his Nuntio and assumed the exercise of the Regal power both at Land and Sea and imprisoned those Catholicks and threatned to take their Lives who had promoted the peace and desired to return to the King's Subjection And when since the Kings happy Restoration the Nobility and Catholick Clergie of Ireland thought it necessary to present some Testimony of their future Allegiance to the King in which they declared that the Pope had no power to dispence with their fidelity to his Majesty or to absolve them from any Oaths they should take to that purpose which Declaration was attested and subscribed by many of the principal Catholick Nobility and others of the best quality and interest as likewise by some of their Titular Catholick Bishops and many of their Secular and Regular Clergie But complaint and notice hereof being sent to Rome the Pope was so offended at it that he caused his Nuntio in Flanders to command some of the Clergy who had subscribed that Paper to attend him and threatned to excommunicate them and Cardinal Barbaryne at the same time writ a Letter to the Bishops and Clergie of Ireland in which he signified how much the Pope was displeased that such a subscription and declaration had been made and commanded them to discountenance and suppress the same and take care that it should proceed no farther and the Cardinal added That they should remember what they well knew that the Kingdom remained still under Excommunication This being the case it cannot but be very necessary that his Majesty should know what opinion his Catholick Subjects have of this Foreign power which will observe no limits but of his own prescription and will concern all Roman English Subjects to explain their sence of it that they may not be thought to desire only the protection of those Laws which gives them equal title to whatever all other Subjects enjoy and to be willing to be dispenced with for performance of all those obligations which other Subjects are under and in consideration whereof the other benefits are granted to them VII Whether the English Catholick Subjects are not bound in Conscience to submit to the Laws of the Land in all things which are not against the Law of God and who is to be judge whether they are against the Law of God or no and if Men are forbid to keep Company or to have conversation with dissolute and prophane Persons how they can justifie the living in continual company with and in constant profession of friendship to those who they conceive and believe to be out of a possibility of Salvation and for which if in truth they do believe it the saying they may believe as well as hope that they will repent and become Catholick before they dye when whatever they may hope they do not in truth believe that they will ever change their Religion so that it is more reasonable to believe from the learning reason and judgment of many Catholicks that they do not believe it whatever they are obliged to say or rather whatever others say to them and whether Protestants who do think that the Papists do really believe they must be damned are not very excusable if they avoid and decline any commerce or conversation with them even to the abstaining from buying or selling with them or from entertaining any Servant of that Religion since it cannot reasonably be presumed that a Servant can love a Master which it is his duty to do who he doth believe will infallibly be damned VIII How Mr. Cressy and the rest who have received Orders in the Church of England can justifie or excuse their being re-ordained after they change their Religion since so many Councils have declared against it and no one for it and since the succession of Bishops is as plainly manifest in one Church as in the other and in truth may be more doubted upon their own grounds in the Roman from the number of Schismes and the continuance of them in which so many excommunicated Persons have been consecrated Bishops and they again ordained Priests under the same condemnation which may be supposed to have made a great confusion by many Mens having conferred Orders who by their Rules I say were Laymen themselves However what difference can there be assigned why such of the Greek Church who come to them are not re-ordained but those of the Church of England are compelled to be IX Whether St. Peter exercised any jurisdiction or assumed any superiority over the rest of the Apostles during the Seven Years he remained at Antioch as he ought to have done if the Supremacy was annexed to his Person or in the Four and twenty Years he reigned in Rome and whether the contrary be not manifest by St. Paul's Epistle to the Galathians not so much by the Contest that was between him and St. Peter about Circumcision even at Antioch in St. Peter's own Diocess where St. Paul withstood him to his face because he was to be blamed which is poorly answered by those who say it was in the warmth of disputation when all men contradict each other without distinction of quality or degree But I say I do not urge the equality so much by that contradiction though it be not answered as by the matter occasion and substance of that Epistle which seems to be written principally upon that Subject St. Paul had converted that People the Galathians from Paganisme to the Faith of Christ and he was no sooner gone from them to another place but some other Christians for there was no attempt to reduce again to Paganisme were inclined to amuse with Scruples that they were not throughly informed of the whole faith that was necessary nor by one who had ever seen our Saviour and so was not like to be himself informed as well as they especially when St. Peter preached contrary to what the other taught so that the weight of what was objected by those whoever they were was the incompetency of the Person who had taught them in comparison of the other and particularly of St. Peter So that St. Paul could not at this time have been ignorant of that Supremacy if there had been any this Epistle being written above Seventeen Years after his conversion nor could he have avoided the mentioning of it upon this argument if he had known it especially since he writ that Letter from Rome where Peter at the same time was nor could he more clearly have confuted that Opinion than he hath done except he had believed St. Peter himself to have affected it which he had no reason to do since he knew who they were who had infused those suggestions He gives them a short accompt of his own Apostleship and how he had spent his time since of his first Journey to Ierusalem yet that he went not thither till three Years after his conversion and till after he performed many acts of his Apostleship in which he received no direction from any Of
in sancta Romana Ecclesia atque altera in Galliarum tenetur Respondet Gregorius Papa Novit fraternitas tua Romanae Ecclesiae consuetudinem in qua se nutritam meminit sed mihi placet ut sive in Romana five in Galliarum seu in qualibet Ecclesia aliquid invenisti quod plus omnipotenti Deo posset placere sollicitè eligas in Anglorum Ecclesia quae adhuc ad fidem nova est institutione praecipuâ quae de multis Ecclesiis colligere potuisti infundas non enim pro locis res sed pro bonis rebus loca amanda sunt Ex singulis ergo quibusque Ecclesiis quae pia quae religiosa quae recta sunt elige haec quasi in fasciculum collect a apud Anglorum mentes in consuetudinem depone If Austin had conformed himself to these Instructions it is very probable that he might have had as good success in reconciling the Eritish Church who principally insisted against any deference to the Roman not comprehending any possible reason for such a superiority or if the successors of Gregory had been of his temper and Christian prudence Christendom had been much better united at this day or more innocently separated and unanswerable reasons for the reformation of some errors which had unwarily creeped in or removing some scandals which could not otherwise be kept out would not have been so often rejected upon no other reason than that the Bishop of Rome was not of that opinion nor would whole National Churches because they have with the consent of the Soveraign power removed some error which the other chuses to retain be reviled with the names of Hereticks and Schismaticks and the universal be contracted within the Province of Rome and not be allowed to be members of the Catholick Church because they will not be subject to that of the Roman which would usurp the authority of condemning many more Christians than are contained within the community thereof To make any profession of a willingness to submit mens judgments for the sence of Scripture to a lawful General Council besides that I do not know that there is any difference upon any Text of Scripture that concerns Salvation I confess I take it to be very impertinent and in that respect not very ingenious since it is manifestly impossible for any such Council ever to meet whilst that of Rome challenges the sole power of calling it and pretends to such a Soveraignty in it that nothing must be debated by it but what is proposed by the Pope or his Legats and all Kingdoms or Provinces as well as private persons who will not submit to his Soveraignty shall be excluded from thence under the notion of being Hereticks so that all Protestants must appear as Delinquents to be censured and condemned which would be a strange condition to submit to when no body can compel them to appear but their own Soveraigns Nor can it be called a free Council where all who ought to be looked upon as members of it are not equally free When General Councils were first called all the Christians of the world were one mans subjects who could both compel as many of them as he thought necessary to be present and to obey and submit to whatsoever was determined whereas now there being so many Kings and Princes who have much larger Dominions than the Emperor and are equally Soveraigns in those their Dominions and none of their subjects can appear there without their Soveraigns consent And lastly it being a Catholick Tenent that how numerous soever the convention in Council is and how universal soever the consent is in what is determined the Canons made there are not obligatory to any Kingdom before it be received and submitted to in that Kingdom upon which the Council of Trent is not yet received in France and in many other Catholick Countries and therefore it will be very hard for Mr. Cressy to justifie the defending or urging the authority of that Council in England where it was never received and hath been always rejected And for these reasons it may reasonably be thought morally impossible for any general free Council ever to meet which must grow every day more impossible as the Christian Faith is farther spread and when the whole world is converted as we do not only pray it may but believe it will be it will be very hard for the greatest Geographer to assign a place for the meeting where the Bishops from all parts may reasonably hope to live to be present there and to return from thence with the resolutions of the Councils into his own Country For the Instruments and means of unity which Mr. Cressy says were left by our Lord to his Church for the preservation of unity besides that most of those means are as applicable to the Church of England as to the Church of Rome though none of them in the terms he uses appear to be enjoyned or left by our Saviour let him but prove the Ninth and Tenth That the ordinary authority is established in the Supreme Pastor the Bishop of Rome and that his jurisdiction extends it self to the whole Church c. and in case any Heresies arise or that any Controversies cannot be any otherwise ended he hath authority to determine the points of Catholick truth opposed c. I say let him prove this and he hath no need of any of the other means and I will give him farther this advantage over me that if he can prove that I am obliged to conform my judgment in any thing to the determination of the Pope more than to the determination of the Bishop of S. Iago I will go to Mass with him to morrow and Mr. Cressy himself might be a good Catholick if he had not unwarrantably to say no worse of it subscribed to the Bull of Pius the Fourth which is no obligation by the Council when he submitted to his new Ordination though he were of the same opinion And if that Tenth proposition of his be the doctrine of the Catholick Church the Colledge of Sorbon hath been often to blame in not consenting to it and I know not how the Iansenists in France can be excused for paying not more reverence to the judgment and determination of two Popes upon the five Propositions for Alexander the Seventh confirmed what Innocent the Tenth had first defined nor was the silence that is since submitted to in those particulars an effect of the Popes authority but of the Kings which amounts to little less than a revocation at least a suspension of the Popes Decree The Argument that the Doctor uses from the Tragical miscarriages of Popes is very apposite and convincing to those Propositions which Mr. Cressy would perswade men to believe do establish his personal Supremacy He says that our Saviour hath committed a Supreme jurisdiction to the person of the Bishop of Rome over the whole Church that in case any Heresies arise or any Controversies in causis
think never saw that excellent Person to take upon them to asperse a Noble man of the most Prodigious learning of the most exemplar manners and singular good nature of the most unblemished integrity and the greatest Ornament of the Nation that any Age hath produced with the Character of a Socinian Mr. Cressy well knows that before that time of his Journey into Ireland in the Year One thousand six hundred thirty eight that Noble Lord had perused and read over all the Greek and Latine Fathers and was indefatigable in looking over all Books which with great expence he caused to be transmitted to him from all parts and so could not have been long without Mr. Dallies Book if Cressy's presenting it to him had not given him opportunity to have raised this scandal upon his memory nor could that Book have been so grateful to him if he had not read the Fathers For Mr. Chillingworth if Mr. Cressy had not been very wary in saying any thing that might redound to the honour of any of the present Prelates he cannot but know that the present Arch-Bishop of Canterbury had first reclaimed him from his doubtings and they were no more nor had he ever declared himself a Catholick except being at S. Omers amounts to such a Declaration before ever he was sent for by Arch-Bishop Laud and I am very much deceived which I think I am not in that particular if Chillingworth's Book against Mr. Knott was not published before the time of Cressy's Journey in thirty eight into Ireland and I know had been perused by him and therefore Mr. Dallies Book could not interrupt him in his study of the Fathers nor induce him to fix his mind upon Socinian grounds which now serves his turn to reproach all men and the Church of England it self for refusing to believe his miracles or to submit to that authority to whose blind guiding he hath lazily given up himself and all his faculties Yet he does so much honour to those grounds that he does confess that they obstructed a good while his entrance into the Catholick Church the contrary whereof I know to be true as much as negative can be true and that he never thought of entring into the Religion he now professes till long after the death of the Lord Falkland and Mr. Chillingworth nor till the same rebellious power that drove the King out of the Kingdom drove him likewise from the good preferments which he enjoyed in the Church and then the necessity and distraction of his fortune together with the melancholick and irresolution in his nature prevailed with him to bid farewell to his own reason and understanding and to resign himself to the conduct of those who had a much worse than his If the having read Socinus and the commending that in him which no body can reasonably discommende in him and the making use of that reason that God hath given a man for the examining of that which is most properly to be examined by reason and to avoid the weak arguments of some men how superciliously soever insisted upon or to discover the fallacies of others be the definition of a Socinian the party will be very strong in all Churches but if a perfect detestation of all those Opinions against the Person and Divinity of our Saviour or any other doctrine that is contrary to the Church of England and the Church of England hath more formally condemned Socinianism than any other Church hath done as appears by the Canons of One thousand six hundred and forty can free a man from that reproach as without doubt it ought to do I can very warrantably declare that that unparallel'd Lord was no Socinian nor is it possible for any man who is a true Son of the Church of England to be corrupted with any of those Opinions But in truth if Mr. Cressy hath that Prerogative in Logick as to declare men to be Socinians from some propositions which he calls Principles which in his judgment will warrant those deductions though he confesses he does not suspect the Doctor will approve such consequences yet he is confident with all his skill he cannot avoid them that is he is a Socinian before he is aware of it and in spight of his teeth this is such an excess in the faculty of arguing as must make him a dangerous Neighbour and qualifies him excellently to be a Commissioner of the Inquisition who have often need of that kind of subtilty that will make Heresies which they cannot find All this invention is to perswade his new friends of that which they call the old Religion that his old Friend's Religion is new that they have no reverence for antiquity no regard for the Authority of the Fathers and only make use of their natural reason to find out a new Religion for themselves whereas in truth whoever will impartially and dispassionately make the enquiry shall find that there is no one substantial controversie between the Roman and the Church of England but what is matter of Novelty and hath no foundation in Antiquity and that the Fathers are more diligently read and studied in our Church than they are in theirs and more reverence is paid to them by us than by them though neither they nor we nor any other Christian Church in the World do submit or concur in all that the Fathers have taught who were never all of one mind and therefore may very lawfully have their reasons examined by the reasons of other men This that I say concerning the reading and the reverence paid to the Fathers ought to be believed till they can produce one Prelate or Member of the Church of England who hath ever used such contemptuous words of the Fathers Ego ut ingenuè fatear plus uno summo Pontifici crederem in his quae fidei mysteria tangunt quà m mille Augustinis Ieronymis Gregoriis c. Credo enim scio quòd summus Pontifex in his quae fidei sunt non posse errare quoniam authoritas determinandi quae ad fidem spectant in Pontifice residet which are the words of Cornelius Mussus an Italian Bishop and much celebrated amongst them for his extraordinary learning in Epis. ad Rom. cap. 14. pa. 606. Michael Medina a man as eminent in the Council of Trent as any who sate there in the debate whether a Bishop was Superiour to a Presbyter jure Ecclesiastico or jure Divino when they who sustained the former alledged Saint Ierome and S. Augustine to support their opinion Medina said aloud Non mirum esse si isti nonnulli alii Patres re nondum eo tempore illustratâ in eam haeresim incidissent How would Mr. Cressy and his Friends insult if a Doctor of the Church of England should publish in Print by the authority of the Church Illud asserimus quo juntores eo perspicaciores esse Doctores contra hanc quam objectant multitudinem Respondemus inquit ex verbo
of the Essence of Religion and reject only some Canons which are indifferent for if any thing remains indifferent after the determination of the Council and may therefore be rejected it is manifest that the jurisdiction is not in the Council though confirmed by the Pope but in that power that rejects it and judges of the indifferency For his invitation of the Doctor to a Christening that a Colledge in Cambridge may have another name given to it than it is now called by S. Bennet or Corpus Christi Colledge the wit of it is enough answered when taken notice of The last Paragraph of his Postscript is a pure piece of Oratory and may be in imitation of no worse an Orator than Caesar himself who when he had tried all fair and foul means threats and promises to draw Cicero to his party and found it was impossible to engage him to be active against Pompey he only considered how to make him Neutral to sit still without doing any thing in the quarrel and writ to him Neque tutius neque honestius reperies quidquam quà m ab omni contentione abesse So Mr. Cressy after he hath heaped more ill words upon the Doctor and applied more reproachful Epithets to his grave and learned person and stile than hath been gathered together in so small a volume within these nine and twenty years he concludes his Postscript with desiring him to consider that Almighty God commands us to love Peace and Truth and then gravely informs him how they ought always to go together and left his too civil address to him should more work upon him than would become an adversary he quickens him for the better application of his Text by telling him that since he hath demolished all Tribunals in Gods Church which might peaceably end controversies and had endeavoured as much as in him lay to banish peace eternally from among Christians it was expected from him that he should give some testimony to the world that he is at least a seeker and promoter of truth and so proceeds very Rhetorically to perswade him that he doth not himself believe any thing that he says to others because he is too reasonable a man and of too great abilities to think that such a Book as his last can convert any Catholick who cannot read without trembling at the blasphemy of it and without a horrible aversion from one who would make their Church and their Faith odious Indeed I believe they will suffer very few of their Proselytes to read that or any other of his Books which may open their eyes or inform them of the darkness they are in If Mr. Cressy's word may be taken as no doubt it will he will tell them of blasphemies that may make them tremble though he hath not in his whole answer named one but if a man will not that is cannot give credit to all the stories which are told of S. Bennet and S. Francis he is streight a blasphemer of Gods Saints as he who will not submit to the authority of the Bishop of Rome demolishes all Tribunals in Gods Church which might peaceably end controversies and endeavours to banish peace eternally from amongst Christians whereas it is only that Tribunal that hinders and obstructs the peace which but for that judicatory would be generally imbraced The counsel I would now give to Mr. Cressy will consist in two kinds the first with reference to himself purely the second with reference to the cause If he thinks fit any more to write against the Church of England which I do not disswade him from that he will state truly and clearly the difference between it and the Church of Rome which he hath never yet done I advise him to remember that he hath been a member and son of the Church of England cherished and educated in her during the most vigorous part of his age and that he ows to that education all the learning he hath I will charitably believe that he saw or thought he saw good reason to withdraw himself from her Communion and that he is satisfied in his conscience with his present state of separation let it be so why should that hinder him from living fairly and civilly towards her It is an ungenerous thing to fall from streight embraces to publick revilings Men of honour after they have contracted friendships with each other for a long time and afterwards find cause from some mutation in manners and upon discovery of infirmities with which they can no longer comply to live at a greater distance towards each other to repose less confidence than they used to do and by degrees to grow strangers they yet retain such a decent behaviour that standers by can scarce discover any alteration of affections in them they are never heard to speak ill to traduce or disgrace one another and believe that it is a debt and duty due to their former friendship never to undervalue each others parts or to bring the honour of either into question common prudence and good breeding prevents those excesses and methinks in Religion the same temper should have a greater influence and Mr. Cressy should for his own sake allow some beauty to have been in the Church that did so long detain him and not desire to render her so ugly and deformed as takes away any excuse from any body for staying so long in her company This I expected from his natural genius and from the conversation he frequented where bitterness of words was never allowable towards men whose opinions were very different and if any new illumination hath perswaded him that such urbanity is not consistent with the zeal that Religious discourses should be warmed with he should suspect it for delusion He hath an excellent example given him by a Catholick learned and Reverend Bishop the present Bishop and Prince of Condun who treats an enemy more inferiour to him and more liable to reproach than the Church of England can be imagined to be to Mr. Cressy with such condescension and humanity as if they stood upon the same level with him And no question those strokes make a deeper impression upon all ingenuous men than louder blows and are with more difficulty repelled Whereas Mr. Cressy like a rude and blustering wind disturbs all sorts of men who stand near him offends and provokes all Classes of men with his unnecessary choler What can the King think to see his Laws and Government so vilified by his scornful expressions to hear his Royal Ancestor whose obsequies were kept and observed at Nostre Dame in Paris with the highest solemnity by the first great King France ever had in spight of the Pope's Excommunication called a Tyrant by one of his own subjects What can all the Protestant Nobility and Prelates of England think to see the Ecclesiastical and Civil Laws of the Church and State despised and trampled upon by a man who could not live an hour in that Air but by the
his Second Iourney afterwards to Ierusalem in which he takes care that they might not think that he had any Superiour there To whom we gave place by subjection no not for an hour He proceeds then in the same jealousie to make a comparison with St. Peter He that wrought effectually in Peter to the Apostleship of the Circumcision the same was mighty in me towards the Gentiles effectually in Peter mighty in Paul a word of an equal energy and lest all this might be looked upon as speaking behind his back after he had mentioned the respect he had received from the other Apostles from Iames and Cephas and Iohn he tells them that when Peter came to him he withstood him to the face because he was to be blamed and the manner of his expostulation with him seems very rough as with a man that stood upon the same level with him not as with the sole Vicar of Christ If thou being a Iew livest after the manner of the Gentiles and not as do the Iews why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Iews Whosoever seriously reflects upon the tampering that had been with the Galathians to lessen their confidence in Paul and the gradations by which he endeavoured to reconfirm them in the same faith he had formerly taught them cannot but believe that the Apostle had therein a purpose to root out any such Opinion of priority out of their hearts especially when in no other place after this there appears the least mention of or appeal to St. Peter in the many errours and mis-interpretations of the words and actions of our Saviour and of them in the Life of the Apostles from whence many troubles and great disorders sprung and grew up amongst Christians of that Age. He shall do well to consider whether it be probable that St. Peter himself or any of his Successors did pretend a Precedency or Superiority over Saint Iohn the Evangelist who lived Twenty Years after Saint Peter and to let us know when the first Pope discovered his Supremacy over other Bishops and then we know well enough how it was introduced in Temporalities If Mr. Cressy and the rest of the enemies of the Church of England who will not allow any members of the same to have any hope without deserting their Mother of a place in Heaven and hardly admit them to be in their wits upon Earth would enter upon the disquisition of these particulars which are warily declined in all their Writings or very perfunctorily handled the foundation doctrine and discipline of that Church would be in a short time utterly overthrown and demolished or worthily vindicated and supported in the judgment of most learned and discerning men and there can be but two reasons why they should decline this method which they should the rather imbrace because all other have proved ineffectual and in near two hundred years the appeal to Fathers and Councils or Scripture it self hath not reconciled many persons in any one controverted particular but those two reasons so unwarrantable that they will never be owned will never suffer them to admit the method and pursue it closely The first is that if they should proceed in this ingenuous and substantial way they would be cut off from those common places in which they are only versed and by which they are supplied to urge all things which have been thought heretofore material to that matter and to reply to what is said of course but especially they will find themselves restrained from that multitude of ill words in which they so much delight of calling those they do not love and whose arguments they cannot answer Hereticks who are condemned already to Hell-fire and from asking the old stale question that hath been as often answered as asked Where was your Church before Luther and from their so often vain excursions upon the voluptuousness of Henry the Eighth whom they would fain perswade the world to be the Founder of the Church of England and all the reformation to have been devised by him Whereas if they would seriously study these material points the first whereof would go very far towards the facilitating the resolution upon the rest they might easily discern that no member of the Church of England by their own rules can be comprehended within any of their decrees for an Heretick which serves their turn only as an angry word to throw at any mans head whom they desire to make odious to all Roman Catholicks and they would be as easily convinced that we never had any thing to do with Luther that in all those quarrels and wars which were either occasioned by him or accompanied his doctrine there was not a man of the English Nation that was ever engaged and that it was long after his time not at all by his model that the Church of England without one sword drawn and in as peaceable and grave a manner as ever that Nation hath concurred in the making of any of those excellent Laws which distinguishes them from all the subjects of the world in the happiness they enjoy did reject those superstitions and inconveniences which they could not sooner free themselves from with those circumstances of justice and peace and the retaining whereof would have been more for the benefit and advantage of the Court of Rome than for the Church of England or the good of that Kingdom and as such alterations cannot be supposed to be made with so universal a consent but that many of all conditions adhered still to the exercise of their Religion with all the circumstances which they had been before accustomed unto and for which no body suffered in many years nor till by their treasonable acts and conspiracies they appeared dangerous to the State For King Henry the Eighth he had some personal contests with Clement the Seventh who was then Pope from whom he received such personal indignities as in the opinion of most of the Princes of that Age who had all out-grown the wardship of the Pope he could not but resent and vindicate himself from nor did he do it any other way than his most glorious Catholick Predecessors had always done upon far less injuries or provocations as Edward the First and Edward the Third and others whose Religion was never suspected often restrained him from exercising any authority or jurisdiction in England to which they well knew he had no other authority or right but what the Crown had granted him and forbid any of their Subjects to repair to Rome or to receive any Orders from thence which was upon the matter all that Henry the Eighth did and was no more than Lewis the Twelfth of France had done very few years before but was so far from being inclined or favouring to any reformation or alteration in Religion that he proceeded as long as he lived with the utmost severity against all who were but suspected to be averse from the Catholick Religion and caused many of them