might even as well say that two or three common Soldiers of the Carthaginian Army and perhaps not one of them at the fight were the Authors of the Roman overthrow at Cannae It was the Universities that approved the separation unanimously It was the Synods that directed the separation It was the King that established the separation It was the Parliament that confirmed the separation How could two or three Privados without Negromancy have such an efficatious influence upon the Universities and Synods and Parliaments and the King himself Yet they might have an hand in it no nor so much as a little finger As much as the Flie that sate upon the Cart-wheel had in raising of the dust The two Houses of Parliament alone did consist of above 600. of the most able and eminent persons in the Kingdome what had these three been able to doe among them supposing they had been then Protestants and of the House Even as much as three drops of hony in a great vessell of vinegar or three drops of vinegar in a great vessell of hony But let us see what it is which he objects against Cranmer and the rest That Cranmer whom I will not deny to have been a friend and favourer of Protestants advised that the King should seek no more to the Court of Rome And that bidding adieu to the Court of Rome he should consult with the most learned in the Universities of Europe at home and abroad There was no hurt in all this There could be no suspicion that the most learned in all the Universities of Europe should be enemies to the just rights of the Roman Court But upon this saith he it was by Commission disputed by the Divines in both Universities And so he concludes triumphantly Behold Cranmer the first author of secession from the Pope I answer That this secession was no secession of the Church of England nor this disputation any disputation concerning the jurisdiction of the Roman Court over the English Church but only concerning a particular processe there depending between King Henâ—y and Queen Katherine about the validity or invalidity of their marriage and the Popes dispensation which Cranmer maintained to be determinable by Divine law not by Canon law The truth is this Doctor Stephens and Doctor Fox two great Ministers of King Henry and Doctor Cranmer chanced to meet without any designe at Waltham where discourse being offered concerning this processe Cranmer freely declared his judgement that the marriage of a Brother with his Brothers Wife was unlawfull by the Law of God and that the Pope could not dispense with it And that it was more expedient and more proper to seek to have this cause determined by the best Divines and Universities of Europe then by the dilatory proceeding of the Roman Court This was related to the King The King sent for Cranmer He offered freely to justifie it before the Pope And to demonstrate both that this was no separation from Rome and that Cranmer himself was no Protestant at that time it is acknowledged by all our Historiographers that after this Cranmer with others was sent as an Ambassador or Envoy to Rome and returned home in the Popes good Grace not without a mark of his favour being made his penitentiary Likewise saith another Cranmer that unworthy Archbishop of Canterbury was his the Earl of Hartfords right hand and chief assistant in the work although but a few moneths before he was of King Harries Religion yea a great Patron and Prosecutor of the six Articles That is as much as to say no friend no favourer of Protestants So this victorious argument failes on both sides Some other places he citeth concerning Cranmer That he freed the Kings conscience from the yoke of Papall dominion that is to say in that processe That by his counsell destruction was provided divinely to the Court of Rome that is occasionally and by the just disposition of Almighty God That the King was brought by Cranmers singular virtue to defend the cause of the Gospell that is in that particular case that the Pope cannot dispense contrary to the Law of God And lastly That the Papall power being discovered by King Henries authority and Cranmers did easily fall down I much doubt if I had the Book whether I should finde these testimonies such as they are cited Howsoever it may be true distinguendo tempora and referendo singula singulis They could not be spoken of the first separation when Cranmer had no more authority then a private Doctor but of the following times King Henry suppressed the Papall tyranny in England by his Legislative Power and Cranmer by his discovery of their usurpations and care to see the Lawes executed Against Crumwell he produceth but one testimony That it was generally conceived and truly as never thought That the politick waies for taking away the Popes authority in England and the suppression of Religious Houses were principally devised by Crumwell First this is but an argument from vulgar opinion Secondly when Archbishop Warham and the Synod did first give to King Henry the Supremacy and the Title of Head of the English Church Crumwell was no Protestant he had lately been Cardinall Wolsies Soliciter and was then Master of the Jewel House of no such power to doe any great good or hurt to the Protestants And at his death he professed that he was no Sacramentary and that he died in the Catholick Faith Lord Cherbury in H. 8. anno 1540. Holl. an 32. H. 8. fol. 242. But for the suppression of Religious Houses it is not improbable He might well have learned that way under Cardinall Wolsy when he procured the suppression of fourty Monasteries of good note for the founding of his two Colleges at Oxford and Ipswich In which businesse our historians say the Pope licked his own Fingers to the value of twelve Barrels full of Gold and Silver Lastly for Doctor Barnes poor man he was neither Courtier nor Councelor nor Convocation man nor Parliament man All the grace which ever he received from King Henry was an honourable death for his Religion He said That he and such other wretches as he had made the King a whole King by their Sermons If they did so it was well done The meaning of a whole King is an Head of the Church saith R. C. It may be so but the consequence is naught Perhaps he meant a Soveraign independant King not feudatory to the Pope which he that is is but half a King Not only of old but in later times the Popes did challenge a power Paramount over the Kings of England within their own dominions as appeareth by the Popes Bull sent to Iames the fifth King of Scotland wherein he declareth that he had deprived King Henry of his Kingdome as an Heretick a Schismatick an Adulterer a Murtherer a Sacrilegious person and lastly a Rebell and convict of laesae Majestatis for that he had risen
been spoken in R. C. his sense yet Ealred was but one Doctor whose authority is not fit to counterbalance the publick Laws and Customes and Records â—f a whole Kingdome Neither doth it appear â—hat they who sate at the sterne in those dayes did either suffer it or so much as know of it Books were not published then so soon as they were written but lay most commonly dormient many years or perhaps many ages before they see the Sun But Ealred his sense was not the same it could not be the same with R. C. his No man in those dayes did take the Church of Rome for the Roman Catholick or Universall Church but for the Diocess of Rome which their best protectors doe make to be no otherwise infallible then upon supposition of the inseparability of the Papacy from it which Bellarmine himself confesseth to be but a probable opinion Neque Scriptura neque traditio habet sedem Apostolicam ita fixaem esse Romae ut inde auferré non possit There is neither Scripture nor Tradition to prove that the Apostolick See is so fixed to Rome that it cannot be removed from it Therefore these words of Ealred cannot be applyed to this present question because the subject of the question is changed And if they be understood simply and absolutely of an universall communion with the Church of Rome both present and future they are unfound in the judgment of Bellarraine himself It remains therefore that they are either to be understood of communicating in essentials and so we communicate with the Church of Rome at this day Or that by the Church of Rome Ealred did understand the Church of Rome of that age whereas all those exceptions which we have against them for our not communicating with them actually in all things are either sprung up since Ealreds time or at least since that time made or declared necessarie conditions of their communion Lastly I desire the Reader to take notice that these words of Ealred doe contain nothing against the politicall Supremacy of Kings nor against the liberties of the English Church nor for the Jurisdiction of the Court of Rome over England and so might have been passed by as impertinent They endited their Letters to the Pope in these words Summo universali Ecclesiae Pastori Nicholao Edwardus Dei gratia Angliae Rex debitam subjectionem omnimodum servitium It seemeth that the Copies differ some have not Pastori but Patri nor universali but universalis Ecclesiae and no more but obedientiam for omnimodum servitium But let him read it as he list it signifies nothing There cannot be imagined a weaker or a poorer argument then that which is drawn from the superscription or subscription of a Letter He that enrolls every man in the catalogue of his friends and servants who subscribe themselves his loving or obliged friends or his faithfull and obedient servants will finde his friends and servants sooner at a feast then at a fray Titles are given in Letters more out of custome and formality then out of judgment and truth The Pope will not stick to endite his Letter To the King of the Romans and yet suffer him to have nothing to doe in Rome Every one who endited their Letters to the high and mighty Lords the States Generall did not presently beleeve that was their just Title before the King of Spains resignation Titles are given sometimes out of curtesie sometimes out of necessity because men will not lose their business for want of a complement He that will write to the great Duke of Muscovia must stile him Emperour of Russia How many have lost their Letters and their labours for want of a mon Frere or mon Confine my Brother or my Cousin It were best for him to quit his argument from superscriptions otherwise he will be shewed Popes calling Princes their Lords and themselves their Subjects and Servants yea Princes most glorious and most excellent Lords and themselves Servants of Servants that is Servants in the snperlative degree They will finde Cyprian to his brother Cornelius health and Justinian to John the most holy Archbishop of the City of Rome Patriarch Did St. Cyprian beleeve Cornelius to be his Master and stile him Brother or owe obedience and service and send but health Had is been comely to stile an ecclesiasticall Monarch plaine Archbishop and Patriarch and for the Christian World to set down only the Citie of Rome But what doth he take hold on in this superscription to their advantage Is it the word summo That cannot be it is confessed generally that the Bishop of Rome had priority of order among the Patriarchs Or is it the word universali Neither can that be all the Patriarchs were stiled oecumenicall or universall not in respect of an universall power but their universall care as Saint Paul saith The care of all the Churches did lie upon him and their presidence in generall Councels It cannot be the word Pastori all Bishops were anciently called Pastors Where then lies the strength of this Argument In the words due subjection No. There is subjection to good advise as well as to just commands The principall Patriarchs bore the greatest sway in a generall Councell in that respect there was subjection due unto them The last words all forts of service are not in some Copies and if they were verborum ut nummorum as they are commonly used as well from Superiors to their Inferiors as from Inferiors to their Superiors they signifie nothing I wonder he was not afraid to cite this superscription considering the clause in Pope Nicholas his letter to King Edward Vobis veroì posteris vestris Regibus committimus Advocationem tuitionem ejusdem loci omnium totius Angliae Ecclesiarum ut vice nostrâ cum consilio Episcoporum Abbatum constituas ubique quae justa sunt King Edward by the fundamentall Law of the Land was the Vicar of God to govern the Church of God within his dominions But if he had not here is a better title from the See of Rome it self then that whereby the King of Spain holds all the Ecclesiasticall jurisdiction of Sicily to him and his heirs at this day They professed that it was Heresie to deny that the Pope omni praesidet creaturae is above every creature That is no more then to say that the Bishop of Rome as successor to Saint Peter is principium unitatis the beginning of unity or hath a principality of order not of power above all Christians It will be hard for him to gain any thing at the hands of that wife and victorious Prince Edward the third who disposed of Ecclesiastical dignities received homage and fealty from his Prelats who writ that so much admired Letter to the Pope for the liberties of the English Church cui pro tunc Papa aut Cardinales rationabiliter respondere nesciebant to which the Pope and
determine causes of Religion The Emperor did not trouble himself much at it But the Pope having created three Spanish Cardinals he forbad them to accept the armes or use the name or habit And not long after published a Reformation of the Clergy conteining twenty three points First of Ordination and Election of Ministers Secondly of the Office of Ecclesiasticall Orders Thirdly of the Office of Deans and Canons Fourthly of Canonicall hours Fifthly of Monasteries Sixtly of Schools and Universities Seventhly of Hospitals Eighthly of the Office of a Preacher Ninthly of the Administration of the Sacraments Tenthly of the Administration of Baptism Eleventhly of the Administration of Confirmation Twelfthly of Ceremonies Thirteenthly of the Masse Fourteenthâ—y of the Administration of Penitence Fifteenthly of the Administration of extreme Unction Sixteenthly of the Administration of Matrimomy Seventeenthly of Ecclesiasticall Ceremonies Eighteenthly of the Discipline of the Clergy and People Nineteenthly of plurality of Benefices Twentithly of the Discipline of the People One and twentithly of Visitations Two and twentithly of Councels Three and twentithly of Excommunication Charles the fifth and the German Dyet did assume to themselves a Legislative power in Ecclesiasticall causes None of our Princes was ever more devoted to Rome then Queen Mary yet when Paul the 4 th revoked Cardinall Poolos Legantine power in England and designed one Petus a Franciscan to come Legate in his place She shut all the Ports of England against all messengers from Rome and commanded all the Briefs and Bulls to be taken from the bearers and delivered unto her So well was she satisfied that no Roman Legate hath any thing to doe in England without the Princes licence But I have brought instances enough untill he be pleased to take notice of them To all which he returns no answer but these generall words Seeing L. D. hath alleged diverse facts of Catholick Princes in disobeying Papall Authority and thence inferreth that they did as much as King Henry who not only disobeyed but denied Papall Authority let us allege both more ancient and greater Emperors who have professed that they had no Authority in Ecclesiasticall causes and avowed Papall Authority After this rate he may survey the whole World in a few minutes Let the Reader judge whether I have not just cause to call upon him for an answer Are they only diverse facts of Catholick Princes By his leave they are both facts and decrees and constitutions and Laws and Canons of the most famous Emperors and Princes of Christendome with their Dyets and Parliaments and Synods and Councels and Universities Or doth it seem to him that they only disobeyed Papall Authority When he reads them over more attentively he will finde that they have not only disobeyed Papall Authority but denied it as he saith Henry the 8 th did in all the principall parts and branches of it which are in controversie between them and us Nay they have not only denied to the Pope that which he cals Papall Authority to Convocate Synods to confirm Synods to make Ecclesiasticall Laws to dispose of Ecclesiasticall preferments to receive the last Appeals in Ecclesiasticall causes but they have exercised it themselves They have disposed of the Papacy they have deposed the Popes they have shut out his Legates they have Appealed from his sentences they have not suffered their Subjects to goe upon his Summons they have caused his Decrees to be torn in pieces most disgracefully and made Edicts and Statutes and pragmaticall sanctions against his usurpations they have regulated the Clergy and reformed the Churches within their Dominions And when they thought fit during their pleasures they have stopped all entercouse with Rome The Kings of Spain suffer no more Appeals from Sicily to the Court of Rome then our Princes from England and exercise all manner of Ecclesiastical Jurisdction by Delegates which certainly neither they nor other Princes would doe if they did at all believe that the Papacy was an universall Spirituall Monarchy instituted by Christ. But it seemeth that he delighteth more in the use of his sword then of his buckler and in stead of repelling my arguments he busieth himself in making new knots for me to untie He knows well that this is no logicall proceeding And I might justly serve him with the same sauce But I seek only the clear discovery of truth and will pursue his steppes throughout his oppositions The first thing that he objecteth to me is the oath of Supremacy made by King Henry and his Church in which oath saith he are sworn five things First that the King of England is not only Governor but only and supreme Governor Secondly not only in some but in all ecclesiasticall things and causes Thirdly as well in all ecclesiasticall causes as temporall Fourthly that no forrein Prelate hath any spirituall Iurisdiction in England Fifthly all forrein Iurisdiction is renounced This he is pleased to call the first new Creed of the English Protestant Church by which it is become both hereticall and schismaticall Before I give a distinct answer to this objection it will be needfull in the first place to put him in minde of some things which I have formerly demonstrated to him touching this particular which he hath been pleased to pass by in silence First who it was that first presented this Title to King Henry Archbishop Warrham whom Sanders calleth an excellent man and a Popish Convocation Secondly who confirmed this Title unto him Four and twenty Bishops and nine and twenty Abbats in Parliament none dissenting There was not one Protestant among them all Thirdly who were the flatterers of King Henry that preached up his Supremacy and printed books in defence of this Supremacy and set forth Catachismâ—s to instruct the Subjects and teach them what the Supremacy was who contrived and penned this very Oath and were the first that took it themselves and incited all others to take it even Bishop Gardiner Tonstall Heath Bonner Stokesley Thurelby c. all R. C. his Friends the greatest Opposers of the reformation and the roughest Persecuters of Protestants Lastly consider what I cited out of Cardinall Poole That God the Father hath assigned this Office to Christian Emperors that they should act the part of Christ the Son of God And again the Pope as a Priestly Head doth execute the Office of Christ the true Head but we may also truly say that the Emperour doth execute the Office of Christ as a Kingly Head These things being premised to dull the edge of his argument now I proceed to a direct answer and first I charge him with chopping and changing the words of the Oath The words of the Oath are these That the Kings Highness is the only supreme Governor in this Realm But in paraphrasing upon them and pressing them he renders them thus not only Governor but only and supreme Governor There is a vast difference between these two to say the King is the only
land when soever these were infringed or an attempt made to destroy them as the liberties of the Crowne and Church of England had then been invaded by the Pope it was the manner to restore them or to declare them by a statute which was not operative to make or create new law but declarative to manifest or to restore ancient law This I told him expressely in the vindication and cited the judgement of our greatest Lawyers Fitz Herbirt and my Lord Cook to prove that this very statute was not operative to create new law but declarative to restore ancient law This appeareth undeniably by the statute it self That England is an Empire and that the King as head of the body politicke consisting of the spirituality and temporality hath plenary power to render finall Iustice for all matters Here he seeth expressely that the dolitcall supremacy or headship of the King over the spirituality as well as temporality which is all that we assert at this day was the an e nt fundamentall law of England And lest hâ—e should accuse this Parliament of partialiâ—y I produced another that was more ancient The Crowne of England hath been so free at all times that it hath been in no earthly subjection but immediately subjected to God in all things touching it's Regality and to no other and ought not to be submitted to the Pope Here the Kings politicall Supremacy under God is declared to be the fundamentall Law of the Land Let him not say that this was intended onely in temporall matters for all the grievances mentioned in that statute are expressely Ecclesiasticall What was his meaning to conceal all this and much more and to accuse me of impudence Secondly he saith that I bring diverse allegations wherein the Popes pretences were not admitted or where the Pope is expressely denied the power to do such and such things Do we professe the Pope can pretend no more then his right Doth he think a legitimate authority is rejected when the particular faults of them that are in authority are resisted He stileth the Authorities by me produced meer Allegations yet they are as authentick Records as England doth afford But though he be willing to blanch over the matter in generall expressions of the Popes pretences and such or such things as if the controversy had been onely about an handfull of goats wool I will make bold to represent some of the Popes pretences and their declarations against them And if he be of the same mind with his Ancestours in those particulars he and I shall be in a probable way of reconciliation as to this question They declared that it was the custom or common law of the land ut nullus praeter licentiam Regis appelletur Papa that no Pope might be appealed unto without the Kings licence They made a law that if any one were found bringing in the Popes letters or mandates into the kingdome let him be apprehended and let justice passe upon him without delay as a Traitor to the King and kingdome They exercised a legislative power in all ecclesiasticall causes concerning the external subsistence Regiment and regulating of the Church over all Ecclesiastical persons in all ages as well of the Saxon as of the Norman Kings They permitted not the Pope to endow Vicars nor make spiritual corporations nor exempt from the jurisdiction of the ordinary nor appropriate Churches nor to dispose Benefices by lapse nor to receive the revenues in the vacancy but the King did all these things as I shewed at large in the vindication They permitted not the Popes canon law to have any place in England further then they pleased to receive it They gave the king the last appeal of all his subjects they ascribed to him the patronage of Bishopricks and investitures of Bishops They suffered no subject to be cited to Rome without the Kings license They admitted no Legates from the Pope but meerly upon courtesy and if any was admitted he was to take his oath to doe nothing derogatory to the King or his Crowne If any man did denounce the Popes excommunication in England without the Kings consent or bring over the Popes bull he forfeited all his goods So the laws of England did not allow the Pope to cite or excommunicate an English Subject nor dispose of an English Benefice nor send a Legate a latere orso much as an authoritative bul into England nor to reâ—eive an appeal out of England without the kings license But saith he To limit an authority implies an admittance of it in cases to which the rsstraints extend not This was not meerly to limit an authority but to deny it VVhat lawfull Jurisdiction could remain to him in England who was not permitted by law to receive any appeal thence nor to send any Citation or sentence thither nor execute any authority over an English Subject either at Rome by himself or in England by his deputies without licence That he exercised all these acts at sometimes there is no doubt of it But he could not exercise them lawfully without consent Give us the same limitation which our Ancestours alwayes claimed that no forraign authority shall be exercised in England withour leave and then give the Pope as much authority as you please volenti non fit injuria consent takes away error He is not wronged who gives leave to another to wrong him He demandeth first were not those bawes in force in the beginning of Henry the eighths raign Yes but it is no strange matter to explaine or confirm or renew ancient laws upon emergent and subsequent abuses as we see in magna Charta the statute of proviso's and many other Statutes Secondly he asketh whether we began our Religion there that is at that time when these ancient lawes were made no I have told him formerly that these statutes were onely declarative what was the ancient common law of the kingdome VVe began our Religion from Joseph of Arimathea's time before they had a Church at Rome But it is their constant use to make the least reformation to be a new Religion Lastly he enquireth whether there be not equivolent laws to these in France Spaine Germany and Italy it self and yet they are Catholicks and hold communication with the Pope Yes there are some such laws in all these places by him mentioned perhaps not so many but the liberties of the French Church are much the same with the English as I have shewed in the vindication And therefore the Popes friends do exclude France out of the number of these Countries which they term Pays d' obedience loyall Countries VVhat â—use some other Countries can make of the Papacy more then we in England concerns not me nor this present discourse And here to make his conclusion answerable to his preface in this section he cries out How ridiculous how impudent a manner of speaking is this to force his Readers to renounce their eyes and
assenting to the erecting of it And I aske how it was not legally established which was established by soveraign authority according to the direction of the Convocation with the confirmation of the Parliament What other legall establishment can there be in England By the Lawes of England a Bishop had but his single vote either in Parliament or Convocation Some Bishops were imprisoned indeed but neither the most nor the best of the English Bishops whether for not assenting or for other reasons will require further proof than his bare assertion This is certain that every one of them had freely renounced the Pope and Papacy in the reign of Henry the eighth He saith I should have added that Church which was suppressed by the last Parliament under King Charles Why should I add a notorious untruth as contrary to my conscience as to my affections I might have said oppressed I could not say suppressed The externall splendor was abated when the Baronies of the Bishops and their votes in Parliament were taken away but the Order was not extinguished So far from it that King Charles himself suffered as a Martyr for the English Church If his meaning be that it was suppressed by an ordinance of one or both Houses without authority royall he cannot be so great a stranger in England as not to know that it is without the sphere of their activity Yet he is pleased to stile it a dead Church and me the Advocate of a dead Church even as the Trees are dead in Winter when they want their leaves or as the Sun is set when it is behinde a Cloud or as the Gold is destroyed when it is melting in the Furnace When I see a seed cast into the ground I doe not aske where is the greeness of the leaves where is the beauty of the flowers where is the sweetnes of the fruit but I expect all these in their due season Stay a while and behold the Catastrophe The rain is fallen the wind hath blown and the floods have beaton upon their Church but it is not fallen for it is founded upon a Rock The light is under a Bushell but it is not extinguished And if God in justice should think fit to remove our Candlestick yet the Church of England is not dead whilest the Catholick Church survives Lastly he denies that the English Church is under persecution And though some of the Church doe suffer yet it is not for Religion but matters of State What can a man expect in knotty questions from them who are so much transported with prejudice as to deny those things which are obvious to every eie If it be but some that have suffered it is such a some as their Church could never shew wherein he that desires to be more particularly informed may read the Martyrology of London or the List of the Universities and from that paw guess at the proportion of the Lion But perhaps all this was for matters of State No our Churches were not demolished upon pretence of matters of State nor our Ecclesiasticall Revenues exposed to sale for matters of State The refusall of a schismaticall Covenant is no matter of State How many of the orthodox Clergy without pretence of any other delinquency have been beggered how many necessitated to turn Mechanicks or day-Laborers how many starved how many have had their hearts broken how many have been imprisoned how many banished from their native Soil and driven as Vagabonds into the merciless World No man is so blinde as he that will not see His tenth Section is a summary or repetition of what he hath already said wherein I finde nothing of weight that is new but onely one authority out of St. Austin That Catholicks are every where and Hereticks every where but Catholicks are the same every where and Hereticks different every where If by Catholicks he understand Roman Catholicks they are not every where not in Russia nor in Aethiopia and excepting some hand-fulls for the most part upon toleration not in any of the Eastern Churches The words of Saint Austin are these Vbicunque sunt isti illic Catholica sicut in Africa ubi vos non autem ubicunque Catholica est aut vos istis aut Heresis quaelibet earum Wheresoever they are there is the Catholick Church as in Africa where you are but wheresoever the Catholick Church is you are not nor any of those Heresies St. Austins scope is to shew that the Catholick Church is more diffused or rather universall than any Sect or all Sects put together If you please let this be the Touchstone between you and us But you will say that you are united every where and we are different every where Nothing less You are united in one pretended head which some of you acknowledge more some less We are united in the same Creed the same Sacraments and for the most part the same discipline Besides of whom doth St. Austin speak in that place of the Novatians Arrians Patripassians Valentinians Patricians Apellites Marcionites Ophites all which condemned all others but themselves and thereby did separate themselves Schismatically from the Catholick Church as it is to be feared that you doe Our case is quite contrary we reform our selves but condemn no others CHAP. 3. Whether Protestants were Authors of the separation from Rome WE are now come from stating the Question to proofs where we shall soon see how R. C. will acquit himself of the province which he hath undertaken To shew that Protestants were not the Authors of the Separation from Rome but Roman Catholicks I produced first the solemn unanimous resolution of our Universities in the point that the Bishop of Rome had no greater Jurisdiction within England conferred upon him by God in the Scripture than any other forrein Bishop Secondly the decrees of two of our nationall Synods Thirdly six or seven Statutes or Acts of Parliament Fourthly the attestation of the prime Roman Catholick Bishops and Clergy in their printed Books in their Epistles in their Sermons in their Speeches in their Institution Fiftly the unanimous consent of the whole Kingdome of England testified by Bishop Gardiner and of the Kingdome of Ireland proved out of the Councell Book Lastly the Popes own Book wherein he interdicted and excommunicated the whole Church of England before the reformation made by Protestants So as apparently we were chased away from them Heare the judgement of a Stranger This year the Pope brake the wise patience or rather dissimulation which for four years together he had used towards England And sent against the King a terrible thundring Bull such as never was used by his Predecessors nor imitated by his Successors It will cost him some tugging to break such a six-fold cord as this is What doth he answer to all this Not one word And so I take my first ground pro confesse That Protestants were not Authors of the separation of the English
Church from Rome Yet something he saith upon the by which is to be examined first That they who made the King head of the Church were so far from being Zelots of the Roman Religion that they were not then of the Roman Religion but Schismaticks and Hereticks outwardly whatsoever they were inwardly What a change is here Even now when they opposed the Reformation they were the best Bishops and now when they oppose the Popes Supremacy they are Schismaticks and Hereticks Let them be what they were or whatsoever he would have them to be certainly they were no Protestants And if they were not Roman Catholicks they were of no Christian Communion They professed to live Roman Catholicks and they died Roman Catholicks The six bloody Articles contrived by them and executed by them in the reign of King Henry and the Bonefires which they made of poor Protestants in the dayes of Queen Mary doe demonstrate both that they were no Protestants and that they were Zelots of the Roman Religion But saith he the essence of the Roman Religion doth consist in the primacy of the Pope If it be so then whereas the Christian Religion hath twelve Articles the Roman Religion hath but one Article and that none of the twelve namely the supremacy of the Pope But this needs makes no difference between us For they denyed not the Popes Primacy that is of order but his Supremacy of power Neither is his Supremacy either the essence or so essentiall a part of the Roman Catholick Beleef but that many of the Roman Catholick Communion have denyed it of old as the Councells of Constance and Basile and many doe deny it and more doubt of it at this day But let that be as it will In all other Controversies they were pure Romanists and the denomination is from the greater part Certainly they were no Protestants which is enough for my purpose He tels us from Bishop Gardiner that the Parliament was with much cruelty constrained to abolish the Primacy he means Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome A likely thing indeed that a whole Parliament and among them above fifty Bishops and Abbets should be forced without any noise against their conscience to forswear themselves to deny the essence of their faith and to use his own words to turn Schismaticks and Hereticks How many of them lost their lives first Not one not one changed his Soil not one suffered imprisonment about it For howsoever the matter hath been misconstrued by some of our Historiographeâ—s Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas Moore were imprisoned before this Act of the Supremacy was made for denying the Kings Mariage and opposing a former Act of Parliament touching the succession of his Children to the Crown Thus much is confessed by Sanders in his Book de Schismate p. 73. b. concerning Fisher and p. 81. concerning Sir Thomas Moor. Quae Lex post Mori apprehensionem constituta erat The Law of Supremacy was made after the apprehension of Sir Thomas Moore Of this much cruelty I doe not finde so much as a threatning word or a footstep except the fear of a Premunire And is it credible that the whole representative of the Church and Kingdome should value their Goods above their Souls Or that two successive Synods and both our Universities nemine dissentiente should be so easily constrained But who constrained the most learned of the Bishopâ— and the greatest Divines in the Kingdome to tell the King that it was his right to publish Catechisms or Institutions and other Books and to preach Sermons at St. Pauls Cross and elswhere for maintenance of the Kings Supremacy These Acts were unconstrained Heare the Testimony of Queen Eizabeth given in their life time to their faces before the most eminent Ambassadors of the greatest Persons in the World when Bishop Gardiner might have contradicted it if he could When the Emperour and other Roman Catholick Princes interceded with her for the displaced Bishops she returned this answer That they did now obstinately reject that Doctrine which most part of themselves under Henry the eighth and Edward the sixth had of their own accord with heart and hand publickly in their Sermons and Writings taught unto others when they themselves were not private Persons but publick Magistrates The charge is so particular that it leaves no place for any answer First of their own accord Secondly not only under Henry the eighth but Edward the sixth Thirdly when they themselves were publick Magistrates Fourthly with heart and hand not only in their Sermons but also in their printed Writings Against Subscriptions and printed Writings there can be no defence But upon whose credit is this constraint charged upon King Henry upon Bishop Gardiners In good time he produceth a Witness in his own cause He had an hard heart of his own if he would not have favored himself and helped to conceal his own shame after King Henry was dead Mortui non mordent Is not this that Stephen Gardiner that writ the book de vera obedientia to justifie the Kings Supremacy Is not this that Stephen Gardiner that tels us That no forrein Bishop hath authority among us that all sorts of people are agreed with us upon this point with most steadfast consent that no manner of person bred or brought up in England hath ought to doe with Rome Is not this he that had so great an hand in framing the oath of Supremacy and in all the great transactions in the later dayes of King Henry was not he one of them who tickled the Kings eares with Sermons against the Popes Supremacy who was a Contriver of the six bloody Articles against the Protestants and was able by his power with the King to bring the great Favorite of those times to the Scaffold for Heresie and Treason To conclude if any thing did constrain him it was either the Bishoprick of London or Winchester or which I doe the rather beleeve out of charity the very power of conscience So much himself confesseth in the conclusion of his book de vera obedientia where he proposeth this objection against himself that as a Bishop he had sworn to maintain the Supremacy of the Pope To which he answers That what was holily sworn is more holily omitted then to make an oath the bond of iniquity He confesseth himself to have been married to the Church of Rome bona fide as to his second Wife but after the return of his first Wife that is the Truth to which he was espoused in his Baptisme being convicted with undenyable evidence he was necessitated out of conscience to forsake the Church of Rome in this particular question of Supremacy and to adhere to his first Wife the Truth and after her to his Prince the supreme head of the English Church upon earth His next attempt is to prove that the Protestants were the Authors of the separation from Rome And he names three Cranmer Crumwell and Barnes He
Popes but for many of the rest and especially for that which did virtually include them all that is the Legâ—slative power in ecclesiasticall causes wherein the whole body of the Kingdome did claim a neerer interest in respect of that receptive Power which they have ever injoyed to admit or not admit such new Laws whereby they were to be governed it had been folly and madness in the Popes to have attempted upon it One doubt still remains How ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction could be said to be derived from the Crown For they might be apt enough in those dayes to use such improper expressions First with the Romanists themselves I distinguish between habituall and actuall Jurisdiction Habituall Jurisdiction is derived only by ordination Actuall Jurisdiction is a right to exercise that habit arising from the lawfull application of the matter or subject In this later the Lay Patron and much more the Soveraign Prince have their respective Interests and concurrence Diocesses and Parishes were not of divine but humane institution And the same persons were born Subjects before they were made Christians The ordinary gives a School master a license or habituall power to teach but it is the Parents of the Children who apply or substract the matter and furnish him with Scholars or afford him a fit subject whereupon to exercise this habituall power Secondly we must also distinguish between the interior and exterior Court between the Court of Conscience and the Court of the Church For in both these Courts the power of the Keies hath place but not in both after the same manner That power which is exercised in the Court of Conscience for binding and loosing of sinnes is soly from Ordination But that power which is exercised in the Court of the Church is partly from the Soveraign Magistrate especially in England where Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction is enlarged and fortified with a coercive power and the bounds thereof have been much dilated by the favour and piety of Christian Princes by whom many causes have been made of Ecclesiasticall cognisance which formerly were not from whom the coercive or compulsory power of summoning the Kings Subjects by processes and citations was derived It is not then the power of the Keies or any part or branch thereof in the exercise of Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction even in the exterior Court of the Church which is derived from the Crown But it is coercive and compulsory and coroboratory power it is the application of the matter it is the regulating of the exercise of actuall Ecclesiasticall Jurisdicton in the Court of the Church to prevent the oppressions of their Subjects and to provide for the tranquillity of the Common-wealth which belongs to Sovereign Princes As to his corollary that never any King of England before Henry the eighth did challenge an exemption from all Iurisdiction under Christ it is as gross a mistake as all the rest For neither did Henry the eighth challenge any such exemption in the Court of Conscience Among the six bloody Articles established by himself that of auricular confession was one Nor in the Court of the Church seeing the direct contrary is expressly provided for in the Statute it self The Archbishop of Canterbury for the time being and his Successors shall have power and authority from time to time by their discretions to give grant and dispose by an instrument under the Seal of the said Archbishop unto your Majesty and to your Heirs and Successors Kings of this Realm as well all manner of such Licences Dispensations Compositions Faculties Grants Rescripts Delegacies Instruments and all other Writings for causes not being contrary or repugnant to holy Scriptures and Lawes of God as heretofore hatâ— been used and accustomed to be had and obtained by your Highnes or any of your most noble Progenitors or any of yours or their Subjects at the See of Rome So vain a suggestion it is That King Henry the eighth did free himself not only from Papall Authority but also and as well from Episcopall Archiepiscopall and all Spirituall Authority either abroad or in England And his Argument which he presseth so seriously to prove it is as vain That the Head of a Company is under none of that Company The Pope himself is under his Confessor who hath power to binde him or loose him in the Court of Conscience The Master of a Family is under his own Chaplain for the regiment of his Soul and under his Physitian for the government of his Body What should hinder it that a Politicall Head may not be under an Ecclesiasticall Pastor The Kings of England are not only under the forrein Jurisdiction of a generall Councell but also under their Ecclesiasticall Pastors though their own Subjects Only they are exempted from all coercive and compulsory power Let us trie whether he be more fortunate in opposing then he hath been in answering The Kings of England saith he permitted Appeales to Rome in ecclesiasticall causes as is evident in St. Wilfrides case who was never reproved nor disliked for appealing twice to Rome not so but the clear contrary appeareth evidently in Saint Wilfrides case Though he was an Archbishop and if an Appeal had been proper in any case it had been in that case This pretended Appeal was not only much disliked but rejected by two Kings successively by the other Archbishop and by the body of the English Clergy as appeareth by the event For Wilfride had no benefit of the Popes sentences but was forced after all his strugling to quit the two Monasteries which were in question whether he would or not and to sit down with his Archbishoprick which he might allwnies have held peaceably if he would This agrees with his supposed Vision in France that at his return into his Country he should receive the greatest part of his possessions that had been taken from him that is praesulatum Ecclesiae suae his Archbishoprick but not his two Monasteries But this is much more plain by the very words of King Alfride cited by me in the Vindication to which R. C. hath offered no answer That he honored the Popes Nuncios for their grave lives and honorable lookes Here is not a word of their credentiall Letters O how would a Nuncio storm at this and take it as an affront The King told them further That he could not give any assent to their legation So that which R. C. calles permitting was in truth downright dissenting and rejecting The reason followes because it was against reason that a person twice condemned by the whole Councel of the English should be restored upon the Popes Letter Is not this disliking What could the King say more incivillity then to tell the Popes Nuncios that their Masters demands were unreasonable or what could be more to the purpose and to the utter ruin of R. C. his cause then that the Decrees of the pope were impugned not once but twice not by a few
kept their ancient bounds But now when the State of the Empire is altogether changed the Provinces confounded and the Dominions divided among lesser Kings who are sometimes in hostility one with another and the Subjects of one Prince cannot freely nor securely repair for Justice into the Dominions of a forrein Prince without prejudice to themselves and danger to their native Country It is very meet that the Subjects of every Soveraign Prince should have finall Justice within the Dominions of their own Soveraign as well in Ecclesiasticall causes as Politicall And this is agreeable with the fundamentall Lawes and Customes of England which neither permit a Subject in such cases to goe out of the Kingdome nor any forrein Commissioner to enter into the Kingdome without the Kings license Upon this ground the Bishops of Scotland were freed from their obedience to the Primate of York and the Bishops of Muscovia from the Patriarch of Constantinople But saith he That which is for the benefit of the Kingdome may be contrary to the good of the Church and should we prefer a Kingdome before the Church the Body before the Soul Earth before Heaven I answer that gain and losse advantage and disadvantage ought not to be weighed or esteemed from the consideration of one or two circumstances or emergents All charges damages and reprises must first be cast up and deducted before one can give a right estimate of benefit or losse If a Merchant doe reckon only the price which his commodity cost him beyond Sea without accounting Customes Freight and other charges he will soon perish his Pack If the benefit be only temporall and the losse Spirituall as to gain Gold and lose Faith which is more precious then Gold that perisheth it is no benefit but losse What should it advantage a man to gain the whole World and lose his own Soul The English Church and the English Kingdome are one and the same Society of men differing not really but rationally one from another in respect of some distinct relations As the Vine and the Elm that susteins it they florish together and decay together Bonum ex singulis circumstantiis that which is truely good for the Kingdome of England cannot be ill for the Church of England and that which is truely good for the English Church cannot be ill for the English Kingdome We may in reason distinguish between Alexanders friend who studies to please him and the Kings friend who gives him good advise The one is a friend to his person the other to his office But in truth whilest Alexander is King and the person and office are united he that is a true friend to Alexander is no enemy to the King and he who is a true friend to the King is no foe to Alexander Indeed if by the Church he understand the Court of Rome then that which was good for the Kingdome of England was prejudiciall to the Church in point of temporall profit But seeing as he confesseth The Soul is to be preferred before the Body it turns to their greater advantage by lessening the account of their extortions He addeth That a Kingdome is but a part of the Church and it is not in the power of any part only for its particular profit to alter what is instituted by the universall Church for her universall good no more then it is in the power of a part of the Kingdome as one Shire or Province to alter for its private inâ—erest what hath been decreed by Parliament for the good of the Kingdome His instance of a Shire or a Province is altogether impertinent for no particular Shire or Province in England hath Legislative authority at all as the Kingdome hath But particular Corporations being invested with power from the Crown to make Ordinances for the more commodious government of themselves may make and doe make ordinarily by Lawes and Ordinances not contra against the Acts of Parliament but praeter besides the Acts of Parliament And let him goe but a little out of the Kingdome of England as suppose into the Isle of Man or into Ireland though they be branches of the English Empire yet he shall finde that they have distinct Parliaments which with the concurrence of the King have ever heretofore enjoyed a power to make Lawes for themselves contrary to the Lawes of the English Parliament But we are so far from seeking to abrogate or to alter any institution of the universall Church or its representative a generall Councell in this case that on the contrary we crave the benefit of their Decrees and submit all our differences to their decision No generall Councell did ever give to the See of Rome Jurisdiction over Britain And though they had yet the state of things being quite changed it were no disobedience to vary from them in circumstances whilest we persist in their grounds To make my word good I will suppose the case to have been quite otherwise then it was That Protestants had made the separation That they had had no ancient Laws for presidents That the Britannick Churches had not enjoyed the Cyprian priviledge for the first six hundred years Yea I will suppose for the present That our Primates were no Primates or Patriarchs And that the Britannick Churches had been subjected to the Bishop of Rome by generall Councells Yet all this supposed upon the great mutation of the state of the Empire and the great variation of affairs since that time it had been very lawfull for the King and Church of England to substract their obedience from the Bishops of Rome though they had not quitted their Patriarchate and to have erected a new Primate at home among themselves Provided that what I write only upon supposition he doe not hereafter allege as spoken by way of concession We have seen formerly in this chapter that the establishment of Primates or Patriarchs and Metropolitans in such and such Sees was meerly to comply and conforme themselves to the Edicts and civill constitutions of Sovereign Princes for the ease and advantage of Christians and to avoid confusion and clashing of Jurisdiction That where there was a civill Exarch and Protarch established by the Emperour there should be an ecclesiasticall Primate or Patriarch And where a Citie was honoured with the name and priviledge of a Metropolis or mother Citie there should be a Metropolitan Bishop The practise of Bishops could not multiply these dignities but the Edicts of Emperors could And this was in a time when the Emperors were Pagans and Infidells Afterwards when the Emperours were become Christians if they newly founded or newly dignified an Imperiall Citie or a Metropolis they gave the Bishop thereof a proportionable ecclesiasticall preheminence at their good pleasure Either with a Councell as the Councels of Constantinople and Chalcedon with the consent and confirmation of Theodosius and Martian Emperours did advance the Bishop of Constantinople from being a mean Suffragan under the Metropolitan of
Prince or Princes but a whole succession of Kings with their convocations and Parliaments proceeding according to the fundamentall Laws of the Kingdome So he might have spared his instances of Saul and Uzziah But he faith that what King Henry did in such matters was plainly against his own conscience as appeareth by his frequent and earnest desires to be reunited to the Pope It is a bold presumption in him to take upon him to judge of another mans conscience God alone knows the secret turnings and windings of the heart of man Though he had desired a reconciliation with Rome yet charity requires that we should rather judge that he had changed his minde then that he violated his conscience Neither will this uncharitable censure if it were true advantage his cause the black of a bean His conscience might make the reformation sinfull in him but not unlawfull in it self The lawfullness or unlawfullness of the Action within it self depends not upon the conscience of the doer but the merit of the thing done His witnesses are Bishop Gardiner and Nicholas Sanders The former a great Counsellor of King Henry a contriver of the oath a propugner of the Kings Supremacy both in print and in his Sermons and a persecutor of them who opposed it For a Preacher to preach against his own conscience comes neer the sin against the holy Ghost He had reason to say he was constrained both to hide his own shame and to flatter the Pope after his revolt whom he had so much opposed especially in the dayes of Queen Marie Otherwise he had missed the Chancellership of England and it may be had suffered as a Schismatick Yet let us hear what he faith that King Henry had a purpose to resigne the Supremacy when the tumult was in the North And that he was imployed to the Emperor to desire him to be a mediator to the Pope about it All this might have been and yet no intention of reconciliation Great Princes many times look one way and row another And if an overture or an empty pretence will serve to quash a Rebellion or prevent a forrein warre will make no scruple to use it But upon Bishop Gardiners credit in this cause we cannot beleeve it This was one of them who writ that menacing Letter to the Pope just before the reformation that if he did not hear them certe interpretabimur nostri nobis curam esse relictam ut aliunde nobis remedia conquiramus they would certainly interpret it that they were left to themselves to take care of themselves to seeke their remedy from elsewhere This was a faire intimation and they were as good as their words This was the man who writ the book de vera obedientia downright for the Kings Supremacie against the Pope Lastly this is who published to the world that all sorts of People with us were agreed upon this point with most sted fast consent that no manner of person bred or brought up in England hath ought to doe with Rome It had been strange indeed that all sorts of People should be unanimous in the point and the King alone goe against his conscience His later witness Nicholas Sanders is just such another whose Book de schismate is brim full of virulent slanders and prodigious fictions against King Henry He feineth that when his death did draw nigh he began to deal privately with some Bishops of the way how he might be reconciled to the See Apostolick Testimony he produceth none but his own Authority They who will not beleeve it may chuse But that which followeth spoileth the credit of his relation That one of the Bishops being doubtfull whether this might not be a trap to catch him answered that the King was wiser then all men that he had cast off the Popes Supremacy by divine inspiration and had nothing now to fear That a King should be laying snares to catch his Bâ—shops apprepinquante hora mortis when the very hour of his death was drawing near and that a Bishop should flatter a dying man so abhominably against his conscience as he makes this to be is not credible But there is a third Author alleged by others who deserved more credit That it was but the coming two dayes short of a Post to Rome which hindred that the reconcilement was not actually made But here is a double mistake first in the time this was in the year 1533. before the separation was made currente Rota Some intimations had been given of what was intended but the Bell was not then rung out Certainly the breach must goe before the reconcilement in order of time Secondly in the Subject this treaty was not about the Jurisdiction of the Court of Rome over the English Church but about the divorce of King Henry and Queen Katherine The words are these That if the Pope would supersede from executing his sentence untill he the King had indifferent Judges who might hear the business he would also supersede of what he was deliberated to doe in withdrawing his obedience from the Roman See The Bishop of Paris procured this proposition from the King and delivered it at Rome It was not accepted The Kings answer came not within the time limited Thereupon the Pope published his Sentence and the Separation followed So this was about the change of a Wife not of Religion before either King Henrys substraction of obedience or the Popes fulmination In the next place he distinguisheth between the Pope and the Papacy acknowledging That it may be lawfull in some cases to substract obedience from the Pope but in no case from the Papacy which he presumeth but doth not prove to be of divine institution whereas Protestants saith he for the faults of some Popes have separated themselves both from Pope Papacy and Roman Church And here again he falls upon his former needless Theme That personall faults are no sufficient ground of a revolt from a good institution If he had been pleased to observe it I took away this distinction before it was made shewing that the personall faults of Popes or their Ministers ought not to reflect upon any but the persons guilty but faulty principles in Doctrine or Discipline doe warrant a more permanent separation even untill they be reformed I doe acknowledge the distinction of Pope Papacy and Church of Rome but I deny that we have separated from any one of them for the faults of another As the Pope may have his proper faults so may the Papacy so may the Church of Rome We have separated our selves from the Church of Rome only in those things wherein she had first separated her self from the ancient Roman Church In all other things we maintain communion with her We are ready to yeeld the Pope all that respect which is due to the Bishop of an Apostolicall Church and whatsoever externall honor the Fathers did think fit to cast upon that See if he
of indulgences whom the Pope of that time rebuked severely Nor Henry the eighth but the excommunication of Clement the seventh That of Luther is altogether without the compass of the question between him and me which concerneth only the Church of England I shall only make bold to tell him that whensoever it comes to be examined it will be found that Luther had many other causes of what he did then the abuse of some Preachers of Indulgences If he will not give me credit let him cousult the hundred grievances of the German Nation That the Pope rebuked those Preachers of Indulgences severely is more then I have read only this I have read that Carolus Militius did so chide Tecelius the Popes Pardoner about it that shortly after he died of grief Concerning Henry the eighth the excommunication of Clement the seventh was so far from being a totall adequate cause of his separation that it was no more but a single occasion The originall priviledges of the British Churches the ancient liberties and immunities of the English Church daily invaded by the Court of Rome the usurpation of the just Rites and Flowers of his own Crown the otherwise remediles oppression of his Subjâ—â—ts and the examples of his noble Predecessors were the chief grounds of his proceedings against the Court of Rome He asketh could not Henry the eighth have been saved though he was excommunicate yes why not Justice looseth unjust bonds But I see that this question is grounded upon a double dangerous error First that all reformation of our selves is a sinfull separation from other Churches Whereas he himself confesseth that it is sometimes vertuous and necessary Nay every reformation of our selves is so far from being a sinfull separation from others that it is no separation at all except it be joyned with censuring and condemning of others The second error intimated in this question is this that so long as there is possibility of salvation in any Church it is not lawfull or at least not necessary to separate from the abuses and corruptions thereof A Church may continue a true particular Church and bring forth Children to God and yet out of invincible ignorance maintain materiall Heresie and require the profession of that Heresie as a condition of communicating with her in which case it is lawfull nay necessary after conviction to separate from her errors Those errors and corruptions are pardonable by the goodness of God to them who erre out of invincible ignorance which are not pardonable in like manner to them who sinne contrary to the light of their own conscience He addeth that this excommunication was not the fault of the Roman Church which neither caused it nor approved it Yea saith he divers of them disliked it both then and since not as unjust but as imprudent and some have declared themselves positively that a Prince and a multitude are not to be excommunicated It were to be wished for the good of both parties that all men were so moderate To his argument I give two answers First as the Church of Rome did not approve the excommunication of Henry the eighth So neither did Henry the eighth separate himself from the Cchurch of Rome but only from the Pope and Court of Rome Secondly what are we the better that some in the Roman Church are moderate so long as they have no power to help us or hinder the acts of the Roman Court They teach that a Prince or a multitude are not to be excommunicated But in the mean time the Court of Rome doth excommunicate both Princes and multitudes and whole Kingdomes and give them away to strangers Whereof there are few Kingdomes or Republicks in Europe that have not been sensible more or less and particularly England hath felt by wofull experience in sundry ages Clement the seventh excommunicated King Henry but Paul the third both excommunicated and interdicted him and the whole Kingdome and this was the first separation of the Church of England from the Church of Rome and the originall of the Schism wherin the Church of England was meerly passive So the Court of Rome was the first cause of the Schism We are come now to my first argument to prove the Court of Rome to be causually schismaticall My proposition is this whatsoever doth leave its proper place in the body either naturall or politicall or ecclesiasticall to usurp the Office of the Head or to usurpe an higher place in the body then belongs unto it is the cause of disorder disturbance confusion and Schism among the Members my assumption is this but the vertuall Church of Rome that is the Pope wiâ—h his Court being but a coordinate Member of the Catholick Church doth seek to usurpe the Office of the Head being but a Branch doth châ—llenge to himself the place of the Root being but a Stone in the building will needles be an absolute Foundation for all persons places and times being but an eminent Servant in the Familie takes upon him to be the Master To the proposition he taketh no exception And to the assumption he confesseth that the Church of Rome in right of the Pope doth seek to be Mistriss of all other Churches and an externall subordinate foundation of all Christians in all times and places which is no more then is conteined in the new Creed of Pius the fourth I acknowledg the Roman Church to be the Mother and Mistriss of all Churches And I promise and swear true obedience to the Bishop of Rome as to the Vicar of Iesus Christ. But all this he justifieth to be due to the Pope and included in the Supremacy of his Pastorall Office But he saith that it is not the Doctrine of the universal Roman Church that the Pope is the root of all spiritual Iurisdiction Though it be not the Doctrine of the whole Roman Church yet it is the Doctrine of their principall Writers at this day It is that which the Popes and their Courtiers doe challenge and we have seldome seen them fail first or last to get that setled which they desired The Pope hath more Benefices to bestow then a Councell If the Church of Rome be the foundation of all Christians then Linus and Cletus and Clemens were the foundations of St. Iohn who was one of the twelve foundations laid immediately by Christ How can the Church of Rome be the foundation of all Christians when they doe not agree among themselves that the Chair of St. Peter is annexed to the See of Rome by divine right How can the Church of Rome be the foundation of all Christians at all times when there was a time that there were Christians and no Bishop or Church at Rome when it happens many times as in this present vacancy that there is no Bishop at Rome St. Peter was Bishop of Antioch before he was Bishop of Rome then there was a time when Antioch was the Mistriss and foundation of all
very same thing in sense It is no new thing for great quarrels to arise from meer mistakes He would perswade the World that there is something in our English Articles which reflects sadly upon the Greek Church to declare them guilty of Heresie or Schism Either he is deceived himself or he would deceive others There is no such thing nor the least insinuation against them either directly or by consequence But he is fallible and may erre in this as well as he doth in saying that I have been sworn to them we doe use to subscribe unto them indeed not as Articles of Faith but as Theologicall verities for the preservation of unity among our selves but never any Son of the Church of England was obliged to swear unto them or punished for dissenting from them in his judgment so he did not publish it by word or writing Secondly they charge us with schismaticall disobedience to the determinations of the generall Councell of Trent To which I answered that that Councell was neither general nor free nor lawfull First not general because there was not one Bishop present out of all the other Patriarchates and but a part of the occidentall Church Secondly of those who were present two parts were Italians and many of them the Popes Pensioners Thirdly at the definition of some of the weightiest controversies there were not so many Bishops as the King of England could have called together in a moneth within his own Realms Fourthly it was not generally received by the Romanists To this he answers that there were some Grecian Bishops there Perhaps one or two titular Bishops without Bishopricks not impowred by commission nor sent with instructions from any Patriarch These were no Grecian Bishops He addeth that it is not necessarie to summon hereticall or schismaticall Bishops Yes the rather before they be lawfully condemned as these never were Besides this is begging of the question When or where were they convicted of Heresie or Schism This is but the opinion of the lesser and unsounder part of the Church against the greater and sounder part Upon this ground the Donatists might have called a Councel in Africk and nicknamed it a general Councel He saith it is obeyed by all Catholicks for matters of faith though not for matters of fact He meaneth by all Roman Catholicks But if it were the supreme Tribunall of the militant Church it ought to be obeyed for matters of fact also so farre as they are Ecclesiastical Break ice in one place and it will crack in more He saith Pius the fourth sent most loving letters to Queen Elizabeth but his messenger was not admitted into England As we have in horror the treacherous and tyrannicall proceedings of Paul the third and Pius the fifth against our Princes and Realms So we acknowledge with gratitude the civilities of Pius the fourth Certainly he took the more prudent way for a Christian Prelate Secondly The Councell of Trent was not free First because the place afforded no security to Protestants Secondly the accuser was the Judge Thirdly any one who spake a free word was either silenced or thrust out of the Councel Fourthly the Protestants who came on purpose to dispute were not admitted Fifthly the Legates gave auricular votes and some of the Councel did not stick to confess that it was guided by the holy Ghost sent from Rome in a male Sixthly new Bishopricks were created during the Session to make the Papalins able to over-vote the Tramontains To all these exceptions he answereth That if the Pope had been their Judge it had been no more unjust then for a King to judge his own notorious Rebells but the Pope out of his abundant favour made the Councel their Iudge which he needed not their Heresies having been formerly lawfully condemned He supposeth without any proof that the Pope is an absolute Monarch of the Church which all the Christian World except themselves doth denie He should remember that these are their own objections and that he is now to prove not to dictate Whether the Pope did judge the Protestants by himself or by a Councel consisting for the most part of his own Clients and Creatures who knew no motion but by his influence is all one in effect He knew that he had made his game sure enough under-hand whilest the Italian Episcopalls were so numerous and partial If the Pope did rather choose to referre the Protestants to the Councel it was not out of favour to them as a more equall and indifferent way but to take the envie off from himself If Christian Princes desire to have a free Councel they must reduce it to the form of the Councel of Constance and revive the Deputies of the Nations Whereas he saith that the Protestants were formerly lawfully condemned either they were strange phantasms of Protestants or it was a strange propheticall Decree Lastly he demands how I can say that it was not a free Councel where two or three safe conducts were granted where the Councel bound it self to determine the controversie by holy Scripture Apostolicall tradition approved Councels consent of the catholick Church and authority of holy Fathers Yes I can say well enough for all this that the Councell was not free fistula dulce canit volucrem dum decipit auceps the pipe playes sweetly whilest the Fowler is about his prey No man sâ—ith Tully proclaimeth in the Market that he hath rotten wares to sell. When men intend most to play tricks they doe often strip up their sleeves to make a shew of upright dealing Scriptures Tradition Councels Fathers Churches are excellent rules beyond exception yet an inexpert or partiall Artist may make a crooked line with them Any one of these proofs would satisfie us abundantly but this was a meer empty flourish The Protestants had safe conduct granted but yet those that repaired to the Councel were not admitted to dispute Thirdly As the Councel of Trent was not a general nor a free Councel so neither was it a lawfull Councel First because it was not in Germany A guilty person is to be judged in his own Province Secondly because the Pope alone by himself or his Ministers acted all the four parts of accuser witness guilty person and Judge Thirdly because the Protestants were condemned before they were heard To this he answereth first That Trent is in Germany wherein he is much mistaken for proof whereof â— produce first the publick protestation of the Germane Protestants That to promise a Councel in Germanie and to choose Trent was to mock the World That Trent cannot be said to be in Germany but only because the Bishop is a Prince of the Empire otherwise that for security it is as well and as much in Italy and in the Popes power as Rome it self To which the Pope himself giveth testimonie in his answer to the Cardinall Bishop and Lord of Trent when he desired maintenance for a Garrison from the Pope to secure
the Councel That there was no fear so long as none but Italians were in Trent and ingageth himself to secure it The grievances which they complained of were done in Germany the redress which they sough was in Germany Germany not Italy had been the proper place for the Councel R. C. proceedeth the Protestants were the first accusers of the Pope It may be so but not in a legall or judiciary way He confesseth That in doubtfull cases there ought to be four distinct persons the accuser the witness the person accused and the Iudge but not in notorious rebellion in which case there needs neither witness nor accuser And doth not this merit the reputation of a doubtfull case wherein so great a part of the occidental Church are ingaged who are ready to prove evidently that he who is their accuser and usurps the office of their Judge is the notorious Rebell himself I confess that in some cases the notority of the fact may supply the defect of witnesses but that must evermore be in cases formerly defined by the Law to be Rebellion or Heresie or the like The Popes Rebellion hath been already condeâ—â—ed in the Councel of Constance and his heretical maintaining of it in the Councel of Basile But the Protestants renouncing of his usurped authority hath never yet been lawfully defined to be either the one or the other Yet he saith The Protestants were condemned not only by the Councel of Trent but by the Patriarch of Constantinople to whom they appealed One that readeth this and knoweth not otherwise would beleeve that the Protestants in general had appealed from the Councel of Trent and were juridically condemned by the Patriarch of Constantinople Who gave the Appellants procuration to appeal in the name of the Protestants in general Who gave the Patriarch of Constantinople power to receive the Appeal Where is the condemnation Is the English Church included therein No such thing The case was this One or two forrein particular Protestants made a representation to the Patriarch of Constantinople of some controversies then on foot between the Church of Rome and them And he delivered his opinion it should seem as R. C. conceiveth more to the advantage of the Romanists thâ—n of the Protestants This he calleth an Appeal and a condemnation I crave pardon of the Reader if I doe not in present give him a punctual and particular account of the Patriarchs answer It is thirty years since I see it Neither doe I know how to procure it Thus farre I will charge my memorie that the questions were ill chosen and worse stated and the Patriarchs answer much more to the prejudice of the Church of Rome then of the Church of England The right stating of the question is all in all When the Church of England have any occasion to make their addresses that way they will make them more apposite more to the purpose But since he hath appealed to the Patriarch of Constantinople to the Patriarch of Constantinople let him goe I mean Cyrillus since the time of Hieremy whom that learned Gentleman Sir Thomas Roe then Ambassador for our late King at Constantinople had better informed of the true state and belief of the English Church He published a Treatise of his own much about the year 1630 which he called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a confession of the Christian Faith so conformable to the grounds of the Church of England that it might seem rather to have been written by the Primate of Canterbury then by the Patriarch of Constantinople I will cull out a few flowers and make a posie for him to let him see whether the Patriarchs of Constantinople doe condemn the Church of England or the Church of Rome In the second Chapter he declareth That the authority of the Scripture is above the authority of the Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. for it is not equall or alike to be taught of the holy Ghost and to be taught of man In his tenth Chap. he declareth That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mortall men can by no means be the head of the Church and that our Lord Iesus Christ alone is the head of it In the thirteenth Chapter he asserteth justification by Faith alone just according to the Doctrine of the Church of England In the fifteenth Chapter he acknowledgeth but two Sacraments In the seventeenth Chapter he professeth a true reall presence of Christ the Lord in the Eucharist just as we doe and rejecteth the nâ—w devise of transubstantiation In the eighteenth Chapter he disclaimeth purgatorie c. All this he declarâ—th to be the Faith which Christ taught the Apostles preached and the orthodox Church ever held and undertaketh to make it good to the World And after in his answer to some questions which were proposed to him he excludeth the Apocryphall Books out of the Canon of holy Scripture and condemneth the worship of Images In a word he is wholy ours And to declare to the World that he was so he resolved to dedicate his confession of the Faith of the Greek Church to the King of England When this Treatise was first published it is no marvel if the Court of Rome and the congregation for propagating of the Roman Faith in Greece did storm at it and use their uttermost indevor to ruine him But he justified it before the Ambassadors of Roman Catholick Princes then remaining at Constantinople and came off fairly in despite of all those who did calumniate him and cast false aspersions upon him Besides his own autograph and the testimonies of the Ambassadors then present if there had been nothing else to justifie this truth the instructions given by Cardinal Bandini to Cannachi Rossi in the name of the Pope alone had been sufficient proof and the plots which they contrived against him either to have him taken away by death or deposition For at the same time they decryed the Treatise here as supposititious and accused him there as criminous for being the Author of it But God delivered him out of their hands He pleadeth moreover That the Bishops assembled in Trent were not the Popes Ministers Yet he knoweth right well that they had all taken an Oath of obedience to the Pope for maintenance of the Papacy Were these equall Judges I confess there were many noble souls amongst them who did limit their Oath according to the Canons of the Church But they could doe nothing being over-voted by the Popes Clients and Pensioners He asketh who were the accusers witnesses and Iudges of the Pope in the Parliament 1534 but King Henry himself and his Ministers I answer that they were not King Henries Ministers but the Trustees of the Kingdome they were not sworn to maintain King Henrie's usurpations they acted not by a judiciary but by a legislative power neither did they make any new Law but only declare the ancient Law of the Land Otherwise they medled not with the person of
which continue in communion with it are the onely Churches which have true doctrine in vertue of the first principle above mentioned and the right governement in virtue of the second and consequently are the entire Catholick or Vniversall Church of Christians all others by misbelief or Schisme being excluded Our answer is ready that the Church of Rome or the Court of Rome have sophisticated the true doctrine of Faith by their supplementall Articles and erroneous additions contrary to the first principle and have introduced into the Church a tyrannical and unlawfull government contrary to the second principle and are so far from being the entire Catholick Church that by them both they are convicted to have made themselves guilty of supertio n and Schisme And lastly where he saith that my onely way to clear our Church from Schisme is either by disproving the former to be the necessary rule of unity in Faith or the latter the necessary bond of governement he is doubly mistaken First we are the persons accused our plea is negative or not guilty So the proof lieth not upon us but upon him to make good his accusation by proving us Schismaticks Secondly if the proof did rest upon our sides we do not approve ofâ—his adviâ—e It is not we who have altered the Doctrine or Discipline which Christ left to his Church by our substractions but they by their additions There is no doubt but Christs legacy ought to be preserved inviolable but we deny that Christ bequeathed spiritual Monarchy over his Church to S. Peter and that the Bishop of Rome is S. Peters heir by Christs ordination And that this was the constant beliefe of the Catholick world at any time This is his province let him either make this good or hold his peace Sect. 2. So his Prologue is ended now we come to his animadversions upon my arguments My first ground was because not Protestants but Roman Catholicks themselves did make the first separation To which his first answer is If it were so how doth that acquit us since continuance in a breach of this nature is as culpable as the beginning Many waies First it is a violent presumption of their guilt and our innocence when their best friends and best able to judge who preached for them and writ for them who acted for them and suffered for them who in all other things were great zeloâ—s of the Roman Religion and persecuted the poor Protestants with fire and Fagot did yet condemn thâ—m and justify this separation Secondly though it doth not alwaies excuse a tâ—to from all guilt and punishment to be misled by others into errour If the blind llead the blind both fall into the ditch yet it doth alwaies excuse a tanto it lesseneth the sin and extenuateth the guilt Persons misled by the example and authority of others are not so cuipable as the first authors and ringleaders in Schisme If this separation be an Errour in Protestants the Roman Catholicks do owe an account to God both for themselves and us did they find cause to turne the Pope out of England as an intruder and usurper and could Protestants who had no relation to Rome imagine that it was their duties to bring him in again Thirdly in this case it doth acquit us not onely a tanto but a toto not onely from such a degree of guilt but from all criminus Schisme so longas we seek carefuly after truth and do not violate the dictates of our Consciences If he will not believe me let himbeleeve S. Austin He that defends not his false opinion with pertinacious animosity having not invented it himself but learned it from his erring parents if he enquire carefully after the truth and be ready to embrace it and to correct his errours when he finds them he is not to be reputed an hereticke If this be true in the case of heresy it is more true in the case of Schisme Thus if it had been a crime in them yer it is none in us but in truth it was neither crime in them nor us but a just and necessary duty Secondly he answereth that it is no sufficient proof that they were no Protestants because they persecuted Protestants For Protestants persecute Protestants Lutherans Calvinists Zwinglians Puritans and Beownists persecute one another VVhat then were VVarham and Heath aud Thureleby Tunscall and Stokesley and Gardiner and Bonner c. all Protestants did Protestants enjoy Arch-Bishopricks and Bishopricks iâ— England and say Masses in those daies will he part so easily with the greatest Patrons and Champions of their Church and opposers of the Reformation If he had wriâ— thus much whilest they were living they would have been very angry with him Yet at the least if they were Protestants let him tell me which of these Sects they were of Lutheranâ— c. But he telleth us that the reouncing of the Pope is the most essentiall part of our reformation and so they had in them the quintessence of a Protestant He is mistaken This part of the reformation was done to our hands it was their reformation not ours But if he will needs have the kingdomes and Churches of England and Ireland to have been all Protestants in Henry the eighths daies onely for renouncing the Popes absolute universall Monarchy I am well contented we shall not lose by the bargain Then the Primitive Church were all Protestants then all the Grecian Russian Armenian Abyssen Christians are Protestants at this day then we want not store of Protestants even in the besome of the Roman Church it self Sect. 3. My second Ground saith he was because in the separation of England from Rome there was no new law made but onely their ancient Liberties vindicated This he is pleased to call notoriously false impudence it self because a law was made in Henry the eighths time and an oath invented by which was given to the King to be head of the Church and to have all the power the Pope did at that time possess in England Is this the language of the Roman Sâ—hooles or doth he think perhaps with his outcriâ—s and clamours as the Turks with their Alla Alla to daunt us and drive us from our cause Christian Reader of what Communion soever thou art be but indifferent and I make thee the Judge where this notorious falshood and impudence doth rest between him and me I acknowledge this was the Title of my fourth Chapter that the King and Kingdom of England in the separation from Rome did make no now law but vindicate their ancient Liberties It seemeth he confureth the Titles without looking into the Chapters did I say they made no new statutes No I cited all the new statutes which they did make and particularly this very statute which he mentioneth here Yet I said they made no new law because it was the law of the land before that statute was made The Customs and liberties of England are the ancient and common Law of the
Beatissimus et Apostolicus vir Papa hoc nobis praecipit Nec additur Leo aut Romanus aut nobis Romae aut aliquid aliud When the word Pope is put alone the Bishop of Rome onely is to be understood as appeareth out of the Councel of Chalcedon The most blessed and Apostolical man the Pope doth command us this Neither is there added Pope Leo or the Pope of Rome or the Pope of the City of Rome or any other thing His second exception hath no more weight then the former That there was no such Bishoprick as Caerleon in those dayes the See being translated 50. years before that to St. Davids Where is the contradiction The name of the old Diocess is Caerleon The new See or Throne was the new Abby Church erected aâ— Menevia which place posterity called St. Davids But St. Davids could not be called St. Davids whilst he himself lived nor afterward until custome and tract of time had confirmed such an appellation Some would make us believe that St. David and St. Gregâ—ry dyed upon the same day and then he was still living when Dinoth gave this answer But let that be as it will for it is not much material St. David after the Translation of his See dyed Archbishop of Caerleon Tunc obiâ—t sanctissimus urbis Legionum Archiepiscopus David in Meneviae Civitate c. Then dyed the most holy Archbishop of Caerleon St. David in the City of Menevia And long after his death it still reteined the name of Caerleon even after it was commonly called St. Davids So much Sr. Henry Spilman might have put him in mind of Discesserat ante haec dignitas a Caerlegione ad Landâ—viam sub Dubrâ—tio et mox â— Landavia ad Meneviam cum sancto Davide c. Sed retento pariter Caerlegionis titulo And least he should account Sr. Henry Spilman partial Let him hear Giraldus Cambrensis Habuimus apud Meneviam Vrbis legionum Archiepiscopos successive viginti quinque quorum primus fuit sanctus David c. We had at Menevia five and twenty Archbishops of Caerleon whereof St. David was the first What can be more plain should a man condemn every Author forcounterfeit wherein St. Albans is called Verolam presently after St. Albans death It is an ordinary thing for the same City to have two names and much more the same Bishoprick one from the old See another from the new or one from the Diocess another from the See as the Bishop of Ossory or Kilkenny indifferently His third exception is so slight that I cannot find the edge of it because Sr. Henry Spilman found no other antiquity in it worth the mention which shrewdly implyes that the Book was made for this alone And how doth he know that Sr. Henry Spilman found no other antiquities in it There might be many other British Antiquities in it And yet not proper for a collection of Ecclesiastical Councels Or if there had been no other Antiquity in it Would he condemn his Creed for a counterfeit because it is not hudled together confusedly with some other Treatises in one volume But to demonstrate evidently to him how vain all his trifling is against the testimony of Dionothus Why doth he not answer the coroberatory proof which I brought out of venerable Bede and others of two Brittish Synods held at the same time wherein all the Brittish Clergy did renounce all obedience to the Bishop of Rome of which all our hystoriographers do bear witness Why doth he not answer this but pass by it in so great silence He might as well accuse this of forgery as the other since it is so well attested that Dionothus was a great actor and disputer in that business Sect. 5. In my sixth Chapter I proved three things First that the King and Church of England had sufficient authority to withdraw their obedience from the Roman Patriarch Secondly that they had just grounds to do it And thirdly that they did it with due moderation Concerning the first point he chargeth me the second time for insisting upon a wrong Plea that is their Patriarchal Authority which he confesseth to be humane and mutable I have formerly intimated why they are so loath to entertaine any discourse concerning the Popes Patriarchate because they know not how to reconcile a Monarchy of divine institution with an Aristocracy of humane Institution When I first undertook this subject I conceived that the great strength of the Roman Sampson did lye in his Patriarchate But since this Refuter quitteth it as the Pope himself hath done not for six hundred years onely he speaks too sparingly but for a thousand years ever since Phocas made Boniface universal Bishop I am well contented to give over that subject upon these two conditions First that he do not presume that the Pope is a spiritual Monarch without proving it Secondly that he do not attempt to make Patriarchal Priviledges to be Royal Prerogatives Yet he will not leave this humane Right before we have resolved him three questions First saith he suppose the Christian world had chosen to themselves one head for the preservation of unity in Religion What wrongs must that head do to be sufficient grounds both for the deposition of the person and abolition of the Government Nay put the case right Suppose the Christian World should chuse one for order sake to be their President or Prolocuter in their General Assembly and he should endeavour to make himself their Prince upon some fained Title Did not he deserve to be turned out of his employment if they found it expedient to have another chosen in his place Secondly He supposeth that this alteration should be made by some one party of the Christian Commonwealth which must separate it self from the communion of the rest of Christianity Ought not far weightier causes then these to be expected One mistake begets another as one circle in the water doth produce anotherâ— We have made no such separation from any just Authority instituted by the Catholick Church We nourish a more Catholick Communion then themselves But if our Steward will forsake us because we will not give him leave to become our Master who can help it Thirdly He supposeth that by setting aside this Supreme Head eternal dissentions will inevitably follow in the whole Church of Christ and then demandeth Whether the refusal to comply with the humours of a lustful Prince be ground enough to renounce so necessary an Authority How should the refusal to comply be any such ground Certainly he means the compliance with the humors of a lustful Prince I pass by the extravagancy of the expression Whatsoever they have said or can say concerning Henry the eighth so far as it may reflect upon the Church of England is cleared in my reply to R.C. First He begs the question Christ never instituted the Apostles never constituted the Catholicke Church never acknowledged any such Supreme Head of Power and
Jurisdiction Secondly The Church and Kingdom of England had more lawful just and noble grounds for their separation from the Court of Rome then any base parasitical compliance with the humours of any Prince whatsoever as he cannot chuse but see in this very Chapter But who is so blind as he that will not see Thirdly We do confess that the Primitive Papacy that is an Exordium unitatis a beginning of unity was an excellent meanes of Concord We do not envy the Bishop of Rome or any Honour which the Catholick Church did allow him But moderne Papacy which they seek to obtrude upon us is rather as Nilus saith the cause of all dissentions and Controversies of the Christian World Lastly To his demand concerning the English Court and Church Whether I would condescend to the rejection of Monarchy and to the extirpation of Episcopacy for the misgovernment of Princes or abuses of Prelats I answer No But this will not advantage his cause at all for three Reasons First never were any such abuses as these objected either to Princes or Prelates in England Secondly we seek not the extirpation of the Papacy but the reduction of it to the primitive constitution Thirdly Monarchy and Episcopacie are of divine institution so is not a papall Sovereignty of Jurisdiction His parliamentary Prelacie hath more sound then weight We need not be beholden to Parliament for the Justification of our Prelacie as he will finde that undertakes it Sect. 6. We are now come to the grounds of our separation from the Court of Rome Reader observe and wonder All this while they have been calling to us for our grounds they have declaimed that there can be no just grounds of such a separation They have declared in the Hypothesis that we had no grounds but to comply with the Humours of a lustful Prince Now we present our grounds being reduced to five Heads First The most intolerable extortions of the Roman Court committed from age to age without hope of Remedy Secondly Their most unjust usurpations of all Rights Civil Ecclesiastical sacred and prophane of all orders of men Kings Nobles Bishops c. Thirdly the malignant influence and effects of this forreign jurisdiction destructive to the right ends of Ecclesiastical Discipline producing dis-union in the Realm factions animosities between the Crown and the Mitre intestine discord between the King and his Barons bad intelligence with neighbour Princes and forreign wars Fourthly a list of other inconveniences or rather mischiefs that did flow from thence as to be daily subject to have new Articles of faith obtruded upon them exposed to manifest perill of Idolatry to forsake the Communion of three parts of Christendome to approve the Popes rebellion against general Councels and to have their Bishops take an Oath contrary to their oath of Allegeance to maintaine the Pope in his rebellious usurpations Lastly The weakness of the Popes pretences and the exemption of the Brittannique Church from forreign jurisdiction by the Decree of the General Councel of Ephesus Certainly he ought to have shewed either that these grounds conjoyned were not sufficient or that they were not true or that there were other remedies But he is well contented to pass by them all in silence which is as mueh as yeeld the Cause Thus he It is then of little concernment to examine whether his complaints be true or false since he does not shew there was no other remedy but division What is it of little concernment to examine whether the grounds be sufficient or no It belongs not to me to shew that there was no other remedy that is to prove a negative but if he will answer my grounds it belongs to him to shew that there was other remedy yet so far as a negative is capable of proof I have shewed even in this Chapter that there was no other remedy I shewed that the Pope and his Court were not under the Jurisdiction of the King or Church of England so as to call them to a personal account I shewed that the English Nation had made their addresses to the Pope in Councel out of Councel for ease from their oppressions in diversages and never found any but what they carved out to themselves at home after this manner He adds And much more since it is known if the authority be of Christs institution no just cause can possibly be given for its abolishment This is a very euthumematical kinde of arguing If the sky fall we shall have larks He knows right well that it is his assumption which is latent that we deny that we have abolished any thing which either Christ or his Church did institute He proceedeth But most because all other Catholick Countries might have made the same exception which England pretends yet they remaine still in communion with the Church of Rome and after we have broke the Ice do not hold it reasonable to follow our example Few or no Catholick Countries have sustained so great oppression from the Court of Rome as England hath which the Pope himself called his Garden of delight a Well that could not be drawn dry All other Countries have not right to the Cyprian Priviledge to be exempt from forreign jurisdiction as Brittaine hath Yet all other Catholick Countries do maintaine their owne Priviledges inviolated and make themselves the last Judge of their grievances from the Court of Rome Some other Catholick Countries know how to make better use of the Papacy then England doth yet England is not alone in the separation so long as all the Easterne Southerne Northern and so great a part of the Westerne Churches have separated themselves from the Court of Rome and are separated by them from the Church of Rome as well as we yet if it were otherwise we must live by precepts not by examples Nay saith he The former ages of our Countrey had the same cause to cast the Popes Supremacy out of the Land yet rather preferred to continue in the peace of the Church then attempt so destructive an innovation Mistake not us so much we desire to live in the peaceable communion of the Catholick Church as well as our Ancestors at far as the Roman Court will give us leave neither were our Ancestors so stupid to see themselves so fleeced and trampled upon and abused by the Court of Rome and to sit still in the mean time and blow their noses They did by their lawes exclude the Popes supremacy out of England so farre as they judged it necessary for the tranquility of the Kingdome that is his patronage of Churches his Legates and Legantine Courts his buls and sentences and excommunications his legislative power his power to receive appeals except onely in cases where the Kingdome did give consent They threatned him further to make a wall of separation between him and them We have more experience then our Ancestours had that their remedies were not Soveraigne or sufficient enough that if we
of Faith that there is a purgatory or it is an article of Faith that there is no purgatory Faith is a certain assent grounded upon the truth and authority of the revealer opinion is an uncertain inclining of the mind more to the one part of the contradiction then the other There are an hundred contradictions in Theologicall opinions between the Romanists themselves much grearer then some of these three controversies wherin he instanceth Yet they dare not say that either the affirmatives or negatives are articles of Faith In things not necessary a man may fluctuate safely between two opinions indifferently or incline to the one more then the other without certain adherence or adhere certainly without Faith We know no other necessary Articles of Faith but those which are comprehended in the Apostles creed The last proof of our moderation was our readinesse in the preparation of our minds to beleeve and practise whatsoever the Catholick Church even of this present age doth universally believe and practise This he saith is the greatest mock foole proposition of all the rest Wherefore For two reasons First we say there is no universall Church Then we have not onely renounced our Creed that is the badge of our Christianity whereof this is an expresse Article but our reason also If there be many particular churches wherefore not one universall Church whereof Christ himselfe is head and king His onely ground of this calumny is because we will not acknowledge the Roman Church that is a particular Church to be the universall Church The second reason is because we say if there be a Catholick Church it is indetermined that is no man knows which it is Then it is all one as if it were not Non existentis non apparentis eadem est ratio It is a brave thing to calumniate boldly that something may stick We know no virtuall Church indeed that is one person who hath in himself eminently and virtually as much certainty of truth and infallibility of judgement as the universall Church but we acknowledge the representative Church that is a generall councell and the essentiall Church that is the multitude or multitudes of believers either of all ages which make the Symbolicall Church or of this age which make the present Catholick Church but mala mens malus animus He knoweth right well that they themselves are divided into five or six severall opinions what that Catholick Church is into the authority whereof they make the last resolution of their Faith So it is not true of us but of themselves it is true that their Catholick Church is indeterminate that is they know not certainly what it is Sect. 8. My fifth ground was that what the king and Church of England did in the separation of themselves from the Court of Rome is no more then all other Princes and Republicks of the Roman communion have done in effect or pleaded for that is made themselves the last Judges of their owne liberties and grievances For proof whereof I instanced in the Emperors the Kings of France and the liberties of the Sallicane Church the Kings of Spaine in their Kingdomes and Dominions of Sicily Castile Flanders the Kings of Portugall the Republick of Venice and in all these particular cases which were in difference between the Popes and us concerning the calling of Ecclesiasticall Synods making of Ecclesiasticall lawes disposing Benefices reforming the Churches within their owne dominions rejecting the Popes sentences buls Legates Nuncios shutting up their Courts forbidding appeals taking away their tenths first fruits pensions impositions c. To all which neither R. C. nor S. W. answers one word in particular Yet he paies me in generals Vir dolofus versatur in generalibus If his cause would have borne it we had had a more particular answer First he asketh what nonsense will not an ill cause bring a desperate man to Concedo omnia I grant all saving onely the application He must seek for the nonsense and the ill cause and the desperate man nearer home But what is the ground of his exception nothing but a contradiction first I would perswade the world that Papists are most injurious to Princes perjudicing their Crowne and subjecting their dominions to the will of the Pope and when I have scarce done saying so with a contrary blast I drive as far back again confessing all I said to be false and that the same Papists hold the Doctrine of the Protestants in effect If he will accuse other men of contradiction he must not overshoot himself so in his expressions but keep himself to the rules of opposition ad idem secundum idem eodem tempore Papists may be injurious to Princes in one respect and do them right in another They may be disloyall at one time and loyall at another Here is no shadow of contradiction But his greatest fault is to change the subject of the proposition I did not plead either that Papists were injurious to Princes or that the same Papists did hold the very doctrine of the Protestants nor so much as mention Papists in generall either to justifie them or to accuse them But I said that the Pope and the Court of Rome had been injurious to Roman Catholick Princes and that Roman Catholick Princes with their party had done themselves right against Popes and their Court. Here is no contrary blast nor contradiction any more then it is a contradiction to say that the Gnelphes maintained the Popes cause against the Emperour and the Gibilines maintained the Emperours cause against the Pope because both factions were Roman Catholicks both Italians He urgeth that the Popes did not cast out of their Communion those Cotholick divines who opposed them which argueth that it is not the Roman Religion nor any publick tenet in their Church that binds any to these rigorous assertions which the protestants condemne I know it is not their religion Our Religion and theirs is the same I know it is not the generall tenet of their Church But it is the tenet of the Court of Rome and the governing party amongst them It is but a poor comfort to one that is oppressed by their Court to know that there are particular Doctors which hold that he is wronged But to his question Did the Pope never excommunicate those Doctors that opposed him Yes sundry times both Princes and Doctors and whole Nations Sometimes he spared them perhaps he did not take notice of them whilest they were living the Pope and his Court have somewhat else to do then to inquire after the tenets of private Doctors perhaps they lived about the time of the councels of Constance and Basile when it had been easier for the Pope to have cast himselfe out of his throne then them out of the Church or perhaps they lived in places without his reach he knows who it was that said my Lord the Emperour defend me with the sword and I will defend thee with my pen. What
A Replication TO THE BISHOP of CHALCEDON HIS Survey of the Vindication OF THE CHVRCH of ENGLAND FROM Criminous Schism Clearing the English Laws from the aspertion of Cruelty With an Appendix in answer to the exceptions of S. W. By the right Reverend JOHN BRAMHALL D. D. and Lord Bishop of Derry LONDON Printed by K. H. for Iohn Crook at the signe of the Ship in St. Pauls Church-yard 1656. To the Christian Reader CHristian Reader of what Communion soever thou beest so thou beest within the Communion of the oecumenicall Church either in act or in desire I offer this second Treatise of Schism to thy serious view and unpartiall Iudgment The former was a Vindication of the Church of England this later is a Vindication of my self or rather both are Vindications of both In vindicating the Church then I did vindicate my self And in vindicating my self now I doe vindicate the Church What I have performed I doe not say I dare not judg the most moderate men are scarcely competent judges of their own works No man can justly blame me for honouring my spiritual Mother the Church of England in whose wombe I was conceived at whose brests I was nourished and in whose bosome I hope to die Bees by the instict of nature doe love their hives and Birds their nests But God is my witness that according to my uttermost talent and poor understanding I have endeavored to set down the naked truth impartially without either favor or prejudice the two capital enemies of right judgment The one of which like a fals mirror doth represent things fairer and straighter then they are the other like the tongue infected with choler makes the sweetest meats to taste bitter My desire hath been to have truth for my chiefest friend and no enemy but error If I have had any byasse it hath been desire of peace which our common Saviour left as a Legacy to his Church that I might live to see the re-union of Christendome for which I shall alwaies bow the knees of my heart to the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ. It is not impossible but that this desire of unity may have produced some unwilling error of love but certainly I am most free from the willfull love of error In questions of an inferior natu re Christ regards a charitaable intention much more then a right opinion Howsoever it be I submit my self and my poor indeavors first to the judgment of the Catholick oecumenicall essentiall Church which if some of late daies have indeavored to hisse out of the Schools as a fancy I cannot help it From the beginning it was not so And if I should mistake the right Catholick Church out of humane frailty or ignorace which for my part I have no reason in the World to suspect yet it is not impossible when the Romanists themselves are divided into five or six severall opinions what â—his catholick Church or what their infallible Iudg is I doe implicitly and in the preparation of my minde submit my self to the true catholick Church the Spouse of Christ the Mother of the Saints the Pillar of Truth And seeing my adherence is firmer to the infallible rule of Faith that is the holy Scriptures interpreted by the catholick Church then to mine own private judgment or opinions although I should unwittingly fall into an error yet this cordiall submission is an implicite retractation thereof and I am confident will be so accepted by t he Father of merâ—â—â—s both from me 〈…〉 and sincerely 〈…〉 â—th Likew◠〈…〉 reprâ—sentative 〈…〉 generall Councell or so generall as can be procured and untill then to the Church of England wherein I was baptized or to a nationall English Synod To the determination of all which and each of them respectively according to the distinct degrees of their authority I yeeld a conformity and compliance or at the least and to the lowest of them an acquiescence Finally I crave this favor from the courteous Reader that because the Surveier hath overseen almost all the principall proofs of the cause in question which I conceive not to be so clearly and candidly done he will take the pains to peruse the Vindication it self And then in the name of God let him follow the dictate of right reason For as that scale must needs settle down whereinto most weight is put so the minds cannot chuse but yeeld to the weight of perspicuous demonstration An Answer to R. C. the Bishop of Chalcedons preface I Examine not the impediments of R. C. his undertaking this survey Only I cannot but observe his complaint of extreme want of necessary Books having all his own notes by him and such store of excellent Libraries in Paris at his command then which no City in the World affords more few so good certainly the main disadvantage in this behalf lies on my side Neither will I meddle with his motives to undertake it I have known him long to have been a Person of great eminence among our English Roman Catholicks and doe esteem his undertaking to be an honour to the Treatise Bos lassus fortiùs pedem figit said a great Father The weary Oxe treadeth deeper Yet there is one thing which I cannot reconcile namely a fear least if the answer were longer deferred the poison of the said Treatise might spread further and become more incurable Yet with the same breath he tels us that I bring nothing new worth answering And in his answer to the first Chapter that no other English Minister for ought he knows hath hitherto dared to defend the Church of England from Schisme in any especiall Treatise Yes diverse he may be pleased to inform himself better at his leisure What is the Treatise so dangerous and infectious Is the way so unbeaten And yet nothing in it but what is triviall Nothing new that deserves an answer I hope to let him see the contrary He who disparageth the work which he intends to confute woundeth his own credit through his adversaries sides But it seemeth that by surveying over hastily he did quite oversee all our principall evidence and the chiefest firmaments of our cause I am sure he hath quite omitted them I shall make bold now then to put him in mind of it Hence he proceedeth to five observable points which he esteemeth so highly that he beleeveth they alone may serve for a full refutation of my Book Then he must have very favourable Judges His first point to be noted is this that Schisme is a substantiall division or a division in some substantiall part of the Church And that the substantiall parts of the Church are these three Profession of Faith Communion in Sacraments and Lawfull Ministery I confesse I am not acquainted with this language to make Profession of Faith Communion in Sacraments and lawfull Ministery which are no substances to be substantiall parts of any thing either Physicall or Metaphysicall He defineth the Church to be a Society can these be
Church about Rites and Ceremonies about Precedency about Jurisdiction about the Rites and Liberties of particular Churches about matter of Fact Obstinacy in a small error is enough to make a Schism Saint Paul tel's us of Divisions and Factions and Schisms that were in the Church of Corinth yet these were not about the essentialls of Religion but about a right-handed error even too much admiration of their Pastors The Schism between the Roman and Asiatick Churches about the observation of Easter was farre enough from the heart of Religion How manny bitter Schisms have been in the Church of Rome it selfe when two or three Popes at a time have challenged Saint Peters Chaire and involved all Europe in their Schismatical contentions Yet was there no manner of dispute about Faith or Sacrements or holy Oders or the Hierarchy of the Church but meerly about matter of Fact whose election to the Papacy was right From the former ground R. C. makes two collections First that Schism is a most grievous crime and a greater sinne than Idolatry because it tendeth to the destruction of the whole Church whose essence consisteth in the union of all her substantiall parts and her destruction in the division of them What doth this note concern the Church of England which is altogether guiltles both of Schism and Idolatry I wish the Church and Court of Rome may be as able to clear themselves I am no Advocate for Schism Yet this seemeth strange paradoxicall doctrine to Christian eares What is all Schism a more grievious sin than formall Idolatry who can beleeve it Schism is a defect of Charity Idolatry is the height of impiety and a publick affront put upon Almighty God Schism is immediately against men Idolatry is directly against God And the Fathers hold that Iudas sinned more in despairing and hanging himself than in betraying his Master because the later was against the humanity the former against the Divinity of Chriist Idolatry is a spirituall Adultery and so stiled every where in holy Scriptures A scolding contentious Wife is not so ill as an Adulteress neither is that Souldier who straggles from his Camp or deserts his Generall out of passion so ill as a professed Rebel who attempts to thrust some base Groom into his Soveraigns Throne Saint Paul calls Idols Devils and their Altars the tables of Divels Can any sinne be more grievous than to give divine honour to the Divel It is true that some Schism in respect of some circumstance is worse than some Idolatry as when the Schism is against the light of a mans knowledge and the Idolatry proceeds out of ignorance But the learned Surveior knoweth very well that it is a gross fallacy to argue à dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciser to applie that which is spoken respectively to some one circumstance as if it were spoken absolutely to all intents and purposes as if one should say that many men were worse than beasts because each kinde of beasts hath but one peculiar fault and that by naturall necessitation as the Lion cruelty the Fox subtilty the Swine obscenity the Wolf robbery the Ape flattery whereas one may finde an epitome of all these in one man and that by free election yet he were a bad disputant who should argue from hence that the nature of man is absolutely worse than the nature of brute beasts Saint Austin faith indeed that Schismaticks baptising Idolaters doe cure them of the wound of their Idolatry and infidelity but wound them more grievously with the wound of Schism The deepest wound is not alwaies the most deadly For the Sword killed the Idolaters but the Earth swallowed up the Schismaticks And Optatus addes that Schisme is summum malum the greatest evill That is not absolutely but respectively in some persons at some times No man can be so stupid as to imagine that Schism is a greater evil than the sin against the Holy Ghost or Atheism or Idolatry The reason of Optatus his assertion followeth the same in effect with Saint Austines for the Idolatrous Ninevites upon their fasting and prayer obtained pardon but the earth swallowed up Korah and his company All that can be collected from Saint Austin or Optatus is this that God doth sometimes punish wilfull Schismaticks more grievously and exemplarily in this life than ignorant Idolaters which proveth not that Schisme is a greater sinne than Idolatry Ieroboam made Gods people Schismaticks but his hand was dried up then when he stretched it out against the Prophet yet the former was the greater sinne The judgements of God in this life are more exemplary for the amendment of others than vindictive to the delinquents themselves And for the most part in the whole historie of the Bible God seemeth to be more sensible of the injuries done unto his church and to his servants then of the dishonor done unto himself In the Isle of Man it is death to steal an Hen not to steal an Horse because there is more danger of the one than of the other in respect of the situation of the Country Penall lawes are imposed and punishments inflicted according to the exigence of places the dispositions of persons and necessities of times But because he hath appealed to Saint Austin to Saint Austin let him goe I desire no better Expositor of Saint Austin than Saint Austin himself Exceptis illis duntaxat quicunque in vobis sunt scientes quid verum sit pro animositate suae perver itatis contra veritatem etiam sibi notissimam dimicantes Horum quippe impietas etiam I. dololatriam forsitan superat Excepting only those Donatists whosoever among you know what is true and out of a perverse animosity doe contend against the Truth being most evidently known to themselves For these mens impiety doth peradventure exceed even Idolatry itself The case is cleare Saint Austin and Optatus did only undestand wilfull perverse Schismaticks who upheld a separation against the evident light of their own conscience comparing these with poor ignorant Idolaters and even then it was but a peradventure peradventure they are worse than Idolaters But I wish R. C. and his party would attend diligently to what followes in Saint Austin to make them leave their uncharitable censuring of others Sed quia non facile convinci possunt in animo namque latet hoc malum omnes tanquam à nobis minùs alieni leviori severitate coercemini But because these can not be easily convicted for this evill obstinacy lies hid in the heart we do use more gentle coertion to you all as being not so much alienated from us I wish all men were as moderate as St. Austin was even where he professeth that he had learned by experience the advantage of severity St. Austin and the primitive Church in the person of which he speaks spared the whole sect of the Donatists and looked upon them as no such great strangers to them because they
of them either by addition or by subtraction is not a reformation but a destruction of them And therefore it is a contradiction to say that a Church which hath the substance or the essence of a Church can give just cause to depart from her in her essentials and not only a contradiction but plain blasphemy to say that the true Church of Christ in essence his mysticall body his Kingdome can give just cause to forsake it in essentials The assumption is proved by him because we confesse that the Roman Church is a true Church in substance and yet have forsaken it in the essentials of a true Church namely the Sacraments and the publick worship of God His proposition admits little dispute I doe acknowledge that no Church true or fals no society of Men or Angâ—â—s good or bad can give just or sufficient cause to forsake the essentials of Christian Religion or any of them and that whosoever do so are either heriticks or schismaticks or both or which is worse then both down right Infidels and Apostates For in forsaking any essential of Christian Religion they forsake Christ and their hopes of Salvation in an ordinary way But here is one thing which it behoveth R. C. himself to take notice of That if the essences of all things be indivisible and are destroied as well by the addition as by the subtraction of any essential part how will the Roman Church or Court make answer to Christ for their addition of so many not explications of old Articles but new pretended necessary essentiall Arricles of Faith under pain of damnation which by his own rule is to destroy the Christian Faith who have coined new Sacraments and added new matter and form that is essentials to old Sacraments who have multiplied sacred Oâ—ders and added new lincks to the chain of the Hierarchy This will concern him and his Chuâ—ch more neerly then all his notes and points doe concern us Concerning his assumption two questions come to be debated first whether the Church of Rome be a true Church or not secondly whether we have departed from it in essentials Touching the former point a Church may be said to be a true Church two waies metaphysically and morally Every Church which hath the essentials of a Church how tainted or corrupted soever it be in other things is metaphysically a true Church for ens verum convertuntur So we say a theef is a true man that is a reasonable creature consistng of an humane body and reasonable soul. But speaking morally he is a faulty filching vitious person and so no true man So the Church of Rome is metaphysically a true Church that is to say hath all the essentials of a Christian Church but morally it is no true Church because erroneous contraries as truth and errour may be predicated of the same subject so it be not ad idem secundum idem codem tempore Truth in fundamentalls and errour in superstructures may consist together The foundation is right but they have builded much hay and stuble upon it And in respect of this foundation she may and doubtless doth bring forth many true Members of Christ Children of God and Inheritors of the Kingdome of Heaven The Church of the Jews was most erroneous and corrupted in the dayes of our Saviour yet he doubted not so say Salvation is of the Iews I know it is said that Christ hath given himself for his Church to sanctifie it and cleanse it and present it to himself a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle But that is to be understood inchoactively in this life the perfection and consummation thereof is to be expected in the life to come To the second question whether the Church of England in the Reformation have forsaken the essentials of the Roman Church I answer negatively we have not If weeds be of the essence of a Garden or rupt Humors or Botches or Wennes and Excrescences be of the essence of man If Errors and Innovations and Superstitions and sperfluous Rites and pecuniary Arts be of the essence of a Church then indeed we have forsaken the Roman Church in its essentials otherwise not We retein the same Creed to a word and in the same sense by which all the primitive Fathers were saved which they held to be so sufficient that in a general Councell they did forbid all persons under pain of deposition to Bishops and Clerks and anathematisation to Laymen to compose or obtrude any other upon any Persons converted from Paganisme or Judaisme We retein the same Sacraments and Discipline which they reteined we derive our holy Orders by lineall succession from them we make their doctrine and their practise under the holy Scriptures and as best Expositors thereof a Standard and Seal of truth between the Romanists and us It is not we who have forsaken the essence of the modern Roman Church by substraction But they who have forsaken the essence of the ancient Romau Church by addition Can we not forsake their new Creed unless we forsake their old faith Can we not reduce the Liturgy into a known tongue but presently we forsake the publick worship of God Can we not take away their tradition of the Patine and Chalice and reform their new matter and form in Presbyterian ordination which antiquity did never know which no Church in the World besides themselves did ever use but presently we forsake holy Orders The truth is their errours are in the excesse and these excesses they themselves have determined to be essentials of true Religion And so upon pretence of interpreting they intrude into the Legislative office of Christ and being but a Patriarchall Church doe usurpe a power which the universal Church did never own that is to Constitute new essentials of Christian Religion Before the determination their excesses might have past for probable Opinions or indifferent Practises but after the determination of them as Articles of faith extra quam non est salus without which there is no salvation they are the words of the Bull they became inexcusable errors So both the pretended contradiction the pretended blasphemy are vanished in an instant It is no contradiction to say that a true humane body in substance may require purgation nor blasphemy to say that a particular Church as the Church of Rome is may erre and which is more than we charge them withall may apostate from Christ. In the mean time we preserve all due respect to the universal Church and doubt not to say with St. Austin that to dispute against the sense thereof is most insolent madness His fifth point to be noted hath little new worth noting in it but tautologies and repetitions of the same things over and over Some Protestants saith he doe impudently deny that they are substantially separated from the Roman Church If this be impudence what is ingenuity If this be such a gross error for man to
be ashamed of what is evident truth We expected thanks for our moderation and behold reviling for our good will He might have been pleased to remember what himself hath cited so often out of my vindication That our Church since the Reformation is the same in substance that it was before If the same in substance then not substantially separated Our comfort is that Caleb and Ioshua alone were admitted ino the Land of promise because they had been Peace-makers in a seditious time and indeavoured not to enlarge but to make up the breach He addes that the chiefest Protestants doe confess that they are substantially separated from the Roman Church Who these chiefest Protestants are he tel's us not nor what they say but referrs us to another of his Treatises which I neither know here how to compass nor if I could deem it worth the labor When these principall Protestants come to be viewed throughly and seriously with indifferent eies it will appear that either by substantially they mean really that is to say that the differences between us are not meere logomachies or contentions about words and different formes of expression only but that there are some reall controversies between us both in credendis and agendis and more and more reall in agendis than in credendis Or secondly that by substance they understand not the old Essentials or Articles of Christian Religion wherein we both agree but the new Essentials or new Articles of Faith lately made by the Romanists and comprehended in the Creed of Pius the fourth about which we doe truly differ So we differ substantially in the language of the present Romanists But we differ not substantially in the sense of the primitive Fathers The generation of these new Articles is the corruption of the old Creed Or lastly if one or two Protestant Authours either bred up in hostility against new Rome as Hanniball was against old Rome or in the heat of contention or without due consideration or out of prejudice or passion or a distempered zeal have overshot themselves what is that to us Or what doth that concern the Church of England He saith St. Austine told the Donatists that though they were with him in many things yet if they were not with him in few things the many things wherein they were with him would not profit them But what were these few things wherein St. Austine required their communion Were they abuses or innovations or new Articles of Faith No no the truth is St. Austine professed to the Donatists that many things and great things would profit them nothing not only if a few things but if one thing were wanting videant quam multa quam magna nihil prosint si unum quidem defuâ—rit videant quid sit ipsum unum And let them see what this one thing is What was it Charity For the Donatists most uncharitably did limit the Catholick Church to their own party excluding all others from hope of salvation just as the Romanists doe now who are the right successours of the Donatists in those few things or rather in that one thing So often as he produceth St. Austine against the Donatists he brings a rod for himself Furthermore he proveth out of the Creed and the Fathers that the communion of the Church is necessary to salvation to what purpose I doe not understand unlesse it be to reprove the unchristian and uncharitable censures of the Roman Court. For neither is the Roman Church the Catholick Church nor a communion of Saints a communion in errours His sixth and last point which he proposeth to judicious Protestants is this that though it were not evident that the Protestant Church is Schismaticall but only doubtfull Yet it being evident that the Roman Church is not schismaticall because as Doctor Sutcliff confesseth they never went out of any known Christian Society nor can any Protestant prove that they did it is the most prudent way for a man to doe for his Soul as he would doe for his lands liberty honour or life that is to chuse the safest way namely to live and die free from schism in the communion of the Roman Church I answer first that he changeth the subject of the question My proposition was that the Church of England is free from schism he ever and anon enlargeth it to all Protestant Churches and what or how many Churches he intendeth under that name and notion I know not Not that I censure any forrein Churches with whose lawes and liberties I am not so well acquainted as with our own But because I conceive the case of the Church of England to be as cleer as the Sun at noon-day and am not willing for the present to have it perplexed with heterogeneous disputes So often as he stumbleth upon this mistake I must make bold to tell him that he concludes not the contradictory Secondly I answer that he disputes ex non concessis laying that for a foundation granted to him which is altogether denied him namely that it is a doubtfull case whether the Church of England be schismaticall or not Whereas no Church under Heaven is really more free from just suspicion of schism then the Church of England as not censuring nor excluding uncharitably from her communion any true Church which retains the essentials of Christian Religion Thirdly I answer that it is so far from being evident that the Roman Church is guiltlesse of schism that I wish it were not evident that the Roman Court is guilty of formall schism and all that adhere unto it and maintain its censures of materiall schism If it be schism to desert altogether the communion of any one true particular Church what is it not only to desert but cast out of the Church by the bann of excommunication so many Christian Churches over which they have no jurisdiction three times more numerous then themselves and notwithstanding some few perhaps improper expressions of some of them as good or better Christians and Catholicks as themselves who suffer daily and are ready to suffer to the last drop of their blood for the name of Christ. If contumacy against one lawfull single superiour be schismaticall what is rebellion against the soveraign Ecclesiasticall Tribunall that is a generall Councell But I am far from concluding all indistinctly I know there are many in that Church who continue firm in the doctrine of the Councels of Constance and Basile attributing no more to the Pope then his principium unitatis and subjecting both him and his Court to the jurisdiction of an Oecumenicall Councell Fourthly I answer that supposing but not granting that it was doubtfull whether the Church of England were schismaticall or not and supposing in like manner that it were evident that the Church of Rome was not schismaticall yet it was not lawfull for a son of the Church of England to quit his spirituall mother May a man renounce his due obedience to a lawfull Superiour
no Liturgy at all but account it a stinting of the Spirit And for the Sacrament of the blessed body and blood of Christ it is hard to say whether the use of it among them be rarer in most places or the congregations thinner But where the ministers are unqualified or the form of Administration is erroneous in essentials or sinfull duties are obtruded as necessary parts of Gods service the English Protestants know how to abstain from their communion let the Roman Catholicks look to themselves for many say let the Faith be with the authours that sundry of the Sons of their own Church have been greater sticklers in their private Conventicles and publick Assemblies then many Protestants Secondly I deny his assumption that the Church of England doth joyn in communion of Sacraments and publick Praiers with any Schismaticks What my thoughts are of those whom he terms Puritans and Independants they will not much regard nor doth it concern the cause in question Many Mushrome Sects may be sprung up lately in the world which I know not and posterity will know them much lesse like those mishapen creatures which were produced out of the slime of Nilus by the heat of the Sun which perishâ—d soon after they were generated for want of fit organs Therefore I passe by them to that which is more materiall If the Church of England have joyned in Sacraments and publick Praiers with Schismaticks let him shew it out of her Liturgy or out of her Articles or out of her Canons and constitutions for by these she speaks unto us Or let him shew that any genuine son of hers by her injunction or direction or approbation did ever communicate with Schismaticks or that her principles are such as doe justify or warrant Schism or lead men into a communion with Schismaticks otherwise then thus a nationall Church cannot communicate with Schismaticks If to make Canons and Constitutions against Schismaticks be to cherish them If to punish their Conventicles and clandestine meetings be to frequent them If to oblige all her sons who enter into holy Orders or are admitted to care of souls to have no communion with them be to communicate with them then the Church of England is guilty of communicating with Schismaticks or otherwise not But I conceive that by the English Church he intends particular persons of our communion If so then by his favour he deserts the cause and alters the state of the question Let himself be judge whether this consequence be good or not Sundry English Protestants are lately turned Romish Proselytes therefore the Church of England is turned Roman Catholick A Church may be Orthodox and Catholick and yet sundry within its communion be hereticks or Schismaticks or both The Church of Corinth was a true Church of God yet there wanted not Schismaticks and hereticks among them The Churches of Galatia had many among them who mixed circumcision and the works of the Law with the faith of Christ. The Church of Pergamos was a true Church yet they had Nicholaitans among them and those that held the doctrine of Balaam The Church of Thyatira had a Preaching Iesabel that seduced the servants of God But who are these English Protestants that communicate so freely with Schismaticks Nay he names none We must take it upon his word Are they peradventure the greater and the sounder part of the English Church Neither the one nor the other Let him look into our Church and see how many of our principall Divines have lost their Dignities and Benefices only because they would not take a schismaticall Covenant without any other relation to the Warres Let him take a view of our Universities and see how few of our old Professors or Rectors and Fellows of Colledges he findes left therein God said of the Church of Israell that he had reserved to himself seven thousand that had not bowed their knees unto Baall I hope I may say of the Church of England that there are not only seven thousand but seventy times seven thousand that mourn in secret and wish their heads were waters and their eies fountain of teares that they might weep day and night for the devastation and desolation of the City of their God And if that hard weapon Necessity have enforced any perhaps with an intention to doe good or prevent evill to complie further than was meet I doe not doubt but they pray with Naman The Lord be mercifull to me in this thing Suppose that some Persons of the English Communion doe go sometimes to their meetings it may be out of conscience to hear a Sermon it may be out of curiosity as men go to see May games or Monsters at Faires it may be that they may be the better able to confute them As St. Paul went into their heathenish Temples at Athens and viewed their Altars and read their Inscriptions yet without any approbation of their Idolatrous devotions Is this to communicate with Schismaticks or what doth this concern the Church of England CHAP. 1. A Replie to the first Chapter of the Survey HOw this Chapter comes to be called a Survey of the first Chapter of my vindication I doe not understand unless it be by an antiphrasis the contrary way because he doth not survey it If it had not been for the title and one passage therein I should not have known whither to have referred it In the first place he taxeth me for an omission that I tell not Why the objection of Schisme seemeth more forcible against the English Church then the objection of Heresie And to supply my supposed defect he is favorably pleased to set it down himself The true reason whereof saith he is because Heresy is a matter of doctrine which is not so evident as the matter of Schisme which is a visible matter of fact namely a visible separation in communion of Sacraments and publick worship of God I confess I did not think of producing reasons before the question was stated but if he will needs have it to be thus before we inquire why it is so we ought first to inquire whether it be so for my part I doe not beleeve that either their objections in point of Heresy or in point of Schisme are so forcible against the Church of England So he would have me to give a reason of a non entity which hath neither reason nor being All that I said was this that there is nothing more colourably objected to the Church of England at first sight to Strangers unacquainted with our affaires or to such Natives as have looked but superficially upon the case then Schisme Here are three restrictions Colourabley at first sight to Strangers Colourably that is not forcibly nor yet so much as truly He who doubteth of it may doe well to trie if he can warme his hands at a Glowe-worm At first sight that is not by force but rather by deception of the sight So fresh water Seamen at
first sight think the shore leaves them terraeque urbesque recedunt but straightwaies they finde their error that it is they who leave the shore To Strangers c. that is to unskillfull Judges A true diamond and a counterfeit doe seem both alike to an unexperienced person Strangers did beleeve easily the Athenian fables of Bulls and Minotaures in Creete But the Crecians knew better that they were but fictitious devises The seeming strength lyeth not in the objections themselves but in the incapacity of the Judges But to his reason the more things are remote from the matter and devested of all circumstances of time and place and persons the more demonstrable they are that is the reason why Mathematicians doe boast that their Principles are so evident that they doe not perswade but compell men to beleeve Yet in the matter of fact and in the application of these evident rules where every particular circumstance doth require a new consideration how easily doe they erre in so much as let twenty Geometricians measure over the same plot of ground hardly two of them shall agree exactly So it seemeth that an error in point of doctrine may be more easily and more evidently convinced than an error in matter of fact He saith the separation is visible True but whether the separation be criminous whether party made the first separation whether there was just cause of separation whether side gave the cause whether the Keies did erre in separating whether there was not a former separation of the one party from the pure primitive Church which produced the second separation whether they who separated themselves or others without just cause doe erre invincibly or not whether they be ready to submit themselves to the sentence of the Catholick Church is not so easy to be discerned How many separations have sprung about elections or jurisdiction or precedency all which Rites are most intricate and yet the knowledge of the Schisme depends altogether upon them This Surveier himself confesseth That a Church may be really hereticall or schismaticall and yet morally a true Church because she is invincibly ignorant of her Heresy or Schisme in which case it is no Schisme but a necessary duty to separate from her In this very case proposed by himself I desire to know how it is so easie by the only view of the separation to judge or conclude of the Schisme But the true ground why Schisme is more probably objected to the Church of England than Heresie is a false but prejudicate opinion That the Bishop of Rome is the right Patriarch of Britain That we deserted him and that the differences between us are about Patriarchall Rites all which with sundry other such like mistaken grounds are evidently cleared to be otherwise in the vindication This is all that concernes my first Chapter The rest is voluntary The next thing observable in his Survey is that Protestants confesse that they have separated themselves not only from the Roman Church but also from all other Christian Churches in the communion of the Sacraments and publick worship of God And that no cause but necessity of salvation can justifie such a separation from the crime of Schisme And it must needs seem hard to prove that it was necessary for the salvation of Protestants to make such a separation from all Churches in the World As if there had been no Christian Church in whose communion in Sacraments they could finde salvation whence it will follow that at that time there was no true Church of God upon earth For proof of the first point That Protestants have separated from all Christian Churches he produceth Calvin Chillingworth and a treatise of his own It were to be wished that Professors of Theology would not cite their testimonies upon trust where the Authours themselves may easily be had only impossibility is stronger than necessity as the spartan Boy once answered the old Senator after the Laconicall manner and that they would cite their Authors fully and faithfully not by halves without adding to or new molding their authorities according to their own fancies or interest It may seem ludicrous but it was a sad truth of a noble English Gentleman sent Ambassador into forrein parts and with him an honorable Espy under the notion of a Companion by whom he was accused at his return to have spoken such and such things at such and such times The Gentleman pleaded ingenuously for himself that it might be he had spoken some of those things or it might be all those things but never any one of them in that order nor in that sense I have said he several Suits of apparel of purple cloth of green Velvet of white and black Sattin If one should put my two purple Sleeves to my green velvet Dublet and make my Hose the one of white Sattin the other of black and then swear that it was my apparrell they who did not know me might judge me a strange man To disorder authority to contract or enlarge them to misapply them besides the scope contrary to the sense of the Author is not more discommendable than common I have seen large volumes containing some hundreds of controversies as was pretended between Protestants and Papists And among them all not above five or six that I could owne as if they desired that the whole woven Coat of Christ should be torn more insunder than it is or that they might have the honor to conquer so many fictious Monsters of their own making I have seen authorities mangled and miâ—applied just like the Ambassadors clothes so as the right Authors would hardly have been able to know them So much prejudice and partiality and an habit of alteration is able to doe like a tongue infected with Choler which makes the sweetest meates to taste bitter or like coloured glass which makes every object we see through it to appear of the same colour Wherefore I doe intreat R. C. to save himself and me and the Reader so much labor and trouble for the future by forbearing to charge the private errors or opinions of particular persons it skilleth not much whether upon the Church of England the most of which were meer strangers to our affaires and many of them died before controversies were rightly stated or truly understood for none of which the Church of England is any way obliged to be responsable And likewise by forbearing to make so many empty references to what he beleeves or pretends to have proved in some of his other books See the Author of the Protestant Religion See the distinction of fundamentals and not fundamentals See the sufficient proposer of faith See the Protestants plain confession See the Flowers of the English Church See the Epistle to King James See the prudential Ballance See the collation of Scripture To what end can this serve but either to divert us from the question we have in hand or to amuse the Reader and put him into a
separate from other Churches but from their own errours In a large garden suppose there should be many quarters some weeded some unweeded there is indeed a separation of the Plants from the Weeds in the same quarters but no separation of one quarter from another Or if a man shall purge out of himself corrupted humours he doth not thereby separate himself from other persons whose bodies are unpurged It is true that such weeding and purging doth produce a distinction between the quarters weeded and the quarters unweeded and between Bodies purged and Bodies unpurged But either they stand in no such need of weeding or purging or it is their own fault who doe not weed or purge when they have occasion If they will needs misconstrue our lawfull reformation to be an unlawfull and uncharitable separation how can we help it We have separated from no Eastern Southern Northern or Western Church Our Article tells them the same either let them produce some Act of ours which makes or implies such a separation or let them hold their peace for ever But all this noise proceeds from hence that R. C. conceives that we will no more join with those Eastern Churches or any of them in their Creeds in their Liturgies or publick forms of serving God nor communicate with them in their Sacraments then we doe with the Church of Rome If we communicate not with the Roman Church in some things it is not our faults It is not their serving of God nor their Sacraments that we dislike but their disservice of God and corrupting of the holy Sacraments But for these Grecian Russian Armenian and Abissine Churches I finde grosse superstitions objected to some of them but not proved I finde some inusitate expressions about some mysteries which are scarcely intelligible or explicable as the procession of the holy Ghost and the Union of the two natures in Christ which are not frequently used among us but I beleive their sense to be the same with ours The Grecians doe acknowledge the holy Ghost to be the Spirit of the Son And all the other Churches are ready to accurse the errours both of Nestorius and Eâ—tyches But that which satisfies me is this that they exact of no man nor obtrude upon him any other Creed or new Articles of Faith then the Apostolicall Nicene and Athanasian Creeds with the explications of the generall Councels of Ephesiu Constantinople and Chalcedon all which we readily admit and use daily in our Liturgy If the Church of Rome would rest where they doe we might well have disputable questions between us but no breach of unity in point of Faith Likewise in point of discipline all these Churches ascribe no more to the Pope then a primacy of Order no supremacy of Power or universal Jurisdiction They make a generall Councel with or without the Popes suffrage to be the highest Ecclesiasticall tribunall Let the Romanists rest where they doe rest and all our controversies concerning Ecclesiasticall discipline will fall to the ground Thirdly they have their Liturgy in a language understood they administer the Sacrament in both kinds to all Christians They doe not themselves adore much lesse compell others to adore the species of Bread and Wine Howsoever they have a kind of elevation They have no new matter and form no tradition of the paten and chalice in Presbyterian ordination but only imposition of hands They know no new Sacrifice but the commemoration representation and application of the Sacrifice of the Crosse. Just as we believe Let the Romanists but imitate their moderation and we shall strait come to joyn in Communion in Sacraments and Sacramentals also Yet these are the three essentials of Christian Religion Faith Sacraments and Discipline So little ground had R. C. to tell us that we had separated our selves from all Christian Churches in the World But Calvin saith we have been forced to make a separation from all the world Admit he did say so What will he conclude from hence that the Church of England did the same This consequence will never be made good without a transubstantiation of Mr. Calvin into the English Church He himself knoweth better that we honor Calvin for his excellent parts but we doe not pinn our Religion either in Doctrine or Discipline or Liturgy to Calvins sleeve Whether Calvin said so or not for my part I cannot think otherwise but that he did so in point of Discipline untill some body will be favorably pleased to shew me one formed nationall or provinciall Church throughout the world before Geneva that wanted Bâ—shops or one lay Elder that exercised Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction in Christendome I confess the Fratres Bohemi had not the name of Bishops but they wanted not the order of Bishops under the name of Seniores or Elders who had both Episcopall Ordination after their Presbyterian Episcopal Jurisdiction and Episcopall Succession from the Bishops of the Waldenses who had continued in the Church under other names time immemotiall and gave them charge at their Reformation long before Luthers time to preserve that Order All which themselves have published to the World in private I confâ—ss likewise that they had their lay Elders under the name of Presbyteri from whence Mr. Calvin borrowed his But theirs in Bohemia pretended not to be Ecclesiasticall Commissioners nor did nor durst ever presume to meddle with the power of the keies or exercise any Jurisdiction in the Church They were only inferior Officers neither more nor less than our Church-Wardens and Sydemen in England This was far enough from ruling Elders Howsoever what doth this concern the Church of England which never made nor maintained nor approved any such separation No more did Calvin himselfe out of judgment but out of necessity to complie with the present estate of Geneva after the expulsion of their Bishop As might be made appeare if it were needfull by his publick profession of their readines to receive such Bishops as the primitive Bishops were or otherwise that they were to be reputed nullo non anathemate digni By his subscription to the Augustane confession which is for Epicopacy cui pridem volens ac libens subscripsi By his confession to the King of Polonia The ancient Church instituted Patriarchater and assigned primacie to single Provinces that Bishops might be better knit together in the bond of unity By his description of the charge of a Bishop that should joyn himself to the reformed Church to doe his indeavour that all the Churches within his Bishoprick be purged from Errors and Idolatry to goe before the Curates or Pastors of his Diocess by his example and to induce them to admit the Reformation And lastly by his letters to Arch-bishop Cranmer the Bishop of London and a Bishop of Polonia I have searched the hundred one and fortieth Epistle and for fear of failing the hundred and one and fortieth page also in my edition but I
but doubtfully and upon supposition not grounded upon any matter of fact It is not improbable and if we were put to our oaths we should surely testifie no such thing for you which words doe follow immediately in the place formerly cited And in another place neither to suppose a visible Church before Luther which did not erre is to contradict this ground of Doctor Potters that the Church may erre unlesse you will have us believe that may be and must be is all one and that all which may be true is true Neither Doctor Potter nor Master Chillingworth did ever maintain a separation from the whole Christian World in any one thing but from some Churches in one thing from some in another not necessary to Salvation wherein they dissented one from another That which is one and the same in all places is no errour but delivered by Christ and his Apostles Saint Austine gives not much more latitude That which the whole Church holds and was not instituted by Counsels but alwaies reteined is rightly esteemed to have been delivered by apostolicall authority Let Master Chillingworth be his own interpreter It is one thing to separate from the Communion of the whole World another to separate from all the Communions in the World one thing to divide from them who are united among themselves another to divide from them who are divided among themseves The Donatists separated from the whole Christian World united but Luther and his followers did not so In all this here is not a word against the Church of England nor any thing materiall against any particular Protestant A perfect harmony and unanimity were to be wished in the universall Church but scarcely to be hoped for until this mortall hath put on immortality in all disputable questions The Romanists have no such perfect unity in their own Church perhaps as many reall differences as there are between us and the Grecians or between us and themselves but only they are pleased to nickname the one Heresies and to honour the other with the title of Scholasticall questions Our communicating with Schismaticks hath been already answered In the latter part of this Chapter he chargeth me with four faults at a time able to break a back of Steel first That I indeavour to clear the English Protestant Church from Schism but not other Protestant Churches I doe not understand exactly the history of their reformation nor the Lawes and Priviledges of forrein particular Churches qui pauca considerat facile pronuntiat he that considereth few circumstances giveth the sentence easily but seldome justly He addeth That either it argues little charity in me or little skill to defend them And elsewhere he instanceth in the Scotish and French Huguenots and laieth down the reason of my silence because I condemn them as Schismaticks for wanting that Episcopacy which I require as essentially necessary to a Catholick Church In the mean time let him remember what it is to raise discord and make variance Prov. 6.16 If the want of Episcopacy were my only reason why doe I not defend the Bohemian Brethren the Danish Swedish and some German Protestants all which have Bishops But because he presseth me so much I will give him a further account of my self in this particular then I intended or am obliged I confesse I doe not approve tumultuary reformations made by a giddy ignorant multitude according to the dictates of a seditious Oratour But withall I must tell him that God would not permit evill but that he knows how to extract good out of evill And that he often useth ill agents to doe his own works Yea even to reform his Church Iehu was none of the best men yet God used him to purge his Church and to take away the Priests of Baal The treason of Iudas became subservient to the secret councels of God for the redemption of the World by the Crosse and Passion of Christ. I doe also acknowledge that Episcopacy was comprehended in the Apostolick office tanquam trigonus in tetragono and that the distinction was made by the Apostles with the approbation of Christ. That the Angels of the seven Churches in the Revelation were seven Bishops that it is the most silly rediculous thing in the World to calumniâ—â—e that for a papall innovation which was established in the Church before there was a Pope at Rome which hath been received and approved in all ages since the very Cradle of Christianity by all sorts of Christians Europeans Africans Asiaticks Indians many of which never had any intercourse with Rome nor scarcely ever heard of the name of Rome If semper ubique ab omnibus be not a sufficient plea I know not what is But because I esteem them Churches not completely formed doe I therefore exclude them from all hope of salvation or esteem them aliens and strangers from the Common-wealth of Israel or account them formall Schismaticks No such thing First I know there are many learned Persons among them who doe passionately affect Episcopacie some of which have acknowledged to my self that their Church would never be rightly setled untill it was new moulded Baptisme is a Sacrament the door of Christianity a matriculation into the Church of Christ Yet the very desire of it in case of necessity is sufficient to excuse from the want of actuall Baptisme And is not the desire of Episcopacy sufficient to excuse from the actuall want of Episcopacy in like case of necessity Or should I censure these as Schismaticks Secondly There are others who though they doe not long so much for Episcopacy yet they approve it and want it only out of invincible necessity In some places the Soveraign Prince is of another Communion the Episcopall Chaires are filled with Romish Bishops If they should petition for Bishops of their own it would not be granted In other places the Magistrats have taken away Bishops whether out of pollicy because they thought that Regiment not so proper for their Republicks or because they were ashamed to take away the Revenues and preserve the Order or out of a blinde Zeal they have given an account to God they owe none to me Should I condemn all these as Schismaticks for want of Episcopacy who want it out of invincible necessity Thirdly There are others who have neither the same desires nor the same esteem of Episcopacy but condemn it as an Antichristian Innovation and a Ragge of Popery I conceive this to be most grosse Schism materially It is ten times more schismaticall to desert nay to take away so much as lies in them the whole order of Bishops than to substract obedience from one lawfull Bishop All that can be said to mittigate this fault is that they doe it ignorantly as they have been mistaught and misinformed And I hope that many of them are free from obstinacy and hold the truth implicitely in the preparation of their minds being ready to
things which are like one another are never the same But let us view his grand exceptions to my supposed definitions My first great fault is That I doe not express it thus in some substantiall part or parts of the Church For all Schisme is in essentials otherwise division in ecclesiasticall Ceremonies or scholasticall Opinions should be Schism Here is nothing new but his reason to which I answer that all differences in Rites and Ceremonies are not schismaticall but if unlawfull or sinfull Rites be obtruded by any Church as a condition of their Communion and a separation ensue thereupon the Obtruders of sinfull Rites and they who break the unity of the Church for difference in indifferent Rites are guilty of Schism So likewise scholasticall Opinions are free and may be defended both waies scholastically but if they be obtruded Magisterialy upon Christians as necessary Articles of faith they render the Obtruders truly schismaticall This is the case of the Church of Rome in both these particular instances and therefore it is not true that all Schism is a division in the essentialls of Religion or its substantiall parts When Pope Victor excommunicated the Eastern Churches about the observation of Easter the difference was but about a Rite aut Ritus potius tempore saith a Roman Catholick or rather the time of a Rite Yet it occasioned a Schisme for either Victors Key did erre and then he was the Schismatick or it did not erre and then they were the Schismaticks What the opinion of Ireneus and the Fathers of that age was Eusebius tells us that their letters were extant wherein they chid Victor sharply about it There was much and long contention between the Sees of Rome and Constanstinople concerning the Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction of Bulgaria a meere humane Rite nothing to the substance of the Church And Iohn the 8 th excommunicated Ignatius the Patriarch about it Here was a Schisme but no essentiall of Religion concerned How many gross Schismes have been in the Church of Rome meerly about the due election of their Popes a matter of humane right which was sometimes in the Emperors sometimes in the People sometimes in the whole Roman Clergy and now in the Colledge of Cardinals Essentialls of Religion use not to be so mutable Nay I beleeve that if we search narrowly into the first source and originall of all the famous Schismes that have been in the Church as Novatianisme and Donatisme c. we shall finde that it was about the Canons of the Church no substantialls of Religion Novatians first separation from Cornelius was upon pretense that he himself was more duely elected Bishop of Rome not about any essentiall of Religion The first originall of the Schism of the Donatists was because the Catholick Church would not excommunicate them who were accused to have been traditores On the other side Felicissimus raised a Schism in the Church of Carthage and set up Altar against Altar because the lapsi or those who had fallen in time of persecution might not presently be restored upon the mediation of the Confessors or as they then stiled them Martyrs What Schismes have been raised in the Church of England about round or square white or black about a Cup or a Surpless or the signe of the Cross or kneeling at the receiving of the blessed Sacrament or the use of the Ring in marriage What bitter contentions have been among the Franciscans in former times about their habits what colour they should be white or black or gray and what fashion long or short to make them more conformable to the rule of St. Francis with what violence have these petty quarrells been prosecuted in so much as two succeeding Popes upon two solemn hearings durst not determine them And nothing was wanting to a complete Schism but a sentence He might have spared his second proofs of his three substantiall parts he meaneth essentiall properties of the Church untill it had been once denyed Yet I cannot but observe how he makes Heresie now worse than Schism because Heresie denyeth the truth of God which simple Schism doth not whereas formerly he made Schisme worse than Idolatry The second fault which he imputeth to me is That I confound meer Schism with Schism mixed with Heresie and bring in matters of faith to justifie our division from the Roman Church This second fault is like the former both begotten in his own brain Let him read my supposed definition over and over again and he shall not finde the least trace of any such confusion in it To bring in their errours in matters of faith to justifie us not only from Heresie but from meer Schism is very proper He himself hath already confessed it I hope he will stand to his word for it is too evident a truth to be denyed that supposing they hold errours in matters of faith and make these their errours a condition of their Communion it is not only lawfull but necessary and a virtue to separate from them Their very errours in matters of faith and their imposing them upon us as necessary Articles doth justifie a separation from them and acquit us before God and man from all criminous Schism whether meer or mixed The sinne of Korah Dathan and Abiran was not meer Schism but ambition treason and rebellion Korah would have had the High-priesthood from Aaron and Dathan and Abiran would have been soveraign Princes in the place of Moses by right of the Primogeniture of Ruben So he proceeds to my other definition Meer Shcism is a culpable rupture or breach of the Catholick Communion to which he saith I add in the next page without sufficient ground and should have added also in Sacraments or lawfull ministry and lastly have shewed what is a sufficent ground But he mistakes throughout for first to have added without sufficient grounds had been a needless tautology which is not tolerable in a definition To say that it is culpable implies that it wants sufficient grounds For if it had sufficient grounds it were not culpable Secondly to have added in Sacraments or lawfull Ministry had been to spoil the definition or description rather and to make it not convertible with the thing defined or described I have shewed that there are many meer Schismes that are neither in Sacraments nor lawfull Ministry Lastly I have shewed what are sufficient grounds and that the Church of Rome gave sufficient cause of separation if he please to take it into consideration He saith internall communion is not necessary to make a man a Member of a visible Church or to make him a Catholick neither is it put into the definition of the Church Let it be so I am far from supposing that none but Saints are within the communion of a true visible Church But I am sure it is a good caution both for them and us There is a mentall Schisme as well as a mentall Murther Whosoever hateth his Brother
is a Murtherer What will it avail a man to be a Catholick in the eie of the World and a Schismatick in the eie of God to be a Member of the visible Church and to be cast into utter darkness He is not a Iew who is one outwardly neither is that Circumcision which is outward in the flesh But he is a Iew who is one inwardly and Circumcision is that of the heart So he is not a Catholick who is one outwardly but he who is a Catholick inwardly whose praise is not of men but of God Then I set down wherein the externall Communion of Catholicks doth consist in the same Creeds or Confessions of faith in the participation of the same Sacraments in the same Liturgies or divine Offices in the use of the same publick Rites and Ceremonies in the communicatory Letters and admission of the same Dâ—scipline These observations about the parts of the Catholick Communion are so innocent so indifferent and so unsubserviant to either party that I hoped they might pass without any censure But behold there is not one of them can escape an exception To the first part of Catholick communion in the same Creeds he takes two exceptions first That communion in faith is pretended a sufficient excuse from true Schism Fear it not no man dreameth that communion with the Church in her Creed doth acquit from Schism but not communicating with the Church in her Creed doth make both Schism and Heresie The having of faith doth not supplie the want of Charity but the want of one necessary requisite renders the having of another insufficient Bonum ex singulis circumstantiis malum ex quolibet defectu His second Exception is That true saving faith requireth not only a communion in the Creed but in all Gods words cleerly revealed to him and sufficiently proposed I answer What is necessary for this man at this time in this place is one thing what is necessary for all Christians at all times in all places is another thing Though all revealed truths be alike necessary to be beleeved when they are known yet all revealed truths are not alike necessary to be known And they who know them not are not obliged to communicate in the beleefe of them untill they know them So to beleeve them when they are revealed to us is a necessary duty of all Christians And yet the explicite beliefe of them is no necessary part of Christian communion He that holds fast the old Creed of the Church hath all things that are absolutely necessary in point of Faith Perhaps he thinks that the determination of the Roman Church is a sufficient proposall we know no such thing Let him first win the privilige and then enjoy it To the second and third parts of Catholick Communion he objects That it is not sufficient to participate in Catholick Sacraments unless it be done with Catholicks This is true How can they be parts of Catholick Communion if no Catholicks doe participate of them But here are two advertisements necessary the one that Sacraments purely administred and Sacraments corruptly administred so long as the abuses doe not destroy the essence are the same Sacraments As Baptisme administred in pure water and Baptisme administred with salt and spittle also is the same Baptisme The other that it is not any Church of one denomination whatsoever either Roman or other that either is the Catholick Church or is to judge under Christ who are true Catholicks There are many more Catholicks without the Roman Communion than within it Our Separatists in England having first laid their own drowsie conceits for infallable grounds that their Discipline is the Scepter of Christ that they alone are Zion and all other societies Babilon then they apply all the power and priviledges and prerogatives of the Church unto themselves So the Church of Rome having flattered it self into an opinion that she alone is the Catholick Church and all other Churches divided from her hereticall or schismaticall Conventicles though they be three or four times larger than her self presently laies hold on the keies of the Church opens and shuts le ts in and thrusts out makes Catholicks and unmakes Catholicks at her pleasure He tels us That the Communion of the Church doth not necessarily imply the same Rites and Ceremonies I know it right well The Queens Daughter was arraied in a Garment wrought about with divers colours No men have been so much too blame as the Church of Rome in obtruding indifferent Rites as necessary duties upon other Churches But yet the more harmony and uniformity that there is in Rites the greater is the Communion The Church is compared to an Army with banners What a disorderly Army would it be if every Souldier was left free to wear his own colours and to give his own words I know the Communion of the Church did not consist in communicatory Letters but they were both expressions and excellent helpes and adjuments of unity and antidotes against Schism What he saith now the third time of our communicating with Schismaticks hath been answered already Wherefore saith he since I. D. hath failed so many waies in defining Schism let us define it better And then he brings in his definition triumphantly True Schism is a voluntary division in some substantiall part of the true Church that is in some essentiall of Christian Religion Where lies the difference I call it a separation and he calles it a division I say culpable and he saith voluntary omnis culpa est voluntaria My expressions are more significant and emphaticall All the difference lies in these words in some substantiall part of the true Church Which for the form of expression is improper to make essentiall properties to be substantiall parts and for the matter is most untrue for there have been are and may be many Schismes which doe not concern any essentialls of Christian Religion I would borrow one word more with him why he calles it rather a division of the true Church than a division from the true Church I know some Roman Catholicks have doubted and suspended their judgements whether Schismaticks be still Members of the Catholick Church others have determined that they are And we are of the same minde that in part they doe remain still coupled and mortised to the Church that is in those things wherein they have made no separation ex ea parte in texturae compage detinentur in caetera scissi sunt And that in this respect the Catholick Church by their baptism doth beget Sonnes and Daughters to God And we think we have St. Austin for us in this also Vna est Ecclesia quae sola Catholica nominatur quicquid suum habet in Communionibus diversorum a sua unitate separatis per hoc quod suum in iis habet ipsa utique generat non illae This perhaps is contrary to R. C. his opinions howsoever we thank him for
produce no Schism whilest one Church did not condemn another and all did submit themselves to the determination of a generall Councell as the highest Judge of controversies upon Earth The reason of their agreement was plainly this because all Churches received the primitive Creed and no Church exacted more in point of Faith then the primitive Creed It would better become the Church of Rome to repent of their rash temerarious censure in excluding above three parts of the Christian World from the communion of Saints out of passion and self interest because they will not acknowledge the supremacy of the Roman Bishop no more then their predecessors did before them from the beginning If these dispersed and despised multitudes of Christians would but submit to the Roman yoke their religion would be found orthodox enough and they would no longer be held a masse of Monsters and a Hydra of many Heads but passe muster for good Catholicks Take an instance or two Of all these multitudes of Christians the Assyrians or the Nestorians have not the best repute Yet when Elias a pety Patriarch of Muzall submitted to the Bishop of Rome and sent the confession of his Faith it was found to be Orthodox Of later daies about the yeer 1595. when part of the Russians subject to the Crown of Poland submitted themselves to the Papacy because they could not have free accesse to the Patriarch of Constantinople in their submission they articled for the free exercise of the Greek Religion To come neerer home This is certain that Pius the 4 th sent Vincentio with Letters of Credence to Queen Elizabeth with secret instructions for he intreated her in his Letter to give the same credit to his Agent which she would doe to himselfe If these instructions were not written we need not wonder Such instructions are not to be seen publickly unlesse they take effect But some of our Authours of great note in these daies write positively others probably upon common report that he offered the Popes confirmation of the English Liturgy and the free use of the Sacrament in both kindes c. so she would join with the Romish Church and acknowledge the primacy of the Chair of Rome It is interest not Religion that makes Catholicks and Hereticks or Schismaticks with the Court of Rome Lastly all these famous Churches or the most of them which he calls multitudes of Christians have a perfect concord both among themselves with the primitive Church in all essentials How should it be otherwise whilest they hold the same Creed without addition or subtraction They agree in most lesser truths They hold their old Liturgies and forms of administration of the Sacraments with lesse variation then the Church of Rome If there be some differences among them the Romanists have as great among themselves One of these Churches alone the Church of Constantinople hath as many dependents and adherents as all the Churches of the Roman communion put together And I believe a greater harmony within it self in Doctrine Sacraments and Discipline Whereas he chargeth me that I professe to communicate with the Catholick Church only in fundamentals not in any other thing he wrongs me much but himself more For I professe my self ready to adhere to the united communion of the true Catholick Church in all things whether they be fundamentals or no fundamentals whether they be credenda or agenda things to be believed or to be practised He saith the Church of Rome is not homogenall with the Protestant Church This is true qua tales as they are Roman and Protestant The Roman Church is not a Protestant Church nor the Protestant Church a Roman Church Yet both the one and the other may be homogeneous Members of the Catholick Church Their difference in essentials is but imaginary Yet he goes about to prove it by three arguments First An Indolatrous Church differs essentially from a true Church But he saith I charge the Church of Rome with Idolatry in the adoration of the Sacrament Judge Reader if this be not like the envious man in the Fable who was contented to have one of his own Eies put out that his fellow might lose both his Eies He had rather his own Church should be questioned of Idolatry then that the Protestant Church should be a coheire with her of Salvation Because the Eare is not the Eie is it therefore not of the Body In the places alleged by him I doe not charge the Church of Rome with Idolatry In the one place I speak of the adoration of the Sacrament as an abuse but not one word of Idolatry In the other place I speak of the peril of Idolatry but not a word of the adoration of the Sacrament If he cite his Authors after this manner he may prove what he list Again The Sacrament is to be adored said the Councel of Trent That is formally the body and blood of Christ say some of your Authors we say the same The Sacrament that is the species of Bread and Wine say others That we deny and esteem it to be Idolatrous Should we charge the whole Church with Idolatry for the error of a party Lastly I answer that a true Church out of invincible ignorance may fall into material Idolatry He himself confesseth that it may fall in materiall Heresie and Schism And Schism with him is worse then Idolatry Though the Church of Rome doe give divine worshâ—p to the Creature or at least a party among them yet I am so charitable as to hope that they intend it to the Creator From the adoration of Sacrament he passeth to justification by speciall Faith only and from thence to the propitiatory Sacrifice in the Masse As if two Churches could not differ about any questions nay not in the forms of expression but presently the one of them must cease to be a true Church I dare say that when I have declared my Faith in these two particulars he dare not step one step beyond me Or if he doe he steps into a manifest errour I doe acknowledge tâ—ne inherent righteousnesse in this life though imperfect by which a Christian is rendred truly just as Gold is true Gold though it be mixed with some drosse But if justification be opposed to condemnation and signify a legall acquittall from guilt formerly contracted as It is God that justifieth who is he that condemneth Then it is the free Grace of God that justifieth us for the merits of Christ by the new evangelicall Covenant of believing But where doth the Church of England teach that man is justified by speciall Faith Now here He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved that is a part of the Catholick Faith But I believe and am Baptized that is justifying Faith Therefore I shall be saved that is speciall Faith There may be Catholick Faith without justifying Faith and justifying Faith without speciall Faith because a man
make that proposition hereticall in it self which was not ever hereticall nor increase the necessary Articles of the Christian Faith either in number or substance What I said is undeniable true First in it self That is in its own nature without any reference to the authority of a Councel And necessary Articles of the Christian Faith that is absolutely and simply necessary for all Christians If the proposition were hereticall in it self then they that held it before the Councel were Hereticks as well as they who hold it after the Councel And that is a necessary Article of the Christian Faith without the actuall belief whereof Christians could never be saved This is sufficient to answer his objection But for the Readers satisfaction I adde moreover that the Romanists believe a generall Councel not only to be fallible without the concurrence and confirmation of the Pope whose priviledge and prerogative the most of them doe make the fole ground of the Churches infallibility but also without his concurrenee to have often erred actually But with the concurrence and confirmation of the Pope they make the determination of a generall Councel to be infallible On the other side we know no such infallibility of the Pope but the contrary After Stephen had taken up the body of Formosus his predecessor out of his grave spoiled him of his pontificall Attire cut off his two Fingers and cast his body into Tybur it became an usuall thing with the following Popes either to enfringe or abrogate the acts of their predecessors Neither was this act of Stephen an errour meerly in matter of fact but principally in matter of Faith that the Episcopall character is deleble We know no such confirmation neâ—dfull nor of any more force then the single Vote of a prime Bishop of an Apostolicall Church And therefore we give the same priviledges to a Councell unconfirmed which they acknowledge to be fallible and to a Councell confirmed by the Pope We have no assurance that all generall Councells were and ever shall be so prudently mesnaged and their proceedings allwaies so orderly and upright that we dare make all their sentences a sufficient conviction of all Christians which they are bound to beleeve under pain of damnation If R C. be not of my mind others of his own Church have been and are at this day When I forbear to cite because I presume it will not be denyed In summe I know no such virtuall Church as they fancy Antiquity never knew it I owe obedience at least of acquiescence to the representative Church and I resolve for ever to adhere to the best of my understanding to the united Communion of the whole essentiall Church which I beleeve to be so far infallable as is necessary for atteining that end for which Christ bestowed this priviledge that is salvation Neither let him think that I use this as an artifice or subterfuge to decline the authority of generall Councells I know none we need to fear And I doe freely promise to reject the authority of none that was truly generall which he shall produce in this question As for occidentall Councels they are farre from being generall My other supposed error is that I say That though a Christian cannot assent in his judgement to every decree of a generall Councell yet he ought to be silent and possess his soul in patience That is untill God give another opportunity and another Councell sit wherein he may lawfully with modesty and submission propose his reasons to the contrary This he saith is to binde men to be Hypocrites and Dissemblers in matter of Religion and by their silence to suppress and bury divine Truth and brings them within the compass of Saint Pauls Woe woe be unto me if I evangelise not Excellent Doctrine and may well serve for a part of the Rebells Catechism Because my Superior is not infallible if I cannot assent unto him must I needs oppose him publickly or otherwise be guilty of Hypocrisie and Dissimulation If he shall think fit in discretion to silence all dispute about some dangerous questions am I obliged to tell the world that this is to suppress or bury divine Truth If he shall by his authority suspend a particular Pastor from the exercise of his pastorall Office must he needs preach in defiance of him or else be guilty of St. Pauls Woe Woe be unto me because I preach not the Gospell I desire him to consult with Bellarmine All Catholicks doe agree that if the Pope alone or the Pope with a particular Councell doe determine any controversie in Religion whether he can erre or whether he can not erre he ought to be heard obediently of all Christians May not I observe that duty to a generall Councell which all Roman Catholicks doe pay to the Pope or is there a less degree of obedience than passive obedience Certainly these things were not well weighed Where I say that by the Church of England in this question I understand that Church which was derived by lineall succession from Brittish English Scotish Bishops by mixt ordination as it was legally established in the daies of Edward the sixth and flourished in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth King Iames and King Charles and now groans under the heavy Yoke of persecution to let us see what an habit of alteration is he excepts against every word of this First against the lineall succession because none of these ancient Bishops taught justification by faith alone This is an argument from the Staffe to the Corner I speak of a succession of holy Orders and he of a succession of Opinions And when the matters come to be searched to the bottom he will be found at a default here also Those ancient Bishops held the same justification by faith that we doe In the next place he excepts against mixt Ordination as partly Papisticall partly Protestanticall He erres the whole Heavens breadth from my meaning Before Austin preached to the Saxons there were in Britain ancient British Bishops and ancient Scotish Bishops who had their severall lines of succession to which Austin added English Bishops and so made a third succession These three were distinct at first but afterwards in tract of time they came to be mixed and united into one succession So as every English Bishop now derives his succession from British Scotish and English Bishops This is the great Bug-bear of mixt Ordination He tells us that King Edward the sixth was a Child He mistakes Kings are never Children nor Minors whilest they have good Tutors and good Councellers was he more a Child than King Iehoash and yet the Church was reformed during his minority This was no Childish Act thanks to Iehoiada a good Uncle and Protector He demands how that Church was legally established in King Edwards daies which was established contrary to the liking of the most and best of the Bishops whereof divers were cast in Prison for not
just And if the Subject will not obey his blood is upon his own head The only question is whether there was at that time not only a pretended but a reall necessity to make those Laws which they call sanguinary or bloody for the preservation of the Common wealth This is the case between the Romanists and us upon these two hinges this controversy is moved Then to leave the Thesis and come unto the Hypothesis and to shew that at that time there was a reall necessity for the making of those Laws First let it be observed that after the secession of the English Church from the Court of Rome the succeeding Popes have for the most part looked upon England with a very ill eye Witness that terrible and unparalleled excommunication and interdiction of England a deprivation of Henry the eighth formerly mentioned published at Dunkirk because they durst bring it no neerer Witness the Bull of Anathematization and deprivation by Pius the fifth against Queen Elizabeth and all her adherents absolving all her Subjects from their oaths of Allegiance without so much as an admonition preceeding Witness the Popes negotiations with the English Spanish French and Portugheses to have Queen Elizabeth taken away by murther and the frame of the Government altered published at Rome by Hieronimo Catena Secretary to Cardinall Alexandrino in the time and with the priviledge of Sixtus the fifth Witness the Logantine authority given to Sanders and the hollowed Banner sent with him and Allen two Romish Priests to countenance the Earl of Desmond in his Rebellion And the Phaenix plume sent to Terowen to incourage him likewise in his Rebellion and a plenary Indulgence for him and all his adherents and assistants from Clement the eighth Lastly witness the two Briefs sent by the same Pope to exclude King Iames from the inheritance of the Crown of England unless he would take an Oath to promote the Roman catholick Interest This is not all In the second place the Popes to have the greater influence upon England did themselves found or conserve severall Colleges or Seminaries of English Priests at Rome at Rhemes at Doway where the English youth were trained up more for the advantage of the Pope than of their Prince and native Countrie What those Principles were which were then infused into them I have neither means at present nor in truth desire to inquire because I hope that at this day they are disclaimed by all or the most learned and moderate persons of those Societies Only for the justification of my native Countrie give me leave to set downe some of them in the words of the former learned Historiographer Suspicions also were daily raised by the great number of Priests creeping more and more into England who privily felt mens mindes spread abroad That Princes excommunicate were to be deposed and whispered in corners That such Princes as professed not the Roman Religion had forfeited their Title and Regall Authority That those men which had entered into holy Orders were by a certain ecclesiasticall freedome exempted from all Iurisdiction of Princes and not bound by their Laws nor ought to reverence their Majesty And that the Bishop of Rome hath supreme authority and most full power over the whole World yea even in temporall matters And that the Magistrates of England were no lawfull Magistrates and therefore not to be accounted for Magistrates Yea that all things whatsoever done by the Queens authority from the time that the Bull declaratory of Pius quintus was published were by the Laws of God and Man altogether void and to be esteemed nothing And some of them dissembled not that they were returned into England with no other intent then by reconciling in confession to absolve every one in particular from all oathes of allegiance and obedience to the Queen Judg how such Emissaties deserved to be welcomed into a Kingdome More might be added but this it self is enough or too much Lastly View all the Treasons and Rebellions that were in Queen Elizabeth's time and see from what source they did spring Parsons proposed to Papists the deposing of the Queen so far forth that some of them thought to have delivered him into the Magistrates hands And wrote a Book under the name of Doleman to intitle the Infanta of Spain to the Crown of England Of Sanders I have spoken formerly Only let me add this That when he was found dead they found in his pouch Orations and Epistles to confirme the Rebells with promise of assistance from the Bishop of Rome and others Parre confessed That that which finally setled him in his treasonable purpose to kill the Queen was the reading of Allens Book that Princes excommunicated for Heresie were to be deprived of life Ballard was himself a Priest of the Seminarie of Rhemes See his conspiracy I pass by the commotions raised in Scotland by Bruce Creiton and Haies Squire accused Walpoole for putting him upon it to poyson the Queen I speake not of the confession of Iohn Nicholas nor the testimonie of Eliot mentioned in their own Apology because they are not of undoubted faith This is most certain That when Campian was interrogated before his death whether Queen Elizabeth were a lawfull and rightfull Queen he refused to answer And being asked If the Pope should send forces against the Queen whether he would take part with the Queen or the Pope he openly professed and testified under his hand that he would stand for the Pope The same Author addeth That his fellows being examined in like manner either refused to answer or gave such ambiguous and prevaricatory answers that some ingenuous Catholicks began to suspect that they fostered some treachery Lay all these together their disloyall answers their seditious tenets so many treacherous attempts so many open Rebellions so many depositions and deprivations and exclusions so many Books brim-full of prodigious treason At such a time when the seditious opinions of that party were in their Zenith when seditious persons crowded over daily in such numbers when the Heir apparent of the Crown of England was a Roman Catholick And let any reasonable man judge whether the Kingdome of England had not just cause of feare whether they were not necessitated to provide nequid detrimenti caperet Respublica that the Commonwealth should sustain no loss whether our Statesmen who did then sit at the sterne were not obliged to their Prince and to their Countrie to provide by all means possible for the security of their Prince and tranquility of their Countrie which could not be done at that time without the exclusion of such Bigots and Bowtifeus from among them nor they be possibly excluded but by such severe Lawes These are the very reasons given in the Edict it self That it did plainly appear to her Majesty and her Councell by many examinations by their own Letters and confessions and by the actuall conspiracies of the like
factious persons but by two or three Kings successively and by Theodore the Archbishop of Canterbury a Roman with the flower of the Clergy and the whole Councel of the English He proceedeth they never disliked that Profession of Saint Austins Fellowes that the See Apostolick had sent them to preach in Britanny as she is accustomed to doe in all the World First why should they dislike it they had no reason for it No good Christian can dislike the Husbandmans sowing of Wheat but every good Christian doth dislike the envious mans supersemination or sowing of Tares above the Wheat Or if there had been reason how could they dislike that which in probability they did not know The Letter out of which these words are cited was not written to the English Kings but to the Scotish Bishops by Laurentius Successor to Austin in the See of Canterbury and Melitus of London and Iustus of Rotchester which three were all the Bishâ—ps of the Roman Communion that were at that day in Britain But if perchance he imagine that the Popes sending Preachers into Britain doth either argue an ancient or acquire a subsequent Jurisdiction over Britain he erres doubly first they did nothing without the Kings licence for matter of fact they produced no Papall mandates which had been in vain to a Pagan King At their first arrivall the King commanded them to abide in the Isle of Thanet untill his further pleasure was known They did so Afterwards they were called in by his command he gave them an express licence to preach to his Subjects and after his own conversion majorem praedicandi licentiam a further and larger licence So the conversion of Kent was by the Popes endeavoures and the Kings authority Secondly for matter of right Conversion gives no just title to Jurisdiction How many Countries have been converted to the Christian Faith by the Britans and English over which they never pretended any authority It followeth they never disliked That Saint Gregory should subject all the Priests of Britain under Saint Austin and give him power to erect two Archiepiscopall Sees and twelve Episcopall Sees under each of them Whom could Ethelbert being himself a Novice in Christianity better trust with the disposing of Ecclesiasticall Affaires in his Kingdome then those who had been his Converters But either Saint Gregory in his projects or rather Austin in his informations did mightily over-shoot themselves for the twentieth part of Britain was not in Ethelberts power And all the other Saxon Kings were Pagans at that time We have seen that after the death of Austin and Gregory there were still but one Archbishop and two Bishops of the Roman Communion throughout the Britannick Islands The British and Scotish Bishops were many but they renounced all Communion with Rome The British Bishops professed plainly to Austin himself in their Synod that they would not acknowledge him for their Archbishop And the Scotish Bishops did so much abhorre from the Communion of the Bishops of the Roman Communion that as themselves complained Dagamus one of the Scotish Bishops refused to eat with them or to lodge with them in the same Inne And yet he tells us in great earnest that they never disliked it He addeth they never disliked that Saint Melit should bring the Decrees of the Roman Synod to be observed of the Church of England It may be so But whether it was so or not whether they liked them or disliked them whether they received them or rejected them Venerable Bede who is his Author speaketh not a word This is not proving but presuming And why might they not receive them if they found them to be equall and beneficiall non propter authoritatem Legislatoris sed propter aequitatem Legis not for the authority of the Roman Synod but for the equity of their Decrees And what were their Decrees Ordinationes de vita quiete Monachorum Orders for the good conversation and quiet of Monks A matter of no great importance but great or small the Decrees of the Roman Synod were of no force in England unless they were received by the King and Kingdome and if they were received by the King and Kingdome then they were naturalised and made the Lawes of England not of Pope Boniface an usurping and if we may trust Saint Gregory his Predecessors an Antichristian Prelate They willingly admitted a Bishop of Canterbury sent to them and chosen by the Pope Why should they not admit him seeing it was their own desire and request to the Bishop of Rome in respect of the great scarcity of Scholars then in England to send them one as appeareth by the very letter of Vitalianus hominem denique docibilem in omnibus ornatum Antistitem secundum vestrorum scriptorum tenorem minime valuimus nunc reperire We could not finde for the present such a complete Prelate as your letters require and by the reception of the King quâ—d cum Nuncii certò narrassent Regi Egberto adesse Episcopum quem petierant a Romano Antistite when King Egbert had certain notice that the Bishop Theodore was come whom they had desired of the Roman Prelate So he was not obtruded upon them against their wills which was the case of patronage between us and them They acknowledged that Saint Peter was the speciall Porter of Heaven whom they would obey in all things I understand not why he urgeth this except it be to expose the simplicity of those times to dirision The case was this there was a disputation between Coleman and Wilfrid about the observation of Easter Coleman pleaded a tradition from Saint Iohn upon whose bosom Christ leaned delivered to them by Columba their first Converter Wilfrid pleaded a different tradition from St. Peter to whom Christ gave the Keies of the Kingdome of Heaven The King demanded whether that which was said of Saint Peter was true They acknowledged it was And whether any thing of like nature was said to Saint Columb They said no. Thereupon the King concluded Hic est Ostiarius ille cui ego contradicere nolo c. ne forte me adveniente ad fores Regni Coelorum non sit quireseret averso illo qui Claves tenere probatur This is the Porter whom I will not contradict least peradventure when I come to the gates of Heaven there be none to open unto me having made him averse to me who is proved to keepe the Keies No man can be so simple as to beleeve that there are Gates and Keies and Porters in Heaven It were but a poor office for Saint Peter to sit Porter at the Gate whilest the rest were feasting within at the Supper of the Lamb. The Keies were given to Saint Iohn as much as to Saint Peter They publickly engraved in the front of their Churches that Saint Peter was higher in degree then Saint Paul Let them place St. Peter as high as they please
so they place him not so high as Christ nor make him Superior to the whole conjoint college of Apostles The truth is this King Ina builded a magnificent Temple at Glastenbury to the honor of Christ and memory of St. Peter and St. Paul and upon the same caused some verses to be engraven wherein St. Peter and St. Paul were compared together Doctior hic monitis celsior ille gradu or St. Paul was more learned but St. Peter higher in degree St. Paul opened the hearts St. Peter the eares St. Paul opened heaven by his Doctrine St. Peter by his Keyes St. Paul was the way St. Peter the gate St. Peter was the rock St. Paul the Architect Theologicall truths ought not to be founded upon Poeticall licence He knows right well that their own Doctors doe make St. Paul equall in all things to St. Peter except in primacy of order We acknowledge that St. Peter was the beginning of unity why then might he not have the first place according to his primacy of Order But the question between them and us is of another nature concerning a supremacy of Power When St. Peters Nets were full he did but beckon and his fellows came to partake But the Court of Rome use him more hardly For whatsoever was ever said or done to his honour or advantage rests not upon his person who was still no more but a fellow of the Apostolicall college but devolves wholly upon his Successors to make them Monarchs of the Church and Masters of all Christians They suffered their Bishops to teach That St. Peter had a Monarchy Was next after Christ the foundation of the Church And that neither true Faith nor good Life would save out of the unity of the Roman Church As if our Ancestors had ever understood the Roman Church in that sense which they doe now for the universall Church or heard of their new coyned distinction of a mediate and immediate foundation as if Saint Peter was laid immediatly upon Christ and all the rest of the Apostles upon Saint Peter or as if the Court of Rome were Saint Peters sole Heir If their Bishops had taught any such Doctrine in the Councells of Constance and Basile they would have gone near to have been censured for Hereticks unless they had explained themselves better then he doth Though it is true that after the Popes by violence and subtlety had gained so much upon the World as to be able to impose new upstart Oaths first upon Archbishops and then upon Bishops inconsistent with their Oaths of Allegiance and had falsified the very forms of their own Oaths from regulas sanctorum Patrum the rules of the holy Fathers to regalia sancti Petri the Royalties of Saint Peter then they had the Bishops bound hand and foot to their devotion But who were these Bishops What were their names What were their words Who were the Kings that suffered them Nay he telleth us not but leaveth us in the dark first to divine what was his dream and then to shew him the interpretation of it Only he referreth us to a treatise of his own called the flowers of the English Church which I never see nor heard of but from himself If there be any thing that is pertinent and deserveth an answer had it not been as easie to have cited his Authors as himself in the margent When his latent testimonies come to be viewed and examined it will be found that his Monarchy is nothing but a primacy or principality of Order his foundation a respective not an absolute foundation and his Roman Church the Catholick Church Or else it will appear that instead of gathering flowers he hath been weeding the Doctors of the Church They admitted Legates of the Pope whom he sent to examine the faith of the English Church The intended Pope was Pope Agatho The pretended Legate was Iohn the precentor whom the Pope sent into England at such time as the Heresie of Eutyches was frequent in the orientall parts ut cujus esset fidei Anglorum Ecclesia diligenter edisceret that he should learn out diligently what was the faith of the English Church He saith not to examine juridically but to learn out diligently This Iohn his supposed Legate had no more power then an ordinary Messenger Well a Synod was called by whom by the supposed Legate No but by the English Who presided in it the pretended Legate No but Theodore the Archbishop of Canterbury There is not the least footstep of any forrein Jurisdiction or Authority in the whole business They caused divers Bishopricks to be erected at the commandement of the Pope If it had been proper for the Pope or if he had had power to have erected them himself why did he put it upon others To command them to erect new Bishopricks had been a power paramount indeed This was more then to execute the Canons The history is recited not in the ninth chapter but in the fifth chapter of the second Book of William of Malmesburie de Gestis Regum Anglorum not as his own relation but transcribed out of a nameless Writer verbis eisdem quibus inveni scripta interseram In the dayes of Edward the elder the Region of the West-Saxons had wanted Bishops upon what ground doth not appear per septem annos plenos seven whole years And it may be that some of the Bishopricks had been longer vacant perhaps ingrossed by the Bishops of Winchester and Shireborne which two I finde to have been alwaies of great note in the Court of the West-Saxon Kings The ground of my conjecture is the words of the Author Quod olim duo habuerunt in quinque diviserunt What two for â—ome space of time had possessed they divided into five Formosus the then Pope resented this R. C. remembers what tragicall stirres he made at Rome but as to this particular a better man might have done a worse deed He sent his Letters into England misit in Angliam Epistolas and it seemeth that they were very high quid a Papa Formoso praeceptum sit but praeceptum signifies a lesson or instruction as well as a commandement And again dabat excommunicationem maledictionem Regi Edwardo omnibus Subjectis ejus he bestowed an excommunication and a curse upon King Edward and all his Subjects Why what had the poor Subjects offended or King Edward for any thing that appeareth This was sharp work indeed the first summons an excommunication with a curse A man of Formosus his temper who was indeed a Bishop of an Apostolicall Church though he violated his oath to obtain it and who supposed himself to be not only the Patriarch of Britaine but a Master of misrule in the Church might adventure farre But to doe him right I doe not beleeve that this was any formall sentence that had been too palpably unjust before a citation I remember not that any other Author mentions it which they would have done
Cardinals did not know at that time how to give a reasonable answer Wherein he pleads that his Ancestors had granted free elections ad rogatum instantiam dictae sedis upon the earnest entreaty of the See of Rome which now they endeavoured to usurpe and seize upon who made himself in Parliament the Judge of all the grievances which the Kingdome sustained from the Pope who made expresse Lawes against the oppressions of the Roman Court declaring publickly That it was his duty and that he was bound by his oath to make remedies against them This was more then twenty such complements as this which is most true in a right sense That it was but a complement appeareth evidently by this The question was about Edward the thirds right to the Crown of France and his confederation with Lewis of Bavaria these were no Ecclesiasticall matters the King sent his Ambassadors to the Pope to treat with him about his right to the Crown of France But notwithstanding his supereminent judgment he gave them in charge to treat with the Pope not as a Iudge but as a private person and a common friend not in form nor in figure of judgement He attributeth no more to the Pope then to another man according to the reasons which he shall produce His own words are these parati semper nedum a vestro sancto cunctis presidente judicio imo a quolibet alio de veritate contrarii si quis eam noverit humiliter informari qui sponte rationi subjicimur aliam datam nobis intelligi veritatem cum plena humili gratitudine complectemur Being ready alwaies humbly to be informed of the truth of the contrary if any man know it not only from your holy judgement being placed in dignity before all or as it is in another place before every Creature but from any other And we who are subject to reason of our own accord will embrace the truth with humility and thankfulnesse when it is made known unto us This was Edward the thirds resolution to submit to reason and the evidence of the truth from whomsoever it proceeded Yet though the case was meerly Civil and not at all of Ecclesiasticall cognizance and though Edward the third did not would not trust the Pope with it as a Judge but as an indifferent Friend yet he gives him good words That his judgement was placed in dignity above all Creatures which to deny was to allow of Heresie Why doe we hear words when we see Deeds The former Popes had excommunicated Lewis of Bavaria and all who should acknowledge him to be Emperor Neverthelesse Edward the third contracted a firm league with him and moreover became his Lieutenant in the Empire Pope Benedict takes notice of it writes to King Edward about it intimates the decrees of his predecessors against Lewis of Bavaria and his adherents signifying that the Emperor was deprived and could not make a Lieutenant The King gives fair words in generall but notwithstanding all that the Pope could doe to the contrary proceeds renews his league with the Emperor and his Commission for the Lieutenancy and trusted more to his own judgement then co the supereminent judgement of the Pope So he draws to a conclusion of this Chapter and though he have proved nothing in the world yet he askes What greater power did ever Pope challenge then here is professed Even all the power that is in controversie between us and them He challenged the politicall headship of the English Church under pretence of an Ecclesiasticall Monarchy He challenged a Legislative power in Ecclesiasticall causes He challenged a Dispensative power above the Lawes against the Lawes of the Church whensoever wheresoever over whomsoever He challenged liberty to send Legates and hold legantine Courts in England without licence He challenged the right of receiving the last Appeals of the Kings Subjects He challenged the Patronage of the English Church and investitures of Bishops with power to impose a new Oath upon them contrary to their Oath of Allegiance He challenged the first Fruits and Tenths of Ecclesiasticall livings and a power to impose upon them what pensions or other burthens he pleased He challenged the Goods of Clergy-men dying intestate c. All which are expresly contrary to the fundamentall Lawes and Customes of England He confesseth That it is Lawfull to resist the Pope invading either the Bodies or the Souls of men or troubling the Common-wealth or indeavoring to destroy the Church I aske no more Yea forsooth saith he if I may be judge what doth invade the Soul No I confesse I am no fit Judge No more is he The main question is who shall be Judge what are the Liberties and Immunities of a nationall Church and what are the grievances which they sustain from the Court of Rome Is it equall that the Court of Rome themselves should be the Judges Who are the persons that doe the wrong Nothing can be more absurd In vain is any mans sentence expected against himself The most proper and the highest judicature upon Earth in this case is a generall Councell as it was in the case of the Cyprian Bishops and their pretended Patriarch And untill that remedy can be had it is lawfull and behooveth every Kingdome or nationall Church who know best their own rights and have the most feeling where their Shoe wrings them to be their own Judges I mean only by a judgment of discretion to preserve their own rights inviolated and their persons free from wrong sub moderamine inculpatae tutelae And especially Sovereign Princes are bound both by their Office and by their Oaths to provide for the security and indemnity of their Subjects as all Roman Catholicks Princes doe when they have occasion And here he fals the third time upon his former Theme that in things instituted by God the abuse doth not take away the use Which we doe willingly acknowledge and say with Saint Austine Neque enim si peccavit Cecilianus ideo haereditatem suam perdidit Christus sceleratae impudentiae est propter crimina hominis quae orbi terrarum non possis ostendere communionem orbis terrarum velle damnare Neither if Cecilian offended did Christ therefore lose his inheritance And it is wicked impudence for the crimes of a man which thou canst not shew to the World to be willing to condemn the communion of the World But neither was that authority of the Bishop of Rome which we have rejected either of Divine or Apostolicall institution Nor have we rejected it for the personall faults of some Popes but because it was faulty in it self Nor have we separated our selves from the conjoyned communion of the Christian World in any thing I wish the Romanists were no more guilty thereof then we Of King Henries exemption of himself from all spirituall jurisdiction we have spoken formerly in this very Chapter CAAP. 5. THe scope of my fifth Chapter was to
truths for the preservation of unity among us and the extirpation of some growing errors Secondly He adds that the deteyning of the Cup could be no sufficient grounds of separation because Protestants doe confesse That it is an indifferent matter of it self and no just cause to seperate Communion Doth the Church of England confesse it to be an indifferent matter No nor any Protestant Church All their publick confessions doe testifie the contrary Nay more I doe not believe that any one Protestant in his right wits did ever confesse any such thing But this it is to nible at Authors and to stretch and tenter their words by consequences quite beyond their sense It may be that Luther at some time said some such thing but it was before he was a formed Protestant whilest he was half sleeping half waking Bellarmine stiles it in initio Apostasiae But after his eies were well opened he never confessed any such thing but the just contrary Suppose that Brentius saith that abstemious persons such whose nature doth abhorre wine may receive under one kinde what a pittifull argument is this drawn from a particular rare case of invincible necessity to the common and ordinary use of the Sacrament The Elephant was exempted from doing obeisance to the Lion because he had no knees But it is the height of injustice to withhold his right from one man because another cannot make use of it Suppose that Melancthon declare his own particular opinion that those Countries where Wine is not to be had should doe well to make use of honied water in the Sacrament What doth this signifie as to the cause he hath in hand whether they use some other liquor in the place of Wine or use no liquor at all Invincible necessity doth not only excuse from one kinde but from both kindes And where the Sacrament cannot be had as it ought the desire to have it sufficeth before God We read of some Christians in India where they had no Wine that they took drie Raisons and steeped them in water a whole night and used that liquor which they squeesed out of them in the place of Wine for the Sacrament It would trouble one as much in many parts of the World to finde right Bread as Wine That nourishment which Indians eat in the place of Bread being made of the roots of Plants doth differ more from our Bread made of Wheat then Cyder or Perry or honnied water doe differ from the juice of the Grape which are such many times as are able to deceive a good tast If Wine were as rare and precious in the World as right Balm which they make to be the matter of a Sacrament there were more to be said in it They themselves doe teach that it is absolutely necessary that the Sacrament be consecrated in Wine and that it be consumed by the Priest They who can procure Wine for the Priest may procure it for the People also if they will The truth is all these are but made Dragons No man ever was so abstemious but that he might taste so much Wine tempered with water as they use it as might serve for the Sacrament where the least imaginable particle conveieth Christ to the receiver as well as the whole Chalice full Neither is there any Christian Country in the World where they may not have Wine enough for this use if they please So notwithstanding any thing he saith to the contrary their dayly obtruding new Articles of Faith and their deteining the Cup in the Sacrament were just grounds of separation but not our only grounds We had twenty other grounds besides them And therefore he had little reason to say That at least the first Protestants were Schismaticks and in this respect to urge the authority of Optatus against us to prove us to be the Heirs of Schismaticks Optatus in the place by him cited speaks against the traditors with whom we have nothing common and the Donatists their own Ancestors not ours whose case is thus described there by Optatus cujus in Cathedra tenet quae ante ipsum Majorinum originem non habebat whose Chair thou possessest which had no originall before Majorinus a schismaticall Donatist This is not our case We have set up no new Chairs nor new Altars nor new Successions but continued those which were from the beginning There is a vast difference between the erecting of a Chair against a Chair or an Altar against an Altar which we have not done and the repairing of a Church or an Altar wherein it was decayed which we were obliged to doe In the next place he endeavoreth to prove by the generall Doctrine of Protestants that they differ from Papists in fundamentall points necessarie to salvation If they doe it is the worse for the Romanists In the mean time the charitie of Protestants is not to be blamed We hope better of them And for any thing he saith to the contrarie we beleeve that they doe not differ from us in fundamentalls But let us see what it is that the Protestants say Some say that Popish errors are damnable Let it be admitted many errors are damnable which are not in fundamentalls Errors which are damnable in themselves are often pardoned by the mercie of God who looks upon his Creatures with all their prejudices Others say that Popish and Protestant opinions are diametrally opposite That is certain they are not all logomachies But can there be no diametrall opposition except it be in fundamentalls There are an hundred diametrall oppositions in opinion among the Romanists themselves yet he will not confess that they differ in fundamentalls Lastly others say that the Religion of Protestants and the Religion of the Church of Rome are not all one for substance I answer first that the word substance is taken sometimes strictly for the essentialls of any thing which cannot be separated without the destruction of the subject Thus a man is said to be the same man in substance while his soul and body are united though he have lost a legg or an arme or be reduced to skin and bone And in this sense the Protestant and Popish Church and Religion are the same in substance At other times the word substance is taken more largly for all reall parts although they be separated without the destruction and sometimes with the advantage of the subject And so all the members yea even the flesh and blood and other humors are of the substance of a man So we read Thine eyes did see my substance being yet unperfect and in thy books were all my members written And in this sense the Protestant and Popish Religion are not the same in substance Secondly the word substantialls may either signifie old substantialls beleeved and practised by all Churches in all ages at all times which are contained in the Apostles Creed And thus our Religion and the Roman Religion are the same in substance Or new
substantialls lately coyned and obtruded upon the Chrurch as those Articles which are comprehended in the Creed of Pius the fourth And in this sense our Religion and theirs are not the same in substance The former substantialls were made by God the later substantialls devised by man I pleaded that when all things were searched to the bottome Roman Catholicks doe acknowledge the same possibility of Salvation to Protestants which Protestants doe afford to Roman Catholicks And for proof thereof I produced two testimonies of his own To this he answers first that Protestants doe allow saving faith and salvation to the Roman Church and to formall Papists But Roman Catholicks doe denie saving faith and salvation to the Protestant Church and to formall Prrtestants and grant it only to such Protestants as are invincibly ignorant of their errours who are not formall Protestants but rather Protestantibus credentes persons deceived by giving too much trust to Protestants We say the very same that we allow not saving faith or salvation to the Popish Church as it is corrupted but as it reteins with Protestants the same common principles of saving truth and is still jointed in part to the Catholick Church Nor to formall Papists but to such as erre invincibly and are prepared in their mindes to receive the truth when God shall reveal it Such are not formall Papists but Papist is credentes such as give too much trust to Papists His second answer is a second errour grounded only upon those imaginarie ideas which he hath framed to himself in his own head of the opinions of particular Protestants and laboured much to little purpose to prove by conjecturall consequences which hang together like a roap of sand That Protestants affirm that such as erre in fundamentall Articles and such as erre sinfully in not fundamentalls may be saved Neither the Church of England against which he ought to bend his forces in this question nor any genuine sonne of the Church of England nor any other Protestant Church ever said that Papists might be saved though they held not the fundamentalls of saving truth or though they held lesser errors pertinaciously without repentance If any particular Protestants were ever so mad to maintain any such thing in an ordinarie way for we speak not now of the extraordinarie dispensations of Gods grace in case of invincible necessity we disclaime them in it Let him not spare them But I beleeve that when all is done about which he makes such a stirre it will prove but Moonshine in the water To what I said that our separation is from their errours not from their Church he answereth that it shews my ignorance what their Church is For their Church is a society partly in their pretended errors and therefore they who separate from them separate from their Church In my life I never heard a weaker plea But I desire no other advantage then what the cause it self affords Doth he himself beleeve in earnest that any errors are essentialls of a Church Or would he perswade us that weeds are essentials of a Garden or ulcers and wenns and such superfluous excrescences essentials of an humane body Or doe weeds become no weeds aud errors no errors because they are called pretended weeds or pretended errors or because they are affirmed to be essentials This is enough to justifie my distinction So it was not my ignorance but their obstinacy thus to incorporate their errors into their Creeds and matriculate their abuses among their sacred Rites In vain doe they worship me saith God teaching for Doctrines the commandements of men Suppose an Arrian or a Pelagian should charge him to be a Schismatick or an Apostate because he deserted their communion To which he should answer that his separation was from their Arrian or Pelagian errours not from their Church as it was a Christian Church and that he held all other common principles of Christianity with them And suppose the Arrian or Pelagian should plead as he doth that their Church is a society partly in their pretended errors or that their pretended errors are essentials of their Church and of their Religion This might well aggravate their own faults but not infringe the truth of his answer Errors continue errors though they they be called essentials There was a time before Arrianism did infest the Church and there succeeded a time when it was cast out of the Church Their old essentials which were made essentials by Christ we doe readily receive Their new essentials which were lately devised by themselves we doe as utterly reject and so much the rather because they have made them essentials Their Church flourished long without these errors and we hope the time will come when it shall be purged from these errors In setting forth the modderation of our English Reformers I shewed that we doe not arrogate to our selves either a new Church or a new Religion or new holy orders Upon this he falls heavily two waies First he saith it is false as he hath shewed by innumerable testimonies of Protestants That which I say is not the falser because he calls it so nor that which he saith the truer because I forbear For what I said I produced the authority of our Church he letteth that alone and sticketh the falshood upon my sleeve It seemeth that he is not willing to engage against the Church of England For stiâ—l he declineth it and changeth the subject of the question from the English Church to a confused companie of particular Authors of different opinions of dubious credit of little knowledge in our Engâ—ish affairs tentered and wrested from their genuine sense Scis tu simulare Cupressum quid hoc It was not the drift or scope of my undertaking to answer old volumes of impertinencies If he have any testimonies that are materiall in the name of God let him bring them into the lists that the Reader may see what they say and be able to compare the evidence with the answer and not imagine more then is true Let him remember that I premonish him that all his innumerable testimonies will advantage him nothing Secondly he would perswade us that if it were so that our Church Religion and holy Orders were the same with theirs then what need had we to goe out of theirs for salvation then we are convinced of Schism Alas poor men what will become of us Hold what we will say what we can still we are Schismaticks with them If we say our Church Religion and holy Orders are the same with theirs then we are Schismaticks for deserting them If we say they are not the same then we are Schismaticks for censuring and condemning them But we appeale from the sentence of our Adveâ—sarie to the sentence of that great Judge who judgeth righteous judgment We are either Wheat or Chaff but neither their tongues nor their pennes must winnow us If we say our Church Religion and holy Orders be
the same with theirs we are no Schismaticks because we doe not censure them uncharitably If we say they be not the same we are still no Schismaticks because we had then by their own confession just reason to separate from them But to come up closer to his argugument Religion is a virtue which consisteth between two eâ—treams Heresie in the defect and Superstition in the excess Though their Church Religion and holy Orders be the same with ours and free from all hereticall defects yet they may â—e and are subject to superstitious excesses Their Church hath sundâ—y blemishes Their Religion is mixed with errors And gross abuses have crept into their holy Orders From these superstitious errors and abuses we were obliged to separate our selves wherein they had first separated themselves from their Predecessors So if there be Schism in the case it was Schism in them to make the first separation and Virtue and Pietie in us to make the second I said most truly that our positive Articles are those generall truths about which there is no controversie Our negation is only of humane controveâ—ted additions Against this he excepts sundry wayes First Because our principall positive Article is that of justification by speciall Faith which as he saith is most of all in controversie Aquinas makes a great difference between opinari and credere between a scholasticall opinion and a necessary Article of Faith Sometimes the understanding doth fluctuate indifferently between the two parts of the contradiction and this is properly doubting Sometimes it inclineth more to the one part then to the other yet not without some fear or suspicion of the truth of the other part This is properly opinion Sometimes the understanding is determined so as to adhere perfectly to the one part And this determination proceeds either from the intelligible object mediately or immediately and this makes knowledge Or from the will upon consideration of the authority and truth of the revealer and this makes faith Justification by speciall faith was never accounted an Article of the English belief either by the English Church or by any genuine Son of the English Church If he trust not me let him read over our Articles and reading satisfie himself I confess some particular persons in England did sometimes broach such a private Opinion but our most learned and judicious Professors did dislike it altogether at that time as I have heard from some of themselves But shortly after it was in a manner generally rejected as Franciscus a Sancta Clara ingeniously confesseth jam hic novus error vix natus apud nostrates sepultus est and now this new error being scarcely born among our Country-men was buried And more plainly elsewhere quibus omnibus bene pensatis saenè nulla bodie reperietur differentia in confessione Anglica sanctissima definitione Tridentina all which things being duely weighed truly there will be found noe difference at this day in the English confession and the sacred definition of the Tridentine Councell meaning about this Subject of justification But saith he if they be not points of our Faith what doe they in our confessions of Faith I answer they are inserted into our confessions not as supplements of our Creed or new Articles but as explanations of old Articles and refutations of their supposititious Principles Contraries being placed together by one another doe make one another more apparent He proceedeth Have not Protestants a positive faith of their negative Articles as wâ—ll as of their positive Articles Commandements may be either affirmative or negative and the negative Commandements binde more firmely then the affirmative because the affirmative binde alwaies but not to the actuall exercise of obedience at all times semper but not ad semper But negative Commandements binde both semper and ad semper both alwaies and to all times But we finde no negatives in the rule of Faith For the rule of Faith consists of such supernaturall truths as are necessary to be known of every Christian not only necessitate praecepti because God hath commanded us to beleeve them but also necessitate medii because without the knowledge of them in some tollerable degree according to the measure of our capacities we cannot in an ordinary way attain to salvation How can a negative be a means Non entis nulla est efficacia In the Apostles Creed from the beginning to the end we finde not the least negative Particle And if one or two negatives were added in the subsequent ages as that begotten not made in the Nicene Creed they were added not as new Articles but as explanations of the old to meet with some emergent errors or difficulties just as our negatives were Yea though perhaps some of our negatives were revealed truths and consequently were as necessary to be beleeved when they are known as affirmatives yet they doe not therefore become such necessary truths or Articles of Religion as make up the rule of Faith I suppose yet further that though some of our negatives can be deduced from the positive fundamentall Articles of the Creed some evidently some probably as the necessity of the consequence is more or less manifest For it is with consequences as it was with Philo's row of iron Rings the first that touched the Load-stone did hang more firmely the rest which were more remote still more loosly I say in such a case that no man was bound to receive them either as Articles or as Consequences but only he that hath the light to see them nor he further then the evidence doth invite him And howsover they are no new Articles but Corollaries or deductions from the old So grossly is he mistaken on all sides when he saith that Protestants he should say the English Church if he would speak to the purpose have a positive beleefe that the Sacrament is not the body of Christ. Which were to contradict the words of Christ this is my body He knowes better that Protestants doe not deny the thing but their bold determination of the manner by transubstantiation themselveâ— confessing that the manner is incomprehensible by humane reason Neither doe Protestants place it among the Articles of the Faith but the opinions of the Schools He acknowledgeth That if I had a true preparation of minde to beleeve whatsoever the true reall Catholick Church universally beleeveth and practiseth the matter were ended But he addeth that by the Catholick Church I mean an imaginary Church or multitude of whatsoever Christians Catholicks Hereticks Schismaticks wâ—â— agree in fundamentall points but disagree in other points of Faith and wholy in communion of Sacraments and ministery of them I accept this offer and I tie him to his word If he stand to this ground there are no more controversies between him and me for the future but this one what is the true Catholick Church whether the Church of Rome alone with all its Dependents or the Church of the whole
World Roman Grecian Armenian Abyssene Russian Protestant which after all their brags of amplitude and universality is three times greater then themselves I desire no fairer issue between him and me I doe from my heart submit to all things which the true Catholick Church diffused over the World doth beleeve and practise And if I should erre in my judgement what the Catholick Church is as I am confident that he and his fellowes doe erre though I have no reason in the world to suspect my present judgement I doe furthermore proâ—ess my readiness to submit to the right Catholick Church whensoever God shall be pleased to reveal it to me This is sufficient to preserve me from being a Schismatick This is sufficient for the salvation of a Christian. He telleth us indeed sometimes that the Roman Church is the true Catholick Church and is diffused all over the World Let him take Roman in the largest sense he can yet still it is but a particular Church of one denomination not Catholick or Universall Whom have they of their Communion in the large Abystene Empire consisting of seventeen Kingdomes Not one Whom have they of their Communion in the Russian Empire neerer home Scarcely one Whom have they of their Communion in all the Eastern Churches perhaps two or three hand-fulls in comparison of those innumerable multitudes of Christians who are subject to the other Patriarchs Before they were so forward and positive in voting for themselves that they are the Catholick Church that they are the infallible Judge it had been meet that they had first agreed among themselves what this Catholick Church is to which every Christian is bound to submit whether it be the virtuall Church that is the Pope or the Pope jointly with his Conclave of Cardinalls or the Pope with a provinciall Councell or the Pope with a generall Councell that is the representative Church or a generall Councell without the Pope or lastly the essentiall Church dispersed over the face of the World for into so many opinions they are divided He addeth that these great multitudes of Christians whereof we speak are not united among themselves but divided in points of Faith in communion of Sacraments and the ministery of them Let Saint Austine answer him Acutum autem aliquid videris dicere cum Catholicae nomen non ex totius orbis Communione interpretaris sed ex observatione Praeceptorum omnium divinorum atque omnium Sacramentorum Thou seemest to thy self to speak very wittily when thou doest not interpret the Catholick Church by the Communion of the whole World but by the Catholick Faith and the right observation of all the Sacraments and true Discipline that is in their sense submission to the Roman Court This last badge which Saint Austin did not know is the only defect of those multitudes of Christians that they will not acknowledge the monarchicall Power of the Roman Bishop As we have seen by experience that when some few of these Eastern or Northern Christians have reconciled themselves to the See of Rome and acknowledged the Papacy they were streight adjudged Orthodox and sound Christians in all other things And the latter of these did provide expresly for themselves at the time of their submission that they would retein their Greekish Religion and Rites He himself in this very place confesseth them to agree in fundamentall points that is to be free from fundamentall errors And for other lesser Controversies they have not half so many among them as the Romanists among themselves As to his marginall note out of Turtullian That Heretici pacem cum omnibus miscent Hereticks mingle themselves with all Sects making it a Symtome of Heresie to be over easie in admitting others to their Communion I doe confess it is a fault indeed But first what doth this concern the Church of England Secondly the greater fault lies on the other hand to be over severe and over vigorous and censorious in casting out or holding others from their Communion and more dangerous to the Church of Christ. In this kinde offended the Donatists the Novatians the Luciferians of old And the Romanists at this day This hath more of the Patriarchall Garbe in it stand from me for I am holier then thou CHAP. 7. That all Princes and Republiks of the Roman Communion doe in effect the same things which King Henry did WE are come now unto his seventh Chapter wherein I am much beholden to him for easing me of the labour of replying For whereas I proved my intention at large by the Acts Laws and Decrees of the Emperors with their Councels and Synods and Electorall College by the Laws of France the Liberties of the Gallicane Church the Acts of their Parliaments and Declarations of their Universities by the practice of the King of Spain his Councels his Parliaments in Sicily in Castile in Brabant and Flanders by the sobbes of Portugall and their bleatings and the Judgment of the University of Lisbone by the Laws and Proclamations and other Acts of the Republick of Venice throughout 68 pages He vouchsafeth not to take notice of any one particular of all this except only some few heads of what I urged concerning the Emperors which he reciteth in lesse then one page and never attempts to answer one syllable of them in particular Yet are these so diametrally opposite to the pretended rights of the Pope his Legislative power his convocating of Synods his confirming Synods his sending out Bulls his receiving Appeals his Patronage of Churches his Pardons and Dispensations his Exemption from all humane judgment his sending of Legates his Tenths and first Fruits his Superiority above generall Councels his Excommunications and in a word his whole Spirituall Sovereignty that nothing can be more opposite In these presidents we did clearly see that essentiall power and right of Sovereignty which I plead for in this Book to make Ecclesiasticall Laws for the externall regiment of the Church to dispose of Ecclesiasticall preferments to reform Ecclesiasticall errors and abuses to be the last Judges of their own liberties and grievances to restrain Ecclesiasticall tyranny and to see that all Ecclesiasticall persons within their Dominions doe their duties And if these instances were not enough many more might be produced of the best Christian Princes Paul the third writ to Charles the fifth That the Decrees of Spira were dangerous to his Soul commands him to put away all disputes of Religion from the Imperiall Diet and referre them to the Pope to order nothing concerning Ecclesiasticall goods to revoke the grants made unto the Rebells against the See of Rome Otherwise he should be forced to use greater severity against him then he would Yet Cardinall de Monte was more angry then his Master saying That he would put his Holinesse in minde rather to abandon the See and restore the Keies to Saint Peter then suffer the Secular power to arrogate Authority to
other Churches and not Rome St. Peter might have continued Bishop of Antioch untill his death and then Antioch had still been the Mistriss and foundation of all other Churches He might have been neither Bishop of Antioch nor Rome and then the other Churches had wanted such an hereditary Mistriss All this is confessed by Bellarmine Doth Paul the ninth make us new Articles of Faith of so great contingency that were not of perpetuall necessity How can the Church of Rome be the foundation of all Christians in all places when there have been so many Christian Churches ever since the dayes of the Apostles who never had any thing to doe with Rome nor scarcely ever heard of the name of Rome If the Pope be the Master of all Christians he is but a young Master for we finde no such expression in all the primitive times Why were the ancient Bishops so grosly over-seen to stile him their Brother their Collegue their Fellow who was their Master It might be modesty in the Pope to use such familiar expressions as a Generall calls all his Army fellow Souldiers but it was never heard that a private Colonell or Captain did call his Generall fellow Souldier or a Servant call his Master fellow Servant or an ordinary Clerk call his Bâ—shop his Brother St. Peter writ himself a fellow elder not a Master If St. Paul had known that the Roman Church had been the Mistriss and foundation of all other Churches he would have given them their due title and the whole Scripture had not been so silent in so necessarie a point But he saith the Popes Supremacy is neither against the two Creeds nor the fiâ—st four generall Councells intimating thereby that it excludes none from salvation and consequently is no sufficient cause of separation I answer first that it is against the four first generall Councels if this were a proper place for the discussion of it I answer secondly that though it were not opposite to the Creed or the first four generall Councells yet if it be not virtually included in the Creed being as it is by them obtruded upon all Christians as an Article of faith or a necessarie part of saving truth extra quam non est salus without which there is no salvation it becomes a just and sufficient cause of separation to all those upon whom it is so obtruded Of this more in the next argument My second argument may be thus reduced That Court which obtruded newly coyned Articles of faith such as the Doctrin of the seven Sacraments Transubstantiation Purgatory Invocation of Saints worshipping of Images Indulgences and especially the Popes Supremacy upon the Christian world as absolutely necessary to salvation and necessarie conditions of Catholick communion and excommunicateth and anathematizeth above three parts of the Christian world for not admitting them is fearfully schismaticall But the Court of Rome doth all this That these are no old Articles appeareth by all the ancient Creeds of the Church wherein they are neither explicitely nor virtually comprehended That they are made new Articles by the Court of Rome appeareth by the Bull of Pius the fourth wherein they are added to the old Creed ut unius ejusdem fidei professio uniformiter ab omnibus exhibeatur that the profession of one and the same faith may be declared uniformly by all and one certain form thereof be made known to all And lastly That the Court of Rome hath solemnly excommunicated with the greater excommunication and anathematized and excluded so farre as lieth in their power from the communion of Christ all the Grecian Russian Armenian Abyssen and reformed Churches being three times more in number then themselves for not receiving these new Articles or some of them and especially for not acknowledging the Sovereign Power and Jurisdiction of the Roman Bishop and his Court appeareth undeniably by the famous Bull of Pius the fifth called Bulla caenae because it is read in die caenae Domini or upon Thursday before Easter In way of answer to this he asketh how this was any cause of King Henry's revolt I reply first that though Henry the eighth had not thought of this so it had not been causa procreans a productive cause of the separation yet to us it is a most just cause to condemn them of Schism Secondly the revolt or more truly the separation of the Church of England from the Church of Rome was not made by Henry the eight or the English Church but by the Pope and Court of Rome who excommunicated him and his Kingdome for not enduring their encroachments and usurpations He and his Kingdome were passive in it only the Court of Rome was doubly active first in revolting from the right Discipline of their Predecessors and secondly in excluding the party wronged from their communion But in the separation of England from the oppessions of the Court of Rome I confesse that Henry the eighth and the Kingdom were active And this very ground to avoid the tyranny and ambition and avarice of the Roman Court was the chief impulsive cause both to the English and Eastern Christians For though the Sovereignty of the Roman Bishop was not obtruded upon them in form of a Creed yet it was obtruded upon them as a necessarie point of Faith If Henry the eight had any other private sinistre grounds known only to himself they doe not render the Reformation one jod the worse in it self but only prove that he proceeded not uprightly which concerneth him not us Secondly he answereth that though they profess that it is necessary to salvation to be under the Pope as Vicar of Christ yet they say not that it is necessary necessitate medii so as none can be saved who doe not actually beleeve it If all this were true yet it were too much to oblige the whole Christian world to submit to the Pope as the Vicar of Christ by virtue of the commandement of God But I fear that Pope Pius by his Bull and all they by their swearing in obedience thereunto doe make it to be necessary necessitate medii so as none can be saved who doe not actually beleeve it And then there was little hope of salvation throughout the whole Christian World in the times of the Councells of Constance and Basile out of the Popes own Court which was then the only Noahs Arke The words of their Oath are these Hanc veram catholicam fidem extra quam nemo salvus esse potest c. This true catholick faith without which no man can be saved which I profess freely and hold truly in present I doe promise vow and swear by the help of God to retein and confess perfect and inviolated most constantly to my last gasp and will take care so farre as in me lyeth to cause it to be taught and preached to all that shall be committed to my charge If it were not necessary necessitate medii some
them To all these I have answered formerly in this Treatise and therefore now I shall touch them more lightly That the Roman Church is the Catholick Church he proveth thus because it is a company of Christians instituted by Christ spread over the World and intirely united in the profession of faith and communion of his Sacraments under his Officers And therefore he bids us out of St. Austin either give or take either receive their Church or shew one of our own as good This Argument is grounded upon a wrong supposition that the Catholick Church is a Church of one denonination as Roman or Grecian c. which we doe altogether deny as implying an evident contradiction Secondly we deny that the Roman Church including the Papacy in respect of which it challengeth this universality and to be the Foundation of Christian Religion and the Mistris of all other Churches is instituted by Christ or by his Church this is their own usurpation Thirdly we deny that the Roman Church is spread over the World Divide Christendome into five parts and in four of them they have very little or nothing to doe Perhaps they have here a Monastery or there a finall handfull of Proselytes But what are five or six persons to so many millions of Christian soules that they should be Catholicks and not all the others This was not the meaning of Saint Austin in the place alleged Date ni hi hanc Ecclesiam si apud vos est ostendite vos ommunicare omnibus Gentibus quas jam videmus in hoc semine benedici Date hanc aut furore deposito accipite non a me sed ab illo ipso in quo benedicuntur omnes Gentes Give me this Church if it be with you Shew that you communicate withall Nations which we see to be blessed in this seed It is not a few particular persons nor some hand-fulls of Proselites but multitudes of Christian Nations that make the catholick Church The Romanists are so farre from communicating with all these Nations that they excommunicate the far greater part of them Fourthly we deny that such an exact entire union in all points and opinions which are not essentialls of Christian Religion is necessary to the being of the catholick Church or that the Romanists have a greater unity among themselves or with others then sundry of those Churches which they have excommunicated Fiftly I deny that the Officers of the Conrt of Rome or any of them qua tales are either the Officers of Christ or of his Church And lastly if all this were true well might it prove the Church of Rome a catholick Church that is a part of the catholick Church but not the catholick or universall Church Still there would want universality To be spread through the Christian World is one thing and to be the common faith of the Christian World another thing Secondly he proveth that they did not exclude us but that we did separate our selves because England denyed the Popes sovereignty by divine right before the Pope excommunicated them And so though it was not perfectly Protestant yet it was substantially Protestant I take him at his word Then all the Eastern Northern and Ethiopick Christians are substantially Protestants as well as we for they all deny the Popes sovereignty either by divine or humane right Then all the world were substantially Protestants in the time of the Councells of Constance and Basile except the Court of Rome that is the Pope and his Officers Then we want not bretheren that are substantially Protestants as well as we in the bosome of the Roman Church at this day To seek to obtrude this spirituall Monarchy upon us was causall Schism to excommunicate us for denying it was actuall Schism To prove that we have departed from them in essentialls he only saith that we have left them simply absolutely nay wholy in the communion of Sacraments and publick worship of God and the entire profession of faith which are essentialls to a Church How often hath this been answered already That every Opinion which a particular Church doth profess to be essentiall is either an essentiall or a truth or that every abuse crept into the administration of the Sacraments is of the essence of the Sacraments is that to which we can never give asâ—ent Let them keep themselves to the ancient Creed of the Church as they are commanded by the Councell of Ephesus and we shall quickly join with them in profession of faith Let them use the ancient formes of administration of the Sacraments which the primitive Roman Church did use and we shall not forbear their communion in Sacraments Did the ancient Roman Church want any essentialls Or are the primitive Roman and the present Roman Church divided in essentials If they differ in essentialls then we ought not to joyn in Communion with the present Church of Rome If they differ not in essentialls no more doe we Thirdly he proveth that the other Patriarchates are not the Catholick Church not true parts thereof because they are divided in profession of faith in communion of Sacraments and in Church Officers Yea saith he it were dotage to think that the Catholick Church can consist of hereticall and schismaticall Churches as I cannot deny but they are except I will deny the thirty nine Articles of the Church of England to which I have sworn I answer that those Churches which he is pleased to undervalue so much doe agree better both among themselves and with other Churches then the Roman Church it self both in profession of Faith for they and we doe generally acknowledge the same ancient Creeds and no other and in inferior questions being free from the intricate and perplexed difficulties of the Roman Schools In point of Discipline they have no complaint against them saving that they we doe unanimously refuse to acknowledge the spiritual Monarchie of the Roman Bishop And concerning the administration of the Sacraments I know no objection of any great moment which they produce against them How should they when the Pope allowed the Russians the exercise of the Greek Religion It is true that they use many Rites which we forbear But difference in Rites is no breach of communion nor needeth to be for any thing that I know if distance of place and difference of Language were not a greater impediment to our actuall communion so long as the Sacraments are not mutilated nor sinfull duties injoined nor an unknown tongue purposely used How are they then schismaticall Churches only because they deny the Popes Supremacie Or how are they hereticall Churches Some of them are called Nestorians but most injuriously who have nothing of Nestorius but the name Others have been suspected of Eutychianism and yet in truth orthodox enough They doe not add the word filioque and from the son to the Creed and yet they acknowledge that the holy Ghost is the Spirit of the Son which is the
the Pope or his Office If Luther proceeded not in form of Law against the Pope it is no marveil I remember no process in Law that was between them He challenged only verbum informans not virgam reformantem Doe you think that if he or any other had cited the Pope to have appeared in Germanie or England he would have obeyed the Summons They might as well have called again yesterday Howsoever Luther's acts concern not us Their third objection is that we have quitted our lawfull Patriarch which argument he saith he will omit because we have spoken enough of that before Either I am mistaken or this is a fallacie of no cause for a cause The true cause why he omitteth it being not because we have spoken enough of it for he hath continually declined it but rather because he seeth that it is incompatible with that sovereignty and universality of Power which the Roman Bishops doe challenge at this day Let them lose the substance whilest they catch at the shadow But in the place of this he proposeth another objection which he calleth their most forcible argument against us which in brief is this No Church is to be left in which salvation is to be had but we confess that the Roman Church is a true Church in substance the true Church c. I cannot but observe what difference there is in the judgements of men for of all their objections I take this to be the weakest And so would he also if he would cease to confound the Catholick Church with a Catholick Church that is the universall Church with a particular Church and distinguish the essentialls of a Church from the corruptions of a Church and make a difference between a just reformation of our selves and a causless separation from others But be the argument what it will forcible or weak it hath been answered abundantly in this Treatise over and over again And therefore though he pleased I use his own expressions to say it often to repeat it often to inculcate it Yet I dare not abuse the patience of the Reader with so many needless tautologies He taxeth me for not answering some testimonies which he hath collected in a book of his called the Protestants plain Confession which he saith I have read and therefore I ought not to have dissembled them but perhaps I thought them too hard to be answered I confess I have read some of his books formerly but I deny that I have one of them in-present If I had doth he think it reasonable or indeed possible that in one Chapter I should take notice of all that hath been written upon this Subject I confess I have answered many impertinences in this Treatise but a man would not willingly go so far out of his way to seek an impertinence When I did read some of his Treatises I pitied the mispending of so much time in weeding and wresting of Authors of severall reformations who writ in the beginning of the Controversie between sleeping and waking Sometimes he condemneth us of Schism for communicating with them some other times he citeth them as our Classicall Authors and at other times from the different Opinions of the Sons of the same Church he impugneth the conclusion wherein they doe all accord As if I should argue this If the bread be transubstantiated into the body of Christ it is either by production or aâ—duction but such and such Roman catholick Authors doe deny that it is by produduction and such and such other Roman catholick Authors doe deny that it is by adduction therefore by the plain confession of Roman Catholicks there is no transubstantiation If I had omitted any testimonies of weight cited by him in this Treatise as he hath done the most of all my grounds then with better reason he might have called it dissembling He seemeth to me to take this course only to make his credulous Reader beleeve that there is more in his books then there is It is the Church of England which he hath undertaken to combate Let him not leave his chosen Province to seek out petty adversaries among strangers and think to wound the Church of England through their sides He needeth not to be so much abroad whilest he may have enough to doe at home He urgeth that there is no salvation out of the Church no more then there was out of the Arke of Noah howsoever or for whatsoever one went out That Noahs Arke was a figure of baptisme St. Peter doth assure us and it may also very fitly represent the Church but that is the catholick or universall Church and then we yeeld the conclusion that there is no salvation out of the Church But particular Churches are like severall Chambers or Partitions within the Arke of Noah A man might goe out of one of them untill it was cleansed into another without any danger The Church of Rome is not Noahs Arke but St Peters Boat The rest of the Apostles had their Boats as well as Saint Peter He beateth but the aire in citing Saint Austin and Saint Hierome against us who have neither left the Church nor the Communion of the Church He maketh our Church to be in worse condition then the Church of the Donatists because Protestants grant that the Church of Rome doth still retein the essence of a true Church but the Donatists did deny that the catholick Church of their time was a true Church Doth he not see that he argueth altogether against himself The Schism of the Donatists consisted therein that they did uncharitably censure the catholick Church to have lost the essence of the Church this was indeed to goe schismatically out of the Communion of the Church and on the other side this is our safety and security that we are so far from censuring the catholick Church that we doe not censure the Roman Church which is but a particular Church to be no Church or to have lost its Communion with Christ nor have separated from it in any essentiall of Christian Religion but only in corruptions and innovations Our Charity freeth us from Schism The uncharitableness of the Donatists rendred them Schismaticks It may be a good lesson for the Romanists who tread too much in the steppes of the Donatists What Calvine saith That God accounteth him a forsaker of his Religion who obstinately separateth himself from any Christian Society which keepeth the true Ministery of the Word and Sacraments Or that there may some vice creep into the Ministery of the Word and Sacraments which ought not to alienate us from the communion of a true Church Or lastly that we must pardon errors in those things which may be unknown without violaâ—ing the summe of Religion or without losse of Salvation or we shall have no Church at all doth not concern us who doe not dream of an Anabaptisticall perfection and upon this very ground doe admit them to be a true Church though imperfect who
have not separated our selves but been chased away who have only forsaken errors not Churches much lesse obstinately and least of all in essentials who would gladly be contented to winke at small faults so they would not obtrude sinfull duties upon us as a condition of their communion The same answer we give to Perkins and Zanchy cited only in the margent whose scope is far enough from going about to perswade us that we ought not to separate from the Church of Rome for which they are cited by him Rather on the contrary if they or any of them have been over rigorous towards the Church of Rome and allow it not the essence of a Church what doth that concern the Church of England Will he blame us for being more moderate Trust me these Authors were far from extenuating the errors of Popery He telleth us That they say unto us as Saint Austin said unto the Donatists If ours be Religion yours is separation They may rehearse the same words indeed but neither is Saint Austins case their case nor the Donatists case our case Sometimes they crie down our Religion as a negative Religion as faulty in the defect And now they accuse us of superstition in the excesse We approve no Church with which they communicate and we doe not Doctor Field saith that if they can prove the Roman Church to be the Church they need not use any other Argument It is most certain we all say the same But still he confoundeth the Church that is the universall Church with a Church that is a particular Church and a metaphysically true Church with a morally true Church Why doth he cite Authors so wide from that which he knoweth to be their sense In this Section there is nothing but crambe bis cocta a repetition of what he hath formerly said over and over of Protestants separating themselves from the whole Christian World in communion of Sacraments Only he addeth the authorities of Master Calvine Doctor Potter and Master Chillingworth which have already been fully answered He saith I indeavour to prove the lawfull Ordination of our first Bishops in Queen Elizabeths time by the testimony of publick Registers and confession of Father Oldcorne He knoweth better if he please that the first Protestant Bishops were not in Queen Elizabeths time but in Edward the sixths time If they were not Protestants they did them the more wrong to burn them for it The Ecclesiasticall Registers doe make their Ordination so plain that no man who will but open his eies can be in doubt of it He confesseth that Father Oldcorne did say our Registers were authenticall So must every one say or think that seeth them and every one is free to see them that will But Father Oldcorne was a prisoner and judged others by himself Yet neither his imprisonment nor his charity did make him swerve in any other point from his Roman Catholick opinions Why did he change in this more then in any of the rest Because there is no defence against a Flaile no resisting evident demonstration which doth not perswade but compell men to believe But wherefore were not these Registers shewed before King James his time They were alwaies shewed to every man that desired to see them Registers are publick Records the sight whereof can be refused to no man The Officers hand is known the Office is secured from all supposititious writings both by the Oath and by the honesty of him that keepeth the Register and by the testimony of all others who view the Records from time to time He might as well ask why a Proclamation is not shewed Which is first publickly promulged and after that affixed to the gates of the City and of the Common-Hall and all other publick places If he could have excepted against the persons either consecraters or consecrated as that there were not such persons or not so qualified or not present at that time he had had some reason for himself But Episcopall Ordination in England was too solemn and too publick an Act to be counterfeited And moreover the Proceedings were published in print to the view of the World whilest there were very many living who were eie witnesses of the Ordination And yet by his favour if there had not been so many Protestant Bishops there as there were it might have made the Ordination illegall but not invalid for which I will give him a president and a witnesse beyond exception The president is Austine the first converter of the English the witnesse Saint Gregory Et quidem in Anglorum Ecclesia c. And truely in the English Church wherein there is no other Bishop but thy self thou canst not ordein a Bishop otherwise then alone c. But when by the grace of God Bishops are ordeined throughout all places Ordination ought not to be made without three or four Bishops He asketh why Bishop Jewell or Bishop Horne did not allege these Registers when they were charged by Doctor Harding and Doctor Stapleton to be no consecrated Bishops I might even as well ask him when he citeth an authority out of Saint Austin why such or such an Author that writ before him upon that Subject did not cite it and thereupon conclude that it was counterfeit An argument from authority negatively is worth nothing Perhaps for I can but guesse untill he cite the places Doctor Stapleton or Harding did not except against the number or qualification of the Ordeiners but against the matter or form of their Episcopal Ordination Perhaps judging them to be Hereticks they thought they had lost their character which yet he himself will acknowledg to be indeleble Perhaps the accusation was general against all Protestants and they gave a general answer Perhaps they were better versed in the Schools then in Records or lastly perhaps or indeed without perhaps they insisted upon the illegality of their ordination in respect of the Laws of England not upon the invalidity of it as shall clearly appear in my next answer In all these cases there was no occasion to allege the Registers Why were they not shewed saith he when Bishop Bonner excepted against the said Horne at the barre What need had the Bishops to desire that their ordination should be judged sufficient by Parliament eight yeers after Now let him take one answer for all There was an Act passed for authorizing the Book of Common-Prayer and the Book of Ordination as an appendix to it to be used throughout England in the reign of Edward the sixth This Act was repealed in the time of Queen Mary and afterwards revived by Queen Elizabeth as to the Book of Common Prayer intending but not expresly mentioning the Book of Ordination which was an appendix to it So it was restored again either expresly under the name of the Book of Common Prayer as containing the publick Prayers of the Church for that occasion or at least implicitly as being printed in the Book of
counterfeit and if genuine whether Melancthons words be rightly rehearsed and if rightly rehearsed at what time it was written whether before he was a formed Protestant or after It appeareth plainly in the words here cited that Melancthon was willing to acknowledge the Papacy only as a Canonicall pollicy And so we doe not condemn it whilest it is bounded by the Canons of the Fathers But then where is their jus divinum or the institution of Christ Where is their absolute or universall Sovereignty of Power and Jurisdiction In all probability if these be the words of Melancthon his meaning was confined to the Roman Patriarchate which was all the Church that he was much acquainted with And that either these are none of his words or that they were written before he was a formed Protestant or that he intended only the Roman Patriarchate is most evident from his later and undoubted writings wherein he doth utterly and constantly condemn the Papall universall Monarchy of the Roman Bishop And lastly what Melancthon faith is only in point of prudence or discretion he thinks no wise man ought to dislike it We are not so stupid as not to see but that some good use might be made of an exordium unitatis Ecclesiasticae especially at this time when the Civill Power is so much divided and distracted But the quere is even in point of prudence whether more good or hurt might proceed from it We have been taught by experience to fear three dangers First when we give an Inch they are apt to take an Ell Tyrants are not often born with their teeth as Richard the the third was but grow up to their excesse in processe of time Secondly when we give a free Alms as Peterpence were of old they streight-way interpret it to be a tribute and duty Thirdly what we give by humane right they challenge by Divine Right to the See of Rome And so will not leave us free to move our rudder according to the variable face of the Heavens and the vicissitude of humane affairs These are all the testimonies which he citeth but he presenteth unto us another dumb shew of English Authors in the margent Whitakers Laude Potter Chillingworth Mountague besides some forreiners But if the Reader doe put himself to the trouble to search the severall places notwithstanding these titles or superscriptions he will finde the boxes all empty without one word to the purpose as if they had been cited by chance and not by choise And if he should take in all the other writings of these severall Authors they would not advantage his cause at all Bishop Mountague is esteemed one of the most indulgent to him among them though in truth one of his saddest Adversaries yet I am confident he dare not stand to his verdict Habeat potestatem ordinis directionis consiliis consultationis conclusionis executionis dellegatam Subsit autem illa potestas Ecclesia auferibilis sit per Ecclesiam cum non sit in Divinis Scripturis instituta non Petro personaliter addicta Let the Bishop of Rome have delegated unto him that is by the Church a power of Order Direction Counsail Consultation Conclusion or pronouncing sentence and putting in execution But let that power be subject to the Church let it be in the Churches power to take it away seeing it is not instituted in the holy Scriptures nor tied personally unto Peter To conclude the same advise which he giveth unto me I return unto himself Attendite ad Petram unde excisi estis Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn Look unto the Church of Hierusalem and remember That the Law came out of Sion and the Word of the Lord out of Hierusalem Look unto the Church of Antioch where the Disciples were first called Christians Look unto the other Eastern Churches in whose Regions the Son of Righteousnesse did shine when the day of Christianity did but begin to dawn in your Caosts Look to the primitive Church of Rome it self Whose Faith was spoken of throughout the whole World and needed not the supplementall Articles of Pius the 4 th Lastly look unto the true catholick oecumenicall Church whose Priveleges you have usurped and seek not to exclude so many millions of Christians from the hope of Salvation and the benefit of Christs Passion In whom all the Nations of the World were to be blessed This indeed is the only secure way both to Unity and Salvation to keep that entire form of Doctrine without addition or diminution which was sufficient to save the holy Apostles which was by them contracted into a Summary and deposited with the Churches to be the true badge and cognisance of all Christians in all succeeding ages more then which the primitive Fathers or rather the representative Church of Christ did forbid to be exacted of any person that was converted from Jewism or Paganism to Christianity And as many as walk according to this rule of Faith Peace be upon them and Mercy and upon the Israell of God FINIS A REPLIE TO S. Ws. REFVTATION OF The Bishop of DERRIES just Vindication of the CHVRCH of ENGLAND THE most of S. W s. Exceptions have been already largely and particnlarly satisfied in the fotmer reply to the Bishop of Chalcedon Yet lest any thing of moment might escape an answer I will review them and answer them generally and succinctly as they are proposed by him To his Title of Downe derry I have nothing to say but that it were strange if he should throw a good cast who seals his bowle upon an undersong Sect. 1. In the first place he professeth to shew the impertinency of my grounds and to sticke the guilt of Schisme not only with colour but with undenyable evidence upon the English Church by the very position of the case or stating of the question between us and this he calleth a little after their chief Objection against us what then is stating of the question and objecting all one I confesse the right position of a case may dispell umbrages and reconcile controversies and bring much light to the truth But as the lion asked the man in the Fable who made the picture we may crave leave to demand who shall put this case surely he meaneth a Roman Catholick For if a Protestant state it it will not be so much for their advantage nor the bare proposition of it bear such undeniable evidence in it I hope a man may view this engine without danger In the beginning of Henry the eighths raigne and immediately before his sustraction of obedience from the See of Rome The Church of England agreed with the Church of Rome and all the resâ— of her Communion in two points which were then and still are the bonds of unity betwixt all her members the one concerning Faith the other Government For Faith her rule was that the Doctrines which had been inherited from their forefathers as the legacies of Christ and his Apostles were solely
to be acknowledged for obligatory and nothing in them to be changed For Governement her principle was that Christ had made S. Peter first or chiefe or Prince of his Apostles who was to be the first mover under him in the Churth after his departure out of this world and that the Bishops of Rome as successeours of S. Peter inherited from him this priviledge c. A little after he acknowledgeth that â—he first principle includeth the truth of the second And that there is this manifest evidence for it that still the latter age could not be ignorant of what the former believed and that as long as it adhered to that method nothing could be altered in it Before we come to his applicarion of this to the Church of England or his inference from hence in favour of the Church of Rome it will not be amisse to examine his two principles and shew what truth there is in them and how falshood is hidden under the vizard of truth In the first place I desire the Reader to observe with what subtlety this case is proposed that the Church of England agreed with the Church of Rome all the rest of her Communion And again that the Bishop of Rome exercised this power in all those Countries which kept communion with the Church of Rome So seeking to obtrude upon us the Church of Rome with its dependents for the Catholick Church We owe respect to the Church of Rome as an Apostolical Church but we owe not that conformity subjection to it which we owe to the Catholick Church of Christ. Before this pretened seperation the Court of Rome by their temerarious censures had excluded two third parts of the Catholick Church from their Communion and thereby had made themselves Schismaticall The world is greater then the City all these Christian Churches which are excommunicated by the Court of Rome onely because they would never no more then their Ancestours acknowledge themselves subjects to the Bishop of Rome did inherit the Doctrine of saving Faith from their forefathers as the Legacy of Christ and his Apostles and have been as faithfull depositaries of it as they And their testimony what this Legacy was is as much to be regarded as the Testimony of the Church of Rome and so much more by how much they are a greater part of the Catholick Church Secondly I observe how he makes two principles the one in doctrine the other in discipline though he confess that the truth of the latter is included in the former and borroweth its evidence from it onely that he might gaine themoreopportunity to shuffle the latter usurpations of the Popes into the ancient discipline of the Church and make these upstart novelties to be a part of that ancient Legacy Frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora It is in vaine to make two rules where oue will serve the turne I do readily admit both his first and his second rule reduced into one in this subsequent forme That those doctrines and that discipline which we inherited from our forefathers as the Legacy of Christ and his Apostles ought solely to be acknowledged for obligatory and nothing in them to be changed that is substantiall or essential So the Church of England maintaines this rule now as well as they The question onely is who have changed that Doctrine or this Discipline we or they we by substraction or they by addition The case is clear the Apostles contracted this Doctrine into a Summary that is the Creed the primitive Fathers expounded it where it did stand in need of clearer explication The Generall Councell of Ephesus did forbid all men to exact any more of a Christian at his baptismal profession Into this Faith were we baptized unto this Faith do we adhere whereas they have changed enlarged their Creed by the addition of new Articles as is to be seen in the new Creed or Confession of Faith made by Pius the fourth so for Doctrine Then for discipline we professe and avow that discipline which the whole Christian world practised for the first six hundred years all the Eastern Sowthern and Northern Churches untill this day They have changed the beginning of unity into an universality of Jurisdiction and Soveraignty of power above General Councels which the Christian world for the first six hundred years did never know nor the greatest part of it ever acknowledge until this day Let S. Peter be the first or chiefe or in a right sense the Prince of the Apostles or the first mover in the Church all this extends but to a primacy of order the Soveraignty of Ecclesiasticall power was in the Apostolicall Colledge to which a generall Councell now succeedeth It is evident enough whether they or we doe hold our selves better to the legacy of Christ and his Apostles Thirdly whereas he addeth that The Bishops of Rome as successours of S. Peter inherited his priviledges and actually excercised this power in all those countries which kept Communion with the Church of Rome that very year wherein this unhappy separation began as it commeth much short of the truth in one respect for the Popes exercised much more power in those Countries which gave them leave then ever S. Peter pretended unto so it is much more short of that Universall Monarchy which the Pope did then and doth still claime For as I have already said two third parts of the Christian world were not at that time of his Communion but excommunicated by him onely because they would not submit their necks to his yoke And those other Countries which yielded more obedience to him or were not so well able to contest against him yet when they were overmuch pinched and his oppresons and usurpations did grow intolerable did oppose him and make themselves the last judges of their own liberties and grievancies and of the limits of Papall authority and set bounds unto it as I have demonstrated in the â—indication So whereas this refuter doth undertake to state the case clearly he commeth not neer the true question at all which is not whether the Bishop of Rome had any authority in the Catholick Church he had authority in his Diocesse as a Bishop in his Province as a Metropolitan in his Patriarchate as the chief of the five Protopatriarchs and all over as the Bishop of an Apostolicall Church or successour of S. Peter But the true question is what are the right limits and bounds of his authority whether he have a legiâ—lative power over all Christians whether the patronage aud disposition of all Churches doth belong unto him whether he may convocate Synods and exercise Jurisdiction and sell palles pardons and indulgences and send Legates and set up Legantine Courts and impose pensions at his pleasure in all kingdomes without consent of Soveraigne Princes and call all Ecclesiasticall causes to Rome and interdict whole nations and infringe their liberties and customes and excommunicate Printes and
deprive them of their Realms and absolve their subjects from their allegiance Let these pretended branches of Papall power be lopped off and all things restored to the primitiye forme and then the Papacy will be no more like that insana Laurus the cause of contention or division in all places In the mean time if they want that respect which is due unto them they may blame themseves who will not accept what is their just right unlesse they may have more Fourthly ' that which followes is a great mistake that it was and is the constant beliefe of the Câ—thelick world that these principles are Christs owne ordination recorded in Scripture What that S. Peter had any power over his fellow-Apostles or that the Bishop of Rome succeeds him in that power It doth not appear out of the holy text that S. Peter was at Rome except we understand Rome by the name of Babylon If it be Christs own ordâ—nation recorded in the scriptures that S. Peter should have all these priviledges and the Bishop of Rome inherit themashis successour thenthe great generall Councel of Chalcedon was much to be blamed to give equal prviledges to the Patriarch of Constantinople with the Patriarch of Rome and to esteem the Imperial City more then the ordination of Christ. Then the whole Catholick Church was much to be blamed to receive such an unjust coustirution not approved by the then Bishop of Rome Lastly this is so farre from the constant belief of the Catholick world that it is not the beliefe of the Roman Church it self at this day The greatest defenders of the Popes Supremacy dare not say that the Bishop of Rome succedeth S. Peter by Christs owne ordination but onely by S. Peters dying Bishop of Rome They acknowledge that S. Peter might have dyed Bishop of Antioch and then they say the Bishop of Antioch had succeeded him or he might have died Bishop of no place and then the Papacy had been in the disposition of the Catholick Church though he died at Rome as without doubt it is and may be contracted or enlarged or translated from one See to another for the advantage of Christian Religion His manifest evidence which he stileth so ample a memory and succession as is stronger then the stock of humane government and action That is that still the latter age could not be ignorant of what the former believed and as long as it adhered to that method nothing could be altered in it is so far from a demonstration that it scarcely deserveth the name of a Topicall argument For as an universall uncontroverted tradition of the whole Christian world of all ages united is a convinclng and undeniable evidence such a tradition is the Apostles Creed comprehending in it all the necessary points of saving Faith repeated daily in our Churches every Christian standing up at it both to expresse his assent unto it and readinesse to maintaine it professed by every Christian at his Baptisme either personally when he is of age sufficient or by his sureties when he is an infant and the tradition of the universall Church of this age a proof not to be opposed nor contradicted by us So the tradition of some particular persons or some particular Churches in particular points or opinions of an inferiour nature which are neither so necessary to be knowne nor so firmely beleeved nor so publiquely aâ—d universally professed nor derived downwards from the Apostolicalages by such uninterrupted succession doth produce no such certainty either of evidence or adherence When the Christian world is either not united or divided about particular opinions or inferiour points of faith it proveth most probably that there was no Apostolical tradition at first but that particular persons or places have assumed their respective opinions in succeeding ages Or otherwise there is a fault in the conduit-pipe or an errour and failing in the derivatton of the tradition And both these do take much away from assurance more or less according to the degree of the opposition In such questionable and controverted points as these which are neither so universally received nor so publiquely professed his assertion is groundless and erroneous that the latter age cannot be ignorant what the former believed Yes in such controverted points this present age may not know yea doth not know what it self beleeveth or rather opiniateth untill it come to be voted in a Synod The most current opinions in the Schoos are not alwaies the most generaly received in the Church those which are most plaâ—sible in one place are often hissed out of another And though it were possible for a man to know what opinion is universally most current yet how shall he know that the greater part is the sounder part or if he did how shall he know that what he beleeveth in such points is more then an indifferent opinion Or that it was deposited by the Apostles with the Church and delivered from age to age by an uninterrupted succession No waies but by universall tradition of the Christian world united either written or unwritten but this is all the evibence which they can expect who confound universall tradition with particular tradition the Roman Church with the Catholick Church the Christian world united with the Christian world divided and Scholasticall opinions with Articles of Faith Yet from these two principles he maketh two inferences the one against the Church of England that since the reformation neither the former rule of unity of Faith nor the second of unity of governement have had any power in the English Church Whilest he himself knoweth no better what we beleeve who live in the same age how doth he presume that the latter age cannot be ignorant of what the former beleeved I have shewed him already how we do willingly admit this principle wherein both his rules are comprehended that the doctrines and discipline inherited from our Forefathers as the legacies of Christ and his Apostles are solely to be acknowledged for obligatory and nothing in them to be changed This is as much as any person disinteressed can or will require And upon this principle we are willing to proceed to a triall with them There is a fallacy in Logick called of more interrogations then one that is when severall questions of different natures to which one uniforme answer cannot be given yea or no are mixed confounded together So he doth not onely set down this second rule concerning governement ambiguously that a man cannot tell whether he make S. Peter onely an head of order among the Apostles or an head of single power and Jurisdiction also over the Apostles but also he shuffles the Bishop of Rome into S. Peters place by Christs own ordination and confounds S. Peters Ex o dium Vnitatis with the usurped power of Popes as it was actually exercised by them in latter ages His second inference is in favour of the Church of Rome that the Roman Church with those Churches
ears and all evidence Nay Reader it is not I that about to force thee to renounce thy Eyes or Ears or thy evidence but it is he that is troubled for fear thou shouldest use thine Eies and Ears to look upon the evidence And therefore like the Priests of Cybele on purpose makes all this noise to deaf thine Ears lest thou shouldest hear the lowde cries of our laws Sect. 4. The scope of my fifth Chapter was to shew that the Britannique Churches that is the Churches of the Britannique Ilands were ever exempted from Forreigne Jurisdiction for the first six hundred years and so ought to continue His first exception to this is How the Britannique priviledges do belong to us Have we any Title from the Britannique Churches otherwise then by the Saxon Christians who onely were our Ancestors c. Yes well enough First VVales and Cornwall have not onely a locall but a personall succession No man can doubt of their right to the priviledges of the Britannique Churches Secondly there is the same reason for the Scots and Picts who were no more subjected to Forreign Jurisdiction then the Britons themselves All these put together Britons Scots and Picts did possess about two third parts of the Britannique Ilands after the Saxon Conquests were consummated Thirdly among the Saxons themselves the great kingdomes of Mercia and North umberland were converted by the ancient Scots and had their Religion ordination first from them afterwards among themselves without any forreign dependance and so were as free as either Britons or Scots and ought to continue so Fourthly throughout the rest of England a world of British Christians after the Conquest did still live mixed with the Saxons such as they had no need to fear such as might be serviceable to them as it commonly falle h out in all Conquests otherwise the Saxons had not been able to people the sixth part of the Land Who can deny these poor conquered Christians and their Christian posterity though mixed with Saxons the just priviledges of their Ancestours Lastly the Saxon Conquest gave unto them as good Title to the priviledges as to the lands of the Brittons so soon as they were capable of them And so at their first conversion they were free and continued free further then themselvs pleased to consent ought to continue free for ever Secondly he objecteth that this pretended execution of the British Churches is false For nothing is more evident in History then that the British Churches admitted appellation to Rome at the Councell of Sardica Before he can alledge the authority of the Councell of Sardica he must renounce his divine institution of the Papacy For that Canon submitteth it to the good pleasure of the Fathers and groundeth it upon the memory of S. Peter not the institution of Christ. Further how doth it appear that the Brittish Bishops did assent to that Canon This is meerly presumption without any proofe The Councell of Sardica was no generall Councell after all the Easterne Bishops were departed as they were before the making of that Canon Neither were the Canons of the Councell of Sardica ever received in England or incorporated into the English laws and without such incorporation they did not bind English Subjects Lastly this Canon is contradicted by the great generall councell of Chalcidon which our Church receiveth There appeareth not the least footstep of any Papal Jurisdiction exercised in England by Elutheri ns but the contrary for he referred the Legislative part to king Leucius and the British Bishops And if Pope Coelestin had sent S. Germain into Britain to free the Brittains from Pelagianisme or converted some of the Scots by Paladius as we have very little reason to believe either the one or the other yet it maketh nothing at all for the exercise of any Papall Jurisdiction in Britain Preaching and Converting Baptizing Ordaining are acts of the key of order not of Jurisdiction But these instances and whatsoever he hath in answer to the Brittish observation of Easter are pressed more home by the Bishop of Chalcedon and clearly satisfied in my reply to him Whither I refer the Reader But saith he that which is mainly to the purpose is that since this priviledge he meaneth the Supremacy descends upon the Pope as successour to S. Peter how far it was executed may be unknowne but that it was due none can be ignorant Words are but wind when they are utterly destitute of all manner of proofe We acknowledge the Pope to be successour of S. Peter and if he do not forfeit it by his own fault we are ready to pay him such respect as is due to the Bishop of an Apostolical Church but for any spiritual Monarchy or Universal Jurisdiction we know no manner of Title that he hath His pretence is more from Phocas the Usurper then from St. Peter And here though I know not this hereditary priviledge of the Pope descended from St. Peter there is no knowledge of that which hath no being and the burthen of proving it lyes upon him yet he taxeth me for leaving it and spending my time about the Popes Patriarchal power I observe how ready they are all to decline all manner of discourse concerning the Popes Patriarchal power And yet for a long time it was the fairest flower in their Garland I know not what is the Reason but we may well conjecture because they find that their spiritual Monarchy and this Patriarchal dignity are inconsistent the one with the other in the same subject They might as well make a King to be a Sheriffe of a Shiere or a President of a particular Province within his own Kingdom as make a spiritual Monarch to be a Patriarch And yet a Patriarch he was and so alwayes acknowledged to be and they cannot deny it Among other proofs of the Brittish Liberty I produced the answer of Dionothu to Austin no obscure person as he makes him but a man famous for his Learning Abbot and Rector of the famous University of Bangor wherein there were at that time above 2100 Monks and Students at the very close of the first six hundred yeares That he knew no obedience due to him whom they called the Pope but obedience of Love And that under God they were to be governed by the Bishop of Caerâ—eon This Record he calleth a piece of a worne Welch manuscript and a manifest forgery of a Counterfeit knave And to prove it counterfeit he produceth three reasons First That the word Pope without any addition is put for the Bishop of Rome which if our great Antiquaries can shew in these daies he will confess himself surprized I shall not need to trouble any of our great Antiquaries about it It will suffice to commit him and his friend Cardinal Bellarmine together about it I see friends are not alwaies of one mind Thus he Cum absolute pronunciatur Papa ipse solus intelligitur ut patet ex confilio chalcedonensi
give him leave to thrust in his head he will never rest untill he have drawne in all his body after whilest there are no bonds to hold him but nationall lawes Lastly he pleads that the pretences on which the English Schism was originally made were farre different from those which I now take up to defend it What inward motives or impulsives our Reformers had to separate from the Court of Rome God knoweth not I that concerneth themselves not me But that there were sufficient grounds of separation I demonstrate that concerneth the cause that concerneth me Their inanimadvertence might make the separation lesse Justifiable to them but no lesse lawfull in it self or to us These causes are as just grounds to us now to continue the separation as they could have bin to them then if they had been observed to make the separation and most certainly they were then observed or the greatest part of them as the liberty of the English Church the weakness of the Popes pretences the extortions of the Court of Rome their gross usurpation of all mens rights and the inconsistency of such a forreigne discipline with the right ends of Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction These things he ought to have answered in particular if he would have said any thing at all but it seemeth he chose rather to follow the counsell of Alcibiades to his Uncle when he found him busie about his accounts that he should study rather how to give no account Sect. 7. The next thing which I set forth was the due moderation of the Church of England in their reformation This he calleth a very pleasant Topick Quâ—cquid recipitur recipitur ad modum recipientis The saddest Subjects were very pleasant Topicks to Democritus The first part of our moderation was this we deny not to other Churches the true being of Churches nor possibility of Salvation nor separate from the Churches but from their accidentall errours and this I shewed to have been S. Cyprians moderation whereby he purged himselfe and his party from Schisme neminem judicantis c. judging no man removing no man from our Communion for difference in opinion This is saith he to declare men Idolaters and wicked and neverthelesse to communicate with them reconciling thus light to darkenesse and making Christ and Antichrist to be of the same Society I spake of our forbearing to censure other Churches and he answers of communicating with them That is one aberration from the purpose But I may give him more advantage then that in this case It is one thing to communicate with materiall Idolaters Hereticks or Schismaticks in their Idolatry Heresy or Schisme which is altogether unlawfull and it is another thing to communicate with them in pious offices and religious duties which may in some cases be very lawfull The orthodox Christians did sometimes communicate with the Hereticall Arreans And the primitive Catholicks with the Schismaticall novations in the same publick divine offices as I have formerly shewed in this treatise But they communicated with them in nothing that did favour the Heresie of the one or the Schisme of the other The Catholicks called the Donatists their brethren and professed that they were obliged to call them brethren as we read in Optatus But the Donatists would not vouchsafe to acknowledge the Catholicks for their brethren upon this refuters principles that a man cannot say his owne Religion is true but he must say the opposite is false nor hold his owne certain without censuring another mans Yet it was not the Catholicks but the Donatists that did mingle light and darkness together These following princlples are so evident and so undeniable that no man can question the truth of them without questioning his owne judgement That particular Churches may fall into errours 2. That all errors are not essentials or fundamentals 3. That those errours which are not in essentials do not destroy the true being of a Church 4. That neverthelesse every one is bound according to the just extent of his power to free himself from them To dote so upon the body as to cherish the Ulcers and out of hatred to the Ulcers to destroy the being of the body are both extreams That is so to dote upon the name of the Church as to cherish the errours of it or to hate the errours so much as to deny the being of the Church Preposterous zeal which is like Hell hot without light maketh errours to be essentials and different opinious different Religions because it will not distinguish between the good foundation which is Christ and the hay and stubble that is builded thereupon The second proofe of our moderation is our inward Charity we leave them unwillingly as a man would leave his fathers or his brothers house infected with the Plague desirous to returne so soone as it is cleansed His answer is that if we did manifest it by our externall works they might have occasion to believe it I did prove it by our externall works namely our daily prayers for them in our Letany and especially our solemn aniversary prayer for their conversion every good Friday though we are not ignorant how they do as solemnly anathematise us the day before The third proof of our moderation was this that we do not challenge a new Church a new Religion or new holy orders we obtrude no innovation upon others nor desire to have any obtruded upon our selves we pluck up the weeds but retaine all the plants of saving truth To this he objects two things First to take away goodnesse is the greatest evill and nothing is more mischievous then to abrogate good lawes and good practises This is not to fight with us but with his owne shadow I speake of taking away errours and he speaketh against taking away goodnesse I speak of plucking up weeds and he speaks against abrogating good lawes and practises yea of taking away the new Testament Where is the contradiction between us These are no weeds but good plants We retain whatsoever the primitive Fathers judged to be necessary or the Catholick Church of this present age doth unanimously retaine which is sufficient We retaine other opinions also and practises but not as necessary Articles or Essentials Let him not tell us of the Scots reformation who have no better an opinion of it then it deservs His second Ojection is that he who positively denies over addes the contrary to what he takes away he that makes it an article that there is no Purgatory no Masse no prayer to Saints has as many Articles as he who holds the contrary Therefore this kind of moderation is a pure folly It may be he thinketh so in earnest but we know the contrary We do not hold our negatives to be Articles of Faith How should a negative that is a non em be a fundamentall This is a true proposition ether there is a purgatory or there is not a purgatory But this other is a fals proposition either it is an Article
did the Sorban Doctours in former ages value the Court of Rome Now of late the Court of Rome have learned another method to purge their Doctours when they displease them It is a shrewd signe when men are glad to cut out the tongues of their owne witnesses Here he fals into a bitter invective against our bloody lawes and bloodier execution It is hard when they come to accuse us of blood guiltiness I could require him with a black list of murthers and Massacres to the purpose indeed the Waldenses alone might furnish me with overmuch store of matter whose first beginning is so ancient that it seemeth to me like the Spring head of Nilus scarcely to be searched out but innocent blood crieth lowde enough of it selfe without help I chuse rather at this time to use the buckler then the sword the accusation of them is no acquitall of us whatsoever he saith here against the Church or State of England for cruelty is clearly and satisfactorily answered in my Reply to the Bishop of Chalcedon whither I refer him Afterwards he telleth how unlucky I am in this Chapter that do absolutely clear their Religion of Calumny which Protestants most injuriously charge upon them that their Vassalage to the Pope destroyes their subjection to their Prince by citing so many instances where Catholicks remaining such have disobeyed the Pope Their Religion is the same with ours that is Christian and needeth not to be cleared from being a source of sedition or an incentive to rebellion It is not accused by us but the envious man hath sowed tares among the wheate No man can deny but that seditious opinions have been devised and dispersed and cherished in the Church of Rome in this last age which were destructive to Loyalty and due subjection to Princes and how some of our own countrey men came to be seasoned with these pernicious principles more then other nations I have partly shewed in the place alledged The instances by me cited in this chapter were before these poisonous opinions were hatched and so are alogether impertinent to that purpose for which he urgeth them They prove that those Roman Catholicks at that time were loyal Subjects they do not prove that all Roman Cathoâ—icks at this time are loyal Subjects that were to infer a general concluâ—iâ—n from particular premisses or to argue à minore ad majus affirmativè which is mere Sophistry But I shall readily grant more then he proveth and as much as he can seek with reason that those seditiâ—us doctrines were never generally received nor yet by the greater and sounder part of the Roman Church and that at this day I hope they are almost buried If ever God be so gracious unto us as to suffer us to meet together in a Councel or Assembly either of the Christian world or of the Western Church the first thing to be done were to weed out all seditious opinions both among them and us which are scandalous to Religion and destructive to all civil societies In the next place he fancieth to himself a platforme of the Christian Church That Christ being to build his spiritual Kingdom upon the Basis of a multitude of earthly Kingdoms saw it necessary to make a bond of unity betwixt the Churches that for this reason he gave the principality among his Apostles to St. Peter and consequently to his Successors the Bishops of Rome which one See mâ—ght by the ordinary providence of Almighty God keep a continuance of succession from St. Peter to the end of the world which the vicissitude of humane nature permitted not to all the Apostolical Sees Hence Rome is invested with the priviledge of Mother and Mistris of the Church and the hinge upon which the common government and unity of the Church depends which being removed the Church vanisheth into a pure Anarchy Excellently well contrived Sr. Thomas Moores Eutopia or my Lord Verulams new Atlantis may give place unto it What great pitty it was that he had not been one of Christs Counsellers when he first formed his Church Only it seemeth a little too saucy with Christ. Christians should argue thus Christ formed his Church thus therefore it is the best form Not thus this is the best forme therefore Christ formed his Church after this manner The old Hermite prayed to God for raine fair weather for his Garden as he thought most expedient for it and had his desire yet his Garden did not prosper whereas other Gardens which wanted that speciall priviledge prospered well his brother Hermite told him the reason of it Thou fool diâ—st thou think thy self wiser then God I wonder he did not go one step higher to make the Bishop of Rome universal Emperour also for prevention of Civil Wars and bloodshed among Christians and so he might have been Rex idem hominum dâ—vumque Sacerdos Now let us take his frame in pieces and look upon it in parcels St. Paul reckons up not one but seven bands of unity among Christians one body one spirit one hope of our calling one Lord one faith one baptism one God and father of all First one body What can be more prodigious then for the members of the same body to warre one wâ—th another One Spirit that is the Holy-Ghost which is the soul that enliveth the Church Can there be a better bond of unity to the body then the soul One hope of our Calling we must be all friends in Heaven Why do we bite and kick one another in the way thither One Lord by whose blood we are redeemed Should they pursue one another as mortal enemies who serve the same Lord One faith delivered by the Apostles do not adulterate it with new devises to raise contentions One Baptism we are marked with the same cogniscance we use the same word we fight under the same Standard why do we mistake one another for enemies Lastly One God and Father of all who is above all by his excellency through all by his providence and in all by the inhabitation of his grace Above all as Father through all as Son in all as Holy-Ghost for Christian to fight against Christian is to divide this one God and committe him against himself Among all these bands of unity why did St. Paul forget unus Papa one Bishop of Rome or spiritual Monarch If there had been any such thing here had been the proper place for it Secondly I will not dispute with him about this whether Christ did give St. Peter a principality among the Apostles so he do not rob Paul to cloath Peter but likewâ—se consent to me that this was but a principality of order and that the principality of power did râ—st in the Colledge of the Apostles there and now in their Successors a General Councel which is a sufficient band of unity as I have formerly demonstrated I wish this Refuter had expressed himself more clearly whether he be for a beginning of order unity or for
hath defined it most expresly And the words of that Councel seem to import no less that it is most manifest that the Bishop of Rome hath authority over all Councels Tanquam super omnia Consilia authoritatem habentem And for the latter opinion Bellarmine declares it to be most true quae sententia est verissima cites great Authors for it and saith that it seemeth to have been the opinion of the old Schoolmen That Bishops do derive all their Iurisdiction from the Pope as all the vertue of the members is derived from the head or as all the vertue of the branches springs from the root or as the water in the stream flowes from the fountain or as the light of the beams is from the Sun This is high enough Sect. 10. I answered that we hold communion with thrice so many Christians as they do He replyeth that if by Christians I mean those who lay claim to the name of Christ he neither denies my answer nor envies me my multitude for Manichees Gnosticks Carpocratians Arrians Nestorians Eutychians c. without number do all usurpe the honour of this title adding that he doth most faithfully protest he doth not think I have any solid reason to refuse communion to the worst of them O God how is it possible that prejudice and partiality or an habit of alteration should make Christians and Pastours of Christs flock to swerve so far not only from truth and charity but from all candour and ingenuity Wherein can he or all the world charge the Church of England or the Church of Greece or indeed any of the Easterne Southerne or Northerne Christians with any of these Heresies It is true some few Easterne Christians in comparison of those innumerable multitudes are called Nestorians and some others by reason of some unusual expressions suspected of Eutychianisme but both most wrongfully Is this the requital that he makes to so many of these poor Christians for maintaining their Religion inviolated so many ages under Mahumetan Princes Yet Michael the Archangel when he disputed with the devil about the body of Moses durst not bring a â—ailing accusation against him but said the Lord rebuke thee The best is we are either wheat or chaff of the Lords ffoare but their tongues must not winnow us Manes a mad-man as his name signifies feigned himself to be Christ chose twelve Apostles and sent them abroad to preach his errours whose disciples were called Manichees they made two Gods one of good called light another of evil called darkness which evil God did make impure creatures of the more faeeulent parts of the matter he created the world he made the old testament Hereupon they held flesh and wine to be impure and marriage to be unlawful and used execrable purifications of the creatures They taught that the soul was the substance of God that war was unlawful that bruite beasts had as much reason as men that Christ was not true man nor came out of the wombe of the Virgin but was a phantasme that Iohn Baptist was damned for doubting of Christ that there was no last Judgement that sins were inevitable many of which errours they sucked from the Gnosticks and Carpocratians The Nestorians divided the person of Christ and the Eutychians confounded his natures what is this to us or any of those Churches which we defend we accurse all their errors If he be not more careful in making his charge he will soon forfeit the stock of his credit He ingageth himself that if I can shew him but one Church which never changed the Doctrine which their Fathers taught them as received from the Apostles which is not in communion with the Roman Church he will be of that ones communion I wish he may make good his word I shew him not only one but all the Easterne Southerne Northerne and I hope Westerne Churches who never changed their Creed which comprehends all these necessary points of saving truth which they received from their Ancestors by an uninterrupted Line of Succession from the Apostles As for Opinions or Truths of an inferiour nature there is no Church of them all that hath changed more from their Ancestours even in these very controversies that are between them and us then the Church of Rome For the clear proof whereof I refer him to Doctor Fields appendix to his third book of the Church the first part of his appendix to four books at the latter end of the first Chapter I pleaded that the Councell of Trent was not general I had reason The conditions of a generall councell recited by Bellarmine are that the summons be generall there none were summoned but onely out of the western Church That the four Protopatriarchs be present by themselves or their deputies there was not one of them present That some be present from the greater part of all Christian Provinces there were none out â—f three parts of foure of the Christian world He saith the other Patriarchs were Hereticks Though it were true yet until they were lawfully heard condemned in a general Councel or refused to come to their triall and were condemned for their obstinacy they ought to have been summoned yea of all others they especially ought to have been summoned But where were they heard or tried or condemned of heresy by any Councel or person that had Jurisdiction over them Others of his fellows will be contented to accuse them of Schisme and not pronounce them condemned hereticks Guido the Carmelite is over partiall and tâ—merarious in accusing them without ground as some of his owne party do confesse and vindicate them And Alphonsus á castro taketh his information upon trust from him The plaine truth is their onely crime is that they will not submit to the Popes spirituall Monarchy and so were no fit company for an Italian Councell His demand Is not a Parliament the generall representative of the nation unlesse every Lord though a knowne and condemned Rebell be summoned or unlesse every member that hath a right to sit there be present is altogether impertinent Neither hath the Pope that power over a generall Councell that the king hath over the Parliament Neither are the Protopatriarchs knowne condemned Rebels Neither is this the case whether the necessary or neglective absence of some particular members but whether the absence of whole Provinces and the much greater part of the Provinces of Christendome for want of due summons do disable a Councell from being a generall representative of the whole Christian world And as it is impertinent so it makes altogether against himselfe Never was there a session of a nationall Parliament in England wherein so few members were present as were in the pretended generall Councell of Trent at the deciding of the most weighty controversy concerning the rule of Faith Never was there lawfull Parliament in England wherein there were more Knights and Burgesses out of one Province then out of all the rest of
Latins Hereticks and Schismaticks and principally upon this ground of the Popes claim of a spiritual Monarchy And that Gerson apprehended their words in this sense it may appear by the context His position is this that men ought not generally to be bound by the positive determinations of Popes to hold and beleeve one and the same forme of government in things that do not immediately concerne the truth of our Faith and the Gospel From thence he proceedeth to set down some different Customes of the Greek Latine Churches both which he doth justifie citing S. Austin to proove that in all such things the custome of the country is to be observed And among the rest of the differences this was one that the Greek Church paid not such Subsidies and Duties as the Gallicane Church did It seemeth that the Pope would have exacted them and that thereupon the Grecians did separate from him using this free expression potentiam tuam recognoscimus avaritiam tuam implere non possumus vivite per vos We know thy might we are not able to satisfie thy covetousness live by your selves And from thence the aforesaid author draweth this conclusion that per hanc consider ationem bene captam c. upon this consideration they might proceed to the reformation of the French Church and the liberties thereof notwithstanding the contradiction which perhaps some of the Court of Rome would make There is not one word or syllable herein that maketh against me but there is both the practise of the Greek Church the opinions of Gerson for the justification of our Reformation and Seperation from the Court of Rome FINIS Sect. 1. Three Essentials of a true Church Great difference between a true Church and a perfect Church Actuall want of essentials not conclusive to God Ch 8. Sect. 3. Particular Rites Formes Opinions no Essentials Schism is not always about esentials Schism is not a greater sin than Idolatry 1. Cor. 10.10.21 Aust. l. 1. de bapt c. 8. Opt l. 1. Aust. Ep. 48. ibidem 1 Tivi 2.17 There may be just cause of separation no just cause of Schâ—sm C. 2. S 6 Particular Churches may give just cause of separation C. 2 Sect. 4. Pref p. 20. Rom. 3.8 Inf. unmask ch 7. sect 112 p. 534. Lib. 2. cont ep Parmen e. 11. Sect. 2. Proâ—â—stans have forsaken no ancient Churches in Sacraments 1. Cor. 19 Math. 26.27 Sect. 3. The true cause of the separation of some Protestants Psal. 19. Essences of things are indivisible destroied by addition as well as subtraction How the Church of Rome is and is not a true Church 1 Cor. 13.12 Iohn 4.22 Eph. 5.26 We have not left the Roman Church in essentialls Con. eph p. 2. Act 6 c 7. Aust ep 118. Nor differ in substance from the Roman Church Aust y. 1. de hapt c. 8. It is not lawfull or prudent to leave the English Church and adhere to the Roman for fear of Schism The present Church of Rome departed out of the ancient Church of Rome Sect. 4. 1 Cor. 13.9 12. Iam. 2.1 To communicate with Schismaticks is not alwaies Schism Sozâ—m l 4 â— 19 The Church of England doth not communicate with Schismaticks 1 Cor. 1.2 11. c. 15 12. Rev 2.14 15.20 Sect. 1. Objections against the Church of England in point of Schisme are colourable not forcible Authors ought to be cited fully and faithfully Protestants conâ—esse no separation from the universall Church I hil c. 3 p. 132. c. 1 s. 1. Nor from the Roman but only in her errors 1. Pâ—t 4. 8. Phil 3 15. Sect. 5. Not the separation but the cause makes the Schism It is necessary to Salvation to forsake known errours C. 9. Sect. 5 Our reformation no separation 2 Gal 9. Aâ—t 30. Lawfull to communicate with the Eastern Churches Calv. epâ—st 141. Ratio ordinis discipline Fratrum Bohemo rum ibid. Calvin no enemy to Episcopacy Epist. ad Mart. Schaling Epl. ad Reg. Polo mae Calv. ep Impres Gen. an 1570. pag. 340. Ep. ad R. Polon 4 Inst. c. 18. sect 18. Doctor Potter cleared Ch. 9. Sect. 5. Ibid Sect. 2. p. 49. â—el l 2. de Eccl Mâ—l c 6. Aust de Veâ— Reâ— c. 6. Ibid. And Master Chillingwoâ—â—h p 245. p. 312. p. 191. 6.5 p. 273. Teâ—t L. 4 Cont. Don c. 23. c. 5. P. 302. As great differences among the Romanists as between them and the Eastern Churches or us C. 1. S. 13. Sect. 2. c. 2. s. 3. Whâ—thâ—r all those be Schismaticks who want Bishops The Romanists no fit persons to object Schism to Protestants c 2. s 6. 5. c. 2. s. 8. The Church of England had better grounds than personall faults of Popes Inf. c. 7 s Sect. 1. P. 8. P. 12. P. 16. All Schisme is not in essentials Bar. Annal an 878. Antimachâ—aveil in â—â—ist ad Lect. Errours in faith obtruded justifie a separation Sect. 2. Meâ—â—rall Schâ—sm 1 Iohn 3. 15. Rom 2 29. Sect. 3. Communion in all points of faith not necessary alwayes Sacraments purely and corruptly administred the same Sacraments Sect. 4. Schismaticks in part doe stâ—ll remain in the Catholick Church Aâ—â—t l. 1. dâ— bapt cont Donâ—istas Idemo 10 Aug. ep 48. R. C. his confession Sect. 5. The Britannick Churches never judged Schismaticks Sect. 6. What is the true Catholick Church Inâ—erest makes Catholickâ— with the Court of Rome Thâ—m a Iesu. cited by Doctor Field l. 3 c. 1. 〈◊〉 ibid. Babing upon Numbers c 7. Cam Annal Elis. An. 1560. Sect. 7. The Church of Rome is materially Idolatrous 1 Cor. 12.16 Bell l. 4. â—e Sac. Euch. c. 29 Speciall Faith is no Article of our Creed Rom. 8 33 Mark 16.16 Papists can pretend to no other Sacrifice then Protestants Bell l 1. de Mâ—sâ— c. 25. Sect. 8. 4 Waies to incurre hereticall pravity Bell. de Eccles. milit l. 3. c. 15. The Power of general Councâ—ls The Popes câ—nfirmation addes noâ—hing to general Councels Platina Acquiescence to the decrees of a generall Councell is necessary 1 Cor 9. Bell de Ro. pont c. 4. c. 2. Sect. 9. Mixt ordination The English Church lawfully established Not lawfully suppressed The English Church nor deaâ— But under persecution Sect. 10. â— 4. cont Cresion c. 61. Sect. 1. Protestants not Authors of the Schism Hiâ—t Conc. Trid an 1538. Sect. 2. The Parliament not compelled Camd. An. Eliz. anno 1559. Bishop Gardiner Speed in Hen. 8. c. 21 n. 1 c 5. De vera obâ—dientia in fine Archbishop Cranmer Speed Baker c. in Henr. 8. Image of both Churches second edition pag. 413. Sand de Schism pag 115. Sacrificio missae intersuit quotidie dum regnabat Henricus Crumwell Barnes Speed l. 9. c. 21. L 1. Cont. Parm. Papists are the right Heirs of the Donâ—rists not Protestants Opt. l 1. Cont. Par. inâ—initio Opt. l. 2. Cont. Parm. in initio Psal. 2. Roman Catholâ—cks sinnâ—d not against conscience in their sâ—paration Henry the eight no Protestant â—ul
Ecclesiasticall causes Hist conc Trid. An. 1544 An. 1545. An. 1548. The Oath of Supremacy justified Sand. de Schism p 59. De Schis Ang p. 57. Hail an 22. H. 8. Pol de Conc Resp. ad qu 74. 75. 1 Pet. 2.13 Aâ—t â—ccl Angl. Art 37. Memor de Samag Catholicâ— cap. 10. A Sancta Clara. Expos. Parapb in Art 37 Ibidem Sect. 2. No contradiction in my words Sect. 3. Constantine Ruffin l. 1. c. 2. Theodorit l. 1. c. 11. Euseb. de vita Constant l. 1. c. 35. Idem l 3. c. 23 Euseb. hist. l. 10. c. 5. Aust. epist. 162. Euseb hist. l. 10. c. 6. Socrat. l. 1. c. 22. Sozom l. 2. c. 27. Euseb. de vit Const. l. 1. c. 37. Theodor. l. 1. c. 19 Valentinian Theodosius Socrat l 7. c. 22. Evagr. l. 9. c. 12. Valentinian the elder Sozo l. 6 c. 7. Idem l. 6. c. 6. Theod. l 4 c 7 8. cod Thâ—od l 4. c. 5. In praemio l. 5. Basilius An. 869. Charles the great Albert Crantz metr l. 1. c. 7. Vindicat. c. 7. pag. 167. Epist. ad Ioan. 2. in Cedice Iustinian Sup. c. 4. sect 1. L 2. Cont. Petili c. 51. Sup c. 2. s. 4 infid unmasked c. 7 s. 112. p. 534. Indulgences The excommunication of Henry the eighth Sect. 2. Bâ—â— Pii 4. The Church of Rome no foundation of Christians Rev. 21.24 l. 2. de Pont. Rom. c. 12. 1 Pet 5.1 Sect. 3. The Church of Rome obtrudeth new Articles of Faith and excommunicateth for not receiving them An. 1564. An. 1569. The Papacy a cause of separation Bull. Pauli 4. The Pope excommunicates the Eastern Churches No Recusants in England or few in the beginning of Q Elizabeths reign The disclosing of the great Bull. Camd Elizab an 1â—70 Image of both Chuâ—ches edit an 1653 p. 442. Camd. Elizab. an 1559. More Protestants suffer now then Roman Catholicks at the Reformation Acworth Cont. Sander l. 2. p. 197. Sect. 4 Vind. c 6. s. A generall Councell complete without the Pope Greg l. 1. epist. 24 Bron. Annot in Conc. 5. The Decree of the Councel of Constance for its superiority above the Pope lawfail Sect. 1. Some Rom. Cath. formal Schismaticks The present Roman Church dâ—parted out of the ancient Roman Church And which is worse out of the Catholick Church Lib 2. Gent. Pet. c. 38. The Romanists true Donatists Ibid. Sect. 1. 2. The Roman Church not the Catholick Church L. de unit c. 6. If denyall of the Popes Supremacy maketh Protestants the World is full of Protestanns Our separation not in essentialls The Eastern Churches true parts of the catholick Church Sect. 3. The Councell of Trent not general Nor free Nor lawfull Hist Conc. Tâ—id l. 2. an 1545. The Protestants not condemned by the Patriarch of Constantinople but the Romanists 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Knolles Turk bist in the life of Am. â— p. 1503. Ib p. 1500. Sect. 4. Why R C. not willing to argue of the Popes Patriarchall Power Answ. to the pres S. c. 1. s. 1. 1 Pet. 3.20 The Church of Rome St. Petes. Boat not Noahs Arke Our charity freeth us from Schism Sect. 6. Cal. Inst. l. 4 c. 1. c. Sect. 5. Sup. c. 1. sect 1. Sect. 6. Our Ordination justified Greg. Resp. ad Int. 8. August Continuation of the Tuck Histin the life of Amurath 4. No diffrence about sacrifice if rightly understood Sect. 7. There are fundamentalls Hebr. 5.12 and c. 6.1 c. How much is necessary to be beleeved to salvation ordinarily All revealed truths not essâ—ntialls Ancient Popes challenged not sovereignty jure divino Of the Church l. 5. a c. 31. ad c. 36. L. 2 Cont. Iovin Sup. c. 5. sect 1. Cent. Epist. Theol. ep 74. A moderate Papacy might prove usefull but dangerous Mont. Orig. Eccles. part post p. 185. The Conclusion Epist. 161. Vind. ch 4. pag. 86. â—â— H 8. c. â—2 16 R. 2. c. 5. Malm. l. 1. de Gâ—st pont Aug. Reg. Honed in h. â— 20. H. 3. c. 9. Stat. Clarendo Stat. CarLile Art Cleri 25 Ed. 3. 37 Ed. 3. ch â— â—6 Rich. 2. c. â— Placit an 1. H. 7. Placit an 32. 34. Edv 1. Ch. 7. p. 196. Ch. â— L. 2. de Roâ— Pont. c. 3â— Act. 16. Britt histâ— L. 11. c. 3. Pag. 106 Dialog de Eccles. Mcne distinct 3. Nilus de primatis 1. Cor. 3.12 C. 3. Sect. 4. Sop. cap. 3. Sect. 4. Eph. 4.4 Eph. 5. â— Bernard de consider l. 4. De concil l. 2 c. 17. De concil l. 2. c. 13. De Roma Pont. l. 4. c. 22. 24 Judg. 6. Bellarmâ—ce concil l. 1. c. 17. Pag. 24â— Vind. pag 101. Gers. p. 4. Serm. de pace unit Cyril considerat â—â—