but upon the conditions which pleases himself Which answer likewise serves for all Hospitals and such like pious Houses founded by the King The third example of the Abbot of Buries exemption by the King is Recorded without particular circumstances and so must stand for an example of the Kings execution or command to the secular Magistrate to proceed accordingly but proves nothing That the King did it without consent of the Bishop under whom it was These are all the cases of secular exemptions produced by that learned Lawyer which you see are pure examples of the Kings exempting either with the Bishops consent or by title of asking what conditions he thought fit to annex to his own Liberalities as every private person may or at most alleaged so abstractedly that any of these or many other causes may justly be supposed to have intervened But I mistake there is yet one more to which the Doctor thought good to give a particular efficacy by citing the very words of the Charter which are these Hoc regali authoritate Episcoporum ac Baronum attestatione constituo I appoint this by my royal Authority with the attestation of my Bishops and Barons But had the Doctor remembred he had named this King before William the Conqueror he would have understood that Regali Authoritate signified as much as in the first of Kings doth that famous phrase Ius Regis that is the power of the sword the power of taking away any mans goods and giving them to another the power of doing all wrong as is not onely known of the Conquerors other proceedings but even out of this fact taking the goods of a Bishop and the provision ordained for Souls and attributing them to an Abbey And this by the very words of the Charter without any course of Law or consent of any Justice or power in the Commonwealth So that our Doctor has brought us in a very special example for Henry the Eighth the worst of his Successors to imitate and justifie his Spiritual Authority by To that which he affirms of the Chatholick German Emperors the Kings of France and England that they claimed to be founders of all Bishopricks in their Dominions and Patrons of them to bestow them by investiture I answer they did very well to found as many as they pleased that is to enrich and enlarge the Church with Episcopal Revenues by their pious Donations and when they have done to claim deservedly the Advowsons and present whom they please to be invested by the Church whom yet if they be found unworthy the Church rejects notwithstanding the Kings presentation and authority and consequently this is done by the consent of the Church Neither is this annexed to the Kingly dignity onely as a particular badg of his Authority over the Church but even private Subjects when either themselves or their Ancestors have founded some Ecclesiastical Benefice challenge to themselves the Advowsons without any prejudice to the Church who allows it reasonable that the Friends of the Donors should rather enjoy that benefit then others Unless perhaps the persons be found unfit which in that case obliges the Church to use her Authority by interposing her resusal This therefore private persons can do as well as Kings and yet I hope the Doctor will not say That all those are Lords and Heads of the Church Lastly he might as well have made mention of the Pope and Clergies ressistance to Kings that usurped the investitures as of the others claiming of them both being equally notorious in History and the Princes in the end having yeelded that their pretence was unjust Next he tells us the Kings of France and England claimed a just right that no Legate from Rome could use Iurisdiction here without their leave What a terrible business is this Or what follows hence None can imagine but the Dr. himself who certainly had some meaning in it or other They did so indeed and so do Catholick Kings sometimes to this day who yet communicate with the Church and are accounted obedient sons as long as they proceed with due moderation But that they did it in disacknowledgment of the Popes Supremacy or that the Legate brought not his Jurisdiction with him from Rome but was glad to receive it of the King ere he could use it this the Doctor will never be able to make good Nay they were so far from denying the Popes Authority even in this kinde That our Kings of England procured of the Pope that the Archbishop of Canterbury should be Legatus Natus But now the Doctor hath resolved me of my former doubt which was with what art possible he could make these imperfect Testimonies serve his purpose adding here immediately these words All these put together are a foundation for this power of the Princes to erect or translate a Patriarchate As if he should have said Though there be not one word in any single Testimony expresly manifesting That it is principally the Kings power or excluding the Churches yet I have produced many things little to the purpose if considered in their single selves which notwithstanding I would intreat you to believe that ALL THESE PUT TOGETHER ARE A FOUNDATION c. Where note that here again also he observes his former invincible method of reserving his strongest Arguments till the last putting immediately before his Conclusion That the Legates were often not admitted in England so as out of the very non-admission of the Legates the Doctor infers an absolute power in Princes to erect and translate Patriarchates Besides were all this granted what is it to your or our purpose since we accuse you not of Schism for breaking from the Popes subjection as a private Patriarch but as the chief Pastor and Head of the Church But because the Doctor could not handsomly transfer this Primacy from Rome to Canterbury to secure him from the subjection to Antichrist therefore he was pleased to mistake it all along this Chapter for a Patriarchate and then undertakes to shew from some few Testimonies de facto That it was not the Churches but the Kings Authority to erect and translate them Whereas besides the answers in particular already given no prudent man can doubt but in the process of fifteen or sixteen hundred years and in such a vast extent as the Christian world there may be found twenty or thirty matters of Fact if one will take Histories to collect them either out of ambition ignorance rebellion or tyranny against the most inviolable right that can be imagined Besides many things might often be mentioned by Historiographers as done without particularizing the Authority by which they were done Especially in our case where by reason of the connexion between the Soul and Body of the politick world the Ecclesiastical and Secular State they seem to act as one thing The Temporal Authority most commonly putting in execution the intentions of the Church And this also makes them appear more visibly
in the 23 Section that this is affirmed and intended by Balsamon to all Canons in general as the judgement of learned men in his notes on the sixteenth Canon of the Council of Carthage hath already been answered and shown that it is not Balsamon who affirms it but other men neither doth he call them learned men as the Doctor here imposes on him but onely says that some men say the Emperor can do such and such things And he adds that those persons proceed upon this ground that the Emperor may do lawfully whatever he lists His last Paragraph for which as his former custom was he reserves the best of his strength proves that this right of Kings to be head in Ecclesiastical affairs cannot be alienated by prescription The testimony he introduces is of one Sayr a late Monk who wrote his Book at Rome a man likely to speak much in the Doctors behalf whose opinion in case he should say any thing against us being but of a private Casuist may with the like facility be rejected as alleadg'd But what says honest Sayr he tells us that when prescription is neither of the Law of Nature nor the divine Law nor the Law of Nations but onely the civil and Canon Law there it extends no farther then every supreme Prince in his Realm by his Law is supposed to will that it shall be extended and therefore that no subject can prescribe exemption from making appeal to his King or that his Prince may not punish him when Reason and Iustice requires Let the testimony it self be what it will what was the Doctor dreaming on when he produced it Marry he dreamt two things First that the Pope had heretofore prescribed against the Kings of England in their pretended right of being head in Ecclesiastical matters next this prescription of the Pope hath not its force from any thing but a Canon or Civil Law These two points the Doctor dreamingly supposes to be certain principles and it is discourtesie in us not to grant them gratis for fear we should spoil his learned Conclusion What a shame is this for a Doctor of Divinity whereas every boy that hath been but two years at Cambridge knows he is first to establish his premises firmly ere he can claim any certainty of truth in his Conclusion to suppose his premises true and upon that grant kindly made by himself to himself conclude at pleasure what he lists And what an unconscionable piece of affected ignorance is this to bring a Testimony which could not possibly be applyed to his purpose without proving the two former self-made suppositions and yet to neglect that necessary task and conclude in these vain words It were easie to apply this distinctly to the confirming of all that hath been said but I shall not expatiate It is now become an old excuse with the Doctor to cry he is out of his way when he comes to a passage he cannot get over but all-to-be-labours things frivolous and which his self-laid grounds once supposed would be out of question Thus you see an end of his sixth Chapter which was totally built upon this ground that the Authority of Head of the Church was no more then Patriarchal and consequently needed in rigour of dispute no other reply but onely to deny the supposition and bid him prove it What has been answered to each particular was onely to let the Reader see how inconsequently and weakly he builds even upon his own foundations SECT 8. A Reply to Doctor Hammonds Narrative Confession of his Schism THe Doctor having laid his tottering grounds for the Kings Supremacy in Ecclesiastical affairs by alleadging some Testimonies expresly against himself and his cause and not one expresly for them but what his fellow-schismaticks afforded him Next having supposed upon his own strongly-dreaming imagination without one direct place of any Authentick writer against clouds of most plain Testimonies from Fathers and Councils frequent in our Controvertists and not touched by him in way of answer against the most visible practice and universal belief of the whole Catholick world that the Pope is onely a private Patriarch and hath no right of Jurisdiction over the universal Church And lastly out of a few Testimonies witnessing de facto that Kings did erect and remove Patriarchates without any word excluding the Churches precedent orders having concluded that such a power belonged de jure to Kings and was annext to a Crown These three things most gravely supposed he goes about to clear the Church of England from the imputation of casting off obedience to the Bishop of Rome at the Reformation which is the intent of this Chapter But first he lays down at large the whole history of Schism ommitting onely the main things that might disgrace it and by what degrees or steps this miserable Kingdom and Church came to renounce the obedience to those Ecclesiastical superiors who had by their own confession for eight or nine hundred years steered that-then-secure Barque in a calm unity of Faith and which Authority all the then present world except King Henry's now friend but late Antagonist Luther acknowledged and submitted to First he tells us this was done by the Clergy in a Synod recognizing the King to be supreme Head of the Church of England Secondly By their submitting themselves to the King and thirdly the definition of the Universities and Monasteries after debate that the Pope had nothing to do more in England then any other extern Bishop that is nothing at all And all this in this sort concluded subscribed and confirmed by their corporal oaths which word corporal was well put in for their Souls and Consciences never went along with it was afterwards turn'd into Acts of Parliament in which it was resolved upon the question to defie the Pope and all his works In answer to which though a bare narration how a Schism was made deserve none yet to devoid it of al excuse it may pretend to I object first that it did not originally spring from Conscience no not even an erroneous one but from manifest malice and viciousness Next that the Kingdoms assent to this il originiz'd breach was not free And thirdly that though both these were granted yet this act of theirs so largely laid out by Doctor Hammond is truly and properly a Schism and entitles them schismaticks nay the more the Doctor dilates upon it the more schismatical he makes the breach of which the two latter himself though never so loath must acknowledge unless he will deny his own words To begin with the first all the world knows that till King Henry violenced the breach all England both Clergy and Laity were as equally and as peaceably conjoyned to the Catholike Church under the government of her supreme Pastour the Bishop of Rome as either France or Spain are now neither did they ever express any scrupulosity that they had remained under such a Government ever since the Conversion of their first Fore-fathers nor were scandalized at the then received Doctrine of the Church holding as a point of Faith that the Pope was
be rendred that the Government was injust ' which as you see could not Irrational therefore was that present perswasion of theirs and if so not sprung from reason therefore from unreasonable passion that is from vice therefore sinful and obnoxious to punishment as all other like perswasions are which make men think and act against their duties and obligations Besides all the Logick we have hitherto heard assures us nothing can convince the understanding but evidence and therefore men take so much paines about the moods and figures that the discourse may prove evident wherefore whatsoever assent comes not out of Evidence must come from our will and wilfulnesse and by consequence cannot be free from desert of punishment if it happen to be wrong and wrongfull Neither availes it to pretend invincible ignorance since no man living if free from a proud spirit can be so sottish as not to know that it is his obligation to obey his Superiors so long setled in the possession of their command till most open and undeniable Evidences and not seeming ones onely should discover that Authority null And if the obligation be of belief he must condemn the Churches judgment in not seeing the falsity of her doctrine and prefer his own before millions more learned who liv'd and dy'd in that faith which savours too strong of a self-conceited pride or else imagin so little sincerity left in the Church that all see and wilfully adhere to a known falshood but himselfe which is a plain sign of a rash and Pharisaical presumption And are not those punishable yet the Doctor would stroke such a fellow on the head and give him sugar plums for following his present perswasion and self-conceit which he nicknames conscience Nay he highly applauds his first Reformers whose conscience no doubt was tainted with the same leaven The Material Schism then which was manifestly your fact is made formal by your want of evidence that the doctrine was erroneous and consequently her Government violable Both which joyn'd together give you in plain termes your own name of flat proper and formal Schismaticks and entitle you to all the bed-roll of vices and curses which you hoarded up for your self and your friends in your first Chapter SECT 11. The Doctors argument that the Popes power in England was deriv'd under the Kings Concession refuted BUt it is now high time to returne to overlook the work who after the declaration of the matter of fact confesses no great hold can be taken from the freeness of the Clergy's determination and therefore the whole difficulty devolves to this one enquiry whether the Bishop of Rome were Supreme Head or Governour of the Church of England in the reign of King Henry the eighth That is we are come about again to the beginning of the Book But I am mistaken he tells us he hath largely disproved in his Chap. 4 5 6. all pretensions from St. Peters Supremacy and from Englands Conversion to whose particular answers I refer the Reader for full satisfaction and he has now invented a new ground of the Popes Supremacy in England to wit the voluntary Concession of our Kings What the Doctor meanes I cannot imagine Some particular priviledges and as I may say pious curtesies have out of a special respect been granted by our Kings to that See to whom they owe their first knowledge of Christ and his Law but these are not the thing in debate The right of Supreme Authority is our question now who ever held this to come from the Concession of our Kings Yet this ayr-beating Champion of Schism first fancies this to be our tenet and then beats it all to dirt He is as valiant as Sir Iohn Falstaff let him tell his own story and hee 'l make you beleeve he has kill'd eleven Enemies when but one opposed him We onely found the Popes Primacy upon his Succession to St. Peter This is the onely adversary-point the Doctor is to combate which he hath most weakly opposed with grosse mistakes palpable contradictions to Scripture and pinning all the words that made for his purpose to every testimony as hath been shew'd But to counterfeit a triumph he makes every trivial thing done either by or about the Pope to be the very ground of his Primacy and then falls to work and impugnes them as really as if he thought we held them The Pope cannot doe any good action or convert a Nation but that must be the ground of his Universal Pastorship over us and be impugned accordingly A beggerly penny cannot be given to the Pope by our Kings for pious uses and out of a gratefull obligation but the poore Peter-pence and such like petty grants must presently be the Popes Universal Authority given him by the Concession of our Kings and that as such must be impugned The Kings of England France c. cannot be said by G de Heimburgh to be free from swearing obedience to the Pope at their instalment an obligation peculiar to the Empire of Germany but presently the Doctor concludes hence an absolute power in our Princes I suppose he means in Ecclesiastical matters for in temporal none denies it so as now the very ceremony of swearing obedience to the Pope is become the very granting of the formal universal Pastorship and they that doe it not are concluded to be free from the Popes Jurisdiction though he knows well enough that the King of France who as he confesses performes no such ceremonious courtesie towards him acknowledg'd notwithstanding himselfe subject to him as the Head of Gods Church Lastly which he touches here againe he cannot read in some Authors that Kings de facto executed the erecting and removing of Patriarchates though the testimony doe not exclude the Churches fore ordering it but presently the Popes Universal Power must be supposed to be transdignifi'd into a private Patriarchate and as a Patriarchate impugned Thus nothing can come amiss to the Doctor Every argument he undertakes to manage is equally strong and unresistable A pot gun will serve him to batter downe the walls of Rome He was borne a Controvertist and it is an even wager whether hee be better in the gift of Use and Applicatioon or in the Art of Dispute and Consutation Next comes another Dilemma or forked Argument which though proceeding on the former false supposition needs no answer yet for the Readers recreation we will afford a glance First it is observable that he never brings this bug-bear Argument upon the stage but when he has made a Prologue for it of some forg'd supposition of his own and then the Thing in vertue of that acts and talkes through the vizard of a mistake and yet ere it comes to a Conclusion the Doctors weak reason cracks to make both ends meet The summe of it is this that The Authority of the Pope was either originally in our Kings so as they could lawfully grant it to the Pope or not if not then the grant
the true Charge the only way for a Protestant to clear his Church from Schism is to shew it not guilty of doing this either by disproving the former to be the necessary Rule of Unity in Faith or the latter the necessary Bond of Government both which though they somtimes say yet because in these Books professedly composed for their Vindication from the guilt of Schism they directly and of set purpose handle neither it is clear they intend to shuffle not speak pithily The first Principle which also includes the truth of the second wee hold by this manifest Evidence that still the latter Age could not bee ignorant of what the former beleev'd and as long as it adhered to that method nothing could bee alter'd in it which way of assurance carries with it the Testimony of all that are truly called Christians and this by so ample a memory and succession as is stronger than the stock of human Government and action no right of Law or human Ordinances being able to offer so ample clear and continued a Title They must remember how their Forefathers who began that which they call the Reformation were themselves of this profession before their pretended reform They ought to weigh what reasons their Ancestors should have had to introduce such an alteration They must confesse themselves guilty in continuing the breach unless they can alledge causes sufficient to have begun it had the same ancient Religion descended to these daies For the constant beleefe of the Catholike world both was at the time of your division and still is that these Principles are Christs own ordination recorded in Scripture derived to us by the strongest Evidences that our nature is capable of to attain assurance what was done in Antiquity Evidences inviolable by any humane either power or proof except perfect and rigorous demonstration to which our Adversaries doe not so much as pretend and therefore without further dispute remain unanswerably convicted of Schism And though after this it bee superfluous to say any thing to any Book which does not so much as attempt to demonstrate either of these Points false yet I shall bestow a few thoughts to declare the quality of the Lord of Derry's Arguments not examining them any further than to shew how litle they are to the purpose In his two first Chapters though there bee many things false and more taken up without proof yet I will not touch them because hee onely pretends to settle the Question which is already done for my part And so I will begin my Animadversions where he begins his Arguments in the third Chapter His first proof is because not Protestants but Roman Catholikes themselves made the first separation 1. If it were so how does that acquit you since continuance in a Breach of this nature which cannot be sodered by time is as guilty as the very beginning Now these two Bonds of Unity being of Christs own institution no time can sear the bleeding wound And this because we hold by the fore-declared strength they now must have demonstrations to contradict it as well as the first Separaters 2. How does he prove they were not Protestants because they persecuted Protestants what then did not Luther persecute Carolstadius and Zuinglius doe they not now in Germany and other Countries Lutherans permit no Calvinists Calvinists no Lutherans Did not you persecute Puritans and Brownists Doe you not now complain to bee persecuted by others will you make all these Papists or why are not they Reformers as well as you you will say many of these first breakers died Catholikes True but upon Repeutance Of Gardiner whom you presse so particularly it is recorded that upon his death bed he said Peccavi cum Petro exivi cum Petro sed nondum flevi cum Petro and so fell on a bitter weeping for that offence But in a word is not this renouncing the Pope the most essential point of your Reformation All the rest your good natur'd Religion can either embrace or censure and as occasion serves admit or refuse Communion with the deniers of any other Article never so fundamental this only is indispensable Then be sure wee never hear you again deny but that they who made this first Breach had in them the quintessence of your Reformation and were far less consistent with Catholicism than your modern younger brother Sectaries are with your kind of Protestancy since your selves confess the admittance of the Popes Authority more destructive to you than the denial of Prelacy His second Argument is because in the separation of England from Rome there was no new Law made but onely their ancient Liberties vindicated The first part is so notoriously false that I wonder any one can have the face to pronounce it a Law was made in Henry the 8ths time an Oath invented and exacted 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 That this was a new Law none but impudence it self can deny As for the second part let us see how hee proves it Hee brings divers allegations wherein the Popes pretences were not admitted as being in the prejudice to the State or Church of England What is this man about that hee so forgets the question Doe wee professe the Pope can pretend no more than his right or is the question of this or that particular action of the Popes or does he think a legitimate Authority in common is rejected when the particular faults of them who are in Authority are resisted Is Magistracy or Royalty rejected when Pleas are commenced against Kings or Commonwealths as going beyond their true Jurisdiction Yes but the Pope is expresly deny'd the Power to doe such or such things Why then even by this fact hee is acknowledged to have power in other things since to limit an Authority implyes an admittance of it in cases to which the restraints extend not But hee presses Lawes anciently receiv'd in our Kingdome What is his meaning were not those Lawes in force in the beginning of Henry the eighths Reign or was his breach but the conservation of these Lawes and wee began our Religion there Are there any of these laws which are not equivalently in France Spain Germany Nay Italy it selfe Are none of these therefore Catholikes are they in as little communication with the Pope as Henry the eighth after his breach or the Protestants in Q Elizabeths times How ridiculous how impudent a manner of speaking and arguing is this to force his Readers to renounce their eyes and ears and all evidence In this fifth Chapter hee argues out of the Liberties of the Britannick Churches But first I would know what this belongs to us unless it bee prov'd that their practicks were an obliging precedent to us have wee any Title from the Britannick Churches otherwise than by the Saxon Christians who onely were our Ancestors and by whose conquests and lawes
That the Emperors did it by their own proper Power SECT 7. Of Doctor Hammond's advance towards the Question in the beginning of his Fourth Chapter THe Doctor having so wisely and securely laid his Grounds that is Having omited all Grounds that might either preiudice his Cause or touch the Question advances at length towards the Controversie it self but with the same reeling-pace as formerly In which he continues throughout the whole progress of this Chapter with such a rambling career as if what he had said hitherto were but preparatives to absurdness or but nonsence in jest which here being come to the point he more exactly performs in earnest Which if my Answer to this Chapter do not plainly demonstrate I will submit my self willingly to be branded by the Readers censure for a most unjust Calumniator But if it do then let him think of Mr. Hammonds manner of proceeding and his cause as they shall be found to deserve And first stumbling at the Threshold he expects that the Church should produce evidence for her own or her supreme Head's Authority in England Which since it is confessed by all sides That the Pope was in quiet possession of such a Primacy it no more belongs to us to prove just then it doth to the Emperor who had derived the succession of his right from a long train of Ancestors to evidence his title to the Kingdom ere he can punish a Rebel It is wonderful the Doctor should be ignorant of that which all the world knows and acknowledges to wit That a long-setled possession is of it self a proof until the contrary be evinced so as he who should deny the Authority of such an Emperor were truly and properly a seditious person and you for the same Reasons truly and properly Schismaticks unless he can produce sufficient that is evident Causes and Reasons why he refused obedience to that Emperor and you why you denied subjection to the Pope who as you were told before was not less found in a quiet and long-acknowledged possession of Primacy in England nay much more then any Emperor or King in Christendom was of his Crown to wit even by your own grants for the space of eight or nine hundred years Neither imagin that the Modern Protestants who finde the Pope outed from his Jurisdiction in England are therefore excusable from their Fore-fathers Schism For however changeableness of humane affairs and pretence that Temporal Laws were constituted and are disannulable by men may render such rights and titles obnoxious to alienation or alteration and so cause a deseazance of any obedience formerly due to a secular Governor Yet if Christ himself hath constituted any Authority and enjoyned obedience to it no length of time no vicissitude of secular Affairs nor intercession of humane Laws can ever disoblige from this duty So that it lies still as freshly as at the first breach encharg'd upon the Protestants under the penalty of Schism to manifest with most convincing and undeniable Arguments that the Pope could never claim any such Authority from Christ. Which claim of ours and as the Doctor will have it our first evidence he goes about to confute in this Chapter But first in big terms he layes out an ample Narration how King Henry the Eighth the Universities and Parliament not onely said but testified under their Hands and Seals nay more saith the Doctor took their Corporal Oaths on it that the Pope was not Head of the Church and All this saith Mr. Hammond is lookâ— on and condemned as an act of Schism in this Church and Nation What a piece of wit is here This is the very thing for which we accuse your Church and Nation of Schism and you by a bare Narration that it was done think it seems to have half proved it was lawfully done And all this said seal'd and sworn by a King Parliament and Universities is enough to amaze a vulgar-headed Reader into a belief That their Votes could not be other then true And I doubt not but the Doctor himself wonders That the whole Catholick Church should be so unreasonable as not to grant and think her self ever to have taught and the whole world ever to have believed a lie rather then to judge so uncharitably That a lustful and tyrannical King with some number of his Subjects partly out of flattery partly out of fear adhearing to him though these not a handful in comparison of the even-then-present Christian World should say seal and swear a falshood Especially the cause of the breach being most notorious to the whole world not to have been Conscience but vicious and unlawful pretences And on the other side multitudes of conscientious and learned men opposing it and many laying down their dearest lives in testimony of the contrary truth whose taking the Affirmative upon their deaths is more to be believed then the other true taking it upon their Corporal Oaths Among those who died in defence of the Popes Supremacy was our renowned and worthy Countryman Sir Thomas More whose esteem for Piety Learning and Prudence as the King professed was so eminent That his subscription alone if it could be procured was worth half the Realms Yet this so notorious acting and commencing of Schism though sprung from unlawful lust and managed with most cruel tyranny the Doctor seems to think so laudable that the very mentioning it will something conduce to justifie a Schismatick All this saith he is looked on and condemned as an act of Schism in this Church and Nation Next he proceeds to state the Question by branching the Objection into many parts which the Doctor will needs have belong to us to manifest ere the Objection will have any force So as possession beyond memory is of no force with him which yet is the basis of all the firm peace this poor world enjoys and the ground upon which every man remains quietly instated in his own When such a possession is once setled all Controversies are silenced when it is question'd a gap is open'd to all litigiousness Necessity therefore and evidence must both be pleaded ere any one can justly quarrel with this Nurse of Peace Yet the Church must plead her Evidence saith the Doctor that is Seem to bring in question her own longpossessed Title and at whose Bar think you must she plead it At no other then that of her quondam Sons and Subjects and now Rebels and Enemies But the Doctor most unfortunately accurate in his Divisions tells us That we must manifest first the matter of fact that thus it was in England Secondly The consequence of that fact that it were Schism supposing those Successors of Saint Peter were thus set over all Christians by Christ. As for the first The Reader I doubt not will smile at the Doctors folly in telling us we are to manifest that which no man living ever denied and which himself immediately before and far more largely hereafter relates and acknowledges For who
the most concerning business imaginable the ordering Gods Church The Doctors Conclusion then which he says is both rational and evident is both irrational and very dim-coloured to any eye but his own who supposes as he tells us here for our farther confirmation That he hath made it already clear from the refutation of our Plea for St. Peters Universal Pastorship whereas it hath been manifested he had not one express word of proof to make good his pretended confutation insomuch as I promise him a general pardon and acquittance for the frivolousness of all the rest if he can shew me in his Answer that any one place expresly testified that which he pretended to evidence by Testimonies What he adds That it was appointed by the Council of Chalcedon de jure that the King may erect a Primacy when he pleases I dare be bold to call a forgery and that it needs an ID EST of the seventeens to make the Councils words sound to his purpose What he tells us next as a thing certain That King Ethelbert at the time of Austins planting the Faith did erect a Primacy at Canterbury the seat of his Kingdom Imperii sui totius Metropolis saith Bede c. is such a childish piece of insincerity that it craves as much pity as it deserves anger For Bede onely tells us there How the King answered them that he could not assent to their new doctrine yet because they were strangers and desired to communicate to him what they believed to be true he would not trouble them but rather kindly entertain them c. Then follows the Doctors Testimony Dedit ergo eis manfionem in Civitate Dovernensi quae Imperii sui totius erat Metropolis Eisque ut promiserat cum administratione victus temporalis c. Wherefore he gave them a dwelling place in the City of Canterbury the Mother-City of his whole Dominions and with administration of Temporal food he hindred them not from Preaching So that the giving them an House in Canterbury to dwell in and meat to eat is a clear evidence with Master Hammond That the King yet a Heathen erected a Primacy when certainly he knew not then what a Primacy meant Lastly To convince absolutely That Kings were Heads of the Church and translated and erected Primacies at pleasure he concludes That had it not been for this there is no reason assignable why this Nation being in Constantine's time under three Metropolitans there should be an addition of two Provinces or that the Metropolitical power should be so removed As if it could not be done at all unless the King did it What an Argument is here to bring for an up-shot of his proofs That the King is Head of the Church We both acknowledge that some removals of Ecclesiastical Seats have been in England but the Question is Whether it belongs to the Kings or the Popes to cause these removals he undertakes to prove it the Kings right we deny it The Doctor produces his Sacra Anchora or last proof That there is no reason assignable why these Sees were removed had it not been that the King had power We answer We can tell how to remove them without the Kings power to wit by the Popes which is the question he professes to make head against But proceeds not farther then onely to say it must needs be the King and that we cannot assign the Pope and that the thing was done and therefore the King must necessarily be the doer of it Thus you see the Doctor is constant to his Principles in putting his strongest Arguments in the rear What man living is able to withstand so potent and cunning an Adversary Besides suppose there had been neither Pope nor King was there any impossibility that consent of Bishops might remove the Primacy to another See especially the Bishops being anciently of such Authority in England That no weighty affairs were transacted but they had a share in the managing of them You see then Mr. Doctor there are two reasons assignable for the fact which you prove to be the Kings power because he did it and then prove he did it because otherwise it could not have been done After he hath thus convinc't Kings to have power also over Ecclesiastical affairs he proceeds to prove that this power of theirs taken away by the Laws is resumable and although his supposition being shown to be groundless there needs no answer to what he builds upon it yet we will not be so discourteous as to slight his mistakes by affording them no Reply Under Pope Melchiades in Constantines time was made a Decree that if the Donatist Bishops in Africk would return to the Unity of the Church they should be allowed either to keep the Bishopricks they had or be provided of others their obstinacy permitted not this to be executed and therefore it was recalled Neer a hundred years after under Pope Anastasius a National Council in Africa ordained a request to Him and other Bishops of Italy by whose predecessors the revocation had been made that the Donatist Bishops might retain their places if they would return to the Catholike Church the cunning Balsamon puts the provision it self for a Canon of this Council and it had been a foul offence in the Doctor to have taken notice of the request though he must needs have read it in Baronius whom he cites in the very place Therefore he concludes that Laws made at Rome do not take away the liberty of another National Council to make contrary Laws thereunto Although as far as can be drawn out of the fact and Council it argues the direct contrary and that it was not lawful for their National Council to infringe what had been done at Rome so unlucky is the Doctor in bringing Arguments so restiff and kicking that they cast their rider out of his inteâ—t He tells next that a Law though made by a General Council and with the consent of all Christian Princes yet if it have respect to a civil right may in this or that Nation be repealed quoting one Roger Widrington and Suarez the latter of them gives this reason because such a Law made at a general meeting of Princes is intrinsically a civil Law But what the Doctor will do with this after he hath produced it I cannot certainly say onely I see he must be very fruitful in unprov'd suppositions ere it will be able to do him or his cause any good First he must suppose that the title of the Head of the Church is a thing not Ecclesiastical but belonging to a civil right next that that same title is denyed their Kings only upon pretence of a Canon of a Council and not upon Christs donation of it to St. Peter these two unproved ând ungranted positions I say he must suppose gratis Otherwise to what end does he argue that the Canons of Councils are repealable and the Kings right by consequence resumeable What follows next
deny but sometimes to be subject for Ordination was sign of subjection but not always The Bishop of Ostia hath the priviledge to consecrate the Pope yet the Pope is not to be his subject The Council of Sardica ordains That the next Province shall give Bishops to a Province that wants yet makes not that Province subject to it The Patriarch of Alexandria gave the Indians Bishops yet claimed no jurisdiction over them and consecrated the Patriarch of Constantinople yet was not Constantinople in his Territories Therefore this is no rule of Subjection and if it were the Doctor must say this Primate was subject to his own Suffragans Neither did ever Popes or Patriarchs in ancient times demand the Ordination of all the Bishops in their Patriarchates nor does the Pope at this day demand it in other Patriarchates though he claim jurisdiction over them But now who can tell us what the Doctor means when he says the Emperor did all this onely by making it a Primates or chief Metropolitans See and that Carthages being the prime Metropolis of Africk is expressed by having the same priviledges with Prima Iustiniana Can any man think he intendeth other then to mock his Auditory For as far as I understand these words signifie that the Emperor said onely Be thou a chief Metropolis and in so saying gave all these Priviledges Whereas all the Doctors labor hitherto and the Texts by him cited wherein every priviledge is set down so particularly make it manifest there were none or not eminent examples of any such Cities or Bishopricks and therefore so many particularities were necessary to be expressed and it be made an example to others Yet upon this relieth the Doctors main evidence and demonstration Though if you will believe him The conclusion of it self is most certain and might otherwise be testified by innumerable Evidences which we ought to suppose the Doctor omits for brevities sake and contents himself with this riff-raff and his Readers with bold promises and solemn affirmations In his tenth Section immediately following he draws out of his so strong discourse a consequence able to make any sensible man understand the former discourses were all vain and wicked For says he If from the Apostles time there hath been an independent power vested in each Primate or chief Metropolitan then how can it be necessary to the being of a Member of the Catholick Church to be subject to that one Primate Worthy Doctor your inference is very strong and good But I pray consider what is the consequent Surely this If there be no Catholick Church the obedience to the Pope is not necessary to be a member of it A very learned conclusion and worthy of so long a discourse to introduce it yet see whether it be yours or no. You say every chief Metropolitan was independent from all others they made therefore so many absolute Churches therefore made not any one Church Where then is the Catholick Church of which we ought to be members Many houses to be one house is as fairly contradictory as many men or horses to be one horse and so of many Churches to be one Church A Church saith St. Cyprian is a people united to their Bishop If then there be a Catholick Church there must be a Catholick Bishop and taking away the obedience to one Bishop you cannot save one Church I know you can talk like a Saint That Christ is the Head in which all Churches are united But the Church is a Government upon Earth and as an Army with its General or a Commonwealth with its chief Magistrate in Heaven were no Army nor Commonwealth So without subjection to a visible supreme Pastor there will be no Church on Earth left us whereof we ought to be Members which is the true Protestant Tenet whatsoever they may shuffle in words an art wherein they are the most eminent of all Modern Hereticks Therefore he had reason to enlarge himself no farther but conclude with the Authority of his Convocation An. 1537. To which I confess my self unable to answer for it is a pregnant and unavoidable Testimony Onely I may remember our old English Proverb Ask my fellow whether I am a Thief or ask Caiphas whether Pilates sentence against our Saviour was not just You know it was a Convocation of Bishops who for fear renounced their Oaths taken in their Consecration and therefore men of no credit upon their pure words in this case Now their Arguments are no other then what are already discussed that is meer Cobwebs woven out of a tainted heart Besides those who supervived that wicked King for the most part with hearty penance washed away that crime and with their tears blotted out as far as in them lay the black Indentures of that dismal Contract SECT 3. A Discovery of Dr. Hammonds Fundamental Error which runs through this Chapter and his ingratitude for our Countreys Conversion THe Doctor proceeding in his own mistaking method which is to produce faintly and then impugn our Pleas in stead of pleading for himself who stands accused of Schism entitles his sixth Chapter THEIR THIRD PLEA FROM THE BISHOP OF ROMES HAVING PLANTED CHRISTIANITY AMONG US As if we pretended the Conversion of this Nation to have been the reason why the Pope challenged here the Supremacy or That his being Head of the Universal Church depended upon his private Apostleship performed towards this Nation This is the ground of all his ensuing Chapter which being absolutely false and forged upon us it had been sufficient to have past it over with this civil reproof Doctor you mistake For what Catholick Author ever affirmed the Pope is beholden to his Ancestors care in bringing England to Christs Faith for his supreme jurisdiction there or that his title of Primacy had not been equal in this Countrey in case it had hapned Constantinople or Alexandria had sent to convert it We will therefore free the Doctor from any obligation of Subjection to the Popes Primacy which he causlesly fears may come by this title so he will acquit himself and the Church of England of another which lies heavy on them and makes up the full measure of their Schism unless they retract it For if greatest benefits draw on greatest engagements and no benefit be so great as that which rescues us from the Devils tyranny the the bonds of Infidelity and brings us by enlarging our hearts by Faith into the glorious liberty of the Sons of God Sure no Obligation can be conceived so indispensably-binding as that which is due to those who were Authors to us of so inestimable a good This consideration should make the enjoyers of that benefit while they were sons to such a Mother more humble and obedient in an especial manner and by consequence in an high measure aggravate the horrid sin of Schism in not onely rebelliously but most ingratefully abandoning the communion of so tenderly beneficial a Parent This should make them after the breach made
though they cannot yet so overcome their proper-will and proper-judgment as to return at least candidly to acknowledge the benefits received from her and to bear her a due respect however not to revile and reproach her But against all History and onely out of a few obscure and unauthentick sayings to disacknowledge your highest obligation to her in stead of grateful courtesie to slight and contemn her to naturalize in the hearts of your poor Auditors an hatred against the very name of Rome and the Pope to which Rome and its Pope you and they are beholding next and immediately under God for all the knowledge you have of Christ or his holy Word Lastly To revile that Church which till you broke from her had ever the most sacred title of Christs onely Spouse with your scolding Sermon-invectives grateful elegancies to your applauding hearers of Idolatrous Antichristian Strumpet Whore of Babylon and all the venemous spiteful expressions that ever were vomited from a malice-imposthum'd heart These things I say are they which brand you beyond infamy in the judgment of prudent men and double Dy the dark-coloured sin of Schism with the deepest tincture of the blackest ingratitude Of this ingratitude Master Doctor clear your selves first in breaking next in your carriage and comportment ever since and we will without much difficulty disoblige you from any other duty which you seem afraid you ow us upon onely that score of Conversion Yet you will needs have us hold whether we will or no That the Pope is Head of the Church because his Predecessor converted England And this ground laid in the air of your own fancy you impugn as inconsequently butting at us most formidably with a Dilemma or cornuted Syllogism and telling us That the Popes Primacy in this Iland is either from the Donation of Christ or Conversion by Austin the Monk If the latter then England was not subject to the Pope before Austin ' s coming If the former then is that other title of the Conversion by Austin a fallacious pretence A NON CAUSA PRO CAUSA c. This is the sum of his Dilemma In answer to which I confess indeed the latter title is A fallacious pretence A NON CAUSA PRO CAUSA but the fallacy is on the Doctors side who feigns us to pretend what we never thought on to wit That the Popes supremacy is grounded on any such title One of the horns then of his Dilemma is a false one and so the danger of being catcht between them easily avoided Nor is his Dilemma it self more solidly founded were both the particular pretences true for it wholly insists and leans upon this Position That no man can claim a possession upon two titles On which ground to let us see he is a Lawyer as well as a Divine he descants in these words He that claims a reward as of his own labor and travail must be supposed to disclaim Donation which is antecedent to and exclusive of the former as the title of descent is of that of conquest Thus this Doctor of Law Whereas what more ordinary then to plead two titles at Law as for example birth-right and a formerly-given judgment for the same thing Or what more unreasonable then to affirm That Iacob who wrought other seven years for Rachel could not claim her as a reward of his service for that time unless he renounce his right to her due at the former years end Do not we see daily That those who have palpable right to their estate when they cannot quietly enjoy it otherwise by reason of the injustice of a wrangling adversary are forced to compound for and buy their own without â—isclaiming their former title Neither is his last instance more solid then its fellows That the title of descent is exclusive to that of conquest since the titles of Donation and Conquest are as opposite as those he mentions and yet it is well known That William the Conqueror pretended a right to the Kingdom upon both these titles and Henry the Seventh if I mistake not upon three But the thing is so clear that it requires no further proof save onely to advertise the Reader That Dr. Hammond is the first Lawyer I ever heard of who denied a possibility of a double title to the same thing Yet I am glad to see by the Doctors perfect ignorance and utter unacquaintance in Law that he is at least a good honest quiet sober soul not used much to trouble himself with Law nor wrangle with his Neighbors which is a very great commendation and better beseeming his innocent Nature which was never shaped to be a Controvertist Next proceeding still on his own false grounds he goes about first ingratefully to deny that St. Austin the Monk converted our Forefathers Secondly After some acknowledgment to prove very unmannerly and uncivilly no thanks due As for the first he tells us That this Iland was converted to the Faith of Christ long before Augustines Preaching to the Saxons citing many Authors for it Where if by the word Iland he mean the Ilanders as I suppose he must I would then ask him though the former Ilanders were before converted by the Missionaries of Pope Eleutherius yet whether those that St. Augustin was sent to convert that is the Saxons were reduced before that time to Christianity or no if they were not as I am sure he must and will acknowledge all the ancient Inhabitants the Britains being driven by them into Wales then what a perversness and want of ingenuity is it in Master Hammond to wave so ungratefully that incomparable benefit which we Englishmen received in our Ancestors by the Popes fatherly care first converted to Christs Faith and what a pitiful shift it is to shew a willingness to put it off by quibbling in the words this Iland as if they did not signifie these Ilanders or the Ilanders of the same race but these Trees Woods and Mountains The next page goes on very currantly and without any rub proving That the formerlyplanted Faith of Christ in this Iland was not totally extinguished by the ancient persecutions so to infer a less beholdingness of us Englishmen to Rome and Pope Gregory the Great for our Conversion but all in vain For unless he proves that they who had formerly embraced and retained that Faith propagated it to the after-comers the Saxons who were Ancestors to us Englishmen or that St. Austin was not the first that preached to these which he will never do all the evidence he can bring from hence is to prove himself ungrateful Then he ends this Paragraph with a Testimony out of the old obscure Annals of Gisburn and brought to light by one of his own side in which it is said That the Bishop of St. Davids was consecrated by the Suffragan Bishops oâ— that Province Nulla penitus professione vel subjectione factâ alteri Ecclesiae No profession or subjection at all being made to another
other See This indeed the Doctor says and we must believe him though he brings not a word of proof for it which the second part of his Assertion concerning their independency did necessarily require onely he says the contrary hath no degree of truth in it which he makes account will carry the business without bringing the least degree of probability for it As for the first part I would ask the Doctor whether St. Paul were supreme over them in his life time or no if he were as I suppose both his Epistles to them and the Doctors former large Testimony from the monosyllable COME will manifest then their being supreme in their own Provinces consisting still with the superiority of St. Paul may for any thing deducible from that reason alone admit the Supremacy of the Head of the Church and their subjection to him And the obligation lies yet upon the Doctor to prove positively That Timothy and Titus were totally exempt from St. Peters Jurisdiction for which Negative proofs are insufficient or indeed for any thing else Yet the Doctors Quiver is full of such blunt shafts and it is an evidence with him to argue thus I have not read it or it is not exprest in this Testimony therefore there is no such thing or therefore it is false As hath been often discovered in the process of this Answer That which follows That it is the nature of Primates or Patriarchs to have no Superior to exercise Iurisdiction over them is onely his own saying and so with like facility denied as asfirmed The Ordination of them by others I have already shewn not to prejudice the Universal Authority of the Head of the Church whose duty it is not to descend to otherwise suppliable actions about particular Members of that Body but from the top of his Primacy to govern and overlook the whole and to be conversant about that more Universal sort of actions reserved and proper to his larger power to the managing of which the short-handed Jurisdictions of particular Patriarchs were not able to reach But now comes the most dangerous blow of all The Doctor did but take his aym all this while now he is fetching the fatal stroke and me thinks I see the Ax even now falling upon the neck of Rome He threatens in his ninth Section To put the whole matter out of controversie And how think you he tells us That Kings could ever erect and translate Patriachates in their own Dominions and therefore that the Kings of England may freely remove that power from Rome to Canterbury and subject all this Iland to that independent Archbishop or Primate There is a trick now for the Pope which he never dream'd of Where first you see Mr Hammond supposes as granted That the Popes power is but meerly Patriarchal which is the chief if not onely thing in question between us So as his method to put the whole matter out of Controversie is to beg the supposal of the whole matter in Controversie This supposal laid for a ground he repeats again for his first instance those two late answered Acts of Iustinian erecting Iustiniana Prima and Carthage two Arch-Bishopricks or Primacies Though himself acknowledges That Carthage was not originally dignified but onely restored to its Primacy by the said Emperor after the Wandals were driven our which being onely an Act of preserving the former Canons of the Church inviolate every good Christian Emperor and Prince not onely may but also ought to do it and when he does it it is by the power of the Canons of the Church As for the first instance concerning Iustiniana Prima the Dr. thinks perhaps good man that he doth well but put the proof in form and he will I am confident be ashamed of the consequence Iustinian erected Patriarchates saith the History therefore Kings have power to do such acts of themselves infers the Doctor where the force of the illation is the same as if one should say The late Parliament took away Bishops therefore Parliaments have a power to take them away That a particular matter of fact may conclude a self-and-proper power in him that did it you must first prove that power to be originally his own and not delegated to him by another pretending to it himself who in our case is the Pope Next you must prove That if he did it without that delegation yet his action was lawful These if you first prove your instances will come to something otherwise they are senceless and infer less then nothing wanting both the crutches which may enable them to advance forwards to a conclusion Your next instance is That the Emperor Valentinian did by his Rescript constitute Ravenna a Patriarchal Seat where you quote no Author but Anno Dom. 432. And indeed you did well for the Rescript is accounted spurious and to have been foisted into the Monuments of that Church in the time of their Schism Had you told us how invalid the Authority of it was and how not onely for that but for many other things it lay under just exceptions you had been put to the puzzling task of defending its authentickness The exceptions against it are these First It begins in a different manner from the constant tenor of all other Rescripts Next the decree is singular and consequently to be suspected in this that all the other Rescripts made in the reign of the two Emperors though constituted by one of them onely yet were ever authorized by both their names whereas the name and Authority of the Emperor Theodosius is wanting to this Thirdly the Inscription of Imperator Major is new and unheard of all the rest entitling Valentinian Imperator Maximus Fourthly the Bishops of Rhegium Placentia and Brixillis are in the Rescript named as under the Archbishop of Ravenna which is a plain forgery since not long afte◠Pope Leo commanding Eusebius Archbishop of Millain to gather a Provincial Council of the Bishops subject to him those three Bishops met there and subscribed to that Council as appears by the Synodal Epistle yet extant Fiftly The same Rescript which gives them Archiepiscopatum an Arch-Bishoprick which you make a Patriarchate granted them also the use of the Pall which was never accustomed to be given by the Emperors but by the Popes onely as appears by the Epistles of Gregory the Great to the then Archbishops of Ravenna This last rub so puzzled Hieronymus Rubens to smooth it who out of a preposterous love of his Countrey cited this Rescript for its priviledge that he was forced to explicate that Pall to be Caesarum Paludamentum such an Imperial Robe as the Cesars used to wear whereas besides the unlikeliness of the action it is plainly contrary to the Rescript it self which grants them such a Pall Sicut Caeteri sub nostrâ Christianissimâ potestate saepe degentes fruuntur Metropolitae As the rest of the Metropolitans in his Dominions often wore Which every one who hath but tasted
pleasure Cath. Do not answer Dr. de Cepis when we ask de alliis you might have sav'd your labour in a great part of your Book wher you slipt the question and digrest to Patriarchs Our question is not of Patriarchal but of Papal Authority and so we ask you whether it be not evident that this Papal Authority was in actual possession of this Islands subjection at the time of the breach and so had been for 900 yeers ever since Pope Gregory sent Austin the Monk to convert the Saxons forefathers to us English Dr. I know no Authority he ever had in England more than Patriarchal Cath. Do not you know that the Popes Authority then acknowledged in England was held above Patriarchs and therefore more then Patriarchal and that you grant you cast out of this Island not a Patriarchal Authority only but a Papal one Dr. True but the pretended Authority was usurpt and not according to Gods Ordinance Cath. How know you it was usurpt wil bare probabilities be a sufficient ground to renounce an authority so long establisht in possession held sacred ever before and to which your selves were till then subject wil I say a meer probability that perhaps that authority was not sacred but unjust serve your turn to excuse you from disobedience in renouncing it Dr. No Sir we have evidence it was unjust and that the Church we were brought up in erred in that point of beliefe Cath. This evidence of yours must either be a Demonstration from natural reason or an undeniable testimony either divine or humane Dr. I doe not pretend natural demonstration but we have evident testimonies against it Cath. Can you manifest that those testimonies and the like may be said of Arguments from natural reason have not been answer'd twenty times over by our Writers and in case they have can you shew that you have replied upon all their answers so as they bear now no probable shew of satisfaction if not you cannot call your testimony an evidence Next are you certain that our Authors cannot produce an hundred testimonies for one of yours or at least an equal number and those seeming as expresly or more to make for us as yours doe for you If so your testimonies are at least counterpois'd with the weight of ours and so cannot make an evidence but hang only in the hovering scales of a doubtfull probability Thirdly are your testimonies such that they are of greater weight than the judgment of all the Catholick world holding the Pope Head of the Church as our greatest adversaries the Puritans say for twelve hundred years or as you say two hundred years later are they of that weight to over-ballance so far-extended so numerous and so learned an Authority If not they are so far from evidences that they fall short of being probabilities Dr. I see you will hold to no authority but that of your own Church and this is a method of security beyond all Amulets Cath. And good reason too unless you can shew us a greater Dr. A greater we have id est Gods word out of which we can evidence that your Church we were brought up in was fallible yea en'd in many points and particularly in this of the Popes Supremacy Cath. You cannot with any face pretend an evidence from Scripture against us unless you can evidence a greater faculty and meanes to interpret those Oracles in you or your first Reformers than there was in the Church you left And since these meanes are either supernatural light or natural parts and knowledge you must evidence an advantage above us in one of these And first as for natural knowledg you cannot be ignorant that at the time of the breach the Catholick Church had an hundred Doctors for one of yours what an unproportion'd advantage then must that number swel to if all the learned men in the many foregoing ages without any one of your Sect then unheard of to counterballance them be heaped into one Bulk and those too such as your selves must acknowledge far more eminent in Schoole Divinity study in Scripture and all kinde of Learning both divine and humane than any of King Henry's fellow-reformers were ever deemed or if you stiffely deny an advantage we as stiffely pretend it and so leave it a drawn maâ—ch for what concernes their parts yet you your selves must giant you are incomparably overpower'd in the numerous multitude of them In natural meanes then of interpreting Scripture our extraordinary advantage over your Reformers makes it an impudence in them to pretend their advantage evident It must be then an evidence of a supernatural faculty in interpreting Gods word better than their Superiours and Pastors which can make them pretend to a clear knowledge thence that our Church hath err'd But since no supernatural thing that is latent and invisible in it selfe can be evidenced or acknowledged to be such without some exteriour token exceeding the power and skill of nature as are miracles gift of tongues c. none of which you can lay claim to it followes that neither your reforming forefathers nor your selves can produce evidence of any better meanes either supernatural or natural to interpret Scriptures than the Church you left therefore no evidence that they more truely interpreted it than that Church therfore none thence that the Church err'd therefore none from divine Authority and no humane authority being found comparable to that of the Church it followes they can have as little evidence from thence Evident therefore it is that you neither had nor now have any evidence at all but onely a probable perhaps that the Church erred which being too sleight a Reason to shake off subjection to an authority so long establish't and held as a point of Faith by the present and past world consequently they who upon no better grounds should shake it off are guilty of a most rash and grievous disobedience and Schism But your selfe here confesse Sect. 5. that you cast this Authority out of this Island without power to evidence that that Church erred as hath been shewn What excuse then can you alledge to clear your Father-Reformers and your selfe from a most irrational and selfe-condemning Schism nay more heresie Dr. At least they had such proofes as they thought evident and bred in them a present perswasion that the Church hath erred which they could not in conscience goe against and therefore it was hard dealing to punish them with Excommunication for proceeding conscientiously according to their present perswasion Cath. I doubt not but they might have a present perswasion that the Church hath err'd but I doubt much whether this present perswasion be sufficient to excuse them either from sin or punishment For this perswasion of theirs is either rational or irrational if rational a sufficient reason may be render'd why they deny'd so qualified a Government and reason it selfe telling us that no reason less than evidence is sufficient it would follow that evidence may
in the Doctors judgment Not considering which yet any prudent man would that the whole world whom before they accounted onely Catholick and in which had been hundreds of Kings Queens and Bishops nay perhaps thousands for one of theirs had ever condemned by their contrary beliefe these Votes and Acts to bee scismatical and heretical Besides this King before the breach acknowledging himselfe subject to that Authority in Ecclesiastical matters as all Catholick Kings now doe and as all his Ancestor-Kings ever since Englands conversion had done it must be as I have told you often most apparent evidence and such as greater cannot be imagin'd which may warrant him to exalâ— himselfe above the Popes Authority so long setled in possession and that in those very things in which before he was acknowledgedly under him especially the contrary verdict of such an universality as I have before mention'd with its weight not to be counterpois'd preponderating and mightily prejudicing any pretence of Evidence Again if the thing were evident how happened it that no Christian King till the time of King Henry the eighth and in his time none but he should discern this clear evidence unless perhaps though they say love is blind yet his desire to Anna Bullen did open his eyes in such miraculous manner that he saw by the heavenly light of her bright star-like eyes that the Pope was Antichrist his Authority unlawful and himselfe who was then found under it in Ecclesiastical matters to be indeed above it in case the Popes spiritual power should cross his carnal pleasure To conclude my answer to this Chapter I would ask two things of Mr. Doctor one is in case a King should have broke from the Church and brought in Schism into his Country whether it could probably be perform'd in any other manner than the very method by which their Reformation was introduced The other is whether the Reformation be yet perfectly compleat or rather that Queen Elizabeth swept the Church indeed but left the dust sluttishly behind the door if it be not yet compleat I would gladly know how far this Reformation and Receding from Rome may proceed and what be the certain stints and limits of this rowling Sea which it may not pass For I see no reason in the Doctors grounds but if the secular powers think it convenient they may reform still end wayes as they please nay even if they list deny Christ to be God an acute Socinian will solve very plausibly all the objections out of Scripture and produce allegations which I doubt not he will make far stronger than the Doctor doth his against the Pope nor will there want some obscure testimonies out of Antiquity and express ones from the Arrian Hereticks to evince the Tenet if this then were voted by a King some of his Bishops and a Parliament the Doctor must not disobey and hold Christs Divinity since the thing was done by them to whom as the Doctor sayes rightfull power legally pertain'd They having no infallibility then may happen to vote such a thing and the Doctor having no infallible certainty to the contrary ought not recede from his lawful Superiours so as upon these grounds all religion may be reformed into Atheism and the infallibility of the Church once denied the temporal Power hath no reason to have his rightful authority stinted but at pleasure to make Reformation upon Reformation from generation to generation per omnia saecula saeculorum THE THIRD PART Containing the answers to the foure last Chapters of Dr. Hammonds Schism SECT 1. Doctor Hammonds second sort of Schism and his pretence that they retain the way to preserve Unity in Faith refuted MAster Hammond hath at length finish't his greatest task and done preaching of the first species of Schism as it is an offence against the subordination which Christ hath by himselfe and his Apostles setled in the Church and is now arrived to the second sort as it signifies an offence against the mutual unity peace and charity which Christ left among his Disciples This Schism against Charity for methods sake as he tells us he divides into three species The first is a Schism in the Doctrine or Traditions a departure from the unity of the Faith once delivered to the Saints from the institutions of Christ of the Apostles and of the Universal Church of the first and purest times whether in Government or practises c. Where first this methodical Dr. makes Faith and Charity all one putting his Schism against Faith for the first species of his Schism against mutual Charity Next he ranks also the rejecting Christs Institution of Government under this second species of Schism against Charity which most evidently was the first General Head of Schism hitherto treated of that is of the Offence against Subordination setled by Christ in the Church For Christ could not settle such a subordination in the Church but he must at the same time institute the Government of the Church since there can be neither subordination without Government nor Government without subordination So as now the Schism against Government is come to be one of the Schisms against mutual Charity and to mend the matter comprehended under the same Head with Schism against Faith Was ever such a confusion heard of And yet all this is done saith the Doctor for methods sake But to proceed the second species of his Schism against mutual Charity is an offence against external peace and Communion Ecclesiastical Where I find as much blundering as formerly For these words must either signifie an Offence against Superiors and Governors of the Church and then it is again co-incident both with the first general Head of Schism which dissolves the subordination of the Churches subjects and also with the first particular species of Schism against mutual Charity which according to the Doctors method included a breach from the Government instituted by Christ. Or else they must signifie an Offence against the mutually and equally-due correspondence and Charity which one fellow-member ought to have to another and then it falls to be the same with his third and last species which he calls The want of that Charity which is due from every Christian to every Christian. So that if the jumbling all the Bells together in a confused disorder may be called musical then the Doctors division may be styled methodical After this he subdivides this first species to wit Schism against Faith into A departure from those Rules appointed by Christ for the founding and upholding truth in the Church and into The asserting particular doctrins contrary to Christs and the Apostolical pure Churches establishment But first he cleares himselfe of the former of these by answering our suggestion as he calls it that in casting out the Authority of the Bishop of Rome they have cast off the Head of all Unity To which he tells us the answer is obvious First that the Bishop of Rome was never appointed by
that the Scripture grants to S. Peter some Primacy of Order or Dignity If so Mr. Hammond then for any thing you know it may be a Primacy of Iurisdiction And it stands onely upon the certainty of your and our interpretation of Scripture whether it signifie such a Primacy or no. Neither indeed could it be any other if any hold may be taken from your words For S. Peter as you grant and as the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Simon the first of the Apostles plainly evidence had some kind of Primacy then given him and if it were then given him he then had it that is he had it in our Saviours life time but you told us before that S. Iohn had the dignity of place which is the same with Primacy of Order before all others in Christs life time even before S. Peter himself The Primacy then which S. Peter had in Christs life time must be some other Primacy and what Primacy could this be but the Primacy of Iurisdiction Again if by this Primacy he allows S. Peter he means such a precedency as hath any effect or efficacity in the Church according to the nature and degree of a Primacy this is all the substance of the Popes Authority and all that is held by us as of Faith but if he means by Primacy there a meerely inefficacious and dry Presidency and Precedency of Order such as is with us the walking on the right hand or sitting first at a Table without any superiority more than a courteous deference of the rest then the Doctor must imagine our Blessed Saviour had no better thing to do when he made S. Peter the first but to take order for feare the good Apostles should fall to complement who should sit go or speak in the first place and consequently this tenet being an Act of our Saviours register'd in Scripture must bee a courteous point of Faith obliging all the Apostles under pain of damnation to be civil and make a leg to S. Peter In the next paragraph the Doctor is full of feares and jealousies and makes a great doubt that the subjection of this Church to the Authority of the Bishop of Rome will never be likely to tend to the Unity of the whole And why think you so Mr. Doctor doe you not find evidently that the Church before Luther and K Henry renounced the said Authority enjoy'd most perfect peace and tranquillity as those who are under that government doe most blessedly now and on the contrary that after that Authority was rejected nothing has succeeded the rejecters but perpetual turmoiles schisms divisions and subdivisions into Sects and daily mutations in Faith and Government as far as the temporal sword did not hinder them Is not this as evident as all History and even our very eyes can witnesse a truth Lastly doe not the present distractions you now groan under awake you to see that the source of all your misery springs from the leaking Cistern of Schism you have digg'd for your selves Did your Ancestours find so little Unity under the Government of the Roman Catholike Church or have you found such a constant Unity since you left it that you can presume the re-admitting that Government is never likely to tend to Unity Yet you cannot think otherwise unlesse all other Churches of Christians paid that subjection too Do you your obligation why should their backwardnes in their duties make you deny yours Besides whom doe you call Christians all that cry Lord Lord that is professe the name of Christ but deny the onely certain Rule to come to the knowledge of his Law such as were the Gnosticks Carpocratians Donatists Socinians and all the heresies that ever arose since the infancy of the Church or doe you mean by the word Christians onely those qui faciunt voluntatem Patris doe the will of our heavenly Father that is all that hear the Church or have a certain and common Rule to know what Christs Law is if so all these acknowledge subjection to the Head-Bishop of Rome never denied by any but those who at the same time they denied it cast themselves out of the Church refusing to hear her You say the Eastern Churches had not acknowledg'd it ere your departure Admit they had not can their pattern warrant you more than it can warrant the Arrians Nestorians Eutychians c. unless you be certain they did well in it They rejected it indeed and for their reward were by all the Christian world till you falling into the same fault began to call them Brothers and by all your Ancestours justly held and called Schismaticks Yet when they were in their right mood they admitted it as much as any Roman-Catholike as appeares in the Acts of the Florentine Council to which they subscribed nay even when they were disgusted and refused Unity they acknowledged the power of the Bishop of Rome as appeares by a testimony of Gerson cited by your friend Bishop Bramhall against himselfe in his just vindication of the Church of England p. 101. which witnesses that the Greeks departed from the then-then-Pope with these words Wee acknowledge thy power we cannot satisfie your covetousness live by your selves His second doubt is that the Bishop of Rome is not able to administer that vast Province I wonder how he did of old and why he may not do the same again as well as formerly But the Dr. calls it a politick probleme whether hee can or no and would have it judged by those who are by God entrusted with the Flock Id est saith he by the Princes the nursing Fathers in every Church It is indeed a politick probleme that is a question concerning Government but since it concernes Government Ecclesiastical it falls not under the scanning of temporal Politicians The Christian Common-wealth would be brought to a pretty pass if the Government of Gods Church so long acknowledged as left by Christ and continued in the Church 300. yeares by their own confession ere there were any Christian Princes should anew be call'd into question by humane policy But these two words of Scripture Nursing Fathers make it plain to the Doctor satisfy'd with any thing himself fancies that the Government and Jurisdiction over the Church belongs to Kings as if to nurse cherish and foster were to rule order govern and command or as if Ioseph who was Foster-father to our Saviour was as good as or the same with God Almighty who was his true Father And I wonder where this Doctor ever read that our Saviour entrusted the Government of his Church and Ecclesiastical affaires to any but the Apostles Ecclesiastical persons or that any held Nero the Heathen Emperour to have right and title o be Head of the Church Again if our Saviour left that authority with his Apostles I would gladly know by what new Orders from Christ it came to be transfer'd from their Successors into the hands of secular Princes But the Doctor has
unity of Church-government then not onely we but all the Angels and Saints in heaven who rejoyce at the conversion of sinners shall joyn in exalting Jubilees for the Blessed and long wish't for return of òur wandring and self-disinherited Brethren The former of these if Mr. Hammond will not beleeve it I have told him where he may see it as visibly as is possible any thing should be made to the eye of Reason The latter to wit the Popes Supremacy is defin'd in the Florentine Council subscribed to both by the Greek and Latine Churches where what the fourth General Council held at Chalcedon wrote to Pope Leo that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he was over the members of the Church as their Head is more plainly exprest in these words Wee define that the holy Apostolical See and the Bishop of Rome have the primacy over all the world and that the Bishop of Rome is Successour to S. Peter the Prince of the Apostles and truly Christs Vicar and Head of the whole Church and the Father and Teacher of all Christians and that there was given him in S. Peter from Christ a full power to feed direct and govern the Catholike Church To these two points if the Protestant will subscribe that is secure inviolate that which touches the root and most vital and intrinsecal part of the Chruch to wit the Rule of Faith she will not stick to open her outward rind that is offer some violence to her uniformity in indifferent and more extrinsecal practises to re-ingraft their dry and sapless branch which now lies withering into her ever-flourishing body To which if these poor endeavours of mine may in the least contribute I shall for the future not reprehend but congratulate Dr. Hammond for his fortunate Errours and honour his ill grounded reasons as of richest value which by stirring up others to detest them and shew what weak pleas are producible for Schism became the happy occasion of his own and others salvation and of Embosoming the Daughter-Church of England in a Charitable Communion with her dearest Mother by whose painful throwes she was first born to Christ her Spouse at whose breasts shee suck'd the first milk of his Doctrine and from whose arms and ever-cherishing embraces first by the malignity of an ill-govern'd passion next by humane policy shee has been so long separated FINIS DOWN-DERRY OR Bishop BRAMHAL'S Iust Vindication of the Church of England refuted MY choice at first directed me rather to answer Mr. Hammond than my Lord of Derry having observ'd his Book not only to bear a greater vogue in the world but to be inwardly furnished with Arguments more suitable to the profession of a Divine But after I had advanc'd past the mid-way of my journey I met some Protestant friends who though formerly they had still cry'd up the Doctor yet soon as I told them in confidence that an Answer to his Schism would instantly bee ready for the the Press they immediately began to extol the Bishop and demand either a present Reply to him or else they should not spare to conclude the Victory their own When I had exprest how weak and unreasonable their discourse was which if admitted would always judg him to have the right cause that speaks the last word I parted with a promise if in stead of that sport which he far more than the other tempts a wit-at leasure to make with him they would accept of a short Refutation of the substantial passages I should not fail to endeavour their satisfaction which thus I perform Reading with some diligence the Bishops Book I find that as there is much commendable in it for industry so is it expos'd to an unavoidable Check of being Patron to an ill Cause whence it may bee a pattern of wit and labour but little assistance to the truth further than by shewing how weak Errour is But not to spend time and paper in vain let us state the controversie clearly that it may be seen how strongly and pertinently his Discourse proceeds Not that I intend minutely to examine his whole Work whereof the far greater part is little or nothing to our controversie as will appear by the bare stating the Question but onely to say enough for him whom the substance can content without engaging into unnecessary and circumstantial disputes He begins his Book telling us nothing can be objected with more colour of truth against the Church of England than that they have withdrawn themselves from obedience to the Vicar of Christ and separated from the Communion of the Catholike Church And that this crime is justly charg'd upon his Church not onely with colour but with undeniable evidence of fact will appear by the very position of the Case and the nature of his Exceptions As for the first it is unquestionably certain and universally assented to by all Protestants who understand any thing that at the beginning of Henry the eighths Reign nay at his first courting his Protestant Mistress the Church of England agreed with that of Rome and all the rest of her Communion in two Points which were then and are still the Bonds of Unity betwixt all her Members 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 bee acknowledg'd for obligatory and nothing in them to bee changed For Government her Principle was that Christ had made St. Peter First or Chief or Prince of his Apostles who was to be the first Mover under him in the Church after his departure out of this world and to whom all others in difficulties concerning matters belonging to the universal either Faith or Government should have recourse And that the Bishops of Rome as Successors of St. Peter inherited from him this priviledge in respect of the Successors of the rest of the Apostles and actually exercised this power in all those countries which kept Communion with the Church of Rome that very year wherein this unhappy separation began It is no lesse evident that in the dayes of Edward the sixth Queen Elizabeth and her Successors neither the former Rule of Unity of Faith nor this second of Unity of Government which is held by the first have had any power in that Congregation which the Protestants call the English Church This is our chief objection against you As for us our Tenet is That those Churchs who continue in Communion with the Roman are the onely Churches which in vertue of the first Principle above mentioned have the true Doctrine and in vertue of the second the right Government and in vertue of both the unity and incorporation into the Church of Christ necessary for salvation And by consequence Wee hold them onely to make the entire Catholike or Universal Church of Christians all others by misbelief or Schism being excluded Now because no understanding man can deny this to be
all that is in the Britannick World belongs to us and is derived to us Yet is this also false For nothing in History is more evident than that the British Churches admitted appellations to Rome at the Council of Sardica And as much as we have Records in our Histories of the Pope Eleutherius so much appeares the Popes Authority in that time And out of St. Prosper contra Collatorem in Chron. Wee have that the Pope Celestinus by his care and sending St. German Vice sua in his own stead freed the Britans from Pelagianism and converted the Scots by Palladius though Venerable Bede as far as I remember does not touch that circumstance But that which is mainly to the purpose is that since the Priviledge wee pretend was one that descends upon the Pope in quality of Successor to St. Peter how far it was executed may be unknown but that it was due none can bee ignorant And here our late Bishop begins to shuffle from the priviledge of St. Peter to the Patriarchal Jurisdiction of the Pope which is another an historical a mutable power and so concernes not our present debate Two objections he makes seem to deserve an answer First That the Welsh or Britans sided with the Eastern Churches against the Roman in the observation of Easter To which I answer 't is true they observ'd not Easter right yet never so much as cited the Eastern Churches in abetment of their practise but onely the custome of their own Ancestors Neither was there any cause of siding wee not hearing it was ever pressed by the Church of Rome after Victor's time to any height The Council of Nice and the Emperour Constantine exhorted the Christian World to it but without any coercitive force And if the Britans resisted or rather neglected them I think wee ought not to say they sided against them but onely did not execute their desires St. Irenâ—us was of the French Church yet testifies this question was no matter of division so that it cannot bee guess'd by this what influence the Roman Church had or had not upon the British It seemes certain also that St. Lupus and Germanus neglected this Point that is thought it not necessary to be corrected however St. Austin seem'd more rigorous And though Palladius sent from Celestinus converted the Scots yet we find some of them in the same practise The second Objection is out of a piece of a worn Welsh Manuscript hoped by the Protestants to bee a Copy of some ancienter Original which though it has already been proved a manifest forgery counterfeited by all likelyhood in Q. Elizabeths time when the English Protestants sought to corrupt the Welsh by Catechisms and other Writings printed and not printed Yet if their great Antiquaries can shew that in St. Gregories time this name Papa or Pope taken by it self without other addition as Papa Urbis Romae c. was put as in later ages for the Bishop of Rome I shall confesse my selfe much surpriz'd If they cannot these very words sufficiently convince the Manuscript to bee a meer Imposture Another suspition against the legitimatnes of this paper naturally arises from this that Sr. Henry Spelman one so diligent in wiâ—ing off the dust from old writings found no other Antiquity in it worth the mention which shrewdly implies the Book was made for this alone And so this demonstrative proof of the Bishop is a conviction of the forgery of some counterfeit Knaue and the easiness of assent in Mr. Mosten and the Knight In his 6th Chapter he pretends three things 1. That the King and Church of England had sufficient Authority to withdraw their obedience from Rome 2ly That they had sufficient grounds for it and 3ly That they did it with due moderation I doubt not but the intelligent Reader understands by the first point that the Bishop meanes to shuffle away the true difficulty and whereas the Question is of the Priviledge given by Christ to Saint Peter and from him descended to the Popes his Successors spend his time about a Patriarchal Authority which wee also acknowledge to be of humane institution And here I must confesse that generally when no body opposes him his Lordship carries it clearly and gives his empty Reader full satisfaction Hee tells you out of Catholike Authors that Princes may resist the oppressions of Ecclesiasticks and themselves have priviledge to exercise Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction That Popes have been convented and deposed That Emperors have changed Patriarchs and that the Kings of England have as much power as Emperors And all this to handle the Question which is not in hand since our dispute is not what can be done in respect of the Popes Patriarchal Authority which the good Bishop himself professes the Pope has renounced these 600. years No doubt but th' other two points will follow the former in missing the Question For admitting the Popes Authority to bee derived from Christ what grounds can there bee for renouncing it or what moderation is the rejjecting it capable of Nay even if it were of humane institution many things there are which cannot bee rejected unless it appear the abuses are not otherwise remediable Suppose then the Christian World had chosen themselves one Head for the preservation oâ—â—o precious a Jewel as Unity in Religion how great absurdities must that Head commit what wrongâ— must it doe to cause it selfe to bee justly deposed and not onely the Person deposed but the very Government abolish't Suppose again that this alteration should â—ee made by some one party of the Christian Common-â—ealth which must separate it selfe from the assistance and communication of the â—â—st of Christianity ought not far weightier causes bee expected or greater abuses committed Suppose thirdly that by setting aside this Supreme Head eternal dissentions will inevibly follow in the whole Church of Christ to the utter ruine of faith and good life which our Saviour thought worth the comming down from Heaven to plant among us and then tell mee whether the refusal to comply with the humours of a lustful Prince be ground enough â—o renounce so necessary an Authority Let the Bishop bee now asked whether Kings deserve to bee deposed and Monarchy it selfâ— rejected for such abuses as hee gathers against the Pope or whether there may not easily bee made a collection of as many an I great misgovernments against the Court of England or any other Country Let him remember whether like abuses were not alledged against his own Parliamentary-Prelacy when it was put down Will hee justifie that if the mâ—â—demeanours pretended against them had been true the extirpation of Prelacy had been lawfull Surely hee would find out many remedies which hee would think necessary to bee first tryed and Sâ—â—ggin should as soon haue chosen a tree to bee hanged on as â—hee have ended the number of expedients to be â—â—yed before hee would give his assent to the extirpation of Episcopacy It is then of little concern to
examine whether his complaints bee true or false since he does not shew there was no other remedy but division and much more since it is known if the authority be of Christs institution no just cause can possibly be given for its abolishment but most because all other Catholick Countries might have made the same exception which England pretends yet they remain still in communion with the Church of Rome whose Authority you cry out against as intolerable nay the former Ages of our Countrey which your selfe cite 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 as Schism draws after it Neither nâ—w after we have broke the ice do our neighbour Nations think it reasonable to follow our example and drown their unity in the waters of Contradiction Lastly the pretences on which the English Schism was originally made were far different from those you now take up to defend it there was then no talk of imposing new Creeds as the conditions of Communion no mention of the abominations of Idolatry and Superstition which now fill your Pulpits nor indeed any other original quarrel but the Popes proceeding according to the known Lawes of the Church which unfortunately happen'd to bee contrary to the tyrannical humour of the King The other point of due moderation is a very pleasant Topick had I a mind to answer at large his Book The first part of moderation is the separating themselves from their Errours not their Churches this signifies to declare them Idolaters superstitious wicked and neverthelesse communicate with them reconciling thus light to darkness and making Christ and Antichrist to be of the same society I confesse this a very good moderation for him that has no Religion in his heart or acknowledges his own the worst there being no danger for him to fear seducing by communication with others But whoever is confident of his own by this very fact implicitely disapproves others I cannot say mine is true but I must say the opposite is false mine is good but the opposite I must say is naught mine necessary but I must judge that which is inconsistent carries to damnation though I am bound both to pity and love the person that disâ—ents Therefore who does not censure a contrary Religion holds not his own certain that is hath none The second part of moderation hee places in their inward charity which if hee had manifested by their external works we might have had occasion to beleeve him Our Saviour telling us the tree is known by the fruit it bears The third part therefore hee is pleased to think may bee found in that they onely take away Points of Religion and adde none Wherein is a double Errour For first to take away goodnesse is the greatest evil that can be done What more mischievous than to abrogate good lawes good practises Let them look on the Scotch Reformation who have taken the memory of Christ from our eyes by pulling down Pictures and Crosses the memory of His principal actions by abolishing Holydayes the esteem of vertue by vilifying his Saints and left him onely in the mouths of babling Preachers that disfigure him to the people as themselves please What if they took away the New Testament too and even solemn Preaching and left all to the will of a frantick Teacher were not this a great moderation because they added nothing The second abuse is that he who positively denies ever adds the contrary to what hee takes away Hee that makes it an Article there is no Purgatory no Mass no prayer to Saints has as many Articles as he who holds the contrary Therefore this kind of moderano is a purefolly The last Point hee deems to be a preparation of mind to beleeve and practise whatever the Universal Church beleeves and practises â— and this is the greatest mock-fool Proposition of all the rest First they will say there is no Universal Church or if any indeterminate that is no man knowes which it is and then with a false and hypocritical heart professe a great readiness to beleeve and obey it Poor Protestants who are led by the nose after such silly Teachers and Doctrines who following the steps of our old mother Eve are flatter'd with the promses of knowledge like the knowledge of God but paid onely with the pure experience of evil In his seventh Chapter hee professes that all Princes and Republicks of the Roman Communion doe in effect the same things which the Protestants doe when they have occasion or at least plead for it What non sense will not an ill cause bring a desperate man to All this while hee would perswade the World that Papists are most injurious to Princes prejudicing their Crowns and subjecting their Dominions to the will of the Pope Hee has scarce done saying so but with a contrary blast drives as far back again confessing all hee said to be false and that the same Papists hold the very doctrine of the Protestants in effect and the difference is onely in words So that this Chapter seems expresly made to justifie the Papists and to shew that though the Popes sometimes personally exceed yet when their passion is over or the present interest ceases then they acknowledge for Catholikes and Orthodox those who before oppos'd them as also that the Catholike Divines who teach the doctrine of resisting the Pope in such occasions are not for that cast out of Communion which is as much as to say it is not our Religion or any publick Tenet in our Church that binds any to those rigorous assertions which the Protestants condemn If this be so what can justifie your bloody Lawes and bloodier Execution for the fourscore years you were in power Why were the poor Priests who had offended no farther than to receive from a Bishops hands the power of consecrating the body of Christ condemned to die a Traitors death Why the Lay-man that harboured any such person made liable to the same forseiture of estate and life Why were Baptisms Churchings Burials Marriages all punished Why were men forced to goe to your Synagogues under great penalties Seldom any lawful conviction exacted but proceeding upon meer surmises A Priest arrested upon the least suspition and hurried before the Magistrate was not permitted to refer his cause to witnesses but compelled to be his own Accuser and without any shadow of proof so much as enquir'd after if he deny'd not himselfe immediatly sent to prison as a Traitor A Priest comming to his Trial before the Judges was never permitted to require proof of his being a Priest It sufficed that having said Mass or heard a Confession he could not prove himselfe a knave What shall I say of the setting up of Pursuivants to hare poor Catholikes in all places and times I have seen when generally they kept their houses close-shut and if any knock't there was a sudden
its Head but abominated the contrary as sacrilegious and schismatical The first urger of the breach then was the King as is also acknowledged let us see then what or who urg'd him that so we may trace the schism to its first original and shew the new-born brat its right Parent As for the King while his blood was yet in due temper and not over-heated with passion that is while his Conscience was uncorrupted it is well known he was as humble a son to the Church and her supreme Pastour the Bishop of Rome as any King in Christendom is at this present admitting appeals thither and his jurisdiction here nay indeed more officiously obedient then any King now-adays can pretend writing or else causing to be set out in his name a Book against Luther in defence of the Roman-Catholick Faith and the Popes Authority which that Apostate rejected for which work also he received in recompence from the Pope the title of Defender of the Faith inherited by the succeeding Kings though they have forfeited the claim to it by disavowing the fact which deserved it What was King Henries judgment of the Popes Universal Authority till he fell into passion is easie to be seen in his own Book where he strongly and rationally proves it in these words Negare Lutherus non potest quin omnis Ecclesia fidelium Sacro-Sanctam sedem Romanam velut Matrem Primatemque recognoscat ac veneretur quaecunque saltem neque locorum distantiâ neque periculis interjacentibus prohibetur accessu Quamquam si vera dicunt qui ex India quoque veniunt huc Indi etiam ipsi tot terrarum tot marium tot solitudinum plagis disjuncti Romano tamen Pontifici se submittunt Ergo si tantam tam latè fusam potestatem neque Dei jussu Pontifex neque hominum voluntate consecutus est sed quâ sibi vi vendicavit dicat velim Lutherus quando in tantae ditionis erupit professionem Num potest obscurum esse initium tam immensae potentiae praesertim si intra hominum memoriam nata sit Quod si rem dixerit unam fortasse aut duas aetates superare in memoriam vobis redigat ex Historiis Alioqui si tam vetusta sit ut rei etiam tantae obliteratae sit origo Legibus omnino cautum esse cognoscat ut cujus jus omnium hominum memoriam ita supergreditur ut sciri non possit cujusmodi habuerit initium censeatur habuisse legitimum Vetitumque esse constat omnium consensu Gentium ne quae di◠manserunt immota moveantur Luther cannot deny but all the Church of the faithful acknowledges and venerates the See of Rome as their Mother and Chief at least whatsoever Church is not hindred from coming thither by distance of place or dangers in the way Although if credit may be given to those who come from the Indies even the very Indians separated by such vast Lands Seas and Wildernesses submit themselves to the Bishop of Rome Wherefore if the Pope hath obtained so great and far-spread an Authority neither by the command of God nor the will of men but hath arrogated it to himself by some violence I would know of Luther when and at what time the Pope broke forth into the profession of so ample a Iurisdiction Can the beginning of such a vast power be obscure Especially if it were born within the memory of man But if he shall say this power exceeds one or two ages let him bring it into our memory by histories Otherwise if it be so ancient that the original of a matter even of so great importance be worn out of memory then let him know it is expresly provided for by the Laws that his right and title which so transcends all memory of man as it cannot be known how it began is judged to have had a lawful original and it is manifest that the consent of all Nations forbid those things should be moved which have long remained setled and firm Thus was King Henry affected and in this affection continued till he found an itching I conceive not too conscientious to his darling Anne Bullen she being too crafty to forgoe the glittering offer of a Crown made unto her by the love-besotted King he grew straight perplext in minde for his former marriage began to think it unlawful though till now neither he nor any in the world ever scrupled it The devotion he bore to his Saint Anne Bullen put a new heat of Religion into his tender heart his restless Conscience alas perswaded him that his marriage with Katherine although confirmed by two and twenty yeers continuance and sealed with the endearing pledge of issue must needs be disanuld The Pope was urged to dispence with his second marriage though his former wife lived King Henry wooed intreated bribed then grew into choller and at last plainly threatned a Schisme unless the Pope would grant and justifie his unlawful desire Here now if the Romish Religion were made up onely of Policy as those think whose eys her prudent and heaven-ordered Government dazles into a blind envy of her priviledges the Pope should rather have sought pretences to yeeld to this unwarrantable request then have denyed it with the loss of a Kingdom from his Jurisdiction but the common Father of the Church more considered unless we will give way to the suspicious Reports of enemies what detriment and scandal to the whole world was likely to result from such an impious example in so eminent a person then consulted with flesh and blood how to second his desire or cloak his grant with the outside of a dangerous necessity He first counselled friendly then reprehended him Fatherly at last refused his consent absolutely Upon this King Henry grew furious put away his most pious and vertuous Lady Queen Katherine whose Angelical Sanctity and Dove like patience he always continued to honour when as he beheaded her assumed Rival Her disenthronement was Anna Bullens enstalment The marriage was celebrated with a divorce of our poor Country from the Church Appeals to Rome denied under pain of death The Popes Authority which had remained inviolable ever since we English were by its means converted utterly rejected nay the very name of Pope rased out of all the Books in England Monasteries and Religious Houses pulled down or robbed their Revenues given by their devout Founders to pious uses confiscare and consecrared to the Kings riotous Lust. Subscriptions forced to a new and till that time unheard of Church-Government a Secular Head of an Ecclesiastical Body they that would not subscribe disgraced or put to death Thus the Reformation was first set on foot and this lust of King Henry was so fruitful that it at once begot Tyranny Rapine the Reformation Adultery Protestancy at least the embrio of it Sacriledge Queen Elizabeth