THE GRAND APOSTACY OF The Church of Rome From her Primitive Purity and Integrity WITH A VINDICATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND In her SEPARATION from Her AND The hazard of Salvation in Communion with Her Discoursed in a SERMON Preached at St. Mary le Bow London On Sunday the 28th of December 1679. By JOHN HILL Rector of St. Mabyn in the County of Cornwall LONDON Printed for Samuel Heyrick at Greys-Inne-gate in Holborn 1680. Rev. 18. vers 4. Come out of her my people that ye be not partakers of her sins and that ye receive not of her plagues c. I Am not ignorant how much revelation is necessary to understand this book of the Revelation and that Interpreters themselves need interpretation It was the modest and ingenuous Confession of the learned Arias Montanus That after thirty years studying the Scriptures with the help of the most Judicious Expositors yet he understood onely two or three Chapters of this Book and hence was wont to say That the Expositors were as difficult to be understood as the Text there being many Comments that may be more properly termed Obscurities than Expositions on the Revelation Yet though some things are laid down mystically in abstruse terms to exercise the Judgment of the wisest yet others are more familiarly expressed to succour the infirmity of the weakest Some indeed are such Depths wherein Elephants may swim but there are others such Shallows wherein Lambs may wade My Text is one of those through which an ordinary Ingenuity may wade neither are the words cloathed with those difficulties which are originally incident to other places of this book The preceding Chapter gives you a description of that Mother of Fornications the Whore of Babylon as she was represented to the Apostle in a Vision In the 16th verse he foretels her ruine and propounds the method of Gods severity therein in the certainty suddenness and inevitability of her destruction And in my Text cautions all Gods people to avoid her sins lest they smart by her punishment to come out of her idolatries lest they be wrapt up in her destruction In the words you have two things considerable 1. A Command Come out of her i. e. out of Babylon 2. The ground and reason thereof and that is twofold 1. lest ye be partakers of her sins 2. of her plagues The words need not much explication and I love not to make Truths plain in themselves difficult by my obscure handling of them It was the unhappiness of the School-men to ravel and ensnarl the plainest truths of the Gospel with their nice distinctions and perplexed abstruse notions wherein as Quintilian Orators Multa loquuntur sed nihil dicunt which otherwise might be wound off by an ordinary Understanding But what Explication they need you shall have in this short Paraphrase Come out of her Exite ex illâ mi popule 'T is not to be so much understood of a bodily departure in regard of a cohabitation and Presence as of a spiritual separation in respect of Faith and Religion Come out of her Judgment and Doctrine her Faith and Worship The words seem to be taken out of Jer. 51.6 Flee out of the midst of Babylon and deliver every man his soul be not cut off in her iniquity And Jer. 50.8 Remove out of the midst of Babylon and go forth And Isai 48.20 Go forth of Babylon flee from her i. e. depart from her Communion Recedite recedite as Junius and Tremellius read the words depart quickly come not near this Pesthouse as you would avoid Infection My people i.e. By singular care respect and affection my people by special favour and covenant you that have owned my Name professed Religion in the power and purity of it O go out of her defile not your garments by Babylon's Idolatries for if you touch her you will pollute your selves Out of her i. e. Babylon We finde particular mention of three Babylons in History 1. Babylon of Assyria standing on the River Euphrates where was the confusion of Languages and where the Jews were in Captivity which place is taxed in Scripture for Idolatry and other Heaven-daring Iniquities 2. Babylon in Egypt standing on the River Nilus and for distinction called Babylon Aegyptiorum thought to be aimed at by St. Peter 1 Epist 5.13 vers Out of the ruines of this arose that great City Cayr 3. Babylon mystical whereof Babylon of Assyria was a type and this is Rome which though the great Favourers of that corrupt Church have endeavour'd to cast all obscurities imaginable on this Interpretation yet without the least shadow of scruple is here to be understood and the Whore of Babylon is by all circumstances that State or Regiment of a People that were then the Inhabitants of Rome or did belong thereto But of this more anon That ye be not partakers of her sins Contract not her guilt which you may do by contriving for her complying with or conniving at her Idolatries Though you act not with them yet if you like love and approve of her Villanies 't is enough to make you partakers with her That you receive not of her plagues Ne in eâdem involvemini ruinâ lest you be involved in the same destruction For there are three things in every sin 1. There is actus qui transit 2. Macula quae manet And 3. Poena quae debetur The act is transient but yet reflects guilt and guilt bindes over to punishment And hence in the Original sin and punishment have one and the same name to note to us that where sin is in the Premises there destruction will be in the Conclusion From the words thus explained there result these four Doctrinal Conclusions 1. That Christians must be very careful lest they communicate with idolatrous persons 2. That those persons of all others who have owned and professed the Name of God asserted his Cause and born testimony to his Truth should be most careful of defiling themselves with idolatrous practices 3. That the Idolatry practised in the Church of Rome is a sufficient ground for our separation from her 4. That to partake of a peoples fin is to be involved in that peoples ruine I shall wrap up all these in this one Proposition That it must be the great care of all Christians who would not run the hazard of their Eternal Salvation to come out of Babylon to separate themselves from the Faith and Religion of the present Church of Rome In the prosecution whereof I shall do these three things 1. I shall shew that Babylon here is meant of Rome 2. What defection this mystical Babylon hath made from her Primitive Purity and Integrity 3. The Grounds of our Separation together with the impossibility of a Reconciliation For the first that Babylon here is meant of Rome is most excellently done to my hand both by Ancient and Modern Writers So that to say any thing after them were but to light a Candle to the
she can fulfil the Royal Law and so brave God in the face as if she needed no pardon from his hands O how sweet a Lesson is this to flesh and bloud even enough to make her run mad of Self-conceit 3. That of commending Ignorance as the Mother of Devotion And thus when they had taken away the Scriptures they set up Pictures in their room All their Religion is no other than a pack of Complements meerly outward and sensible adapted to the humour of their ignorant and sensual Votaries for homo est magis sensus quam intellectus to worship God in Spirit and Truth can no more be understood by them than an Eye can see Spirit How ridiculous are their superstitious Cuâ—toms Yet not to do what Fathers and Grandfathers have done is to profane their Canonized dust And indeed had not the Scripture foretold what an Eclipse would be upon the whole Church we should think it impossible that such ridiculous things should be taken up Because Christ is the Light therefore they have Light at Noon-day and because Christ said We must be like little Children therefore the Monks wear Cowls like childrens Swadling-clouts And one Pope made a serious Motion in the Conclave That he and his Cardinals might ride in a solemn day on Asses in imitation of Christs humility but the Conclave thought that the As too much rode the Pope already And thus you have had the several Instances and Causes of Rome Defection from her Primitive Purity and Integrity I now proceed to the third thing proposed to be shewn viz. III. The grounds of our Separation from and the impossibility of Reconciliation to that Church This I will consider 1. More generally 2. More particularly More generally and that by asserting these three things 1. The lawfulness of the Church of England's Separation from the Church of Rome 2. That this Separation the Romanists themselves cannot justly charge as Schismatical 3. That our Compliance with that Church is dangerous and borders on Ruine and Destruction I. The lawfulness of the Church of England's Separation from the Church of Rome The Church of Rome is confessed to be antient but not her Errours neither do we in any thing differ from her wherein she hath not departed from her self Here consider these two things 1. That the Church of Rome was never a Mother to our Church and we never had such dependance on her as the Romanists pretend we had Our Christian Faith came not from the seven Hills neither was it derived from Austin the Monk or Pope Gregory Britain had a worthy Church before either of them look'd into the world built on the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles And the account that Historians give of it is thus viz. That Christianity was propagated here immediately after the death of that Proto-Martyr St. Steven Which appears by divers passages out of Origen and Tertullian Gildas the Historian of our own Nation called Sapiens affimeth That in the time of Tiberius who died thirty seven years after Christ was crucified this Island of Britain received the Faith Some there are and not improbably who conjecture that St. Paul himself preached the Gospel here after his first Imprisonment at Rome which was quinto Neronis This is confirmed by a Passage of Venantius Honorius viz. Transit oceanum vel qua fuit Insula pontum Quasque Britannus habet Terras atque ultima Thule Beronius himself one of their own Authors cells us That he found it in a Manuscript in the Vatican Library that the Gospel was first preach'd in this Nation by Simon Zelotes and Joseph of Arimathea In what state Christianity stood afterwards appears not in any footstep of History till King Luoius time who is said to send to Eleutherius the then Bishop of Rome for some Pastors to instruct his People in the Christian Religion Fugatius and Damianus were the persons sent over with his Letters to the King which acquainted him That as Christ's Vicar he might settle matters for Religion a thing which his Successors will not now allow within his own Dominions And thus Christianity flourished for several hundred years here And notwithstanding all the affrightments of Pensecution that was then on the Church and the Heathen Princes spilt the bloud of the Christians like water yet those sanguine showers have ever since made the Church the more fruitful And in the Borders of this Island the Primitive Christian Religion had publick encouragement and profession even to the time of Austin the Monk who found here at his entrance one Archbishop seven Bishops and a Monastery at Bangor with twenty one hundred Monks in it So that several hundred years did intervene between the first planting of Christianity and Austin's coming hither I should not be so large in 〈◊〉 Historical Narrative but that I know 't is objected to us by the Romanists That we had our Religion from them and the Conversion of the English Nation was by Rome and her Agents We own that the Antient Roman Church was Sister to ours but no Mother there was neer Kindred but no Dependance But 2. Though we should grant them such a Dependance yet still we assert our Separation lawful because they have separated and departed from their first Purity We hold with the Antients from whom they are departed and we hold with them as far as they hold with Christ This will evidence it self if you consider these four things 1. That the Modern Papists maintain sundry Articles opposite to that which hath been formerly believed by the most eminent Doctors of the Roman Church as that of the merit of Condignity opposed by St. Bernard and Anselme and now defended by the Modern Jesuits Images at first were onely motivum objectum an inducing means to move people to adore the Samplar and no material Object of adoration which now is opposed by their present Church 2. Sundry Popish Assertions now obtruded are manifestly repugnant to the Teners of the Primitive Church as That the Popes Judgment is infallible That he is Lord over the whole World That publick Service doth bost edifie in an unknown Language That Lay-men must not read Scriptures c. 3. Many of their Opinions are improbable unreasonable and absurd as That the Scripture hath no greater authority to binde or loose the Faithful than the Church will That the definition of the Pope is as authemtiek as the facred Scripture That Fornication in the Clergie is a smaller offence than Marriage That to worship Images is meritorions With innumerable other such-like Absurdities 4. Some of our Adversaries more ingenuous than their fellows confess That we believe and hold the fundamental Truths of the Gospel the main and vital matter of Religion And if we do thus who is to be faulted the Church of Rome or the Church of England But herein she discovers her self to be that body of which Antichrist is the Head and that Whore and Mother of
and lose their name in this Thus much as to the Doctrinal part From what hath been said may naturally be inferred I. The impossibility of Reconciliation to such an Apostatiz'd Church I know there are some who think that there is little difference between the two Churches of England and Rome and undertake to shew us the several Advances the one hath made towards the other and these are either 1. Some Politick Romanists who hereby would extenuate the foulness of Popery or 2. Some ignorant and loose Protestants who live void of the knowledge and conscience of all Religion men who live tanquam poeniterent non pecudes natos as if they repented they were not made Beasts whose Reason is their burden and light of mind their offence who are so given up to their sensual Appetites as if they were all flesh and had no Spirit who rake up those heavenly Sparks their Souls in ashes never considering their original capacity and end or that Viaticum Aeternitatis provision that is to be made for them unto Eternity These men are moulded for Heathenish as well as Popish Impressions But if we rightly consider the Purity of our own Church and the Apostacy and Corruptions of the Church of Rome you will finde an impossibility of Reconciliation For rebus sic stantibus as the case is that Church must put off it self and cease to be what it is ere it can begin to be once again what it was for Substance Credit Fame Vertue and Honour have at once forsaken her and by long disuse have left her worse than naught Neither can we see how these houses can be repaired but they must be pulled down to the very foundations and then built from the ground But if there be any possibility it must come either from her self or others not from her self because she obstinately defends her Errours not onely with Tongue and Pen but with Fire and Sword and will not yield so much as that she can erre refusing to amend those notorious Abuses which by the moderate Verdict of her elect Cardinals are condemned and by the palpable Flatteries of her last and worst Parasites the Jesuits is grown not onely secure but more proud and arrogant than ever she was Can it be then from others How oft hath this been endeavoured to no purpose Rome may be sacked and battered as it hath often been by Military Forces but purged by Admonitions Convictions and Censures it will never be Now the impossibility of our Reconciliation besides these things I have already named ariseth from the pride and usurpation of the Head of their Church being armed with that Position That he cannot Erre This without hope of Reconciliation divideth Christendom and many other Doctrinal Controversies are subtilly kept on foot to be a Stalking-horse for this Adde to this their hatred against our Religion above all others Jews and Grecians are tolerated in Rome it self their Ceremonies Synagogues Services yea and Circumcision it self administred to the dead as well as to the living by which the Romanists declare themselves to be better friends to the Turks and Jews than to the Protestants not to insist on that detestable Virulence of their Tongues and Gall in their Ink against our first Reformers which hath not stayed there but broken out into their most barbarous Butcheries and cruel Bloud-sheddings They oblige the Consciences of Catholicks to a Separation from all our Ecclesiastical Assemblies are afraid that any of our Books especially our Translations of the Bible should be read in any of their Dominions and where they cannot turn will be sure to burn Protestants O the many miserable Massacres Canibal-like Conspiracies and tragical Murders that they have been guilty of Who are ignorant what Fierceness Fears and Fires were raised to consume the innocent bodies of the Saints living and dead and that in such sort as every corner of the Land seemed as hot as Nebuchadnezzar's Furnace even seven times hotter than it used to be wherein were to be cast whosoever would not fall down and worship the Image which that Romish Nebuchadnezzar had erected Now what Arguments can be used to perswade us of their Reconciliation to us either in the whole or in part of our Religion since they deem it no other than a peccant humour necessary to be purged out every few years either by Murder if it prevail in the Head or by Massacre if in the Body of any Nation And rather than it should not they will not stick with Blassius at the Commandment of their great Gracchus to set on fire the Capitol it self to lay hands on sacred Majesty and to imbrue them in his Royal bloud to subvert Religion to sacrifice our Lives Liberties and all to their ambitious Lusts and Revenge When then you are willing that your Souls shall be damned and Bodies destroyed then think of Reconciliation II. Let us now see our duty which is first to hate and oppose the Popish and to embrace and keep close to the Protestant Religion First Hate and oppose the Popish Religion Let the high praises of God be in our mouths and a two-edged sword in our hands to be avenged on that Scarlet Whore that Mother of Fornications that hath made her self drunk with the bloud of the Saints and Martyrs of Jesus They must be punished by us or we shall be so by them Let 's make no friendship with angry men much less with bloody men 'T is the greatest honour that can be put upon us to be Instruments of their destruction This duty respects us in whatever relations we are be we either Magistrates Ministers or private Christians The Magistrates by repressing those Perverters of our Faith and encouraging Protestant Principles and Practices 'T is not Reason of State but Ruine of State to gratifie those men who would rejoyce to see our Glory in the dust Ministers by preaching up the excellency of this way preserving the pattern of wholesome words and speaking the things which become sound Doctrine to take heed of their own mixtures and not adulterate the Doctrine of Faith to please men The beauty of heavenly Truths wants not the paint either of Humane or Heretical Additions The Babes of Christ must be fed with sincere Milk and the soreness of mens eyes must not hinder the Lights of the Church from shining And next by confuting Gain-sayers not onely have a voice to call their Sheep but to drive away Wolves one to establish Truth and another to oppose Errour one of their hands must work the other hold the weapon Their breasts should be Store-houses of Spiritual Armour be furnished with skill in Scripture in which they should be mighty and in the writings of men even of Hereticks themselves to beat them with their own weapons to kill Goliah with his own sword Are we in the lower Orb of private Christians We must oppose this many-headed Monster and that 1. By confuting the debauched Romanists with the Language of our heavenly
Abominations Thus in these two things you see our Separation lawful II. Now secondly I assert this Separation to be so lawful that the Romanists themselves cannot justly charge it as Schismatical I say justly though Stapleton Sanders Bellarmine and other Romanists brand our Separation from them with the odious name of Donatism and Schism because it is evident out of St. Augustine that as the Donatists never objected any thing against nor could blame any thing in the Church from which they separated either for Faith or Worship So they of the Church of Rome cannot justly blamo us for departing from them if we consider these two things 1. The manner how we separated 2. The ground for which we separated 1. The manner This was not uncharitable rash heady and â—…advised not before all means were used for the cure of the Romanists by the discovery of their errours notwithstanding which they still persist in them Our famous and learned Reformers would have healed Babylon but she would not be healed Many skilful Physicians have had her in hand but she grew so much the worse and instead of being reclaimed by them hath anathematized them with the most dreadful Curses excommunicated murdered and destroyed multitudes of them Nay more they were denied civil and religious Communion with her unless they received the beasts mark in their hands or foreheads All which considered we might safely forsake her nay could not safely do otherwise therefore Come out of her my people 2. Consider the ground and cause as well as the manner of the Separation which was not for some slight and tolerable Errours but damnable Heresies and gross Idolatries the Heresies fundamental and the Idolatries such as those who hold Communion with her cannot but partake of her sins If then to thrust Jesus Christ out of the Chair and place the Pope as infallible Doctor of the Church in it if to reject the Scriptures and set up Traditions if to take off Jesus Christ from being sole Mediator and thrust in Saints and Angels if to raze the second Commandment and introduce Image-worship be damnable Heresies and gross Idolatries then the Church of Rome is gullty of them and our Communion on this very account is expresly forbidden See 2 Cor. 6.14.17 What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness and what communion hath light with darkness c. vers 17. Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate Our Adversaries themselves grant That in whatever Church any of these depravations are found Communion with it is to be broken off as dangerous and damnable which brings me to the third thing asserted viz. III. That our Compliance with this Church is dangerous and borders upon eternal Ruine This will appear if you consider this Church under these destructive circumstances 1. In her gross Idolatry and no Idolater shall ever enter into the kingdom of heaven look on her Image-worship Invocation of Saints Adoration of the Hoast what is all this but plain Idolatry The second Commandment not onely prohibits this sin but threatens a severe punishment to such sinners The wiser sort of the Heathens condemned the Worship of God by Images as incongruous to the divine nature and an horrid reflection on the Deity The old Romans as Varro tells us had no Images for a hundred and seventy years in their Divine Worship The Primitive Christians would rather die than defile themselves with Images Antisthenes condemns the use of them for Instruction because there is so great dissimilitude between God and any visible representation of him that no man can learn any thing of God from an Image And as for their common distinction of not worshipping them â—erminativè but relativè it 's vain and ridiculous And pray observe this viz. that their worshipping of Images came in with the decay of their Piety 2. In that Enmity and Opposition the Romanists have to the sacred Scriptures those lively Oracles of the living God and so consider 1. How they complain against them as not containing all things needful for Salvation that the best part of Religion is left out of them and onely made known to us by their unwritten Traditions 2. They forbid the people to read them and will not have them translated in the Mother-tongue of any Nation And if once as some of them boast they could get us out of Scriptures into Councils and Fathers they should do well enough with us 3. They make the Pope Judge over the sence of Scripture and forbid all other Interpretations but what agree with the Church and Pope of Rome 4. Their Mouths have been open against them and have belched forth bitter and blasphemous Invectives against them How often do they call the Scripture dead Ink and a dumb Judge that it is not Regula regulans but Regula regulata not made to rule our Faith but our Faith to rule it that it is not simply necessary and it receives all the Authority it hath from the Church and from Tradition without which it is of no credit at all What horrid Blasphemy is this Doth not God command us to consult his Oracles to apply our selves unto the Law and to the Testimony Isa 8.19 20. and makes it a renunciation of our Allegiance to him to go any where else for Counsel or Direction than to the written Word But we know wherein the insufficiency of the Scripture lyes they are sufficient enough for God's ends but not for the Pope's ends they are able to furnish every Christian in the world with Wisdom enough how he should save his Soul but they are not so useful to the Pope's triple Crown this Armory furnisheth him with no Artillery to defend the Lordly Power and God-like Infallibility that he claims and this is the only defect he charges them with To supply which the rabble-rout of Traditions is brought into the Church this way their fine Wits with the Devils help have taken that the Scripture may be declared as insufficient and uncertain minima particula revelatae veritatis as one of them impudently writes and so it needs the patchery of their Traditions to make it perfect Just as Andronicus served the Emperour Alexius who gave out that he was weak and insufficient to govern alone and so first got a joynt power with him and at last an absolute power over him to dethrone him And whether their Traditions have dealt better with the Scriptures let the world judge when These go up the Scriptures go down That we may say to them as Christ said to the Pharisees Mat. 15.6 You have made void the Commandments of God by your Traditions you have unlorded as the Septuagint renders it and supplanted its authority in the minds of men who leave Gods Word to hearken to your Traditions 3. Consider farther that most parts of Popery are directly absurd and offer violence to common Sense and the very light of Nature For who can rationally conceive That it should be the Popes right