now be quiet and friendly when they are in eadem damnatione Prelacy as well as Popery being voted damnable Heresie by the late Parliament 'T is true their Religion as consider'd including Episcopacy is cast out of the Land but then how comes Episcopacy to be essential to their Religion Have not the Bishops alwayes profess'd themselves of the same Communion with the Huguenots of France the Zuinglians of Switzerland c. who hold Episcopacy abominable The persons of such Bishops as reside in England and are accus'd of nothing but Episcopacy live free and secure enjoy their whole Estates except what belonged to their Dignity and
and Schism And though the Doctor excuses the imputation of King Henries Sacriledge saying That Sacriledge is no more Schism then it is Adultery yet it is enough if he grant as he must That both his Sacriledge and his Schism were born of the same mother-occasion the Kings lust and so though the Doctor say That facies non omnibus una Yet I answer Nec diversa tamen qualem decet esse sororum their faces not the same Nor different yet as sisters well became Neither is this all to shew that the first occasion of the breach was not Conscience The King himself desired oftentimes afterwards a reconcilement which being not possible without revoking all he had done despair made him resolve Over shooes over boots to make the rupture still wider while he lived though at his death when it was no time to dally the care of his Soul now out-weighing the pleasure of his Body he with extream grief of heart repented him of his Schism By this one may see how justly the Doctor pretended Pag. 18 19 as an excuse of his Schism The care of their Conscience and the not-admitting any sin which the Church may oblige them to subscribe to whereas if the original of the breach be this as it most evidently is then I cannot conceive the Church obliged the ring leader of it to any sin in bidding him keep his own wife But if you pretend another which by the whole scope of this Chapter you seem not to do it will be found to have no nobler an extraction then the former onely perhaps the carnal sin in him may be changed into a spiritual one in you that is King Henries lust into your self-conceited pride and refractory disobedience which may indeed outâ—vy and excel him though not excuse you But perhaps your grounds which before absolved the Rebel Out law and Anabaptist will absolve him too by saying it was King Henries present perswasion that his wife was to be put away and then comes in the whole eighth Paragraph of the second Chapter to plead for the adulterous King thus Nay though the error be really on his side yet if the doctrines so proposed that he ought to keep his wife as the condition of Communion be indeed agreeable to truth but yet be really apprehended by him to whom they are thus proposed to be false and disagreeable it will even in that case be hard to affirm That that man may lawfully subscribe or Kâ—-Henry lawfully keep his wife contrary to his present perswasion Thus much for the first thing I undertook to shew that the original of this breach proceeded not from Conscience the second will also appear no less manifest That the progress and promoting of it was altogether as unconsciencious The second consideration which renders this Schism more inexcusable in the now Protestants is That when it first was brought into this Kingdom it was no free choice of the Ecclesiastical State which could the Doctor prove he would think it perhaps of some weight The King using all means both by perswasions and force to make men subscribe persecuting continually those that refused and putting to death many upon the same score among the rest those two Lights of our Nation for learning and piety Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas Moor most intimate with the King and in the sincerest loyalty addicted to him till their knowing conscienciousness made them refuse to subscribe lest they might at once prejudice Loyalty and Religion by a preposterous obedience But what need more proofs since the Doctor grants here Section five That it is easie to believe that nothing but the apprehension of dangers which hung over them by a Praemunire incurred by them could probably have inclined the Clergy to subscribe thus he Though blowing and supping both at once he striaght-way addes That the Reasons or Arguments offered in debate were the causes as in all charity we are to judge of their decision Whereas I cannot see any reason why the Doctor should be so uncharitably charitable as to judge them not onely weak but to have been hardned and lost for the future all feeling of Conscience for their lapse since the fore-going fear bears the weight of a strong prejudice against the clear Verdict of Conscience and the future recantation of all the Bishops who then subscribed in Queen Maries time and their persisting in Queen Elizabeths days rather evidences That the curb being removed which misled them it was Conscience which made them return and strength and force of Conscience which made them afterwards persevere in the same judgment The third thing I am to prove and make the Doctor confess is That there was a breach made which denominates them truly and properly Schismaticks The first part is so clear that it needs no proof since the very deed bears witness For first your self acknowledge you renounced the Authority of the Roman See and cast it out of this Iland Which Authority yet you must acknowledge likewise That all the whole World which before the breach you held the onely good Christians submitted to as sacred and descended from Christs institution which Authority was known and held both by them and your selves till then to be over both you and your King in Ecclesiastical matters and had enjoyed the possession of that Claim confessedly eight or nine hundred years nor this upon title onely of a Patriarchate your Conversion or Grant of Kings but of an Universal Primacy and Pastorship over the whole Church by Christs grant and before your conversion was dream'd on Lastly The Government of the Church thus established was held by all those whom before that day you accounted the onely Faithful as of Divine Right and a point of Faith and that the denial of it twisted into one crime both Heresie and Schism A manifest breach then and Schism there was made by you first from that supreme Ecclesiastical Governor under whom both you and your Ancestors till that time had ever-continued and next from the Universality of Christians by erecting to your selves a new structure of Church-Government which all the vast Congregation of these from whom you broke detested and abhorred as Sacrilegious and Schismatical Singularity therefore most clearly manifested it self in your new Church-Government and if singularity be opposite to a community of which Communion is the Form it follows evidently That your singularity destroyed Communion and so was formally Schism Again if multitudes of things of the same species cannot be made one otherwise then by the unity of order it follows That what dissolves this order dissolves the unity and so causes a breach or Schism But you manifestly unravelled all the then constituted order of Gods Church by casting out of the Kingdom the supreme Authority in which as in a knot the other several ends were sum'd and tied up therefore you also unravelled and broke asunder its unity This then as it is acknowledged by you so in it self is