are part of the Depositum of Christianity of the Analogy of faith and for this we are by the Apostle commanded to contend earnestly and therefore Controversies may become necessary but because they are not often so but oftentimes useless and always troublesom and as an ill diet makes an ill habit of body so does the frequent use of controversies baffle the understanding and makes it crafty to deceive others it self remaining instructed in nothing but useless notions and words of contingent signification and distinctions without difference which minister to pride and contention and teach men to be pertinacious troublesome and uncharitable therefore I love them not But because by the Apostolical Rule I am tyed to do all things without murmuring as well as without disputings I consider'd it over again and found my self reliev'd by the subject matter and the grand consequent of the present Questions For in the present affair the case is not so as in the others here the Questions are such that the Church of Rome declares them to reach as far as eternity and damn all that are not of their opinions and the Protestants have much more reason to fear concerning the Papists such who are not excus'd by ignorance that their condition is very sad and deplorable and that it is charity to snatch them as a brand from the fire and indeed the Church of Rome maintains Propositions which if the Antient Doctors of the Church may be believ'd are apt to separate from God I instance in their super addition of Articles and Propositions derived only from a pretended tradition and not contain'd in Scripture Now the doing of this is a great sin and a great danger Adoro Scripturae plenitudinem Si non est scriptum timeat vae illud adjicientibus detrahentibus destinatum said Tertullian I adore the fulness of Scripture and if it be not written let Hermogenus fear the woe that is destin'd to them that detract or add to it S. Basil says Without doubt it is a most manifest argument of infidelity and a most certain sign of pride to introduce any thing that is not written in the Scriptures our blessed Saviour having said My sheep hear my voice and the voice of strangers they will not hear and to detract from Scriptures or add any thing to the Faith that is not there is most vehemently forbidden by the Apostle saying If it be but a mans testament nemo superordinat no man adds to it And says also This was the Will of the Testator And Theophilus Alexandrinus says plainly It is the part of a Devilish spirit to think any thing to be Divine that is not in the authority of the holy Scriptures and therefore S. Athanasius affirms that the Catholicks will neither speak nor endure to hear any thing in Religion that is a stranger to Scripture it being immodestiae vaecordia an evil heart of immodesty to speak those things which are not written Now let any man judge whether it be not our duty and a necessary work of charity and the proper office of our Ministery to persuade our Charges from the immodesty of an evil heart from having a Devilish spirit from doing that which is vehemently forbidden by the Apostle from infidelity and pride and lastly from that eternal Wo which is denounc'd against them that add other words and doctrines than what is contain'd in the Scriptures and say Dominus dixit The Lord hath said it and he hath not said it If we had put these 〈◊〉 censures upon the Popish doctrine of Tradition we should have been thought uncharitable but because the holy Fathers do so we ought to be charitable and snatch our Charges from the ambient slame And thus it is in the question of Images Dubium non est quin Religio nulla sit ubicunque simulacrum est said Lactantius Without all peradventure where ever an Image is meaning for worship there is no Religion and that we ought rather to die than pollute our Faith with such impieties said Origen It is against the Law of Nature it being expresly forbidden by the second Commandment as Irenaeus 〈◊〉 Tertullian Cyprian and S. Augustine and therefore is it not great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 should contend sor that Faith which 〈◊〉 all worship of 〈◊〉 and oppose the superstition of such Guides who do teach their 〈◊〉 to give them veneration to prevaricate the Moral Law and the very Law of Nature and do that which whosoever does has no Religion We know Idolatry is a damnable sin and we also know that the Roman Church with all the artifices she could use never can justifie her self or acquit the common practices from Idolatry and yet if it were but suspicious that it is Idolatry it were enough to awaken us for God is a jealous God and will not endure any such causes of suspicion and motives of jealousie I instance but once more The Primitive Church did excommunicate them that did not receive the holy Sacrament in both kinds and S. Ambrose says that he who receives the Mystery other ways than Christ appointed that is but in one kind when he hath appointed it in two is unworthy of the Lord and he cannot have Devotion Now this thing we ought not to suffer that our people by so doing should remain unworthy of the Lord and for ever be indevout or cozen'd with a false shew of devotion or fall by following evil Guides into the sentence of Excommunication These matters are not trisling and when we see these errors frequently taught 〈◊〉 own'd as the only true Religion and 〈◊〉 are such evils which the Fathers say are the way of damnation we have reason to hope that all wise and good men lovers of souls will confess that we are within the circles of our duty when we teach our people to decline the crooked ways and to walk in the ways of Scripture and Christianity But we have observed amongst the generality of the Irish such a declension of Christianity so great credulity to believe every superstitious story such confidence in vanity such groundless pertinacy such vicious lives so little sense of true Religion and the fear of God so much care to obey the Priests and so little to obey God such intolerable ignorance such fond Oaths and manners of swearing thinking themselves more oblig'd by swearing on the Mass-book than the four Gospels and S. Patrick's Mass-book more than any new one swearing by their Fathers soul by their Godsips hand by other things which are the product of those many Tales are told them their not knowing upon what account they refuse to come to Church but only that now they are old and never did or their Country-men do not or their Fathers or Grand-fathers never did or that their Ancestors were Priests and they will not alter from their Religion and after all can give no account of their Religion what it is only they believe as
Church to day may be heretical at the next change or may betray her trust or obtrude new Articles in contradiction to the old or by new interpretations may clude antient truths or may change your Creed or may pretend to be the Spouse of Christ when she is idolatrous that is adulterous to God Your Religion is that which you must and therefore may competently understand You must live in it and grow in it and govern all the actions of your life by it and in all questions concerning the Church you are to chuse your Church by the Religion and therefore this ought first and last to be enquired after Whether the Roman Church be the Catholick Church must depend upon so many uncertain enquires is offered to be proved by so long so tedious a method hath in it so many intrigues and Labyrinths of Question and is like a long line so impossible to be perfectly strait and to have no declination in it when it is held by such a hand as yours that unless it be by material enquiries into the Articles of the Religion you can never hope to have just grounds of confidence In the mean time you can consider this if the Roman Church were the Catholick that is so as to exclude all that are not of her communion then the Greek Churches had as good turn Turks as remain damned Christians and all that are in the communion of all the other Patriarchal Churches in Christendom must also perish like Heathens which thing before any man can believe he must have put off all reason and all modesty and all charity And who can with any probability think that the Communion of Saints in the Creed is nothing but the Communion of Roman Subjects and the Article of the Catholick Church was made up to dispark the inclosures of Jerusalem but to turn them into the pale of Rome and the Church is as limited as ever it was save only that the Synagogue is translated to Rome which I think you will easily believe was a Proposition the Apostles understood not But though it be hard to trust to it it is also so hard to prove it that you shall never be able to understand the measures of that question and therefore your salvation can never depend upon it For no good or wise person can believe that God hath tied our Salvation to impossible measures or bound us to an Article that is not by us cognoscible or intends to have us conducted by that which we cannot understand and when you shall know that Learned men even of the Roman party are not agreed concerning the Catholick Church that is infallibly to guide you some saying that it is the virtual Church that is the Pope some that it is the representative Church that is a Council Some that it is the Pope and the Council the virtual Church and the representative Church together Some that neither of these nor both together are infallible but only the essential Church or the diffusive Church is the Catholick from whom we must at no hand dissent you will quickly find your self in a wood and uncertain whether you have more than a word in exchange for your soul when you are told you are in the Catholick Church But I will tell you what you may understand and see and feel something that your self can tell whether I say true or no concerning it You are now gone to a Church that protects it self by arts of subtilty and arms by violence and persecuting all that are not of their minds to a Church in which you are to be a Subject of the King so long as it pleases the Pope In which you may be absolved from your Vows made to God your Oaths to the King your Promises to Men your duty to your Parents in some cases A Church in which men pray to God and to Saints in the same Form of words in which they pray to God as you may see in the Offices of Saints and particularly of our Lady a Church in which men are taught by most of the principal Leaders to worship Images with the same worship with which they worship God and Christ or him or her whose Image it is and in which they usually picture God the Father and the holy Trinity to the great dishonour of that sacred mystery against the doctrine and practice of the Primitive Church against the express doctrine of Scripture against the honour of a Divine Attribute I mean the immensity and spirituality of the Divine Nature You are gone to a Church that pretends to be Infallible and yet is infinitely deceived in many particulars and yet endures no contradiction and is impatient her children should enquire into any thing the Priests obtrude You are gone from receiving the whole Sacrament to receive it but half from Christs Institution to a humane invention from Scripture to uncertain Traditions and from antient Traditions to new pretences from prayers which ye understood to prayers which ye understand not from confidence in God to rely upon creatures from intire dependence upon inward acts to a dangerous temptation of resting too much in outward ministeries in the external work of Sacraments and of Sacramentals you are gone from a Church whose worshipping is simple Christian and Apostolical to a Church where mens consciences are loaden with a burden of Ceremonies greater than that in the days of the Jewish Religion for the Ceremonial of the Church of Rome is a great Book in Folio greater I say than all the Ceremonies of the Jews contained in Leviticus c. You are gone from a Church where you were exhorted to read the Word of God the holy Scriptures from whence you found instruction institution comfort reproof a treasure of all excellencies to a Church that seals up that fountain from you and gives you drink by drops out of such Cisterns as they first make and then stain and then reach out and if it be told you that some men abuse Scripture it is true for if your Priests had not abused Scripture they could not thus have abused you but there is no necessity they should and you need not unless you list any more than you need to abuse the Sacraments or Decrees of the Church or the messages of your friend or the Letters you receive or the Laws of the Land all which are liable to be abused by evil persons but not by good people and modest understandings It is now become a part of your Religion to be ignorant to walk in blindness to believe the man that hears your Confessions to hear none but him not to hear God speaking but by him and so you are liable to be abused by him as he please without remedy You are gone from us where you were only taught to worship God through Jesus Christ and now you are taught to worship Saints and Angels with a worship at least dangerous and in some things proper to God for your Church worships the Virgin
a number of Fathers that their doctrine which they would prove thence was the Catholick Doctrine of the Church because any number that is less than all does not prove a Catholick consent yet the clear sayings of one or two of these Fathers truly alleged by us to the contrary will certainly prove that what many of them suppose it do affirm and which but two or three as good Catholicks as the other do deny was not then matter of faith or a Doctrine of the Church for if it had these had been Hereticks accounted and not have remain'd in the Communion of the Church But although for the reasonableness of the thing we have thought fit to take notice of it yet we shall have no need to make use of it since not only in the prime and purest Antiquity we are indubitably more than Conquerors but even in the succeeding Ages we have the advantage both numero pondere mensurâ in number weight and measure WE do easily acknowledge that to dispute these questions from the sayings of the Fathers is not the readiest way to make an end of them but therefore we do wholly rely upon Scriptures as the foundation and final resort of all our perswasions and from thence can never be confuted but we also admit the Fathers as admirable helps for the understanding of the Scriptures and as good testimony of the Doctrine deliver'd from their fore-fathers down to them of what the Church esteem'd the way of Salvation and therefore if we sind any Doctrine now taught which was not plac'd in their way of Salvation we reject it as being no part of the Christian faith and which ought not to be impos'd upon consciences They were wise unto salvation and fully instructed to every good work and therefore the faith which they profess'd and deriv'd from Scripture we profess also and in the same faith we hope to be sav'd 〈◊〉 as they But for the new Doctors we understand them not we know them not Our faith is the same from the beginning and cannot become new BUT because we shall make it to appear that they do greatly innovate in all their points of controversie with us and shew nothing but shadows instead of substances and little images of things instead of solid arguments we shall take from them their armour in which they trusted and choose this sword of Goliah to combat their errors for non est alter talis It is not easie to find a better than the word of God expounded by the prime and best Antiquity THE first thing therefore we are to advertise is that the Emissaries of the Roman Church endeavour to perswade the good People of our Dioceses from a Religion that is truly Primitive and Apostolick and divert them to Propositions of their own new and unheard of in the first ages of the Christian Church FOR the Religion of our Church is therefore certainly Primitive and Apostolick because it teaches us to believe the whole Scriptures of the Old and New Testament and nothing else as matter of faith and therefore unless there can be new Scriptures we can have no new matters of belief no new articles of faith Whatsoever we cannot prove from thence we disclaim it as not deriving from the Fountains of our Saviour We also do believe the Apostles Creed the Nicene with the additions of Constantinople and that which is commonly called the Symbol of Saint Athanasius and the four first General Councils are so intirely admitted by us that they together with the plain words of Scripture are made the rule and measure of judging Heresies amongst us and in pursuance of these it is commanded by our Church that the Clergy shall never teach any thing as matter of Faith religiously to be observed but that which is agreeable to the Old and New Testament and collected out of the same Doctrine by the Ancient Fathers and Catholick Bishops of the Church This was undoubtedly the Faith of the Primitive Church they admitted all into their Communion that were of this faith they condemned no Man that did not condemn these they gave letters communicatory by no other cognisance and all were Brethren who spake this voice Hanc legem sequentes Christianorum Catholicorum nomen jubemus amplecti reliquos vero dementes vesanosque judicantes 〈◊〉 dogmatis infamiam sustinere said the Emperors Gratian Valentinian and Theodosius in their Proclamation to the People of C. P. All that believ'd this Doctrine were Christians and Catholicks viz. all they who believe in the Father Son and Holy Ghost one Divinity of equal Majesty in the Holy Trinity which indeed was the summ of what was decreed in explication of the Apostles Creed in the four first General Councils AND what faith can be the foundation of a more solid peace the surer ligaments of Catholick Communion or the 〈◊〉 basis of a holy life and of the hopes of Heaven hereafter than the measures which the Holy Primitive Church did hold and we after them That which we rely upon is the same that the Primitive Church did acknowledge to be the adaequate foundation of their hopes in the matters of belief The way which they thought sufficient to go to Heaven in is the way which we walk what they did not teach we do not publish and impose into this faith entirely and into no other as they did theirs so we baptize our Catechumens The Discriminations of Heresie from Catholick Doctrine which they us'd we use also and we use no other and in short we believe all that Doctrine which the Church of Rome believes except those things which they have superinduc'd upon the Old Religion and in which we shall prove that they have innovated So that by their confession all the Doctrine which we teach the People as matter of Faith must be confessed to be Ancient Primitive and Apostolick or else theirs is not so for ours is the same and we both have received this faith from the fountains of Scripture and Universal Tradition not they from us or we from them but both of us from Christ and his Apostles And therefore there can be no question whether the Faith of the Church of England be Apostolick or Primitive it is so confessedly But the Question is concerning many other particulars which were unknown to the Holy Doctors of the first ages which were no part of their faith which were never put into their Creeds which were not determin'd in any of the four first General Councils rever'd in all Christendom and entertain'd every where with great Religion and veneration even next to the four Gospels and the Apostolical writings OF this sort because the Church of Rome hath introduc'd many and hath adopted them into their late Creed and imposes them upon the People not only without but against the Scriptures and the Catholick Doctrine of the Church of God laying heavy burdens on Mens consciences and making the narrow way to Heaven yet narrower
the Church we think it fit to acquaint them that in the Primitive Church when the Bishops impos'd severe penances and that they were almost quite perform'd and a great cause of pity intervened or danger of death or an excellent repentance or that the Martyrs interceded the Bishop did sometimes indulge the Penitent and relax some of the remaining parts of his penance and according to the example of S. Paul in the case of the incestuous Corinthian gave them ease lest they should be swallowed up with too much sorrow But the Roman Doctrine of Indulgences is wholly another thing nothing of it but the abused name remains For in the Church of Rome they now pretend that there is an infinite of degrees of Christs merits and satisfaction beyond what is necessary for the salvation of his servants and for fear Christ should not have enough the Saints have a surplusage of merits or at least of satisfactions more than they can spend or themselves do need and out of these the Church hath made her a treasure a kind of poor-mans box and out of this a power to take as much as they list to apply to the poor Souls in Purgatory who because they did not satisfie for their venial sins or perform all their penances which were imposed or which might have been imposed and which were due to be paid to God for the temporal pains reserved upon them after he had forgiven them the guilt of their 〈◊〉 sins are forc'd sadly to roar in pains not inferiour to the pains of hell excepting only that they are not eternal That this is the true state of their Article of Indulgences we appeal to Bellarmine Now concerning their new foundation of Indulgences the first stone of it was laid by Pope 〈◊〉 VI. in his extravagant Vnigenitus de poenitentiis remissionibus A. D. 1350. This constitution was published Fifty years after the first Jubilee and was a new device to bring in customers to Rome at the second Jubilee which was kept in Rome in this Popes time What ends of profit and interest it serv'd we are not much concern'd to enquire but this we know that it had not yet passed into a Catholick Doctrine for it was disputed against by Franciscus de Mayronis and Durandus not long before this extravagant and that it was not rightly form'd to their purposes till the stirs in Germany rais'd upon the occasion of Indulgences made Leo the Tenth set his Clerks on work to study the point and make something of it BUT as to the thing it self it is so wholly new so merely devis'd and forged by themselves so newly created out of nothing from great mistakes of Scripture and dreams of shadows from antiquity that we are to admonish our charges that they cannot reasonably expect many sayings of the Primitive Doctors against them any more than against the new fancies of the Quakers which were born but yesterday That which is not cannot be numbred and that which was not could not be confuted But the perfect silence of antiquity in this whole matter is an abundant demonstration that this new nothing was made in the later laboratories of Rome For as Durandus said the Holy Fathers Ambrose Hilary Hierom Augustine speak nothing of Indulgences And whereas it is said that S. Gregory DC years after Christ gave Indulgences at Rome in the stations Magister Angularis who lived about 200. years since says he never read of any such any where and it is certain there is no such thing in the writings of S. Gregory nor in any history of that age or any other that is Authentick and we could never see any History pretended for it by the Roman writers but a Legend of Ledgerus brought to us the other day by Surius which is so ridiculous and weak that even their own parties dare not avow it as true story and therefore they are fain to make use of Thomas Aquinas upon the Sentences and Altisiodorensis for story and record And it were strange that if this power of giving Indulgences to take off the punishment reserv'd by God after the sin is pardoned were given by Christ to his Church that no one of the antient Doctors should tell any thing of it insomuch that there is no one Writer of Authority and credit not the more antient Doctors we have named nor those who were much later Rupertus Tuitiensis Anselm or S. Bernard ever took notice of it but it was a Doctrine wholly unknown to the Church for about MCC years after Christ and Cardinal Cajetan told Pope Adrian VI. that to him that readeth the Decretals it plainly appears that an indulgence is nothing 〈◊〉 but an absolution from that penance which the Confessor hath imposed and therefore can be nothing of that which is now adays pretended TRUE it is that the Canonical 〈◊〉 were about the time of Burchard lessen'd and alter'd by commutations and the ancient Discipline of the Church in imposing penances was made so loose that the Indulgence was more than the Imposition and began not to be an act of mercy but remisness an absolution without amends It became a trumpet and a levy for the Holy War in Pope Urban the Second's time for he gave a plenary Indulgence and remission of all sins to them that should go and fight against the Saracens and yet no man could tell how much they were the better for these Indulgences for concerning the value of indulgences the complaint is both old and doubtful said Pope Adrian and he cites a famous gloss which tells of four Opinions all Catholick and yet vastly differing in this particular but the Summa Angelica reckons seven Opinions concerning what that penalty is which is taken off by Indulgences No man could then tell and the point was but in the infancy and since that they have made it what they please but it is at last turn'd into a Doctrine and they have devised new propositions as well as they can to make sense of it and yet it is a very strange thing a solution not an absolution it is the distinction of Bellarmine that is the sinner is let to go free without punishment in this world or in the world to come and in the end it grew to be that which Christendom could not suffer a 〈◊〉 of Doctrines without Grounds of Scripture or Catholick Tradition and not only so but they have introduc'd a way of remitting sins that Christ and his Apostles taught not a way destructive of the repentance and remission of sins which was preached in the Name of Jesus it brought into the Church false and fantastick hopes a hope that will make men asham'd a 〈◊〉 that does not glorisie the merits and perfect satisfaction of Christ a doctrine expresly dishonourable to the full and free pardon given us by God through Jesus Christ a practice that supposes a new bunch of Keys given to the Church besides that
question is after what manner it is so whether after the manner of the slesh or after the manner of spiritual grace and sacramental consequence We with the Holy Scriptures and the primitive Fathers affirm the latter The Church of Rome against the words of Scripture and the explication of Christ and the doctrine of the primitive Church affirm the former 2. That they be careful not to admit such Doctrines under a pretence of being Ancient since although the Roman errour hath been too long admitted and is ancient in respect of our days yet it is an innovation in Christianity and brought in by ignorance power and superstition very many Ages after Christ. 3. We exhort them that they remember the words of Christ when he explicates the doctrine of giving us his flesh for meat and his bloud for drink that he tells us The flesh profiteth nothing but the words which be speaks are spirit and they are life 4. THAT if those ancient and primitive Doctors above cited say true and that the symbols still remain the same in their natural substance and properties even after they are blessed and when they are receiv'd and that Christ's body and bloud are only present to faith and to the spirit that then whoever tempts them to give Divine honour to these symbols or elements as the Church of Rome does tempts them to give to a creature the due and incommunicable propriety of God and that then this evil passes further than an errour in the understanding for it carries them to a dangerous practice which cannot reasonably be excus'd from the crime of Idolatry To conclude THIS matter of it self is an error so prodigiously great and dangerous that we need not tell of the horrid and blasphemous questions which are sometimes handled by them concerning this Divine Mystery As if a Priest going by a Baker's shop and saying with intention Hoc est corpus meum whether all the Bakers bread be turned into the body of Christ Whether a Church mouse does eat her Maker Whether a man by eating the consecrated symbols does break his fast For if it be not bread and wine he does not and if it be Christ's body and bloud naturally and properly it is not bread and wine Whether it may be said the Priest is in some sense the Creator of God himself Whether his power be greater than the power of Angels and Archangels For that it is so is expresly affirmed by Cassenaeus Whether as a Bohemian Priest said that a Priest before he say his first Mass be the Son of God but afterward he is the Father of God and the Creator of his body But against this blasphemy a book was written by John Huss about the time of the Council of Constance But these things are too bad and therefore we love not to rake in so filthy chanels but give only a general warning to all our Charges to take heed of such persons who from the proper consequences of their Articles grow too bold and extravagant and of such doctrines from whence these and many other evil Propositions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 frequently do issue As the tree is such must be the fruit But we hope it may be sufficient * to say That what the Church of Rome teaches of Transubstantiation is absolutely impossible and implies contradictions very many to the belief of which no faith can oblige us and no reason can endure For Christ's body being in heaven glorious spiritual and impassible cannot be broken And since by the Roman doctrine nothing is broken but that which cannot be broken that is the colour the taste and other accidents of the elements yet if they could be broken since the accidents of bread and wine are not the substance of Christ's body and bloud it is certain that on the Altar Christ's body naturally and properly cannot be broken * And since they say that every consecrated Wafer is Christ's whole body and yet this Wafer is not that Wafer therefore either this or that is not Christ's body or else Christ hath two bodies for there are two Wafers * But when Christ instituted the Sacrament and said This is my body which is broken because at that time Christ's body was not broken naturally and properly the very words of Institution do force us to understand the Sacrament in a sense not natural but spiritual that is truly sacramental * And all this is besides the plain demonstrations of sense which tells us it is bread and it is wine naturally as much after as before consecration * And after all the natural sense is such as our blessed Saviour reprov'd in the men of Capernaum and called them to a spiritual understanding the natural sense being not only unreasonable and impossible but also to no purpose of the spirit or any ways perfective of the soul as hath been clearly demonstrated by many learned men against the fond hypothesis of the Church of Rome in this Article SECT VI. Half Communion tho' confessed to be otherwise in Christs institution and primitive practice required upon pain of Excommunication The Question now is not so much whether it be a new as a better practice than what Christ instituted Council of Constance Cassander Aquinas c. acknowledge the Novelty Pope Gelasius calls it sacrilege Greek Church communicates the people in the Chalice OUR next instance of the novelty of the Roman Religion in their Articles of division from us is that of the half Communion For they deprive the people of the Chalice and dismember the institution of Christ and praevaricate his 〈◊〉 law in this particular and recede from the practice of the Apostles and though they confess it was the practice of the primitive Church yet they lay it aside and cur so all them that say they do amiss in it that is they curse them who follow Christ and his Apostles and his Church while themselves deny to follow them Now for this we need no other testimony but their own words in the Council of Constance Whereas in certain parts of the word some temerariously presume to affirm that the Christian people ought to receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist under both kinds of bread and wine and do every where communicate the Laity not only in bread but in wine also ---- Hence it is that the Council decrees and defines against this error that although Christ instituted after supper and administred this venerable Sacrament under both kinds of bread and wine yet this notwithstanding ---- And although in the primitive Church this Sacrament was receiv'd of the faithful under both kinds Here is the acknowledgment both of Christs institution in both kinds and Christs ministring it in both kinds and the practice of the primitive Church to give it in both kinds yet the conclusion from these premisses is We command under the pain of Excommunication that no Priest communicate the people under both kinds of bread and wine The
Antichrist if he ever get into that Seat or be in already and made it necessary for all of the Roman Communion to believe and obey him in all things SECT XI Other instances of new Doctrines and practices in the Roman Church It is easier to shew where our Religion was before Luther than where theirs was before the Council of Trent Great and Excellent persons have complained heavily of the corrupt State of that Church but without redress The Reformation preferred a New cure before an Old sore THERE are very many more things in which the Church of Rome hath greatly turn'd aside from the Doctrines of Scripture and the practice of the Catholick Apostolick and primitive Church SUCH are these The Invocation of Saints the Insufficiency of Scriptures without Traditions of Faith unto Salvation their absolving sinners before they have by Canonical penances and the fruits of a good life testified their repentance their giving leave to simple Presbyters by Papal dispensation to give Confirmation or chrism selling Masses for Nine-pences Circumgestation of the Eucharist to be ador'd The dangerous Doctrine of the necessity of the Priests intention in collating Sacraments by which device they have put it into the power of the Priest to damn whom he pleases of his own Parish their affirming that the Mass is a proper and propitiatory sacrifice for the quick and the dead private Masses or the Lord's Supper without Communion which is against the doctrine and practice of the Antient Church of Rome it self and contrary to the Tradition of the Apostles if we may believe Pope Calixtus and is also forbidden under pain of Excommunication Peractâ consecratione omnes communicent qui noluerint ecclesiasticis carere liminibus sic autem etiam Apostoli statuerunt sancta Romana tenet Ecclesia When the Consecration is finished let all Communicate that will not be thrust from the bounds of the Church for so the Apostles appointed and so the holy Church of Rome does hold The same also was 〈◊〉 by Pope Soter and Pope Martin in a Council of Bishops and most severely enjoyn'd by the Canons of the Apostles as they are cited in the Canon Law THERE are divers others but we suppose that those Innovations which we have already noted may be 〈◊〉 to verifie this charge of Novelty But we have done this the rather because the Roman Emissaries endeavour to prevail amongst the ignorant and prejudicate by boasting of Antiquity and calling their Religion the Old Religion and the Catholick so insnaring others by ignorant words in which is no truth their Religion as it distinguishes from the Religion of the Church of England and Ireland being neither the Old nor the Catholick Religion but New and superinduc'd by arts known to all who with sincerity and diligence have look'd into their pretences BUT they have taught every Priest that can scarce understand his Breviary of which in Ireland there are but too many and very many of the people to ask where our Religion was before Luther Whereas it appears by the premises that it is much more easie for us to shew our Religion before Luther than for them to shew theirs before Trent And although they can shew too much practice of their Religion in the degenerate ages of the Church yet we can and do clearly shew ours in the purest and first ages and can and do draw lines pointing to the times and places where the several rooms and stories of their Babel was builded and where polished and where furnished BUT when the Keepers of the 〈◊〉 slept and the 〈◊〉 had sown tares and they had choak'd the wheat and almost destroyed it when the world complain'd of the 〈◊〉 errors in the Church and being oppressed by a violent power durst not complain so much as they had cause and when they who had cause to complain were yet themselves very much abused and did not complain in all they might when divers excellent persons S. Bernard Clemangis Grosthead Marsilius Ocham Alvarus Abbat Joachim Petrarch Savanarola Valla Erasmus Mantuan Gerson Ferus Cassander Andreas Fricius Modrevius Hermannus Coloniensis Wasseburgius Archdeacon of Verdun Paulus Langius Staphilus Telesphorus de Cusentiâ Doctor Talheymius Francis Zabarel the Cardinal and Pope Adrian himself with many others not to reckon Wiclef Hus Jerom of Prague the Bohemians and the poor men of Lions whom they call'd 〈◊〉 and confuted with fire and sword when almost all Christian Princes did complain heavily of the corrupt state of the Church and of Religion and no remedy could be had but the very intended remedy made things much worse then it was that divers Christian Kingdoms and particularly the Church of England Tum primùm senio docilis tua saecula Roma Erubuit pudet exacti 〈◊〉 temporis odit Praeteritos foedis cum religionibus annos Being asham'd of the errors superstitions heresies and impieties which had deturpated the face of the Church look'd into the glass of Scripture and pure Antiquity and wash'd away those stains with which time and inadvertency and tyranny had besmear'd her and being thus cleans'd and wash'd is accus'd by the Roman parties of Novelty and condemn'd because she refuses to run into the same excess of riot and de-ordination But we cannot deserve blame who return to our antient and first health by preferring a New cure before an Old sore CHAP. II. The Church of Rome as it is at this day disordered teaches Doctrines and uses Practices which are in themselves or in their true and immediate Consequences direct Impieties and give warranty to a wicked Life SECT 1. Repentance according to the Romish Doctors not of obligation as soon as we sin by Gods Law but only before we die The Church requiring it once a Year at Easter is satisfied with a ritual repentance The Objection answered that this is not the Doctrine of the Church but the Opinion of some private Doctors Contrition with them not available without confession to a Priest but Attrition with it is And one act of Contrition will make all sure OUR First instance is in their Doctrines of Repentance For the Roman Doctors teach that unless it be by accident or in respect of some other obligation a sinner is not bound presently to repent of his sin as soon as he hath committed it Some time or other he must do it and if he take care so to order his affairs that it be not wholly omitted but so that it be done one time or other he is not by the precept or grace of Repentance bound to do more Scotus and his Scholars say that a sinner is bound viz. by the precept of the Church to repent on Holy days especially the great ones But this is thought too severe by Soto and Medina who teach that a sinner is bound to repent but once a year that is against Easter These Doctors indeed do differ concerning the Churches sense which according to the best of them is bad enough
the Church of Rome does not allow it to be of any value unless it be joyn'd with a desire to confess their sins to a Priest saying that a man by contrition is not reconcil'd to God without their Sacramental or Ritual penance actual or votive and this is decreed by the Council of Trent which thing besides that it is against Scripture and the promises of the Gospel and not only teaches for Doctrine the Commandments of Men but evacuates the goodness of God by their Traditions and weakens and discourages the best repentance and prefers repentance towards men before that which the Scripture calls Repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. BUT the malignity of this Doctrine and its influence it hath on an evil life appears in the other corresponding part of this Docrine For as Contrition without their ritual and sacramental confession will not reconcile us to God so Attrition as they call it or contrition imperfect proceeding from fear of damnation together with their Sacrament will reconcile the sinner Contrition without it will not attrition with it will reconcile us and therefore by this doctrine which is expresly decreed at Trent there is no necessity of Contrition at all and attrition is as good to all intents and purposes of pardon and a little repentance will prevail as well as the greatest the imperfect as well as the perfect So Gulielmus de Rubeo explains this doctrine He that confesses his sins grieving but a little obtains remission of his sins by the Sacrament of Penance ministred to him by the Priest absolving him So that although God working Contrition in a penitent hath not done his work for him without the Priests absolution in desire at least yet if the Priest do his part he hath done the work for the penitent though God had not wrought that excellent grace of contrition in the penitent BUT for the contrition it self it is a good word but of no severity or affrightment by the Roman Doctrine One contrition one act of it though but little and remiss can blot out any even the greatest sin always understanding it in the sense of the Church that is in the Sacrament of Penance saith Cardinal Tolet. A certain little inward grief of mind is requir'd to the perfection of Repentance said Maldonat And to 〈◊〉 a grief in general for all our sins is sufficient but it is not necessary to grieve for any one sin more than another said Franciscus de Victoriâ The greatest sin and the smallest as to this are all alike and as for the Contrition it self any intention or degree whatsoever in any instant whatsoever is sufficient to obtain mercy and remission said the same Author NOW let this be added to the former and the sequel is this That if a man live a wicked life for threescore or fourscore years together yet if in the article of his death sooner than which God hath not commanded him to repent he be a little sorrowful for his sins then resolving for the present that he will do so no more and though this sorrow hath in it no love of God but only a fear of Hell and a hope that God will pardon him this if the Priest absolves him does instantly pass him into a state of salvation The Priest with two fingers and a thumb can do his work for him only he must be greatly dispos'd and prepar'd to receive it Greatly we say according to the sense of the Roman Church for he must be attrite or it were better if he were contrite one act of grief a little one and that not for one sin more than another and this at the end of a long wicked life at the time of our death will make all sure UPON these terms it is a wonder that all wicked men in the world are not Papists where they may live so merrily and die so securely and are out of all danger unless peradventure they die very suddenly which because so very few do the venture is esteem'd nothing and it is a thousand to one on the sinners side SECT II. Confession as used in the Roman Church a trifling business whereby few are frighted from sinning but more made confident and go on in sinning Confessing and sinning going in a round Their Rules and Doctrines of Confession enjoyn some things that are dangerous and lead into temptation WE know it will be said That the Roman Church enjoyns Confession and imposes Penances and these are a great restraint to sinners and gather up what was scattered before The reply is easie but it is very sad For 1. FOR Confession It is true to them who are not us'd to it as it is at the 〈◊〉 time and for that once it is as troublesom as for a bashful man to speak Orations in publick But where it is so perpetual and universal and done by companies and crouds at a solemn set time and when it may be done to any one besides the Parish-Priest to a Friar that begs or to a Monk in his Dorter done in the ear it may be to a person that hath done worse and therefore hath no awe upon me but what his Order imprints and his Vitiousness takes off when we see Women and Boys Princes and Prelates do the same every 〈◊〉 And as oftentimes they are never the better so they are not at all asham'd but men look upon it as a certain cure like pulling 〈◊〉 a mans clothes to go and wash in a river and make it by use and habit by considence and custom to be no certain pain and the women blush or smile weep or are unmov'd as it happens under their veil and the men under the boldness of their Sex When we see that men and women confess to day and sin to morrow and are not 〈◊〉 from their sin the more for it because they know the worst of it and have felt it often and believe to be eas'd by it certain it is that a little reason and a little observation will suffice to conclude that this practice of Confession hath in it no affrightment not so much as the horrour of the sin it self hath to the Conscience For they who commit sins confidently will with less regret it may be confess it in this manner where it is the fashion for every one to do it And when all the world observes how loosly the Italians Spaniards and French do live in their Carnivals giving to themselves all liberty and licence to do the vilest things at that time not only because they are for a while to take their leave of them but because they are as they suppose to be so soon eas'd of their crimes by Confession and the circular and never-failing hand of the Priest they will have no reason to admire the severity of Confession which as it 〈◊〉 most certainly intended as a deletory of sin and might do its first intention if it were equally manag'd so now
which the Apostles receiv'd to open and shut the Kingdom of Heaven a Doctrine that introduces pride among the Saints and advances the opinion of their works beyond the measures of Christ who taught us That when we have done all that is commanded we are unprofitable servants and therefore certainly cannot supercrogate or do more than what is infinitely recompenc'd by the Kingdom of Glory to which all our doings and all our sufferings are not worthy to be compar'd especially since the greatest Saint cannot but say with David Enter not into judgment with thy servant for in thy sight no flesh living can be justified It is a practice that hath turn'd penances into a Fair and the Court of Conscience into a Lombard and the labours of Love into the labours of pilgrimages superstitious and useless wandrings from place to place and Religion into vanity and our hope in God to a confidence in man and our fears of hell to be a meer scar-crow to rich and confident sinners and at last it was frugally employed by a great Pope to raise a portion for a Lady the Wife of France schetto Cibo bastard Son of Pope Innocent viii and the merchandize it self became the stakes of Gamesters at Dice and Cards and men did vile actions that they might win indulgences by gaming making their way to heaven easier NOW although the Holy Fathers of the Church could not be suppos'd in direct terms to speak against this new Doctrine of Indulgences because in their days it was not yet they have said many things which do perfectly destroy this new Doctrine and these unchristian practices For besides that they teach a repentance wholly reducing us to a good life a faith that intirely relies upon Christs merits and satisfactions a hope wholly depending upon the plain promises of the Gospel a service perfectly consisting in the works of a good conscience a labour of love a religion of justice and piety and moral vertues they do also expresly teach that pilgrimages to holy places and such like inventions which are now the earnings and price of indulgences are not requir'd of us and are not the way of salvation as is to be seen in an Oration made by S. Gregory Nyssene wholly against pilgrimages to Jerusalem in S. Chrysostom S. Augustine and S. Bernard The sense of these Fathers is this in the words of S. Augustine God said not Go to the East and seek righteousness sail to the West that you may rcceive indulgence But indulge thy brother and it shall be indulg'd to thee you have need to inquire for no other indulgence to thy sins if thou wilt retire into the closet of thy heart there thou shalt find it That is All our hopes of Indulgence is from GOD through JESUS CHRIST and is wholly to be obtain'd by faith in Christ and perseverance in good works and intire mortification of all our sins To conclude this particular Though the gains which the Church of Rome makes of Indulgences be a heap almost as great as the abuses themselves yet the greatest Patrons of this new Doctrine could never give any certainty or reasonable comfort to the Conscience of any person that could inquire into it They never durst determine whether they were Absolutions or Compensations whether they only take off the penances actually impos'd by the Confessor or potentially and all that which might have been impos'd whether all that may be paid in the Court of men or all that can or will be required by the Laws and severity of God Neither can they speak rationally to the Great Question Whether the Treasure of the Church consists of the Satisfactions of Christ only or of the Saints For if of Saints it will by all men be acknowledged to be a defeisible estate and being finite and limited will be spent sooner than the needs of the Church can be served and if therefore it be necessary to add the merits and satisfaction of Christ since they are an Ocean of infinity and can supply more than all our needs to what purpose is it to add the little minutes and droppings of the Saints They cannot tell whether they may be given if the Receiver do nothing or give nothing for them And though this last particular could better be resolv'd by the Court of Rome than by the Church of Rome yet all the Doctrines which built up the new Fabrick of Indulgences were so dangerous to determine so improbable so unreasonable or at best so uncertain and invidious that according to the advice of the Bishop of Modena the Council of Trent left all the Doctrines and all the cases of Conscience quite alone and slubber'd the whole matter both in the question of Indulgences and Purgatory in general and recommendatory terms affirming that the power of giving Indulgence is in the Church and that the use is wholsome And that all hard and subtil questions viz. concerning Purgatory which although if it be at all it is a fire yet is the fuel of Indulgences and maintains them wholly all that is suspected to be false and all that is uncertain and whatsoever is curious and superstitious scandalous or for filthy lucre be laid aside And in the mean time they tell us not what is and what is not Superstitions nor what is Scandalous nor what they mean by the general term of Indulgence and they establish no Doctrine neither curious nor incurious nor durst they decree the very foundation of this whole matter The Churches Treasure Neither durst they meddle with it but left it as they found it and continued in the abuses and proceed in the practice and set their Doctors as well as they can to defend all the new and curious and scandalous questions and to uphold the gainful trade But however it be with them the Doctrine it self is prov'd to be a direct Innovation in the matter of Christian Religion and that was it which we have undertaken to demonstrate SECT IV. The Doctrine of Purgatory which is the Mother of Indulgences an Innovation Of punishment due when the guilt is removed The Antients prayers for the dead respected not Purgatory Their fire of Purgation not kindled till the day of Judgment Purgatory no Doctrine of the Church in Saint Austin's time The new Purgatory depends upon Legends and apparitions The Ancients knew but of two states after death of the just and unjust THE Doctrine of Purgatory is the Mother of Indulgences and the fear of that hath introduc'd these For the world hapned to be abus'd like the Countrey-man in the Fable who being told he was likely to fall into a delirium in his feet was advis'd for remedy to take the juice of Cotton He feared a disease that was not and look'd for a cure as ridiculous But if the Parent of Indulgences be not from Christ and his Apostles if upon this ground the Primitive Church never built the Superstructures of Rome must fall they can be no
opposition is plain Christs Testament ordains it The Church of Rome forbids it It was the primitive custom to obey Christ in this a later custom is by the Church of Rome introduced to the contrary To say that the first practice and institution is necessary to be followed is called Heretical to refuse the latter subintroduc'd custom incurrs the sentence of Excommunication and this they have pass'd not only into a law but into an Article of Faith and if this be not teaching for doctrines the Commandments of men and worshipping God in vain with mens traditions then there is and there was and there can be no such thing in the world So that now the question is not whether this doctrine and practice be an INNOVATION but whether it be not better it should be so Whether it be not better to drink new wine than old Whether it be not better to obey man than Christ who is God blessed for ever Whether a late custom be not to be preferr'd before the antient a custom dissonant from the institution of Christ before that which is wholly consonant to what Christ did and taught This is such a bold affirmative of the Church of Rome that nothing can suffice to rescue us from an amazement in the consideration of it especially since although the Institution it self being the only warranty and authority for what we do is of it self our rule and precept according to that of the Lawyer Institutiones sunt praeceptiones quibus instituuntur docentur homines yet besides this Christ added preceptive words Drink ye all of this he spake it to all that received who then also represented all them who for ever after were to remember Christs death But concerning the doctrine of Antiquity in this point although the Council of Constance confess the Question yet since that time they have taken on them a new confidence and affirm that the half Communion was always more or less the practice of the most Antient times We therefore think it fit to produce testimonies concurrent with the saying of the Council of Constance such as are irrefragable and of persons beyond exception Cassander affirms That in the Latin Church for above a thousand years the body of Christ and the blood of Christ were separately given the body apart and the blood apart after the consecration of the mysteries So Aquinas also affirms According to the antient custom of the Church all men as they communicated in the body so they communicated in the blood which also to this day is kept in some Churches And therefore Paschasius Ratbertus resolves it dogmatically That neither the flesh without the blood nor the blood without the flesh is rightly communicated because the Apostles all of them did drink of the chalice And Salmeron being forc'd by the evidence of the thing ingenuously and openly confesses That it was a general custom to communicate the Laity under both kinds It was so and it was more There was antiently a Law for it Aut integra Sacrament a percipiant aut ab integris arceantur said Pope Gelasius Either all or none let them receive in both kinds or in neither and he gives this reason Quia divisio unius ejusdem mysterii sine grandi sacrilegio non potest pervenire The mystery is but one and the same and therefore it cannot be divided without great sacrilege The reason concludes as much of the Receiver as the Consecrator and speaks of all indefinitely THUS it is acknowledged to have been in the Latin Church and thus we see it ought to have been And for the Greek Church there is no question for even to this day they communicate the people in the Chalice But this case is so plain and there are such clear testimonies out of the Fathers recorded in their own Canon Law that nothing can obscure it but to use too many words about it We therefore do exhort our people to take care that they suffer not themselves to be robb'd of their portion of Christ as he is pleased sacramentally and graciously to communicate himself unto us SECT VII Publick Prayers in an unknown Tongue the Roman practice As easie to reconcile Adultery to the seventh Commandment as this practice to the fourteenth Chap. of the first to the Corinthians Testimonies of the Fathers against it That such Service does not Edifie A dumb Priest may serve as well for them that understand not as he that speaks aloud for the first can do all the Signs and Ceremonies and the other does no more to them The words both of Civil and Canon Law against it Heathen Priests and Hereticks Turks and Jews agree with the Roman practice AS the Church of Rome does great injury to Christendom in taking from the people what Christ gave them in the matter of the Sacrament so she also deprives them of very much of the benefit which they might receive by their holy prayers if they were suffered to pray in publick in a Language they understand But that 's denyed to the common people to their very great prejudice and injury CONCERNING which although it is as possible to reconcile Adultery with the seventh Commandment as Service in a Language not understood to the fourteenth Chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians and that therefore if we can suppose that the Apostolical age did follow the Apostolical rule it must be concluded that the practice of the Church of Rome is contrary to the practice of the Primitive Church Yet besides this we have thought fit to declare the plain sense and practice of the succeeding Ages in a few testimonies but so pregnant as not to be avoided Origen affirms that the Grecians in their prayers use Greek and the Romans the Roman language and so every one according to his Tongue prayeth unto God and praiseth him as he is able S. Chrysostom urging the precept of the Apostle for prayers in a Language understood by the hearer affirms that which is but reasonable saying If a man speaks in the Persian Tongue and understands not what himself says to himself he is a Barbarian and therefore so he is to him that understands no more than he does And what profit can he receive who hears a sound and discerns it not It were as good he were absent as present For if he be the better to be there because he sees what is done and guesses at something in general and consents to him that ministers It is true this may be but this therefore is so because he understands something but he is only so far benefited as he understands and therefore all that which is not understood does him no more benefit that is present than to him that is absent and consents to the prayers in general and to what is done for all faithful people But If indeed ye meet for the 〈◊〉 of the Church those things ought to be spoken which the hearers understand
a Synod of German and French Bishops at Francford who discussed the Acts pass'd at Nice and condemn'd them And the Acts of this Synod although they were diligently suppressed by the Popes arts yet Eginardus Hincmarus Aventinus Blondus Adon Aymonius and Regino famous Historians tell us That the Bishops of Francford condemn'd the Synod of Nice and commanded it should not be called a General Council and published a Book under the name of the Emperor confuting that unchristian Assembly and not long since this Book and the Acts of Francford were published by Bishop Tillius by which not only the infinite fraud of the Roman Doctors is discover'd but the worship of Images is declar'd against and condemned A while after this Ludovicus the son of Charlemain sent Claudius a famous Preacher to Taurinum in Italy where he preach'd against the worshipping of Images and wrote an excellent book to that purpose Against this book Jonas Bishop of Orleans after the death of Ludovicus and Claudius did write In which he yet durst not assert the worship of them but confuted it out of Origen whose words he thus cites Images are neither to be esteemed by inward affection nor worshipped with outward shew and out of Lactantius these Nothing is to be worshipped that is seen with mortal eyes Let us adore let us worship nothing but the name alone of our only Parent who is to be sought for in the Regions above not here below And to the same purpose he also alleges excellent words out of Fulgentius and S. Hierom and though he would have Images retain'd and therefore was angry at 〈◊〉 who caus'd them to be taken down yet he himself expresly affirms that they ought not to be worshipped and withall adds that though they kept the Images in their Churches for history and ornament yet that in France the worshipping of them was had in great detestation And though it is not to be denied but that in the sequel of Jonas his book he does something prevaricate in this question yet it is evident that in France this Doctrine was not accounted Catholick for almost nine hundred years after Christ and in Germany it was condemned for almost 1200 years as we find in 〈◊〉 WE are not unskill'd in the devices of the Roman Writers and with how much 〈◊〉 they would excuse this whole matter and palliate the crime imputed to them and elude the Scriptures expresly condemning this Superstition But we know also that the arts of Sophistry are not the ways of Salvation And therefore we exhort our people to follow the plain words of Scripture and the express Law of God in the second Commandment and add also the exhortation of S. John Little children keep your selves from Idols To conclude it is impossible but that it must be confessed that the worship of Images was a thing unknown to the primitive Church in the purest times of which they would not allow the making of them as amongst divers others appears in the Writings of Clemens Alexandrinus Tertullian and Origen SECT IX Picturing God the Father and the Holy Trinity a scandalous practice in the Roman Church It is against the Doctrine and practice of the Primitive Church and of the wiser Heathens who had no Images or Pictures of their gods AS an Appendage to this we greatly reprove the custom of the Church of Rome in picturing God the Father and the most holy and undivided Trinity which besides that it ministers infinite scandal to all sober-minded men and gives the new Arrians in Polonia and Anti-Trinitarians great and ridiculous entertainment exposing that sacred Mystery to derision and scandalous contempt It is also which at present we have undertaken particularly to remark against the doctrine and practice of the primitive Catholick Church S. Clemens of Alexandria says that in the Discipline of Moses God was not to be represented in the shape of a Man or of any other thing and that Christians understood themselves to be bound by the same Law we find it expresly taught by Origen Tertullian Eusebius Athanasius S. Hierom S. Austin Theodoret Damascen and the Synod of Constantinople as it is reported in the 6. Action of the second Nicene Council And certainly if there were not a strange spirit of contradiction or superstition or deflexion from the Christian Rule greatly 〈◊〉 in the Church of Rome it were impossible that this practice should be so countenanc'd by them and defended so to no purpose with so much scandal and against the natural reason of mankind and the very Law of Nature it self For the Heathens were sufficiently by the light of Nature taught to abominate all Pictures or Images of God Sed nulla effigies simulacraque nulla Deorum Majestate locum sacro implevere timore They in their earliest ages had no Pictures no Images of their Gods Their Temples were filled with majesty and a sacred fear and the reason is given by Macrobius Antiquity made no Image viz. of God because the supreme God and the mind that is born of him that is his Son the eternal Word as it is beyond the Soul so it is above Nature and therefore it is not lawful that Figments should come thither 〈◊〉 Callistus relating the heresie of the Armenians and Jacobites says they made Images of the Father Son and Holy Ghost quod perquam ab sur dum est Nothing is more absurd than to make Pictures or Images of the Persons of the holy and adorable Trinity And yet they do this in the Church of Rome For in the windows of their Churches even 〈◊〉 Countrey-villages where the danger cannot be denied to be great and the scandal insupportable nay in their books of Devotion in their very Mass-books and breviaries in their Portuises and Manuals they picture the holy Trinity with three noses and four eyes and three faces in a knot to the great dishonour of God and scandal of Christianity it self We add no more for the case is too evidently bad but reprove the error with the words of their own Polydore Virgil Since the world began never was any thing more foolish than to picture God who is present every where SECT X. Setting up the Pope as universal Bishop an Innovation Among the Apostles the first Church-Governours no Prerogative of one over the rest a remarkable testimony of S. Cyprian to prove it Bishops succeeded the Apostles without Superiority of one over another by Christs Law The Pope has invaded their rights and diminished their power many ways Primitivs Fathers make every Bishop to have a share of power not from another Bishop but from Christ and are against one Bishops judging and forcing another Bishop to obedience Popes opposed when they interposed their authority in the affairs of other Churches THE last Instance of Innovations introduc'd in Doctrine and Practice by the Church of Rome that we shall represent is
full as bad as it is stated in the charge but they agree in the worst part of it viz. that though the Church calls upon sinners to repent on Holy days or at Easter yet that by the Law of God they are not tied to so much but only to repent in the danger or article of death This is the express Doctrine taught in the Church of Rome by their famous Navar and for this he quotes Pope Adrian and Cardinal Cajetan and finally affirms it to be the sense of all men The same also is taught by Reginaldus saying It is true and the opinion of all men that the time in which a sinner is bound by the commandment of God to be contrite for his sins is the imminent article of natural or violent death WE shall not need to aggravate this sad story by the addition of other words to the same purpose in a worse degree such as those words are of the same Reginaldus There is no precept that a sinner should not persevere in enmity against God There is no negative precept forbidding such a perseverance These are the words of this man but the proper and necessary consequent of that which they all teach and to which they must consent For since it is certain that he who hath sinn'd against God and his Conscience is in a state of enmity we say he therefore ought to repent presently because until he hath repented he is an enemy to God This they confess but they suppose it concludes nothing for though they consider and confess this yet they still saying a man is not bound by God's Law to repent till the article of death do consequently say the same thing that Reginaldus does and that a man is not bound to come out of that state of enmity till he be in those circumstances that it is very probable if he does not then come out he must stay in it for ever It is something worse than this yet that Sotus says even to resolve to defer our repentance and to refuse to repent for a certain time is but a venial sin But Medina says it is none at all IF it be replied to this that though God hath left it to a sinners liberty to repent when he please yet the Church hath been more severe than God hath been and ties a sinner to repent by collateral positive laws for having bound every one to confess at Easter consequently she hath tied every one to repent at Easter and so by her laws can lie in the sin without interruption but twelve Months or thereabouts yet there is a secret in this which nevertheless themselves have been pleased to discover for the ease of tender consciences viz. that the Church ordains but the means the exteriour solemnity of it and is satisfied if you obey her laws by a Ritual repentance but the holiness and the inward repentance which in charity we should have supposed to have been design'd by the law of Festivals Non est id quod per proeceptum de observatione Festorum injungitur is not that which is enjoyned by the Church in her law of Holy-days So that still sinners are left to the liberty which they say God gave even to satisfie our selves with all the remaining pleasures of that sin for a little while even during our short mortal life only we must be sure to repent at last WE shall not trouble our selves or our charges with confuting this impious Doctrine For it is evident that this gives countenance and too much warranty to a wicked life and that of it self is confutation enough and is that which we intended to represent IF it be answered that this is not the doctrine of their Church but of some private Doctors we must tell you that if by the Doctrine of their Church they mean such things only as are decreed in their Councils it is to be considered that but few things are determined in their Councils nothing but articles of belief and the practice of Sacraments relating to publick order and if they will not be reproved for any thing but what we prove to be false in the articles of their simple belief they take a liberty to say and to do what they list and to corrupt all the World by their rules of conscience But that this is also the Doctrie of their Church their own men tell us Communis omnium It is the Doctrine of all their men so they affirm as we have cited their own words above who also undertake to tell us in what sense their Church intends to tye sinners to actual repentance not as soon as the sin is committed but at certain seasons and then also to no more of it than the external and ritual part So that if their Church be injuriously charg'd themselves have done it not we And besides all this it is hard to suppose or expect that the innumerable cases of conscience which a whole Trade of Lawyers and Divines amongst them have made can be entred into the records of Councils and publick decrees In these cases we are to consider who teaches them Their Gravest Doctors in the face of the Sun under the intuition of Authority in the publick conduct of souls in their allowed Sermons in their books licens'd by a curious and inquisitive authority not passing from them but by warranty from several hands intrusted to examine them ne fides Ecclesioe aliquid detrimenti patioetur that nothing be publish'd but what is consonant to the Catholick faith And therefore these things cannot be esteem'd private opinions especially since if they be yet they are the private opinions of them all and that we understand to be publick enough and are so their Doctrine as what the Scribes and Pharisees taught their Disciples though the whole Church of the Jews had not pass'd it into a law So this is the Roman Doctrine though not the Roman law Which difference we desire may be observed in many of the following instances that this objection may no more interpose for an escape or an excuse But we shall have occasion again to speak to it upon new particulars BUT this though it be infinitely intolerable yet it is but the beginning of sorrows For the guides of Souls in the Roman Church have prevaricated in all the parts of Repentance most sadly and dangerously THE next things therefore that we shall remark are their Doctrines concerning Contrition which when it is genuine and true that is a true cordial sorrow for having sin'd against God a sorrow proceeding from the love of God and conversion to him and ending in a dereliction of all our sins and a walking in all righteousness both the Psalms and the Prophets the Old Testament and the New the Greek Fathers and the Latin have allowed as sufficient for the pardon of our sins through faith in Jesus Christ as our Writers have often prov'd in their Sermons and books of Conscience yet first
devices they serve themselves and they do not serve God They serve themselves by this Doctrine For they teach that what Penance is ordinarily imposed does not take away all the punishment that is due for they do not impose what was anciently enjoyn'd by the Penitential Canons but some little thing instead of it and it may be that what was anciently enjoyned by the Penitential Canons is not so much as God will exact for they suppose that he will forgive nothing but the guilt and the eternity but he will exact all that can be demanded on this side Hell even to the last farthing he must be paid some way or other even when the guilt is taken away but therefore to prevent any failing that way they have given Indulgences enough to take off what was due by the old Canons and what may be due by the severity of God and if these fail they may have recourse to the Priests and they by their Masses can make supply so that their Disciples are well and the want of ancient Discipline shall do them no hurt BUT then how little they serve God's end by treating the sinner so gently will be very evident For by this means they have found out a way that though it may be God will be more severe than the old Penitential Canons and although these Canons were much more severe than men are now willing to suffer yet neither for the one or the other shall they need to be troubled they have found out an easier way to go to Heaven than so An Indulgence will be no great charge but that will take off all the supernumerary Penances which ought to have been imposed by the ancient Discipline of the Church and may be required by God A little alms to a Priest a small oblation to a Church a pilgrimage to the image or reliques of a Saint wearing St. Francis's Cord saying over the Beads with an hallowed Appendent entering into a Fraternity praying at a priviledg'd Altar leaving a Legacy for a Soul-Mass visiting a priviledg'd Cemetery and twenty other devices will secure the sinner from suffering punishment here or hereafter more than his friendly Priest is pleased gently to impose To them that ask what should any one need to get so many hundred thousand years of pardon as are ready to be had upon very 〈◊〉 terms They answer as before That whereas it may be for Perjury the ancient Canons enjoyned Penance all their life that will be supposed to be twenty or forty years or suppose an hundred if the man have been perjur'd a thousand times and committed adultery so often and done innumerable other sins for every one of which he deserves to suffer forty years penance and how much more in the account of God he deserves he knows not if he be attrite and confess'd so that the guilt is taken away yet as much temporal punishment remains due as is not paid here but the Indulgences of the Church will take off so much as it comes to even of all that would be suffer'd in Purgatory Now it is true that Purgatory at least as is believ'd cannot last a hundred thousand years but yet God may by the acerbity of the flames in twenty years equal the Canonical Penances of twenty thousand years to prevent which these Indulgences of so many thousand years are devised A wise and thrifty Invention sure and well contriv'd and rightly applotted according to every mans need and according as they suspect his Bill shall amount to THIS strange Invention as strange as it is will be own'd for this is the account of it which we find in Bellarmine and although Gerson and Dominicus à Soto are asham'd of these prodigious Indulgences and suppose that the Pope's Quaestuaries did procure them yet it must not be so disown'd truth is truth and it is notoriously so and therefore a reason must be found out for it and this is it which we have accounted But the use we make of it is this That since they have declar'd that when sins are pardon'd so easily yet the punishment remains so very great and that so much must be suffered here or in Purgatory it is strange that they should not only in effect pretend to shew more mercy than God does or the primitive Church did but that they should directly lay aside the primitive Discipline and while they declaim against their Adversaries for saying they are not necessary yet at the same time they should devise tricks to take them quite away so that neither Penances shall much smart here nor Purgatory which is a device to make men be Mulata's as the Spaniard calls half Christians a device to make a man go to Heaven and to Hell too shall not torment them hereafter However it be yet things are so ordered that the noise of Penances need not trouble the greatest Criminal unless he be so unfortunate as to live in no Countrey and near no Church and without Priest or friend or money or notice of any thing that is so loudly talk'd of in Christendom If he be he hath no help but one he must live a holy and a severe life which is the only great calamity which they are commanded to suffer in the Church of England but if he be not the case is plain he may by these Doctrines take his ease SECT IV. The Roman Doctors themselves know how to spoil the hopes from these large grants of Indulgences if any should fancy that Purgatory would quickly be emptied and no need to continue Pensions for those that died many Years since Though a plenary or full Indulgence one would think should make all sure yet no such matter for there is a more full and a most full indulgence Other things that they say may evacuate Indulgences so that they lose their force therefore they advise to imploy the Priest and to multiply Masses Cardinal Albernotius his care by his last Will to have fifty thousand Masses said for his Soul WE doubt not but they who understand the proper sequel of these things will not wonder that the Church of Rome should have a numerous company of Proselytes made up of such as the beginings of David's Army were But that we may undeceive them also for to their souls we intend charity and relief by this Address we have thought fit to add one Consideration more and that is That it is not fit that they should trust to this or any thing of this not only because there is no foundation of truth in these new devices but because even the Roman Doctors themselves when they are pinch'd with an Objection let their hold go and to escape do in remarkable measures destroy their own new building THE case is this To them who say that if there were truth in these pretensions then all these and the many millions of Indulgences more and the many other ways of releasing souls out of Purgatory the innumerable Masses said every
us to intercede and we shall prevail for others but that a wicked person who is under actual guilt and oblig'd himself to suffer all punishment can ease and take off the punishment due to others by any externally good work done ungratiously is a piece of new Divinity without colour of reason or religion Others in this are something less scandalous and affirm that though it be not necessary that when the Indulgence is granted the man should be in the state of grace yet it is necessary that at some time or other he should be at any time it seems it will serve For thus they turn Divinity and the care of souls into Mathematicks and Clock-work and dispute minutes and periods with God and are careful to tell their people how much liberty they may take and how far they may venture lest they should lose any thing of their sins pleasure which they can possibly enjoy and yet have hopes of being sav'd at last 3. BUT there is worse yet If a man willingly commits a sin in hope and expectation of a Jubilee and of the Indulgences afterwards to be granted he does not lose the Indulgence but shall receive it which is expresly affirm'd by Navar and Antonius Cordubensis and Bellarmine though he asks the question denies it not By which it is evident that the Roman Doctrines and Divinity teach contrary to God's way who is most of all angry with them that turn his grace into wantonness and sin that grace may abound 4. IF any man by reason of poverty cannot give the prescrib'd Alms he cannot receive the Indulgence Now since it is sufficiently known that in all or most of the Indulgences a clause is sure to be included that something be offered to the Church to the Altar to a Religious House c. The consequent of this will be soon seen that Indulgences are made for the rich and the Treasures of the Church are to be dispensed to them that have Treasures of their own for Habenti dabitur But then God help the poor for them Purgatory is prepar'd and they must burn For the rich it is pretended but the smell of fire will not pass upon them FROM these premises we suppose it but too evident that the Roman Doctors prevaricate in the whole Doctrine of Repentance which indeed in Christ Jesus is the whole Oeconomy of Justification and Salvation it is the hopes and staff of all the world the remedy of all evils past present and to come And if our physick be poison'd if our staff be broken if our hopes make us asham'd how shall we appear before Christ at his coming But we say that in all the parts of it their Doctrine is insinitely dangerous 1. Contrition is sufficient if it be but one little act and that in the very Article of Death and before that time it is not necessary by the Law of God nay it is indeed sufficient but it is also insufficient for without Confession in act or desire it suffices not And though it be thus insufficiently sufficient yet it is not necessary For Attrition is also sufficient if a Priest can be had and then any little grief proceeding out of the fear of Hell will do it if the Priest do but absolve 2. Confession might be made of excellent use and is so among the pious Children of the Church of England but by the Doctrines and Practices in the Church of Rome it is made not the remedy of sins by proper energy but the excuse the alleviation the considence the ritual external and sacramental remedy and serves instead of the labours of a holy and a regular life and yet is so intangled with innumerable and inextricable cases of conscience orders humane prescripts and great and little artifices that scruples are more increased than sins are lessened 3. FOR Satisfactions and Penances which if they were rightly order'd and made instrumental to kill the desires of sin or to punish the Criminal or were properly the fruits of repentance that is parts of a holy life good works done in charity and the habitual permanent grace of God were so prevailing as they do the work of God yet when they are taken away not only by the declension of primitive Discipline but by new Doctrines and Indulgences regular and offer'd Commutations for money and superstitious practices which are sins themselves and increase the numbers and weights of the account there is a great way made for the destruction of souls and the discountenancing the necessity of holy life but nothing for the advantage of holiness or the becoming like to God AND now at last for a Cover to this Dish we have thought fit to mind the World and to give caution to all that mean to live godly in Christ Jesus to what an insinite scandal and impiety this affair hath risen in the Church of Rome we mean in the instance of their Taxa Camerae seu Cancellariae Apostolicae the Tax of the Apostolical Chamber or Chancery a book publickly printed and expos'd to common sale of which their own Espencaeus gives this account That it is a book in which a man may learn more wickedness than in all the Summaries of vices published in the World And yet to them that will pay for it there is to many given a Licence to all an Absolution for the greatest and most horrid sins There is a price set down for his Absolution that hath kill'd his Father or his Mother Brother Sister or Wife or that hath lien with his Sister or his Mother We desire all good Christians to excuse us for naming such horrid things Nomina sunt ipso penè timenda sono But the Licences are printed at Paris in the year 1500. by Tossan Denis Pope Innocent the VIII either was Author or Inlarger of these Rules of this Chancery-tax and there are Glosses upon them in which the Scholiast himself who made them affirms that he must for that time conceal some things to avoid scandal But how far this impiety proceeded and how little regard there is in it to piety or the good of souls is visible by that which Augustinus de Ancona teaches That the Pope ought not to give Indulgences to them who have a desire of giving money but cannot as to them who actually give And whereas it may be objected that then poor mens souls are in a worse condition than the rich he answers That as to the remission of the punishment acquir'd by the Indulgence in such a case it is not inconvenient that the rich should be in a better condition than the poor For in that manner do they imitate God who is no respecter of persons SECT VI. Other Instances of dangerous Doctrines as That one man may satisfie for another That a habit of sin is not a sin distinct from those actions by which it was contracted Mischief of this doctrine shewed The distinction of Mortal and venial sins
In what senso to be understood and admitted With them one whole sort of sins is venial in its own nature and a whole heap of them cannot make a mortal sin nor put us out of God's favour But when the Casuists differ so much in determining whether this or that be a venial or mortal sin if the Confessor says it is venial and it proves to be a mortal one a man's soul is betrayed THESE Observations we conceive to be sufficient to deter every well meaning person from running into or abiding in such temptations Every false Proposition that leads to impiety is a stock and fountain of temptations and these which we have reckon'd in the matter of Repentance having influence upon the whole life are yet much greater by corrupting the whole mass of Wisdom and Spiritual Propositions THERE are indeed many others We shall name some of them but shall not need much to insist on them Such as are 1. THAT one Man may satisfie for another It is the general Doctrine of their Church The Divines and Lawyers consent in it and publickly own it The effect of which is this that some are made rich by it and some are careless But qui non solvit in aere luat in corpore is a Canonical rule and though it was spoken in the matter of publick penances and so relates to the exterior Court yet it is also practis'd and avowed in satisfactions or penances relating to the inward Court of Conscience and penance Sacramental and the rich man is made negligent in his duty and is whip'd upon another man's back and his purse only is the Penitent and which is worst of all here is a pretence of doing that which is too near blasphemy but to say For by this Doctrine it is not to be said of Christ alone that he was wounded for our transgressions that he only satisfied for our sins for in the Church of Rome it is done frequently and pretended daily that by another man's stripes we are healed 2. THEY teach That a habit of sin is not a sin distinct from those former actions by which the habit was contracted The secret intention of which Proposition and the malignity of it consists in this that it is not necessary for a man to repent speedily and a man is not bound by repentance to interrupt the procedure of his impiety or to repent of his habit but of the single acts that went before it For as for those that come after they are excus'd if they be produc'd by a strong habit and the greater the habit the less is the sin But then as the repentance need not for that reason be hasty and presently so because it is only to be of single acts the repentance it self need not be habitual but it may be done in an instant whereas to mortifie a habit of sin which is the true and proper repentance there is requir'd a longer time and a procedure in the methods of a holy life By this and such like Propositions and careless Sentences they have brought it to that pass that they reckon a single act of Contrition at any time to be sufficient to take away the wickedness of a long life Now that this is the avowed Doctrine of the Roman Guides of souls will sufficiently appear in the Writings of their chiefest of which no learned man can be ignorant The thing was of late openly and professedly disputed against us and will not be denied And that this Doctrine is infinitely destructive of the necessity of a good life cannot be doubted of when themselves do own the proper consequents of it even the unnecessariness of present repentance or before the danger of death of which we have already given accounts But the reason why we remark it here is that which we now mentioned because that by the Doctrine of vitious habits having in them no malignity or sin but what is in the single preceding acts there is an excuse made for millions of sins For if by an evil habit the sinner is not made worse and more hated by God and his sinful acts made not only more but more criminal it will follow that the sins are very much lessened For they being not so voluntary in their exercise and distinct emanation are not in present so malicious and therefore he that hath gotten a habit of drunkenness or swearing sins less in every act of drunkenness or profane oath than hethat acts them seldom because by his habit he is more inclin'd and his sins are almost natural and less considered less chosen and not disputed against but pass by inadvertency and an untroubled consent easily and promptly and almost naturally from that principle So that by this means and in such cases when things are come to this pass they have gotten an imperfect warrant to sin a great deal and a great while without any new great inconvenience Which evil state of things ought to be infinitely avoided by all Christians that would be sav'd by all means and therefore all such Teachers and all such Doctrines are carefully to be declin'd who give so much easiness not only to the remedies but to the sins themselves But of this we hope it may be sufficient to have given this short warning 3. THE distinction of Mortal and Venial sins as it is taught in the Church of Rome is a great cause of wickedness and careless conversation For although we do with all the antient Doctors admit of the distinction of sins Mortal and Venial yet we also teach That in their own nature and in the rigor of the Divine Justice every sin is damnable and deserves God's anger and that in the unregenerate they are so accounted and that in Hell the damned suffer for small and great in a common mass of torment yet by the Divine mercy and compassion the smaller sins which come by surprize or by invincible ignorance or inadvertency or unavoidable infirmity shall not be imputed to those who love God and delight not in the smallest sin but use caution and prayers watchfulness and remedies against them But if any man delights in small sins and heaps them into numbers and by deliberation or licentiousness they grow numerous or are in any sense chosen or taken in by contempt of the Divine Law they do put us from the favour of God and will pass into severe accounts And though sins are greater or less by comparison to each other yet the smallest is a burthen too great for us without the allowances of the Divine mercy BUT the Church of Rome teaches that there is a whole kind of sins which are venial in their own nature such which if they were all together all in the world conjoyn'd could not equal one mortal sin nor destroy charity nor put us from the favour of God such for which no man can perish etiamsi nullum pactum esset de remissione though God's merciful Covenant of Pardon did not
any grace of God but wish it were more modestly pretended unless it could be more evidently prov'd Origen condemned this whole procedure of conjuring Devils long since Quaeret aliquis si convenit vel Daemones adjurare Qui aspicit Jesum imperantem Daemonibus sed 〈◊〉 potestatem dantem Discipulis super omnia daemonia ut infirmitates sanarent dicet quoniam non est secundùm Potestatem datam à salvatore adjurare Daemonia Judaicum enim est If any one asks Whether it be fit to adjure Devils He that beholds Jesus commanding over Devils and also giving power to his Disciples over all unclean spirits and to heal diseases will say that to adjure Devils is not according to the power given by our Blessed Saviour For it is a Jewish trick and S. Chrysostom spake soberly and truly We poor Wretches cannot drive away the flies much less Devils BUT then as to the manner of their Conjurations and Exorcisms this we say If these things come from God let them shew their warranty and their books of Precedents If they come not from God they are so like the Inchantments of Balaam the old Heathens and the modern Magicians that their Original is soon discovered BUT yet from what principle it comes that they have made Exorcists an Ecclesiastical Order with special words and instruments of collation and that the words of Ordination giving them power only over possessed Christians Catechumens or Baptized should by them be extended and exercis'd upon all Infants as if they were all possessed by the Devil and not only so but to bewitched Cattel to Mice and Locusts to Milk and Lettice to Houses and Tempests as if their Charms were Prophylactick as well as Therapeutick and could keep as well as drive the Devil out and prevent storms like the old 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of whom Seneca makes mention Of these things we cannot guess at any probable principle except they have deriv'd them from the Jewish Cabala or the Exorcisms which it is said Solomon us'd when he had consented to Idolatry BUT these things are so unlike the wisdom and simplicity the purity and spirituality of Christian devotion are so perfectly of their own devising and wild imaginations are so full of dirty superstitions and ignorant fancies that there are not in the world many things whose sufferance and practice can more destroy the Beauty of Holiness or reproach a Church or Society of Christians SECT XI The Church of Rome invents Sacramentals of her own without a Divine Warrant Such as Holy water Paschal wax Oil Palm-boughs c. Concerning which their Doctrine is that by these the Blood of Christ is applied to us and they not only signifie but produce Spiritual and supernatural effects How the people are abused with Legendary stories of miraculous cures wrought by them And are taught in the Sacraements themselves to rely so much upon their inherent virtue as to take less care of moral and virtuous dispositions TO put our trust and confidence in God only and to use Ministeries of his own appointment and sanctification is so essential a duty owing by us to God that whoever trusts in any thing but God is a breaker of the first Commandment and he that invents instrumental supports of his own head and puts a subordinate ministerial confidence in them usurps the rights of God and does not pursue the interests of true Religion whose very essence and formality is to glorifie God in all his attributes and to do good to man and to advance the honour and Kingdom of Christ. Now how greatly the Church of Rome prevaricates in this great Soul of Religion appears by too evident and notorious demonstration For she hath invented Sacramentals of her own without a Divine warrant 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said S. Cyril Concerning the holy and Divine mysteries of Faith or Religion we ought to do nothing by chance or of our own heads nothing without the Authority of the Divine Scriptures But the Church of Rome does otherwise invents things of her own and imputes spiritual effects to these Sacramentals and promises not only temporal blessings and immunities and benedictions but the collation or increment of Spiritual graces and remission of venial sins and alleviation of pains due to mortal sins to them who shall use these Sacramentals Which because God did not institute and did not sanctisie they use them without Faith and rely upon them without a promise and make themselves the fountains of these graces and produce confidences whose last resort is not upon God who neither was the Author nor is an Approver of them OF this nature are Holy Water the Paschal Wax Oyl Palm-boughs Holy Bread not Eucharistical Hats Agnus Dei's Meddals Swords Bells and Roses hallowed upon the Sunday called Laetare Jerusalem such as Pope Pius the second to James the II. of Scotland and Sixtus Quintus to the Prince of Parma Concerning which their Doctrine is this That the blood of Christ is by these applied unto us that they do not only signifie but produce spiritual effects that they blot out venial sins that they drive away Devils that they cure diseases and that though these things do not operate infallibly as do the Sacraments and that God hath made no express Covenant concerning them yet by the devotion of them that use them and the prayers of the Church they do prevail NOW though it be easie to say and it is notoriously true in Theology that the prayers of the Church can never prevail but according to the grace which God hath promis'd and either can only procure a blessing upon natural things in order to their natural effects or else an extraordinary supernatural effect by vertue of a Divine promise and that these things are pretended to work beyond their natural force and yet God hath not promis'd to them a supernatural blessing as themselves confess yet besides the falseness of the Doctrine on which these superstitions do rely it is also as evident that these instrumentalities produce an affiance and confidence in the Creature and estrange mens hearts from the true Religion and trust in God while they think themselves blessed in their own inventions and in digging to themselves Cisterns of their own and leaving the Fountain of Blessing and Eternal Life To this purpose the Roman Priesta abuse the People with Romantick stories out of the Dialogues of S. Gregory and venerable Bede making them believe that S. Fortunatus cur'd a Man's broken thigh with Holy Water and that S. Malachias the Bishop of Down and Connor cur'd a mad-man with the same medicine and that Saint Hilarion cur'd many sick persons with Holy Bread and Oyl which indeed is the most likely of them all as being good food and good medicine and although not so much as a Chicken is now a-days cur'd of the Pip by Holy Water yet upon all occasions they use it and the common people throw it upon Childrens
a very great charity to your soul I must confess I was on your behalf troubled when I heard you were fallen from the Communion of the Church of England and entred into a voluntary unnecessary schism and departure from the Laws of the King and the Communion of those with whom you have always lived in charity going against those Laws in the defence and profession of which your Husband died going from the Religion in which you were Baptized in which for so many years you lived piously and hoped for Heaven and all this without any sufficient reason without necessity or just scandal ministred to you and to aggravate all this you did it in a time when the Church of England was persecuted when she was marked with the Characterisms of her Lord the marks of the Cross of Jesus that is when she suffered for a holy cause and a holy conscience when the Church of England was more glorious than at any time before Even when she could shew more Martyrs and Confessors than any Church this day in Christendom even then when a King died in the profession of her Religion and thousands of Priests learned and pious men suffered the spoiling of their goods rather than they would forsake one Article of so excellent a Religion So that seriously it is not easily to be imagined that any thing should move you unless it be that which troubled the perverse Jews and the Heathen Greek Scandalum crucis the scandal of the Cross You stumbled at that Rock of offence You left us because we were afflicted lessened in outward circumstances and wrapped in a cloud but give me leave only to remind you of that sad saying of the Scripture that you may avoid the consequent of it They that fà ll on this stone shall be broken in pieces but they on whom it shall fall shall be grinded to powder And if we should consider things but prudently it is a great argument that the sons of our Church are very conscientious and just in their perswasions when it is evident that we have no temporal end to serve nothing but the great end of our souls all our hopes of preferment are gone all secular regards only we still have truth on our sides and we are not willing with the loss of truth to change from a persecuted to a prosperous Church from a Reformed to a Church that will not be reformed lest we give scandal to good people that suffer for a holy conscience and weaken the hands of the afflicted of which if you had been more careful you would have remained much more innocent BUT I pray give me leave to consider for you because you in your change considered so little for your self what fault what false doctrine what wicked and dangerous proposition what defect what amiss did you find in the Doctrine and Liturgy and Discipline of the Church of England For its doctrine It is certain it professes the belief of all that is written in the Old and New Testament all that which is in the three Creeds the Apostolical the Nicene and that of Athanasius and whatsoever was decreed in the four General Councils or in any other truly such and whatsoever was condemned in these our Church hath legally declared it to be Heresie And upon these accounts above four whole ages of the Church went to Heaven they baptized all their Catechumens into this faith their hopes of heaven was upon this and a good life their Saints and Martyrs lived and died in this alone they denied Communion to none that professed this faith This is the Catholick faith so saith the Creed of Athanasius and unless a company of men have power to alter the faith of God whosoever live and die in this faith are intirely Catholick and Christian. So that the Church of England hath the same faith without dispute that the Church had for 400 or 500 years and therefore there could be nothing wanting here to saving faith if we live according to our belief 2. For the Liturgy of the Church of England I shall not need to say much because the case will be very evident First Because the disputers of the Church of Rome have not been very forward to object any thing against it they cannot charge it with any evil 2. Because for all the time of King Edward VI. and till the eleventh year of Queen Elizabeth your people came to our Churches and prayed with us till the Bull of Pius Quintus came out upon temporal regards and made a Schism by forbidding the Queens Subjects to pray as by Law was here appointed though the prayers were good and holy as themselves did believe That Bull enjoyned Recusancy and made that which was an act of Rebellion and Disobedience and Schism to be the character of your Roman Catholicks And after this what can be supposed wanting in order to salvation We have the Word of God the Faith of the Apostles the Creeds of the Primitive Church the Articles of the four first general Councils a holy Liturgy excellent Prayers perfect Sacraments Faith and Repentance the ten Commandments and the Sermons of Christ and all the precepts and counsels of the Gospel We teach the necessity of good works and require and strictly exact the severity of a holy life We live in obedience to God and are ready to die for him and do so when he requires us so to do We speak honourably of his most holy Name we worship him at the mention of his Name we confess his Attributes we love his Servants we pray for all men we love all Christians even our most erring Brethren we confess our sins to God and to our Brethren whom we have offended and to Gods Ministers in cases of Scandal or of a troubled Conscience We communicate often we are enjoyned to receive the holy Sacrament thrice every year at least Our Priests absolve the penitent our Bishops ordain Priests and confirm baptized persons and bless their people and intercede for them and what could here be wanting to Salvation what necessity forced you from us I dare not suspect it was a temporal regard that drew you away but I am sure it could be no spiritual BUT now that I have told you and made you to consider from whence you went give me leave to represent to you and tell you whither you are gone that you may understand the nature and conditions of your change For do not think your self safe because they tell you that you are come to the Church You are indeed gone from one Church to another from a better to a worse as will appear in the induction the particulars of which before I reckon give me leave to give you this advice if you mean in this affair to understand what you do it were better you enquired what your Religion is than what your Church is for that which is a true Religion to day will be so to morrow and for ever but that which is a holy
yet if any of your Guides shall seem to question any thing of it I will bind my self to verifie it to a tittle and in that too which I intend them that is so as to be an objection obliging you to return under the pain of folly or heresie or disobedience according to the subject matter And though I have propounded these things now to your consideration yet if it be desired I shall represent them to your eye so that even your self shall be able to give sentence in the behalf of truth In the mean time give me leave to tell you of how much folly you are guilty in being moved by such mock-arguments as your men use when they meet with women and tender consciences and weaker understandings THE first is where was your Church before Luther Now if you had called upon them to speak something against your religion from Scripture or right reason or Universal Tradition you had been secure as a Tortoise in her shell a cart pressed with sheaves could not have oppressed your cause or person though you had confessed you understood nothing of the mysteries of succession doctrinal or personal For if we can make it appear that our religion was that which Christ and his Apostles taught let the truth suffer what eclipses or prejudices can be supposed let it be hid like the holy fire in the captivity yet what Christ and his Apostles taught us is eternally true and shall by some means or other be conveyed to us even the enemies of truth have been conservators of that truth by which we can confute their errors But if you still ask where it was before Luther I answer it was there where it was after even in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament and I know no warrant for any other religion and if you will expect I should shew any society of men who professed all the doctrines which are now expressed in the confession of the Church of England I shall tell you it is unreasonable because some of our truths are now brought into our publick confessions that they might be oppos'd against your errors before the occasion of which there was no need of any such confessions till you made many things necessary to be professed which are not lawful to be believed For if we believe your superinduced follies we shall do unreasonably unconscionably and wickedly but the questions themselves are so useless abstracting from the accidental necessity which your follies have brought upon us that it had been happy if we had never heard of them more than the Saints and Martyrs did in the first Ages of the Church but because your Clergy have invaded the liberty of the Church and multiplied the dangers of damnation and pretend new necessities and have introduc'd new articles and affright the simple upon new pretensions and slight the very institution and the Commands of Christ and of the Apostles and invent new Sacramentals constituting Ceremonies of their own head and promise grace along with the use of them as if they were not Ministers but Lords of the Spirit and teach for doctrines the commandments of men and make void the Commandment of God by their tradition and have made a strange body of Divinity therefore it is necessary that we should immure our Faith by the refusal of such vain and superstitious dreams but our faith was completed at first it is no other than that which was delivered to the Saints and can be no more for ever So that it is a foolish demand to require that we should shew before Luther a systeme of Articles declaring our sense in these questions It was long before they were questions at all and when they were made questions they remained so a long time and when by their several pieces they were determined this part of the Church was oppressed with a violent power and when God gave opportunity then the yoke was broken and this is the whole progress of this affair But if you will still insist upon it then let the matter be put into equal ballances and 〈◊〉 them shew any Church whose confession of Faith was such as was obtruded upon you at Trent and if your Religion be Pius Quartus his Creed at Trent then we also have a question to ask and that is Where was your Religion before Trent THE Council of Trent determined that the souls departed before the day of Judgment enjoy the Beatisical Vision It is certain this Article could not be shewn in the Confession of any of the antient Churches for most of the Fathers were of another opinion But that which is the greatest offence of Christendom is not only that these doctrines which we say are false were yet affirmed but that those things which the Church of God did always reject or held as uncertain should be made Articles of Faith and so become parts of your religion and of these it is that I again ask the question which none of your side shall ever be able to answer for you Where was your Religion before Trent I could instance in many particulars but I shall name one to you which because the thing of it self is of no great consequence it will appear the more unreasonable and intolerable that your Church should adopt it into the things of necessary belief especially since it was only a matter of fact and they took the false part too For in the 21. Sess. chap. 4. it is affirmed That although the holy Fathers did give the 〈◊〉 of the Eucharist to Infants yet they did it without any necessity of salvation that is they did not believe it necessary to their salvation which is notoriously false and the contrary is marked out with the black-lead of every man almost that reads their Works and yet your Council says this is sine controversià credendum to be believed without all controversie and all Christians forbidden to believe or teach otherwise So that here it is made an Article of Faith amongst you that a man shall neither believe his reason nor his eyes and who can shew any confession of Faith in which all the Trent doctrine was professed and enjoyned under pain of damnation and before the Council of Constance the doctrine touching the Popes power was so new so decried that as Gerson says he hardly should have escaped the note of Heresie that would have said so much as was there defined so that in that Article which now makes a great part of your belief Where was your Religion before the Council of Constance and it is notorious that your Council of Constance determined the doctrine of the half-communion with a Non obstante to Christ's institution that is with a defiance to it or a noted observed neglect of it and with a profession it was otherwise in the Primitive Church Where then was your Religion before John Hus and Hierom of Prague's time against whom that Council was convened But by this instance it appears
certainly it gives confidence to many men to sin and to most men to neglect the greater and more effective parts of 〈◊〉 repentance WE shall not need to observe how Confession is made a Minister of State a Pick-lock of secrets a Spy upon families a Searcher of inclinations a Betraying to temptations for this is wholly by the sault of the Men and not of the Doctrine but even the Doctrine it self as it is handled in the Church of Rome is so far from bringing peace to the troubled Consciences that it intromits more scruples and cases than it can resolve FOR besides that it self is a question and they have made it dangerous by pretending that it is by Divine Right and Institution for so some of the Schoolmen teach and the Canonists say the contrary and that it is only of humane and positive Constitution and by this difference in so great a point have made the whole Oeconomy of their repentance which relies upon the supposed necessity of Confession to fail or to shake vehemently and at the best to be a foundation too uncertain to build the hopes of salvation on it besides all this we say Their Rules and Doctrines of Confession enjoyn some things that are of themselves dangerous and lead into temptation An instance of this is in that which is decreed in the Canons of Trent that the Penitent must not only confess every mortal sin which after diligent inquiry he remembers but even his very sinful thoughts in particular and his 〈◊〉 desires and every circumstance which changes the kind of the sin or as some add does notably increase it and how this can be safely done and who is sufficient for these things and who can tell his circumstances without tempting his Confessor or betraying and defaming another person which is forbidden and in what cases it may be done or in what cases omitted and whether the confession be 〈◊〉 upon infinite other considerations and whether it be to be repeated in whole or in part and how often and how much these things are so uncertain casual and contingent and so many cases are multiplied upon every one of these and these so disputed and argued by their greatest Doctors by Thomas and Scotus and all the Schoolmen and by the Casuists that as Beat us Rhenanus complains it was truly observed by the famous John Geilerius that according to their cases enquiries and conclusions it is impossible for any man to make a right Confession So that although the shame of private Confession be very tolerable and easie yet the cases and scruples which they have introduc'd are neither easie nor tolerable and though as it is now used there be but little in it to restrain sin yet there is very much danger of increasing it and of receiving no benefit by it SECT III. Penances in the Roman Church very ineffectual how they differ from the antient Canonical ones Indulgences will relieve him that thinks his enjoyned penances too severe What vast stores of Pardons that Church boasts of and upon what easie terms granted They serve themselves by them but do not serve God An account why so many thousand years of pardon need be granted A holy life seems only necessary for him that has neither friends nor money BUT then for Penances and Satisfactions of which they boast so much as being so great restraints to sin these as they are publickly handled are nothing but words and ineffective sounds For first if we consider what the Penances themselves are which are enjoyned they are reduced from the antient Canonical Penances to private and arbitrary from years to hours from great severity to gentleness and slattery from fasting and publick shame to the saying over their Beads from Cordial to ritual from smart to money from heartiness and earnest to pageantry and theatrical Images of Penance and if some Confessors happen to be severe there are ways enough to be eased For the Penitent may have leave to go to a gentler or he may get Commutations or he may get somebody else to do them for him and if his Penances be never so great or never so little yet it may be all supplied by Indulgences of which there are such store in the Lateran at Rome that as Pope Boniface said No man is able to number them yet he confirm'd them all IN the Church of Sancta Maria de Popolo there are for every day in the year two thousand and eight hundred years of pardon besides fourteen thousand and fourteen Carentanes which in one year amount to more than a Million all which are confirm'd by the Pope Paschal I. Boniface VIII and Gregory IX In the Church of S. Vitus and Modestus there are for every day in the year seven thousand years and seven thousand Carentanes of pardon and a pardon of a third part of all our sins besides and the price of all this is but praying before an Altar in that Church At the Sepulchre of Christ in Venice there is hung up a prayer of S. Augustine with an Indulgence of fourscore and two thousand years granted by Boniface the VIII who was of all the Popes the most bountiful of the Churches treasure and Benedict the XI to him that shall say it and that for every day toties quoties The Divine pardon of Sica gave a plenary Indulgence to every one that being confessed and communicated should pray there in the Franciscan Church of Sancta Maria de gli Angeli and this pardon is ab omni poena culpa The English of that we easily understand but the meaning of it we do not because they will not own that these Indulgences do profit any one whose guilt is not taken away by the Sacrament of Penance But this is not the only snare in which they have inextricably entangled themselves but be it as they please for this whatever it was it was since inlarged by Sixtus IV. and Sixtus V. to all that shall wear S. Francis's Cord. The saying a few Pater nosters and Ave's before a privileg'd Altar can in innumerable places procure vast portions of this Treasure and to deliver a soul out of Purgatory whom they list is promised to many upon easie terms even to the saying of their Beads over with an appendent Medal of the Pope's benediction Every Priest at his third or fourth Mass is as sure as may be to deliver the souls of his Parents And a thousand more such stories as these are to be seen every where and every day ONCE for all There was a book printed at Paris by Francis Regnault A. D. 1536. May 25. called The hours of the most blessed Virgin Mary according to the use of Sarum in which for the saying three short prayers written in Rome in a place called The Chapel of the holy Cross of seven Romans are promised fourscore and ten thousand years of pardon of deadly sin Now the meaning of these things is very plain By these