Sunday before it and therefore must have been a Minister of the Church of England on the one Sunday and a Member of the Church of Rome on the next during the time betwixt which two Sundays I am certain you are far from being able to have considered and examined the Merits of the two Churches you are not so quick a Man pag. 2. for all your pretended discovering at first sight that all other Communions were evidently confusion But allowing that during this search you onely Ex hypothesi put your self in such a state without leaving actually our Communion till your Method and Reasons were over and satisfactory it was a very odd Method for a Man that had been so long a Minister and was so old a Man and would much handsomer have become you were you coming over from Paganism or Mahometism than from one Church that evidently hath the Catholick Faith to another Whichsoever of the two Senses was that which you designed I am certain that the first was fit onely for a Madman and the other almost as much unbecoming an old Clergy Man who after Threescore as I believe you are falls to abstracting and doubting and supposing as if he had been in a Dream all the rest and best part of his Days since he was in Orders and at last when others being to dote he begins to doubt to search and to make saving discoveries CHAP. IV. The Confusion of his search and the Absurdity of it shewn NOtwithstanding the Inconsistences in this your tale which are so many as would almost ruine any ones having the least value for your Book or for the Reasons and Arguments in it I must follow and see how dexterously you managed or how well you used this your wonderous Method pag. 2 3. Vpon a reserved Principle say you that Christ hath a Church upon earth in my inquiry amongst my Brethren of the Church of England who were as much your Brethren in this state and no more than they are Hobbes's or Spinoza's I gave most attention to those teachers or writers that had most reverence for Church Authority c. I appeal to any Man of sense whether this passage does not favour much more of a Man already a Papist than of a mere Seeker but to pass that Pray Sir what did you want or what was you inquiring for was it for the Catholick Church or for a particular Communion wherein you might be safe if for the Catholick Church you needed not to be curious whom you inquired of among our Teachers and Writers since the meanest of them could readily have told you that the Catholick Church is made up of all the Particular Churches planted in the four quarters of the World holding from Christ the onely Head of her the true Faith and Catholick Vnity so that if you intended to find where she was fixed that so you might in necessity tell her your grievances she is confined to no place pag. 5. being a Diffusive Body throughout the World. If you wanted a Particular Communion a true Member of the Catholick Church wherewith to communicate and upon which to trust your Salvation the Church of England Particular as to place Catholick as to Faith and Doctrine is such so that your inquiry might here have ended since if you were a true Member of Hers you were at the same time as true a Member of the Catholick Church Here I must take occasion to tell you that you seem by your Abstracting your self from your self to have wilder'd your self and thence to have confounded the Notions of the Catholick and Particular Churches while from our Saviour's promise that the Gates of Hell should never prevail against the Catholick Church you argue the Church must be one which no Body denies that it must have one Faith which no Body denies neither and that it must by virtue of Christ's promise perpetually abide in this one Faith nor is this denied any more than the other two by any of our Church and what have you got hence onely that Christ hath and will always have a true Church upon Earth which I know no Body ever denied But here is the grand pinch and what one may easily see you aim at and that is to have this Catholick Church and the Church of Rome to be all one and the same which we shall see how you prove by and by In the mean time I must return to you where I left you quarrelling with our Church-men and see whether I can make an end of the Quarrel You say that you found that those of our Church that had most Reverence for Church Authority meant onely their own c. You had done the World a great kindness if you had told who they were you inquired of and what were the Queries you put to them I hope if you asked after the Catholick Church they did not tell you that the National Church of England was the whole Catholick Church If you asked after a Particular Church surely you cannot blame them for asserting the Authority of their own Church When you put the same Queries to the Romish Teachers or Writers did they reject their own Church's Authority did not they mean their own when they would persuade you to their Communion as much as our Men did that of our Church when you inquired among them where then is the fault what would you have had 'em to doe to please you would you have had them to say that the Church of England is the Catholick Church which no one that hath any sense can say of Her any more than of the Church of Rome would you have had 'em to say that they had a Church indeed but that either she had no Authority or that no Body need to submit to it which none but a mere Ignoramus could say This Sir is perfect Trifling this is to write a Book and yet not to know what one wants or what he would have I wish to God you had reserved when you were abstracting your self a little Logick that a Man might have known what you meant here and where one might have you that so when a Reader thinks by your Words and by Connexion that you are talking of the Catholick Church you may not come off with a Pish the Man understands me not I was speaking of Particular Churches I wish you had licked this your confused piece into a little better Method and had bestowed on it a little thing called Intelligibility but perhaps you thought such a stile fittest for a Man that was going to write about Transubstantiation You are as little pleased with them when you say they held the Scriptures in high esteem you might without a falsity have added in far greater than the Church of Rome does of which you now are though under that Notion they understood no more pag. 3. than what themselves were pleased to allow to be Canonical admitting also some Traditions but taking and refusing as
Rome was from the beginning reckoned a particular Church I think is as plain as that Rome is in Italy I have proved it so fully above that I almost loath such a ridiculous subject of discourse pag. 17. And your Authorities from Pacian and Cyril of Jerusalem are not one jot to your purpose if you intend them to confirm that the Church of Rome is the Catholick Church all that they say or prove being that Catholick is the Sirname of true Christians and that every one should enquire for and unite with the Catholick Church into whatsoever place he comes Now what is this to the Church of Rome here is no mention of her here not a syllable to determine that she is the Catholick Church to unite with which these two Fathers are carefull to advise These things you tell us gave you some small encouragement to betake your self to that Communion that was both Christian and Catholick c. for which very reason you needed not have left the Communion of the Church of England which is both Christian and Catholick You ought to dislike Papist upon the same ground you dislike Protestant and if Christian was too large for you you needed not to leave the Church of England to be both Catholick and Christian the Church of England denominates her self from no particular Persons good or bad but is a True Church having lawfull Pastors and a Catholick Faith. You next say you cannot imagine why Protestants should so decline the Title of Catholick you mean or suffer it with so much silence to be laid aside unless it be pag. 18. because it imports a Faith spread throughout the World which they very well know would be utterly impossible to prove their Protestant Faith ever was c. Whether this passage is more ridiculous or false I must own that upon the sudden I cannot tell if you mean here as you ought the Church of England as you must to be consistent with your self having a good while ago cast off all the other Reformed Communions nothing can be more false and ridiculous since twice a Day we use it constantly in our Service and surely you will not be so extravagantly unreasonable to say we do not Mean or Pray for our selves when we Pray for the Good Estate of the Catholick Church So that our decling the Title and suffering it with so much silence to he laid aside must be put to the account of the grosser sort of Untruths And we need not wonder that you would offer a false reason for a false thing our Faith and the Faith of all the Reformed Churches having been already proved to be Catholick and therefore your utterly impossible to prove it to be a Faith spread throughout the World must be put up on the same account Nor is there ever a Member of the Church of England of any Learning that I ever met with or heard of that either declined the Title of a Reformed Catholick or was not ready onely to profess but also to prove that by being a Son of the Church of England he was a Member of a Catholick Church As to what you add about the other Adjunct in our ours I say of the Church of England as well as yours at Rome Creed Apostolical that you saw less reason for their claim to that and to give them their due they were more modest than much to insist upon it c. This Sentence is Brass every bit of it for if you mean the Church of England here I am astonished to think you should have so little Conscience or so little Modesty to publish such a gross untruth in the face of a Church that is so far from not insisting on the Title of Apostolical that it denounces every person excommunicate that shall dare to say the Church g Whosoever shall hereafter affirm that the Church of England by Law established under the Kings Majesty is not a TRUE and an APOSTOLICAL CHURCH teaching and maintaining the DOCTRINE of the APOSTLES let him be Excommunicated â—pso facto and not restored but onely by the Arch-Bishop after his Repentance and publick Revocation of this his WICKED ERROUR Can. 3. of the Synod in 1603. of England is not an Apostolical Church and calls such an affirmation an impious Errour But if you are resolved to carry things at this rate by brazening us down 't is to no purpose to contend with you I must needs tell you that you might as well have published to the World that the Church of England hath no Creed in her publick Service nor believes a Trinity nor hath any Bishops to preside ovâ—â— her as this of her neither having nor pretending to Apostolical Faith and Succession If you include also the rest of the Reformed Churches you might easily know that there is no thing they so much insist upon as the proving their Faith and Practices to be purely Apostolical and therefore their Churches to be such so that neither are they so modest as not to insist on their being Apostolical as to the want of Succession among them that you object against 'em and they do not deny you your self have furnished them with an answer to your Party from St. Ambrose's words Non habent Petri haereditatem qui Petri Fidem non habent de Poenit. l. 1. c. 6. that they enjoy not the inheritance or Succession of Peter who have not the Faith of Peter But here you have a mind to make the Church of England to be of your opinion that is that the foreign Reformed Churches have no true Ministers because those that come out of France with the Title of Ministers are not allowed to exercise their Ministry before they receive the Orders of the Church of England pag. 19. c. It is true they are not allowed to have a Cure of Souls here without the taking of Episcopal Orders because it is expressly provided by Act of Parliament among us that no one shall have such a Cure of Souls without Episcopal Orders which Act you know was fully designed against our home Dissenters who had opportunities of Episcopal Orders at home not against them who could not have them at home with whom also we had nothing to do But since no exception was made in the Act for them the Church cannot dispense with an Act of Parliament in their favour However that she allows theirs to be true tho' imperfect Churches is hence plain because her Members in their Travels communicate with those Churches which thing she would never permit had they no Ministry it was the Practice of our Exiles in France during the long Rebellion and Dr. R. Watson hath lately put forth the most Learned and most Religious Bishop Cozin who was one of those noble exiled Confessors his Defence of their communicating there with Geneva rather than Rome So that your Argument fails you also here CHAP. XV. More of his foul Aspersions on the Church of England exposed and
them singly as for both together his most severe imposition of both Joh. 6.53 we can shew you herein the Obedience of the Catholick Church for above a thousand years who were so humble and so respectfull also as not to think themselves either wiser than our Saviour or above his express commands herein Afterwards indeed one part of the Catholick Church grew more knowing and the Council of Constance maugre our Saviour's express command to be seen in the Gospels and very particularly in St. Paul denied one half of the Communion 1 Cor. 11.24 25. the Cup to the Laity and so that Church continues ever since to do Among those several Arguments or Reasons mustered up by Gerson at the Command and for the Defence of this bold Council I do not remember one that is not either ridiculous in it self or highly reflecting upon our blessed and most wise Saviour's prudence or foresight But to pass by this and your Argument from the 6th of S. John which I shall remember when I come to that point in your Book methinks your assuring your self that if your former Faith was not right in this the Eucharist it was wrong in all controverted Particulars c. is none of the clearest Inductions and would have appeared something too bold had you not helped it out a little with what I suppose you have heard some of your new Church say that that Church hath the same Authorities and Traditions for them as for this c. which I think to be one of the greatest truths in your Book and I do assure you that I am perfectly of the same opinion that the Church of Rome hath the same neither better nor worse Authorities and Traditions for all the Points controverted betwixt the Church of England and her that she hath for Transubstantiation which I question not to shew when I come to that point to be either very bad or none at all Whether you have wrought in this your search according to the directions of the Church of England will be better seen when we come to your Proofs themselves I cannot pass the Canon of our Church you have quoted here without making two short Remarks from it The first of which is Imprimis vero videbunt ne quid unquam doceant pro Concione quod à populo religiose teneri credi velint nisi quod consentaneum sit Doctrinae veteris aut Novi Testamenti quodque ex illâ ipsâ Doctrinâ Catholici Patres Veteres Episcopi collegerint c. Liber Canon Disciplinae Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1571. Titulo Concionatores How little our Church is a favourer or encourager of the Private Spirit you talk so often about or of private Interpretations when she doth not allow the Guides of the Parochial Churches themselves to teach any thing for Faith in their Sermons which is not agreeable to the Doctrine of the Old and New Testament and the Interpretations of Catholick Antiquity 2. That it is a most false as well as a most ridiculous Assertion of your new Brethren of the Church of Rome who say our Church slights and rejects the Fathers because they are all against her and that she owns they are all against her for a clear Contradiction to which I would but desire of any Romanist to reade this short Canon of a Synod of ours in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth seriously over and to consider it and I do not question if he would but speak plainly herein as every ingenuous man ought that he would own such Assertours to be guilty of a downright Calumny For your Conditional Thanks that you seem willing to bestow on the Church of England for her Directions she can have no reason to expect any from you since I am pretty well assured that you have not observed her Directions and therefore can owe her none on that account and for your Conditional Prayers for the Teachers of her Communion c. I can assure you that they are by her Injunctions and without any conditions not behind-hand with you in such civilities since thrice a week at least they are commanded in the Litany to put up constantly a Petition for you and such as you Galatinus and his Rabbins I shall refer to their place in your Book to which I shall now pass finding nothing farther in your Preface that may not be better considered in the Answers to the Particulars of your Book CHAP. I. The Method of the Answer and a Consideration of Mr. Sclater's Reasons of doubting in our Communion BEfore I undertake the Particulars of your Book I cannot refrain the making a complaint to you that you have not put your writing into a Method becoming a Scholar but have managed your reasons so confusedly and passed so abruptly from one head to another that it is sometimes difficult to know which of your points you are then about Method and clearness and a fair transition from one part of a Discourse to another were never counted trifles nor ever thought unworthy the care of any one Writer that did desire either to instruct or to convince his Readers That I may avoid therefore my self what I am forc'd to rereprehend in another I shall in this my Expostulation confine my self to and direct my self by these Rules 1. To consider the Reasons of your doubting during your continuance in our Communion whether you were in the right way and of a true Church 2. The Method you used for the resolving your self in your doubts 3. The Reason or Reasons that convinced you so far as to leave our Communion and to espouse that of the Church of Rome I do not believe I can wrong your Book in taking such a Method or disoblige you or any one else that may read this As to the first head then the Reasons of your doubting one might with reason have expected that you would a little more have enlarged your self in a thing the right managing of which was of so infinite concern or at the least that you would have afforded the World tho' but one Reason that might have given satisfaction That which you have put down I mean the Text from S. Paul Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall I am sure cannot since that Text may as well serve against the approaching Easter as it did against the last and you may as well use it now as you did then and should a giddy mind possess you and hurry you next to Socinianism then to the Anabaptists and herd you at last among the Quakers no body could refuse you your Motto and Let him that thinketh he standeth c. would serve you in as much stead for any of them as it did now Without any satisfaction at all therefore about the reasons of your doubt which I wish we had had faithfully set down that so the World might not take that leave it does now of judging what it pleases concerning the true reasons of your
leaving us I must follow you to that wherein you are more copious the Method you used for the resolving your self in your doubts which you forgot to set down here CHAP. II. His Account of Education and Interest examined and Refuted BEfore you enter on your Method you tell us you had two very great things to conflict with which were like to prove great obstacles in this your inquiry after truth Education and Interest pag. 1. Through Education and Confidence in the Teachers you had been inured to you complain you had almost been hardened against the lissening to any thing contrary to those Precepts and Doctrines they had rooted in you c. To hear an old Man complain of Education cannot but be a little strange especially from one who hath been a Teacher himself as he disdainfully I must believe calls our Clergy perchance betwixt Thirty and Forty Years if Twenty nay Ten far too much sure for such a complaint and in a Church too which permits and encourages her Clergy in the perusing canvasing and examining all Books of Controversie betwixt her self and the Church of Rome and which is more obliges them to a perusal and diligent examination of the Primitive Fathers by that very Canon you your self quoted in your Preface which I have put down also pag. 2. 1. But this is the common voice of the Converts young or old and therefore whether to purpose or no you must for company use it tho' it be really ridiculous from one in your circumstances as I think I have made plain enough And truly the complaint would far the handsomer become you now when you are of a Church that teaches her Members the pretty knack of captivating their understanding stopping their ears and shutting their eyes against any thing that might convince them of the Errour they are in I must confess that your Church is not singular herein the Turks practise it as strictly as you that they may secure their Members in their excellent and most safe as they doubtless think it Communion and Religion of Mahomet But suppose Education might be a Prejudice and would give a man a great deal of trouble to rid himself of the Prepossessions it commonly instills into green heads yours could not give you any since Alexander like you cut the Knot that might have given you great trouble to unloose by abstracting your self when you entered on your Method from your self and Religion too which doubtless is both a quick and a sure way of ridding a mans self of the Prejudices from any Religion pag. 2. by abstracting himself from Religion and looking on himself as a Man of no Religion I cannot but applaud your Method of getting shut of the Prejudices of Education and cannot but admire it as the most clever sure short unerring way that any man could take to get rid of Education which I will now with you take leave of and pass on to Interest and see how you served it And here again you are as concise with Interest as you were before with Education if a man may credit you When I considered say you Solomon's Advice pag. 2. buy the Truth and sell it not I was easily persuaded to look upon Interest as a thing worth nothing c. And did you serve it so why then truly to give you your due you are an extraordinary Person among the Converts one to whom an Eye to worldly Interest cannot fairly be objected and I suppose you are very willing and desirous too that the World should have such an Opinion of you that you have fairly quitted all purely for Conscience sake that you had two Livings indeed but since you are convinced that you ought not to be any longer a Communicant with much less a Minister of the Church of England you have sacrificed them both to the Interest of your Immortal Soul that tho' as the World now goes it is the sure and only way to Preferments in Church or State to continue a Member at least outwardly of the Church of England so called yet you for your part have and do count all this worldly Interest as a thing worth nothing and are resolved to turn your back to it so that you may but provide for the Salvation of your Soul. This truly is the Picture of a very excellent Christian the only question to be asked now is whether it is Mr. Sclater's of Putney I am sorry that I must acquaint the World notwithstanding your speaking so contemptibly of Interest that really it is no more yours than the man 's in the Moon for to be more serious with you with what face could you write this when almost all the Kingdom knows that you hold both your Livings still tho' you disown your being so much as a Member of the Church of England and how briskly you hectored and quarrelled the Church of Worcester when they only desired to fill the Cure of Putney with a Minister of the Church of England which you denyed any longer to own your self to be A great many I am sure think you did very ill to hold those Livings in your present Condition and I do assure you it is infinitely worse to do it and yet by writing to insinuate to the World that you have not but have accounted all worldly Interest the Profits of two Livings may be so named I hope as a thing worth nothing You have not lost or delivered up any worldly concern that I can hear of on this account you stand I believe in as much probability as ever you did of getting more if this be the way of slighting and undervaluing Interest I do assure you that all the Covetous the Extortioners and the worldly Hypocrites do it as much as you CHAP. III. His Method shewn to be Vnreasonable LEaving then this false as well as disingenuous account of your setting aside and ridding your self of Interest I must begin the Examination of your Method of resolving your self in your Doubts which indeed is surprizing from a Minister and became Des Cartes as to matters of Philosophy a little better than it can do you or any one else in Matters of Religion Here say you as I had abstracted my self from my self and Religion too pag. 2. as a man of no Religion but contemplating all I must lay all before me and look studiously upon them c. If you mean by this account of your Method that you really put your self into an abstracted state and were really as of no Religion so of no Church at all during this your search for a Communion wherein you might be afterwards safe I must tell you that as your Method was most extravagant so it was of too short a duration for your looking studiously contemplating and comparing the two Communions of England and Rome together since it is as certain that you were at Mass last Easter Day 1686 as that you did give the Communion at Putney Church on Palm
they saw good c. To be brief with you on this point if you speak here of particular Persons in our Church it is utterly false since they are all obliged to believe that to be the Canon of Scripture which is set down in the Articles of our Church and there is not one Man of our Church that is at liberty to believe which he pleases and to reject which he pleases from being Canonical Scripture to him and for Traditions received in the Church no particular Man hath any more power over them than over the number of the Canonical Books But if you speak of our Church it self here which your words without stretching will not bear it is as false of Her since she believes and delivers those Books onely as Canonical which the Primitive Church believed and delivered down to her as such She rejects none as Apocryphal which were not also rejected as such by the Primitive Church as the Famous and most Learned Bishop Cosin hath most incomparably proved it for her in that his excellent Scholastick History of the Canon of Scripture And for Traditions she rejects none but such as have no evidence nor probability of their ever having been of use in the Primitive Church or such as are of no moment in which case I never saw reason why the National Church of England hath not as much Authority herein to judge of these things as the Church of Rome her self who for example sake hath left off giving the Communion to Infants tho' a Tradition of the Catholick Church So that I cannot for my Life see what you would fain tho' most ridiculously deduce from hence that all with us resolved it self into the Judgment of a Private Spirit pag. 3. and must be I suppose you mean the Private Spirit must be tho' your words are far from bearing it the chief or rather onely support of your Protestant Faith c. Since it is so palpably false as I have just now shewn nothing as to matters of Faith Discipline or Church Communion among us being either left to or guided by or depending upon any Man how great or how learned soever his private Spirit and so ridiculous that I could not forgive it any Man that had not abstracted himself from his reason but to doe you right you have almost a mind to come off it with your Methought and I am content without being angry that it should pass for your thought the abstracted-no-Religion Man's You go on to shew that you could not persuade your self that Scripture alone could be the Judge of Controversies pag. 3. and resolve your doubts when the Private Spirit was made the Judge of Scripture c. Let the private Spirit be excluded will you admit it then will you allow the Representative Church of England to interpret in new Emergencies which fell not within the care of Antiquity and the Four General Councils If you admit this there need be no dispute since long before your doubts the Church of England hath by publick Authority interpreted the Scripture in all matters of Faith and Discipline and tied up all her Members hath in all the points of Controversie betwixt us and Rome determined that the sense of the Scripture is directly against them and for us If you will not admit it I should be glad to see one reason against it that would not as fully fly in the face of the Church of Rome As to the Mischief upon this Principle of the Private Spirit pag. 3 4. the Wars and Murders c. You ought to have remembred that that Principle was not set up by but against the Church of England and that it was not the Church but the direct and sworn Enemies thereof that committed all those outrages you cannot be ignorant that it was She only that suffered during that Rebellion and Schism and therefore it is most unjust in you to insinuate as if She was cause of all that distraction whereas nothing is more apparent than the contrary to it And as to your Tanrum Religio c. I challenge you to shew any one Principle of the Church of England that encourages or does but glance towards Rebellion Sedition or disturbance of either Church or State This I 'll promise you for every one I 'll shew you Ten of your new Church I 'll shew you Councils for it your own most famous of all the European Councils the Fourth of Lateran leading the Van. Your Popes deposing Princes pag. 84. giving away their Kingdoms as they have done ours more than once setting up in Rebellion Son against Father I 'll shew you the Rebellious Holy League in France one King most barbarously Murdered by it a Pope Sixtus Quintus in a set Speech commending the Paricide the Sorbone it self making Rebellious Decrees against the Two Harries of France both Massacred by their Catholick as they call themselves Subjects but enough of this wherein you know or at least should that we have infinitely the advantage of your new Church as to Principles of Loyalty The result it seems of your Inquiry and search among us was that you could not comply with common reason if you did not disclaim the Judgment of your own or any Man 's private Spirit c. pag. 4. I have upon this but one Question to ask you and that is how you came to be a Roman Catholick if you disclaimed your own reason or private Spirit pray who chose your guide or Church for you if you disclaimed every ones else pray tell us how any Body else could doe it for you But notwithstanding this your disclaiming we find you busie enough up and down the Book acting as if you never had done any such thing discovering judging complying contemplating searching and Forty such expressions which used to denote the exercise of a Man's private Judgment and Reason CHAP. V. His Method farther exposed and the ridiculous Fruits of it THE Fruit of all your search hitherto hath been onely to find pag. 4. or at least to mistrust the ground you stood upon somewhat unsure c. What ground it was you then stood upon I cannot guess since before this you had abstracted your self from Religion and supposed your self as of no Religion so most certainly of no Church But all this is assuredly but a figure to bring in the Rock the Rock you think you were got upon when once a Romanist If I might have had a word with you before you had mounted your Rock for now I am afraid there is no speaking with you I would onely have been informed by you whether there is but one Rock and whether I must give (a) Orig. Hom. 1. in Matth. Origen the lie who tells me that all the Apostles were Rocks as well as Peter and what I must say to (b) Prescript c. 32. 36. Edit Franck. 1597. Tertullian and others that tell me other Apostles planted Churches as well as Peter
and Paul at Rome and that I might be as safe in any of them all as in that at Rome since they and Rome had the same Faith as (c) Cont. Haer. l. 1. c. 2 3. Edit Feuard 1625. Irenaeus says delivered to them and had a Ministry settled by Apostles among them I wish I might be so happy as to have a satisfactory Answer to these Queries from you or any one else But for the present you are too busie having got the Text that the Gates of Hell should not prevail which Text by the bye how came you to interpret of a Church since if you disclaim your private Judgment it does for any thing you can know relate to something else You are sure upon it that Christ hath a Church that that Church has but one Faith which I have already told you our Church does not deny And now you wanted nothing to find firm footing sure footing you should have called it for Mr. Serjeant's sake but to discover pag. 4. whether the Church from her Original was the Commissioned Interpreter of the Sacred Writings c. One would expect here in a thing of that moment some well managed Reasons from Scripture Reason and the Consent of Antiquity to prove that the Church of Rome which you cannot deny that you mean here was this Commissioned Interpreter but instead of that you think you do it cleverly enough by insinuating that without it there would be no end of Controversies which is not proving but begging As to the choice of a Hundred Faiths without such an Interpreter which you say you saw you might have if you mean in the Church of England pag. 5. and that you must mean having already set aside all other Communions and being now employed in the examining whether of the Two Churches the Church of England or Rome you might be safe with I am obliged to tell you that there are no fewer than Ninety Nine mistakes in this short Sentence since the Faith of the Church of England is but one and as much one as that of the Church of Rome her self But for all this talk you have not got to your Church yet pag. 5. which must be Visible to wave needless Disputes such the Church of England is as well as the Church of Rome And now you want nothing but a definition of her which you complain you could not get among us and therefore was forced to go to the Books of Catholicks As to the complaint I answer that you needed not to have gone to the Catholicks as you call 'em since the Church of England's definition in her Articles will I think satisfie any reasonable Man while (d) Article 19. it defines the Visible Church of Christ to be a Congregation of Faithfull here Hereticks and Schismaticks are both excluded Men in which the pure Word of God is Preached and the Sacraments be duly Ministred according to Christ's Ordinance and that must be by lawfull Pastors in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same You could not but know of this Definition of the Church of Christ you had done well to have shewn particularly wherein it failed of separating Hereticks or Schismaticks from being either Flock or Shepherds in the Church But no Ignorance is comparable to that which is affected And since you would not be contented with ours I 'll e'en try S. N's and see what reason it has to be prefer'd to that of the whole Church of England The Church of Christ is one Society or company of Men. S. N. Ch. of E. S. N. The Visible Church of Christ is a Congregation Linked and combined together in the same Profession of Christian Faith. Of Faithfull Men. Ch. of E. S. N. Ch. of E. And use of Sacraments under lawfull Pasters And the Sacraments be duly Administred according to Christ's Ordinance Thus far we agree as for S. N's addition of those Pastors also under one Supreme Head Pastor or Conservator pacis veritatis do you or he prove it and then put it into the Definition it s being there now is no proof of the Truth of it However you I perceive were satisfied with it and think this Definition hath brought you to the Rock hath done your business for you I have often heard indeed of Men disputed into a Church of Men cajoled and of others threatned or frighted into a Church but must confess I never heard of any before you definitioned into a Church and truly it looks surprizing that a Man should like a Church for a Definitions sake Suppose your Definition prove false are you resolved to leave that Church and go to another that hath a better Definition If this be your Humour the Sophisters would be too hard for you and lead you into an endless Maze Satisfied however you are at present and so overjoyed at this Definition that you forgot what was necessary for it and that was to prove and to confirm it instead of which you fall into extravagant Praises and a hurry of Words and Ecstasies to no purpose whereas you neglect to prove First that this is a true and regular Definition and Secondly that it does belong to the Church of Rome so called exclusive of all other Had you done this pag. 6. you had acted like a Scholar whereas the other rable of discoveries and abused Psalms prove nothing at all and would far better have become some Woman or Poet-Convert than you who should prove these things and let them which can doe no better admire After your fit of Ecstasies is over you seem something willing to afford us some Testimonies of Antiquity to what purpose I must now inquire that so we may avoid Confusion and I may shorten my Answers But here according to my own design I must take leave of your Method of resolving your self in your doubts being arrived at that which I took leave for order and clearness sake to call the Reasons of your Conversion which convinced you so far as to leave our Communion and to espouse that of Rome I will take leave of it with this Complement that it really is the most admirable one I ever heard of for a Clergy-Man of above Threescore CHAP. VI. His Proofs of a Monarchical Church under one Supreme Head from Scripture Answered THE Fruit of your noble Method and the effect of all your Search hitherto hath been as far as I can perceive that you have met with a Definition that pleases you Now except you take S. N. to be as infallible in making of Definitions as the Pope is said by some and perhaps believed by you to be in making of Canons for the Church and that you ought to submit to his Definition just as you do to the Popes Decrees with all submission without any scruple or examination you know it will be expected from you to prove this his Definition to be true I cannot dare to think you so
confuted YOU are next resolved to have a little fling at the Church of England about her Orders which you say pag. 19. they of that Church very much endeavour to prove and fain would have confest to be received from undoubted Bishops of the Church of Rome But here your heart failed you and this is all you have to say against our Orders which is nothing at all since we are much abler and as ready to prove the Legitimacy of our Orders as you can those of your Pope himself this is to bark when you dare not come near to fasten but if you have a mind to shew your parts upon this subject do but undertake and answer Arch-Bishop Bramhals Confutation of the Nags-head Ordination c. and I 'll do as I hear you have renounce my Orders But Alas Sir I might as well put you upon carrying Westminster Abby to Putney as upon the Answering that Vnanswerable Book After the civil hint that the Church of England hath no true Orders you are for making her amends out of Reverence to her by proving that she is a very Nonsensical foolish Church which you attempt by two small you have a kindness still for her or else we might have had four perhaps ten great Observations Your first is That this reduces the Catholick Church into a narrow corner of the World Toto divisos orbe Britannos 1 Obs pag. 19. and as small a handfull in that narrow Corner c. But pray Mr. Sclater how are we got hither What is this This that reduces the Catholick Church c. Hath the Church of England denied the foreign Reformed Churches to be true Churches Pray shew us where But suppose she had this will not prove that the Catholick Church is reduced into this narrow Corner of the World except you shew that she hath also denied the Church of Rome and those Churches that submit to her to be true Churches Nor this neither will not confirm your Observation supposing the Church of England had rejected both the foreign Reformed and Vnreformed Churches out of the Catholick Church since you have surely heard of such a Church as the Large Greek Church under the Four Patriarchs of the Russian Church of the vast Aethiopian Church of the Armenian and of the Nestorians to omit others Have you or can you prove that the Church of England hath excluded all these also from being Parts or Members of the Catholick Church If you cannot how doth she confine the Catholick Church here or what contradiction is she guilty of that abhors the thought of such a thing as you would fasten upon her I cannot refrain shewing a just resentment here and therefore must tell you that this your Observation is the most disingenuous and the most foolish that I ever met with in my Life and that I could never have suspected that any Man that had common sense and pretended to Conscience could have been guilty of so foul a thing had I not met with it in this Book And just such stuff as this is the Remark in this Observation upon our Church that she is pleased in order to avoid the Word Catholick to call it an Vniversal Church c. Who would expect that a Man that hath been a Minister in our Church these Thirty Years that hath used our Service perchance a Thousand times should make such a strange Remark hath our Church as you say she hath in order to avoid the Word Catholick struck it out of that Translation of the Apostles Creed which she appoints in her Liturgy Hath she struck it out and put in Vniversal in the Four places it used to occur in in the Creed of St. Athanasius Is it gone out of the Nicene Creed she appoints Pray get some Body to look those Three Creeds for you A Man would believe you had not seen a Common-Prayer-Book these Thirty Years or pass a much severer Sentence upon you Doth not the Church of England command its Daily Vse in the General Collect which we daily put up for the good Estate of the Catholick Church And further she is so far from altering or endeavouring to avoid as you most falsly would observe she doth the Word Catholick See Bishop Sparrows Collection of Canons c. that whereas in the Injunctions of King Edward the Sixth 1547. the Form of bidding the Common-Prayers before Sermon begun thus You shall Pray for the whole Congregation of Christ's Church and c. in those of Queen Elizabeth 1559 and in the 55th of the Canons Ecclesiastical of the Synod under King James the First 1604. the Word Catholick is put in and every Minister is commanded to begin his bidding of Prayer in these very words Ye shall Pray for Christs Holy Catholick Church c. Nay you your self used the term Catholick while you continued and as a Member of our Church on last Palm-Sunday at Putney Church or else you broke our Church Laws So that I cannot now avoid the asking you your self what you now think of this your Remark and whether you had not saved your self a disparagement had you had the good fortune not to have put it down You have a Second Remark much akin to the First in which you profess you can no more tell how she can be the Catholick Church than she is able to find her self in the innumerable huddle of ten times Ten more Dissenters Dissemblers and Indifferents pag. 19. than her number is able to make c. How you come to know the number of those that hold Communion with the Church of England to be so very small is matter of wonder to me but if I should say that your Calculation is most intolerably false I am sure you cannot disprove me since I am certain I have truth and the common Judgment of all unprejudiced Men on my side that Calculating the numbers of the several Parishes thro' England there are one with another Ten I may I believe safely say Twenty times more that hold Communion with the Church of England than dissent from it As for Dissemblers and Indifferents how you come to know Mens Hearts so well is owing more to your new than old Religion which would have taught you more Prudence about such things After you have come off so wretchedly with your first Observation no Body will expect wonders from your second which is 2 Obs pag. 20. That you should have had the better Opinion of this handfull as you ridiculously call the Church of England if their Faith had been conformable to the Faith of those Bishops from whom their Bishops had their Mission c. That our Bishops have their Mission from Rome is what we utterly deny that they were some of 'em in the beginning of the most necessary Reformation ordained by those that held with the Church of Rome in her corrupt Faith and Practices is what we do not deny This however we say cannot prejudice our Reformation since
another place that our Lord gave to his Disciples at his Last Supper the Figure of his sacred Body and Blood. CHAP. XXV Some Corollaries against Transubstantiation HAving hitherto sufficiently answered all your pretended Proofs for Transubstantiation and shewn in part the Sense and Arguments of the Fathers against it instead of wearying my self or rather our Reader with any more of your Authors which you very irregularly place and which you your self will grant to be produced to no purpose if the former Primitive Fathers were of a contrary Faith about the Eucharist I shall here adjoyn a few Corollaries to vindicate the Faith of the Catholick and Apostolical Church of England against Transubstantiation and will make it apparently clear that her Doctrine and Faith herein is both Primitive and Orthodox and exactly the same with that of the Fathers of the Catholick Church My first Corollary shall be 1 Coroll That the Fathers gave such Titles to the Consecrated Elements of Bread and Wine as utterly exclude a Transubstantiation It was sufficiently common with them to call the Elements a Tertullian con Marcion l. 4. c. 40. Beda Comment in 3. Psalm the Figure b August de Doctr. Christi c. 7. Origen Dialog cont Marcion p. 116. Edit Wets the Sign c Basil Anaphora Cyril Hierosol Col. 4. Cat. Mys the Type d Greg. Naz. Orat. 118. Macarius Hom. 27. the antitype e August in Gratiano the Similitude f Theodoret. Dialog 2. and the Symbols of the Body and Blood of Christ g Tom. 6. Concil Edit Cossart and a whole Oecumenical Council of 338 Bishops at Constantinople A. D. 754. declare them to be the true and onely Image of our Saviour's Body and Blood. These Expressions and the like I argue to be utterly inconsistent with the Elements being Transubstantiated into the very Body and Blood of Christ since it is impossible any thing can be the Figure of a thing and the thing it self or the thing it self and yet but the figure of it he that will affirm this may without an absurdity say that the Sign of the King at a Tavern door is the King himself that the Picture of the Ship in St. Paul's Church-yard is as real a true Ship as any on the River and that the Image of the King in the Exchange is really King James 2d in his very Person In short if any thing be the Figure it cannot be the thing if it be the thing it self it cannot be the Figure of it since nothing can be the Figure of it self And therefore if Christ's Natural Body be really on the Altar that which is there cannot be the Figure of it But if as the Fathers almost unanimously speak that which is there be the Figure the Sign of it then consequently our Saviour's Natural Body it self is not This is so evident See Tertullian's 4th Book against Marcion ch 40th I think I need not say any more upon this Point I might very easily else have shewn that the Strength of one of Tertullian's Arguments for our Saviour his having a true substantial Body against Marcion depended wholly on the Eucharist its being the FIGURE of his Body but I will wave it and conclude this Corollary with that of Facundus h Et potest Sacramentum Adoptionis Adoptio nuncupari Sicut Sacramentum Corporis Sanguinis ejus quod est in Pane Poculo consecrato Corpus ejus Sanguinem dicimus Non quod propriè Corpus ejus sit Panis Poculum Sanguis Sed quod in se Mysterium Corporis ejus sanguinisque contineant Hinc ipse Dominus benedictum Panem Calicem quem Discipulis tradidit Corpus Sanguinem suum Vocavit Facund Herm. pro Defens 3. Capit. Con. Chalced. Lib. 9. c. 5. p. 404 405. Edit Sirmond 1629. Bishop of Hermiana in Africa the Sacrament of Adoption may be called by the name of Adoption as we call the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ the consecrated Elements of Bread and Wine his Body and his Blood not that the Bread is properly his Body or the Cup his Blood but because they contain the Mystery of his Body and Blood upon which very account it is that when our Lord delivered the consecrated Bread and Cup to his Disciples he called them his Body and his Blood. One thing I must not forget here that tho' these Fathers and the Church of England with them look upon the consecrated Elements as Signs and Figures onely yet they and we believe that by the Institution of Christ they are the Means of conveying all the Virtue and Benefits of our Saviour's crucifyed Body of communicating the Blood and Body of Christ unto every worthy Communicant This I could not omit to let you see the silliness of your foolish Cant up and down of meer Signs of what meer figures c. such Expressions were designed against the Church of England or what do they in your Book against her if they were I must tell you that they are sottishly ridiculous and most intolerable from a man who was I am sorry I can say it a Minister of the Church of England and therefore must so often have seen her Articles and so often have used her Communion-Service My Second Corollary is 2. Coroll That such things are attributed to the Sacramental Body and Blood of Christ by the Primitive Fathers as do altogether exclude their being transubstantiated into the Natural Body and Blood of Christ I instance in that of the Sacramental Body and Blood of Christ their being said to Nourish our Bodies That the consecrated Elements do nourish our Bodies is very apparent from a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Justin Apolog 2. St. Justin Martyr's saying that our flesh and blood are nourished by the consecrated Elements being changed into our Substance From b Quando ergo Calix Panis percipiunt â—erbum Dei fit Eucharistia Sanguinis Corporis Christi ex quibus augetur consistit Carnis nostrae Substantia S. Iren. c. Haer. l. 5. c. 18. Irenaeus and c Caro Corpore Sanguine Christi vescitur ut Anima de Deo saginetur Tert. de Resurrect c. 8. Tertullian that our Flesh is fed and nourished with the Body and Blood of Christ From d Ille Cibus qui sanctificatur per Verbum Dei perque obsecrationem juxta id quod babet materiale in ventrem abit in secessum ejicitur Orig. in 15 Matt. p. 27. Origen that the Eucharist as to its Material Part undergoes the common course of our common repasts From e Quia sicut visibilis Panis Vini substantia exteriorem nutrit inebriat hominem ita Verbum Dei qui est Panis Vivus participatione sui Fidelium recreat mentes Isidor Hispal apud Rathramni Lib. de Corp. Sang. D. p. 120. Edit Paris Boileau 1686. Isidore of Sevil that the Substance of the Visible Bread
VETERES VINDICATI IN AN Expostulatory Letter TO Mr. SCLATER of PVTNEY UPON HIS CONSENSVS VETERVM c. WHEREIN The Absurdity of his Method are shewn The Weakness of his Reasons are shewn His false Aspersions upon the Church of England are wiped off and her FAITH concerning the EUCHARIST proved to be THAT of the PRIMITIVE CHURCH Together with Animadversions on Dean Boileau's French Translation of and Remarks upon Bertram King Charles the Martyr to the Prince 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 27. But if you never see my face again I do Require and intreat you as your FATHER and your KING that you never suffer your heart to receive the least check against or Disaffection from the TRUE RELIGION established in the CHURCH of ENGLAND I tell you I have TRYED IT and after MUCH SEARCH and MANY DISPUTES have concluded IT to be BEST in the WORLD not onely in the Community as Christian but also in the special notion as Reformed keeping the middle way between the POMP of SUPERSTITIOUS TYRANNY and the MEANNESS of FANTASTICK ANARCHY LONDON Printed for Henry Mortlock at the Phoenix in St. Paul's Church-yard and at the White Hart in Westminster Hall. 1687. IMPRIMATUR Guil. Needham RR. in Christo P. ac D. D. Wilhelmo Archiep Cantuar. à Sacr. Domest Ex Aedib Lambeth Apr. 7. 1687. TO THE READER IT is not material to thee to know what were the particular Reasons that put me upon answering this Book of Mr. Sclater whether it were a Challenge or a Request both or neither such as it is it was designed for a Vindication of our most Holy Mother the Church of England from those very silly and very false Aspersions cast upon her by Mr. Sclater up and down his Book I hope no one will think that I have been too sharp upon him I am certain his behaviour in his Book was so very extravagant and his abuses so open and so intolerable that I can assure the Reader that it was with trouble that I did restrain using oftner a just Indignation There is no one that reads him who had he been to examine his Quotations as I obliged my self for t he most of them would not I think have been as sharp upon him as I have any where been It would have stirred up a very meek man's Indignation to have been served as he did me his Reader with his Quotation from Hilary pag. 38. where having by chance cast my eye on the first part of the passage set down by him I went hunting for the rest of it as it stood in his Book quite through St. Hilary's whole Book from thence and little dreamed of what I was very angry to find that I was to look backwards in St. Hilary for the other two parts of that passage There are other dealings in his Book much more provoking than this However if any one think I am too severe upon him I must onely say that it is perchance more pardonable in me than in another not that I have any personal quarrel against Mr. Sclater whom I am morally certain I never spoke with in my life but upon another account One short Address I cannot avoid the making here to my Brethren of the Clergy who have not opportunities of a full examination of these Controversies in Antiquity it self that they would beware for Mr. Sclater's sake of taking things too much on trust from our Romish Adversaries or of relying too much on some extraordinary passages out of the Fathers This Address I make because I have been informed that this unhappy man was very much imposed upon and perhaps almost perverted by that passage out of St. Chrysostome about St. Peter's having the Care of the whole Church committed to him which passage therefore I was the more carefull to examine and to confute it that some may see how unsafe it is to rely on scraps of Fathers about these Things and how little they ought to value even the most favourable place out of Antiquity for Popery since the stress of all Antiquity is directly against it as our excellent Writers have abundantly shewn and even such as I are able to shew AN EXPOSTULATORY LETTER TO Mr. EDWARD SCLATER of PVTNEY SIR THE expectation that some person of more leisure and better abilities would have condescended to the trouble of examining this your Treatise was the sole reason that hindred your receiving this sooner from me I am very certain there is nothing in it either so strong or so well managed that could affright any such from bringing your Book to account and therefore I must impute their neglect herein to another cause which I believe you are not at all desirous to hear mentioned by me I am sure I have the opinion of some and those learned persons to confirm me in this my belief 'T is for your own sake therefore chiefly and for those Readers who may possibly be startled at the Title of your Book that I undertake to examine it and to oblige you and them to see how very little reason you had or they to be mov'd by it to call your Book Consensus Veterum and what a miserable mistake you have made in this your forsaking the Communion of your Mother the Church of England and falling to that of Rome I hope you will not be angry that I take the same liberty to examine your method in this Change that you say you did to examine that of our Church One thing I 'll promise you which I am persuaded I shall in the examining of your reasons find you very often faulty in that I will constantly as to my Proofs and Authorities use all the fairness and ingenuity that becomes a Scholar or a Christian herein The Cause of the Church of England is so infinitely better and more steady than that you have so lately espoused that it would be as extremely imprudent as unjust to practise the contrary in the defence of her as she does not need so I am sure she does abhor and is far from admitting any indirect or fraudulent management of her Cause I shall therefore without any farther Preface prosecute my design and begin with your Preface which presents the Reader with a needless Apology about the Plural Title of your Tract for if those other quotations and proofs about the true Catholick Church and the Supremacy of St. Peter and the Bishops of Rome were of any force with you they deserve their place in the Plural Title of your Book if they were not yet that other about the Eucharist though with you All in All can be but one how great soever How Transubstantiation concludes Communion under one species I cannot understand since if Transubstantiation was always the Opinion of the Catholick Church as you affirm it was from the very beginning it would have concluded then as well as now which I am sure it did not for besides our Saviour's Institution in both kinds and his Precept as strict for either of
much a Madman as to believe S. N's Infallibility at Definitions and therefore now do wait for your proof of these two things First That this your espoused Definition is true that is that Christ his Catholick Church is Monarchical and governed supremely by one chief Pastor pag. 6. his Generalissimo a very fit Title in a literal sense for some of your Popes or Vicegerent here on Earth and Secondly That this Definition doth belong to the Church of Rome and not to the Church of England Do but prove me the first and I 'll forgive you the trouble of proving the Second and bestow it on you as a just reward for your pains about the first But before we begin I must desire you to remember not to confound Particular Churches with the Catholick Church and not to take that as said of the one which does certainly belong to the other You begin your Proofs with Scripture which a Man may easily see is not at all on your side you give us thence so few and those nothing to the purpose For as to the first out of Acts the Second pag. 7. Verse 1. how that which is onely an Historical Relation should be a Heavenly Representation I cannot imagine No Body will deny that they that meet as the Apostles then were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in one place not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as you falsly quote it and as ill translate it at the same work should be as the Apostles then were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of one accord or of one mind and which is more that every Particular Church over the World should be as to the Rule of Faith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of one mind but I can never believe that for this reason they are can or ought to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 always meet at the same place which your use of it would insinuate and must require the one as well as the other for your purpose But what this is to a Monarchical Church with a supreme Head I cannot guess nor your other from St. Pauls frequent Injunctions to his several Plantations that they should be all of one mind pag. 7. and speak the same things You had done well to have quoted some passages to have illustrated what you say or at least to have put down some references in the Margin but this alas was not convenient then even those that swallow what you say without examining could not avoid seeing the Fallacy for whereas St. Paul writing to Particular Churches exhorts them to be at Vnity among themselves you would fain turn it as if he should exhort them as to all particulars and circumstances to be at Vnity or to have the same with the other Churches as if writing to Ephesus for example he should exhort them to be of the same mind and to speak the same things with the Church of Corinth with the Church at Thessalonica c. Shew this and I 'll yield the point but remember that if you mean of the same mind and to speak the same things as to matters of Faith this as it need not be proved no Body gainsaying it so it does no ways serve what you cited it for to prove a Monarchical Church It cannot appear otherwise than very strange to all considering Persons that these People should generally with so much confidence affirm that our Saviour left his Church in such a condition with a Supreme Vicegerent over it and yet like you when they should come to make the thing apparent from the History of those first times penned in the Gospels Acts and Epistles are forc'd to drop the proof of it and to impose upon their Readers a scrap or two out of those writings not one jot to the purpose oftentimes You will easily find that I mean this of you and I must needs say that these your two useless proofs I mean Quotations for they are far from Proofs forced me upon this Remark CHAP. VII His Arguments for a Monarchical Church out of Antiquity refuted ONE comfort however you seem to promise us that you will make your Reader amends by your Testimonies out of the Fathers for your being so short and so destitute of 'em from Scripture You begin them in a quaint stile which I believe you took for a pretty fancy pag. 7. I followed say you I must confess a loof off her the Kings Daughter all glorious within Companions that followed her c. This passage is one of the pleasantest that I ever met with and the fullest of Figure I must profess till I saw your Book I always took St. Dennis Ignatius Irenaeus c. for Members of the Church and never in the least dreamed that these persons were her Companions or the Virgins that are her Fellows and I must own that it is the first time I ever heard of a Members being a companion to the Body or that a Man without the breach of common sense may say that his Hand or Foot is a Companion of his Body But you Sir had been contemplating just before the ravishing Beauty of the Kings Daughter all glorious within and the Virgins that be her Fellows and Companions did so run in your head that 't is no wonder you mistook Dennis the Areopagite and the rest you mention after him for the Queens Companions At present however we must let them pass as such whom you followed you tell us and lissened what they said of her and overheard First Dionysius the Areopagite St. Pauls Scholar Secondly Clemens Romanus c. 'T is commonly said it's ominous stumbling at the Threshold and a bad presage to trip at the first attempt and this truly is your very case for it is a great mistake you should overhear either of them two using those passages you mention since neither of them ever said the things St. Dennis having never left any thing writ at all nor St. Clemens any thing besides his two allowing the fragment of the Second to be his Epistles So that your two first quotations are pitifull Forgeries as I shall hereafter prove but granting the passages were true and as old as you would have 'em pag. 7. they are not one jot to your purpose The first of 'em saying onely that the Apostles desired their followers by their Instructions might be partakers of the Divine Nature the latter that Bishops should observe the Orders left by the Apostles pag. 8. both which are nothing to the purpose of a Monarchical Church but prove the contrary if it were worth the while to shew it Ignatius Saint and Martyr is the next you produce pag. 8. from him you tell us that People in all things should submit to their Bishop that no Man can be partaker of the Eucharist that abstains from the Bishops Altar A Man would guess by these passages that you had already forgot what you were about to prove You were to prove that Christ lest his Church under one
particular Governour and here you prove that People must be dutifull to their Bishops pag. 8. Ay but say you St. Ignatius tells us there is but one Altar and one Bishop as also that there ought to be but one Church and one Faith which is in Christ c. and that surely is to the purpose This I utterly deny I grant indeed St. Ignatius in his Epistle to the Philadelphians not as you have mistaken it to the Philippians to which Church he wrote no Epistle tho' some have coined one for him doth speak of one Altar and one Bishop and you had done fairly to have cited the passage at large as you did the other two nothing to the purpose but this is a certain sign that runs almost through your Book that where you onely hint or quote half or put an c. in the middle of a Sentence there all things will not be found fair The passage then is this (a) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 St. Ignat. Ep. ad Philadelph Edit J. Vossii Be carefull therefore saith he speaking to the Philadelphians to make use of this one Eucharist for there is but one Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one Cup to Communicate to us or unite us to his Blood one Altar as but one Bishop with the Presbyters and Deacons my fellow-servants that whatever ye do ye may act according to Gods appointment Now this passage is so far from proving what you would have it that there is but one Supreme Bishop who you say is he of Rome that it asserts the direct contrary for if it proves as you say it does that there is but one Altar and one Bishop I am as certain that it proves that one Bishop to be the Bishop of Philadelphia and that one Altar to be this Bishops since he exhorts these Philadelphians to make use and keep to that Eucharist that was to be received from that one Altar that did belong to that one Bishop and that one Bishop I am sure was the then Bishop of Philadelphia I will not urge upon you any place of Ignatius but will onely say and will be at any time ready to prove that he that cites Ignatius for a defender of a Monarchical Church under one Head on Earth either hath not read Ignatius or does not understand him What you urge from St. Cyprian is to no purpose since every one owns that every Member ought to keep the Vnity of that Church to which he doth belong and that no Man that is disobedient to the Church his Mother will ever have God for his Father Nor your long quotation from St. Irenaeus where your faculty of translating appears to be none of the best pag. 8. This Preaching and this Faith when the Church had heard spread through the whole World she diligently keeps as it were dwelling in one House to wit having one Soul and one Heart c. which give me leave to alter a little to St. Irenaeus his good sense and then you shall have my Answer about it The Catholick Church having received this Preaching and this Faith although she be dispersed over the whole World yet keeps and preserves them as diligently as if she were confined to or did Inhabit a single House and she doth believe them without any difference or disagreement as tho' she had but one Soul and but one Heart and accordingly doth both preach teach and deliver these things these Articles of Faith as if she had but one Mouth c. Of all the passages in Antiquity I wonder what ill Fate put this piece of St. Irenaeus in your way had you considered it well I am sure we should not have met with it in your Book since it does perfectly ruine the whole design of this part of your Book for whereas the benefit you intended from it was to help you to prove that the Church of Christ is Monarchical under a single head there is nothing less here and every thing contrary for as it speaks of the Catholick Church as one through this Vnity of Faith so it proves what we of the Church of England so much contend for that the Particular Churches of Germany Spain France Aegypt and the East of Lybia Jerusalem Rome and the rest do make up this Catholick Church without the least hint of a Head over them all or of any other Vnity than that of Faith the Light that doth like the Sun equally enlighten every where You will say perhaps that the Church of Rome is not expressly mentioned here and that probably it is because all these Particular Churches mentioned are the several parts of her Body which really is the same as the Catholick Church But to spoil this groundless Pretence neque haequae in Medio Mundi sunt constitutae not to insist on it that by the Churches constituted in the middle of the World in this passage She as well as Jerusalem and the Churches betwixt them is certainly intimated I desire you but to peruse the Third Chapter of his Third Book against Heresies Having in the beginning of this Chapter urged against the Hereticks that none of the Apostles delivered to the Bishops their Successours any such things as they impiously taught and that he could shew this from the Successions in all the Churches he thus addresses them b Sed quoniam valde longum est in hoc tali volumine Omnium Ecclesiarum enumerare Successiones Romae fundatae constitutae Ecclesiae Traditionem c. St. Irenaeus l. 3. c. 3. contr Haeres Edit Feuardent 1625. But because it is too tedious in such a Volume as this is to reckon up the Successions of all Churches c. he then reckons up that of the very great and very ancient Church founded at Rome by St. Peter and St. Paul c. If this passage do not prove the Church of Rome to be one of all those Churches and as Particular a Church as any of the rest I will for the future as you did abstract my self and deny my Eyes as well as my Reason What you quote from Clemens of Alexandria and Tertullian two of whose passages are part falsly pag. 9. and part lamely translated are nothing at all to your purpose they only speak of the Catholick Church as one through the Vnity of Faith not a word of the Church of Rome or of her being that one Church under one Head Bishop The same advantage and no more doth that from St. Chrysostom afford you pag. 9. which says The Apostle calls it the Church of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he may shew it may be reduced into one which with your leave I would express thus to shew or having shewed that it ought to be at Vnity c. All which is no more than what the Members of the Church of England have said a Hundred Thousand times that every Church as well as that at Corinth ought to be at Vnity You
might have quoted our Collect for all Conditions of Men O God the Creatour and Preserver of all Mankind p. 9. c. instead of the passage out of Theodoret onely you had a mind to shew your great reading otherwise ours would have served you to all the purposes this can they both saying the same thing that is not one syllable to your intentions p. 10. St. Ambrose's and St. Hierome's are just the same speaking that which none of our Church can deny every member of it doth believe that there is one Catholick and Apostolick Church and at the same time is as ready to profess that he doth no more believe than any of the Primitive Christians ever did that the Church of Rome is that Church or that that one Catholick and Apostolick Church is governed by one Supreme Pastour the Bishop of Rome which was the thing you were to prove but how little you have performed it I dare appeal to any one that would but as he reads consider and compare your quotations and what I have said upon them More Testimonies it seems you could have given us p. 10. but you say it were too tedious either to write or reade c. There is another reason why they would be tedious and that is because if they are no better than these we have had already they would have been nothing to the purpose and to say those Testimonies you have presented us are not the best would be to disparage your prudence and parts which we need not doe One more however you cannot refrain giving us for good omens sake that of Constantine the Great whose Zeal for the Vnity of the Catholick Church and his most earnest endeavours for the peace thereof all know and admire and therefore 't was needless to recite since it hath not one syllable to your business which was not to prove what both sides affirm that there is a Catholick Church but that the Church of Rome is that Catholick Church governed by one Supreme Pastour Quod restat probandum aternùm restabit One thing I must desire of you by reason of these passages that if ever you set up again for a Writer you would either tell us what Editions the Books are of which you quote or name the Books you pick'd 'em out of you cite the 62d Chapter Valesius's Edition says it 's the 64th you quote the 63d and he says it 's the 65th Chapter of Eusebius's 3d Book of the Life of Constantine CHAP. VIII The Ridiculousness of his Attempt against Protestant Communions exposed and an Vnity of Faith among them proved HERE pag. 10. as tho' you had done wonders by your Authorities you not without a secret vain-glory say What would I have once given to have found such an Vnity amongst Protestants to have England Scotland Denmark Zwethland Geneva Zurick c. thus Unius Labii nay to have found but one County in my own dear Countrey or perhaps one single Family so united a Brotherhood c. I wish Sir that it might have been my good fortune to have met you sometime with money in your Pocket in this generous mood I do assure you that I would have been reasonable and for one Guinea would have proved it to you or have forfeited 40 that all these Churches you have reckoned up in the North and Western parts of Europe are as much Vnius Labii as all the Proofs you have tack'd together do either prove or require for to repeat the substance of them there is none of them all doth either prove or offer at it that all the Particular Churches of Christ should have the same Customs Rites Ceremonies and Discipline without any difference one from another That which they prove and indeed there is but one that doth it clearly that from Irenaeus is that the Vnity of the Catholick Church dispersed throughout the world or which is the same thing of all the Particular Churches every where which do make up the Catholick Church was in and from the one Faith which she had from the Apostles and this Faith was that which we call the Apostle's Creed a Summary of which St. Irenaeus having set down in the short Chapter immediately before this out of which you have your quotation begins this Chapter as you have quoted that the Catholick Church having received this Preaching and this Faith to wit included in the Apostle's Creed doth preserve it and teach it inviolably c. and at the end of this same Chapter c Et neque qui valde praevalet in Sermone ex iis qui praesunt Ecclesiis alia quam haec sunt dicet Nemo enim super Magistrum est neque infirmus in dicendo deminorabit Traditionem Cùm enim una eadem fides sit neque is qui multum de ea potest dicere amplius Lampliat neque is qui minus deminorat S. Iraen c. Haer. l. 1. c. 3. Edit Feuard he tells us that the Church was so much Vnius Labii as your phrase is in this Faith that neither He that was more eloquent among the Pastours of the Church will say or teach any things different from these Articles of Faith for no Man is above his Master nor he that is less expert will diminish any thing from this Faith delivered or Tradition For since the Faith is one and the same neither he that can say most about it doth add any thing to it nor he that can say least doth take any thing from it This Faith then to use St. Irenaeus's simile like the Sun Ibidem enlightens all parts of the world shines to them all and doth influence all with her one Faith as with a common heat and makes all that embrace it throughout the world to become the constituent parts of the Catholick Church By this time I do not question but that you think your Guinea might have been in danger since no man that hath common sense can deny that the Churches of England Denmark Swedland and the rest are Vnius Labii in this Faith which is equally embraced and professed by them and therefore hath the same influence over them that it had over the several Churches in St. Irenaeus his time to make them true Members of the Catholick Church So that as all your money would have been lost on this account so your Pity over your own dear Countrey is not onely lost but childish and ridiculous too and would far handsomer have become a Woman that never saw farther than her Psalter than you that pretend to such a large knowledge in Fathers and Divinity But tho' your Pity were lost pag. 10 11. you are resolved your Countrey shall not want your hearty prayers that true Charity may possess their hearts and that there may be a most holy love planted and reigning in their hearts for ever c. I used to think it was the opinion of the Church of Rome and her Party that we
of the Church of England wanted the true Faith if so you are not then so charitable for all your Pretences as you might be and a little petition that true Faith as well as true Charity may possess our hearts would not be so very much or so troublesome for you now you are on your Rock to put up for us But perhaps your opinion is that our Faith is good enough in this Church onely that we are an ill-natured uncharitable Church and therefore want such an Oratour as you to obtain for us the Gift of Charity But do we want Charity so much more than our neighbours at Rome God will one day judge and let the world doe it in the mean time whether we or they want it more they that damn all besides their own Church or we that hold that even they may be saved And for our Faith neither shall we need to flatter our selves by and by we shall be called to account by you about it and proved to our sorrow to want that altogether as much as Charity so that in the mean time how are you the compassionate and charitable Man 'T is no wonder that one that hath made so great a mistake as to say there is no Vnity among the Reformed Communions should make such adoe to make the Church of Rome appear great by reckoning up all the Vniversities Bishopricks c. that own and submit to the Pope's Jurisdiction I have not so much time to trifle away as to examine whether your Muster be right all that it proves is that a great many Churches that by the Rules of Christianity and by the ancient Laws of the Catholick Church were free and independent do now labour willingly or unwillingly I do not pretend to know under the Vsurpation of the Church of Rome and her Vniversal Bishop which Title Gregory the Great himself a Bishop of that See thought Antichristian When you reckon Sicily and its Bishops you ought to have remembred that they have a Supreme Head of their own the King of Spain who is therefore once a year excommunicated by the other Supreme Head at Rome but for quietness sake as constantly the next day absolved who acts as supremely and Independently there as the Pope himself does in Rome or any part of Italy But this perchance you did not know and therefore 't would be very unreasonable to expect a true account of it from you CHAP. IX A Digression wherein is proved that the Church of Rome is a particular Church and that the Vnity among the Primitive Churches was in Faith onely YOUR next design if I understand you right is to prove the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome But before I undertake to talk with you about that I will take leave to make a Digression the Design of which shall be to shew you that I may not be onely employed in pulling down what you build how much you have been mistaken about your Notion of the Catholick Church and how miserably that Definition of S. N. or rather the Romish Missionaries have imposed upon you I will contract it as much as I can and care not how short I am so that I be but clear and intelligible The things therefore I propose to make appear are these First That the Church of Rome in the Primitive times was looked upon to be as particular a Church as any other then in being Secondly That as an Vnity in Faith was always required in every Particular Church to make it a true branch of the Catholick Church so there were in those Primitive times always found and always allowed of differences as to Practices Ceremonies Discipline and such things between the several particular Churches without any breach of Catholick Peace and Vnity 1. The first of these I am almost as much ashamed to attempt as to prove that I had a Mother it is so plain and visible through all Antiquity that I admire any Man that owns his Reason can in the least question the Church of Rome's being as Particular a Church as any of its neighbours such I am sure St. Paul thought it to be when he wrote his Epistle from Corinth to that Church and such St. Clemens knew it certainly to be when he writes in the name of the Church settled at Rome the famous Epistle to the Church of Corinth the Epistle St. Ignatius wrote to it just before his Martyrdom there does equally prove it with the other two and not one syllable is there to be met with in these three best Monuments of Antiquity as far as I can see that does at all advance her above the common level of the other her sister Churches or in the least hint her any ways being the Mistress or Mother of them all as the late and our modern Wise-men are pleased to say she is but for proving it are willing to be excused I question not but what I have cited out of St. Irenaeus proves the sentiment of him and his time to have been that she was a particular Church among the rest in the world he was certainly of this opinion S. Iren. con Haer. l. 3. c. 3. when telling the Hereticks that it would be too tedious to reckon up the Successions of ALL the CHURCHES he puts down that of Rome which he could not have done had not she been one of those All he there mentions I will but produce one more upon this too evident a point Tertullian d Edant ergo Origines Ecclesiarum suarum evolvant ordinem Episcoporum suorum ita per Successiones ab initio decurrentem ut primus ille Episcopus aliquem ex Apostolis vel Apostolicis viris c. habuerit auctorem antecessorem Hoc enim modo Ecclesiae Apostolicae census suos deferunt sicut Smyrnaeorum Ecclesia habens Polycarpum ab Joanne conlocatum refert Sicut Romanorum Clementem à Petro ordinatum edit proinde utique ceterae exhibent c. Tertull. de Praescript c. 32. Edit Franck. 1597. who challenging the Hereticks to shew the Original of their Churches the Succession of their Bishops in a direct line from either an Apostle or an Apostolical Person that always kept within the Vnity of the Church tells them the Apostolical Churches could doe this for example the Church of Smyrna that had Polycarp placed there for their first Bishop by St. John the Church of Rome that had Clemens ordained by St. Peter and for the rest of those Churches that they did the same 2. I 'll pass now to the second point to shew That as an Vnity in Faith was always required in every Particular Church to make it a true part of the Catholick Church so there were in those primitive times always found and always allowed of Differences as to Practice and Ceremonies Discipline and such things between the several particular Churches without any breach of Catholick Peace and Unity As to the Vnity by Faith I need not much if at all
Matth. 16.13 14 c. wherein the discourse of our Saviour with his Disciples and his gift of the keys to Peter is recorded speaking to his Disciples as invested already with this power of binding and loosing t S. Matt. 18.17 18. And if he shall neglect to hear them tell it unto the Church but if he neglect to hear the Church let him be to thee as an Heathen man and a Publicane verily I say unto you whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound c. and whatsoever ye shall loose shall be loosed in heaven which place with me puts it past all doubt that the rest of the Apostles were equally concerned in that speech of our Saviour's to St. Peter and thereby had equal power But if they will not allow this place to suppose a power already given they will not dare to deny that it doth confer so that if he had the power given to him particularly in the Sixteenth Chapter of this Gospel they all have it now in the Eighteenth and thereby the same Jurisdiction and Authority in the Church which quite destroys all you have been hitherto about which was indeed to prove St. Peter had the same Supremacy invested on him by our Saviour which the Bishops of Rome do since from him exercise and enjoy But how little you have performed I dare appeal to any indifferent person to your own self if you will but compare your papers and mine together so that I might save my self the trouble to try what you say about that Primacy not dying with Peter but I will not lest you should say I left that part unanswered CHAP. XIII Arguments for the Primacy not dying with Peter answered the Proofs out of St. Chrysostome for St. Peter's Supremacy fully confuted YOUR Arguments for the Primacy not dying with Peter are few and which is worse nothing to your purpose pag. 13. since they are far from proving what you desire but you ought to have remembred that it is not onely your Task to prove that there was such a Primacy and that it was not to die with St. Peter but that it was to descend to the successive Bishops of Rome after his decease and not to any of the Apostles nor to the Bishops of Antioch But since I perceive we shall find the first to wit of proving the Primacy not to die with St. Peter too many for you it would be cruel to put you upon proving any of the other for as to that proof out of the Epistle of St. Hierome to Demetrias all it proves is that Innocentius was Anastasius's Successour in the Apostolical Chair at Rome now if you cannot prove hence pag. 14. either that this was the sole and onely Apostolical Chair or that it was always the chief and governing Chair of the Catholick Church every one will see that you alledged a place nothing to the purpose having not a word of St. Peter in it that you cannot shew either of them is what I to prevent your trouble of inquiring among your people about it will make appear in a very few words That the Apostolical Chair at Rome is not the onely Chair in the Church Catholick v Percurre Ecclesias Apostolicas apud quas ipsae adhuc Cathedrae Apostolorum suis locis praesidentur proxima est tibi Achaia habes Corinthum Philippos Thessalonicenses Ephesum Romam Tertull. de Praescript contr Haeret. c. 36. Edit Junii Franekerae 1597. Tertullian is demonstration Run over saith he the Apostolical Churches in which the very Chairs the Apostles used are to this day presided in by the Bishops in their several places and then he reckons Corinth and Philippi and Rome it self among the rest That it was not originally the chief or governing Chair is as plain from the account we have in Euscbius from x Pest servatoris Ascensum Petrum Jacobum Joannem quamvis Dominus ipsos caeteris praetulisset non idcirco de primo honoris gradu inter se contendisse sed Jacobum cognomine Justum Hierosolymorum Episcopum elegisse Clemens apud Euseb Hist Eccl. l. 2. c. 1. Edit Vales Clemens his Sixth Book of Institutions That after our Lord's Ascension Peter James and John tho' preferred not Peter alone by our Lord above the rest of the Apostles did not thereupon contend among themselves for the first place of Honour but chose James the Just Bishop of Jerusalem Whose Chair I am sure this passage makes Primus Honoris Gradus the chief Cathedra in the world Having thus spoiled this your proof your next will give me the less trouble pag. 14. wherein St. Hierome tells Damasus that in this miserable condition of the Eastern Churches being over-run by Heresies he would stick to St. Peter 's Chair and that Faith commended by St. Paul c. which passage would have cleared it self had you but been so just as to have translated the very next words which bring us St. Hierome's reason for this his resolution of slighting all Hereticks and communicating with the Apostolical Chair at Rome because he had in that Church been first made a Christian Inde nunc meae animae postulans cibum unde olim Christi vestimenta suscepi Hieron Ep. Damaso and therefore thence would receive the spiritual food for his Soul. Had you Mr. Scl. but made St. Hierome's resolution your own you had never fallen from the Catholick Apostolical and Orthodox Communion of the Church of England unto that of In the mean time remember that you have not proved either a Primacy or a Succession in it for the Bishops of Rome In the next place as tho' conscious to your self that you had done nothing hitherto and that your Arguments for the Supremacy and then for the Succession were too weak you fall again to the proving that St. Peter was Supreme O incomparable Method and are now resolved to doe it to purpose But how out of St. Chrysostome's Homilies and Comments There is no one that hath looked tho' but a little into that Father that will not smile at this your attempt However you tell us and no body will deny it that he gives St. Peter extraordinary and noble Titles pag. 15. that he calls him Prime Leader of the Apostles the head of Orthodoxy the great High-Priest of the Church the Pillar of the Church the Head of the Chorus of the Apostles and says that He took the charge of the whole Church throughout the World c. I have onely this question to put to you whether you take St. Chrysostome as to these passages concerning St. Peter the greatest as well as the clearest of which for your purpose I have here set down in a strict literal sense if you own it as you seem to do by placing them here for such a purpose I must then plainly tell you that you doe a very great wrong to this Holy and learned Father than whom no one perchance ever gave
himself a greater liberty as to Rhetorical flights in his Homilies since in other places he bestows Titles as high and as great as these on other Apostles which if I take in the same sense that you do these the Good Father is made inconsistent with himself and to preach down-right falsities and contradictions I 'll instance onely in St. John and St. Paul do but give your self the trouble to reade over his Preface to his Comments on St. John's Gospel and tell me then whether you do not find him among other large Elogies calling St. John the Pillar of all the Churches throughout the world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Tom. 2. p. 555. ad fin Edit Savil. and telling us that He had the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven But for St. Paul I am confident I can make even you confess that He mounts him above St. Peter himself concerning whom you have furnished a Catalogue of such glorious Titles Look but upon his Comment on that a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrys Tom. 3. p. 679. saying of St. Paul's 2 Cor. 11.28 about his care of all the Churches a passage by the bye that is more than all your whole Church can patch together for St. Peter how he advances our Apostle there he tells us that St. Paul had the care and charge not of a single House but of Cities and Countreys and Nations yea of the whole world b 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Orat. 5. contr Jud. Tom. 6. pag. 364. in another place that he was intrusted with the charge and Government of the whole world which is the very same Commission and as full and clear as that great one which is your chief and best that you quote for St. Peter of his having the charge of the Church throughout the world And he does not onely make St. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 equal in dignity to St. Peter but which is much more advances him above him as I undertook to prove c 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 D. Chrys Orat. 9. Tom. 6. p. 97. Edit Savil. No one says he speaking of St. Paul is greater than he no nor equal to him neither c. By this time I hope I have made it evident that St. Chrysostome will not doe your business that he is as much nay more against you than for you and that you and I ought both of us to own our several Quotations for Rhetorical Flights since in another d 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 D. Chrys Tom. 8. p. 115. Edit Savil. place if you and I be obstinate against any allowances for these passages He spoils all we have both brought when he tells us That the Apostles were appointed by God to be Rulers not Temporal Rulers to receive each his Nation or City but Spiritual Rulers intrusted in Common All together with the Care of the Catholick Church throughout the World. Therefore as all your Authorities from St. Chrysostome for St. Peter's Supremacy are out of doors pag. 15. so that from St. Augustine comes too late having the same fault as I could most easily shew but do not think I need to trouble my self with it pag. 15. or what the Popes Legates said at Chalcedon that being to make a Man his own witness Especially since that great Council had so little value for what they said that they did notwithstanding all the Pope's opposition decree that Constantinople should enjoy equal Privileges with old Rome and which is more did declare e Etenìm antiquae Romae Throno QVOD VRBS ILLA IMPERARET jure Patres Privilegia tribuere EADEM CONSIDERATIONE moti 150 Dei amantissimi Episcopi S. Sancto novae Romae Throno AEQVALIA PRIVILEGIA addixerunt c. Concil Chalced cap. 28. Edit Bever Oxon. that as well old as new Rome had such great Privileges bestowed upon them purely because they were successively the Imperial Cities of the world CHAP. XIV The ridiculous Vse of his Testimonies shewn and his foolish Aspersions upon the Church of England wiped off THese Testimonies say you I content my self withall as sufficient to shew pag. 15. I have not gone rashly on without the advice of ancient Councellors c. It had been one further happiness for your Testimonies could they but have contented others as well as you say they have done you but how can that be expected since they are as I think I have fully shewn far from being satisfactory because altogether insufficient for the design you gather'd them for In a word you have neither proved that Christ left his Church in a Monarchical State nor that St. Peter was made the sole Head and Dictator as you word it of the Catholick Church nor lastly that the Bishops of Rome have and do succeed him in such a charge Had you done these you had done your cause service to attempt and not to do it is but to tell the World that it cannot be done and what thanks you will have for that I can very easily guess All these Testimonies you sum up with St. Bernard pag. 15. but since he lived far too late to be admitted a Witness about these things and you might as well have quoted those two Monsters of Men Gregory the Seventh and Innocent the Third for those purposes I must set him aside No Body ought to wonder that you are pleased with what you have thus scraped together or that you think you have found something since every one likes his own best how little reason you had to flatter your self I think I have abundantly proved but on you go and now strongly imagine that the wise God and his Son could leave which is a little too bold with God did leave might surely serve you none other at his Ascension pag. 16. c. To be short Sir all this pleasant fancy is answered already and all you have so carefully been about hitherto proves but a Dream a Delusion proceeding from your examining things by false Measures and through a false Glass But for all this This must be the Church you called Catholick in your Creed and till now did not so well mind c. Alas Sir that a Man of your parts and years should not before this have minded what Catholick meant and where that Church was when there 's scarce a person of any tolerable sense in England that cannot with a great deal of readiness give a sufficient account of these things but here is the Mystery you have found that the Church of Rome is this very Church mentioned in our common Creed and that when we profess we believe the Holy Catholick Church we mean tho' we do not mind it the Church of Rome It is to no purpose to endeavour to reclaim such Men as you since you seem to have abandoned the common principles by which Mankind govern themselves for else how could you dream of a part being the whole a Member the Body That the Church of
if there were Errours fit to be thrown out of our Church you your self I am sure your Learned Men will grant that no Ordination can prejudice or hinder such a Rejection of Errours That there were such Errours crept in which ought to be cast out and were at our Reformation is what our Church-Men a Hundred times over have invincibly proved As to the Rule you bring from St. Ambrose that they enjoy not the Inheritance of Peter pag. 20. who receive not the Faith of Peter we are very ready to join issue with you or any of your Church upon it and I question not before you and I part on this subject to ruine the Papal and Roman Succession by your own Rule to wit by proving that they have receded from the Faith of Peter and the whole Primitive Church We readily own that a true and Apostolical Mission pag. 20. Commission and Ordination are considerable particulars and are as ready any time to assert that our Church hath them and to prove it against you at any time if you have a mind to undertake this point against her CHAP. XVI The Doctrine of the Church of England concerning the Eucharist put down Mr. Scl. 's Reasons from Scripture for Transubstantiation answered HAving traced you hitherto and found all your Attempts vain and your Reasons to no purpose which you took so much pains to scrape together to have proved that our Saviour Christ left his Catholick Church in a Monarchical State under a Particular Vicegerent and that that Vicegerent was the Bishop of Rome and his Church the Catholick Church And having shewn all your Attacks against and Remarks upon the Church of England to be very vain extremely abusive and extravagantly ridiculous I have now onely your last your great Reason to examine wherein you make an effort to prove that her Faith concerning the Eucharist is contrary to that of the Catholick Church If you could have proved this I must confess your forsaking our Communion would have been much more reasonable and therefore I question not but that as you have mustered up abundance of Authorities so you have done all you can to make them speak and declare against us but to how little purpose you have made all this noise and ado about this point also is what I shall quickly see Before I enter on your particular proofs I have a fresh complaint to make that you have not used herein that Ingenuity that would have become a Scholar one might very rationally have expected that as your Intentions were to prove against the Church of England that her Faith was as to the Eucharist false and corrupt so you would have set down what that her Faith is This would have looked like fair and ingenuous dealing first to have put down her Faith about the Eucharist and then to have shewn how contrary it was to Scripture and to the unanimous Consent of Antiquity If you reply to this my Complaint that her Faith is so well known that you needed not put it down together but that you have occasionally done it up and down these Authorities I must tell you that by the account you give of it occasionally one would be persuaded that it is far from being so well known I am sure that slender account or rather hints that you so often intersperse about it are utterly false and very foolish so that if any one should take an account of our Churches Faith from you and whom can they better take it from than one that was so lately a Minister among us they must believe that we hold the Eucharist to be mere figures mere representations and bare signs for that is the most you allow us to make of it that I can meet with in your Book all which how far it is from Truth I shall quickly shew you Well then since you had not the Ingenuity to put down an Account of the Church of England's Faith about the Eucharist I must that so I may the better examine the Proofs you bring and any one may compare the Authorities you quote and our Faith together and thereby more impartially judge and more readily discover whether Antiquity fairly laid down speak for or against us Concerning this Sacrament the Church of England in her 28th Article of Religion delivers her Opinion thus The Supper of the Lord is not onely a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another but rather it is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ's death Insomuch that to such as rightly worthily and with Faith receive the same the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Bloud of Christ After which having declared her self against Transubstantiation as repugnant to plain Scripture and to the nature of a Sacrament and against any Corporal Presence of Christ's Natural Flesh and Bloud in the Declaration about kneeling at the end of our Communion-Service in our Liturgy she goes on in this Article to declare that The Body of Christ is given taken and eaten in the Supper onely after an heavenly and spiritual manner and that the Mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith which last expressions exclude the wicked from partaking of Christ's Body and allow them barely the Sign or outward part of the Eucharist In the Publick Catechism in the Liturgy having taught her Catechumens that there are two things in each of the Sacraments the outward Sign and the inward spiritual Grace she teaches them to answer that the outward part of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is Bread and Wine and that the inward part or thing signified is the Body and Bloud of Christ which are verily and indeed taken and received by the Faithfull in the Lord's Supper These passages are sufficient to shew that our Church holds a real but not carnal a Spiritual and Heavenly but not Corporal Participation of Christ's Body and Bloud which tho' locally and naturally in Heaven is yet after a Mystical and Supernatural way communicated to the Faithfull not by the mouth of the Body but by that of Faith. Thus much for her Sentiment concerning this Sacrament pag. 20. now I must try your Reasons against it You tell us that you had been a long time greatly concerned for the Interpretation of but five small words of our Saviour c. The result of your concern I suppose was that those five words I doubt we shall find more than five or double five concerned in this business are to be taken in a literal sense and that which you offer for proof of it is this First Because this Sacrament was his last Will and Testament which ought not to be worded obscurely or doubtfully to prevent quarrels and divisions Secondly Because this Will is repeated by so many of his Apostles without the least variation or caution against the
guilty of such pitifull stuff look at it again Mr. Sclater fetch down your Dictionary and try again at it and see whether you that translate but at this rate be fit to set up for a Book-writer and a Manager of Controversies and a Balancer of the Merits of the two Churches I am ashamed that any Man our Church should either have so little brains or so little honesty but to let your Translation alone Rupertus does confirm my reason for the determining This to mean This Bread when he says This saith our Saviour that is This Bread is my Body or my Flesh CHAP. XVII His false Slander of our Church and his foolish Observation about Judas shewn I Must next consider what you have of Argument in your Preface where you would have us believe that the sixth Chapter of St. John's Gospel is to be taken in a literal sense but since you were not at leisure to offer any Proof for it I need spend no time to answer one thing I must examine there and that is the danger you said you must live and die in under the denial or but doubting of so great a Truth Pref. in Communion with those that said How can this Man give us his Flesh to eat And doth our Church say so that our Saviour cannot give us his Flesh to eat How is it then that in the Prayer We do not presume c. she orders her Communicants to pray to our Gratious Lord to grant to them so to eat the Flesh of his dear Son Jesus Christ and to drink his Bloud that their sinfull Bodies may be made clean by his Body and their Souls washed through his most pretious Bloud c. That in the Prayer of Consecration the same Petition is put up to omit any more places This Sir is very provoking and highly unjust that a Man who hath perchance a hundred times used these very Prayers who did last Palm-Sunday use them reade them when he administred the Eucharist to the Parishioners of Putney should in the face of the Sun in our own Nation in our own Language publish so gross and Vntruth and affix so false a Scandal upon our Church as to say she affirms our Saviour cannot give us his Flesh to eat If these and such be the Fruits of your Conversion sit anima mea cum Philosophis rather than with such Christians Do not think to bring off your self with saying that our Church denies that any one can eat the Flesh of Christ in that sense which those people meant it that spoke these words that will not doe your business since that Church whereof you now are for all its belief of Transubstantiation abhors the Capernaitical sense of these words as much as we and are ready to say with us that our Saviour cannot and does not give us his Flesh to eat in that carnal sensual abominable manner that these Capernaites talked of Your next Observation in your Preface that Judas was one of the Disciples that went back and walked no more with our Saviour is I must confess a rarity which hath escaped I believe all our Commentatours but will your pretty and spitefull Observation hold Matth. 26.23 25. how is it then that we meet with Judas in our Saviour's dish the very night before he was Crucified I know no other fetch that you can have to save your ingenious Observation besides that of a Gentleman who in a dispute holding that Abraham was justified by Faith and being pressed by the Opponent with that of St. James that Abraham was justified by Works saved his bacon by saying that there were perhaps two Abrahams and so you may gravely say that there were two Judas Iscariots CHAP. XVIII His Authorities from Galatinus and the Spurious Liturgies for Transubstantiation rejected and the reason of it His railing and Absurdities about these and other Spurious Pieces examined and exposed NOW we are come to your main Battel where like as the Turks are said to have had a sort of Souldiers called as I remember Asaphi whom they set in the front of their Battel to dull and evigorate their enemies by their cutting down of these dull Souls so you have placed Galatinus and his Rabbins in your front to hinder your Adversaries falling with too much stomach upon your main Body You saw it necessary however in your Preface to bespeak your Reader in favour of Galatinus Preface that he was always accounted a very learned Man. You had done well to have quoted some people on your side here because your bare word will not pass with me nor with any one else that will take the pains to reade our two papers I am sure he shewed neither Learning nor Honesty in those passages you quote from him See Dr. Cave's Chartophylax in Galatino p. 336. since he stole them from Porchetus Salvaticus without owning in the least whence he had them and for the Passages and Rabbins themselves it is the Opinion of Learned Men that there were neither such Rabbins nor such Works of theirs as to these things but that they are the Pious Frauds of Porchetus and others So that I need not trouble my self but set aside this forged stuff your calling them Prophetick pag. 21. and abusing the place of St. John of the Spirits blowing where it listeth c. would in any other sort of People have been called Enthusiasm and downright Fanaticism And truly you put in as fair for a touch of the latter as your veriest Enemy could desire when instead of Argument you vent your Anger and instead of reasoning fall into downright railing against the Impious Ambition and unlimitted appetite of rule of the Private Spirit which would fain soar above the Heavens and make it self Lord even of the Writings of God also Her private Glosses imperious Sentiments and contradictory Interpretations like the Victorious Rabble of the Fishermen of Naples riding in Triumph and trampling under their feet Ecclesiastical Traditions Decrees and Constitutions Ancient Fathers Ancient Liturgies the whole Church of Christ c. But pray Sir if your Catholick fit be over who is it that hath or own this Private Spirit you have been venting so much Spleen against If you designed it for a Character of the Church of England which I believe you did I am obliged to tell you that it is a most impudent and a most false Slander Do but look into that Canon of our Church which you your self quoted See the Canon it self and the Remarks above p. 2. and those little Remarks I made upon it do but peruse again what I said above as to our Church tying up and obliging all her Members by her Articles without leaving any of those things to a Private Spirit and then look at what your bitter Pen hath here vented if it do not make you eat up these Cholerick Nonsensical Words and recant this Scandal upon an Apostolical Catholick Church I must then tell you
that you left common Honesty and the Church of England at the same time But you go in your virulent strain and tell the world that it is not likely those who upon their own bare Authority and private Sentiments reject what Authors they please should with much kindness lissen to the Ancient Liturgies of Saint Peter Saint James the Elder Saint James the Younger and Saint Matthew or value the Testimonies of Saint Dionysius Saint Paul's Scholar Saint Martialis you should have added Saint Dionysius his companion into France Clemens Romanus Ignatius Andreas c. they must suffer too The Servant is not better than his Master c. who would not guess by this stinging farewell that the Learned Men of the Church of England had served our Saviour as bad as they have done these Liturgies Dennises Martials Andreases c. and that they had denied him as well as them I must tell you Mr. Sclater that your Book is one of the most disingenuous that I ever met with and that this passage deserves much severer Language than I shall bestow upon it but your Conclusion of it is just as true and not one jot more as that of our rejecting what Authors we please upon our own bare Authority and private Sentiments which I shall now examine and go through the Authors and Liturgies you put down For the Liturgies then first you tell us you do not know why these Ancient Liturgies should be rejected c. to which I can answer you as briefly that I do believe you that you do not but if you would take a little Heretical advice I could direct you to those who might inform your Ignorance herein but I believe you are too angry at me before this time to take my advice Against the Liturgies I have these things to urge first An Vniversal Silence concerning them for many Ages of the Church that of Saint James being the first heard of and that not till after the Fifth General Council being first mentioned in the Council held in Trullo which was under Justinian Rhinotmetus in the Sixth Century Eusebius than whom no one was more accurate and carefull to find out the Writings of those famous Persons whom he speaks of in his History among all the Catalogues he reckons up of the particular Apostles and First Fathers does not make the least mention of any of these Liturgies All Saint Jerome's care in his time could not furnish us with one Syllable about such Liturgies which reasons together with those taken from the Liturgies themselves have satisfied all reasonable Men that there were no such genuine things No Body now I mean to Learned Man believes Saint Peter's Liturgy the demonstrative Arguments against which are many it makes mention of Saint Cyprian and Cornelius the Bishop of Rome it prays for the Patriarch and the very Religious Emperours I could furnish you with more intrinsick Arguments against it and against the rest which labour under the same or worse Absurdities out of your own to omit our Authors the l Nouvelle Bibliotheque des Auteurs c. des Liturgies Faussement Attribué es aux Apôtres p. 21 22 23 24. A. Parâ—s 1686. present Learned and Judicious Sorbonist Du Pin hath gathered enough against it and the rest to prove them all suppositious if you have a mind to shew any parts in this sort of Learning I do not question but the worthy Doctor or some one here in England for him will give all due satisfaction in the point but alas Sir you seem to me who judge of you by your Book to be far from able to meddle in such matters One Liturgy of yours he hath not encountred that of Saint James the Elder not because he had nothing to object against it but because there was no such Liturgy to be objected against but you may pass for a Discoverer and a bringer to light of Ancient Authors and though you be denied a place with Baluzius and such yet no Body can deny you one with honest Annius Viterbiensis After all in defence of your self some Body wiser than some Body having I suppose put it into your head that these same Liturgies were not altogether unquestionable you gravely tell us in your Preface that it was not your business to assert the Authors of them c. To which I answer Preface that it is very well for you that it was not since I am sure you are a very unfit Man for any such thing so that now you your self are content that these Liturgy-Authors should suffer as well as their Master You say next pag. 28. Preface that it is enough for your purpose if they be allow'd of that Antiquity that may give them some competent interest in Tradition to be short with you they are not allowed any Authority since not onely ours but your own Authors Du Pin for example have proved them invinciblement pag. 22. as he words it supposititious and Novel either of which is enough to ruine them and hinder their having their place in Tradition These things are sufficient to shew that I need not say one word to your Authorities for Transubstantiation out of these forged Liturgies I will onely remark that you begin very unluckily with them pag. 28. and for your first Blessed God by whom we are vouchsafed to change the immaculate Body of Christ and his precious Bloud c. I would fain know into what the Priests were vouchsafed to change the Immaculate Body of Christ and his Bloud This is Transubstantiation with a vengeance I thought your business had been to prove that the Bread is changed into the Body the Wine into the very Bloud of Christ but here for a leading Card the Body and Bloud of Christ are changed into Bread and Wine or something else Well for a Man that keeps to his Text I know no Body like you and for supererogating no Body can come near you I question not but if you had a mind you could very easily prove that the Transubstantiation is to be from Body to Bread not from Bread into Body but this it is to be a Read Man when a Man can with a wet Finger prove either way and I verily believe you can as easily do the one as the other and bring as many Fathers for the one as for the other But farewell Liturgies I must now inquire about Saint Dionysius against whom you say we have such pitifull Objections pag. 29. Had you offered any reason for your calling them pitifull Objections it would have looked something like a Scholar but he that catcheth you at that may have you for nothing So that since you will not let me answer you I must say what I can for the Objections against Saint Dennis his being a Writer Eusebius is as much a Witness for us here as against the Liturgies though he speaks of Saint Dennis the Areopagite yet he gives not any hint of any Writings of his
impertinent and how unjust your railing at our Church about these Books was and to expose your gross ignorance to your new Superiours that they also may see which perhaps they did not know before how unfit a man you were to meddle with this sort of learning and how wretchedly you have come off CHAP. XIX The Authorities from Ignatius Justin Martyr and Irenaeus for Transubstantiation answered I come now to examine as they come to hand your several Authorities for Transubstantiation the Liturgies as spurious are already dispatched The first of your Authorities from Ignatius which you needed not if you really did go to Theodoret for since it is now common in Ignatius himself from the Florentine Copy that the Hereticks that denyed Christ had a true Body abstained from the Eucharist because they do not confess the Eucharist to be the Flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ P. 30. c. does you no service because We of the Church of England who do not believe any Transubstantiation say with St. Ignatius that the Sacrament is the Body and Blood of Christ However as we say that it is figuratively such so there is nothing here to determine that St. Ignatius meant otherwise than we do since his Argument is as strong not to say stronger in a figurative sense against the Hereticks it invincibly proving as a Contr. Marc. l. 4. c. 40. Tertullian does upon the very same account that our Saviour had a true Body since none but such could have a figurative Body or Figure a Figure of a Figure or Phantome being perfect nonsense so that St. Ignatius is no help to prove a Transubstantiation and your reasoning upon it ridiculous since if the Hereticks had owned the Eucharist with Calvin or Zuinglius to have been the sign or Figure of Christs Body P. 30. they had quite ruined their own doctrine and had allowed Christ to have had a true Body since none but such could have a Sign or Figure but some Men are so fond of saying something that so it be but said they matter not whether it be for or against themselves which this your reasoning really is Your next Authority from St. Denys as spurious is to no purpose P. 30. nor your next upon the same account from your Andreas who methinks as an Apostle should have had the place of St. Denys and both of them before St. Ignatius but you I suppose either found them in this order or thought Ignatius fittest to be put first because he looked a little more to your purpose than either of them Tho' as to the latter of them your Andreas had you but shewn any ingenuity in what you cite from him he would have proved full as little to your purpose but you cunningly slip over in this short passage that which would have told you that the Sacrifice here spoken of could be no other than a figurative and representative Sacrifice since it is said to be offered in altari crucis upon the Altar of the Cross which you wisely tho' not over honestly leave out to make your Author speak something towards the purpose we meet him here for Your Note upon this Passage that truly eaten excludes eating in sign onely or Spirit does as much discover your Ignorance of the Sense of the Genuine Fathers as your Phrase in sign onely does your malice who cannot but know that the Church you have forsaken never said so to say that he which eats both in Sign and Spirit does not eat truely is to give the lye to a whole Tract of S. (b) Tractatus 26 in Joann Austins where among twenty other Confutations you may find that such Persons as Moses Aaron and Phineas who pleased God visibilem cibum spiritaliter intellexerunt spiritaliter esurierunt spiritaliter gustaverunt ut spiritaliter satiarentur did spiritually understand the visible Food the Manna did spiritually hunger after and tast of it that they might be spiritually filled and satisfied and that the true eating the Bread of Life so as not to dye does belong (c) Pertinent ad virtusem Sacramenti non ad visibile Sacramentum Qui manducat intus non foris qui manducat in corde non qui premit dente August Tract 26. in Joan to the virtue of the Sacrament and not to the visible Sacrament and that the true receiver is he who eateth inwardly not outwardly who eateth with the heart and not he who presseth it with his teeth Justin Martyr you next cite saying P. 31. 'T is not common Bread or common Drink we take how then Why as the Word of God Jesus Christ our Saviour was made Flesh so we are taught that our Nourishment by Prayer proceeding from him being made the Eucharist to be the Flesh and Blood of the same incarnate Jesus c. This Translation I accuse not onely of falshood and of perverting the plain sense of St. Justin but of direct Nonsense for first whereas St. Justin sayes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. Just M. Apol 2. p. 98. Edit Morel Paris 1636. We do not receive these things the consecrated Bread and the consecrated Wine mingled with Water A S common Bread or common Drink you make him say that ' iis not common Bread or common Drink we take which is directly contrary to the true sense of his Words which are so far from denying that they evidently suppose and prove them to be still Bread and Wine after Consecration or else they could not be received in a different manner from that at common Meals Again whereas our Author goes on but as by the Word of God Jesus Christ our Saviour being incarnate had both Flesh and Blood for our Salvation you nonsensically translate him as the Word of God Jesus Christ our Saviour was made Flesh where you not only lame his sense and obscure it but quite pervert it you making the Word of God to be our Saviour himself the second Person in the Trinity whereas Justin means by it the Power of the Holy Ghost which over-shadowed the Blessed Virgin. I will give you but another touch of your nonsense and that is when you translate so we are taught that our nourishment by prayer to be the flesh instead of is the flesh I hate so mean an employment as to be thus taken up in ripping up your pitiful dealing or else I could expose you further from this very passage out of Justin but I think this enough to let you and your new Superiors see what wretched stuff we are like to be put off with and how vastly unfit you are to meddle about such things To leave then this miserable murthering of Justin I come now to see what you would have thence suppose you had known which you did not what the Author meant here You argue our Saviour was made Flesh therefore the Eucharist is Flesh or Justin could not say they were so taught I answer That as our Saviour was not Transubstantiated when
him say Let us take the Body and Blood of Christ whereas he hath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here and faith let us take to wit the consecrated Elements AS the Body and Blood of Christ which is a trick you played St. Justin Martyr as well as Cyril and then you from Grodecius translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by species a word unknown to the Primitive Christians in the sense you Transubstantiatours use it in witness b Non valebit Christi sermo ut Species mutet Elementorum p. 48. ex Arubrosio your own Quotations out of St. Ambrose when as any one that knows but a little Greek could tell you it means a Figure But to rescue Cyril clearly out of your hands had you but turned one leaf backward you might have read that which would if you had any ingenuity in you have hindred your bringing Cyril on the stage for a favourer or teacher of Transubstantiation there in his Mystigogical Catechism about Chrism having spoken of the use and vast benefit of it he thus addresses his Auditors but take heed that thou do not think that Chrism to be bare Oyl 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cyr. catechism Mystag 3. p. 235 Edit Paris 1640. for as the Encharistical Bread after the Invocation and illapse of the Holy Spirit is no longer ordinary Bread but the Body of Christ even so this holy Oyl is no longer bare or as one may say common Oyl after the Invocation of the Holy Spirit but Charisma Christi the Gift or Grace of Christ and a little after he sayes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Idem â—odem loco the Body is anointed with the Oyl that is seen by us but the Soul is sanctified by the Holy and Quickening Spirit Here we meet with as high and as strange Expressions about the Chrism as in the next Cathechism about the Eucharistical Bread and Wine as there the Bread upon Consecration is said to be no longer common Bread just so it is said here about the Chrism that it is not common Oyl after Consecration as he talks there of a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which you would have us to believe is no more than the bare appearance of Bread so here of a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which upon the same reason must be onely the appearance of Oyl without any Substance In a word if St. Cyril proves a Transubstantiation of the Bread and Wine there he as certainly proves a Transubstantiation of the Chrism-Oyl here if you say as all confess that he doth not prove this of the Oyl I must say upon equal grounds that he doth no more prove the other of the Bread and Wine so that St. Cyril is not for your purpose of proving Transubstantiation But before I pass to your next Author I have a question to ask you and that is why you put down the Text it self of Cyril here whereas your English if it be your own is word for word translated from Grodecius his Latin Translation of St. Cyril I appeal to your own Conscience whether what I say is not true but since you may be too peevish to tell me I will give an instance or two besides those already observed where you have both equally added to the Text of St. Cyril or grosly mistaken it St. Cyril sayes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which two last words you have altered into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this place you verbatim from c Aquam aliquando mutavit in vinum quod est sanguini propinquum in Cana Galilaeae sola voluntate Grodec Lat. Inter. Grodecius translate thus he sometimes changed Water into Wine which is neer to blood in Cana of Galilee by his onely Will whereas according to Grodecius his Greek there is not a Syllable of such an Expression as which is neer to blood and according to yours not a Syllable for by his onely Will and yet you two could nick it so exactly But that which is the pleasantest of all is that you not onely transcribe a Blunder of his but make it ten times worse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cyril ex Luc. 5.34 Filiis Sponsi Grodecil Interpr Latina To the Sons of his Spouse Sclaters Engl. Translat Cyril in this Passage speaks of the Children of the Bride-chamber Grodecius hath made them the Children of the Bridegroom and you have made them the Children of the Bride when you call them the Sons of his Spouse by which you mean our Saviour's Spouse which I am sure is his Bride the Church This is translating with a witness and this it is to make a Man's self a slave to another Man's Translation which is guilty of such Blunders and Errours and yet by putting your Margin full of Greek to make the World believe you had been at the Fountain-head your self I must confess it is the first time I ever heard of a He-Bride or could have suspected that a Man that hath so much Greek and Hebrew in his head would have translated hic Sponsus our Saviour his Spouse I haue been so large upon these two Fathers St. Gregory Nyssen and St. Cyril not onely because they are always reckoned the chiefest Authors for Transubstantiation but because I might thereby very much shorten the Answers I am to make to your following Authorities which I shall consider if they speak any thing new if not refer to some of my Answers already made CHAP. XXIII Those from Epiphanius St. Ambrose and St. Chrysostom answered YOur Testimony out of Epiphanius proves nothing more than your Infirmity in translating P. 42. for he that believeth not that he is true you have ridiculously made it who believeth it not to be his very true Body But such dealing is not strange to me to find in you this Talent runs almost through your whole book You are very copious in the next place from St. Ambrose P. 42. your first Testimony from him proves nothing against the Church of England nor your second since in our Liturgy we use in the distributing the Consecrated Bread the same Expressions used then the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ and our People are taught to say Amen P. 43. Nor your third fourth and those which follow wherein this Father uses so much of Allegory and therefore is not to be confined to a literal Sense P. 44 45 46 c. Your last from him is your best one which however proves no more than what we never deny that the Nature of the Elements are changed as to their Virtue and Quality but as to a change of their very substance we do deny it upon reasons from Scripture and purer Antiquity nor doth this Father attempt the Proof of any such a Change. He proves the contrary p. 43. when in your first Testimony from him he speaks of the Elements Continuing What they were that is as to their Substance or Essence and yet being changed into another thing Quanto magis Operatorius est
Substance unto which those Accidents do belong In a word had there been such a thing as Transubstantiation believed then as the Fathers could not have urged the Example of the Eucharist its continuing in the very same NATURE and SUBSTANCE it had before Consecration against the Eutychian Hereticks so it is Morally Impossible that those Hereticks should omit so home an Argument in Defence of themselves but since these are never known to have urged any such thing for themselves and we find the Greatest and most Learned Fathers urging the Example of the EUCHARIST its remaining in the TRUE SUBSTANCES of BREAD and WINE after CONSECRATION we have all the Reason in the World to conclude that the Fathers neither did nor could ever believe such a thing as Transubstantiation I might have added another Corollary from the Distinction between the Natural and the Spiritual Flesh and Blood of Christ so much insisted on by the Fathers Clemens of Alexandria (4) Paedag. L. 2. c. 2. and others and especially by Rathramn or Bertram who hath made it the Subject of the Second Part of his Book from Section 50th p. 127 by our Countreymen (5) Illa Eucharistia non est Câ—â—pus Christi CORPORALITER sed SPIRITVALITER non Corpus illud QVO passus est sed Corpus illud de quo locuâ—as est quando Panem Vinum in EUCHARISTIAM nocte unâ ante Passionem suam Consecravit Alsric apud Wheloci notas in Bed. H. E. l. 4. c. 24. Alfrick Arch-Bâ—â—â—op of Canterbury in an Epistle to Wulphin Bishop of Shirbâ—urn and by Wulphin himself (6) Hostia illa est Christi Corpus non Corporaliter sed Spiritualiter Non Corpus in quo passus est sed Corpus de quo locutus est quando Panem Vinum ea quae Passionem antecessit nocte in Hostiam Consecravit de Sacrato Pane dixit Hoc est Corpus Meum c. Wulfini Oratio Synodica apudVsser de Christ Eccl. Succes Statu c. 2. p. 44. in a Synodical Oration of his to his Clergy in the Tenth Century near a Thousand years after Christ. I might also have insisted on some more such particularly on that Account in Hesychius (7) Hesychius in Levit. l. 2. c. 8. of the Custome of the Church of Jerusalem to burn what was left of the Consecrated Elements but to avoid being tedious those I have already made are abundantly sufficient to shew that Transubstantiation was not could not be the Belief of the FATHERS that their FAITH concerning the EUCHARIST is the very SAME with the FAITH taught and embraced by the CHURCH of ENGLAND which was the Thing I undertook to evince CHAP. XXIV Two or Three Reflexions upon the Remainder of Mr. Sclater's Book The Conclusion HAving done This I shall not trouble my self with the rest of your Citations but shall wave them as not one jot to the Purpose since if they should be against OUR CHURCH I have already proved that they as are much against THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH I will onely make two or three Reflections upon the Rest of your Book and then take leave of you The First shall be upon your Great Lateran Council p. 84. That it did determine allowing what is denyed by some of your own side that things were managed fairly at this Meeting for Transubstantiation and for the PAPAL POWER of DEPOSING KINGS at the same time If it erred in Determining the LATTER why not in Determining the FIRST I am sure that TRANSUBSTANTIATION is as MUCH against the PRIMITIVE FATHERS as that DAMNABLE HERETICAL DOCTRINE of POPES POWER of DEPOSING of KINGS and DISPOSING of their KINGDOMS can be A Discourse concerning Christ's Kingdom in TWO SERMONS preached before the University of Cambridge Printed for Green 1682 p. 18 19. And we do not envy your having TRANSUBSTANTIATION determined by such a Council as FIRST Conciliarly determined that HELLISH DOCTRINE of DEPOSING of KINGS a Practice so Impious that Dr. BARNES not LONG SINCE in a SERMON before the FAMOUS UNIVERSITY of CAMBRIDGE thought it to be ONE of the most IRREFRAGABLE ARGUMENTS to use his own words to prove HIM CHRIST his PRETENDER VICAR the POPE to be THE ANTICHRIST and he goes on to tell THEM That whereas some have taken a great deal of Pains to prove HIM the POPE so from the obscure Prophecies of Daniel And others with great Labour and Difficulties have applied all the Phaenomena and Characters of the Apocalyptical falle Prophet to the POPE THIS is a most SURE and COMPENDIOUS WAY of stamping upon HIM the MARK of the BEAST This Doctor 's words and Opinion I have chosen the rather for this Purpose because I believe he doth not pass in the Rank of MISREPRESENTERS among YOU and because it was in a SERMON before an UNIVERSITY p. 18. wherein HE told them he would deal sincerely with THEM I am perswaded that those of your Party that know HIM will grant him to be none of our fiery Zealots p. 49 50. N. B. and Furioso's against Popery tho' HE doth in the second SERMON speak of JUST EXCLAMATIONS against the SUPERSTITIONS and IDOLATRIES of the CHURCH of ROME and of a COMMENDABLE INDIGNATION against the WICKED and HELLISH PRACTICES of the ROMISH EMISSARIES to ESTABLIH the POPISH RELIGION My next Reflexion is p. 75 76. that your Account of Berengarius discovers abundance of malice and of ignorance too because He could not be the first Disturber of the long Peace of the Church by teaching a Doctrine opposite to Transubstantiation since in the Century before that Berengarius lived in not to go abroad in our OWN NATION the SAME DOCTRINE that Berengarius did stand up for was the COMMON FAITH of OUR CHURCH and was publickly taught and believed as appears most evidently to a Demonstration from the Publick Authorized SAXON HOMILY for EASTER and from the Writings and SYNODICAL ORATIONS wherein a Man may most reasonably expect to meet with the genuine and publick Faith of the Church of ALFRICK ARCHBISHOP of CANTERBURY our ENGLISH PATRIARCH and of WULPHINE Bishop of SHIRBOURN as I have already observed (l) p. 73.81 N. B. and put down their words and the SAME FAITH was generally believed by almost ALL the FRENCH and ITALIANS as well as by the ENGLISH in Berengarius his time as Matthew Westminster tells us (m) Eeodem tempore Berengariuâ—in haereticam prolapsus pravitatem omnes Gallos Italos et Anglos suis jampenecorruperat pravitatibus Matth. West ad annum 1087. who was mistaken in saying it was by the Infection of Berengarius's Doctrine since it is certain THAT was the GENERAL and PUBLICK DOCTRINE here in the Century before and in FRANCE the Century before that to wit in the NINTH CENTURY as one may believe from the Writingr of Bertram and Erigena And here I cannot but observe how much you discover a gross ignorance when you make Bertram p. 76. and Scotus Erigena whom you
have split into two Followers of Berengarius whenas They both lived two Hundred years before Him. Nay a man would believe almost from you that Berthram was at this present alive when you say that Berengarius's Opinion and Arguments are still urged by Bertram p. 76. lately reprinted in English You have a great deal more of such wretched stuff but I am so weary of it that I will but speak a word or two to you as to the Greeks and then pass to a sarewell request to you and your new Superiours That the present great Ignorance Poverty and Ambition of the Greek Church hath taught a great many of them leaving their own ancient Faith to embrace for lucre sake the Latin Doctrine of Transubstantiation is what we cannot now deny but that which we have to say upon this business is that those persons neither learned this new fangled Doctrine from the Fathers from their own Liturgies or from the antient Creeds or Ecclesiastical Constitutions See Dr. Smith of Oxford his Miscellanea that Gabriel of Philadelphia who studied and lived so long at Padua and Venice first broached Transubstantiation in their language since whom many Latinized Greeks have espoused it and the four Patriarchs at the Instance of Monsieur Nointel Ricaut his Preface to his Present State of the Greek Church or rather his French Mony as I hope a Gentleman who was then in Turkey will e're long make it sufficiently appear subscribed the Oriental Confession drawn up by one bred in Italy in the year 1672. not as you falsly tell us 1643. As their Ignorance which is so great that Sr. P. Ricaut says most Mechanicks among us are more learned and knowing than the Doctors and Clergy of Greece disposes them for any Doctrine whatever so their great Poverty which no body denies and their unaccountable and prodigious Ambition hurry them on to any thing for lucre sake The Dire effects of their extravagant Ambition are sufficiently seen in that they have thereby run their poor Church into such arrears with the Port that it will never be able to claw off Ricaut 's Prâ—sâ—nt State of the Greek Church Through their changing of Patriarchs whereof they a p. 102 102 c. p. 98. had six in eight years at Constantinople and their most unchristian shouldering of one another out the Poor Church was indebted in the year 1672. to the Grand Seâ—gnior three hundred and fifty thousand Dollars as Sr. Paul says he was informed by the Bishop of Smyrna This is enough to shew the miserable Humour as well as Condition of those People who to get monys to buy out the incumbent Patriarch and to place themselves tho' but for a month on the Patriarchal Throne at Constantinople would I question not subscribe a worse Doctrine than that of Transubstantiation since they have ignorance enough for any The behaviour of the Arch-Bishop of Samos to Doctor Smith of Maudlins makes me to have a very slender opinion of those sort of men See Dr. Smiths Preface to Miscellanea when he met with him in France then Children only received in the one kind and they could not digest Flesh but as soon as he had crossed the Water and breathed a little English Air then Children did undoubtedly partake in both kinds as he quickly wrote to Doctor Smith But enough of this Man and the Humour of that miserable People which is nothing to the purpose of a Consensus Veterum The Request I have now to make to you Mr. Sclater is that you would consider what a miserable mistake you have made about these things how grievously you have suffered your self to be imposed upon in leaving a Communion which is truly Catholick and Apostolical and hath not one unlawful Term of Communion and in falling to a Church which for all the Paints and Washes laid on it appears to be very deformed and hath a great many unlawful Terms of Communion If their Condition be dangerous that were bred in that Communion if they have any opportunities as all here in England have of knowing more and of better information what must be thought of yours who can pretend no want of Information have had so long a Tract of opportunities to have secured you even in old age from such a doleful Fall I do from my soul wish that you may before death surprizes recover your self and return to that true Faith from which you have swerved and that all that lye under the same guilt may in God's good time be again gathered into our Apostolical Church May God remove all Ostacles that do at present hinder such a Return And my request to your Superiours is that if ever they think fit to have another Convert appear in Print against us they would oblige us so far as to chuse one that hath a little more Modesty and a little more Learning one that can distinguish between the Presbyters of Achaia and St. Andrew between the Second General Council of Constantinople p. 72. and the reputed Seventh at Nice whence he quotes that impudent lye of Epiphanius the Deacon one that can translate what he is taught to borrow that so if ever any of our Church vouchsafe to answer him he may not have so many complaints to make as I have had in the Examination of Mr. Sclater's Book March 1st 1686 THE END