from Simon Magus and the Manichees The Pontificians like the Mahumetans have such a Rhapsody of Religion a Religion so compounded of several Errors and Corruptions which yet are blended with many Doctrines most sound and Orthodox that to find out the age of their severall Ingredients it will be necessary to rake into several times too THe great Palladium of the Conclave the famous point of Infallibility which if you take away from them down goes their Troy it being absolutely impossible that the learned Members of such a Church should glibly â—wallow so many Errors unless by swallowing this first That she cannot erre I say the point of Infallibility which is a very old Article of their very new Creed a Creed not perfected by its Composers until the Council at Trent we cannot better derive then from the Scholars of Marcus in â—renaeus or from the Gnosticks in Epiphanius They had their Purgatory from Origen one of the best indeed in one kind but in another one of the worst of our antient Writers not onely an Heretick but an Haeresiarcha or at the farthest from Tertullian who had it from no better Authour then the Arch-Heretick Montanus Nor does Bellarmine mend the matter by deriving it as far as from Virgil's Aeneid and from Tully in his Tale of the Dream of Scipio and farther yet from Plato's Gorgias unless he thinks that an Heathen is any whit fitter then an Heretick to give Advantage to a point of the Roman Faith Their Denial of Marriage to all that enter into the Priesthood is dated by themselves but from Pope Calixtus Their Transubstantiation is from the Lateran Council Their Half-Communion is no older then since the times of Aquinas unless they will own it from the Manichees to give it the credit of more Antiquity Their publick praying before the people in an unknown Tongue may be fetcht indeed as far as from Gregory the Great Their Invocation of Saints departed is no doubt an aged Error though not so aged as they would have it for the gaining of honour to the Invention because St. Austin does deny it to have been in his days And not to be endless in the beginning of such a limited Discourse as must not presume to exceed an hour though in so fruitfull a field of matter 't is very difficult not to be endlesse The Vniversall Superintendency or Supremacy of the Pope hath been a visible usurpation ever since Boniface the Third And so our Adversaries of Rome have more to plead for Their Errours then all the rest because the rest were but as Mushroms in their severall times soon starting up and as soon cut down whereas the Errours of Rome do enjoy the pretence of Duration too But touching each of those Errours I mean the Errors of their Practice as well as Iudgment we can say with our Saviour in his present Correption of the Pharisees whose Error was older and more authentick that is by Moses his permission had more appearance of Authority and more to be pleaded in its excuse then those we find in the Church of Rome that froâ—n the beginning it was not so and we care not whence they come unlesse they come from the Beginning Indeed in matters of meer Indifference which are brought into the Government or outward Discipline of the Church every Church has the Liberty to make her own Constitutions not asking leave of her Sisters much less her Children onely they must not be reputed as things without which there is no Salvation nor be obtruded upon the People amongst the Articles of their Faith We are to look upon nothing so but as it comes to us from the Beginning And this has ever been the Rule I mean the warrantable Rule whereby to improve or reform a Church When Esdras was intent on the re-building of the Temple he sent not to Ephesus much lesse to Rome he did not imitate Diana's Temple nor enquire into the Rituals of Numa Pompilius but had recourse for a Temple to that of Solomon and for a Ritual to that of Moses as having both been prescribed by God himself And yet we know the Prophet Haggai made the people steep their Ioy in a showre of Tears by representing how much the Copy had faln short of the Original The holy Prophets in the Old Testament shewing the way to a Reformation advis'd the Princes and the People to aske after the old paths and walk therein as being the onely good way for the finding of rest unto their souls Jer. 6. 16. The Prophet Isaiah sought to regulate what was amisse amongst the Iewes by bidding them have recourse unto the Law and the Testimony should not a people â—eek unto their God If any speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them Isa. 8. 19 20. And accordingly their Kings who took a care to reform abuses are in this solemn style commended for it That they walked in the ways of their Father David that is reform'd what was amisse by what had been from the Beginning So St. Paul in the New Testament setting right what was crooked about the Supper of the Lord in the Church of Corinth laid his line to that Rule which he was sure he had receiv'd from the Lord Himselfe 1 Cor. 11. 23. And thus our Saviour in my Text finding the Pharisees very fond of a vicious practice which supported it self by an old Tradition and had something of Moses to give it countenance in the world though indeed no more then a bare permission could not think of a better way to make them sensible of their Error and such an Error as was their Sin too then by shewing them the great and important difference betwixt an old and a primitive Custome and that however their breach of Wedlock had been without check from the days of yore yet 't was for this to be reform'd that 't was not so from the Beginning In a most dutifull Conformity to which example our Reformers here in England of happy memory having discover'd in every part of the Church of Rome not onely horrible Corruptions in point of Practice but hideous Errors in point of Doctrine and that in matters of Faith too as I shall find an occasion to shew anon and having found by what degrees the severall Errors and Corruptions were slily brought into the Church as well as the several times and seasons wherein the Novelties received their birth and breeding and presently after taking notice that in the Council of Trent the Roman Partisans were not afraid to make New Articles of Faith whilst the Sacrifice of the Mass the Doctrine of Purgatory the Invocation of Saints the Worship of Images and the like were commanded to be embraced under pain of damnation as it were in contempt of the Apostle's denuntiation Gal. 1. 8. by which that practice of those Conspirators made them liaable to a curse and farther yet that in
meddle in any Diocese but their own And the chief Primacies of Order were granted to Rome and to Constantinople not for their having been the Sees of such or such an Apostle but for being the two Seats of the two great Empires Witness the famous Canon of the Generall Council at Chalcedon decreeing to the Bishop of Constantinople an equality of Priviledges with the Bishop of Rome not for any other reason then its having the good hap to be one of the two Imperial Cities Nay no longer ago before Boniface the Third who was the first Bishop of Rome that usurpt the Title of Universal I say no longer before Him then his next immediate Predecessor Pope Gregory the Great for I reckon Sabinian was but a Cypher the horrible Pride of succeeding Popes was stigmatiz'd by a Prolepsis by way not of Prophecy but of Anticipation For Gregory writing to Mauritius the then reigning Emperour and that in very many Epistles touching the name of Universal which the Bishop of Constantinople had vainly taken unto himself calls it a wicked and profane and blasphemous Title a Title importing that the times of Antichrist were at hand little thinking that Pope Boniface would presently after his decease usurp the same and prove the Pope to be Antichrist by the Confession of a Pope He farther disputed against the Title by an Argument leading ad absurdum That if any one Bishop were Universal there would by consequence be a failing of the Universal Church upon the failing of such a Bishop An Argument ad homines not easily to be answer'd whatsoever Infirmity it may labour with in it selfe And such an Argument is That which we bring against the Pope's pretended Headship For if the Pope is the Head of the Catholick Church then the Catholick Church must be the Body of the Pope because the Head and the Body are the Relative and Correlative and being such they are convertible in obliquo And then it follows unavoidably That when there is no Pope at all which is very often the Catholick Church hath then no Head and when there are many Popes at once which hath been sometimes the case then the Catholick Church must have at once many Heads and when the Pope is Heretical as by the confession of the Papists he now and then is the Catholick Church hath such a Head as makes her deserve to be beheaded That Popes have been Hereticks and Heathens too not only by denying the Godhead of the Son and by lifting him up above the other two Persons but even by sacrificing to Idols and a totall Apostacy from the Faith is a thing so clear in the writings of Platina and Onuphrius that 't is the Confession of the most zealous and partial Asserters of their Supremacy I know that Stella and those of the Spanish Inquisition do at once confesse this and yet adhere to their Position That with his Colledge of Cardinals the Pope cannot erre and is the Head of the Church But St. Hilary of Poictiers was so offended at Pope Liberius his espousing the Arian Heresie that he affirm'd the true Church to have been then onely in France Ex eo inter nos tantùm Communio Dominica continetur So ill success have they met withal who have been Flatterers of the Pope or the Court of Rome To conclude this first Instance in the fewest words that I can use Whosoever shall read at large what I have time onely to hint the many Liberties and Exemptions of the Gallican Church and the published Confessions of Popish writers for more then a thousand years together touching the Papal Usurpations and Right of Kings put together by Goldastus in three great Volumes he will not be able to deny let his present perswasion be what it will that the Supremacy of the Pope is but a Prosperous Vsurpation and hath this lying against it that 't was not so from the beginning Secondly 'T is true that for severall Ages the Church of Rome hath pretended to be infallible as well incapable of error as not erroneous But from the beginning it was not so For besides that Infallibility is one of God's peculiar and incommunicable Attributes where there is not Omniscience there must be Ignorance in pâ—rt and where Ignorance is there may be Error That Heresie is Error in point of Faith and that Novatianism is Heresie all sides agree And 't is agreed by the Champions of the Papacy it selfe such as Baronius Pamelius and Petavius that Rome it self was the Nest in which Novatianism was hatcht and not onely so but that there it continued from Cornelius to Caelestine which wants not much of two hundred years To passe by the Heresies of the Donatists and the Arians which strangely prosper'd for a time and spread themselves over the world the former over the VVest the later over the East and as far as the Breast of the Pope himself one would have thought that the Tenet of Infallibility upon Earth had been sufficiently prevented by the Heresie of the Chiliasts wherewith the Primitive Church her self I mean the very Fathers of the Primitive Church for the two first Centuries after Christ was not onely deceiv'd by Papias who was a Disciple of St. Iohn but for ought I yet learn without the least Contradiction afforded to it Nay the whole Church of God in the opinion of St. Austin and Pope Innocent the third and for six hundred years together if Maldonate the Iesuit may be believ'd thought the Sacrament of Eucharist to have been necessary to Infants as well as to men of the ripest Age and yet as Maldonate confesseth at the very same time it was so plain and so grosse an Error that notwithstanding St. Austin did endeavour to confute the Pelagians by it as by a Doctrin of Faith and of the whole Church of God yet the Council of Trent was of a contrary mind and did accordingly in a Canon declare against it 3. Pass we on to the Doctrine of Transubstantiation which if its Age may be measur'd by the very first date of its Definition may be allow'd to be as old as the Lateran Council a Council held under Pope Innocent the Third since whom are somewhat more then 400 years But from the beginning it was not so For besides that our Saviour just as soon as he had said This is my Blood explain'd himself in the same Breath by calling it expresly the fruit of the Vine and such as He would drink new in the Kingdom of God Mat. 26. 29. Mark 14. 15. there needs no more to make the Romanists even asham'd of that Doctrine then the Concession of Aquinas and Bellarmine's Inference thereupon Aquinas so argues as to imply it is Impossible and imports a Contradiction for one body to be locally in more places then one and in all at once But Bellarmine at this is so very angry that in
stricken in years by so much the less it is decrepit And that for this reason because the longer it endures the more it inclines to its perfection that is to say its immortality Last of all for Religion the Case is clear out of Tertullian Id verius quod prius id prius quod ab initio That Religion was the truest which was the first and that the first which was from the beginning And as He against Marcion so Iustin Martyr against the Grecians did prove the Divinity of the Pentateuch from the Antiquity of its VVriter The Iewes enjoy'd the first Lawgiver by the Confession of the Gentiles Moses preached the God of Abraham whilst Thales Milesius was yet unborn Nor was it a thing to be imagin'd that God should suffer the Devil to have a Chappel in the world before himself had any Church And thence Vincentius Lirinâ—nsis to prove the Truth of any Doctrine or the Lâ—gality of a Practice does argue the Case from a Threefold Topick The Universality the Consent and the Antiquity of a Tradition Which Rule if we apply unto the scope of this Text as it stands in relation unto the Context we shall have more to say for it then for most Constitutions divine or humane For That of Mariage is almost as old as Nature There was no sooner one man but God divided him into two And then no sooner were there two but he united them into one This is That sacred Institution which was made with Mankind in a state of Innocence the very Ground and Foundation of all both sacred and civil Government It was by sending back the Pharisees to the most venerable Antiquity that our Lord here asserted the Law of wedlock against the old Custom of their Divorce Whilst they had made themselves drunk with their muddy streams He directed them to the Fountain to drink themselues into sobriety They insisted altogether on the Mosaical Dispensation But He endeavour'd to reform them by the most Primitive Institution They alledged a Custom bâ—t He a Law They a Permission and that from Moses But He a Precept and that from God They did reckon from afar off But not as He from the Beginning In that one Question of the Pharisees VVhy did Moses command us to give her a writing of Divorce and to put her away they put a Fallacy upon Christ call'd Plurium Interrogationum For Moses onely permitted them to put her away but commanded theâ— if they did to give her a writing of Divorce And accordingly their Fallacy is detected by Christ in his Answer to them Moses did not command but meerly suffer'd you in your custom of making unjustifiable Divorcements 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he permitted that is to say he did not punish it not allowing it as good but winking at it as the lesser of two great evils He suffer'd it to be safe in foro Soli could not secure you from the Guilt for which you must answer in foro Poli And why did he suffer what he could not approve Not for the softness of your heads which made you ignorant of your Duties but for the hardness of your hearts which made you resolute not to do them you were so barbarous and brutish upon every slight Cause or Occasion rather that if you might not put her away you would use her worse You would many times beat and sometimes murder sometimes bury her alive by bringing another into her Bed So that the Liberty of Divorce however a poyson in it self was through the hardness of your hearts permitted to you for an Antidote But from the Beginning it was not so And you must put a wide difference betwixt an Indulgence of Man and a Law of God To state the controversie aright you must compare the first Precept with your customary Practice not reckoning as far as from Moses onely but as far as from Adam too you must not onely look forward from the year of the Creation 2400. but backward from thence unto the year of the Creation The way to understand the Husband's Duty towards the VVife and so to reform as not to innovate is to consider the words of God when he made the VVife out of the Husband For He that made them at the beginning made them Male and Female and said For this cause shall a man leave Father and Mother and shall cleave unto his Wife and they twain shall be one Flesh. VVhat therefore God hath joyn'd together let not man put asunder The Antecedent Command was from God the Father the Command in the sequel from God the Son And though the Practice of the Iewes had been contrariant to them both by a Prescription almost as old as two thousand years yet as old as it was 't was but an overgrown Innovation For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from the beginning it was not so Thus our Saviour being sent to Reform the Iews made known the Rule of his Reformation And the Lesson which it affords us is in my poor judgment of great Importance For when the Doctrine or Discipline of our Church establisht here in England shall be attempted by the Corruptions of Moderne Pharisees who shall assert against us as these here did against our Saviour either their forreign Superstitions to say no worse or their domestick Profanations to say no more we cannot better deal with them then as our Saviour here dealt with the ancient Pharisees that is we cannot better put them to shame silence then by demonstrating the Novelty and base extraction of their Pretensions whilst we evince at the same instant the Sacred Antiquity of our owne When they obtrude their Revelations or teach for Doctrines of God the meer commandments of Men we must aske them every one how they read in the beginning We may not draw out of their Ditches be the Currents never so long whilst we have waters of our own of a nobler Taste which we can easily trace back to the crystal spring And first of all it concernes us to marke the Emphasis which our Ancient of dayes thought fit to put on the Beginning that no inferior Antiquity may be in danger to deceive us For there is hardly any Heresie or Usurpation in the Church which may not truly pretend to some great Antiquity though not so old as the Old man much lesse as the Old Serpent The Disciplinarians may fetch theirs from as far as the Heretick â—â—rius who wanting merit to advance him from a Presbyter to a Bishop wanted not arrogance and envy to lessen the Bishop into a Presbyter But His Antiquity is a Iunior as well to that of the Anabaptists as to that of the Socinians For the Anabaptists may boast they are as old as Agrippinus and the Socinians as Sabellius The Solifidians and Antinomians are come as far as from Eunomius The Ranters from Carpocrates The Millenaries from Papias The Irrespective Reprobatarians
That against the Command of our blessed Saviour in the verse but one before my Text That which God hath joyned together the men of Rome do put asunder By these and many more Corruptions in point of Practice and Doctrine too which were no more then Deviations from what had been from the Beginning and which the learned'st Sons of the Church of Rome have been forced to confess in their publick writings the awakened part of the Christian world were compell'd to look out for a Reformation That there was in the See of Rome the most abominable Practice to be imagin'd we have the liberal Confesson of zealous Stapleton himself and of those that have publisht their Penitentials We have the published Complaints of Armachanus and Grostead and Nicolas de Clemangis Iohn of Hus and Ierome of Prague Chancellor Gerson and Erasmus and the Archbishop of Spalato Ludovicus Vives and Cassander who are known to have died in the same Communion did yet impartially complain of some Corruptions Vives of their Feasts at the Oratories of Martyrs as being too much of kin unto the Gentiles Parentalia which in the judgment of Tertullian made up a species of Idolatry And Cassander confesses plainly that the Peoples Adoration paid to Images and Statues was equal to the worst of the ancient Heathen So the buying and selling of Papal Indulgences and Pardons 't is a little thing to say of Preferments too was both confest and inveigh'd against by Popish Bishops in Thuanus Now if with all their Corruptions in point of Practice which alone cannot justifie a People's Separation from any Church though the Cathari and the Donatists were heretofore of that opinion we compare their Corruptions of Doctrine too and that in matter of Faith as hath been shewed Corruptions intrenching on Fundamentals it will appear that That door which was open'd by Vs in our first Reformers was not at all to introduce but to let out Schism For the schism must needs be Theirs who give the Cause of the Separation not Theirs who do but separate when Cause is given Else S. Paul had been to blame in that he said to his Corinthians Come ye out from among them and be ye separate 2 Cor. 6. 17. The actuall Departure indeed was Ours but Theirs the causal as our immortal Arch-Bishop does fitly word it we left them indeed when they thrust us out as they cannot but go whom the Devil drives But in propriety of speech we left their Errors rather then Them Or if a Secession was made from them 't was in 〈◊〉 very same measure that they had made one from Christ. Whereas they by their Hostilities and their Excommunications departed properly from us not from any Errors detected in us And the wo is to them by whom the offence cometh Matth. 18. 7. not to them to whom 't is given If when England was in a Flame by Fire sent out of Italy we did not abstein from the quenching of it until water might be drawn from the River Tiber it was because our own Ocean could not only do it sooner but better too that is to say without a Figure It did appear by the Concession of the most learned Popish Writers that particular Nations had still a power to purge themselves from their corruptions as well in the Church as in the State without leave had from the See of Rome and that 't was commonly put in practice above a thousand years since It did appear that the Kings of England at least as much as those of Sicily were ever held to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that by the Romanists themselves until by gaining from Henry the First the Investiture of Bishops from Henry the Second an Exemption of the Clergy from Secular Courts and from easie King Iohn an unworthy Submission to forreign Power the Popes became strong enough to call their strength the Law of Iustice And yet their Incroachments were still oppos'd by the most pious and the most learned in every Age. Concerning which it were easie to give a satisfactory account if it were comely for a Sermon to exceed the limits of an hour In a word it did appear from the Code and Novels of Iustinian from the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 set out by the Emperour Zeno from the practice of Charles the Great which may be judged by the Capitulars sent abroad in his Name from the designs and endeavours of two late Emperors Ferdinand the First and Maximilian the Second from all the commended Kings of Iudah from the most pious Christian Emperours as far as from Constantine the Great and from many Kings of England in Popish times too that the work of Reformation belong'd especially to them in their several Kingdoms And this is certain that neither Prescription on the Pope's side nor Discontinuance on the Kings could add a Right unto the one or any way lessen it in the other For it implies a contradiction that what is wrong should grow right by being prosperous for a longer or shorter season Had the Pope been contented with his Primacy of Order and not ambitiously affected a Supremacy of Power and over all other Churches besides his own we never had cast off a Yoke which had never been put upon our Necks And so 't is plain that the Usurper did make the Schism If Sacrilege anywhere or Rebellion did help reform Superstition That was the Fault of the Reformers not at all of the Reformation not of all Reformers neither For the most that was done by some was to write after the Copy which had been set them in my Text by the Blessed Reformer of all the World which was so to reform as not to innovate and to accommodate their Religion to what they found in the Beginning Nay if I may speak an Important Truth which being unpassionately consider'd and universally laid to heart might possibly tend to the Peace of Christendom seeing it was not so much the Church as the Court of Rome which proudly tâ—od upon Crowns and Scepters and made Decrees with a non obstante to Apostolical Constitutions or whatsoever had been enacted by any Authority whatsoever the Commandments of Christ being not excepted we originally departed with higher Degrees of Indignation from the Insolent Court then Church of Rome Nor protested we so much against the Church though against the Church too as against the Cruel Edict first made at VVorms and after cruelly re-inforced at Spire and Ratisbone for the confirming of those 1 Corruptions from which the 2 Church was to be cleans'd To the 1 former we declar'd a Vatinian Hatred but to the 2 latter of the two we have the Charity to wish for a Reconcilement That we who differ upon the way in which we are walking towards Ierusalem may so look back on the Beginning from whence at first we set out and from which our Accusers have foulely swerv'd as to