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
Christ to be the Head of all Christian Unity or that Church to be the conservatory for ever of all Christian Truth more than any other Bishop or Church of the Apostles ordaining or planting Where I find almost as many absurdities hudled together as words For first what signifies the Bp. of Rome was not appointed by Christ Christ was not on earth when St. Peters Successors in the See of Rome sate there and when he ordained St. Peter chief of the Apostles Saint Peter was not yet Bishop of Rome Next if he meanes that St. Peter was not appointed by our Saviour as the Head of Christian Unity St. Hierom's testimony I suppose will be as good as the Doctors word who tels us Inter duodecim c. Amongst the twelve one was chosen that A HEAD being constituted the OCCASION OF SCHISM MIGHT BE TAKEN AWAY Where we see expresly Saint Peter the Popes Predecessor was advanced to be HEAD and this to take away occasion of Schism that is to be HEAD OF CHRISTIAN UNITY Thirdly hence also follows that Christian Unity is conserved by him more than by any other Bishop contrary to the Doctors assertion Fourthly he equivocates in the word Roman Church and takes in it a sence which he knowes we never mean't Our acception of it being of the Universal Church communicating with the Mother Church of Rome his of the private Diocess of Rome it selfe Fifthly it is groundless to affirm even of this private Church of Rome it selfe that she is not the conservatory of Christian Truth more than any other since the Doctor cannot but know the Fathers are of a contrary beleefe holding that the two chief Apostles dying there bequeathed to that Church as a sacred Legacy a greater vigour of Christian Tradition Again Histories and Fathers witnessing so unanimously her firm persistance above the rest objections often urged by our Authors to that purpose the Doctor might at least have afforded us one testimony of the contrary besides his own bare saying Lastly what is the Doctors intent in saying Christ did not appoint the Church of Rome conservatory for ever of all Christian truth What meanes this canting Parenthesis for ever As if Christ might perhaps appoint her to conserve truth for a while but meant after some time to discharge her of that office But this Parenthesis the Doctor reserved for a starting-hole that he might at pleasure cry out she had erred when he had found out some odd testimony which with the help of an id-est-clause might overthrow the Authority of the whole World His second Defence for relinquishing the means to preserve Unity of Faith which we charge them with is this that The way provided by Christ and his Apostles for preserving the Unity of Faith c. is fully acknowledged by their Reformation Which way sayes the Doctor is made up of two Acts of Apostolical Providence First their resolving upon some few heads of efficacy to the planting of Christian life through the world and preaching and depositing them in every Church Secondly their establishing an excellent subordination of Church-officers c. As for the first of these Acts as he calls them of Apostolical Providence if these two Heads he speaks of as thus deposited be indeed sufficient to form a Christian life in order to the attainment of Eternal bliss and that they came down certainly to us by this depository way at first in the Churches and so derived successively age by age Dr. Hammond is suddenly become a Proselyte and a plain Papist For we neither say we have any point of Faith superfluous for the Community of the Faithful nor that those we have came to us by any other meanes than seruando depositum by preserving uncorrupted those necessary doctrines thus deposited But I fear much when the matter comes to scanning Mr. Hammond in this his doctrine neither goes to Church nor stayes at home but halts very lamely in the mid-way He stayes not at home for his Church of England is so far from holding the points deposited by the Apostles in Churches a certain way to preserve Unity of Faith that nothing is more abominable to her than the name of Tradition This appeares by the sixth Article or Canon of Queen Elizabeth's female-headed General Council where the Scripture is made the sole ground of Faith and nothing affirmed as necessary to Salvation but what is built upon it whereas the Doctor here builds points necessary to salvation for sure those few heads of special efficacy to the planting a Christian life can be no lesse upon their preaching and depositing them in the Churches nay more the Unity of Faith that is Faith it self for Faith if not one is none upon this way of depositing Yet for all this he will not goe to Church neither though he stay not at home For ask him are those few Heads all that are necessary he will tell you nâ— yet which be those necessary Heads how many and why no more were thus delivered since this he sayes is A WAY TO PRESERVE UNITY IN FAITH and on the other side he sees what multiplicity is bred by the diverse interpretations of Scripture ask him I say these questions and no particular account can he give you only he had a mind to say somthing in geneneral lest he might be thought to have utterly contemned all Traditions Again these Churches in which were deposited those few Heads of such special eefficacy to plant Christian life were they infallible that is such as we may certainly trust to in their preserving that depositum if they were they might as well be infallible in other necessary points also and so the Doctor hath slipt by good hap into our Rule of Faith and though hoodwink't goes to Church again But if they be not infallible that is connot certainly tell us that they delivered us the right depositum and the same they received then the Drremaines as he is and hath brought nothing to his purpose For since Unity of Faith cannot be preserved without some efficacious meanes of bringing it down to us inerrably true unless this depositing was such as must upon necessity continue for ever which is that we call Infallibility or Indefectibility of the Church the providence of the Apostles had been very sleight and nothing at all to the Doctors purpose that is it had been no efficacious way to preserve Unity of Faith He addes afterwards And all this is asserted and acknowledged by every true son of the Church of England as zealously as is pretended by any Romanist Here again the Doctor seemes to step forwards towards the Church and to draw a great troup of backward unwilling Protestants after him For if they hold as I conceive he meanes by these words the doctrines deposited in the Church as zealously as the Romanists they must hold them as of Faith for so farre our well-grounded zeal carries us and that the depositary is so trusty as
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
unity of Church-government then not onely we but all the Angels and Saints in heaven who rejoyce at the conversion of sinners shall joyn in exalting Jubilees for the Blessed and long wish't for return of òur wandring and self-disinherited Brethren The former of these if Mr. Hammond will not beleeve it I have told him where he may see it as visibly as is possible any thing should be made to the eye of Reason The latter to wit the Popes Supremacy is defin'd in the Florentine Council subscribed to both by the Greek and Latine Churches where what the fourth General Council held at Chalcedon wrote to Pope Leo that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he was over the members of the Church as their Head is more plainly exprest in these words Wee define that the holy Apostolical See and the Bishop of Rome have the primacy over all the world and that the Bishop of Rome is Successour to S. Peter the Prince of the Apostles and truly Christs Vicar and Head of the whole Church and the Father and Teacher of all Christians and that there was given him in S. Peter from Christ a full power to feed direct and govern the Catholike Church To these two points if the Protestant will subscribe that is secure inviolate that which touches the root and most vital and intrinsecal part of the Chruch to wit the Rule of Faith she will not stick to open her outward rind that is offer some violence to her uniformity in indifferent and more extrinsecal practises to re-ingraft their dry and sapless branch which now lies withering into her ever-flourishing body To which if these poor endeavours of mine may in the least contribute I shall for the future not reprehend but congratulate Dr. Hammond for his fortunate Errours and honour his ill grounded reasons as of richest value which by stirring up others to detest them and shew what weak pleas are producible for Schism became the happy occasion of his own and others salvation and of Embosoming the daughter-Daughter-Church of England in a Charitable Communion with her dearest Mother by whose painful throwes she was first born to Christ her Spouse at whose breasts shee suck'd the first milk of his Doctrine and from whose arms and ever-cherishing embraces first by the malignity of an ill-govern'd passion next by humane policy shee has been so long separated FINIS DOWN-DERRY OR Bishop BRAMHAL'S Iust Vindication of the Church of England refuted MY choice at first directed me rather to answer Mr. Hammond than my Lord of Derry having observ'd his Book not only to bear a greater vogue in the world but to be inwardly furnished with Arguments more suitable to the profession of a Divine But after I had advanc'd past the mid-way of my journey I met some Protestant friends who though formerly they had still cry'd up the Doctor yet soon as I told them in confidence that an Answer to his Schism would instantly bee ready for the the Press they immediately began to extol the Bishop and demand either a present Reply to him or else they should not spare to conclude the Victory their own When I had exprest how weak and unreasonable their discourse was which if admitted would always judg him to have the right cause that speaks the last word I parted with a promise if in stead of that sport which he far more than the other tempts a wit-at leasure to make with him they would accept of a short Refutation of the substantial passages I should not fail to endeavour their satisfaction which thus I perform Reading with some diligence the Bishops Book I find that as there is much commendable in it for industry so is it expos'd to an unavoidable Check of being Patron to an ill Cause whence it may bee a pattern of wit and labour but little assistance to the truth further than by shewing how weak Errour is But not to spend time and paper in vain let us state the controversie clearly that it may be seen how strongly and pertinently his Discourse proceeds Not that I intend minutely to examine his whole Work whereof the far greater part is little or nothing to our controversie as will appear by the bare stating the Question but onely to say enough for him whom the substance can content without engaging into unnecessary and circumstantial disputes He begins his Book telling us nothing can be objected with more colour of truth against the Church of England than that they have withdrawn themselves from obedience to the Vicar of Christ and separated from the Communion of the Catholike Church And that this crime is justly charg'd upon his Church not onely with colour but with undeniable evidence of fact will appear by the very position of the Case and the nature of his Exceptions As for the first it is unquestionably certain and universally assented to by all Protestants who understand any thing that at the beginning of Henry the eighths Reign nay at his first courting his Protestant Mistress the Church of England agreed with that of Rome and all the rest of her Communion in two Points which were then and are still the Bonds of Unity betwixt all her Members One concerning Faith the other Government For Faith her Rule was that the Doctrines which had been inherited from their Forefathers as the Legacies of Christ and his Apostles were solely to bee acknowledg'd for obligatory and nothing in them to bee changed For Government her Principle was that Christ had made St. Peter First or Chief or Prince of his Apostles who was to be the first Mover under him in the Church after his departure out of this world and to whom all others in difficulties concerning matters belonging to the universal either Faith or Government should have recourse And that the Bishops of Rome as Successors of St. Peter inherited from him this priviledge in respect of the Successors of the rest of the Apostles and actually exercised this power in all those countries which kept Communion with the Church of Rome that very year wherein this unhappy separation began It is no lesse evident that in the dayes of Edward the sixth Queen Elizabeth and her Successors neither the former Rule of Unity of Faith nor this second of Unity of Government which is held by the first have had any power in that Congregation which the Protestants call the English Church This is our chief objection against you As for us our Tenet is That those Churchs who continue in Communion with the Roman are the onely Churches which in vertue of the first Principle above mentioned have the true Doctrine and in vertue of the second the right Government and in vertue of both the unity and incorporation into the Church of Christ necessary for salvation And by consequence Wee hold them onely to make the entire Catholike or Universal Church of Christians all others by misbelief or Schism being excluded Now because no understanding man can deny this to be
SCHISM DIS-ARM'D OF The Defensive Weapons LENT IT By Doctor Hammond and the Bishop of DERRY By S. W. Prov. 17. 15. Qui justificat impium qui condemnat justum abominabilis est uterque apud Deum At PARIS By M. Blageart 1655. To the Reader BEfore you can have past three Chapters I know you will be objecting that the blows I give are too rude for so civil an Adversary and therefore I have plac'd these few Lines to meet you in the very entry and stop you till you have answered this Question How would you take it if one should spit in your face and justifie the affront because his breath is sweet or What would you say to him that ruines your Estate by Perjury and defends himself that he held up his hands and eyes to Heaven and swore demurely Whatever Answer you give I am confident it will perfectly clear my behavior towards the Doctor with whom I should have very little contention were the difference between us in any thing of less concernment then Eternity Let him if he please maintain with all his Rhetorick that King Richard was a strait and handsom Person let him employ as much wit as he thinks he has to prove Perkin Warbeck no Counterfeit for my part I shall be so far from finding fault with him that I shall not so much as seek any But if he will abusively treat matters of so high importance as Religion and think to escape because his perverse meaning goes disguis'd under the mask of a courteous stile I conceive my self sufficiently warranted if sometimes in pulling off his Vizard I twitch him by the Beard especially since falshood is so much the worse the better it is exprest every one being apt to believe there is surely some Reason where there appears no Passion S. W. THE Table of the Contents of the several Sections THe Introduction The First Part. Containing an Answer to the Four first Chapters Sect. 1. NOtes upon Dr. Hammonds first Chapter Of the danger and sin of Schism P. 1 Sect. 2. Concerning his notion of Schism and the Excommunication of the Church 6 Sect. 3. Of his Plea of a weak Conscience not suffering him to subscribe to the Churches Doctrine against his present perswasion 14 Sect. 4. Concerning the ground of Unity groundlesness of Schism and of his manner of arguing to clear himself of the later 21 Sect. 5. Contains some observations upon his third Chapter Of the division of Schism 29 Sect. 6. Of the Doctors advance towards the Question in the beginning of his fourth Chapter 37 Sect. 7. Of his first Evidence against St. Peters Universal Pastorship 42 Sect. 8. The Examination of his second Evidence that the Apostles had distinct Provinces so to prejudice St. Peters Universal Pastorship 48 Sect. 9. Some Consequences out of the Doctors former Grounds and his further process in Evidencing 55 Sect. 10. The Examination of Ten dumb Testimonies which Dr. Hammond brings to plead for him 63 Sect. 11. The Examination of his irrefragable Evidence and other silent Testimonies produced by him 71 Sect. 12. Another dumb show of the Doctors Testimonies to prove St. Peter over the Iews onely 80 Sect. 13. His second general Evidence against St. Peters Supremacy from the Donation of the Keys found to be obscurer then the former 87 The Second Part. Comprehending the Answers of the Fifth Sixth and Seventh Chapters Sect. 1. OF the pretended Primogeniture of Antioch and the Doctors mistake of the Council of Chalcedon 105 Sect. 2. His Arguments from the Canon of Ephesus and the Instances relating to Justiniana Prima refuted 115 Sect. 3. A discovery of the Doctors Fundamental Error which runs through this Chapter and his ingratitude for our Countreys Conversion 125 Sect. 4. His continuance of the same Fundamental Error and some mistaking Proofs That Kings can erect Patriarchates Sect. 5. The Doctors Testimonies from Councils and Histories found to be partly against himself partly frivolous and to no purpose 144 Sect. 6. The Examination of his Testimonies produced to prove his Fundamental Position That Kings are supreme in Spiritual Matters 159 Sect. 7. Other empty Proofs of his pretended Right confuted 169 Sect. 8. A Reply to the Doctors Narrative Confession of his Schism 178 Sect. 9. The nature of Schism fetched from its first Grounds and the material part of it fastned on the Protestants 193 Sect. 10. That the reforming Protestants were and are guilty of the formal part of Schism 203 Sect. 11. The Doctors Argument That the Popes power in England was derived under the Kings Concession refuted 210 The Third Part. Containing the Answers to the Four last Chapters of Dr. Hammonds Schism Sect. 1. HIs second sort of Schism and his pretence That they retain the way to preserve Unity in Faith refuted 229 Sect. 2. His evasion in recurring to the first Three hundred years and concerning the humble and docible temper of his Church 245 Sect. 3. An Examination of some common Notes produced by the Doctor to particularize his Clients to be no Schismaticks 253 Sect. 4. Of his charitableness in admitting all to his Communion and our pretended uncharitableness for refusing to go to their Assemblies 263 Sect. 5. Our pretended uncharitableness in judging and despising others retorted upon the Objectors 274 Sect. 6. Our Objection that the pretended Church of England is now invisible maintain'd and asserted to be just 290 Down-Derry Or Dr. Bramhals Iust Vindication of the Church of England refuted 305 The Stationer to the READER THough the entertainment to which the Author invites thee be almost wholly new and the Food substantial and solid yet the Stomach of the Times seeming quite cloid with Controversie obliged both him to quicken thy rellish with a little Piquant Sauce and me to tempt thy coy Appetite with this short and drolish BILL of FARE 1 HOw the Doctor of Divinity has forgot his Accidence Pag. 7 2 Dr. Hammond turn'd a zealous Advocate for Bastwick Burton and Prynn's Ears 16 3 How the Doctor has found Iudas a Diocess among the Devils wherein he would have St. Matthias succeed him 48 4 How the Doctor has got all the Apostles leave to play except St. Peter and St. Paul and consequently established the PP their Successor Universal Pastor 56 5 How the Doctor makes account there is no Communion but in Eating and Drinking 64 6 The Doctors miraculous gift in making dumb Witnesses speak as he pleases 63 64 c. 7 A general Rendevouz of the Doctors Auxilliaries 84 8 The Doctor brings his Evidences at length to a fair Market by the unlucky introduction of one blabbing Testimony p. 87 9 The Doctor falls into a sudden fit of Popery too violent for the constitution of many strong Papists 95 10 Well done Doctor 96 11 How Dr H would have all the Apostles called Peter 101 12 The Doctor winks and fights 112 13 The properer man the worse luck 120 14 A comfortable sample of the Doctors Annotations in
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
really apprehended by him to whom they are thus proposed to be false it is hard to affirm that that man can lawfully subscribe and therefore rather then do it the Doctor makes account he may remain out of Communion and that lawfully too This is the Doctors assertion which indeed might serve out of a Pulpit to an Auditory that he would claw with giving them that sweet and as they esteem it Christian liberty of holding what they list but to any judicious person that knows what Government is it is in reality the sublimated quintessence of perfect Non-Religion and Anarchy The Position comes to this That none should be condemned or punished by his Governors for not-doing that the contrary whereof he thinks is to be done To give which Position the least shadow of likelihood the Doctor is necessarily obliged to prove first That no Pride Interest or Passion can make one think wrong and consequently culpable in so thinking which if the Doctor do he will work wonders and with a turn of his hand convert this world of miserable sinners into a Heaven of pure and perfect Saints But let us hear an Argument or two upon the Doctors principles An ambitious or proud man blinded by his Passion begins to think and really true that the long established Government of the Commonwealth is tyrannical and upon this thought he proceeds to jumble all the Land into intestine Seditions and to dismount the Governors from the top of Authority and as he tells you conscientiously too that is with a perfect perswasion according to his present Passion Force him not to subscribe to obey his lawful Magistrate saith the Doctor he may not do it lawfully it is against his Conscience A revengeful or malicious man thinks that in all right and reason he may endamage the party that offered the affront and upon the lawfulness of his so doing while his humor possesses him he would lay his Soul Controle him not saith the Doctor he is in an â—rror but yet governs himself at present according to Conscience he may not lawfully subscribe or â—eal a pardon contrary to his present perswasion The Anabaptist thought himself nearly touched in Conscience to cut off the heads of his Mother and Sister for kneeling at the Communion Urgâ—… him not to the contrary saith the Doctor 〈◊〉 cannot lawfully spare them it is against his preseâ—… perswasion The Puritans following the Protestants example refuse obedience to the Church of England seeing in her so many dregâ—… of Popery remaining Unjustly did the Church of England saith the Doctor in obliging them to her obedience and cutting off poor Bastâ—… wicks Burtons and Prynnes Ears who did according to their Conscience or present perswasion Neither will it avail you to Answer that these were told by Gods Law that their actâ—… were unwarrantable and therefore were culpable For it is easie to reply that you were as much and as earnestly commanded by God to hear the Church and obey your lawful Superiors and incurred a far greater sin if you did not to wit the sin of Schism which your selfe unfortunate Pen has out of the Fathers described to be a venomous compound swoln with the mixt poyson of all sorts of Vices The Reader will by this see to what a pass this Doctors Logick would bring the world if his Position should take place That no man should be obliged to or punished for anything against his present perswasion which he terms his Conscience The contrary to which that I may a little more elucidate from its first grounds the Reader may please to consider That this present perswasion which a man is so fixt in may either begin in the Understanding or proceed from the Will If in the Understanding it must be onely a perfect demonstration that can beget in it so firm an adherence and then being rational it is not onely excusable but laudable Otherwise it is an irrational resolvedness sprung from a passionate distorsion of the interessed Will pushing and exciting the Understanding without due deliberation first to pitch upon and afterwards pertinaciously to adhere to a thing more then the light of Reason it self gives Which being in the Will vicious is consequently as all other Vices are culpable liable to correction and by correction reformable So as Licet non possumus opinari quando volumus that is Although we cannot deem or think a thing true but we must have some Motive or other true or false why we think so yet with this it well consists that a perverse affection in the Will may blinde and lead astray the Understanding by proposing false Motives for true ones And therefore when the Will by deserved punishment is whipt out of her viciousness the Native lustre of the Understanding will quickly disenvelop its self from the cloud of mistake in which the Passion exhaled vapors had enwrapt her You see then Doctor which perhaps you never reflected on before A man may be obliged to retract a present perswasion and however he pretends Conscience for his excuse be punished too if he does not since his bad will was the cause of his erroneous judgment as the cases of the fore-mentioned Malefactors your Clients have as I hope by this time better informed you But perhaps you would not have this method used in matters of Religion And why not Unless the violating the ever-sacred Authority of Christs Church and renouncing the main support of all Religion the Rule of Faith things in the conserving of which the eternal salvation of mankinde consists be less deserving punishment in the offenders or less worth taking notice of by the Governors of the Church then the wrong of thirteen-pence half-penny is by the Laws and Governors of the Commonwealth The result then of your discourse comes to this That all your dwindling suppisitions anâ— may bees which you wisely put down foâ— proofs and sometimes for grounds remain still in question or rather unquestionably unsupposable Your tenderness of Conscience not to sin against God in subscribing to the errors forsooth of his Church which he hath commanded you to hear onely Pharasaical arrogancy and singularity in you which makes you think and style at pleasure any thing Error which the whole Church holds if contrary to your private judgment Lastly Our pretended making Communion impossible will be found to be onely a self-opinionated pride in you and of all pride 's the most miserable and filly to adhere so pertinaciously against Evidence of Authority to a few obscure scraps of writers speaking on the by and your own self acknowledged fallibility All these and whatever pretences you here in sinuate will all lie at your doors and loudly call you Schismaticks unless you can evidence with most perfect demonstrations that those things were Errors which the Church obliged you to subscribe to that is that the Churches doctrine was or is erroneous and consequently her self not infallible This if you evidence I shall grant you have
not onely overthrown ours but all Religion not onely acquitted your self of Schism but also quite taken away all possibility of being a Schismatick since no Authority can with any face or conscience oblige to a belief of which her self is not certain But I doubt not you make your self sure of the conquest not apprehending any but Saints and Angels in Heaven and God himself to be infallible To which you adde of your own invention impeccable as your custom is never to speak of our Tenet without the disgraceful addition of some forged calumny or other imposed upon us But that none else should be infallible except those you mention I much wonder I thought the Apostles had been also infallibly assisted when they pen'd the sacred Writ and peach'd the Gospel I thought also our Saviour when he sent them to teach and promised them his assistance had said He would remain with them always even till the end of the world that is with the succeeding Church I thought there had been some means to be infallibly-certain that such and such Books were Gods Word and genuine Scripture without an Angel Saint or Christs coming from Heaven or the Doctors private-spirited opinion which he will call God Neither do I doubt but the Doctor himself will grant it impossible That all the Protestants in England should be fallible or mistake in witnessing whether twenty years ago there were Protestant Bishops or no and that such was the Tenet and Government of their Church at that time Yet a thousand timeâ— greater evidence have we of the indefectibility of the Churches Faith and her infallibility As you may to your amazement see if you will but open your eyes in that incomparable Treatise of Rushworth's Dialogues vindicated from all possible confute by that excellent Apology for it writ by the learned Pen of Mr. Thomâ—â— White in his Friends behalf whose Dialogues he set forth enlarged and defended against your acute Friends Faulkland and Digby Persons who did not use to treat Controversies iâ— such a dreaming shallow way as it hath been your misfortune to do here nor stand Preaching to their adversary when they should Dispute To these Dialogues and their Apology I refer you that you may know what to do if you confute them solidly and demonstrate plainly That our Church is liable to Error you will eternally silence us and clear your selves But take heed you bring not whimpering probable may-be's and onely-self-granted suppositions for proofs These might serve your turn in your first Book which might hope for the good fortune to scape without answering but in your second and after you are told of it it will fall short of satisfactory Remember Mr. Hammond that you granted â— cheerful obedience and submission of your judgments and practices to your Superiors under penalty oâ— not being deemed true Disciples of Christ. If this be real as I wish it were then what easier condescension and deference to the judgment of Superiors can be imagined then to submit oneâ— private judgment when he has onely probability to the contrary Evidence therefore demonstrable evidence you must give in of the Churches erring ere your pretence that you were obliged by her to subscribe to Errors can take place and so excuse you from Schism But as your profession of the obligation you have to submit your judgment to the Church renders your probable Reasons insufficient to fall to judge her so God be praised your own self acknowledged fallibility will secure us from the least fear of your Demonstrations Yet unless you do this you undo your cause for if the Church could not erre she could need no reforming So that your Preaching of Reformation is vain your Faith vain and by consequence your selves Schismaticks and an Ace more SECT 4. Concerning the ground of Unity groundlesness of Schism and of Dr. Hammonds manner of arguing to clear himself of the later ALl that is material in the Doctors second Chapter is sum'd up in these two heads that the Church does ill in obliging men to subscribe against their present perswasion and That the Church which they left was erroneous and so obliged them to the subscription of Errors Upon these two notes as on a base-ground he runs division all along this Chapter repeating them so often in each Paragraph that I was forced to omit my intended method at present not making a Countet-sermon to each in order but bringing together his dispersed Doctrine into Heads and then confuting them not doubting but the Leaves and Branches which counterfeit some small flourish of devotion will quickly fade into Hypocrisie when the sapless roots are pluckt up from their rotten ground The former of them hath been discovered in the former Section to be worse then weak his manner of arguing from the second shall be laid open in this But because I perceive Mr. Hammond very much unacquainted with our grounds why our Church obliges her sons to rest in her belief and continue in her Communion thinking her doubtless very discourteous that will not leâ— her subjects in civility as the modest and moderate Church of England does hold and do what they list I will at present undeceive him somewhat in that point having a better occasion to do it more largely hereafter First The Doctor stumbles much and as Ignorance iâ— ever the Mother of admiration thinks Master Knot 's Inference very strange that the Church iâ— infallible otherwise men might forsake her Communion Whereas on the contrary I not onely think it strange to infer otherwise but as great an absuâ—dity as can be imagined for why may not meâ— forsake the Communion of the Church if they may forsake her Doctrine since it is impossible to preserve the former if he renounce the latter and why may they not forsake her Doctrine if she have no Power nor Authority â—o tie them to the belief of it and how can she have any Authority to binde them to the belief of it if she her self knows not certainly whether it be true oâ— no that is be not infallible Or what man living who hath so much wit as to raise or understand the difficulty can possibly so degenerate from Reason which is his nature as to submit it in believing things above his Reason and which concern his eternal Salvation upon such an Authority as may perhaps lie and so damn him for believing her since Without true Faith it is impossible to please God Hence follows by an inevitable consequence that since the Church pretends and hath ever pretended to have a Promise from Christ of a perpetual assistance from Error if Christ have made good that promise that is if she be infallible then her obliging her sons to rest in her Faith is most plainly evidenced to be charitable just and necessary because in that case it were both mens obligation and also their greatest good to believe so qualified a Mistress Whereas on the other side any other Congregation
that professes her self fallible that is uncertain of the truth of her Doctrine cannot without accusing her self of the greatest injustice and tyranny in the World binde others to the belief of the said Doctrine For it carries the prejudice of the highest unreasonableness with it for a man to tell me I will force you â—o believe that which yet I my self know not whether it is to be believed or no. Let not Dr. Hammond then blame our Church for obliging men to subscribe to her Doctrine unless he can evidence first That she hath not that which she hath ever from the beginning of the Church pretended to to wit a security from fallibility by the perpetual assistance of her Spouse and Saviour But rather let him invent if he can any rational excuse for his own Church which professing her self fallible and so wanting all power to oblige to belief would notwithstanding have others believe her accounting the Puritans Anabaptists Presbyterians and Independants Schismaticks if they do not and dares enstyle her self a Church that is a Commonwealth which hath power and means to oblige to Unity in belief whereas her own professed fallibility or uncertainty evidences that she wants all the Nerves which should connect the Members of such a Body These grounds laid it were not amiss to insert here what the Author of that Epistle which was writ from Bruxels in answer to Dr. Hammond saith upon this place By this saith he you may perceive much of his discourse to be not onely superfluous and unnecessary but contrary to himself for he laboreth to perswade That the Protestant may be certain of some truth against which the Roman Catholick Church bindeth to profession of Error which is as much as to say That he who pretends to have no infallible Rule whereby to govern his Doctrine shall be supposed to be infallible and that he who pretends to have an infallible Rule shall be supposed to be fallible at most because fallible Objections are brought against him Now then consider what a meek and humble son of the Church as this Dr. would he thought ought to do when on the one side is the Authority of Antiquity and Possession such Antiquity and Possession without dispute or contradiction from the Adversary as no King can shew for his Crown and much less any other person for any other thing together with the perswasion of Infallibility and all the pledges Christ hath left to his Church for motives of Union On the other side uncertain Reasons of a few men pretending to Learning every day contradicted by incomparable numbers of men wise and learned and those few men confessing those Reasons and themselves uncertain fallible and subject to Error Certainly without a byass of interest or prejudice it is impossible to leave the Church if he be in it or not return if he be out of it For if infallibility be the ground of the Churches power to command belief as she pretends no other no time no separation within memory of History can justifie a continuance out of the Church Thus far that Letter which had it not been strangled in the birth and miscarried in the Printer's hand might have saved me the labor of this larger conâ—ute and being exactly short might justly be styled Dr. Hammonds Iliads in a Nut-shell since the force of it was so united the Reason in it so firmly connected as might have cost the Doctor a full ten years siege ere he could make a breach into it with his Brown-Paper Bullets But now it is high time to reflect upon the Doctors manner of arguing who tells us here That he needs give no more answer to our objection of a Schismatical departure then this That they who acknowledge not the Church of Rome to be Infallible may be allowed to make a supposition which is founded in the possibility of her inserting Errors in her Confessions c. And so goes on with three or four Suppositions all built upon that first general Supposition That the Roman Catholick Church hath erred or is not infallible I commend the Doctor for his wit The whole question is reduced to this one point Whether the Church erred or no as is most manifest For if she evidently errâ—d he and his Ancestors may possibly be excused for not believing her and rejecting her Government by Schism which she told you was sacred but if she was infallible no plea nor evasion can possibly serve your turn neither is it your or their supposing it which can make her fallible and so be a fit ground to build your excuse on Now comes this Gentleman who in the first page of his Book is entitled Doctor of Divinity to handle this Question and onely desires in courtesie that the main matter in controversie out of which it was easie to infer what he pleased should first be supposed or granted and that upon that ground he would evince his cause Just like that young smatâ—eâ—er in Logick who undertook to prove his fellow a Goose but first he would needs have him suppose that whatsoever had two Legs was one of those tame Fowl which his wary fellow notwithstanding his importunity refusing to grant he was left quite blank and his wise Argument at an end Such is the on-seâ— such must be the event of the Doctors Logick You and your first Reformers are Schismaticks says the Catholick in rejecting the Government of the Church and her chief Pastor which she told you was both lawful and sacred Your Church erred saith the Doctor and so we could not be obliged to believe her I but answers the Catholick you must first prove evidently that she is fallible and subject to Error O replies the Doctor we suppose that to be most certainly true and without all dispute Risum teneatis amici Yet Mr. Hammond hath involved another Error in the same passage more unpardonable if possible then the former so fruitful is his Logick of inconsequent absurdities For what man ever arrived to that heigth of mistake as to endeavor to manifest his innocency by the voluntary confession of a crime which implies the objected fault and much more to boot or to alledge for his plea against the accusation of his adversary that which more deeply condemns and is objected to him as a far more hainous crime by the same adversary Yet such is this Doctors acuteness He is accused by us of Schism and lays for the ground of his excuse That he acknowledges not our Churches infallibility which is charged upon him not onely to be both Schism and Heresie but as the very sink of all Infidelity For what man of Reason but stands in an hovering disposition of minde to embrace any Religion or rather Irreligion nay even Turcism it self as your best Champion the Lord Faulkland professes he would when a stronger blast of a more probable Reason shall turn the sail of his Wind-Mill Judgment knowing and acknowledging as he must and does That neither
his own private interpretation of Scripture nor the Church he is in is infallible or secured from Error by any promise of Christ. The denying this Infallibility therefore Mr. Doctor is the greatest crime we charge you with but you free of your Suppositions suppose it your chief virtue and put it for the ground of all your excuse In this Infallibility is founded all the power of the Church obliging to belief the inviolableness of her Government the unjustifiableness of any Schism the firm security that Faith is certain and lastly whatever in the Church is sacred The Doctor therefore in clearing himself by denying the Infallibility of the Church does the self-same as if some discontented subject having first out-lawed himself by denying the Laws and rejecting the Government of England and afterwards becoming obnoxious to those Laws by Robbing Murthering c. should endeavot to plead Not guilty by alledging That though indeed the English Subjects who accept the Laws and allow the Government of England are liable to punishment if they offend against them Yet I saith he who suppose this Government Tyrannical and these Laws unjust especially having a present perswasion and thinking in my Conscience they are so cannot be obliged to keep them and therefore must not be accounted a factious man nor be liable to punishment if I break them What will become of this malefactor Master Doctor your Logick clears him But the Reader and I am perswaded wiser judgments will think him more highly deserving the Gallows for refusing subjection to the Laws and Government and you more deeply meriting Excommunication for rejecting the Churches Infallibility the onely ground of her Authority then for all the rest of your particular faults which issue from that false principle But it is pretty to observe how the Doctor never clears himself from Schism upon any other grounds then those which if admitted would prove all the Malefactors in the World innocent and make it lawful nay an obligation in Conscience to dissolve the whole Fabrick of the Worlds Government So true it is That the very position of a Fallibility of Faith first lays and in time hatches the Cockatrice Eggs of both Atheism and Anarchy SECT 5. Containing some Observations upon Mr. Hammonds third Chapter of the Division of Schism WHen I had perused his third Chapter with intent to see what it might contain worth the answering finding scarce any thing which made either against us or for him I thought I had mistaken the Title of his Book but looking back I found it to have indeed this Inscription OF SCHISM A DEFENCE OF THE CHVRCH OF ENGLAND AGAINST THE EXCEPTIONS OF THE ROMANISTS BY H. HAMMOND D. D. So that now I remain'd satisfied what was the Title but much more unsatisfied to find my expectation so totally deluded and that in a large Chapter containing thirty six pages almost a full quarter of the Book not five words were found which touched the question directly nor could in any way be a preparative to it So as we have here 66 pages of 182. well towards half the Book premised by the Doctor to introduce the Question like the Mindian Gate too large an entrance for so narrow a Corporation Frivolous then had been the long Preamble of this Chapter had it been to the purpose and tended to the Question but if it be found nothing at all to the Question but to wave and conceal the main and indeed sole matter which concerns it nay more to have prevaricated from the very scope for which he would seem to intend it then I will leave it to the Reader to imagin what commendations this Chapter and its Author doth deserve Our Question is of Schism In this Chapter he undertakes to shew the several sorts of it which therefore he divides into Schism against Fraternal Charity and Schism against some one particular Governor as in the People against a Priest or Deacon in those against a Bishop in Bishops against their Arch-Bishops in Arch-Bishops against their Primate or Patriarch and there he stops lest if he had ascended a step higher to the Authority of the Pope he should have said more truth then will serve his turn For you must know he has a deep design against Antichrist and is resolved that half a score odd stories or some few words and unwarrantable practices of discontented persons especially being cited in Greek shall utterly overthrow him in despite of manifest practice of Antiquity clouds of testimonies from Fathers and the Doctrine of the Catholick Church of whose fallibility he is far from even pretending to any infallible Evidence But that we may manifest what we laid to his charge that all this long Chapter is but waste-paper the Reader may please to take notice that the Schism we charge the Protestants with is not of the peoples Schism against a Deacon or Presbyter nor of a Deacon or Presbyters Schism against a Bishop nor any link in that chain of Schisms which he there enumerates but we accuse them and their Fore-Fathers the first Reformers First of a Breach or Schism from the whole Catholick Church This is without controversie the Schism of Schisms and which in the first hearing of the word Schism objects it self to our understanding as being simply properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such whereas the other are nothing but particular refractory disoâ—â—diences in comparison of this and may well consist with your obedience to the Universal Church This this I say is the chief and main Schism we impute to his fellow Protestants yet the Doctor in his present Book entituled Their Defence from Schism takes no notice of the chief thing he ought to clear them of will not have it come into play nor allow it a place in his Division as if it were either none at all or else such a slight one as was not worth taking notice of Strange that he could use such prolixity in trifling Schisms impertinent to the present discourse and not afford the least mention to the greatest Schism of all when the scope and aim of his Chapter necessarily required it and the Question forcibly exacted it Strange that he could remember even the peoples Schism against a Deacon or Presbyter and forget that which breaks from the whole body of the Universal Church But the Doctor is more carefull to preserve his own Copy-hold then the Churches Free hold for according to his division and Doctrine in this Chapter his Parishoners would be Schismaticks for disobeying him or a puny Deacon but neither he nor the Deacon Schismaticks at all for disobeying the whole Church And thus the Dr. has established his own Authority to be more inviolable then the Popes and by this one Division has quite conquered and got the upper-hand of Antichrist Secondly What is become of General Councils all this while Have not they as great an Authority as any private Patriarch Primate Arch-Bishop Bishop Dr. Hammond or a Deacon Far grâ—â—ter
the fourth and yet was ordain'd by St. Peter refused the Office till the successive death of Linus and Cletus to which solution recur S. Epiphanius Ruffinus c. but none ever dream'd of Dr. Hammonds facile all-solving Scholion That Linus was the first Bishop of the Gentile-Christians after S. Paul Clemens the first of the Iewish after St. Peter which had been very obvious to those that lived so neer those times but the reason why they did not is evident because they never dream'd of a distinction of Iewish and Gentile Church and Bishops whereas the Doctor dreams of nothing else The Fathers and ancient Writers were alas in a great mistake imagining that all the endeavors of the Apostles as far as they could without scandalizing either part tended to reduce both the Iews and Gentiles to Unity and Uniformity in one Church and to unite them in him whom they taught and preacht to be the Head Cornerstone Christ Iesus in whom is no distinction of Iews and Gentiles till one Mr. Hammond a Protestant Minister came with his Scholions and Id ests to teach them contrary doctrine In the beginning of the thirteenth Section he affirms stoutly That for another great part of the world it is manifest that St. Peter had never to do either mediately or immediately in the planting and governing of it If it be so manifest Master Hammond it had been easier for you to make it manifest to us and was requisite you should it being your proper task otherwise to cry it is manifest and yet bring nothing to prove it is as much as to say It is manifest because I fancy it so But as before you brought the invincible Testimonies of WE KNOW and WE MAKE NO QUESTION for EVIDENCES so now onely with an authentick IT IS MANIFEST you think the deed done and your cause evinced In his fourteenth Section he tells us That St. John had the dignity of place before all others in Christs life time even before St. Peter himself This he proves plainly he says from his style of beloved Disciple and leaning on Christs brest at Supper As if because Iacob loved Ioseph more then all his other Brethren and therefore out of particular favor might have let him lean on his brest at Supper it must needs mean plainly that yong Ioseph was the highest of his Brethren in dignity had due to him the birth-right and inheritance c. And who sees not that the posture of leaning on Christs brest at Supper was not an orderly and ordinary manner of sitting but onely a peculiar grace and familiarity used towards him by his Lord yet the Doctor is certain of it and for more security gives us a gallant instance That leaning on Christs brest signifies the first place next to Christ as being in Abrahams bosom plainly signifies saith this All-explaining Doctor being in dignity of place next to the Father of the Faithful From which instance of his if true it follows that Lazarus who was in Abrahams bosom was above all the Patriarchs and Prophets except Abraham as also that none was in Abrahams bosom except Lazarus onely since there can be no more NEXTS but one But it is no wonder to see the Doctor trip now who hath stumbled nay faln down flat on all-four so often In the rest of this Paragraph he tells us That the Jews in the Lydian Asia were St. Iohns peculiar Province in the next that the Gentiles there were St. Pauls and when he hath done destroyes both the one and the other with a Testimony out of St. Chrysostom concerning St. Paul which says that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A whole entire Nation that of Asia was entrusted to him To which joyn what is manifest all over in the Acts that St. Paul preached to the Jews in Asia it is palpable that this Testimony affirms St. Paul to have had Jurisdiction over all in Asia both Jews and Gentiles Again since the Doctors groundâ— make the Jurisdictions of the Apostles exclusive to one another and this place tells us that the whole entire Nation of Asia was under St. Paul it must follow out of his doctrine of Exclusive Iurisdiction that poor St. Iohn had not so much as the place of a Parish-Priest allow'd him of his own but what he was beholding to St. Paul for What an unpardonable blindness was this to prove St. Paul over the Gentiles onely by a Testimony which entitles him to the whole entire Nation SECT 12. Another dumb show of Dr. Hammonds Testimonies to prove St. Peter over the Iews onely AFter such invincible Testimonies alleaged the Doctor begins to triumph and tells us That we cannot say any thing in any degree probable for St. Peters Universal Pastorship over the Churches in the Lydian Asia And the reason he gives is because they were so early famous as that Christ honored them with an Epistle in the Revelations It must be a wonderful acuteness in Logick which can make this conclude Christ wrote an Epistle to those Churches therefore St. Peter had nothing to do with them As if the same reason did not as well exclude all the rest of the Apostles as St. Peter from their Jurisdiction But the Doctor says they were early famous I ask him were they earlier than our Saviours chusing twelve Apostles and Simon Peter the first if not their earliness will not hurt us nor help you His next two demands concerning St. Iohns and St. Pauls Jurisdiction there are already answer'd out of his own Testimony from St. Chrysostom It follows Doth not â—t Paul give him meaning Timothy full instructions and such as no other Apostle could countermand or interpose in them leaving no other Appeal nor place of Application for farther directions save Onely to himself when he shall come to him And then to make the Reader believe that all this is Scripture he quotes for it immediately 1 Tim. 3. 14 15. Doctor Doctor play fair above board In the place you quote there is not one word of all this long rabble but the bare word Come as is evident even in your own translation where I finde it thus These things write I unto thee hoping to come unto thee shortly But if I tarry long that thou maist know how thou oughtest to behave thy self in the House of God the pillar and ground of truth Where in the fifteenth Verse there is nothing at all of this rambling story which the Doctor talks of in the fourteenth Verse onely the word Come So as out of this seemingly-barren Monosyllable Come the Doctor hath miraculously caused a fruitful harvest of Testimonies arise for his purpose to wit That St. Paul gave him such instructions as NO OTHER APOSTLE COULD COUNTERMAND OR INTERPOSE IN THEM that he left NO APPEAL or place of Application for further directions save ONELY TO HIMSELF c. Where are all those quarrelling and exceptive terms But the Doctor seems willing not onely to limit the Apostles
Communion of the Faithful This Rule therefore broken or rejected dissolves all positive Communion amongst Christians both in Faith and Sacraments For what tie could they possibly have to communicate in any thing consequent to Faith as Sacraments Government or any good work unless they first communicate in faith the rule and ground of those Sacraments Government and good works and how can they communicate in faith if there be no Infallibility to binde them to an Unity in it The denying therefore of this Infallibility is the reason of all Schism and even of Heresie too nay it selfe is the Heresie of Heresies opening a liberty for every man to embrace his owne new-fangled opinions and introducing principles of incertitude and at best probability in Religion whose natural course is to wander at last into a Civil kind of Atheism Nor can there be any rational pretence to oblige mens consciences to a Religion whose conâ—est uncertainty must needs infer an absolute abolishment of all Church discipline and content it selfe with a meer voluntary obedience that is legitimaâ—e all Schism by taking away the very possibility of Schismatizing Another reason may be given why the denying this infallibility perverts quite overthrows all unity in Church-government For the preservation of the Churches unity in government being essential to Religion that is to the Art of breeding up mankind to know and love God it cannot possibly be conceived to be of humane but divâ—ne institution and therefore being taught and instituted by Christ belongs to Faith and so requires to be recommended by the same never-eâ—ring Rule which teaches us the rest of his Doctrine He therefore that denies this Infallibility hath no sufficient reason to beleeve the Article of the Churches Government and consequently will easily finde evasion to excuse his obedience to her commands The Unity of the Church being thus clearly delivered there needs no new task to shew what Schism is it being nothing else but the unknitting and dissolving these several manners of this Unity and Communion and in breaking aâ—under that tye and obligation by which these Unions of the several members with one another and of all with the Head are firm'd and made inviolable What remaines to be done is onely to shew that this Anatomy of Schism is the perfect picture nay the very Sceleton of the carkasse-Church of England and that they have infring'd the lawes of Unity in all the aforesaid manners And as for the first which is the Unity of all the Members under one Head or Chief Bishop and Pastour of the Church in whom at the time of the breach all the Hierarchical Order was summed up as in the highest top of that Heaven-reaching Climax you confesse here Sect. 5. that you cast it out of this Island The Authority I say of the chief Pastourship of the Bishop of Rome to which you and the whole Church you were then in were subject acknowledged by you not Patriarchal onely but a large step higher to wit universally extended over all Patriarchs and the whole Church was that which you cast out and subtracted your selfe from its obdiencee If then you will hold to your former grounds so largely to your disadvantage laid in your third Chapter that it is Schism in a Deacon or Priest to disobey a Bishop in a Bishop to refuse subjection to his Aroh-Bishop c. How will you excuse your selves from Schism in rejecting the Authority of the Head of the Church unless you can evidence that Authority null that is that Doctrine false to which you had been subject ever since your first Conversion as to a more superiour Governour than either Bishop Arch-Bishop Primate or Patriarch In vaine then was your long frivolous digression that Kings may erect and translate Patriarchates since a greater Authority than a Patriarch was rejected by you and cast out of this Island which no King ever pretended to erect and remove at pleasure In vain do you think to shelter your Schism under the wings of the Regal power since your King being at that time actually under the Pope as far as concerned Ecclesiastical matters and acknowledging his supreme Pastourship lies himself as deeply obnoxious to the charge of Schism as you his subjects and followers or rather much more as being the Ringleader of the breach So as no plea is so unwarrantable as to bring him for your excuse who is the person accounted most guilty and who needs a plea himself for his own far more inexcusable Schism and disobedience But what excuse you bring or not bring concerns us not at present onely this remains certain and acknowledg'd that you cast out of the Island that Supreme Authority in which at that time the Faithful of the Church you were in communicated and in which chiefly consisted the Unity of the Hierarchical Government arising orderly and knit np peaceably in acknowledgment of and subjection to that One Head Whether you did this justly or no belongs to the formal part of Schism and shall be discussed in the following Section Next for what concerns the Unity of one Member-Church with another it is no lesse evident you have broke asunder all positive Communion not in Government onely as hath been shewn but in Faith and Sacraments with all Churches which communicated with the See of Rome whom before your Schism you 〈◊〉 the onely and sole true Members of Christs mystical Body That you broke from their Communion in Government hath been already manifested from your rejecting her Supreme Governour in the subjection to whom they all communicated Nor is it less evident that you have broke from their Faith as appeares from the irreconcileable diversity of the points of Faith between us and the large difference between your 39. Articles and our Council of Trent Nor has the Unity you and those Churches had in Sacraments escaped better Five of them being par'd away as unnecessary the sixth transelementated from the sacred price of our Redemption into the egena elementa of bread and wine and the seventh onely that is Baptism with much adoe remaining inviolate lest you should forfeit the name of Christians also together with the reality If the denial of these and your styling the best act of our Religion to wit the the oblation of the Unbloudy Sacrifice in your 31. Article a blasphemous fiction and pernicious imposture and lastly if your persecuting us to death be signes of a positive communion with us then killing may be called kindness and railing votes against us may perhaps be styled Communicatory letters with us All Communication then both positive and negative with the Church you were in formerly was by you renounced yet at least some pretence of excuse had been producible if departing out of that Church you had either kept or renew'd Communion with some other which was acknowledged by all the World or at least by your selves before the breach to have been a true one But you can pretend no such thing as
be rendred that the Government was injust ' which as you see could not Irrational therefore was that present perswasion of theirs and if so not sprung from reason therefore from unreasonable passion that is from vice therefore sinful and obnoxious to punishment as all other like perswasions are which make men think and act against their duties and obligations Besides all the Logick we have hitherto heard assures us nothing can convince the understanding but evidence and therefore men take so much paines about the moods and figures that the discourse may prove evident wherefore whatsoever assent comes not out of Evidence must come from our will and wilfulnesse and by consequence cannot be free from desert of punishment if it happen to be wrong and wrongfull Neither availes it to pretend invincible ignorance since no man living if free from a proud spirit can be so sottish as not to know that it is his obligation to obey his Superiors so long setled in the possession of their command till most open and undeniable Evidences and not seeming ones onely should discover that Authority null And if the obligation be of belief he must condemn the Churches judgment in not seeing the falsity of her doctrine and prefer his own before millions more learned who liv'd and dy'd in that faith which savours too strong of a self-conceited pride or else imagin so little sincerity left in the Church that all see and wilfully adhere to a known falshood but himselfe which is a plain sign of a rash and Pharisaical presumption And are not those punishable yet the Doctor would stroke such a fellow on the head and give him sugar plums for following his present perswasion and self-conceit which he nicknames conscience Nay he highly applauds his first Reformers whose conscience no doubt was tainted with the same leaven The Material Schism then which was manifestly your fact is made formal by your want of evidence that the doctrine was erroneous and consequently her Government violable Both which joyn'd together give you in plain termes your own name of flat proper and formal Schismaticks and entitle you to all the bed-roll of vices and curses which you hoarded up for your self and your friends in your first Chapter SECT 11. The Doctors argument that the Popes power in England was deriv'd under the Kings Concession refuted BUt it is now high time to returne to overlook the work who after the declaration of the matter of fact confesses no great hold can be taken from the freeness of the Clergy's determination and therefore the whole difficulty devolves to this one enquiry whether the Bishop of Rome were Supreme Head or Governour of the Church of England in the reign of King Henry the eighth That is we are come about again to the beginning of the Book But I am mistaken he tells us he hath largely disproved in his Chap. 4 5 6. all pretensions from St. Peters Supremacy and from Englands Conversion to whose particular answers I refer the Reader for full satisfaction and he has now invented a new ground of the Popes Supremacy in England to wit the voluntary Concession of our Kings What the Doctor meanes I cannot imagine Some particular priviledges and as I may say pious curtesies have out of a special respect been granted by our Kings to that See to whom they owe their first knowledge of Christ and his Law but these are not the thing in debate The right of Supreme Authority is our question now who ever held this to come from the Concession of our Kings Yet this ayr-beating Champion of Schism first fancies this to be our tenet and then beats it all to dirt He is as valiant as Sir Iohn Falstaff let him tell his own story and hee 'l make you beleeve he has kill'd eleven Enemies when but one opposed him We onely found the Popes Primacy upon his Succession to St. Peter This is the onely adversary-point the Doctor is to combate which he hath most weakly opposed with grosse mistakes palpable contradictions to Scripture and pinning all the words that made for his purpose to every testimony as hath been shew'd But to counterfeit a triumph he makes every trivial thing done either by or about the Pope to be the very ground of his Primacy and then falls to work and impugnes them as really as if he thought we held them The Pope cannot doe any good action or convert a Nation but that must be the ground of his Universal Pastorship over us and be impugned accordingly A beggerly penny cannot be given to the Pope by our Kings for pious uses and out of a gratefull obligation but the poore Peter-pence and such like petty grants must presently be the Popes Universal Authority given him by the Concession of our Kings and that as such must be impugned The Kings of England France c. cannot be said by G de Heimburgh to be free from swearing obedience to the Pope at their instalment an obligation peculiar to the Empire of Germany but presently the Doctor concludes hence an absolute power in our Princes I suppose he means in Ecclesiastical matters for in temporal none denies it so as now the very ceremony of swearing obedience to the Pope is become the very granting of the formal universal Pastorship and they that doe it not are concluded to be free from the Popes Jurisdiction though he knows well enough that the King of France who as he confesses performes no such ceremonious courtesie towards him acknowledg'd notwithstanding himselfe subject to him as the Head of Gods Church Lastly which he touches here againe he cannot read in some Authors that Kings de facto executed the erecting and removing of Patriarchates though the testimony doe not exclude the Churches fore ordering it but presently the Popes Universal Power must be supposed to be transdignifi'd into a private Patriarchate and as a Patriarchate impugned Thus nothing can come amiss to the Doctor Every argument he undertakes to manage is equally strong and unresistable A pot gun will serve him to batter downe the walls of Rome He was borne a Controvertist and it is an even wager whether hee be better in the gift of Use and Applicatioon or in the Art of Dispute and Consutation Next comes another Dilemma or forked Argument which though proceeding on the former false supposition needs no answer yet for the Readers recreation we will afford a glance First it is observable that he never brings this bug-bear Argument upon the stage but when he has made a Prologue for it of some forg'd supposition of his own and then the Thing in vertue of that acts and talkes through the vizard of a mistake and yet ere it comes to a Conclusion the Doctors weak reason cracks to make both ends meet The summe of it is this that The Authority of the Pope was either originally in our Kings so as they could lawfully grant it to the Pope or not if not then the grant
of turfe which once forc't its passage through the midst of a Rock and with good reason too for why should an acknowledg'd fallibility bridle them now whom before an acknowledg'd infallibility could not restrain But you would make Queen Mary co partner in your Schism and alledge her retaining for some time the title of Head of the Church and her refusing to admit of a Legate from Rome which things you say will make it lesse strange that this Supreme Power of the Popes should be disclaimed in the time of King Henry the eighth Yet as for the first you know well enough that she never pretended it as her lawful title but onely permitted that the former phrase of the Lawes which nick-named her so might be used till she having setled the turbulent spirits raised by your good doctrine which opposed her renouncing it found an handsom occasion to disclaim that title usurp't by her late Predecessors Your selfe confessing that she urg'd the matter afterwards in a Parliament and with much difficulty obtained it Which plainly cleares her and makes your bringing her Authority upon the stage very frivolous the fact being acknowledgedly against her will But I see not how it can excuse you rather it accuses your Brethren at that time both of schism and impudence in forcing their Princess to retain an unjustly assumed title against both her Will and her Conscience What force he puts in her denying a Legate no man knowes unless he could dive into the mysterious depth of the Doctors thoughts For besides that there was another Legate in England at that time All Catholick Countries when they saw it convenient have done the same and yet arâ— reputed true sons of the Church since they retaine as humble an Obedience to the See of Rome and as firmly acknowledge her authority as those who admit them But I see the Doctâ—â— knowes not in what the absolute Supremacy as he calls it of the Pope consists Every waving of any request or favour is with him a flat denial and rejection of the Authority as if they who denied the former Kings of England subsidies deny'd them to be Monarchs or Heads of the Common-wealth Neither can I see that this as you fancy makes your breach lesse strange but rather much stranger that whereas Rome was so farre from that tyranny falsely by you imputed to her that you might have as Queen Mary and as Catholick Kings now doe deny'd to admit the Popes Legats and all such flowers of pious friendship or as you will call them extravagant encroachments and yet have remained in true charity with the faithful and Communion with that your Superiour yet neither this moderate carriage nor any thing else could satisfie your resolute and desperate disobedience but to reject the very Authority it selfe utterly to extirpate it root and branch and cast it out of this Island This renouncing then of the chiefest Authority of the Church you left you call in a strange expression the Bottome upon which the Foundation of Reformation was laid upon which by the same workmen who pulled downe a good house to build a worse was erected a superstructure in King Henry's dayes the number of the Sacraments translation of the Bible and the use of the Lords prayer in the English Tongue as if the Lords Prayer was never used in the vulgar language till King Henry's holinesse ordained it As for the Kings Vicar-general who presided in his duely-assembled Councel as you call it I can say no more of him but he was a proper fellow Domini similis like his Master Vicegerent to him in that high and mighty title of the Chief of Schismaticks the rotten Head of the corrupted body But Mr. Doctor proceeds in his Schism much farther advanced as he tells us in King Edwards dayes Yet first he is resolved to clear the way and remove a rub which he apprehends very dangerous to wit lest we should think to prove the acts made in his dayes invalid and vilifie them because the King was yet alas but a child assuring us therefore that the Lawes of this Realm ordain that what is done by the Protector is done by the Child and that too as well as if the Child had been a man But I will secure the Doctor of his sâ—are for though the child had been a man and had had as many wives as his Father yet neither he nor they had been a jot further from being plain Schismaticks unless this child or man had been wiser holier and oldeâ— than all Gods Church so to justifie the breach which his Father had made Very pitiful then had been the Doctors reâ—uge had the infant King the Head of theiâ— Church been at yeares of discretion but yeâ— far more pitiful is it the then Protector steering the helm of the Common-wealth whoâ—e traiterous and ambitious designe to intercept Queen Mary's succession being manifestly discover'd whatever he acted against Catholicks or their Religion Q. Mary's supports ought in all reason but the Doctors be rather imputed to interest than piety But nothing can prejudice as he thinks the regularity of his Reformation Schism once admitted as sacred no wonder if tyranny treachery and ambition be not onely lawful but pious and commendable Yet his tyranny in secular matters is become even the Supream Power in Ecclesiastical and so the Reformation goes on in the Doctors Book currantly and merrily especially though some Bishops resisted and were punisht yet as the Doctor sayes Arch-Bishop Cranmer who kept a Wench in King Henries time and the far greater number of Bishops joyning with him all is well and the Reformation valid Then to cry quits with us for their persecuting our Bishops he puts us in mind how their friends in Queen Maries dayes were not onely persecuted with fire but with â—agot too To answer which let the Dr. but clear those malefactors from Schisme and Sedition and we shall acknowledge the cruelty ours and the innocency theirs otherwise let them remember our pretended persecution was onely execution of justice and theirs a most sacrilegious and irreligious tyranny But I smell by the Dr. that he hath been in Iohn Foxes kennel The Reformations he mentions introduced in the Popedom of this head junior of their Church are many changes as the Dr. tells us and recessions from the doctrine and practises of Rome That is now grown reason enough to think all that was done to be lawfully done Besides saith he That of Images the lawfulnesse of the marriage of the Clergy was asserted the Dr. likes that point of faith dearly the English Liturgy formed the people got wine to their bread c. But that ill-favord c. dashes out the best Then then it was the Dr. should have added that those two sweet singers of Israel Hopkins and Sternhold as Cleveland expresses it murdered the Psalmes over and over with Another to the same then did the Later of these in a fit of divine fury
in the Doctors judgment Not considering which yet any prudent man would that the whole world whom before they accounted onely Catholick and in which had been hundreds of Kings Queens and Bishops nay perhaps thousands for one of theirs had ever condemned by their contrary beliefe these Votes and Acts to bee scismatical and heretical Besides this King before the breach acknowledging himselfe subject to that Authority in Ecclesiastical matters as all Catholick Kings now doe and as all his Ancestor-Kings ever since Englands conversion had done it must be as I have told you often most apparent evidence and such as greater cannot be imagin'd which may warrant him to exalâ— himselfe above the Popes Authority so long setled in possession and that in those very things in which before he was acknowledgedly under him especially the contrary verdict of such an universality as I have before mention'd with its weight not to be counterpois'd preponderating and mightily prejudicing any pretence of Evidence Again if the thing were evident how happened it that no Christian King till the time of King Henry the eighth and in his time none but he should discern this clear evidence unless perhaps though they say love is blind yet his desire to Anna Bullen did open his eyes in such miraculous manner that he saw by the heavenly light of her bright star-like eyes that the Pope was Antichrist his Authority unlawful and himselfe who was then found under it in Ecclesiastical matters to be indeed above it in case the Popes spiritual power should cross his carnal pleasure To conclude my answer to this Chapter I would ask two things of Mr. Doctor one is in case a King should have broke from the Church and brought in Schism into his Country whether it could probably be perform'd in any other manner than the very method by which their Reformation was introduced The other is whether the Reformation be yet perfectly compleat or rather that Queen Elizabeth swept the Church indeed but left the dust sluttishly behind the door if it be not yet compleat I would gladly know how far this Reformation and Receding from Rome may proceed and what be the certain stints and limits of this rowling Sea which it may not pass For I see no reason in the Doctors grounds but if the secular powers think it convenient they may reform still end wayes as they please nay even if they list deny Christ to be God an acute Socinian will solve very plausibly all the objections out of Scripture and produce allegations which I doubt not he will make far stronger than the Doctor doth his against the Pope nor will there want some obscure testimonies out of Antiquity and express ones from the Arrian Hereticks to evince the Tenet if this then were voted by a King some of his Bishops and a Parliament the Doctor must not disobey and hold Christs Divinity since the thing was done by them to whom as the Doctor sayes rightfull power legally pertain'd They having no infallibility then may happen to vote such a thing and the Doctor having no infallible certainty to the contrary ought not recede from his lawful Superiours so as upon these grounds all religion may be reformed into Atheism and the infallibility of the Church once denied the temporal Power hath no reason to have his rightful authority stinted but at pleasure to make Reformation upon Reformation from generation to generation per omnia saecula saeculorum THE THIRD PART Containing the answers to the foure last Chapters of Dr. Hammonds Schism SECT 1. Doctor Hammonds second sort of Schism and his pretence that they retain the way to preserve Unity in Faith refuted MAster Hammond hath at length finish't his greatest task and done preaching of the first species of Schism as it is an offence against the subordination which Christ hath by himselfe and his Apostles setled in the Church and is now arrived to the second sort as it signifies an offence against the mutual unity peace and charity which Christ left among his Disciples This Schism against Charity for methods sake as he tells us he divides into three species The first is a Schism in the Doctrine or Traditions a departure from the unity of the Faith once delivered to the Saints from the institutions of Christ of the Apostles and of the Universal Church of the first and purest times whether in Government or practises c. Where first this methodical Dr. makes Faith and Charity all one putting his Schism against Faith for the first species of his Schism against mutual Charity Next he ranks also the rejecting Christs Institution of Government under this second species of Schism against Charity which most evidently was the first General Head of Schism hitherto treated of that is of the Offence against Subordination setled by Christ in the Church For Christ could not settle such a subordination in the Church but he must at the same time institute the Government of the Church since there can be neither subordination without Government nor Government without subordination So as now the Schism against Government is come to be one of the Schisms against mutual Charity and to mend the matter comprehended under the same Head with Schism against Faith Was ever such a confusion heard of And yet all this is done saith the Doctor for methods sake But to proceed the second species of his Schism against mutual Charity is an offence against external peace and Communion Ecclesiastical Where I find as much blundering as formerly For these words must either signifie an Offence against Superiors and Governors of the Church and then it is again co-incident both with the first general Head of Schism which dissolves the subordination of the Churches subjects and also with the first particular species of Schism against mutual Charity which according to the Doctors method included a breach from the Government instituted by Christ. Or else they must signifie an Offence against the mutually and equally-due correspondence and Charity which one fellow-member ought to have to another and then it falls to be the same with his third and last species which he calls The want of that Charity which is due from every Christian to every Christian. So that if the jumbling all the Bells together in a confused disorder may be called musical then the Doctors division may be styled methodical After this he subdivides this first species to wit Schism against Faith into A departure from those Rules appointed by Christ for the founding and upholding truth in the Church and into The asserting particular doctrins contrary to Christs and the Apostolical pure Churches establishment But first he cleares himselfe of the former of these by answering our suggestion as he calls it that in casting out the Authority of the Bishop of Rome they have cast off the Head of all Unity To which he tells us the answer is obvious First that the Bishop of Rome was never appointed by
it cannot deceive us Now you see the Doctor is got as farre as the Church-door But when he heares them within the Church talk that a company of men can be Infallible he leaps you back at one jump as far as the Sceptick Schooles of the Heathen Academicks But how could Mr. Hammond imagine this pretence sufficient to acquit him from Scism in renouncing the way to preserue Unity of Faith or to prove that he and his fellowes still fully acknowledged it The way to preserve Unity of Faith held by all the Christian world before their breach was the beleefe of the Churches Infallibility and we think mans wit cannot invent a better for that End Either then this must be the way to preserve Unity in Faith or some other if this you manifestly broke and rejected it as hath been shewn and as the 19th Article of Queen Elizabeths new Creed professedly declares if some other whatever it is it must needs include a fallibility and uncertainty in the Church of the doctrine she teaches Wherefore either evidence to us that a professed and beleeved fallibility can be a better way to preserve Unity in Faith than a beleefe of Infallibility or else grant that renouncing the latter you renounced the best and most efficacious way to conserve such an Unity The second way to preserve Unity in Faith here mentioned by the Doctor as fully and zealously acknowledged by him his fellows is the establishment by our Saviour and his Apostles of an excellent subordination of all inferiour Officers of the Church to the Bishop in every City of the Bishops in every province to their Metropolitans of the Metropolitans in every region or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to Patriarchs or Primates allowing also amongst them such a primacy of Order or Dignity a◠might be proportionable to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c Thus the Doctor In answer to which w◠will examine a while whether this way thu◠laid out be indeed the way to preserve Unity i◠Faith For if notwithstanding this subordination no Priest is bound to beleeve his Bishop nor Bishop his Metropolitan nor Metropolitan his Patriarch how can this conduce to the Unity of Faith But peradventure he will say this subordination in obedience is a great help to keep out errours and then if this be so we must take into consideration how this point relates to Unity of Government as it is a means to conserve Truth the breaking of which Unity is called Schism So the question in that case is reduced to the examine how his subordination provides against Schism Let us admit then that all the world were made up of Churches governed in this Order as the Doctor hath put them I would ask if in the time of the Arian Heresie a Priest had dissented from his Bishop an Arian but yet consented with his Metropolitan had it been schism in so doing The Doctor must answer No for the Metropolitan being of higher Authority than the Bishop the adherence to him would more secure the Priest from schism than the relinquishing the Bishop could endanger him Next if a Bishop dissent from an heretical Metropolitan but consents with a Catholick Patriarch is it yet Schism Surely no since the same reason clears him that cleared the Priest before Again if the Metropolitan dissent from his own Primate or Patriarch but agree with all the rest is it yet schism Certainly no for the collection of all the rest being of greater Authority than any one in particular can by consequence more excuse him than the other can condemn him Hitherto then we have found none of the Doctors Amulets against Shism Let us proceed If a Patriarch dissent from the first from the Doctors 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but yet concedes to all the rest is it yet schism The Doctor answers no For in regard he owed the other onely something more of a civil respect as a younger brother does an Elder without any inferiority to him in Command or Jurisdiction it cannot be a Schism Forwards still Suppose some Nation or some Patriarch dissent from a General Council is it yet Schism still the Dr. answers No for in his third Chapter which branch't Schism into all its Species he put no such schism as that against a General Council How then hath Mr. Hammond by this new way provided against Schism if according to this Subordination all the Church may fall together by the eares and all may find lawful excuses to secure them from being Scismaticks since the oeconomy of that distracted Family is so order'd that neither any one in particular nor any in common have any tie to hold them to the rest without which ty of consent in matters of faith this imagin'd subordination can no way be a meanes to preserve Unity of Faith and conquently the Drs. Church government without some stronger obligation to knit up all this Order in an Unity is not an Act of Providence either worthy our Saviour or his Apostles But what is become of the King or Emperour all this while is he no body now who before was the Chief It seemes the Apostles made no reckoning of him in all their Providence It is wonderful Mr. Hammond should so forget himself and proceed so inconsonantly to his own grounds that whereas before the King was Chief Governour Head of the Church Supreme in Ecclesiastical matters over and above both Metropolitans and Patriarchs c. Now in treating the Government of the Church instituted to preserve the Unity of Faith he thinks the Head of the Church whom he had formerly exalted above all that is called HOLY not worth the mentioning Does he think the Unity of such a Head conduces nothing to the preservation of Unity in Faith which yet he grants to a far more inferiour Bishop or accounts he it a small sin for a Patriarch to dissent from so Sacred a Head of his Church and his lawful Superiour nay Supreme in Ecclestastical matters and to whom the rightful power as the Doctor told us in those things legally pertaines Yet Mr. Hammond had good reason to omit it For though he may talk of and advance that doctrine in common so to escape the Supremacy of the Pope for you must conceive that he had rather have even a Bramble rule over their Church than that all o're spreading Cedar the Bishop of Rome yet he declines it as handsomely as he can when he should apply that doctrine to particulars as is seen in our present case For indeed who would not laugh at him if he had told us as he must had he introduced the King that it was the heighth of Schism to dissent in a point of Faith from a Thing which neither the Catholikes nor yet Protestants as you here see acknowledge but a kind of a Lay-Elder an Office which were it not three dayes older might seem borrowed from their dearly beloved brethren the Presbyterians Yet the Doctor is grown kind and allows
or at least that year was pure again For it cannot be imagin'd the doctrine of that Council was pure but the beleefe of the Faithful in that Age taught by those Pastors which there resided must be pure also Far more consonant then to their grounds is the doctrine of the Puritans denying promiscuously all Antiquity than to pick and cull out at pleasure what serves their turn as doe the Protestants and to like and reject allow and disallow what makes for or against them without giving any evident reason why they put such a difference In vain therefore does the Doctor like a very Saint pretend in behalfe of their Church an unaffected ignorance though they should mistake being conscious to himselfe what pitiful shifts he makes use of in stead of grounds In vain does he hope that this ruliness as he calls it and obedience of theirs will render them approvable to God unless they can render God an approved reason why they will at pleasure hold his sacred Spouse the Church holy in one Age and adulterate in another and shape and fashion Christs seamless coat according to the mode of their ever-changing fancy Lastly most vainly doe they hope this ruliness in holding to the first 300. yeares will lead them into all truth unless they could shew that all the points of Truth between them and us were professedly treated and decided in those times and the decision on their side He ends in a preaching manner with extolling the humble and docible temper of his Church Truly Mr. Doctor it is a wonderful commendation to your Church that she is yet to bee taught Pray when will she be at age to leave going to School when will she be out of her prentice-like tutorage and set up for her selfe to professe truth as a Church should do I thought a Church should have been Columna firmamentum veritatis the Pillar and firm foundation of Truth but yours is like the hinge of a door or a weather-cock docibly turning with every wind of doctrine How doe you think the Puritans or any other Sect should in reason yeeld any Authority to your Church since she professes her selfe yet learning her Faith that is as yet knowes it not If it be such a commendation in your Church to be docible I suppose it is so in others and consequently in the whole Church and then I pâ—ay who must teach her or what greater Professor is there on Earth of the knowledge of Christs Faith to whom the Universal Church may submit her selfe as dociâ—le Perhaps you will say that one particular Church must sisterly and charitably assist and teach another that is though each be ignorant it selfe yet like the blind leading the blind they must all be supposed mutual Mistreâ—ses and consequently all learned But let us examine a little further this docible and humble temper of your youngling Church Is it dâ—ciblenesse or humility think you to forsake a Mistress who had all the qualities which could give â—er Authority and fall to teach your selves new reformed doctrines without any Authority at all Such is the humble dâ—ciblenesse of your Church Is it docibleness to cast off the Authority of 14. General Councils and the consent of Christendome for twelve hundred yeares and rely upon your own judgments to interpret the rest as you list This is the so much brag d on docibleness and humble temper of your Church Parallel to the former or rather far ouâ—vying them though of a contrary strain is that most heroick Act of your docible humility to be willing to hold things concerning your eternal salvation upon the Authority of the four General Councils or the Doctors and Church of the first 300. yeares which Drs. and Councils notwithstanding it is an Article of your Faith that they are fallible And as for the Church of those times that it was fallible your selfe grants for you confesse that the same Church erred in the fourth Age. Now to hold Articles or points of Faith upon that Authority which it is an Article of Faith may deceive me is such a magnanimous piece of docible humility as I dare be bold to say in the Doctors behalfe neither the Apostles nor any Saint in the succeeding Church durst ever own Neither can the present Catholikes whom some who neither understand their own nor Catholike grounds laugh at as blindly humble and obedient to the Church lay claim to such an incomparable degree of humility proper and peculiar to the Protestants onely For we pretend not Faith certain but upon a deemed INFALLIBILITY in the Authority assuring it so as though they may be supposed blameable by you for failing in their grounds that is in believing the Church infallible yet they cannot be condemned for proceeding inconsequently upon those groundâ— for an infallible Authority deserves a firm assent But to stand to the acceptation of matters of Faith which you pretend most certain upon an Authority confessed by your selves uncertain is such a condiscension of humility such a prostrating your proper knowledge as is not onely a blindly-capâ—ivating your Judgment but even an utter renouncing all judgment prudence and common sence not a submitting the reason by a voluntary winking at objections but a quite extinguishing and perfect putting out of the very Eye of reason it selfe and is all one as if a man should say For any thing I know such a one may lye in what he tells mee yet neverthelesse I will strongly perswade my selfe that all hee sayes is most certainely true Yet this humility the Doctor calls here a special mark of the Church of Englands Reformation And surely you have reformed well since you have not only reform'd the Unity you before enjoy'd into distractions the Faith you formerly profest into new-fangled misbeleefes but your former reason and judgment into present folly and fancy What is said of your accepting the four Councils c. may also bee apply'd to your private interpretitions of Scripture which found your Faith which Faith you will have to be certain and firm though the persons Interpretation it is built on be fallible and obnoxious to errour The pious words in your own behalfe with which you close up your Chapter spoken in an Elegiack tone are very moanfully moving words out of a pulpit rhetorical enough for women not rational enough to satisfie any prudent man You professe you would preserve the Unity of the Apostolical Faith and primitive practises as entire as Christs body or garments Good Mr. Hammond leave mocking your Readers and tell us why the Primitive times must needs just end then when the Church began to flourish and the Fathers to write against your doctrine And as for Christs body or garments I see no such great respect in you or your Churches doctrine allow'd towards holy Reliques that I should be willing to trust those sacred pledges to your unhallowed hands from whose rude usage his mystical Body his Church Faith its Rule
Sacraments Government nor any thing though never so sacred left by our Saviour hath found any security SECT 3. An examination of some common notes produced by Dr. Hammond to particularize his Clients to bee no Schismaticks HIs 9th Ch. undertakes to clear his Church from the 2d sort of his Schism against mutual â—â—arity to wit from that Schism which is against extern Peace or Communion Ecclesiastical And first he alledges for his plea that they have retain'd the right form of Government c. So that now Schism against Subordination or Government for they are all one which was the first general Head of Schism and also comprehended under the first species of the second Head as appeares C. 8. S. 2. is by the Doctors accurate method come to be under the second species also of the same second General Head Which is all one as if dividing vivens into Sensitive and Insensitive and then subdividing the Genus of Sensitive into the two Species of Rational and Irrational or Man and Beast he should first treat of Insensitive the first Genus and that done fall in hand with Sensitive the second and then under each Species of that returne to treat professedly of Insensitive again that is to speak of Trees Shrubs and Herbs when he should speak of men and creatures endued with sence Surely Doctor Hammond is more methodical in his Sermons otherwise the World must needs look upon him as another S. Iohn Baptist because hee preaches in a Wilderness But let us follow him through all his Mazes distinguish't by no orderly path but what his own inconstant and desultorious track makes First then he tells us that they retaiâ— the Form of Government in and under which the Apostles â—ounded Ecclesiastical Assemblies or Communion viz. that of the Bishop and his inferioâ— Officers in every Church As if the Arian Hereticks who denied Christ to be God and almost all heresies that ever broke from Gods Church did not retain afterwards the Authority of their own Bishops But what availed it either them or you but to the greater danger of damnation if you adhered to those Bishops who had rejected the Authority of their former Superiours and taught you doctrines contrary to the Order of Gods Church without whose order much lesse against it they had no Authority to teach at all Again you tell us of one piece of your Government that of Bishops constituted indeed by the Apostles but you tell us not of the main hinge of your Churches Government which is of the King being its Head and Supreme in Ecclesiastical matters This is the sum and top of your Churches Government put us not off with an odd end of it This is that for substituting which in stead of the Ecclesiastical Head you rejected wee charge you of Schism and breach of Communion Ecclesiastical for in so doing you cut Gods Church into as many single headed and consequently diverse-bodied and disparate Congregations as there are Kingdoms in Christendome Shew us that this your Novelty in Government was practised by the Apostles in their Assemblies or instituted by them or their Blessed Master and then you will say something to the point Remember your purest times of the first 300. yeares shew us that all that time the Church was ordered by the Emperours Presidency or that this Government was instituted by Christ and his Apostles If you cannot then tell us how comes it to be held now as a chief point of Faith You may not in reason think to uphold your self your by testimonies out of the following ages unles you wil disavow your own grounds for those ages were as you say all impure Lay your hand then on your heart Mr. Hammond and tell us in good sadness if you be not gravell'd in your own doctrine while you maintain this new Lay Ecclesiastical Government His second plea is that as they maintain the Order of Bishops so they submit to the exercise of it acknowledging the Authority of those Governors In answer to which no new thing is to be said this being the very same with the former only First changed into Secondly For the obeying submitting to and acknowledging the due Authority of Governours is the very formal maintaining and accepting the Government which was his first branch So as this is another orderly production of the Drs. methodical Head which vents it selfe in first secondly thirdly c. upon all occasions though both his first second and third bee the selfe-same formal thing His third plea is that they observe the circumstances necessary to the assembling themselves for publick worship First that of place Churches Secondly that of time the Lords day primitive Festivals As if all Schismaticks in the World doe not meet at some set times and in some appointed and set places Thirdly Formes of prayer and praises almost all out of our Mass and Breviary Celebration of Sacraments onely five of them being quite abolish't and three quarters of the sixth Sacramentals Copes and Surplisses which you might by the same principles call rags of Rome Preaching against Christ and his Church such doctrine as none ever sent you or your first Fore-fathers to preach Cathechising infecting and imbuing tender and easie minds with your tainted doctrine Fourthly that of Ceremonies such as the practice of the Primitive Church hath sent down recommended to us Pray by whom did she send them down and recommend them to you Examine wel and you shall find that the same authority recommended to you many more as from her though you only accepted of what you thought convenient Lastly that of discipline to binde all to these performances Doubtlesse all Sects in the world impose some obligation upon their subjects to keep them together else they could not bee a Sect. Yet that your tie either to that or any thing else concerning Government is as slack as may be is manifest out of the slender provision made against Schism according to the Protestant grounds See Part 3. Sect. 1. as I have shewn in my answer to the fore-going Chapter Neither are you beholding to your doctrine for any discipline sufficient to hold you together in Unity a professed fallibility is too weak for that but to the secular Power the threat of whose sword held you in awe for a while but as soon as that Power was dissolv'd your slack-sinew'd Church which no tie either in Reason or Conscience held together bewrayed its composition and like the statue seen by Nabuchadonosor fell all to pieces It were not amiss ere I leave these three pleas already mentioned to take a second survey of them that the Reader may visibly perceive how less than nothing this Doctor hath said either to his or indeed any purpose To make this discovery sincere we must mark his intent and scope in this Chapter which is to free or clear their Church from the breach of Commmunion Ecclesiastical which he makes to consist in such and such things Now
alter old ones then you must either grant our Church in the fifteenth age to have been no Church which you dare not affirm for fear of spoiling your own mission or else grant that you were more bound to hold the Ceremonies recommended by her than those which descended from the Primitive times Since our Church could better see what was expedient for her present circumstances than the Primitive could foresee so long before hand what was likely to be convenient for future ages SECT 4. Of Doctor Hammonds charitablenesse in admitting all to his Communion and our pretended Uncharitablenesse for refusing to goe to their Assemblies IN the fifth place the Doctor professes like a good charitable man as hee is that they exclude no Christian from their Communion that will either filially or fraternally embrace it with them No truly to give your Religion its due it is a wonderful civil and courteous profession and admits all the old condemned Heresies into Communion provided they but professe Christ whatever points else they deny it matters not Nay it is sufficient if they call themselves Christians though all the world else calls them Hereticks yet your kind hearted Church cannot but friendly entertain them You keep open house for all commers The doctrine of Oportet haereses esse There must bee heresies is changed by your boon behaviour into It is impossible there should be heresies For whereas the world heretofore understood those to be Hereticks who held the letter of the Scripture and some points of Christianity but deny'd others which were the tenets of the Universal Church at that time you have now quite chang'd the former notion and think none to bee excluded from Communion that is none to be Hereticks that bear the name of a Christian so as though they deny all points of Christs doctrine yet professe Christs name and the outward letter of the Scripture let them come and welcome Anabaptists Brownists Presbyterians Quakers Carpocratians perhaps Arians nay even Simon Magus himselfe all these sew'd together only with the aiery sound of the word Christian will serve for broken-ware pieces to patch up Doctor Hammonds motley Church For since they hold to his grounds that is to professe Christs name and the letter of the Scripture he cannot in any reason admit some and refuse the rest Again the Doctor is willing to admit any that will filially or fraternally embrace communion with them that is all that will be either under them or at least not above them but is loath to admit communion with any that will paternally communicate with them that is be over and govern them No take heed of that as much courtesie as you please but not a dram of humility obedience nor subjection to Superiours These peace-preserving virtues would quite break the neck of Schism and Faction If there bee any such over-powering Authority though never so long setled in possession over the Countrey and acknowledged and beleeved by all Christians in never so many ages to bee of divine institution yet presently the spirit of Schism in the first place endeavours to break asunder the bonds of this paternal communion to pluck it down to the ground and cast it out of the Island You are willing you say to admit all to your Assemblies that acknowledge the foundation laid by Christ and his Apostles You love mightily to talk plausible words in the aire and in general as if you made account your Readers should bee all fooles to search no further than the empty sound of your universal sayings not applying them to the thing in question Good Mr. Doctor tell me what it is to acknowledge the foundation laid by Christ and his Apostles Is it to acknowledge Scripture All heresies in the world fly onely to it and make it their armour-house to oppugn Christ and his Church Arians and Socinians most of all and yet they can deny Christs Godhead So as by this means indeed you will have store of communicants Is it the true sence of the Scripture then truth being one and falshood manifold if their interpretation be different from yours both cannot bee true and consequently both acknowledge not the foundation left by Christ for falsifying his word cannot be that foundation Again if this bee the foundation left by Christ you must have some certain and known Rule to come by the true sence of the Scriptures else you cannot be certainly assured who acknowledge this foundation and so admit rashly to your Communion you know not whom Is it perhaps the true sence of Scripture but restrain'd to fundamentals still the same difficulty remaines unlesse you have some certain Rule to distinguish and sort out the Essentials from points of less importance to talk much of fundamentals and never tell us which are they is but a shuffling trick of a mountebank and very unbecomming a grave Divine Or is this Foundation perhaps the solid sence of Christs law written and planted in the tables of mens hearts by the Apostles and thence by a welllink't chain of Universal Tradition derived to our times If so you must admit onely Catholikes and exclude all the rest since onely they hold this foundation Or rather indeed since you deny this way of bringing down Faith to bee sufficient which Catholikes hold as a certain and infallible Rule it followes that if you will goe conseqently to your own grounds you must not admit them neither since this is not the by-you acknowledged foundation laid by Christ and his Apostles It remaines then that you are willing to admit all those that shall say they have the Foundation laid by Christ and his Apostles and then you cannot doubt but to have the brotherly fellowship of all hereticks and schismaticks in the world that have been are or shall bee since all pretend strongly in general termes to acknowledge that Foundation Nor is hee lesse devoutly charitable in the following words that they earnestly desire to bee admitted to the like freedome of external Communion with all the members of all other Christian Churches as oft as occasion makes us capable of that blessing of the one heart and the one lip This it is to bee so inured to a drowsy sounding vein of preaching Quodlibets till a man hath humm'd and drumm'd away all reason out of his head Speak sence man and let your pretended Charity come clad in Truth or else I must justly suspect it to bee nothing but Pharisaical hypocrisie I hate contradictions though told me in never so pious a tone Was it ever heard that any Catholike deny'd you Communion if you were capable of that blessing of one heart the same interiour beleefe and one lip the same exteriour profession To what purpose then are those seemingly pious words produc'd Leave off paying us with this hollow language empty of sence render your selves capable of that blessing in your actions renounce and repent your disobedience to your so-long-acknowledg'd Superiours Repeal your schismatical ordinances against
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
absolutely renounce ere wee can deem you other than Hereticks Either wee must judge the highest Tribunal in the world upon whose living voice wee build all Faith and true sence of the Scriptures to have lyed that is wee must judge our highest Superiours Pastours Teachers and Church to be erroneous in Faith and heretical or else we must judge you our equals at most and till you out-law'd your selves her subjects to be truly criminal and rightly condemned Thirdly Unus Deus una Fides unum Baptisma there is but one Faith as there is but one God That your Faith and ours cannot be one is most evident All our whole Church condemning yours as heretical and yours when the humour takes them as much detesting ours as erroneous Nay the most dreadful sacrifice of our Saviours Body and Bloud our Holy of Holies reviled and abhorred by your Church as a blasphemous fiction and pernicioâ—â— imposture Both our Faiths therefore cannot be one and consequently one of them is none but erreur against Faith which if firmly adhered to as it is must be Heresie either your Faith then or ours under penalty of maintaining a contradiction must necessarily bee held as heresie Now comes this Doctor and accuses us for the most uncharitable men in the world because wee will not judge our own Faith heretical and so free theirs Remember our Saviours words Mr. Dr. He that believes not is judg'd already Joyn this to Una Fides and our contradicting one another in most important points of Faith and you must necessarily conclude that neither of us if hee bee certain he beleeves and has that one Faith can make conscience of judging the other since the other is judged already in receding from or not having the true Faith Nay if he judge him not to be already judged he must judge himself to be in the same state of a self-judg'd unbeleever or rather on the contrary hee must make conscience of not judging him for such but by a colloguing piece of courtesie draw him into eternal perdition and himselfe follow him for his uncharitable connivence Thus you see the Dr. never meddles with any point but he blunders and destroys all the reason that ever concerns it Neither is it Charity but partly fear of most open shame partly ignorance of any grounds or what belongs to a Church or a Government which makes him not judge us to bee both Hereticks and Schismaticks since one of us must be such and he has a good mind to give us these new Titles whom hee very angrily here calls his vaunting enemies But as the former body of our Church out of which their few Reformers receded standing and remaining still one and the same together with that plain and common notion that a tree is not said to be broken from a branch but the branch from the tree-leaves them so much light of apprehension as not to dare to call us schismaticks so the acknowledg'd antiquity of our doctrine ever persisting the self-same and the confessed innovation of theirs frights them though unwillingly from styling us Innovators and Hereticks Fourthly our judging you may indeed seem to bee errour but malice and uncharitablenesse it cannot For since the grounds of our Faith which necessarily oblige us to judge thus of you and all such were held by us as firmly before you were ever dream'd of as at present you cannot object that wee invented new grounds to conclude so hardly of you in our thoughts nor that they were purposely and maliciously aymed at your then-unhatch'd Congregation So as you may if you please pretend that all the grounds on which wee hold our Faith Gods word and its true Interpretation are erroneous and therefore that our so judging of you necessarily springing from those Grounds is an errour yet malice or uncharitablenesse you cannot call it since wee cannot hinder the consequence from following without denying the grounds which infer it that is without denying the certainty and truth of all our Faith And me thinkes the zeal of our Missionaries to reduce others from the ill state wee conceive them in with daily hazarding and often laying down actually their lives for that end both in this Countrey and many others should transfer the charge of Uncharitablenesse to your colder partâ— for sure it can bee no lesse to judge them uncharitable who so readily and willingly lay down their dearest lives to redeem the soules of their very enemies and persecutors from a beleeved danger Yet this is the Doctors Goliah's sword as he calls it wherewith he threatned to give a fatall wound Though in truth I can discern no more edge in it than in a Beetle S. Cyprians testimony of Neminem damnantes neminem a communione nostrâ arcentes Condemning no man nor driving any from his Communion was spoken of himselfe of his own temper towards the rest of Gods Church acknowledged by himselfe to be such and that in the point of Rebaptization of Infants which though held stiffely by himselfe yet his charity so moderated his zeal that hee exprest his indifferency in those alledged words Neither had he reason to deny Communion to other Catholikes for a private opinion onely till the Church had interpos'd her Authority But where did the Doctor read either in S. Cyprian or any other Father that they admitted to their Communion those who had been condemned as Schismaticks and Hereticks by all the Churches in communion with the See of Rome as were the Protestants Unlesse hee can shew this hee abuses most absurdly that holy and learned Father by seeming to make him allow a promiscons admission of all Sects let them be what they please which savours more of Doctor Hammonds spirit who would have all come to his Church thas call themselves Christians than of Blessed S. Cyprians who knew better what belonged to Church-order and discipline But I thought there was one of the Drs mysteries in it when I saw the words of the Father alledged to an end so inâ—onsonant to his Doctrine without quotation of any place Book Chapter or Epistle But Mr. Hammond will have the thing between us to bee onely differences in opinion and indeed if that supposition that the onely ground of all our Faith in which consists our main difference were but an Opinion as on his part it is not I see no reason why either hee or I should trouble our selves to write Books in defence of an Opinionative Faith it were better in that case to eat drink shake hands and be merry nor trouble our selves with thinking whether there bee a Heav'n or no which wee can never come the ground of Faith being but an Opinion to any certain knowledge of In the last place of his first Part of this Schism hee tells us we beg the question in calling them Schismaticks because they deny it and offer to prove the contrary Certainly Mr. Hammond has been so long in the Pulpit that hee has forgot the fashion of
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
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
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
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 as a point of Faith that the Pope was its Head but abominated the contrary as sacrilegious and schismatical The first urger of the breach then was the King as is also acknowledged let us see then what or who urg'd him that so we may trace the schism to its first original and shew the new-born brat its right Parent As for the King while his blood was yet in due temper and not over-heated with passion that is while his Conscience was uncorrupted it is well known he was as humble a son to the Church and her supreme Pastour the Bishop of Rome as any King in Christendom is at this present admitting appeals thither and his jurisdiction here nay indeed more officiously obedient then any King now-adays can pretend writing or else causing to be set out in his name a Book against Luther in defence of the Roman-Catholick Faith and the Popes Authority which that Apostate rejected for which work also he received in recompence from the Pope the title of Defender of the Faith inherited by the succeeding Kings though they have forfeited the claim to it by disavowing the fact which deserved it What was King Henries judgment of the Popes Universal Authority till he fell into passion is easie to be seen in his own Book where he strongly and rationally proves it in these words Negare Lutherus non potest quin omnis Ecclesia fidelium Sacro-Sanctam sedem Romanam velut Matrem Primatemque recognoscat ac veneretur quaecunque saltem neque locorum distantiâ neque periculis interjacentibus prohibetur accessu Quamquam si vera dicunt qui ex India quoque veniunt huc Indi etiam ipsi tot terrarum tot marium tot solitudinum plagis disjuncti Romano tamen Pontifici se submittunt Ergo si tantam tam latè fusam potestatem neque Dei jussu Pontifex neque hominum voluntate consecutus est sed quâ sibi vi vendicavit dicat velim Lutherus quando in tantae ditionis erupit professionem Num potest obscurum esse initium tam immensae potentiae praesertim si intra hominum memoriam nata sit Quod si rem dixerit unam fortasse aut duas aetates superare in memoriam vobis redigat ex Historiis Alioqui si tam vetusta sit ut rei etiam tantae obliteratae sit origo Legibus omnino cautum esse cognoscat ut cujus jus omnium hominum memoriam ita supergreditur ut sciri non possit cujusmodi habuerit initium censeatur habuisse legitimum Vetitumque esse constat omnium consensu Gentium ne quae di◠manserunt immota moveantur Luther cannot deny but all the Church of the faithful acknowledges and venerates the See of Rome as their Mother and Chief at least whatsoever Church is not hindred from coming thither by distance of place or dangers in the way Although if credit may be given to those who come from the Indies even the very Indians separated by such vast Lands Seas and Wildernesses submit themselves to the Bishop of Rome Wherefore if the Pope hath obtained so great and far-spread an Authority neither by the command of God nor the will of men but hath arrogated it to himself by some violence I would know of Luther when and at what time the Pope broke forth into the profession of so ample a Iurisdiction Can the beginning of such a vast power be obscure Especially if it were born within the memory of man But if he shall say this power exceeds one or two ages let him bring it into our memory by histories Otherwise if it be so ancient that the original of a matter even of so great importance be worn out of memory then let him know it is expresly provided for by the Laws that his right and title which so transcends all memory of man as it cannot be known how it began is judged to have had a lawful original and it is manifest that the consent of all Nations forbid those things should be moved which have long remained setled and firm Thus was King Henry affected and in this affection continued till he found an itching I conceive not too conscientious to his darling Anne Bullen she being too crafty to forgoe the glittering offer of a Crown made unto her by the love-besotted King he grew straight perplext in minde for his former marriage began to think it unlawful though till now neither he nor any in the world ever scrupled it The devotion he bore to his Saint Anne Bullen put a new heat of Religion into his tender heart his restless Conscience alas perswaded him that his marriage with Katherine although confirmed by two and twenty yeers continuance and sealed with the endearing pledge of issue must needs be disanuld The Pope was urged to dispence with his second marriage though his former wife lived King Henry wooed intreated bribed then grew into choller and at last plainly threatned a Schisme unless the Pope would grant and justifie his unlawful desire Here now if the Romish Religion were made up onely of Policy as those think whose eys her prudent and heaven-ordered Government dazles into a blind envy of her priviledges the Pope should rather have sought pretences to yeeld to this unwarrantable request then have denyed it with the loss of a Kingdom from his Jurisdiction but the common Father of the Church more considered unless we will give way to the suspicious Reports of enemies what detriment and scandal to the whole world was likely to result from such an impious example in so eminent a person then consulted with flesh and blood how to second his desire or cloak his grant with the outside of a dangerous necessity He first counselled friendly then reprehended him Fatherly at last refused his consent absolutely Upon this King Henry grew furious put away his most pious and vertuous Lady Queen Katherine whose Angelical Sanctity and Dove like patience he always continued to honour when as he beheaded her assumed Rival Her disenthronement was Anna Bullens enstalment The marriage was celebrated with a divorce of our poor Country from the Church Appeals to Rome denied under pain of death The Popes Authority which had remained inviolable ever since we English were by its means converted utterly rejected nay the very name of Pope rased out of all the Books in England Monasteries and Religious Houses pulled down or robbed their Revenues given by their devout Founders to pious uses confiscare and consecrared to the Kings riotous Lust. Subscriptions forced to a new and till that time unheard of Church-Government a Secular Head of an Ecclesiastical Body they that would not subscribe disgraced or put to death Thus the Reformation was first set on foot and this lust of King Henry was so fruitful that it at once begot Tyranny Rapine the Reformation Adultery Protestancy at least the embrio of it Sacriledge Queen Elizabeth