Believed in this our own Profession as well as you are in yours when you make the Decrees of Popes and Councils to be your Law and Rule and Tests We perform therefore more then you demand You ask us Where was our Church before Luther And we answer Where our Religion was You ask us Where was that and we tell you Where ever the Christian Religion was and the Holy Scriptures were received This were enough for us in answer to your Question But we do more We tell you not only where our Church and Religion was but where there were men that owned not your grand Corruptions no more then we What can you demand more of us when you call for a succession of Protestants then that we tell you of a succession of Christians which are of our Religion and which were no Papists yea against Popery which therefore were of our integrity And who knoweth not that the foresaid Abassines Armenians Egyptians Greeks c. are against your Papal Soveraignty Infallibility and all that is by us renounced as Essential to Popery O but say the Juglers these are not Protestants they differ from you in many particulars I answer Call them by what name you please they are not only Christians but also Anti-papists or free from Popery and then they are of our Religion and Church But indeed must the world be made believe that all that we Believe is essential to our Religion and that no man that differeth from us can be of our Religion be the difference never so small But say they tell us of a Church that professes your 39 Articles Silly deceivers Do not those very Articles profess that The Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation so that whatever is not read therein nor may be proved thereby is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an Article of the Faith or be thought requsite or necessary to Salvation Art 6. We never took these Articles instead of the Scripture but the Articles and all Protestants profess the Scripture to be the only Rule and Test of their Faith and Religion The substance of the 39 Articles may easily be proved to have been successively held by the Church from the beginning but it is not incumbent on us to prove that every word in the writings of every Divine or Church hath been so continued no more then you will own the writings of any Divines or Provincial Synods of your own as being the Rule of your Faith As you profess that the Decrees of Popes and general Councils approved by him besides the Scriptures are the Rule and Test of your Religion so do we profess that the Scriptures alone with the Law of Nature is the Rule of ours But what say they will you be of the same Church with Nestorians Eutichians and other Hereticks I Answ 1. We will not take all for Nestorians or Eutichians that a railer can call such that never knew them nor can prove it 2. Hereticks indeed that deny any essential part of Christianity are no Christians anh therefore none of the Church that we are of but if you will call those Hereticks that have all the essentials of Christianity because they err in lesser points we know that there are such in the Catholick Church We will be none of them our selves if we can escape it yet indeed have no hope of escaping all error till we are perfect in knowledge But we will not run out of the family of God because there are children and sick persons in it Nor will we for sake the Catholick Church because there are erring persons in it O but saith the Papist We acknowledge not your distinction of points Essential and not Essential all points of Faith are Essential with us and of necessity to Salvation Answ Reader thou shalt see here such impudent and faithless jugling as may make thee blush to think that Christianity hath such professors 1. The Outside of their assertion damneth no aess then all the world that live to the use of Reason 2. The Inside of their deceitful meaning is almost clean contrary and leaveth Heathens and Infidels in the Church or in a state of salvation as well as Christians 3. It leaveth no one Article of faith essential to a Christian or to one that shall be saved and leaveth the Church an Invisible thing clean contrary to their own assertions of its Visibility 4. And when they have thus wrangled themselves into a wood of contradictions and Unchristian absurdities the wisest of them say as we say in the main point All this I will now manifest to thee 1. The Out-side of their assertion is that Every point that we are bound to belive by a Divine faith is fundamental or essential to Christian faith or of necessity to salvation And if so then no man breathing can be saved For no man knoweth all that he is bound to know And no man believeth that which he understandeth not It is impossible to believe that such a Proposition is a truth distinctly and actually when I understand not what the Proposition is And that we all know but in part even what we are obliged to know no man will deny but he that is mad by pride or faction All that God hath revealed in his word is the matter of our faith There is to man can say I have no culpable ignorance of any one Truth of God that I should believe Had we been more perfect in our diligent studies and prayers and use of all means and had we never sinfully grieved the spirit that should illuminate us to say nothing of our Original sinfull darkness there is not one of us but might have known more then we do If sin of the will and life be consistent with true faith then some sin in the understanding is consistent with faith But the former is true therefore c. But according to the out-side of their doctrine no man that hath any sinfull ignorance and consequently unbelief in his understanding can be saved that is no man in the world If he that thinks he knowth any thing knoweth nothing as he ought to know 1 Cor. 8. 2. what shall be said of these men that think they and all the Church do know all things that they ought to know and that their understandings have no sin And must we needs be of that faith that damneth all men and of that Church where none are saved 2. As the Out-side of their Assertions is made for a bug-bear to frighten fools so that the In-side as expounded by many of them is that Heathens and Infidels may be of their Church or saved and that nothing of the Chrian faith at all is necessary to salvation is plain For they ' tell us that they mean that all points are of necessity where they are sufficiently proposed and mens ignorance is not invincible but where there is no sufficient proposal but mens ignorance is invincible or
did Reject the chief of the Popish errors as we do Besides many particular points named in my Safe Religion they Rejected with us the Popes Catholick Monarchy the pretended Infallibility of the Pope or his Councils the new form of the Papall Catholick Church as Headed by him with other such points which are the very fundamentall controversies between us and the Papists So that besides that the Papists themselves profess our Religion the major part of the Catholick Church did profess it with the Rejection of the Papacy and Papall Church and so you may as easily see where our Religion was before Luther as where the Catholick Church or most of Christians were before Luther 3. And beside both these our Religion was professed with a yet greater Rejection of Romish corruptions by thousands and many thousands that lived in the Western Church it self and under the Popes nose and opposed him in many of his ill endeavours against the Church and truth together with them that gave him the hearing and were glad to be quiet and gave way to his tyranny but never consented to it Concerning these we have abundant evidence though abundance more we might have had if the power and subtilty of the Papall faction had not had the handling of them 1. We have abundance of Histories that tell us of the bloody wars and contentions that the Emperours both of East and West have had with the Pope to hinder his tyranny and that they were forced by his power to submit to him contrary to their former free professions 2. And we have abundance of Treatises then written against him both for the Emperours and Princes and against his doctrine and tyranny some store of them Goldastus hath gathered And intimations of more you have in their own expurgatory Indices 3. And we have the histories and professions of the Albigenses Waldenses Bohemians and others that were very numerous and if Raynerius say true they affirmed about the year one thousand one hundred that they had coutinued since the Apostles and no other Originall of them is proved 4. Particular evidence unanswerable is given in by Bishop Usher de Succes statu Eccl. and Answer to the Jesuites and the Ancient Religion of Ireland and in Dr. Field and Morneyes Mysterie of Iniquity and of the Church and Illyricus and many others 5. Even Generall Popish Councils have contended and born witness against the Popes superiority over a Councill 6. And in that and other points whole Countreyes of their own are not yet brought over to the Pope 7. They have still among themselves Dominicans Jansenists c. that are reproached by the Jesuites as siding with Calvin in many Controversies as Catharinus and many more in others Most points of ours which we oppose to Popery being maintained by some or other of them 8. But the fullest evidence is the certain history or knowledge of of the case of the common people and Clergy among them who are partly ignorant of the main matters in Controversies between us as we see by experience of multitudes for one to this day and are generally kept under the fear of fire and sword and torments so that the truth of the Case is this the Roman Bishops were aspiring by degrees to be Arch-bishops and so to be Patriarchs and so to have the first seat and vote and to be called the Chief Bishops or Patriarchs and at last they made another thing of their office and claimed about six hundred years or more after Christ to be universal Monarchs or Governours of all the Church But though this claim was soon laid it was comparatively but few even in the West that made it any Article of their faith but multitudes sided with the Princes that would have kept the Pope lower and the most of the People medled not with the matter but yielded to necessity and gave place to violence except such as the Albigenses Bohemians Wicklefists and the rest that more openly opposed So that no man could judge of the multitude clearly which side they were on being forced by fire and sword and having not the freedom to profess their minds So that in summ our Religion was at first with the Apostles and the Apostolick Church and for divers hundred years after it was with the universal Christian Church And since Romes usurpation it was even with the Romanists though abused and with the greater part of the Catholick Church that renounced Popery then and so do now and also with the opposers of the Pope in the West under his own nose You see now what Succession we plead and where our Church and Religion still was If any deny that we are of the same Church and Religion with the Greeks Abassines and most of the Christian world yea all that is truly Christian I easily prove it 1. They that are Christians joyned to Christ the Head are all of the same Church and Religion for none else are Christians or united to Christ but the Church which is his Body But the sincere Greeks Abassines c. and we are Christians united to Christ the Head therefore we are all of one and the same Church and Religion 2. They that believe the same holy Scripture and differ in no essential part of the Christian faith are of the same Church and Religion but so do both we and all true Christians therefore we are all of one Church and Religion 3. They that are truly regenerate and Justified hating all known sin longing to be perfect Loving God above all and seeking first his Kingdom and Righteousness and accounting all things but as dung in comparison of Christ these are all of the true Catholick Church and the true Christian Religion but such are all that are sincere both of the Greeks Abassines c. and the Reformed Churches as we prove 1. To others by our Profession and Practice by which only they are capable of judging of us 2. To ourselves infallibly against all the Enemies of our salvation in Hell or Earth by the knowledge and acquaintance with our own hearts and the experience of the work of God upon them All the Jesuites in the world cannot perswade me that I love not God and hate not sin and prefer not the Love of Christ before all the world when I feel and know that I do till they can prove that they know my heart better then I do 4. If Christ Consent to it and we Consent to it then we are all that are sincere in their profession of the true Catholick Church and Religion for if he consent and we consent who is there that is able to break the match But Christ consenteth and we consent as we prove by parts 1. His consent is expressed in his Gospel that whoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life and whoever will may drink of the water of life freely 2. And our consent we openly professed at Baptisme and have frequently renewed and our own
such as comes not from a wilfull neglect of means there no ignorance of the articles of faith is damnable and so no article absolutely necessary so that the question indeed is not Whether men believe or not but Whether they are Unbelievers or Heathens or ignorant persons by a willfull neglect of sufficiently proposed Truth or not So that all that part of the Heathen or Infidell world O how great that have no such proposals of the Gospel may not only be saved but be better and safer then most Christians if not all who certainly are sinfully ignorant of some truth which they ought to know Obj. But say they it will not stand with faith to deny belief to God in any thing sufficiently revealed for he that believeth him in one thing believeth him in all Answ Very true if they know it to be the Word of God And if this be all the Protestants are ready to averre upon their most solemn Oaths that they believe every thing without exception which they know to be a Divine Revelation and no wonder for so doth every man that believes that there is a God and that he is no lyar If this will serve your turn you have no more to say against us your mouths are stopt But may it not stand with faith to be ignorant and that through sinfull neglect of some revealed truth of God or of the meaning of his word If you are so proud as to think that all the justified are perfect and have no sin yet at last consider whether a man that liveth in Heathenism til fourscore years of age and then turns Christian is not afterward ignorant through his former sinfull negligene But dare you say that you have no sinfull ignorance to bewail Will you confess none nor beg pardon or be beholden to Christ to pardon it That they make no point of faith necessary while they seem to make all necssary see but what I have after cited from Frans à S. Clara probl 15 16 17. and abundance more that are mentioned there by him 3. And that by this Protean jugling they make the Church invisible is apparent For what man breathing knoweth the secrets of the souls of others whether they have resisted or not resisted the light and whether they are ignorant of the articles of faith upon sinfull contempt or for want of some due means of faith or internal capacity or opportunity We are as sure that all men are ignorant of some thing that God hath revealed to be known in nature and Scripture as that they are men But now whether any one of these men be free from those aggravations of his ignorance and that in every point upon which the Papists make him an unbeliever is unknown to others When the Faith or Infidelity of men and so their being in the Church or out of it must not be known by the Matter of Faith which they profess but by the secret passages of their hearts their willingness or unwillingness resistance or not resistance and such like the Church then is invisible no man can say which is it nor who is of it He that professeth not the Faith may be a Catholick and he that professeth it for ought they know may be an Infidel as being sinfully yet ignorant of some one truth that is not in his express confession thus by confusion the bulders of Babel marre their work 4. And that the wisest of them say in the main as we say see here in some proofs Bellarm. de Verbo Dei lib. 4. cap. 11. In the Christian Doctrine both of Faith and Manners some things are simply necessary to salvation to all as the Knowledge of the Articles of the Apostles Creed of the ten Commandements and of some Sacraments The restore not so necessary that a man cannot be saved without the explicite Knowledge belief and profession of them These things that are simply necessary and are profitable to all the Apostles preached to all Allthings are Written by the Apostles which are Necessary to all and which they openly preacht to all see the place Costerus Echirid c. 1. p. 49. Non inficiamur praecipua illa fidei capita quae omnibus Christianis cognitu sunt ad salutem Necessaria perspicuè satis esse Apostolicis scriptis comprehensa That is We deny not that those Chief Heads of the Faith which are to all Christians necessary to be known to salvation are perspicuously enough comprehended in the Writings of the Apostles Judge by these two to spare the trouble of citing more whether they be not forced after all their Cavils to say as we in distinguishing of Articles of Faith And they cannot be ignorant that the Church hath still had Forms of Profession which were called her Symbols as being the Badge of her Members and did not suspend all upon uncertain conjectures about the frame and temper of the Professors minds But if indeed it be not the want of Necessary Articles of Faith that they accuse us of but the want of willingness or diligence to know the truth let them prove their accusations and let those persons that they prove guilty bear the blame Do they think we would not as willingly know the truth as they and that we do not pray as earnestly for Divine illumination Do we not read their Books I verily think incomparably more then they do ours and are we not willing to confer with the wisest of them that can inform us I have often privately and publickly desired you that if any of them can say more then all these Schoolmen Fryars and Jesuites say which I have read they would let me hear it that I may want no means they can afford me for my fuller information But yet they have not done with us When we prove a succession of our Religion by proving a succession of such as adhered to the Scriptures which are the Doctrine of our Religion an Argument that no Papist under heaven can confute they vainly tell us that All Hereticks pretend to Scripture and therefore that will not prove the point But 1. Doth it follow that Scripture is not a sufficient Rule of our Religion because Hereticks may pretend to it You take the 39 Articles for our Religion and yet may Hereticks that are far from our minds pretend to them It 's the liker to be the Rule because all Hereticks pretend it and would borrow credit from it to their Heresies The Law of the Land is the Rule of our Justice and yet Lawyers and their Clients that are contrary to each other do plead it for their contrary Causes The Creed it self is pretended by Arrians for their Heresie What must we have no Rule or Test or discovery of our Religion which a Heretick can pretend for his impiety What words of God or man are not capable of being misinterpreted If we should give you every day a confession of Faith some Hereticks might pretend to hold the same No wonder then if they
do so by the Scriptures 2. And can any Learned Papists be so ignorant as not to know that the Arrians pretended the Authority of General Councils and so do many other Hereticks and that the Authority of Pope and Councils are frequently pretended for contrary opinions among them and may be pretended by many an Heretick And will they therefore grant that the Decrees of Popes and Councils are no sufficient discovery of their Faith If Hereticks pretending to your Test of Faith disprove not that to be your Faith then Hereticks pretending to our Rule and Test of Faith which is the Holy Scripture is no proof that it is not our Rule of Faith I do therefore conclude that the Proof of a Succession of such Churches as have received the Holy Scriptures is a valid proof of a succession of Churches of our Religion seeing we have no Religion doctrinally but the Holy Scriptures And this as far as modesty will permit I challenge all the Jesuites on Earth to confute with any solid Reasons yet adding that we do ex superabundanti prove a succession also of Churches that never owned Popery even the greatest part of the Christian world But let these men themselves but prove to us a succession of their Church even such as they require of us Let them prove that from the Apostles days the Catholick Church or any one Congregation of twenty men did hold all that now their Councils and Popes have Decreed and are esteemed Articles of their Faith and I am contented to be their bondslave for ever or to bear a fagot or be used by them as cruelly as their malice can invent or flames or their strappado's execute Let my Head be at their Mercy if they can but prove that Succession of Popery as they require us to do of Protestancy or as I have produced of our Churches and Religion In the 15th and 16th Detection I have more largely spoken to them of this point to which I refer the Reader In the very principal point of their Papal Soveraignty they have nothing but this gross deceit to cheat the world with The Roman Emperors divers ages after Christ did give the Bishop of Rome a Primacy in their Empire and hence these men would perswade us that even from Christ they have had a Soveraignty over all the Christian world Wink but at these small mistakes and they have won the Cause 1. Suppose but Christs Institution to stand in stead of the Emperors 2. Suppose divers hundred years after Christ to have been in the Apostles days 3. Suppose Primacy to be Soveraignty or Universal Government 4. But especially grant them that the Roman Empire was all the Christian world and then they have made good that part of their Cause That there were many Nations without the reach of the Roman Empire that had received the Christian Faith is past doubt Socrates lib. 1. c. 15. saith that Thomas chose Parthia Bartholomew chose India Matthew Ethiopia to plant the Gospel in but the middle India was not converted till Constantines days by Frumentius and Edesius and Iberia by a Maid So Euseb l. 3. c. 3. tells us of Thomas his Preaching to the Parthians and Andrew to the Scythians Et in vit Const l. 4. c. 8. that there were many Churches in Persia cap. 91. how Constantine wrote for them to the King Godignus and others of them maintain that the Abassines did receive the Gospel from the beginning Besides Scotland and many other Countries that were not under the Roman Power And none of these were Governed by the Pope These three Arguments against the Papal Cause I shall here premise to more that follow 1. If all that part of the Christian world that was out of the reach of the Roman Empire did never submit to the Soveraignty of the Pope then hath he not been successively or at any time the actual Head of the Universal Church But the Antecedent is most certain therefore so is the Consequent How an old woman the Emperors Mother of Habassia did baffle their Jesuites by asking them How it came to pass if obedience to the Pope be necessary to salvation that they never had heard from him till now I have told you after from themselves If Primacy were Soveraignty and Emperors and Councils were Gods yet the Indians Abassines Persians and many more in the East and the Scots and Irish and Danes and Sweeds and Poles and Muscovites and most of Germany in the West and North should be no subjects of the Pope 2. If the Rule and Test of the Faith of Papists never had a Real Being or no succession from the Apostles then their Faith and Church hath either no Real Being or no such Succession But the Antecedent is true as I prove It is either General Councils or Popes or the Church Essential as they use to call it that is the Whole Body that is the Rule of their Faith If it be General Councils 1. They had no being from the Apostles till the Council of Nice therefore the Rule of the Papists Faith was then unborn 2. Yea they never had a being in the world There was never any thing like a General Council since the days of the Apostles to this day The first at Nice had none save one John of Persia who its like was some persecuted Bishop that was fled or if one or two more its not material but the Bishops of the Empire and out of the Western parts so few as was next to none The following Councils as Constantinop 1. c. were only out of one piece of the Empire The Council of Trent I disdain to reckon among the modester pretenders to an Universality 2. And if it be not General Councils but the Pope that is the Rule of their Faith then 1. Their Faith hath been interrupted yea and turned to Heresie and to Infidelity when the Pope hath so turned 2. And why then do they tell our people that they take not the Pope for the Rule of their Faith 3. If it be the Major part of the Universal Church 1. It 's known that two to one are against them or at least the Greater part therefore by that Rule their Faith in the Papal Soveraignty is false 2. And yet it would be hard if a man must be of no Belief till he have brought the world to the pole for it Argum. 3. If all the stir that the Papists make in the world for the Papal Government be but to rob Christian Princes and Magistrates of their Power then are they but a seditious Sect But the Antecedent is apparent For there are but two sorts of Government in the Church The one is by the Word applyed unto the Conscience which worketh only on the willing either by General exhortations as in Preaching or by personal application as in Sacraments Excommunication and Absolution And this is the work of the present Pastors and cannot be performed by the Pope Nor would he be
being false Popes who are not to be written in the Catalogue of the Roman Popes but only for the marking out of such times And what kind of Cardinals Priests and Deacons think you we must imagine that these monsters did choose when nothing is so rooted in nature as for every one to beget his like And Genebrard that spleenish Papist li. 4. Sec. 10. saith In this one thing that age was unhappy that for neer one hundred and fifty years about fifty Popes did wholly fall away from the virtue of their ancestors being rather irregular and Apostatical then Apostolical So that the Church of Rome had not then either a Holy or Apostolical Head And Pope Adrian the sixth himself writeth De Sacram. Confir Art 4. that there have many Popes of Rome been Hereticks And two or three several General Councils did condemn Pope Honorius for an Heretick And if I should tell you but what their own writers say of the wickedness of the Roman Clergy in many ages and of the wickedness of the Roman people of the large summs of money that the Pope hath yearly for the licensed or tolerated Whore-houses in Rome you would think that the body of the particular Roman Church were neer kin to the Head and therefore not the Holy Mistris of all Churches But perhaps some will say that the Pope was holy because his Office was Holy though his person vicious Ans 1. If this be the Holiness of the Catholick Church mentioned in the Creed then the Institution of offices is it that makes it Holy and while the office continueth the Holiness cannot be lost 2. Then let them prove their Holiness by Saints no more 3. Let them not then delude the people but speak out and tell them that they mean such Holiness as is consistent with Heathenism or Infidelity Murders Sodomie and may be in an incarnate Devil Is this the Holiness of the Catholick Church Object But you may have unholy persons among you also that yet say you are of the true Church Answ But they are no Essential part of the Catholick Church which we believe and therefore it may be a Holy Church though they be unholy But the Pope is an Essential part of the Roman Church which they believe in and therefore it can not be Holy if he be unholy Object By this means you leave no room for the Church of Rome or any Papist in the Catholick Church which is truly Holy Answ Not as Papists so they can be no members of it But if with any of them Christianity be predominant and prevail against the infection of Popery so that it practically extinguish not Christianity then as Christians they may be members of the Church and be saved too but not as Papists CHAP. VII Argum. 5. THE true Catholick Church of Christ is but One The pretended Roman Catholick Church is more than One Therefore the pretended Roman-Catholick Church is not the true Catholick Church of Christ The Major is confessed The Minor I prove thus 1. Where there are two Heads or Soveraign Powers specifically distinct there are two Societies or Churches But those called Papists or the Roman Catholick Church have two Heads or Soveraign Powers specifically distinct Therefore they are two Churches The Major is granted by all Politicians who do without contradiction specifie Common-wealths and other Political Societies from the Soveraign Powers and so the Monarchical Aristocratical and Democratical are several Species The Belgian Common-wealth and the French be not specifically the same The Minor hath two standing proofs so visible that he must be blind indeed that cannot see them First there are the many Volumes that are written by both sides for their several forms Bellarmine Gretsor and the rest of the Italian faction proving that the Pope is the chief Power and above a General Council and the seat of Infallibility and not to be judged by any being himself the Judge of the whole world And the other party proving that a General Council is above the Pope and that he is to be judged by them and may be deposed by them If any say that they are but few and no true Catholicks of this Opinion I answer then a General Council are but few and no true Catholicks which yet is said by them to represent the whole Catholick Church For the General Council of Constance and of Basil have peremptorily asserted it and repeat it over and over yea the Council of Basil say Ses ultim that Not one of the skilfull did ever doubt but that the Pope was subject to the Judgement of a General Council in things that concern faith And that he cannot without their consent dissolve or remove a General Council yea and that this is an Article of faith which without destruction of salvation cannot be denyed and that the Council is above the Pope defide and that it cannot be removed without their own consent and that he is an heretick that is against these things See Binnius page 43. 79. 96. And Pope Eugenius owned this Council ibid. page 42. And for the Council of Constance Martin the fifth was chosen by it and present in it and personally confirmed it in these words Quodomnia singula determinata conclusa decreta in materiis fidei per praesens concilium conciliariter tenere inviolabiliter observare volebat nunquam contraire quoquo modo Ipsaque sic conciliariter facta approbat ratificat non aliter nec alio modo that is what they did as a Council and not what private members did you see then even General Councils representing the Catholick Church do not only say that a Council is above the Pope but make it an Article of faith and damn those that deny it What then is become of Bellarmine and the rest of their champions But perhaps you 'l say they are but few on the other side I answer yes Not only most Popes and the Italian Clergy and the predominant party of Papists but another General Council even that at the Lateran under Julius 2. and Leo 10. expresly determine on the contrary that the Pope is above a General Council So that here is not only an undenyable proof that General Councils are fallible by their contradicting each other and that there is a Necessity of rejecting some of them and consequently that the Foundation of Popery is rotten but also here is one Representative Catholick Church against another Representative Catholick Church and one Council for one Species of Soveraignty and another for another Species of Soveraignty So that undoubtedly it is not the same Church that had two heads of several sorts 2. And the Nations that are on both sides to this day are a proof beyond denyall of their division The French on one side and the Italians on the other and other nations divided between both So that the thing which they call by one name is two indeed But so is not the true Catholick Church Object
Professors of our Religion therefore c. But all this will not serve them without a Catalogue and telling them where our Church was before Luther To this we further answer we have no peculiar Catholick Church of our own for there is but one and that is our Church Wherever the Christian Church was there was our Church And where-ever any Christians were congregate for Gods worship there were Churches of the same sort as our particular Churches And wherever Christianity was there our Religion was For we know no Religion but Christianity And would you have us give you a Catalogue of all the Christians in the world since Christ Or would you have us as vain as H. T. in his Manuall that names you some Popes and about twenty professors of their faith in each age as if twenty or thirty men were the Catholick Church Or as if those men were proved to be Papists by his naming them This is easie but silly disputing In a word Our Religion is Christianity 1. Christianity hath certain Essentials without which no man can be a Christian and it hath moreover many precious truths and duties necessary necessitate praecepti and also necessitate medii to the better being of a Christian Our being as Christians is in the former and our strength and increase and better-being is much in the latter From the former Religion and the Church is denominated Moreover 2. Our implicite and actuall explicite Belief as the Papists call them must be distinguished or our General and our particular Belief 3. And also the Positives of our Belief must be distinguished from the implyed Negatives and the express Articles themselves from their implyed Consectaries And now premising these three distinctions I shall tell you where our Church hath been in all Ages since the birth of Christ 1. In the dayes of Christ and his Apostles our Church was where they and all Christians were And our Religion was with them in all its parts both Essential and perfective That is we now Believe 1. All to be true that was delivered by the Apostles as from God with a General faith 2. We believe all the Essentials and as much more as we can understand with a Particular faith 3. But we cannot say that with such a particular faith we believe all that the Apostles believed or delivered for then we must say that we have the same degree of understanding as they and that we understand every word of the Scriptures 2. In the dayes of the A postles themselves the Consectaries and implied Verities and Rejections of all Heresies were not particularly and expresly delivered either in Scripture or Tradition as the Papists will confess 3. In the next ages after the Apostles our Church was the one Catholick Church containing all true Christians Headed by Jesus Christ and every such Christian too many to number was a member of it And for our Religion the Essential parts of it were contained both in the Holy Scriptures and in the Publick Professions Ordinances and Practices of the Church in those ages which you call Traditions and the rest of it even all the doctrines of faith and universal Laws of God which are its perfective parts they were fully contained in the holy Scriptures And some of our Rejections and Consectaries were then gathered and owned by the Church as Heresies occasioned the expressing of them and the rest were all implyed in the Apostolical Scripture doctrine which they preserved 4. By degrees many errors crept into the Church yet so that 1. Neither the Catholick Church nor one true Christian in sensu composito at least did reject any essential part of Christianity 2. And all parts of the Church were not alike corrupted with error but some more and some less 3. And still the whole Church held the holy Scripture it self and so had a perfect General or Implicite belief even while by evill consequences they oppugned many parts of their own profession 5. When in process of time by claiming the universall Soveraignty Rome had introduced a new pretended Catholick Church so far as their opinion took by superadding a New Head and form there was then a two fold Church in the West the Christian as Christian headed by Christ and the Papal as Papal Headed by the Pope yet so as they called it but one Church and by this usurped Monarchy as under Christ endeavoured to make but one of them by making both the Heads Essential when before one only was tolerable And if the Matter in any part may be the same and the same Man be a Christian and a Papist and so the same Assemblies yet still the forms are various and as Christians and part of the Catholick Church they are one thing and as Papists and members of the separating sect they are another thing Till this time there is no doubt of our Churches Visibility 6. In this time of the Romish Usurpation our Church was visible in three degrees in three severall sorts of persons 1. It was visible in the lowest degree among the Papists themselves not as Papists but as Christians For they never did to this day deny the Scriptures nor the Ancient Creeds nor Baptism the Lords Supper nor any of the substance of our Positive Articles of Religion They added a New Religion and Church of their own but still professed to hold all the old in consistency with it Wherever the truth of holy Scriptures and the ancient Creeds of the Church were professed there was our Religion before Luther But even among the Papists the holy Scriptures and the said Creeds were visibly professed therefore among them was our Religion And note here that Popery it self was not ripe for a corruption of the Christian faith professed till Luthers opposition heightned them For the Scripture was frequently before by Papists held to be a most sufficient Rule of faith as I shewed before from the Council of Basil and consequently Tradition was only pleaded as conservatory and expository of the Scripture but now the Council of Trent hath in a sort equalled them And this they were lately driven to when they found that out of Scripture they were unable to confute or suppress the truth 2. At the same time of the Churches oppression by the Papacy our Religion was visible and so our Church in a more illustrious sort among the Christians of the most of the world Greeks Ethiopians and the rest that never were subject to the usurpation of Rome but only many of them took him for the Patriarch primae sedis but not Episcopus Ecclesiae Catholicae or the Governour of the Universall Church So that here was a visibility of our Church doubly more eminent then among the Romanists 1. In that it was the far greatest part of the Catholick Church that thus held our Religion to whom the Papists were then but few 2. In that they did not only hold the same Positive Articles of faith with us but also among their Rejections
whether you believe that the Oral Tradition of all the Church did preserve the Knowledge of Augustines Epiphanius Chrysostomes c. doctrine so much as their writings do Is the doctrine of Aquinas Scotus Gabriel c. yea the Council of Trent preserved now more certainly in mens memories then in writing If so they have better memories then mine that keep them and they have better hap then I that light of such keepers For I can scarce tell how to deliver my mind so in any difficult point but one or other is misunderstanding and misreporting it and by leaving out or changing a word perhaps make it another matter so that I am forced to refer them to my writings and yet there by neglect they misinterpret me till I open the book it self to them 6. Either the Fathers of the fifth age are intelligible in their writings or not If they be then we may understand them I hope with industry If they be not then 1. Much less were their transient speeches intelligible 2. And then the writings of the sixth age be not intelligible nor of any other and so we cannot understand the Council of Trent as the Papists do not that controvert its sense voluminously nor can we know the Churches judgement 7. By your leave the Roman Corrupters take on them so much Power to make new Laws and new Articles of Faith quoad nos by definitions and to dispense with former Laws that unless they are all Knights of the Post they can never swear that they had all that they have from their Fore-fathers 8. Well! but all this is the least part of my answer But I grant you that the sixth age understood and retained the doctrine of the fifth age and have delivered it to us But that there were no Hereticks or corrupters you will not say your selves Well then the far greatest part of the Catholick Church did not only receive from the fifth age the same Christian Religion but also kept themselves from the grossest corruptions of the Pope and his flatterers that were then but a small part And thus we stick to the Catholick Church succeeding to this day and you to an usurper that then was newly set on the Throne of universal Soveraignty So that your chief Argument treadeth Popery in the dirt because the greater part of the Catholick Church not only in the fifth and sixth age but in the seventh eighth nineth tenth thirteenth fourteenth fifteenth and sixteenth ages have been aliens or enemies to the Roman universal Monarchy therefore if one age of the Church knew the mind of the former age better then the Pope did we may be sure that the Pope is an usurper The third Argument of H. T. is that the Fathers of the first five hundred years taught their tenets therefore its impossible they should be for the Protestants Answ 1. Protestants are Christians taking the Holy Scriptures for the Rule of their faith If the Fathers were Christians they were for the Protestants but its certain they were Christians If you could prove that they were for some of your mistakes that would not prove them against the Protestants in the doctrine of Christianity and the holy Scriptures and so that we are not their Successors in Christianity and of the same Church which was it that you should have proved but forgot the question And of this we shall speak to you more anon Well! by this time I have sufficiently shewed the succession of our Church and continuation of our Religion from the Apostles and where it was before Luther and given you the Catholick Church instead of a dozen or twenty names in each age which it seems will satisfie a Papist but yet we have not done with them but require this following Justice at their hands Seeing the Papists do so importunately call to us for Catalogues and proof of our succession Reason and Justice requireth that they first give us a Catalogue of Papists in all ages and prove the succession of their Roman Catholick Church which they can never do while they are men And here I must take notice of the delusory ridiculous Catalogue wherewith H. T. begins his Manual His Argument runs thus That is the only true Church of God which hath had a continued succession from Christ and his Apostles to this day very true But the Church now in Communion with the Sea of Rome and no other hath had a continued succession from Christ and his Apostles to this time therefore c. For the proof of the Minor he giveth us a Catalogue And here note the misery of poor souls that depend on these men that are deluded with such stuff that one would think they should be ashamed the world should see from them 1. What if his Catalogue were true and proved would it prove the Exclusion that no other Church had a succession Doth it prove that Constantinople or Alexandria had no such succession because the Romanists had it where is there ever a word here under this Argument to prove that exclusive part of his Minor 2. And note how he puts that for the Question that is not the Question between us A fair beginning The Question is not about Churches in Communion with you but about Churches in subjection to you But this is but a pious fraud to save men by decieving them The Ancient Church of Rome had the Church of Hierusalem Corinth Philippi Ephesus and many a hundred Churches in Communion with her that never were in subjection to her 3. And if the Papists can but prove themselves true Christians I will quickly prove that the Protestants are in Communion with them still as Christians by the same Head Christ the same spirit baptism faith love hope c. though not as Papists by subjection to the same usurper 4. Our question is of the Universal Church And this man nameth us twenty or thirty men in an age that he saith were professors of their Religion And doth he believe in good sadness that twenty or thirty men are either the universall Church or a sufficient proof that it was of their mind 5. But principally did this man think that all or any besides their subjects had their wits so far to seek as to believe that the persons named in his Catalogue were Papists without any proof in the world but meerly because they are listed here by H. T Or might he not to as good purpose have saved his labour and said nothing of them 6 But what need we go any further we will begin with him at lis first Century and so to the second and if he can prove that Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary or John Baptist or the Apostles or any one of the rest that he hath named were Papists much more all of them I am resolved presently to turn Papist But unless the man intended to provoke his reader to an unreverent laughter about this abuse of holy things one would think he should not have named
not the subject of the Pope as universal Monarch Nor can any other be saved as being without the Church 3. And that the Church of Rome is by Gods appointment the Mistris of all other Churches 4. And that the Pope of Rome is Infallible 5. That we cannot believe the Scriptures to be the word of God or the Christian doctrine to be true but upon the Authoritative Tradition of the Roman Church and upon the knowledge or belief of their Infallibility that is we must believe in the Pope as Infallible before we can believe in Christ who is pretended to give him that infallibility 6. That no Scripture is by any man to be interpreted but according to the sence of the Pope or Roman Church and the unanimous consent of the Fathers 7. That a General Council approved by the Pope cannot err but a General Council not approved by the Pope may err 8. That nothing is to us an Article of faith till it be declared by the Pope or a General Council though it was long before declared by Christ or his Apostles as plain as they can speak 9. That a General Council hath no more validity then the Pope giveth it 10. That no Pastor hath a valid Ordination unless it be derived from the Pope 11. That there are Articles of faith of Necessity to our Salvation which are not contained in the Holy Scriptures nor can be proved by them 12. That such Traditions are to be received with equal pious affection and reverence as the holy Scriptures 13. That Images have equal honour with the Holy Gospel 14. That the Clergy of the Catholick Church ought to swear obedience to the Pope as Christs Vicar 15. That the Pope should be a temporal Prince 16. That the Pope and his Clergy ought to be exempted from the Government of Princes and Princes ought not to judge and punish the Clergy till the Pope deliver them to their power having degraded them 17. That the Pope may dispossess Princes of their Dominions and give them to others if those Princes be such as he judgeth hereticks or will not exterminate Hereticks 18. That in such cases the Pope may discharge all the subjects from their allegiance and fidelity 19. That the Pope in his own Territories and Princes in theirs must burn or otherwise put to death all that deny Transubstantiation the Popes Soveraignty or such doctrines as are afore expressed when the Pope hath sentenced them 20. That the people should ordinarily be forbidden to read the Scripture in a known tongue except some few that have a license from the ordinary 21. That publick Prayers Prayses and other publick worship of God should be performed constantly in a language not understood by the People or only in Latine Greek or Hebrew 22. That the Bread and Wine in the Eucharist is Transubtantiate into the very body and blood of Christ so that it is no more true Bread or Wine though our eyes tast and feeling tell us that it is 23. That the consecrated host is to be worshipped with Divine worship and called our Lord God 24. That the Pope may oblige the people to receive the Eucharist only in one kind and forbid them the Cup. 25. That the sins called venial by the Papists are properly no sins and deserve no more but temporal punishment 26. That we may be perfect in this life by this double perfection 1. To have no sin but to keep all Gods Law perfectly 2. To supererogate by doing more then is our Duty 27. That our works properly merit salvation of God by way of Commutative Justice or by the Condignity of the works as proportioned to the Reward 28. That Priests should generally be fordidden Marriage 29. That there is a fire called Purgatory where souls are tormented and where sin is pardoned in another world 30. That in Baptism there is an implicite vow of obedience to the Pope of Rome 31. That God is ordinarily to be worshipped by the Oblation of a true proper propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead where the Priest only shall eat and drink the body and blood of Christ while the Congregation look on and partake not 32. That the Canon of Scripture is the same that is declared by the Council of Trent I will pass by abundance more to avoid tediousness And I will not stay to enquire which of these are proper to the Papists But I am resolved so to receive many of them as they can prove a Catholick succession of that is that they were in all ages the Doctrine of the Universal Church And I crave the charity of such a proof from some Papist or other if they have any charity in them and that they will no longer keep universal Tradition in their purses And I would desire H. T. to revise his Catalogue and instead of twenty or thirty dead and silent names that signifie no more then Blanks or Cyphers he would prove that both those persons and the Catholick Church did in every age hold these thirty two forementioned doctrines And when hath done then let him boast of his Catalogue Till they will perform this task let them never more for shame call to us for Catalogues or proof of succession But if they are so unkind that they will not give us any proof of such a Catholick succession of Popery we shall be ready to supererogate and give them full proof of the Negative That there hath been no such succession of these thirty two points as soon as we can perceive that they will ingeniously entertain it though indeed it hath been often done already But certainly it belongeth to them that superinduce more Articles of Faith to prove the continuation of their own Articles through all ages of which anon Well! but one of these Articles at least the Popes Soveraignty H. T. will prove successively if you will be credulous enough In the first age he proves it from Peters words Act. 15. 7 8 9 10. God chose Peter to convert Cornelius and his company therefore the Pope is the Universall Monarch Are you not all convinced by this admirable argument But he forgot that Bellarmine Ragusius in Concil Basil and others of them say that no Article can be proved from Scripture but from the proper literall sence To say somewhat more he unseasonably talks of the Council of Sardis and Calcedon an 400. 451. lest the first age have but a blank page In the second age he hath nothing but the names of a few that never dreamt of Popery and a Canon which you must believe was the Apostles that Priests must communicate Of which we are well content In the third Age he nameth fifteen Bishops of Rome of whom the last was deposed for offering incense to Saturn Jupiter c. But not a syllable to prove that one of these Bishops was the universal Monarch Much less that the Catholick Church was for such Monarchy But to excuse the matter he tells you that
25. Tertul. cont Marcion Carm. lib. 4. cap. 7. Athanas Tom. 2. Epist 39. Et in Synops Sacr. scrip Hilar. Pictav Explanat in Psalmos Cyril vel Johan Hierosol Catech. 4. Concil Laodic Can 59. Epiphan haeres 8. 76. de Mensur ponderib Greg. Nazianz. Carmin de veris genuinis libris SS Amphiloch in Balsam pag. 1082. Hieronym in Prolog in lib. Reg. Prol. in lib. Solom Et Epist ad Laetam passim Ruffinus in Symbolum But what need I cite any more when Dr. Cosin hath done it in a volume purposely where this allegation also of the third Conc. Carthag is answered AND now having shewed you that Papists cannot prove any Catholick Succession or Continuation or Tradition of their Religion let us consider of their silly shift by instancing in some by-points common to them with others Of which I shall say the less because I have spoke to it already in my Safe Religion And before I mention any particulars remember that I have proved before that ignorance or difference about many points not essential to Christianity may consist with our being of one Religion and Catholick Church and therefore such differences are nothing to the point of succession of the Catholick Church or Religion This is plain to any reasonable man And that the Papists may see that for their parts they have nothing to say against it I shall add to what is said that they tolerate or plead for the toleration of greater differences among themselves which yet they affirm to consist with the unity of faith I will now give you but an instance or two The Jesuits maintain that if a man do but believe in their Pope and Church as infallible he may not only as some say be ignorant of some Article of the Creed it self and yet be a true Catholick yea and be saved but also believe a false Article as from God and the Church The former is commonly taught not only by such as Suarez that say the Article of Christs Descent into Hell is not to all of Necessity to Salvation but by many others in the Doctrine of Implicite faith The later clause you may see among others in Franc. Albertinus the Jesuite Corollar pag. 250. where his objectors put this case Suppose twenty Bishops preach to a countrey man a false Article as if it were spoken by God and the Church that proposal of the twenty Bishops is so sufficient that the Countrey man prudently formeth an evident practical judgement and morally certain to believe with a speculative assent the Article proposed by the twenty Bishops for the Authority of God as the formal reason Three absurdities seem hence to follow 1. That the Countrey man should be obliged under mortall sin to believe the twenty Bishops and so the precept of faith should bind to believe a falshood 2. The Countrey man should be in Gods Grace without faith In Grace because he commits no mortal sin yea he obeys the command of believing Yet without faith because he believes a falshood opposite to faith and so loseth faith 3. God should concur to deceive To the first Albertinus answereth that it s no Absurdity that the command of faith do oblige to believe a falshood it being not per se but per accidens To the second he saith that the Countrey man doth not lose his grace or faith because the falshood believed is not formally opposite to the true faith but materially Here you see that a man may hold an Article opposite to the faith materially and yet not only be a true Christian in grace and faith but also in so doing obey by accident the command of believing so be it he believe in their Church And if that be so with what face can these men say that our Church or Religion is new or not the same with the Greeks c. when we have the same formal Object of faith and differ in no Essential Material point See here their lubricity and partiality One Instance more The second Council of Nice that decreed for Image-Worship doth yet expresly decree that Latria Divine worship is to be given only to God Thomas Aquinas sum 3. q. 25. art 3. 4. purposely maintaineth that Latria Divine Worship is to be given to the Image of Christ and to the Cross that he dyed on and to the sign of that Cross Here is an Article of their faith expresly contradicted And yet Aquinas is a member of their Church And if any say he is no member it s proved past doubt for the Pope hath Canonized him for a Saint So that now it is a part of their Religion to take him for a true believer And Albertinus hath as he thinks proved that though in many other matters of fact the Pope be fallible yet in the Canonizing of Saints he is infallible because of some promise of Gods speciall assistance if one knew where to find it Abundance of such Instances might be brought that prove that the Papists own men as true believers that deny or contradict Articles of their faith But what need we more then that France and thousands elswhere are yet members of their Church that deny the Laterane and Florentine definition for the Popes Supremacy above a General Council and when most Papists hold that Angels are incorporeal contrary to the definition of the said second Council of Nice And therefore by their own law nay much more we may well say that those were of our Religion that differed from us in nothing that is indeed or our esteem Essential to the faith Now to a few particulars 1. The Papists tell us that Fulk confesseth that Hierom Austin Ambrose c. held the invocation of Saints H. T. p. 49. Answ 1. If any hold that they should desire the departed Saints to pray for them as they do the living we have reason enough to take it for their error but it s no proof that they are not of the same Church and Religion with us As long as they give no part of that adoration or honour to Saints which is proper to God the Father Son or Holy Ghost it is not inconsistent with true Faith and Christianity 2. But yet we must tell you that the Primitive Church was unacquainted with the Romish prayer to Saints Till the end of the fourth Century they are not able to prove that ever three men if any one were for any prayer to the Dead at all except such a conditional speech in an Oration as Greg. Nazianzen hath If holy souls have any care or feeling of such things as these receive this Oration Orat. 11. I intreat the Reader that needeth information of the way of Antiquity in this point to read Bishop Ushers Answer to the Jesuite on this point page 418 c. Where he saith that for nine parts of the first four hundred years he dare be bold to say that the Jesuite is not able to produce so much as one true testimony out
of any Father whereby it may appear that any account at all was made of it Where he citeth the full express words of the Fathers of those first ages against praying to Saints as Origen in Jus. Hom. 16. And in Rom. lib. 2. cap. 2. And Contr. Celsum lib. 8. page 432 433 406 411 412. lib. 5. pag. 239. Tertullian Apol. cap. 30. Tertullian and Cyprian of Prayer Athanasius Orat. 4. Cont. Arrium pag. 259 260. Eccles Smyrn apud Euseb Hist lib. 4. c. I am loth to recite what is there already given you 3. And when Prayer to the dead did come in how exceedingly it differed from the Romish Prayers to the dead I pray you read there in the same Author 4. And also of those Adorations and Devotions offered by the Papists to the Virgin Mary I desire you to read in the same Author and Place enough to make a Christian tremble and which for my part I am not able to excuse from horrid Blasphemy or Idolatry though I am willing to put the best interpretation on their words that reason will allow 5. The Reason why in the old Testament men were not wont to pray to Saints Bellarmine saith was because then they did not enter into heaven nor see God Bellar. de sanct Beat. li. 2. cap. 19. So Suarez in the third part Tom. 2. disp 42. Sect. 1. But abundance of the chief Doctors of the Church for divers Ages were of opinion that the Saints are not admitted into Heaven to the clear sight of God before the day of Judgement as most of the Eastern Churches do to this day therefore they could not be for the Popish Prayer to Saints And here again observe that men may be of the same faith and Church with us that differ and err in as great a matter as this The Council of Florence hath now defined it that departed souls are admitted into Heaven to the clear sight of God And yet Stapleton and Francis Pegna à Castro Medina Sotus affirm that Irenaeus Justin Martyr Tertullian Clemens Romanus Origen Ambrose Chrysostome Austin Lactantius Victorinus Prudentius Theodoret Aretas Oecumenius Theophilact Euthymius yea and Bernard have delivered the contrary sentence See Staplet Defens Eccles author cont Whitak lib. 1. cap. 2. with Fran. Pegna in part 2. Director Inquisitor com 21. Now as all these must needs be against the Popish Invocation of Saints so they were against that which is now determined to be de fide Whence I gather on the by 1. That the Romish faith increaseth and is not the same as heretofore 2. That they had not this Article by Tradition from any of these Fathers or from the Apostles by them unless from the Scriptures 3. That men that err in such points as are now defined by Councils to be de fide are yet accounted by Papists to be of their Church and faith And therefore they may be of ours notwithstanding such errours as this in hand 4. And note also by this tast whether the Papists be not a perjured generation that swear not to expound Scripture but according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers 6. The Council of Laodicea condemned them as Idolaters that prayed to Angels Can. 35. which Caranza Crab and other Papists have turned into Angulos whose falsification you may see fully detected by the said Bishop Usher ibid. pag. 470. 471 472. Read there also the full Testimonies of Greg. Nissen Athanasius Epiphanius c. against praying to Saints and Angels and the detection of Bellarmines fraud that pretendeth the Fathers to speak of the Gentiles Idolatry when they mention the Virgin Mary and the Saints and say expresly they were not to be adored But for all this H. T. Manual page 291 c. hath Fathers for this Adoration of Angels and Saints And who are they The first is Dionysius to which I answer 1. There is never a such a word in the place cited in Dionysius in the Book that I have at hand printed Lugdun 1572. 2. We are for praying the Saints to pray for us too that is those on earth And the words cited by him mention not the Saints in heaven 3. That Dionysius is not Dionysius but a spurious Apochryphal Book Not once known and mentioned in the world till Gregory the greats dayes six hundred years after Christ as Bellarmine himself saith Lib. de Scriptor Eccles de Dionys And lib. 2. de Monach. cap. 5. The second is Clem. Apostol Constit 5. Answ 1. The words speak only of honouring the Martyrs which is our unquestioned duty but not of Praying to them 2. It s an Apochryphal forgery and neither the Apostles nor Clements Work which he citeth but any thing will serve these men Let him believe Bellarmine de scriptor Eccles pag. 38 39. where he proveth it and saith that in the Latine Church these Constitutions are of almost no account and the Greeks themselves Canon 2. Trul. reject them as depraved by Hereticks and that the receiving of them is it that misleadeth the Aethiopians See more against them in Cooks Censurâ pag. 17 18 19. and Rivets Crit. Sac. Dalaeus in Pseudepigrap The third Testimony of H. T. is from Justins second Apol. Answ It is not Praying to Angels that Justin seemeth to intend but giving them due honour which we allow of His intent is to stop the mouths of Heathens that called the Christians impious for renouncing their Gods To whom he replyeth that we yet honour the true God and his Angels c. His Testimony for the third age is only Origen and yet none of Origen First in his Lament Answ 1. Origen there mentioneth the Saints but not the dead Saints It may be all the Saints in the Church on earth whose prayers he desireth 2. If this satisfie you not at least be satisfied with this that you cite a forgery that is none of Origens works Not only Erasmus saith that This Lamentation was neither written by Origen nor translated by Hierom but is the fiction of some unlearned man that by this trick devised to defame Origen But Baronius Annal. Tit. 2. ad an 253. p. 477. witnesseth that Pope Gelasius numbers it with the Apocryphals But H. T. hath a second testimony from Origen in Cantic Hom. 3. Answ 1. That speaks of the Saints prayer for us but not of our prayers to them one word which is the thing in question 2. But Erasmus and others have shewed that neither is this any of Origens works Sixtus Senensis saith that some old Books put Hieroms name to it And Lombard and Aquinas cite passages out of it as Ambroses You see now what Testimonies H. T. hath produced for the first three Ages even till above four hundred years after Christ And yet no doubt but this is currant proof with the poor deluded Papists that read his Book 2. The next exception to be considered is Praying for the Dead which they say the ancient Church was for Answ 1. We are for
putting an Oath to all the Clergy of the Christian Church within your power to be true to the Pope and to obey him as the Vicar of Christ Who first taught men to swear that they would not interpret Scripture but according to the unanimous Consent of the Fathers Who was the first that brought in the doctrine or name of Transubstantiation and who first made it an Article of faith Who first made it a point of faith to believe that there are just seven Sacraments neither fewer nor more Did any before the Council of Trent swear men to receive and profess without doubting all things delivered by the Canons and Oecumenical Councils when at the same time they cast off themselves the Canons of many General Councils and so are generally and knowingly perjured as e. g. the twentieth Canon of Nice forementioned These and abundance more you know to be Novelties with you if wilfulness or gross ignorance bear not rule with you and without great impudence you cannot deny it Tell us now when these first came up and satisfie your selves One that was afterward your Pope Aeneas Sylvins Epist 288. saith that before the Council of Nice there was little respect had to the Church of Rome You see here the time mentioned when your foundation was not laid Your Learned Cardinal Nicol. Cusanus lib. de Concord Cathol c. 13. c. tells you how much your Pope hath gotten of late and plainly tells you that the Papacy is but of Positive right and that Priests are equall and that it is subjectional consent that gives the Pope and Bishops their Majority and that the distinction of Diocesses and that a Bishop be over Presbyters are of Positive right and that Christ gave no more to Peter than the rest and that if the Congregate Church should choose the Bishop of Trent for their President and Head he should be more properly Peters Successor then the Bishop of Rome Tell us now when the contrary doctrine first arose Gregory de valentia de leg usu Euchar. cap. 10. tells you that the Receiving the Sacrament in one kind began not by the decree of any Bishop but by the very use of the Churches and the consent of believers and tels you that it is unknown when that Custom first begun or got head but that it was General in the Latine Church not long before the late Council of Constance And may you not see in this how other points came in If Pope Zosimus had but had his will and the Fathers of the Carthage Council had not diligently discovered shamed and resisted his forgery the world had received a new Nicene Canon and we should never have known the Original of it It s a considerable Instance that Usher brings of using the Church service in a known tongue The Latine tongue was the Vulgar tongue when the Liturgy and Scripture was first written in it at Rome and far and neer it was understood by all The service was not changed as to the language but the language it self changed and so Scripture and Liturgy came to be in an unknown tongue And when did the Latine tongue cease to be understood by all Tell us what year or by whom the change was made saith Erasmus Decl. ad censur Paris tit 12. § 41. The Vulgar tongue was not taken from the people but the people departed from it 5. We are certain that your errors were not in the times of the Apostles nor long after and therefore we are sure that they are Innovations And if I find a man in a Dropsie or a Consumption I would not tell him that he is well and ought not to seek remedy unless he can tell when he began to be ill and what caused it You take us to be Heretical and yet you cannot tell us when our errors did first arise Will you tell us of Luther You know the Albigenses whom you murdered by hundreds and thousands were long before him Do you know when they begun Your Reinerius saith that some said they were from Silvesters dayes and some said since the Apostles but no other beginning do you know 6. But to conclude what need we any more then to find you owning the very doctrine and practise of Innovation When you maintain that you can make us new Articles of faith and new worship and new discipline and that the Pope can dispense with the Scriptures and such like what reason have we to believe that your Church abhorreth Novelty If you deny any of this I prove it Pope Leo the tenth among other of Luthers opinions reckoneth and opposeth this as Hereticall It is certain that it is not in the hand of the Church or Pope to make Articles of faith in Bulla cont Luth. The Council of Constance that took the supremacy justly from the Pope did unjustly take the Cup from the Laity in the Eucharist Licet in primitivâ Ecclesiâ hujusmodi Sacramentum reciperetur a fidelibus sub utraque specie i. e. Though in the primitive Church this Sacrament was received by Believers under both kinds The Council of Trent say Sess 21. cap. 1 2. that this power was alway in the Church that in dispensing the Sacraments saving the substance of them it might ordain or change things as it should judge most expedient to the profit of the receiver Vasquez To. 2. Disp 216. N. 60. saith Though we should grant that this was a precept of the Apostles nevertheless the Church and Pope might on just causes abrogate it For the Power of the Apostles was no greater then the power of the Church and Pope in bringing in Precepts These I cited in another Treatise against Popery page 365. Where also I added that of Pope Innocent Secundum plenitudinem potestatis c. By the fulness of our power we can dispense with the Law above Law And the Gloss that oft saith The Pope dispenseth against the Apostle against the Old Testament The Pope dispenseth with the Gospell interpreting it And Gregor de valent saying Tom. 4. disp 6. q. 8. Certainly some things in later times are more rightly constituted in the Church then they were in the beginning And of Cardinal Peron's saying lib. 2. Obs 3. cap. 3. pag. 674. against King James of the Authority of the Church to alter matters conteined in the Srripture and his instance of the form of Sacraments being alterable and the Lords command Drink ye all of it mutable and dispensable And Tolets Its certain that all things instituted by the Apostles were not of Divine right Andradius Defens Concil Trid. lib. 2. pag. 236. Hence it is plain that they do not err that say the Popes of Rome may sometime dispense with Laws made by Paul and the four first Councils And Bzovius The Roman Church using Apostolical power doth according to the Condition of times change all things for the better And yet will you not give us leave to take you for changers and Novelists But let us add
Apostate Heretical or Schismatical any more then whether Jerusalem Ephesus Philippi or any other Church be so faln If you are not faln I am glad of it if you are I am sorry for it and so I have done with you unless I knew how to recover you Would you not laugh even at the Church of Jerusalem that was truly the Mother Church of the world if they should thus reason We are not faln away therefore we must Rule over all the world and no man is a Christian that doth not obey us This is the sport you make in the cheating of souls Well but let us follow you though our cause be not concerned in it 1. I answer that we accuse you not of renouncing the name of Christ 2. We must needs fear that according to to your own definition of Heresie you are guilty of many Heresies And to your Questions I answer 1. I pray you tell us what General Councils did ever condemn one half of the Heresies mentioned by Epiphanius Augustine or Philastrius Was there ever a greater rabble of Heresies then before ever a General Council was known and were they dead and buryed before the first General Council was born 2. Did you not smile when you wrote these delusory Questions How can a General Council condemn you or any great part of the Church for instance the Greeks c. If you be not there it s not a General Council And will you be there to condemn your selves you have more wit and less grace then so And I pray what General Council did ever condemn the Greeks for those many errors charged on them If the Greeks themselves were not there it was not a General Council so considerable a part are they of the Church And what General Council hath condemned the Abassines Egyptians c. 3. Do you think General Councils are so stark mad or horridly impious as to condemn so many Kingdoms with one condemnation for Heresie Why they know that men must be heard before they be condemned and a Kingdom consisteth of many millions of souls And it is not enough to know every mans faith if we know the faith of the King or Pope or Archbishop or Bishops And how long shall they be examining each person in many Kingdoms 4. But yet I can say more of your Church then of others He that kills the Head kils the Man Your Usurping Head is an Essential part of your New-formed Church But your Head hath been condemned by Councils therefore your Church in its essential part hath been condemned by Councils Do you not know that all the world as well as the feigned Council Sinuessan condemned your Pope Marcellinus for Offering to Idols Know you not that two or three General Councils condemned Pope Honorius as a Monothelite Yes no doubt you know it Know you not that the second General Council of Ephesus condemned and excommunicated your Pope And that the Council of Basil called by him did the like If you do not see Bellarmines parallel of them de Conciliis lib. 2. cap. 11. Do I need to tell you what the Council of Constance did Or for what John 22. alias 23. and John 13. and other Popes were deposed by Councils 2. And for Fathers do I need to tell you how many condemned Marcellinus Liberius Honorius and others How oft Hilary Pictav in fragmentis in recit Epist Liberii doth cry out Anathema tibi Liberi prevaricator presuming to curse and excommunicate your Pope Need I tell you what Tertullian saith against Zephernius Yea what Alphonsus à Castro and divers of your own say against Liberius Honorius Anastasius Celestine and tell us that many Popes have been Hereticks At least give us leave to believe Pope Adrian the sixth himself Read Dom. Bannes in 2 m 2ª q. 1. art 10. Where he proves at large against Pighius that a Pope may be an Heretick and laughs at Pighius that now after two hundred years would prove them false witnesses which write that Pope Honorius was condemned for an Heretick by three Popes viz. Agatho Leo the second and Adrian the second 3. But perhaps you 'l say that though your Popes have been condemned by Councils yet so have not your maintained doctrines Answ Yes that they have too Did not the Councils at Constantinople condemn the Doctrine of the second Nicene Council for Image-worship and the Council at Frankford do the like And those two at Constantinople were as much General as your Council of Trent was and much more And yet that same Council at Nice did condemn the doctrine of St. Thom. Aquinas and your Doctors commonly of worshipping the Image of Christ and Cross and sign of the Cross with Latria divine worship And did not your General Councils at Laterane and Florence declare that the Pope is above a Council and that they cannot depose him c. And yet your General Councils at Constance and Basil determine the contrary as an Article of Faith and expresly affirm the former to be Heresie See then your own doctrine even in a fundamental point condemned by General Councils of your own which side soever you take the Popes or the Councils And did not the sixt Council of Carthage of which St. Augustine was a principal member not only detect Pope Zosimus forged Canon of Nice but also openly and prevalently resist and reject your Usurpation and refuse your Legates and Appeals to you If you would cloak this believe your own Pope Boniface Epist ad Eulalium saying Aurelius sometime Bishop of Carthage with his Colleagues did begin by the Devils instigation to wax proud against the Church of Rome in the times of our Predecessors Boniface and Celestine And if you have learnt to except against this Epistle see your Bishop Lindanus justifying it Panopl l. cap. 89 Or at least believe your Champion Harding against Jewels Challenge art 4. sect 19. After the whole African Church had persevered in schism the space of twenty years and had removed themselves from the obedience of the Apostolick seat being seduced by Aurelius Bishop of Carthage Again note that Austin was one of them But you 'l say that this was not a General Council Answ True for when part riseth against part it cannot be the whole that is on either side Moreover do you not know that the Greeks have condemned you oft And truly their Councils have been much more General then yours at Trent was where about forty Bishops altered the Canon of Scripture and made Tradition equal with it I think verily this one County would have afforded a far better Council of a greater number But I 'le once more name one General Council that hath condemned your very foundation and that is the fourth General Council at Calcedon before mentioned Act. 15. Can. 28. Act. 16. where you may find 1. That the ancient Priviledges of the Roman Throne were given them by the Fathers in Council 2. That the Reason was because Rome was the
which are not destructive to the Essentials of Christianity but only to some Integral part And there is a schism that doth not unchurch men as well as a schism that doth of which this is no place to treat But ad hominem me thinks your own writers put you hard to it who conclude as Bellarmine and many more do though Alphonsus à Castro and others be against it that Hereticks and Schismaticks are no members of the Church And Melch. Canus Loc. Theol. lib. 4. cap. 2. fol. 117. saith that that Hereticks are no parts of the Church is the common conclusion of all Divines not only of those that have written of late but of them also that by their Antiquity are esteemed the most Noble This is attested by Cyprian Augustine Gregory the two Councils of Lateran and Florence Rightly therefore did Pope Nicolas define that the Church is a collection of Catholicks If this be true it is an Article of faith And then Alphonsus à Cast and all of his mind are Hereticks and lost men And I pray you note what a case you are in Two Approved General Councils have determined that a Heretick is no member of the Church But multitudes of your own writers and Pope Adrian and many more of your Popes have judged that a Pope may be a Heretick and consequently no member of the Church And consequently judge what 's become of your Church when an Essential part of it is no part of the Church Your common shift which Canus ibid. and others fly to is that He must be a judged Heretick before he is dismembred But 1. Sure that is but for manifestation to men for before God he is the same if men never judge him 2. Where the case is notorious the offendor is ipso jure cut off 3. Then it is in the Popes Power to let whole millions of Hereticks to be still parts of the Church And so the world shall be Christians or no Christians as he please and why may he not let Turks and Infidels on the same grounds be parts of the Church For he may forbare to judge them if that will serve 4. Then all the Christians in the world that the Pope hath not yet judged and cast out are members of the Church And then millions and millions are of the Church that never were subjects of the Pope If you say It is enough that there is a General condemnation of all that are guilty as they are I answer then it is enough to cut off a Pope that there was a General condemnation against such as he 5. But if all this satisfie you not yet I told you before that two or three Councils and three Popes did all judge Pope Honorius guilty of Heresie and consequently both Popes and General Councils have judged that a Pope may be an Heretick therefore you have been judged Heretical in your Head which is an essential part of your Church And thus I have shewed you what is the schism of the Church of Rome which being but a part hath attempted to cut off all the rest and so hath made a new pretended Catholick Church As a part of the Old Church which consisteth of all Christians united in Christ we confess all those of you still to be a part that destroy not this Christianity But as you are new gathered to a Christ-Representative or Vicar General we deny you to be any Church of Christ If you be Church members or saved it must be as Christians but never as Papists For a Papist may be a Christian but not as a Papist And if yet you cannot see the Church that you separate from open your eyes and look into much of Europe and all over Asia almost where are any Christians look into Armenia Palestine Egypt Ethiopia and many other Countries and you shall find that you are but a smaller part of the Church If you will not believe what I have before proved of this hear what your own say Anton. Marinarins in the Council of Trent complaineth that the Church is shut up in the Corners of Europe and yet Domestick enemies arise that waste this portion shut up in a corner Sonnius Bishop of Antwerp in Demonstrat Relig. Christian lib. 2. Tract 5. c. 3. saith I pray you what room hath the Catholick Church now in the habitable world scarce three elnes long in comparison of that vastness which the Satanical Church doth possess If yet you boast that you have the same seat that formerly you had I answer so have the Bishops of Constantinople Alexandria and others whom you condemn And we say as Gregory Nazianz Orat. de land Athanasii It is a succession of Godliness that is properly to be esteemed a succession For he that professeth the same doctrine of faith is also partaker of the same throne But he that embraceth the contrary belief ought to be judged an adversary though he be in the throne This indeed hath the name of succession but the other hath the Thing it self and the Truth And he next addeth such words as utterly break your succession in pieces saying For he that breaketh in by force as abundance of Popes did is not to be esteemed a successor but rather he that suffereth force nor he that breaketh the Laws but he that is chosen in manner agreeable to the Laws nor he that holdeth contrary tenets but he that is endued with the same faith Unless any man will call him a Successor as we say a sickness succeedeth health or darkness succeedeth light and a strom succeeds a calm or madness or distraction succeedeth prudence Thus Nazianz pag. 377. We conclude therefore with one of your own Lyra Glos in Math. 16. Because many Princes and chief Priests or Popes and other inferiors have been found to Apostatize the Church consisteth in those persons in whom is the true knowledge and confession of Faith and Verity And so much to this empty Manuscript CHAP. XXXVI Detect 27. ANother of their Deceits is this To charge us with introducing New Articles of faith or points of Religion because we contradict the New Articles which they introduce and then they require us to prove our doctrines which are but the Negatives of theirs We receive no Doctrines of faith or worship but what was delivered by the Apostles to the Church These men bring in abundance of New ones and say without proof that they received them from the Apostles And because we refuse to receive their Novelties they call our Rejections of them the Doctrines of our Religion and feign us to be the Innovators And by this device it is in the Power of any Heretick to force the Church to take up such as these men call New points of faith If a Papist shall say that besides the Lords Prayer Christ gave his Disciples another Form or two or three or many or that he gave them ten New Commandments not mentioned in the Bible or that he oft descended after his Ascension and
conversed with them or that there are many more worlds of men besides this earth or that Christ instituted twenty Sacraments how should we deal with these men but hy denying their fictions as sinfull Novelty and rejecting them as corrupt additions to the Faith And were this any Novelty in us And should they bid us prove in the express words of Scripture or antiquity our Negative Propositions that Christ gave but one form of prayer that he did not oft descend that he gave no more Decalogues Sacraments c. Is it not a sufficient proof of any of these that they are not written and that no Tradition of them from the Apostles is proved and that they that hold the Affirmative and introduce the Novelty must prove and not we Our Articles of faith are the same and not increased nor any new ones added But the Papists come in with a new faith as large as all the Novelties in the Decretals and the Councils and these innovations of theirs we reject Now our Rejections do not increase the Articles of our faith no more then my beating a dog out of my house or keeping out an enemy or sweeping out the filth doth enlarge my house or increase my family They do not take all the Anathema and Rejections in their own Councils to be Canons or Articles of faith For example The Pope hath made it an Article of faith that no Scripture is to be interpreted but according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers This wereject and make it no Article of our faith but an erroneous Novelty Do we hereby make a new Article because we reject a new one of theirs yea a part of the Oath of their Church made by Pope Pius after the Council of Trent 1. If this be an Article prove it if you can 2. If it be a Truth and no Novelty I pray you tell us which be Fathers and which not and help us to know certainly when we have all or the unanimous Consent And then tell us whether every man is not forsworn with you that interprets any text of Scripture before he have read all the Fathers or any text which six of them never expounded or any text which they do not unanimously agree on And yet though it be not our necessary task we can easily prove to you that this is a New Article of your devising 1. Because else no man must expound any Scripture at all before these Fathers were born For how could the Church before them have their unanimous consent And 2. Because that otherwise these Fathers themselves wanted an Article of faith unless it was an Article to them that they must expound no Scripture but by their own Consent 3. Because these Fathers do few of them expound all or half or the twentieth part of the Scripture 4. Because they took liberty to disagree among themselves and therefore do not unanimously consent in abundance of particular texts 5. Because they tell us that they are fallible and bid us not take it on their trust 6. Because the Apostles have left us no such rule or precept but much to the contrary 7. Your own Doctors for all their Oath do commonly charge the Fathers with error and misexpounding Scripture as I shewed before Canus and many others charge Cajetan a Cardinal and pillar in your Church with making it his practise to differ from the Fathers and choosing expositions purposely for the Novelty pro more suo as his custom And when he hath highly extolled Cajetan Loc. Theol. lib. 7. pag. 223. he adds that yet his doctrine was defiled with a Leprosie of errors by an affection and lust of Curiosity or confidence on his wit expounding Scripture as he list happily indeed for the most part but in some few places more acutely then happily because he regarded not antient Tradition and was not verst in the reading of the Fathers and would not learn from them the Mysteries of the sealed book And in another place he blames him that he alway followed the Hebrew and Greek text And many other Papists by him and others are blamed for the same faults Andradius and more of the later plead for it And yet these men are counted members of your Church that go against an Article of your new faith and Oath So Transubstantiation is one of your New Articles in that Oath Do we make a New one now if we reject it Or need we be put to prove the Negative And yet we can easily do it And Edm. Albertinus among many others hath done it unanswerably Another of your Articles is that it belongeth to your Holy Mother the Church to judge of the true sence of Scripture And you mean the Roman Church and that they must judge of it for all the Christian world Prove this to be the Antient doctrine if you can If we reject this Novelty are we Innovators or need we prove the Negative And yet we can do it and have oft done it at large Did Athanasius Basil Nazianzen Nyssen Augustine Hierom Chrysostome Epiphanius and the rest of the Fathers send to Rome for the sence of the Scriptures which they expound or did they procure the Popes Approbation before any of them published their Commentaries You know sure that they did not The like may be said of all the rest of your New Articles and Practises We stand our ground Some of your Novelties we reject as trifles some as smaller errors and some as greater but still we keep to our antient faith of which the Scripture is a full and sufficient Rule as Vincentius Lirinens ubi supra though we are glad of all helps to understand it we say with Tertullian de carne Christi cap. 6. Nihil de eo constat quia Scriptura non exhibet Non probant quia non Scriptum est His qui insuper argumentantur nos resistemus CHAP. XXXVII Detect 28. ANother of their Deceits is this They make advantage of our charitable Judgement of them and of their uncharitable judgement of us and all other Christians to affright and entice people to their sect They say that we cannor be saved nor any that are not of the Roman Church But we say that a Papist may be saved They say that we want abundance of the Articles of faith that are of necessity to salvation We say that the Papists hold all that is necessary to salvation Luther saith that the Kernel of true faith is yet in the Church of Rome therefore say they Let Protestants take the shell And hence they make the simple people believe that even according to our own Confessions their Church and way is safer then ours I have answered this formerly in my Safe Religion but yet shall here once more shew you the nakedness of this Deceit 1. The Papists denying the faith and salvation of all other Christians doth no whit invalidate our faith nor shake our salvation Our Religion doth not cease to be true when ever a peevish
not bound so much as to seek information And pag. 120. he cites Vega lib. 6. cap. 18. saying that as Ignorance purae negationis about many Articles of faith may be without fault so there is the same reason of Ignorance pravae dispositionis Which he maintains against Gerson and Hugo And S. Clara adds of his own To speak my sense freely I think that the common people committing themselves to the instruction of the Pastors trusting their knowledge and goodness if they be deceived it shall be accounted Invincible Ignorance or probable at least So Herera which excuseth from fault Yea some Doctors give so much to the Instruction of Doctors on whom the care of the flock lyeth that if they teach hic nunc that God would be hated that a rude Parishoner is bound to believe them And so page 121. concludeth that he hopeth many of us are saved Page 122. he citeth the concent of Azorius To. 1. l. 8. Just c. 6. and Corduba again And pag. 123. saith It seemeth to be the common Opinion of the Schools and Doctors at this day that the Laity erring with their Teachers or Pastors are altogether excused from all fault yea by erring thus many wayes materially they merit for the act of Christian Obedience which they owe their teachers as Valentia saith Tom. 3. disp 1. q. 2. pag. 5. and others with Angles Vasquez c. Pag. 124 125. After Cajetan he cites Zanchez teaching that those that are brought up among Hereticks are not bound presently to believe and yet are not to be accounted Hereticks till they refuse Belief sufficiently propounded to them And he cites Alph. Ã Castro and Simanchas Aragon and Tannerus and Faber for the same And pag. 126. he cites Eman Sa affirming that even among Catholicks many are excused from the explicite knowledge of the Trinity and Incarnation specially if there want a Teacher For what saith he shall we say that an infinite number of Christians otherwise good people perish that scarce know any thing aright of the Mysterie of the Trinity and Incarnation Yea judge perversly or falsly of them if you ask them And cites Rozella and Midina of the same mind Lastly gives also the judgement of Gr. Valentia fully for his opinion Analys fid lib. 2. cap. 3. lit D. In the sixteenth Probleme page 127. he puts another Question Whether the Law of Nature and Decalogue may be unknown without fault And saith that though Alex. Ales say No yet It is the more common and received Opinion citing Adrian Corduba Herera alios communiter that there may be such invincible ignorance in respect of the Law of Nature and the Decalogue And note for the understanding of all this that this which they call an Implicite faith in Christ is no actual faith in Christ at all He that only believes as the Church believes and knows not that the Church believes in Christ in the Resurrection of Christ c. hath no actual belief in Christ or the Resurrection at all Ignoti nulla fides If I believe that one of you is true of his word it doth not follow that I actually believe the particular propositions which I never heard This which they call an implicite Belief is nothing but the explicite actual belief of the Formal Object of Faith Divine or Humane as that God is True or the Church True and infallible but it is no belief at all of the particular material object And note that every one in the world that believeth that there is a God must needs believe that he is no Lyar and so hath in God an Implicite belief Now if this will save men without a particular belief in Christ then Christianity is not necessary Every Turk and Jew and Infidel that believeth in God may then be said to have an Implicite faith in Christ in the Popish language because he believeth all that God revealeth to be true But if an Implicite faith in God will not serve how should an implicite faith in the Church serve unless the Church that is the Pope be better then God See here whether they make any more of the Christian faith then a meer shooing horn to draw and keep men to their side By a General Council and the Pope it is determined that no man can be saved out of their Church as headed by the Pope To believe in the Pope is of Necessity to Salvation but to believe in Christ in his Incarnation Death Resurrection is not so An Implicite faith in the Pope or Church yea or erring Doctors may save and men may merit by following them in error but an Implicite faith in God himself will not save if we believe not in the Pope So that if we were Infidels we might be saved so we were of the Church of Rome and believed in the Pope but the Holiest Christian that believeth explicitely in God and all the Articles of the faith cannot be saved if he believe not in the Pope Do you think they believe these Doctrines themselves or rather frame them to the building of their Kingdom And what a wonder is it that Learned Doctors see not their own contradiction they suppose a man to believe in the Pope or as the Church believeth and yet not to believe in Christ And is not the Church essentially a company of Christians the spouse and body and school and Kingdom of Christ And is not the Pope essentially the pretended Vicar of Christ How then can they believe in Christs Vicar or Christs School or Kingdom or followers before they believe in Christ himself And by all this you may perceive the Holiness of the Roman Church and the nature of that Discipline or Church Government that all the world must needs submit to or be damned Even such as takes in Infidels and all and layeth the Church as common to the world for as many as will but believe in the Pope and Clergy You see here also another mysterie opened that a man may have enough to Justifie him that yet will not save him For most of them are here said to hold that a man may be justified without an explicite faith in Christ or that the knowledge of Christ is not necessary to his Justification but to his salvation it is Though the other half say that its necessary to neither And if a man die in a Justified State must he be condemned when Paul saith Rom. 8. 30. Whom he justified them he also glorified You see also here what their Baptism doth that can ex opere operato infallibly put away the sins of all these Infidels and so the Eucharist c. And yet they must not be saved for all that their sins are all done away O what a Maze is the Romish Divinity And you see how well they are agreed about these fundamentals when half of them think that an Actual belief in Christ is necessary to salvation and not to Justification and others that its necessary to
both and a great part that its necessary to neither And you see here the benefit of having an Infallible Living judge of controversies and expounder of Scriptures and how admirably he hath ended all their differences And again I say If formally these Unbelievers are in their Catholick Church they shall give us leave to say that the Greeks and other Eastern and Southern Christians are in the same Catholick Church as we are when we differ not so much And when they have made the Non-belief of Articles of the faith consistent with salvation they will never while they breath be able to confute him that on the same grounds affirmeth the contrary belief consistent with salvation in case of the same want of teaching and sufficient means And by this time I hope you see of how small moment the Popish Censures are when they judge that a Protestant cannot be saved It s true that S. Clara here judgeth otherwise but 1. It s said his Book was burnt or condemned at Rome for it 2. He alloweth Infidels as much 3. And he proveth himself a Heretick by it at Rome seeing a General Council and Pope have determined the contrary even that it is necessary to salvation to be a subject of the Pope of Rome CHAP. XXXVIII Dètect 29. ANother of their Deceits and I think the most successfull of all the rest is Their suting their Doctrines and Government and Worship to the fleshly humours of the ungodly by which means the Greatest and the Most are alwayes like to be on their side When on the contrary our Doctrine Discipline and worship is all so contrary to carnal interest and conceits that we are still like to lose the most if not the greatest and consequently to be a persecuted people in the world This is their unanswerable Argument By this means they captivate the Nations to their Tyranny The Most are every where almost licentious sensual worldly and unsanctified Wise men and Godly men are few in comparison of the rest of the world And it is the multitude commonly that hath the strength and the Great ones that have the wealth So that I confess I take it for a wonder of mercy that they are not Lords in every Countrey and that the Reformed Catholicks be not used every where as they be in Spain and Italy For where they have but opportunity to shew themselves the Principles and Practises of the Papists are such as will be most likely to win the Rabble rout to them and make them Masters of the multitude and of all except a few believing Heavenly persons For the flock is little that must have the Kingdom And then when they have got the multitude thus to follow them and club'd the rest into prisons or burned them in the flames they reckon of this as one of the surest Evidences that they are the Catholick Church because forsooth they are the greater number in the Countries where they have advantage and it is but a few whom they were able to persecute or burn as Hereticks that were against them The very Argument of the Jews against Christ and his Disciples The Reasons why they have not by this Policie won the Christian world to their side are under God the great Defender of the innocent these four 1. Because in the Eastern and Southern Churches they have not had opportunity to lay their snares as they have had here in the West And also those Churches have too many corruptions and neglects at home for the gratifying of the worser sort 2. Because God hath been pleased in some places so to bless the endeavours of the smaller part as to enable them against the multitude to preserve some liberty 3. Because God hath sometime given Wise and Godly Princes to the people that will not be cheated with the Popular deceits 4. And principally because that the Papal Tyranny is directly contrary to Princes Rights so that its only those that are blinded by ignorance or strengthened by an extraordinary league with Rome or forced by the multitude of Popish subjects and neighbours that put their necks into the Romish yoke For what by the Popes pretended Power in temporals at least in ordine ad spiritualia and what by his excommunicating Princes and his pretended power to depose them and give their kingdoms to another and to absolve their subjects from their oaths and fidelity which is an Article of their faith agreed on by the Pope and General Council Later sub Innoc. 3. cap. 3. and what by his exempting the Clergy from their Princes Power and what by the pilling their Countries for money and what by their doctrine and practises of murdering Princes that are not of their mind by these and many other Evidences they have awakened many of the Princes of the earth to look about them and consequently to befriend the Truth against these Tyrannous Usurpers Had it not been for these helps under God we had not been like to have a name where they can reach nor to have had liberty to breath in the common air It would be a voluminous work to shew you how all the Doctrines Government and worship of the Papists is suted to the humor of the sensual multitude and fitted to take with ungodly men I shall but instance in twenty particulars which are far from all 1. The Reformed Catholicks hold that none should be taken into the Church by Baptism unless themselves or their Parents if they be Infants do make Profession of the Christian faith and of an holy life for the time to come and seem to understand what they say and do and be serious in it which exasperateth the grosly ignorant and ungodly when we deny them this Priviledge of Believers But the Papists admit of the ignorant ungodly and such as believe not explicitely in Christ as you heard even now and so please the people and fill their Church 2. The Orthodox hold that Baptism giveth Remission of sin to none but true believers and their seed The Papists perswade many millions more that all their sins are not only pardoned but actually abolished ex opere operato in their Baptism which is comfortable News to such ungodly souls 3. The Protestants say that Original sin liveth after Baptism in some degree though it reign not or condemn not those that are true believers and that Concupiscence that is all inordinacy of the sensual appetite or inordinate inclination to sensual objects is a sin The Papists tell them that when once they are baptized there is no such thing in them as Original sin and that Concupiscence is no sin at all 4. The Orthodox hold that none are to be admitted to the Eucharist and Communion of the Church therein but those that believe actually or profess so to do the Articles of the faith and understand the nature of the Sacrament and live according to the Laws of Christ But the Papists give it to all and drive men to the Sacrament so that
from or disobeyeth the uncharitable Clergy but he is stigmatized for an Heretick and charged with almost as much wickedness as their mouths are wide enough to utter and the ears of other men to hear What horrid things have they spoken of the poor Waldenses and Albigenses and Bohemians Of Luther Oecolampadius Calvin and who not Though I have had applauding flattering Letters from some of them that tryed whether I were flexible and ductile yet I doubt not but I shall have my share my self before they have done with me I wonder I hear not of it before now Hence among other reasons its like that Mr. Pierce became so destitute of Charity as to disgorge his sould of so many bitter reproaches and calumnies against the Puritans and Presbyterians whom if he know not he sinneth but as Paul did but if he know he terrifieth us from his principles by the fruits that which shews the want of Charity shews the want of saving Grace and consequently the want of right to Glory Hence it is that the greatest Schismaticks are the commonest accusers of their Brethren with schism Pharisaically saying I thank thee Lord that I am not as other men nor as these Schismaticks Hence also it is that so many learned well-meaning Papists do so pervert their studies and endeavors and abuse and lose and worse then lose their wits and parts to draw men to their way compassing Sea and Land to make a Romish Proselite especially of a Prince or man of power interest or ability to serve them What pains take they to draw Nations to their minds and to embroil the world in contentions and confusions to attain their ends What horrid persecutions Massacres and barbarous inhumane cruelties have multitudes of men of learning and good parts and natures been ingaged in by the very Principle that I now confute and for the promoting of their kind of Unity and Concord in wicked and impossible ways 7. Besides this it takes men off from seeking the true Peace of the hurch while they mistakingly pursue a false peace The Devil the cunning Enemy of Concord hath not a more effectual way to take men off from the ways and means of holy Concord then by starting them a false game and causing them to lay out all their labor to build a Babel when they should be building Zion Oh what a blessed state might the Church be in if all the Jesuites Fryers Prelates Priests and others had laid out that labor for a righteous possible Unity and Peace in Gods appointed way which they have vainly and impiously laid out to unite the world in a Vice-christ or Vice-god Fore seeing and at present feeling many of these calamitous consequences to the Church I think it of exceeding moment that mens judgements should be rectified that are misled concerning the nature of the unity of the Church Still professing that to me they are the dearest Christians and nearest to my heart that are most for Unity and Concord so it be in Christ and upon righteous possible conditions CHAP. II. The true State of the Controversie and how much we grant HAving given you an account of the Occasion and Motives that produced this Disputation I shall now briefly state the Controversie between us And because the terms are all plain and my sense of them explained in the fore-going part I shall think no more here necessary then to tell you in certain Propositions How much we Grant and How far we are Agreed and then to tell you what it is that we deny and wherein we differ Prop. 1. We are Agreed that Christ hath a true Catholick Church on earth and ever hath had since first he planted it and ever will have to the end of the world and that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it or hath it ever had an Intercision for a day or an hour and that this Church is so far Infallible as that it never was nor ever will be ignorant of or erroneous against any Article of faith or part of obedience that is of absolute Necessity to salvation otherwise by that error it should have ceased to be the Church of Christ Prop. 2. We are agreed that this Catholick Church in respect of the Internal faith and charity of the Members and their Communion with Christ by the quickening Spirit on his part and holy sincere returns of devotion on theirs may be called Mystical or Invisible The thing is utterly undenyable though some Papists in the perversness of contentious Disputations seem to deny it And doubtless when they assert that Christ hath no Invisible Church they must mean it simply and not quoad haeo interiora or else they speak against all sense and Reason No man is simply Invisible but every man as to his soul is Invisible Prop. 3. We are Agreed that this Catholick Church in regard of the outward Profession of this Inward Faith and Holiness and in regard of the discernable numbers of persons making this Profession hath ever been visible since first it began to be visible And that the visibility hath never had any intercision If some Protestanss say otherwise it 's clear that this is all that by the common judgement of Protestants is maintained viz. That Christians and the Catholick Church containing the Professing Christians through the world have ever since their first planting had a visible being but yet 1. That the Visibility was not such but that Hereticks as the Arrians did might make a controversie of it whether they or the true Christians were the Church indeed and by their greater numbers or Power might blind men that they should not see which was the true Church 2. And that in the Catholick Church some parts may be much more corrupt and others much more pure and the Purer part be so much the lesser and oppressed and vilified by the more corrupt that the most part should not discern their Purity but take them as they did the Waldenses for Hereticks 3. And that two parts or more of this Catholick Church may so fall out among themselves as that one of them shall deny the other to be part of the Catholick Church when yet they really for all that censure remain parts of it as much as they And hereupon may grow a contest between them which of the two is the true Catholick Church and one part may say It is we and not you and the other may say It is we and not you and no man shall be able to discern which of the two is the Catholick Church because it is neither of them but each are a part 4. And though the Bodies of the members are visible and their Worshipping actions Visible and their Profession audible yet the faith Professed is not Visible nor the Truth of their Profession or of their Christianity or Church Truth being the object of the Intellect and not of sence 5. And though the true members of the Church do know the true Church
A Key for Catholicks To open the Jugling of the Jesuits and satisfie all that are but truly willing to understand whether the Cause of the Roman or Reformed Churches be of God and to leave the Reader utterly unexcusable that after this will be a Papist The first Part. Containing some Arguments by which the meanest may see the Vanity of Popery and 40. Detections of their Fraud with Directions and Materials sufficient for the Confutation of their Voluminous Deceits particularly refelling Ts. Manual some Manuscripts c. With some Proposals for a hopeless Peace The Second Part sheweth especially against the French and Grotians that the Catholick Church is not United in any meerly Humane Head either Pope or Council By Richard Baxter a Catholick Christian and Pastor of a Church of such at Kederminster LONDON Printed by R.W. for Nevil Simmons Bookseller in Kederminster and are to be sold by him there and by Thomas Johnson at the Golden Key in St. Pauls Church-yard 1659. At 4. s. bound To his Highness RICHARD Lord Protector OF THE Common-wealth of England Scotland and Ireland c. SIR THese Papers presume to tender you their service because the Subject of them is such as it most neerly concerneth both us and you that you be well acquainted with The Roman Canons that batter the Unity Catholicism and Purity of the Church of Christ are mounted on the frame which I have here demolished The swords and pens and tongues that you are now engaged against and which you must expect from henceforth to assault you are whetted and managed by the senseless tyrannous ungodly principles which I have here Detected As unreasonable as they appear to the unprejudiced they are such as have animated the studies and diligent endeavours of thousands to captivate the Princes and Nations of the Earth to the Roman yoke As vain as they appear to us that see them naked they are such as have divided and distracted the Churches of Christ and troubled and dethroned Princes and laid them at the feet of the Roman Pope They have absolved subjects from their Oaths and other obligations to fidelity They have involved many a Nation in blood O the streams of the blood of Saints that have been shed by these Roman Principles in Savoy France Bohemia Poland Germany Ireland England and many other Lands As easie a war as here I manage it is against those adverse Principles that have armed Thousands and Millions against the innocent or against their lawful Soveraigns whom God had bound them to obey They have fastned knives in the breasts of the greatest Kings as the lamentable case of Henry the third and fourth of France doth testifie They have in a few days time in Paris and the adjoyning parts of France perfidiously butchered Nobles and other persons of eminency and people of all sorts to the number of neer thirty thousand as Thuanus reckoneth them if not forty thousand as Davilah The Doctrines which I here confound have invaded England by a Spanish Armado whether by the Popes consent and upon the account of Religion I have after shewed out of their own Writers they have prepared knives and poyson for our Princes which God did frustrate they have laid Gunpowder to blowup King and Parliament and hellishly execute the fury of the deluded zealots in a moment and then to have charged the Puritans with the fact They have in a time of Peace by a sudden insurrection murdered so many thousands in Ireland in a few days or weeks as posterity will scare believe They are dreadful Practicals and not meer speculations that we dispute against I beseech you therefore that you receive not this as you would do a Scholastick or Philosophical Disputation about such things as seem not to concern you but as you would interess your self in a Disputation upon the Question Whether you should be deposed or murdered as an Heretick And whether we should be Tormented and burnt as Hereticks And whether the lives of all the Princes and People upon earth whom the Pope judgeth Hereticks should be at his mercy c. so do in this cause I speak not this to provoke you to deal bloodily with them as they do with the servants of the Lord I abhor the thoughts of imitating their cruelty It is only the Necessary Defence of your Life and Dignity and the Lives of all the Protestants that are under your Protection and Government and the souls of men that I desire On what terms we stand with those men whose Religion teacheth them to kill us if they can and to venture their lives for it is easie to understand When we have no security from them for our lives but their disability to destroy us we must disable them or die I utter no melancholy dreams nor slanders I have here shewed it in the too plain and cepious Decrees of the approved General Council at Lateran that the deposing of Princes and absolving their Subjects from their fidelity and giving their Dominions to others not only for supposed Heresie but for not exterminating such as deny Transubstantiation c. is an Article of their Faith and no man can disown it without disowning Popery in the Essentials If once they will renounce the Decrees of General Councils approved by the Pope we shall be soon agreed Saith Costerus Enchirid. cap. 1. p. 46. Quae sanc Decreta si veritatem si obsignationem Spiritus Sancti si praesentiam Christi spectes idem habent pondus momentum quod Sancta Dei Evangelia They believe these Decrees to be as true as the Gospel I need not therefore tell you that Bozius Hostiensis and many more of them make the Pope to be the Lord of all the World Or that Bellarmine and the stronger side do carry it as The common judgement of all Catholick Divines see what a rabble he heaps up De Pontif. Rom. li. 5. c. 1. that the Pope ratione spiritualis habet saltem indirectè potestatem quandam eamque summam in temporalibus Which cap. 6. he saith is just such over Princes as the soul hath over the body or sensitive appetite and that thus he may change Kingdoms and take them from one and give to another as the chief Spiritual Prince if it be but necessary to the safety of souls cap. 78. He gives us his proof of this And whether the Pope do take your Government to be for the good of souls I need not tell you It is the stupendious judgement of God on Christian Princes for their sins that they have been so far blinded as to endure such an usurper so long and have not before this blotted out his name from among the sons of men Non licet c. It is not lawful saith Bellarmine ib. c. 7. for Christians to Tolerate an Infidel or Heretical King if he endeavour to draw his Subjects to his Heresie or unbelief but to judge whether a King do draw to Heresie or not belongeth to the Pope to
what is the thing whose succession is questioned A Protestant is a Christian that holdeth to the holy Scriptures as the sufficient Rule of faith and holy living and protesteth against Popery The Protestant Churches are Societies professing the Protestants Religion The Protestant Religion is an improper speech but the Protestants Religion is a phrase that we shall own For Protestancy is not our Religion it self but the Rejection of Popish corruptions of Religions or defiling Additions If my Rejections of other mens Additions be themselves Additions then is it in the power of any Heretick in the world to force me to Add to my Religion at his Pleasure A thousand new Articles Forms of Worship he may devise and then must I add to my Religion by rejecting them all even as I add to my Apple by wiping the dirt of it or to my Cloaths by brushing them The Protestants Religion is only the Christian Religion the naked Christian Religion alone The Papists the Christian Religion corrupted with abundance of additions The Protestants ever disavowed any Confessions of men as pretended to be the Rule or Law of their Religion The Protestants Religion is the Holy Scriptures alone The Papists Religion is all that is decreed by the Pope and Councils Our Religion containtd in the Scoipture hath its Essentials and Integrals All the Essentials and as much of the Integrals as in the use of means we are able to understand we believe particularly and explicitely the rest we believe generally and implicitely to be all true So that as the Papists will not give us leave to take the writings of Greâ—ser Bellarmine or any of their Doctors yea the Articles of their Divines at Thoren Ratisbone c. to be therefore Articles of their faith but only those that are contained in General Councils approved by the Pope so we require the same justice of them that they call Nothing the Articles of our Faith but what is contained in the Holy Scripture which is the only Rule of our Religion Do they know our Religion better then we do This is our Religion and this we stand to Well! Consider now whether any thing be easier then for a Protestant to shew you a visible Church that hath successively been of his Religion 1. The Christian Religion hath been in all ages since Christ in visible Societies The Religion of Protestants is the Christian Religion therefore the Religion of Protestants hath been in all ages since Christ in visible Societies 2. That Religion which is contained in the Holy Scripture as its Rule or sufficient Revelation hath been professed in all ages in visible Churches But the Religion of Protestants is contained in the Holy Scriptures as its Rule or sufficient Revelation therefore the Religion of Protestants hath been professed in all ages in visible Churches We name the Societies from the places of their residence Our Church as Augustine tels the Donatists begun at Hierusalem and thence was dispersed into Asia Africa and Europe it hath continued in Syria Aethiopia Aegypt India Greece c. If I could name but one Nation that had been of my Religion I should suspect it were not the true Religion It is the Christian world that is instead of a Catalogue to us O but say the Juglers This is a General answer to say you are Christians there are more sorts of Christians then One I Reply It is the General or Catholick that we are speaking of and therefore if it were not such a General answer it were not pertinent to the Question There are no more sorts of Christians but One that is there is no Essential difference among them but there is a gradual integral and modal difference But may not Christians of several Degrees of Knowledge be in the same Catholick Church Our question is not Where any Sect or any particular Church hath had its succession but where that Catholick Church hath been of which we are members And surely Christ hath but One Catholick Church O but say they would you make men believe that Ethiopians Armenians Greeks c. are Protestants you may be ashamed of so gross a fiction I answer Is it the Name of Protestants or their Religion that you would have us prove a succession of These deceivers cheat abundance of poor souls by this one device even supposing that the word Protestant doth denominate our Church from its Essential parts and so call for a Catalogue of Protestants But I would ask them whether we or they do better know our Religion and consequently what a Protestant is If they know it at all it is from our writings or expressions For sure they will not pretend without signs to know our hearts and that better then our selves You must take it from us if you will know what our Religion is as we must take it from you if we will know yours And therefore delude not silly souls by perswading them that you know what our Religion is better then we If you will believe our Books that tell you believe our sayings also and believe me that here tell you my own Religion A Protestant is a Christian that protesteth against Popery Christianity is our Religion Protesting against Popery is our Negation or Rejection of your Corruptions of Religion Men that never heard of the name of Papist or Protestants may be of the same Religion with us If many Nations of the world never received Popery and we reject it if they never knew it and we know it and disown it are we not both of one Religion even in the Integrals One man never heard of the Leprosie another catcheth it and is cured of it and a third flyeth from it and preventeth it And I think all these are truly men yea and in tantum sound men When you call to us for a proof of our succession either you mean it of the Essentials of our Religion and Church or of the Negation of your Corruptions Either you mean it of the points that we are Agreed in or of those we differ in Christianity is it that we are Agreed in and that is our Religion and nothing but that Protestancy as such is but our wiping off the dirt or curing the scab that you have brought upon our Religion Is he not a man as well as you that will not tumble with you in the dirt or come into your Pesthouse If we know not our own Religion then we cannot tell it you and then you cannot know it And if we do know it believe us when we profess our own Belief We still profess before men and Angels that we own no Religion but the Christian Religion nor any Church but the Christian Church nor dream of any Catholick Church but one containing all the true Christians in the world united in Jesus Christ the Head We protest before men and Angels that it is the Holy Scriptures that are the Law and Rule and Test of our Religion And why are we not to be
content with this to govern Volunteers The other is by Commands that shall be seconded with force And this is proper to the Magistrate But if they will be deluded to give up their Crowns and Scepters to the Pope let them stand as the objects of the compassion of Spectators Much more then I have here given you I had prepared of the Testimony of Antiquity against them But here is more then they are able solidly to answer and I was afraid of over-whelming the capacity of ordinary Readers I understand not the French Tongue but by the Testimony of Learned men that understand them and especially by the help of a Noble friend that hath vouchsafed to translate some part of them for my use I am imboldened to a confidence that the two famous Confutations of the great Perron will stand to the perpetual shame of Popery which none of them will be ever able to Reply to without as great a dishonour to their Cause as will follow their not daring to Reply I mean Blondell's Book De Primatu in Ecclesia which overwhelms them utterly with the witness of Antiquity Pet. Molinaeus de Novitate Papismi which I hope his Reverend Son of his name may live to help us to in English But if any of the Romanists that dare not meddle with those Champions nor dash themselves upon those Pillars shall yet vouchsafe an Answer to this smaller work I do hereby assure him that if he wil do it soberly in the fear of God in a way of close and solid Arguing he will perform a task that will be very acceptable to me But niblers snarlers cavillers and senseless praters I shall contemn Richard Baxter The Contents CHap. 1. Popery no way to Unity page 1. Chap. 2. Directions for them that will deal with a Papist p. 5. Chap. 3. Argum. 1. Against Popery by which every honest godly man is secured from them p. 9. Chap. 4. The second Argument p. 16. Chap. 5. Argum. 3. That deposing Kings that will not exterminate us and absolving Subjects from their Allegiance and giving their Dominions to others is an Article of the Papists Faith p. 17 18. Chap. 6. Argum. 4. The Church of Rome unholy in its Essentials p. 21 22 c. Chap. 7. Argum. 5. The Papists of more then One Church yet each part pretending to be the Catholick Church p. 26. Chap. 8. Argum. 6. The Church of Rome hath discontinued p. 31. Chap. 9. Argum. 7. From sense securing all men from Popery that will believe their eyes or any of their or others senses T 's frivolous answer refelled p. 34. Chap. 10. Detect 1. Prove them but guilty of one Error in Faith and all Popery is confuted p. 38. Chap. 11. Detect 2. A Doctrine so contrary to Scripture and it self cannot be free from Error p. 39. Chap. 12. Detect 3. Agree on the way of proof before you dispute Papists will take neither Sense Reason Scripture nor the Tradition or Judgement of the greater part of the Church for judge or proof p. 41. Chap. 13. Detect 4. Understand what they mean when they call to you for a Judge of Controversies How far a Judge is necessary and who p. 43. Chap. 14. Detect 5. They pretend that in their way there is an End of Controversies but in ours there is none Detected p. 46. Chap. 15. Detect 6. Their boast of Unity and reproaching us with Divisions Detected p. 52. Chap. 16. Detect 7. Their confounding the Essentials and Integrals of Christianity Detected p. 63. Chap. 17. Detect 8. Their extolling the judgement of the Catholick Church Detected It is against them p. 71. Chap. 18. Detect 9. Some of their deluding Ambiguities Detected 1. In the word Church 2. In the word Pope 3. A General Council Bring them to Define what they mean by these and you break them p. 73. Chap. 19. Detect 10. Their Confounding 1. An humane Ordinance and a Divine 2. Meere Primacy with Soveraignty 3. An alterable Order with an unalterable Essential Detected p. 81. Chap. 20. Detect 11. The vanity of their pretending Tradition detected p. 86. How far we are for Tradition p. 87. Tradition confoundeth Popery p. 98. Chap. 21. Detect 12. Their pretence that the Greeks and all other Churches were once under the Pope Detected p. 102. Chap. 22. Detect 13. Their plea that the Church of Rome is a True Church and therefore we are Schismaticks for separating from it Detected p. 103. Chap. 23. Detect 14. Their pretending to fixed Unity and settledness and that we are at uncertainty incoherent and changelings Detected p. 107. Chap. 24. Detect 15. Their plea that our Church and Religion is new and theirs old and their calling for a Catalogue and proof of the Succession of our Church before Luther Detected and our Church made known to them p. 115. And vindicated from Turbervile's exceptions Proved fully that persons differing in points of Faith are Christians and of the same Church p. 125 127 c. And that the Abassines Armenians Copties Greeks c. are of the same Church with us proved T 's proof of their Succession confuted to p. 141. Chap. 25. Detect 16. Their jumbling all our differences together and then making lesser or common differences to be the Protestant Religion Detected p. 141. Thirty two points of Popery named which they are challenged to prove a Succession of with my promise to receive what is so proved T 's Arguments for the Succession of their Doctrine confuted to p. 155. Papists have those in their Church that differ in point of Faith p. 155. No such difference between us and the most of the Christian world as can prove us not of the same Catholick Church proved against H. T. in the instances 1. Of Invocation of Saints p. 157. 2. Praying for the dead p. 160. 3. Veneration or Adoration of Images Cross and Reliques p. 162. 4. Transubstantiation 5. Satisfaction and Purgatory 6. Of Fasts Free-will c. Chap. 26. Detect 17. Their false interpretation of the sayings of Ancients from whence they would extort a proof of their Soveraignty Detected in eight instances p. 169. Chap. 27. Detect 18. Their corrupting Councils and Fathers and citing such Detected p. 176. Chap. 28. Detect 19. Their perswading the people that we are all Lyars that nothing we say and write may be regarded p. 182. Chap. 29. Detect 20. Their feigned Miracles 184. The story of the Boy of Bilson p. 185. Chap. 30. Detect 21. Their Impudent slanders The horrid Lyes against Luther and Calvin insisted on by the Marquess of Worcester and their common Writers fully detected p. 189. Chap. 31. Detect 22. Their quarrels at our Translations of Scripture p. 200. Chap. 32. Detect 23. Their design to make the Ministers odious to the people Their riches and ours compared p. 201. Chap. 33. Detect 24. Their cavils against our Ministry Ordination and Succession confuted p. 205. Chap. 34. Detect 25. Their pretence of the Holiness of their Church
and the unholiness of ours And 1. Of their Canonized Saints p. 214 217. 2. Of the strictness of their Religious Orders 3. Of their unmarryed Clergie p. 227. 4. Their Holy Ceremonies Chap. 35. Detect 26. Their demanding of us to tell them when every one of their Corruptions did begin p. 233. Their Novelty proved p. 234 c. A Confutation of a Papists M. S. on this point which was sent to Mr. Millard neer Sturbridge p. 244. Chap. 36. Detect 27. They charge us with New Articles for denying their new Articles of Faith and then bid us prove the Succession of our Negatives p. 258. Chap. 37. Detect 28. They conclude that theirs is the safer Religion because it is most uncharitable and damneth others and ours the less safe because the more charitable p. 261. They admit or save Heathens while they would damn Protestants proved p. 265. Chap. 38. Detect 29. They win the Great ones and multitude by suiting their Doctrine and Worship to the fleshly conceits and inclinations of ungodly men p. 271. shewed in twenty instances Chap. 39. Detect 30. They pick up the mistakes or harsh passages of some particular Divines and perswade men that these are the Protestant Religion p. 279. A Confutation of Cardinal Richlieu's twelve Accusations or Arguments against the Protestants p. 280 281 c. Chap. 42. Detect 33. Their pretence of a Divine institution and Natural Excellency of a visible Monarchical Government of the whole Church Detected p. 297. An Answer to the ridiculous Reasons of Cardinal Boverius to Prince Charles p. 297. Chap. 43. Detect 34. Their new device of receiving nothing as Scripture Evidence but the express words p 307. Chap. 44. Detect 35. They choose such persons to dispute with against whom they have some notable advantage p. 312. Chap. 45. Detect 36. Their designs to divide us or sow Heresies among the Vulgar and then draw them to some odious practices p. 313. About our late changes and warres and Heresies in England The Protestants and particularly the Presbyterians vindicated from their charge of killing the late King p. 321. Yet the case different from theirs p. 323. How Papists have crept into most parties p. 327. What Heresies and Sects are their proper spawn p. 330. Chap. 46. Detect 37. They Hide themselves in their Agents and new Converts The means Our danger by the Hiders The Detection p. 337. to 345. Chap. 47. Detect 38. Their exceeding industry to pervert men of Interest and power p. 345. Chap. 48. Detect 39. Their Treasons against the lives of Princes and the Peace of Nations and their dissolving the bond of Oaths and Covenants and making Perjury and Rebellion to seem Duties and Meritorius p. 348. proved from themselves their recrimination about the late Kings death further refelled p. 355. Chap. 49. Detect 40. Their last course is to turn to open Hostility and stir up Princes to war and blood p. 356. Chap. 50. Some Proposals to the Papists for a Hopeless Peace p. 364. The Contents of the Second Part. Quest WHether the way to heal the Divisions in the Churches of Christ be by drawing them all into One Universal Visible Political body under One Universal visible Head or Government Or whether the Catholick Church be a body so United and Governed Neg. Chap. 1. Shewing the Occasions and reasons of this writing especially as from the Grotians Mr. Pierce's exceptions manifested to be frivelous p. 379. Grotius speaking English to gratifie Mr. Pierce p. 383. Chap. 2. The true state of the Controversie and what Consociations of Pastors and union of Churches we grant p. 394. Chap. 3. Our Arguments for the Negative Fifteen Reasons against the Popes Soveraignty briefly named p. 402. Against the Headship of Pope or General Councils Argum 1. From the non-existence of an universal Head p. 404. Argum. 2. It never did exist much less in continued succession p. 406. Argum. 3. A General Council unnecessary impossible and would be unjust p. 409. proved to p. 421. Argum. 4. If assembled it could not possibly do the work of the Head or Soveraign p. 421. Argum. 5. None hath power to summon a General Council p. 421. Argum. 6. Pope nor Council have not the Legislative Power to the Church Universal p. 423. Argum. 7. Pope nor Council are not the Fountain of Power to all Church-officers p. 425. Argum. 8. In great Causes all may not appeal to them nor can they finally decide p. 425. Argum. 9. They cannot put down other inferior officers through the world p. 426. Argum. 10. 11. Our Relation to such a Head not Essential to our Christianity nor are we baptized into such a Head p. 127. Argum. 12. This Head no Principle anciently taught the Catechized p. 428. Argum. 13. 14. It is no Treason or damning sin to deny this Head Nor are all Christians bound to study the Laws of Popes and Councils p. 428 429. Argum. 15. 16. The Head of the Church must be evident to all the members and his Laws certain p. 430. Argum. 17. 18. Councils and Decretals must not be usually preached A Visible Head not agreed on among Papists and therefore as none p. 431. Argum. 19. No such Head revealed in Scripture p. 432. Argum. 20. The Scripture appropriates the Soveraignty to Christ only p. 433. Proved and the Objections answered Chap. 4. Opening the true grounds on which the Churches Unity and Peace must be sought and the means that must be used to attain so much as is here to be expected 1. The General Grounds p. 440. The true particular Grounds of Peace in twenty Propositions p. 442. What unity to be here expected p. 443. The Applications of the foresaid Grounds or the reduction of them into practice p. 453. The Conclusion p. 455. ERRATA PAge 24. l. 9. r. Platina p. 30. l. 9. r. Formosus p. 31. l. 19. r. Cardinals p. 58. l. 13. r. mean time p. 59. l. 5. 16. r. Filiutius l. 9. 25. r. Bauny l. 13. r. a man may do p. 61. l. 7. r. Baldellus l. 23. r. Escobar p. 78. l. 15. blot out too p. 82. l. 3 blot out not p. 104. l. 15. for reasoned r. ceased p. 126. l. penult for of r. take p. 131. l. penult r. Vignerius p. 134. l. 36. for five Acts r. the fifth Act. p. 145. l. 9. r. to receive so many l. 19. r. when he hath p. 157. l. 34. for Jus r. Jos p. 170. l. 9. for which r. with p. 195. l. 35. for this r. his p. 196. l. 36. r. Baldwin p. 206. l. 27. for of r. or l. 28. for Dr. r. D. p. 213. l. 7. r. when we do p. 220. l. 36. r. Dan tes p. 224. l. 2. 3 4. r. the names in the Accus case p. 225. l. 8. r. your self p. 259. l. 31. r. Anathema's p. 261. l. 35. r. not for nor p. 266. l. 17. r. that it is l. 28. r. Canus p. 267. l. 10. r. to
Columbanus the Abbot coming into France that the Scots do nothing differ from the Brittains in their Conversation For Bishop Daganus coming to us refused not only to eat with us but even to eat in the same House where we did eat Usher Epist Hibern 7. p. 18. Our most peaceable Bishop Hall was forct to write a Roma irreconciliabilis While we are thinking of Reconciliation they are about our ears with Plots and violence and with swarms of Rome-bred Sects and are day and night industriously undermining us so that by their continual Alarms I am called off to these defensive wars which here I have undertaken yet still resolving that the Desperateness of the Cure shall not make me run from them into a contrary extream nor be out of the way of Peace nor neglect any necessary means how hopeless soever of success The Work that here I have undertaken is 1. To give you briefly those Grounds on which you must go if you will keep your ground against a Papist 2. To give a few invincible Arguments which the weakest may be able to use to overthrow the principal grounds of the Papists 3. To detect their Frauds and give to the younger sort of Ministers sufficient Directions for the Confutation of all the Papists in the world 4. To propound though in vain such terms of Peace as we can yield to CHAP. II. BEfore I mention the Grounds or Cause that you must maintain I must premise this Advice to the Common People 1. Wrong not the Truth and your selves by an unequal conflict Enter not rashly upon Disputes with those that are Learned and of nimble tongues if you be ignorant or of weak capacities your selves Though I shall here shew you that Scripture Church Tradition Reason and Sense are on your side yet experience tels us how the words of Juglers have made millions of men deny belief to their eyes their taste and other senses An ignorant man is soon silenced by a subtile wit and many think that when they cannot answer they must yield though they deny both Sense and Reason by it If any of them secretly entice you desire them to debate the case with some able learned experienced Minister in your hearing It is the office of your Pastors to defend you from the wolves If you once despise them or straggle from them and the Flocks and trust to your own Reason that is unfurnished and unprepared for such work you may take that you get by it if you be undone You need the help of Pastors for your souls as well as of Physicians for your Bodies and Lawyers for your Estates or else God would never have set them over you in his Church Let them but come on equal terms and you shall see what Truth can do In this way we will not avoid a Conference with any of them But alas with ignorant unlearned people what may not such Deceivers do that can perswade so many thousand souls to give no Credit to their own eyes or taste or feeling but to believe a Priest that Bread is not Bread and Wine is not Wine 2. Yet I would have the weakest to endeavour to understand the reasons of their Profession and to be able to repell Deceivers And to that end I shall here give you first some Directions concerning the cause which you must defend And concerning this Observe these things following 1. Understand what the Religion is that you must hold and maintain It is the antient Christian Religion Do not put every Truth among the Essentials of your Religion Our Religion doth not stand or fall with every Controversie that is raised about it That which was the true Religion in the Apostles days is ours now that which all were baptized into the Profession of and the Churches openly held forth as their Belief Reformation brings us not a new Religion but cleanseth the old from the dross of Popery which by innovation they had brought in A man that cannot confute a Papist may yet be a Christian and so hold fast the true Religion It followeth not that our Religion is questionable or unsafe if some point in Controversie between them and us be questionable or hard The Papists would fain bring you to believe that our Religion must lie upon some of these Controversies but it s no such matter Perhaps you will say That then it is not about Religion that we differ from them I answer yes it is about the Essentials of their Religion but it is but for the preserving the Integrity of ours against the Consequences and additions of theirs They have made them a New Religion which we call Popery and joined this to the Old Religion which we call Christianity Now we stick to the old Religion alone and therefore there is more essential to their Religion then is to ours so that our own Religion even the ancient Christianity is out of Controversie between us The Papists do confess that the Creed the Lords Prayer the ten Commandments are true yea that all the Scripture is the word of God and certainly true so that our Religion is granted us as past dispute And therefore it is only the Papists Religion that is in question between us and not ours If you will make those lower Truths to be of the Essence of your Religion which are not you will give the Papists the advantage which they desire 2. If the Papists call for a Rule or Test of your Religion and ask you where they may find it assign them to the Holy Scriptures and not to any Confessions of Churches further then as they agree with that We know of no Divine Rules and Laws of Faith and Life but the holy Scripture and the hearts of Believers have an imperfect Transcript of them The Confessions of Churches are but part of the Holy Scripture or Collections out of them containing the points of greatest weight And if in phrase or order much more in matter there be any thing humane we make it not our Rule nor are we bound to make it good no more then the Writings of godly men A point is not therefore with us an Article of Faith because our Churches or a Synod put it into a Confession but because it is in the Word of God For a Councils determinations do with us differ but gradually from the Judgement of a single man in this respect And therefore we give them the Scripture only as the full Doctrine of our Faith and the perfect Law of God And those points in it which Life or Death is laid upon and God hath told us we cannot be saved without we take as the Essentials of our Religion and the rest as the Integrals only If they ask Why then we do draw up Confessions of Faith I answer 1. To teach and help the people by gathering to their hands the most necessary points and giving them sometimes an explication of them 2. To let our Accusers see that we misunderstand not the
Scriptures 3. To let Pastors and other Subjects know what sence of Scripture the Magistrate will own within his Dominions 4. And to let the Pastors and the world know what sence in the principal Points we are agreed in But still we take not our Confessions for our Divine Rule and therefore if there be any errour in a Confession there is none in the Rule of our Religion and consequently none in the Religion which we all agree in but only in such a persons or Churches exposition of the Rule which yet among Christians is not in any essential Point 3. Understand well what is the Catholick Church that when the Papists ask you what Church you are of or call to you to prove its antiquity or truth you may give them a sound and Catholick answer The Catholick Church is the whole number of true Christians upon earth for we meddle not now with that part which is in Heaven It is not tyed to Protestants only nor to the Greeks only much less to the Romanists only or to any other party whatsoever but it comprehendeth all the members of Christ and as visible it containeth all that profess the Christian Religion by a credible profession If the Christian Religion may be known then a man may know that he is a Christian and consequently a member of the Catholick Church But if the Christian Religion cannot be known then no man can know which is the Church or which is a Christian All Christians united to Christ the Head are this Catholick Church If you tye the Church to your own party and make a wrong description of it you will ensnare your selves and spoil your belief and your defence of it 4. Run not into extreams mix not any unsound principles with your Religion For if you do the Papists will cull out those and by disgracing them will seem to disgrace your Religion 5. Use not any unsound Arguments to defend the Truth For if you do the truth will suffer and seem to be overthrown by the weakness of your Arguments 6. Joyn not with those men that cast out any Ordinance of God because the Papists have abused it Reformation of corrupted Institutions is not by the Abolition of them but by the Restauration of them There are few things in use among the Papists themselves as parts of worship but may lead us up to a good original or tell us of some other real Duty which did degenerate into these 7. Joyn not with those ignorant unpeaceable self-conceited womanish rabious Divines or private men that pour out unworthy reproaches at godly men among our selves as if they were Hereticks or such as the Churches should dis-own For these are they that please the Papists and harden them in their Error and offend the weak They think they may call us Hereticks or Blasphemers by authority when we call one another so Such Railers teach them what to say and play their game more effectually then they could do their own When they are alluring the simple people how soon will they prevail if they can but prove their charge against us from the pens of Protestants themselves Having told you on what grounds you must make good your cause against them I shall next give you three or four easie Arguments some of them formerly given you by which even the weakest may prove that Popery is but deceit CHAP. III. Argum. 1. IF there be any godly honest men on earth besides Papists then Popery is false and not of God But there be godly honest men on earth besides Papists therefore Popery is false and not of God The Major is proved thus It is an Article of the Popish faith that there are no godly honest men on earth besides Papists therefore if there be any such Popery is false By godly honest men I mean such as have true love to God and so are in a state of salvation The Antecedent I prove thus 1. Their very definition of the Church doth make the Pope the Head and confine the membership only to his subjects making the Roman Catholick Church as they call it the whole 2. But yet lest any ignorant Papists say I may be a Roman Catholick without believing that all others are ungodly and shall be damned I will give it you in the Determination of a Pope and general Councll Leo the tenth Abrog Pragm sanct Bull. in the 17 th General Council at the Laterane saith And seeing it is of necessity to salvation that all the faithful of Christ be subject to the Pope of Rome as we are taught by the testimony of divine Scripture and of the holy Fathers and it is declared in the Constitution of Pope Boniface 7. c. And Pope Pius the second was converted from being Aenaeas Sylvius by this Doctrine of a Cardinal approved by him at large Bull. Retract in the Vol. 4. of Binnius p. 514. I came to the Fountain of Truth which the holy Doctors both Greek and Latine shew who with one voyce say that he cannot be saved that holdeth not the unity of the holy Church of Rome and that all those vertues are maimed to him that refuseth to obey the Pope of Rome though he lye in sack cloth and ashes and fast and pray both day and night and seem in the other things to fulfill the Law of God So that if a Pope and General Council be false then Popery is false For their infallibility is the ground of their faith and they take it on their unerring authority But if the Pope and a General Council be to be believed then no man but a subject of the Pope can be saved no though he fast and pray in sack-cloth and ashes day and night and seem to fulfill the rest of the Law of God It s certain therefore that if any one of you that call your selves Romane Catholicks do not believe that all the world shall be damned save your selves you are indeed no Romance Catholicks but are Hereticks your selves in their account for you deny a principal Article of their faith and deny the Infallibility of the Pope with a General Council which is your very Foundation And therefore we find that even in the great charitable work of reducing the Abassines the Jesuite Gonzalus Rodericus in his speech to the Emperours mother laid so great a stress on this point that when she professed her subjection to Christ he told her that None are subject to Christ that are not subject to his Vicar Negavi Christo subjici qui ejus vicario non subjicitur Godignus de reb Abassin Lib. 2. c. 18. in Roderic liter p. 323. And Bellarmine saith de Eccl. l. 3. c. 5. that no man though he would can be subject to Christ that is not subject to the Pope that is he cannot be a Christian And therefore Card. Richlieu then Bishop of Lusson tels the Protestants that they were not to be called Christians And Knot against Chillingworth with abundance more of them
on by Catholikes who rooting out the hereticks may possess it without contradiction and may keep it in the purity of faith saving the right of the principal Lord so be it that he himself do make no hinderance hereabout and oppose any impediment and the same Law is to be observed with them that are not principal Lords And the Catholikes that taking the sign of the Cross shall set themselves to the rooting out of the hereticks shall enjoy the same indulgences and holy priviledges which were granted to those that go to the releif of the holy land Moreover we Decree that the believers receivers defenders and favourers of Hereticks shall be excommunicate firmly decreeing that after any such is noted by excommunication if he refuse to satisfie within a year he shall from thence forth be ipso jure infamous and may not be admitted to publike Offices or Councils or to the choice of such nor to bear witness And he shall be intestate and not have power to make a will nor may come to a Succession of inheritance And no man shall be forced to answer him in any cause but he shall be forced to answer others And if he be a Judge his sentence shall be invalid and no causes shall be brought to his hearing If he be an Advocate his Plea shall not be admitted If a Notary or Register the Instruments made by him shall be utterly void and damned with the damned Author And so in other the like cases we command that it be observed Thus they go on further commanding Bishops by themselves or their Arch-deacons or other fit persons once or twice a year to search every Parish where any Heretick is found to dwell and put all the Neighbourhood to their Oaths whether they know of any Hereticks there or any private meetings or any that in life and manners do differ from the common conversation of the faithful c. And the Bishops that neglect these things are to be cast out and others put into their places that will do them And Pope Gregory 7. l. 4. Epist 7. expresly stirs up the people to cast off their Princes saying And for the conspiracy of Hereticks and the King we believe it is not unknown to you that are near them how it may be impugned by the Catholike Bishops and Dukes and many others in the German parts for the faithful of the Church of Rome are come to such a number that unless the King shall come to satisfaction they may openly profess to choose another King and observing Justice we have promised to favour them and will keep our promise firm c. The sum of all is that all that the Pope calls Hereticks must be condemned and destroyed and all Kings Princes or Lords that will not execute his sentence and root them out must be disposessed of their Dominions and the subjects absolved from their fidelity whatever Oaths they had taken and all others that do but favour or receive them be utterly undone I fetch not these things out of the writings of the Protestants nor from any private Doctors of their own but from the very words of a General Council confirmed by the Pope and unquestionably approved by them And abundance the like might be produced And many ages saw this doctrine put in execution when the Emperors of Germany were deposed by the Pope and the Subjects absolved from their Allegiance as the many volumes written in those times and published together by Goldastus testifie And the King of France or any other that tolerate any of the supposed Hereticks may see what a censure they are exposed to if meer necessity were not their security Perhaps some will say that this Decree was not de fide but a temporary precept Answ When a precept requireth duty it may be a point of Faith to believe it Precepts are the Objects of Faith at least as they are assertions that the thing commanded is our duty It is an Article of faith that God is to be loved and obeyed and our Superiors to be honoured and our Neighbour to be loved and Charity to be exercised c. The Creation the Incarnation of Christ his death resurrection ascension glorification intercession his future Judgement the Resurrection of the body c. are all matters of fact and yet matters of faith too If practicals be not Articles of faith then we have no Articles of faith at all for all our Theology and Religion is practical Do Papists murder poor Christians by the thousands and yet not fide divina believe that it is their duty so to do Either it is a duty or a sin or indifferent If a sin woe to their Pope and Council and if this be no sin with them I know not why the world should be troubled by them with the name of sin If it be indifferent what then shall be called sin If they can swallow such Camels as the blood of many thousand Christians what need they strain at Gnats and stick at private Murders or Fornication or Lying or Slandering any more then the Jesuit Casuists do that are cited by the Jansenian in his Mysterie of Jesuitism But if these Murders and deposing Kings be indeed a duty how can they know it to be so but by Believing And indeed if a General Council and the Pope are to be believed who give it us with a Decernimus firmiter statuimus then it is doubtless a point of faith and if they are not to be believed then Popery is all but a meer deceit Object 2. But may we not be Roman Catholikes though we joyn not with them in this point Have not many such renounced it and so may we Answ If you renounce the Decrees of a Pope and General Council you renounce your Religion in the very foundation of it and cannot be Papists if you know what you do but are in the Roman account as errant Hereticks as those that they have tortured and burnt to ashes though here in England where they cannot handle you as they would do they dare not tell you so And if you may renounce the Decrees of a Pope and General Council when they say It is a duty or lawful to extirminate all as Hereticks that believe not Transubstantiation and to seize upon the Lands of Princes that will not do it and to deliver them to others that will and absolve their Vassals from their fidelity I say if you may renounce them in this why may not we have as free leave to renounce them in other things as groundless CHAP. VI. Argum. 4. THE true Catholike Church is Holy the Church of Rome hath for many generations been unholy therefore the Church of Rome was not in any of those Generations the true Catholike Church The Major Proposition is an Article of the Creed professed by themselves as much as by us I Believe the Holy Catholike Church The unholiness of the Church of Rome I prove undenyably thus If an Essential part of
false So that here we must break with a Papist even where we might join in dispute with a heathen And how will Papists deal with Heathens if they will deny the proofs from sense and reason 3. But will they stand to the Validity of Proofs from Scripture No For 1. They take it to be but part of Gods word so that we may nor argue Negatively It is not in the holy Scripture therefore it is not an Article of faith or a Law of God For they will presently appeal to Tradition 2. And even so much as is in Scripture though they confess it to be true yet they confess it not to be by us intelligible and will not admit of any proof from it but with this limitation that you take it in that sense as the Church takes it For they are sworn by the Trent Oath to take it in that sence as the Holy Mother Church doth hold and hath held it in and never to take or interpret it but according to the unanimous sense of the Fathers So that they must know what sense all the Fathers are unanimous in before they can admit a proof from Scripture And before that can be done above a Cart-load of books must be read over or searched and when that 's done they will find that most texts were never medled with by most of those Fathers in their writings and in those that they did meddle with they disagreed in multitudes and where they disagree they are not unanimous and there the Papists are sworn to believe no sense at all And if they would have come down to a Major vote it is no short or easie matter to gather the votes And if they know the Fathers unanimous consent yet must they have the sense of the present Church too And is it not all one to make your adversary the Judge of your cause as the Judge of your Evidences and all your proofs 4. Well but at least may we not hope that they will stand to the Judgement of the Catholick Church And if so we will not take it for our adversary No they will not do so neither For 1. When they deny proof from sense and reason they must needs deny all that 's brought from the Church For the Church cannot judge it self but on supposition of the infallibility of sense 2. And when you argue from the judgement and practice of the greater part of the Church they presently disclaim them all as Hereticks or Schismaticks and will have no man be a Valid witness but themselves The Greeks the Aethiopians the Armenians the Protestants all are Hereticks or Schismaticks save they and therefore may not be witnesses in the case So that you see upon what terms we stand with the Papists that will admit of no proofs upon the Infallibility of Sense or Reason or the sufficiency of Scripture or the testimony of the Catholick Church but only from themselves CHAP. XIII Detect 4 UNderstand what the Papists mean when they are still calling to you for a Judge of Controversies If you would dispute with them they are presently asking you Who shall be the judge and perswading you that it is in vain to dispute without a living Judge for every man will be the Judge himself and every mans cause will be right in his own eyes and all the world will be still at odds till we are agreed who shall be the Judge To help you to see the sense of this deceit and then to confute it 1. You may easily observe that this is the plain drift of all to perswade you to make them your judges and yield the cause instead of disputing it For it is no other judge but themselves that they will admit Yield first that the Pope or his Council is the judge of all controversies and then its folly to dispute against them so that if you will yield them the cause first they will then dispute with you after 2. But what is to be said to the pretence of the Necessity of a Judge I answer 1. It s against all reason and experience to think that all enquiries or disputes are vain unless there be a Judge to decide the case A Judge is a Ruling decider not to satisfie mens minds so much as to preserve Order and Peace and Justice in the Society But there are thousands of cases to be privately discussed that we never need to bring to a Judge Every Husbandman and Tradesman and Navigator and other Artificer doth meet with doubts and difficulties in his way which he laboureth to Discern and satisfieth himself with a Judgement of Discretion without a Ruling Judge We eat and drink and clothe our selves and follow our daily labours without a Judge though we meet with controversies in almost all what meat or drink is best for quality or quantity and a hundred like doubts Men do marry and build and buy and sell and take Physick and dispatch their greatest worldly business without a Judge Judges are only for such controverted cases as cannot well be decided without them to the attaining of the Ends of Government 2. Is it not against the daily practice of the Papists to think or say that all disputes and controversies must have a Judge Who is the Judge between the Nominals Reals and Formalists the Dominicans Franciscans and Jesuites in all those controversies which have Cartloads of Books written on them Their Pope or Councils dare not Judge between them Do they not daily dispute in their Schools among themselves without a Judge and still write books against one another without a Judge 3. Understand well the use and differences of Judgement The sentence is but a means to the execution and Judges cannot determine the mind and will of man but preserve outward Order if men will not see the truth themselves Me thinks the Jesuits that are so eager for free will should easily grant that the Pope by his definition cannot determine the Will of man And they see that Hereticks remain Hereticks when the Pope hath said all that he can And if he can cure them all by his determinations he is much too blame that he doth not And if a mans mind be to be settled an Infallible Teacher is fitter then a Judge Judgement then being for Execution when you ask Who shall be the Judge I answer that Judgement is either total absolute and final or it is only to a certain particular end limited and subordinate from which there is an Appeal In the former case there is no Judge but Christ and the Father by him No absolute decision can be made till the great Judgement come and then all will be fully and finally decided And for the limited present Judgements of men they are of several sorts according to their several Ends. When the question is Who shall be corporally punished as an Heretick the Magistrate is Judge For coercive punishment being his work the Judgement must be his also But when the question is Who
shall be excommunicated as an Heretick as Gods Law hath told us who in specie and so is the Rule of decision about individuals so to try individual persons and cases according to this Law belongs to the Governours of the Church but not to the Governours of other Churches a thousand miles off that never received such an authority and are not capable of the work but to the Governours of the Church in which the party hath Communion and into which he shall at any time intrude and seek communion And all men have a Judgement of discerning that are concerned in the Execution So that if a disputing Papist will say that his business is not to Dispute with you but to Excommunicate or hang or burn you for an Heretick then I confess it s all the reason in the world that you should first agree of the Judge But why the Pope should be the Judge I know not unless it be in his own charge CHAP. XIV Detect 5. VVHen you have proceeded on these grounds the Papists will tell you that in their way there is an End of Controversies but in yours there is none For if you will not stand to ones Judgement as infallible you may dispute as long as you live before you come to an End To direct you in discussing this part of the Deceit also 1. We confess that on earth there will be no End of all controversies among the best nor of the great controversies which salvation lyeth on between the believers and the unbelievers that is there will be still Infidelity and Heresie in the world and errour in the godly themselves 1. Hath it not been so in every age till now And why should we expect that it should now be otherwise 2. Doth not Paul tell us that here we know but in part and prophesie in part and when is it that that which is imperfect will be done away but when that which is perfect is come While we know but in part we shall differ in part 2. Hath your way put an End to controversies any more then ours Are you not yet at controversie with Infidels Whether Christ be the Redeemer and with Hereticks whether he be true eternall God Are you not yet as full of controversies among your selves as any Christians on the face of the earth I do not believe but in the many Volumes of your Schoolmen Casuists and Commentators I can shew more controversies yet depending then you can find amongst any sort of Christians in the world yea then you can find among all other Christians in the world set together 3. And is there any thing in your way that better tendeth to the deciding of controversies then in ours Nothing at all but contrarily you have made more Controversies then you have ended For 1. We have a Certain infallible Rule to decide our controversies by even such as you confess your selves to be infallible Even the Holy Scriptures but you have an uncertain Rule even the Decrees of your Popes and Councils and the many Volumes of the Fathers which are at odds among themselves your very Rule is self-contradicting and your Judges are together by the ears as hath been shewed 2. Our Faith consisteth in those points which are granted by your selves and so are beyond Controversie between us and you But yours lyeth also in a mixture of mens corruptions which will ever be controverted and condemned 3. Our Faith consisteth in the few ancient Articles by which the Church was alwayes known as to its essentials But you confound the Essentials with the integrals and the Number of your necessary Articles is so great as must needs be matter of more controversie then ours 4. We know our Religion and where to find it For it is perfect at the first and receiveth no additions or diminutions One generation cometh and another goeth but the word of the Lord endureth for ever But you never know when you have all because you know not when your Pope will have done defining that is an article of faith to you one year that was none the year before nor ever before 5. We need no Judge to decide any controversies among us in the points of Absolute necessity to salvation both because the Scripture is so plain in those points as to serve for decision without a Judge and because we abhor to make a controversie of any of them and where there is no controversie there needs no Judge We are all agreed through the plainness of the Scripture that there is but one Eternal most Wise and Good and Omnipotent God and that there is one Mediator between God and man who is himself both God and man that was crucified dead buried went to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rose again ascended intercedeth for us and is King and Head of the Church and will raise the dead and judge the world some to Heaven and some to Hell These and all the rest of the Essentials of our faith and many more points that are not essentials are so plain in Scripture that we are past making them matter of Controversie If any man deny an Essential point of faith he is none of us no more then of you But you are it seems so deep in infidelity that you must have a judge to decide your Controversies in the necessary Articles of Faith For whatever is de fide you make to be of such equal necessity that you deride our distinguishing the Fundamentals from the rest as may be seen in Knots Infidelity unmaskt against Chillingworth Seriously tell us Do you think Christians need a Judge or must put it to a Judge to decide whether Christ be the Messias or not whether he died and rose again or not Whether he will judge the world or not or any such points If he be a Judge he must have power to oblige you to stand to his Determination on which side soever he determine And what if John 22. determine that the soul is not immortal or John 23. that there is no resurrection or life to come but a man dieth like a beast would you stand to this decision 6. If you say that your Judge hath power to oblige you only on one side that is when he judgeth right and so make no Judge of him but a Teacher we have such Judges as well as you even Teachers to shew us the Evidence of truth 7. If you say that you have a Judge to determine of heresies in order to the Punishing of them by the sword So have we as well as you and better then you For your Pope is a Priest that hath nothing to do with the sword at least out of his own Principalities but our Princes and other Rulers are lawful Magistrates that are appointed to be a terror to evill doers Rom. 13. 4 6. 8. If you say that you have a Judge to determine of heresie in Order to Excommunication so have we in every Church even the Pastors of the Churches who are
bound to unite and assist each other in such works What is to be accounted Heresie the Law of God sufficiently determineth And what particular persons are to be Judged hereticks and excommunicated according to that Law the particular Pastors that are on the place can better decide then a Pope that is a thousand or five thousand miles off and cannot hear the witnesses And do you not your selves decide almost all such cases through the world that is of your subjection by the present Pastors or Bishops and not by the Pope And why may not we do so then as well as you 9. But if you lay all upon your Popes or Councils Infallibility I desire you but to read my third Disputation in a Book against Popery called the Safe Religion and then believe that Infallibility if you can I should think my self a miserable man if I were not my self more Infallible then many of your Popes have been Every Christian while such is infallible in his belief of the Christian faith And the Scripture is an infallible ground of our belief 10. Is it not a plain Judgement of God upon you that while you make the Scripture so dark and not intelligible and cry up the Necessity of a living Judge you should not only swarm with differences among your selves but should be utterly disagreed and at a loss to know who is this Judge of Controversies one saying it is the Pope and another that its the Council and what the better are you for saying There must be a Judge as long as you cannot tell Who it must be It s not only uncertain among you Whether Pope or Councill be the Infallible Judge but also which is a true Pope and which is a lawfull General Council For fourty years at least together the Church could not know the true Pope but the more learned and conscionable men were divided Nor is it known to this day Frequently the strongest hath carried it and success been his best title Nay General Councils themselves knew not the right Pope The Council at Constance and Basil knew not the right Pope They of Basil thought Felix the fifth the true Pope and Eugenius no Pope But friends and strength confuted a General Council and proved deposed Eugenius the Pope And for Councils themselves who knows which to take for currant and of Authority What Catalogues have you of reprobated Councils and of doubtfull Councils and partly approved partly reprobate and who knows which and how far but only that is approved that pleaseth the Pope and that reprobate that displeased him and yet perhaps approved by a former Pope So that you are all in a confusion and uncertain about your true Popes and General Councils And if you knew them yet what a loss are you at to know their Decrees and Canons What a Fardel of false Decretall Epistles have you thrust upon the world as Blondell Dalleus Reignolds and others have fully proved Forsooth decretals that use a translation of the Scripture that was formed a long time after the death of the supposed Authors of those Epistles And Decretals which make mention of persons and things that were many score or hundred years after the death of the said Authors These are your new Scriptures and by these our faith must be regulated and our controversies decided And your Canons are abundance of them as uncertain some of your own will have but twenty Canons of the first General Council at Nice some will have the new found rabble of additions Much more uncertainty or certain forgery there is in the Canons called the Apostles and the like we may say of abundance more And now I appeal to all the impartial Reason in the world whether your voluminous apocriphal uncertain faith that needs a living Judge and cannot find one or agree upon him and that leaves your controversies still undecided be a liker way to peace and unity then our short and plain Articles and infallible Scripture faith that hath less matter of contention and better means to prevent it even faithful Teachers and Judges in every Church and Commonwealth which shall so far determine as may preserve the peace of those societies levaing the final full Decision of all to the Eternal Judge that is even at the door 11. Yea and is not Gods hand of Judgement yet more observable against you that when your Popes and Councils have past their judgement the several Sects are unable to understand them witness the late sentence against the Jansenists of which the persons that seem to be condemned say that there is no such thing or words in all Jansenius writings as the Pope saith are in him and condemneth as his and the Controversie is as far from a decision as if the Pope had held his peace Yea your great Disputer here in England Thomas White the Novelist is the same for all the Popes determination Take another instance in the forementioned Case Whether the Pope or Council be supream The Councils of Constance and Basil determined it one way as de fide and yet that made no end of the Controversie The Council of Lateran and Pope Leo determined it the other way and yet it is a Controversie after two contrary decisions and some say one way and some the othe and some say It is yet undecided for fear of angring the French by casting them off as Hereticks Another instance The Council at Basil Sess 36. pag. 80. in Binnius hath fully determined the Controversie between the Franciscans and Dominicans about the Virgin Maries immaculate conception and yet it is undetermined still and Thomas White presumes to affirm that Certainly there is no Tradition for it nor any probability that ever the Negative will be defined Apolog. for Tradit pag. 64 65 66. yea he carryeth it as boldly out as if never Council had made or medled with it I will therefore recite the words of the Council which are these A hard question hath been in divers parts and before this holy Synod about the Conception of the glorious Virgin Mary and the beginning of her Sanctification some saying that the Virgin and her soul was for some time or instant of time actually under Original sin others on the contrary saying that from the beginning of her Creation God loving her gave her grace by which preserving and freeing that blessed person from the Original spot we having diligently looke into the authorities and reasons which for many years past have in publike relation on both sides been alledged before this holy Synod and having seen many other things about it and weighed them by mature consideration do Define and Declare that the doctrine affirming that the glorious Virgin Mary the Mother of God by the singular preventing and operating grace of God was never actually under Original sin but was ever free from all Original and actual sin and was holy and immaculate is to be approved held and embraced of all Catholikes as godly and Consonant
Christianity 14. We desire also to be informed by them what is the use of the Churches Creed and why they have used frequently to make confession of their faith Was it not the whole faith Essential to Christianity which they confest If not then it was not fit to be the badge of the Church or of the Orthodox if yea then it seems those Creeds had in them the essentials distinguished from the rest 15. we would know whether every thing delivered or defined by any General Council be of such necessity to salvation that all must explicitely believe them all that will be saved If so then whether any Papist can be saved seeing they understand them not all If not then sure a distinction must be made 16. And we would know how they can countenance ignorance so much as they do if all things revealed be of equal necessity to salvation 17. And what mean they to distinguish of Implicite and Explicite faith Is it enough to believe as the Church believes and not know what in any particular then it is not de fide or necessary to salvation to believe the resurrection of Christ or of man or the life to come For a man may believe that the Church is in the right and yet not know that it holdeth any of these Is it enough to believe the formal object of faith which with us is Gods veracity without the material Or is it enough to remain Infidels and only believe that the Church are true Believers If you hold to this you make no act of faith but one the believing that the Church that is the Pope or Council are true believers to be of Necessity to salvation But if there be something that is Necessary to be actually that is explicitely believed then must not that be distinguished from the rest and made known 18. Whence is it that you denominate men fideles believers with you Is it from a Positive faith or for not holding the contrary If the latter then Stones and Beasts and Pagans and their Infants may be believers If the former then that Positive faith from whence all believers are denominated must be known 19. Is not that true faith and all that is essential to Christianity which doth consist with saving grace or to use your phrase with true Charity If not then either Infidels and no Christians may have true Charity or else true Charity may be in the unjustified or both If yea which doubtless you will yield then sure men of lower knowledge and faith then Doctors may have true Charity and therefore true faith 20. Lastly I appeal to your own confessions Bellarmine often distinguisheth between the points that all must of Necessity explicitely believe and the rest And Suarez in three parts Thom. Disp 43. Sect. 4. faith of the Article of Christs descending into Hell If by an Article of faith we understand a truth which all the faithfull are bound explicitely to know and believe so I do not think it necessary to reckon this among the Articles of faith because it is not altogether necessary for all men Here you see that Suarez distinguisheth between Articles of Necessity to all and those that are not and that he excepts even the Descent into Hell from this number of Articles Necessary to all I might cite many more of your writers but the thing is well known But perhaps you 'l say that though all that is de fide be not necessary to be believed explicitely by all yet implicitely it must I Ans 1. that which you call Implicite believing is no believing that point but another point yea a point that doth not so much as infer that for it followeth not the Church is infallible therefore Christ descended into Hell 2. And we believe all that is de fide with an Implicite faith as well as you But it is an Implicite Divine faith and not humane For we are sure that All that God saith is true and this Divine veracity is the formal object of our faith And we believe that all that is in Scripture is true and that all that was ever delivered by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost is true Object But all that is de fide is so necessary that it will not stand with salvation to believe the contrary or deny or dis-believe any point of faith Answ 1. That cannot be true For no man can prove that a point may not be denyed and disputed against by a true Believer as long as he is ignorant that it is true and from God the same ignorance that keeps him from knowing it may cause him to deny it and gainsay it 2. Do not your own differing Commentators Schoolmen and Casuists on one side at least dispute voluminously against some Truths of Divine revelation If you change a mans mind from the smallest error by dispute do you take that to be a change of his state from death to life Aenaeas Sylvius thought a General Council was above the Pope but when he came to be Pope Pins the second he thought the Pope above a General Council was this a change from death to life It seems by his Bull of Retractation he thought so but so did not several General Councils was the Catholick Church Representative at the Councill of Basil or Constance or Pisa in a state of death and damnation for believing the Pope to be subject to a General Council or was the Council at Laterane another Representative Catholick Church in a state of death for holding the Contrary Must either Pope John the twenty second or Pope Nicolas be damned because of the contrariety of their Decrees If the Council of Toletane the first ordain that he that hath a Concubine instead of a wife shall not be kept from the Sacrament doth it prove them all in a state of death If Bellarmine confess that the sixth General Council at Constantinople have many errors doth it follow that the Catholick Church representative was in a damnable state If the second Council at Nice maintain the corpercity of Angels and the first Council at the Latarane maintain the contrary doth it follow that one of them was in a state of death I think not though I am sure it proves a General Council fallible when approved by the Pope and therefore Popery a deceit Bellarmine sometime tells us of the change of his own mind And the Retractations of Austin a better man tell us of the change of his mind in many things And yet it followeth not that he was in a state of death and unjustified before Object But all that is de fide is of Necessity to the Salvation of some though not of all Answ 1. If that be granted yet you must grant us leave to distinguish between Points necessary to be believed by all and points that are not thus necessary to all 2. But in what case is it that you mean that other points are of Necessity to some 1. Is it to those some
following ages we will be tryed by them in the articles of our faith and in the principal controversies we have with the Papists Yea but this will not serve their turn It is the present Church that must judge or none For say they if the ancient Church had power so hath the present and if the ancient Church had possession of the truth how shall we know it but by the present I answer 1. We may know it by the Records of those times far surer then by the reports of men without writing Controversies or numerous mysterious points are sorrily carryed in the memories especially of the most even of the Teachers And for the Records one diligent skilfull man will know more then ten thousand others One Baronius Albaspinaeus Petavius among the Papists and one Usher Blondell Salmasius Gataker c. among the Protestants knew more of the mind of antiquity then a whole Country besides or perhaps then some Generall Councils 2. Well! but if you appeal to the greater number to them shall you go You must be tried by the present Church Why then you are condemned Is it the lesser number or the greater or the better that must be judge You will not say the leser as such If you do you know where you are If you say the Better part shall be judge who shall be Judge which is the Better part we are ready to prove the Reformed Churches the Better part and if we do not we will give you the day and lose our cause But I suppose you will appeal to the Greater part Content Then the world knows you are lost The Greeks Moscovites Armenians Abassines and all other Churches in Asia Africa and Europe are far more then the Papists and your own pens and mouths tell us that these are against you Many of them curse you as Hereticks or Schismaticks the rest of them know you not or refuse your government They all agree against your Popes universall Headship or Soveraignty and so against the very form of your new Catholick Church So that the world knows the Judgement of the far greatest part of Christians on earth to be against you in the main so that you see what you get by appealing to the Catholick Church But I know you will say that all these are Schismaticks or Hereticks and none of the Catholick Church But they say as much by you some of them and all of them abhor your charge and how do you prove it and who shall be Judge whether they or you be the Catholick Church You tell us of your succession and of twenty tales that are good if you may be Judges your selves but so do they say as much which is good if they be Judges When we offer to dispute our case with you you ask us Who shall be Judge and tell us the Catholick Church must be Judge But who shall be Judge between you and them which is the Catholick Church you will not let us be Judges in our own cause and why then should you Are we Protestants the lesser number as to you so are you to all the rest that are against you And what reason have we to let the lesser number Judge over the Greater If still you say because you are the Better let that be first tryed but no reason you should there also be the Judges So that the case is plainly come to this Either the Papists must stand to the Greater number and then the controversie is at end or they must shamefully say we will not dispute with you unless we may be the Judges our selves though the fewer Or else they must lay by their talk of a Judge and dispute it equally with us by producing their evidence which we are ever ready for CHAP. XVIII Detect 9. THE most common and prevalent Deceit of the Papists is by ambiguous terms to deceive those that cannot force them to distinguish and to make you believe they mean one thing when they mean another and to mock you with cloudy words I shall here warn you to look to them therefore especially in three terms on which much of their controversies lies that is the words Church Pope and Council For there 's but few understand what they mean by any one of these words 1. When you come to dispute of the Church with them see that you agree first under your hands of the Definition of that Church of which you dispute And when you call them to Define it you will find them in a wood you will little think how many severall things it is that they call the Church For example sometime they mean the whole Body Pastors and People but more commonly they mean only the Pastors which are the far smallest part And sometime they mean the Church Reall and sometimes only the Church Representative as they call it in a Generall Councill But whether they mean the Pastors or People they exclude all saving the Pope of his subjects and so by the Church mean but a part or sect Sometime in the Question about Tradition some of the French take the Church for the community as fathers deliver the doctrine of Christ to their children c. And sometime they take it in its Politicall sence for a holy society consisting of a visible Head and members But then they agree not of that Head some setting the Pope highest and some the Councill But frequently they take the word Church for the supposed Head alone as in most questions about Infallibility Judging of Controversies expounding Scripture keeping of Traditions defining points of faith c. They say The Church must do these but commonly they mean the supposed Head And one part mean a Generall Councill and the Jesuites and Italians and predominant part do mean only the Pope so that when they talk of the whole Catholick Church and call you to its Judgement and boast of its Infallibility you would little think it they mean all this while but one poor sinfull man and such a man as sometime hath been more unlearned then many of your school boys of twelve or fourteen years of age and sometime hath been a Murderer Adulterer and if General Councils or the common vote may be believed an Heretick an Infidel an Incarnate Devil This man is their Church as Gretser Bellarmine and the rest of that strain profess So that if you do but force them to define and explain what they mean by the Church you will either cause them to open their nakedness or find them all to pieces about the very subject of the Dispute 2. So also when they use the name of a Pope in disputation make them explain themselves and tell you in a Definition what they mean by a Pope For though you would think this term were sufficiently understood yet you shall find them utterly at a loss and all to pieces about it Let us consider distinctly of the Efficient Matter and Form 1 As to the efficient cause of their Pope
at Anatolius his rising and the equaling him with Rome but they never excepted one word that ever I found against the saying that it was because of the Empire that Rome by the Fathers had the Primacy given it And the Reason given by themselves Concil Constant Can. 5. is because Constantinople is new Rome But Binnius saith that Rome receiveth not the Canons of this Council neither but only their condemnation of Macedonius And he saith that every Council hath just so much strength and authority as the Apostolick seat bestoweth on it For saith he unless this be admitted no reason can be given why some Councils of greater numbers of Bishops were reprobated and others of a smaller number confirmed Bin. Vol. 2. p. 515. What would you have more Sirs Do you not see yet what the Popish Catholick Church is and what they mean when they mouth it out to you and ask you whether your private Judgement be safer or wiser then that of the whole Church or of all the Christian world You see they mean all this while but one man whom Gretser and others plainly confess they call the Church So that indeed it is General Councils and all the Christian world or Church that are the ignorant fallible and oft erring part and it is one man that sometime is reputed an incarnate Devil by a General Council too that is the unerring Pillar of the Church and wiser then all they Do you not see that they make a meer nothing or mockery of General Councils any further then they please the Pope And can you expect that any thing should please them that is against his Greatness or as Julius the second calls it his holding the place of the great God the Maker of all things and all Laws What a vile abuse is it then of the Pope to trouble the world by the meetings and Consultations of General Councils when he can sit at Rome and contradict them infallibly and Good man is fain to save the Catholick Church from the Errors that General Councils the Representative Catholick Church would else lead them into and therefore could he not with less ado infallibly make us Laws Canons and Scriptures without them For sure that which the Pope can do against a General Council he can do without them If he can Infallibly contradict a General Council and Infallibly Rule us contrary to their Judgement he may no doubt Infallibly Rule us without them And therefore of late times they have learnt so much wit that you may look long enough before you see a General Council And I think the Council of Constance were no better Prognosticators then William Lilly nor no more effectuall Lawgivers then Wat Tyler when they Prognosticated or Ordained Decennial Councils And I will be judged by all the world And here also you may see what account the Papists make even of the first General Councils It s all one with them to judge others Hereticks for contradicting especially the four first General Councils compared to the four Evangelists as the Scripture it self and yet who would have thought it they profess themselves to reject the Canons or Decrees of both these the first of Constantinople and that of Calcedon in part And now I think on it by this priviledge I cannot see but the Pope is priviledged from all possibility of being an Heretick personally But these things are on the by I return to the point in hand which is to prove to you that not only the Romish Universal Monarchy and Vice-godhead but even its Patriarchal Primacy was no Apostolical Tradition but an Humane Institution founded on this Consideration that Rome was the Imperial Seat and City 5. And Humane it must needs be 1. For we find that Councils did not declare it as any part of the Law of God but Ordain it as an act of their own 2. We find them adding the Patriarchate of Constantinople which was a new seat neither Patriarch nor Bishop residing there in the Apostles dayes or long after 3. Yea we find them giving this new Patriarch the second place and once making him equal with old Rome which they would never have presumed to do if they had thought that the Patriarchship of Alexandria Antioch or Rome had been of Divine Institution for what horrible arrogancy would that have been when the Holy Ghost by the Apostles had made Alexandria second and Antioch third and Rome first for a Council to set Constantinople before two of them and equal with the first 6. And therefore we have reason to think that if Patriarchs be desirable creatures there may more and more new ones now be made as lawfully as Constantinople was 7. And we do not think that a General Council or Pope can make a man of one Nation to be Patriarch of the Church in another Nation that perhaps may be in wars with the Prince of the first Nation but that each Prince with the Church under their Power hath more to do in it then either Pope or Council And if Portugal and France set up Patriarchs at home they do as lawfully as the Patriarch of Constantinople was set up 8. And therefore we must needs judge that to disobey the Pope or withdraw from his subjection if he had never forfeited his Patriarchship by the claim of an Universal Headship were no greater a sin then to disobey or withdraw from the Patriarch of Alexandria Antioch or Constantinople either the Government by Patriarchs and Arch-bishops is of Gods ordaining and approving or not if not as most of the Protestants hold then it is no sin to reject any of them If it be of God then to reject any of them though in simple error is a sin of disobedience through ignorance but is far from proving a man to be no member of the Catholick Church for sure Patriarchs are far from being Essential parts of the Catholick Church For 9. We conclude as in the Papists own Judgement the Catholick Church may be without the Patriarch of Constantinople Alexandria or Antioch so may it therefore without the Pope of Rome CHAP. XX. Detect 11. THE great endeavour of the Papists is to advance Tradition The Council of Trent Ses 4. hath equalled it with the Scriptures as to the pious affection and reverence wherewith they receive it On pretence of this Tradition they have added abundance of new Articles to the faith and accuse us as Hereticks for not receiving their Traditions And this is a principall difference betwixt us that we take the Scriptures to be sufficient to acquaint us with the will of God as the Rule of faith and holy living and they take it to be but part of the word of God and that the other part is in unwritten Tradition which they equal with this as afore For the maintaining of Tradition it is that they write so much to the dishonour of the holy Scripture as you may find in Rushworths Dialogues and Tho. Whites Defence of them and
when they had no being since the death of the Apostles 6. And also that we are able to prove the death and burial of many things that have gone long under the name of Traditions 7. And when we find so lame an account from your selves of the true Apostolical Traditions You are so confounded between your Ecclesiasticall Decrees and Traditions and your Apostolical Traditions that we despair of learning from you to know one from the other and of seeing under the hand of his Holiness and a General Council a Catalogue of the true Apostolical Traditions And sure it seems to us scarce fair dealing that in one thousand and five hundered years time if indeed there have been Popes so long the Church could never have an enumeration and description of these Traditions with the proofs of them Had you told us which are Apostolick Traditions but as fully and plainly as the Scriptures which you accuse of insufficiency and obscurity do deliver us their part you had discharged your pretended trust 8. And it is in our eyes an abominable impiety for you to equal your Traditions with the holy Scripture till you have enumerated and proved them And it makes us the more to suspect your Traditions when we perceive that they or their Patrons have such an enmity to the Holy Scriptures that they cannot be rightly defended without casting some reproach upon the Scriptures But this we do not much wonder at for it is no new thing with the applauders of Tradition We find the eighth General Council at Constantinople Can. 3. decreeing that the Image of Christ be adored with equal Honour with the Holy Scripture But whether that be an Apostolical Tradition we doubt 9. And if General Councils themselves and that of your own should be for the sufficiency of Scripture what then is become of all your Traditions Search your own Binnius page 299. whether it past not as sound doctrine at the Council of Basil in Ragusii Orat. Sup. 6. that faith and all things necessary to salvation both matters of belief and matters of practice are founded in the literal sense of Scripture and only from that may argumentation be taken for the proving of those things that are matters of faith or necessary to salvation and not from those passages that are spoken by allegory or other spiritual sence Sup. 7. The Holy Scripture in the literal sense soundly and well understood is the infallible and most sufficient Rule of faith Is not here enough against all other Traditional Articles of faith A plain man would think so Yea but Binnius noteth that he meaneth that explicitely or implicitely it is so Well! I confess the best of you are slippery enough but let us grant this for indeed he so explaineth himself afterward yet that 's nothing for Tradition He there maintaineth that Scripture is the Rule of faith not part of the Rule For saith he when the intellect hapneth to err as in hereticks its necessary that there be some Rule by the deviation or conformity to which the intellect may perceive that it doth or doth not err Else it would be still in doubt and fluctuate it appeareth that no humane science is the Rule of faith It remaineth therefore that the Holy Scripture is this Rule of faith This is the Rule John 20. where be saith these things are written that you might believe that Jesus is the son of God and believing might have life in his name And 2 Pet. 2. You have a more sure word of prophecy to which ye do well that ye attend as to a light c. And Rom. 15. Whatsoever things were written were written for our learning c. And its plain that the foresaid authorities are of holy Scripture and speak of the holy Scripture c. The second part also is plain because if the holy Scripture were not a sufficient Rule of faith it would follow that the Holy Ghost had insufficiently delivered it who is the author of it which is by no means to be thought of God whose works are all perfect Moreover if the Holy Scripture were wanting in any things that are necessary to salvation then those things that are wanting might lawfully and deservedly be superadded from some thing else aliunde or if any thing were superfluous be diminished But this is forbidden Rev. 22. From whence its plain that in Scripture there is nothing defective and nothing superfluous which is agreeable to its author the Holy Ghost to whose Omnipotency it agreeeth that nothing deminutely to his Wisdom that nothing superfluously and to his Goodness that in a congruous order he provide for the Necessity of our salvation Prov. 30. 5 6. The word of God is a fiery buckler to them that hope in him Add thou not to his words lest be reprove thee and thou be found a lyar How like you all this in a Popish General Council and in an Oration against the Sacrament in both kinds Well! but perhaps the distinction unsaith all again No such matter you shall hear it truly recited He proceeds thus But for the further declaration of this Rule as to that part it must be known that the sufficiency of any doctrine is necessarily to be understood two wayes one way Explicitely another way Implicitely And this is true in every Doctrine or science because no doctrine was ever so sufficiently delivered that all the Conclusions contained in its principles were delivered and expressed explicitely and in the proper terms and so it is in our purpose because there is nothing that any way or in any manner N.B. pertaineth to faith and salvation which is not most sufficiently contained in the holy Scripture explicitely or implicitely Hence saith Austin every truth is contained in the Scriptures latent or patent as in other sciences Speculative or Moral and Civil the Conclusions and determinations are contained in their principles c. and the deduction is by way of inference or determination This is the plain Protestant Doctrine There is nothing any way necessary to faith or salvation but what is contained in the Scriptures either expresly or as the Conclusion in the premises Good still we desire no more Let holy Reason then discern the Conclusion in the premises and let us not be sent for it to the Authority of Rome nay sent for some thing else that is no Conclusion deducible from any Scripture principles we grant Tradition or Church practices are very useful for our better understanding of some Scriptures But what is this to another Traditional word of God Prove your Traditions but by inference from Scripture and we will receive them Yet let us hear this Orator further clearing his mind Adding to a Doctrine may be understood four wayes 1. By way of explication or declaration 2. By way of supply 3. By way of ampliation 4. By way of destruction or contrary The first way is necessary in every science and doctrine and specially in Holy Scripture not for it self
nothing can be added and therefore we are at a Certainty for our Religion for we have a sure and perfect Rule from Heaven Nothing may be added to it or taken from it But the Papists do profess that the Determinations of the Pope or Councill may make a point and so five thousand points for there is no certain number to be de fide articles of faith and necessary to salvation though not in se yet quoad nos as to us And what it is for a Law to be obligatory in se and not quoad nos is hard to understand So that the Papists never know when their faith is perfect and grown to its full stature For ought they know a thousand more Articles yet may be added And yet these men of uncertain growing faith have the face to perswade men that we are mutable and they are fixed You see our several Principles now to our Practices For our part 1. We never changed our Head our Lord our Faith or one Article of our Faith if malice it self be able to charge us with changing the smallest Article of our Faith let them say their worst we change not our Rule the holy Scriptures nor one clause or sentence of it but endeavour the preservation of the same which at the first we received In our contests with the Papists our great offence is at their mutation from the antient Rule and way we contend but for the faith once delivered to the Saints the old way with us is the good way we abhor a Religion that is new sprung up or is less then one thousand five hundred and fifty years standing at least If we change in any thing it is but by repenting of our former changeableness while our Nation was Popish having then changed from the Apostolick simplicity we change from that sinful change and return to the antient way again And if we have made any further changes since our first change at the Reformation it is but a perfecting the change to Antiquity and Apostolick simplicity which we then begun Rome was not built in a day and is not pulled down in a day The work of Reformation is but one change though it be not done all at one time If we find some spots of Romish dirt upon us that escaped us at our first washing it is no dangerous mutability yet to wash it off If a man converted by saving grace be not perfectly rid of all his former sin the first day of his Conversion should he be reproached as mutable for striving against it all his life after and casting it off by degrees as he is able If a man did but recover by degrees from the relicks of his disease they will not therefore reproach him as mutable If he sweep the dust or dirt out of his house every day they will not say He is mutable and knows not where to rest These men might as well reproach us as mutable because we rise in the morning and do not still lie in bed or because we go to bed at night and do not stay up still But what is it that we are changeable in we have changed none of the substance of worship did we baptize before and do we not so still Did we pray or administer the Lords Supper before and do we not so still what is the change why 1. We before used the common Prayer book and now we do not 2. Before we used prayers at the buria of the dead which now are omitted 3. Before we used the Cross and Surplice and kneeled at the Sacrament which are now omitted And what then therefore we have changed our Religion Even as a man changeth his cloaths by brushing them or his house by sweeping it or his face by washing it Do these men think us so sottish as to place our Religion in these Circumstances God hath bid us Pray continually but he hath not told us whether we shall use a Prayer book or not but left that to mens necessities or conveniences to determine of And doth a man change his Religion or Worship of God if he either begin or cease to use a Book If any man had so little wit or Religion as to place their Religion in a Prayer book it s no great loss to them if they have lost their Religion when the Prayer book is taken from them We doubt not but Prayer books are profitable to some and hinderances to others some should use them and some should not but whether we use them or not use them is no part of our Religion at all but a meer Accident or common help and appurtenance God hath not told preachers whether they shall use any Notes for their memory in Preaching to one it is an hinderance to another an help Doth a man change his Religion when he changeth a custome of using Notes God hath not told us what Chapter we shall read or what Psalm we shall sing or what Text we shall Preach on this day or that day What if one age think it best that some Pastors give Laws to all the rest that they shall read no Chapter preach on no Text and sing no Psalm but by their direction and the next age think it meeter to leave it to each Minister as thinking it unfit to Ordain such Ministers that have not wit enough to choose their Text or Chapter or Psalm according to occasions Will you say that here is a change of Religion These outside Hypocrites tell the world what a thing they take Religion to be and in what they place it What if one man use an hour-glass in preaching and another use none What if one read a Chapter with spectacles and another without or if one preach in a Pulpit and another below or if one preach in a white garment or another in a black or if one stand at the Sacrament and another sit and another kneel Are we therefore of several Religions or is this any part of the worship it self Do we not all now either stand sit or kneel at the hearing of a Sermon as we please Do we not kneel or stand at Prayer as we please Yea do not men commonly in singing Psalms of Prayer or Praise to God sit or stand as they please And what if we do so at the Sacrament Is it not all one Or doth standing kneeling or sitting make another Religion or any part of it And for Marrying Burying Baptizing and the rest we have altered no part at all of the worship of God but order them in that manner as seemeth most convenient What ignorant souls are these that think that the using a Prayer book or praying without book or the using this gesture or that these words or those words that are to the same sence doth make different Religions or Ordinances of worship These are tricks that none but the sottishly ignorant will be deluded with that know not whâ—â— Religion or worship is They may as well say If I change
Popes and Councils Their own Polidore Virgil de Inven. Rerum p. 410. lib 8. c. 4. calling us a Sect doth give you a just description of us Ita licentia pacta loquendi c. i. e. Having once got leave to speak that sect did marvailously increase in a short time which is called Evangelicall because they affirm that no Law is to be received which belongeth to salvation but what is given by Christ or the Apostles Mark what they confess themselves of our Religion And yet these very men have the face to charge us with Novelty as if Christ and his Apostles were not of sufficient Antiquity for them Our main quarrel with them is for adding new inventions in Religion and their principal business against us is to defend it and yet they call theirs the old Religion and ours the new Our Argument lieth thus That which is most conform to the Doctrine and Practice of Christ and his Apostles is the truly Antient Religion and Church But our Religion and Church is most conform to the doctrine and practice of the Apostles therefore it is the truly antient Religion and Church The Major they will yield For no older Religion is desirable further then as the Law of Nature and Moral Determinations of God are still in force I suppose they will not plead for Judaism For the Minor we lay our cause upon it and are ready to produce our evidence for the Conformity of our Religion and Churches to the doctrine and practice of the Apostles That Religion which is most conform to the Holy Scriture is most conform to the doctrine and practice of Christ and his Apostles But our Religion and Churches is most conform to the holy Scriptures therefore c. They can say nothing against the Major but that the Scripture is Insufficient without Tradition But for that 1. We have no Rule of faith but what is by themselves confessed to be true They acknowledge Scripture to be the true word of God So that the Truth of our Rule is Justified by themselves 2. Let them shew us as good Evidence that their Additional Articles of faith or Laws of life came from the Apostles as we do that the Scriptures came from them and then we shall confess that we come short of them Let them take the Controversies between us point by point and bring their proof and we will bring ours and let that Religion carry it that is Apostolicall But we are sure that by this means they will be proved Novelists For 1. Their Traditions in matter of faith superadded to the Scripture are meer Hereticall or Erroneous forgeries and they can give us no proof that ever they were Apostolicall 2. The Scripture affirmeth its own sufficiency and therefore excludeth their Traditions 3. I shewed you how in their own General Council at Basil the Scripture sufficiency was defended 4. I have shewed you in my Book called the Safe Religion that the ancient Fathers were for the sufficiency of Scripture 5. Their Traditions are the opinions of a dividing sect contrary to the Traditions or doctrine of the present Catholick Church the far greater part of Christians being against them 6. We are able to shew that the time was for some hundred years after Christ when most of their pretended Traditions were unknown or abhorred by the Christian Church and no such things were in being among them 7. And we can prove that the chief points of Controversie mantained against us are not only without Scripture but against it and from thence we have full particular evidence to disprove them If the Scriptures be true as they confess them to be then no Tradition can be Apostolicall or true that is contrary to them For example the Papists Tradition is that the Clergy is exempt from the Magistrates judgement But the holy Scripture saith Let every soul be subject to the higher power Rom. 13. 1 2 3 4 5. The Papists Tradition is for serving God publickly in an unknown tongue But the holy Scripture is fully against it Their Tradition is against Lay mens reading the Scripture in a known tongue without special License from their ordinary But Scripture and all antiquity is against them The like we may say of many other Controversies So that these seven wayes we know their Traditions to be deceitfull because they are 1. Unproved 2. Against the sufficiency of Scripture 3. Against their own former confessions 4. Against the concent of the Fathers 5. Contrary to the judgement of most of the Catholick Church 6. We can prove that once the Church was without them 7. And they are many of them contrary to express Scripture And if Scripture will but shew which of us is neerest the doctrine and practice of the Apostles then the controversie is ended or in a fair way to it For we provoke them to try the cause by Scripture and they deny it we profess it is the Rule and test of our Religion but they appeal to another Rule and test And thus you may see which is the old Religion which will be somewhat fullyer cleared in that which followeth II. And that our Church and Religion hath been continued from the dayes of Christ till now we prove thus 1. From the promise of Christ which cannot be broken Christ hath promised in his word that that Church and Religion which is most conform to the Scripture shall continue to the end But our Church and Religion is most conform to the Scripture therefore Christ hath promised that it shall continue to the end 2. From the event The Christian Religion and Catholick Church hath continued from the dayes of Christ till now But ours is the Christian Religion and Catholick Church therefore ours hath continued from the dayes of Christ till now The Major they will grant the Minor is proved by parts thus 1. That Religion which hath all the Essentials of Christianity and doth not deny or destroy any Essential part of it is the Christian Religion but such is ours therefore c. 2. That Religion which the Apostles were of is the Christian Religion But ours is the same that the Apostles were of therefore c. 3. That Religion which is neerer the Scripture then the Romish Religion is certainly the Christian Religion But so is ours therefore c. 4. They that believe not only all that in particular that is contained in the Ancient Creeds of the Church but also in generall all that is besides in the holy Scripture are of the Christian Religion But thus do the Reformed Churches believe c. 2. And for our Church 1. They that are of that one holy Catholick Church whereof Christ is the head and all true Christians are members are of the true Church For there is but one Catholick Church But so are we therefore c. 2. They that are Sanctified Justified have the love of God in them are members of the true Catholick Church But such are all that are sincere
to penitence that hath found by experience that when he comes there he is naught with them himself Or whether a man may lawfully lie and calumniate to put by a calumny Or speak falsly with mentall reservations Or forbear loving God many years together if not all his life Are these points no whit Material You know that one part of you with a Pope and General Council are for deposing Heretical Kings and murthering and stabbing them and others of you disavow it Is this no whit material And yet you are all of one Church and Religion A hundred more of your differences I could name Argum. 4. From instances of the Fathers that have erred in Material points and yet are taken to be of the same Church and Religion How many Churches differed about Easter day what abundance of errors are in your Clementines and other such writers owned by you Justin Martyr was a Millenarie Numbered divers Infidels with Christians thought that Angels lived by meat and generated with Devils c. Athenagoras thought that second Marriages were comely Adultery and that the Angels fell by the love of women and begot Gyants of them c. Irenaeus hath the like Theophilus Antioch worse Tertullian and Orrigen you will confess had yet worse Clem. Alexand. was for the salvation of Infidels and Heathens against swearing and many such besides those before mentioned Greg. Thaumaturgus hath divers if the confession and other works be his that are ascribed to him Cyprian Firmilian and the whole Council at Carthage were for rebaptizing those baptized by hereticks Against all Wars and Oaths Lactantius with many more was a Millenary and hath too many great errors I have no delight to rake into their faults but if it be necessary I shall quickly prove many and great errors by fourty more of them at the least And yet all these or most are confessed by you to be of one Church and Religion Argum. 5. From your own Confessions Bellarmine lib. 1. de Beat. SS cap. 6. faith that he seeth not how the sentence of Justin Irenaeus c. can be defended from error Of Tertullian he saith There 's no trust to be given to him lib. 4. de Rom. Pont. c. 8. Eusebius he saith was addicted to the Hereticks Cyprian he saith did seem to sin mortally de Rom. Pont. lib. 4. cap 7. Augustine is accused by many Jesuites for going too far from Pelagius Hierom is oft pluckt by you And so are many more of the Fathers And yet you confess some of them at least were of the true Church and Religion Argum. 6. If there be no perfect concord to be expected till we come to the place of perfect knowledge and happiness then it is not perfect concord that is necessary to prove us of the same Church or Religion But the Antecedent is alas too far past doubt Therefore c. Argum. 7. If the godly and learned Doctors of the Church and all men have some alas how many culpable errors in matters of Religion yea of faith if you call that de fide which we are obliged to believe then those that have such errors may be of the same Church and Religion But the Antecedent is so true and evident that I think none but a blind proud Pharisee will deny himself to beg of God daily to pardon and heal his culpable errors So much to prove that men of errors and differing minds if not about the essence of the Church may be of the same Church 2. But why is it that they must all needs explicitely hold the thirty nine Articles 1. I pray you tell us whether all your own Church do explicitely hold and believe all your Articles that is all that Popes and General Councils have defined or declared Dare you say that one of five hundred of five thousand doth explicitely believe all this And why then is it necessary in our case that all must explicitely believe all those Articles 2. Yea with us it is far more unnecessary For we take not those Articles for the Rule of our faith but only the holy Scripture And therefore you may as well tell us that no man is of our Religion that did not write or speak all the same words that Jewell Reignolds Perkins or such other have written in their whole works 3. It s easie to prove for all that that the sense and substance of those Articles have been owned by the Churches in all ages 3. But what if we grant your conclusion that else they cannot be esteemed Protestants what of that As if none but Protestants were of the same Church and Religion with us Sure you think we make a sect of our selves like you and exclude all others from the Church and Salvation as you do The word Protestant is not the first denomination of our Religion from its essence for so we call our selves Christians only But it is a title that accidentally accrewed to our Religion from our Protesting against your innovations and corruptions and our Rejecting the errors contrary to our Religion which you had introduced Now those that were not involved in your errors as our forefathers were but lived at a further distance from you might have no occasion to make such a Protestation and yet be of the same Church and Religion as we are Now to your particular Laws 1. Saith H. T. Let him not name the Waldenses for they held the Real presence that the Apostles were Lay men that all Magistrates fall from their dignity by any mortal sin that it is not lawful to swear c. and Waldo lived but in one thousand one hundred and sixty Answ 1. We have better assurance of the faith of the Waldenses in their own published Confessions then from the mouth of their Adversaries 2. The Lutherans hold the real presence and yet are of the same Religion and Church with us 3. The Apostles were Lay-men in the Jews account and sense as not being Priests or Levites but not in Christians account that believed their mission and thus thought the Waldenses 4. They thought that Magistrates and Ministers do by Mortal sin forfeit all the right and title to their office from which themselves may have comfort and justification in judgement But they never thought that they were not to be obeyed by others or that their actions were not valid for the Churches good 5. Many of the ancientest Fathers thought it unlawfull to swear at all that yet are cited by you as of your Church But the Waldenses are slandered in these points 6. Though Waldo was but about one thousand one hundred and sixty yet the same Religion and Church under other names and before those names were fastned on them was much elder as Raynerius may satisfie you So that for all this the Waldenses and we are of one Church and Religion He adds Let him not name the Hussites for they held Mass Transubstantiation and seven Sacraments that the universal Church consisted only of the
sensible Image made of any sensible matter but such an Image as is to be conceived with the understanding Origen against Celsus lib. 7. page 373 384 386. 387. is large and plain against this use of Images as the Protestants are And the Eliber Concil C. 36. saith Placuit picturas in Ecclesia esse non debere ne quod colitur aut adoratur in parietibus depingatur It seemeth good to us that Pictures ought not to be in the Church lest that which is worshipped or adored should be painted on Walls Some Papists would sain find a sense for this anon contrary to the words But Melch Canus plainly saith that the Council did not only imprudently but impiously make this law to take away Images Loc. Theol. lib. 5. cap. 4. conc 4. I shall cite no more but intreat the Reader that is willing to be informed how much Antiquity was against the Papists in the points of Images to peruse only Dallaeus de Imaginibus and Usher in his Answer to the Jesuite and Sermon to the Parliament And I provoke the Papists to confute what is in them alledged if they can H. T. hath no better shift to salve their credit Manual page 319 320. then to set their own Schoolmen and General Council together by the ears The second Council of Nice that did most for Images did openly renounce the adoring them with Divine honour and Tharasius solemnly professed Duntaxat in unum verum Deum latriam fidem se referre reponere They did refer and repose faith and divine worship in the true God alone But Aquinas sum 3. q. 25. a. 3. 4. maintaineth as I before observed that the Image of Christ and the Cross and the sign of the Cross are to be worshipped with Divine worship And what saith H. Turbervile to this Why This is a meer school opinion and not of faith with us Urge not therefore what some particular Divines say but hearken to the Doctrine of Gods Church Very good Is not this so gross a kind of jugling that would never down if devout ignorance and implicite faith had not prepared the stomacks of the people 1. You see here that to contradict the Determination of a General Council is not of faith with them But it is not against your faith Do you give leave to meer school opinions to contradict General Councils See here what 's become of the Popish faith If the Determinations of Councils be not Articles of faith with you then you have no faith but give up your cause And if they be then Aquinas and his followers are Hereticks 2. And then see what 's become of the Popes Infallibility in Canonizing Saints that have sainted Thomas Aquinas that proves a Heretick by your Law so that your cause is gone which way ever you turn you 3. And then see what it is to pray to Saints when some of them are made Hereticks by your own Laws 4. And then also see at what Unity the Church of Rome is among themselves when it is the very common doctrine of their learned Schoolmen which contradicteth a General Council Are you not well agreed that while 5. And lastly note what a Holy Church you have when the common sort of your most learned Divines are thus made Hereticks See Bishop Ushers allegations of Th. Arundels Provincial Council at Oxford 1408 ex Guil. Linewood lib 5. And Jac. Naclantus in Rom. cap. 1. fol. 42. saith We must not only confess that the faithfull in the Church do worship before the Image as some cautelously speak but that they adore the Image without any scruple yea and that they worship it with the same worship as the Prototype so that if it be worshipt with Divine worship the Image must have Divine worship And Cabrera in 3. part Thom. qu. 25. art 3. disp 2. num 15. there cited by Usher saith that it is of faith that Images are to be worshipped in Churches and without and we must give them signs of servitude and submission by embracing lights offering incense uncovering the head c. 2. That Images are truly and properly to be adored with an intention to adore themselves and not only the samplars represented in them This Conclusion is against Durandus and his followers whose opinion by the Moderns is judged dangerous rash and savouring of Heresie and M. Medina reporteth that M. Victoria reputed it heretical but our conclusion is the common one of Divines If Images be improperly only adored then they are not to be adored simply and absolutely which is manifest Heresie And if Images were to be worshipped only by way of Remembrance because they make us remember the samplars which we thus adore as if they were present it would follow that all creatures are to be adored with the same adoration as God which is absurd 3. The Opinion of Saint Thomas that the Image must be worshipped with the same act of adoration as the samplar which it representeth is most true most pious and very consonant to the decrees of faith Thus Cabrera who adds that this is the doctrine of Thomas and all his Disciples and almost all the old Schoolmen and particularly of Cajetan Capreolus Paludanus Ferrariensis Antoninus Soto Alexand. Ales Albertus Magnus Bonaventura Richardus de media villa Dionysius Carthusianus Major Marsilius Thom. Waldensis Turrecremata Clichtovaeus Turrian Vasquez c. And Azorius saith It is the constant opinion of Divines Institut Moral tom 1. lib. 9. cap. 6. Yea in the Roman Pontifical published by the Authority of Clement the eighth it is expressed that The Legates Cross shall have the right hand because Divine worship is due to it See here whether the Pope himself be not an Heretick and the Pontifical contain not heresie and the whole rabble of the Schoolmen hereticks by contradicting the determination of the General Council at Nice 2. which H. T. citeth and the doctrine which he saith is the doctrine of Gods Church such is the faith and unity of the Papists But they will say still that though all these worship the very Cross and Images themselves and that with Divine worship yet there be some of a better mind that do but worship God by the Image such as H. T. c. Answ And do you think that rational Pagans did not know as well as you that their Images were not Gods themselves and so worshipped them not as Gods but as the representers and instruments of some Diety Lactantius Instit lib. 2. cap. 2. brings them in saying thus Non ipsa c. We fear not them but those whom they represent and to whose names they are consecrated And Arnobius thus Deos per simulachra veneramur It is the Gods that we worship by Images And Augustine thus reporteth the Pagans sayings in Psal 96. Non ego lapidem c. I do not worship that stone nor that Image which is without sense And in Psal Psal 113. cono 2. Nec simulachrum nec daemonium
say that we are wanting and so far wanting that being out of the Church there is no true Holiness among us When in the Preface of my Book against Popery called The Safe Religion I had truly spoken my experience that I had never the happiness to be acquainted with any Papist of a serious spiritual temper and holy life but only some of a Ceremonious formall kind of Religion and but with very few that lived not in some gross sin I was passionately censured by some of the Papists as one that condemned all for some When as 1. I only spoke of my own acquaintance 2. And I added withall that yet I was confident that God had his servants among them though I had not the happiness to know them 3. And is it not a ridiculous business that these same men should be so passionate with me for speaking but the truth concerning the ungodliness of some of them when at the same time they make it an Article of their faith and an essential point of Popery That no one Protestant hath charity or can be saved yea that no Christian in the world is sanctified really and can be saved but a Papist O the partiality of these men 4. Yea when they necessitate us to mention their ungodliness by calling us to it and laying the stress of all our cause upon the point yea laying the very Christian faith it self upon the Holiness of their Church For we must not know that Scripture is Gods word or that Christianity is the true Religion till we first know that the Church of Rome is the true Church that we may receive it on their credit And we must know that they are the true Church by being the only Holy people in the world I must profess that if my faith lay on this foundation I know so much of the falshood of it that I must needs turn infidell and I can no more believe this then I can believe that the snow is not white They confess I thank them for nothing that their common people are bad but yet say they there is some good ones among us Inter haereticos autem nullus est bonus but among the hereticks not one is good So saith Thom. Ã Jesu de convers omn Gent. pag. 531. And saith H. Turbervile Manual p. 84. But I never yet heard of any Protestant Saints in the world O wonderfull perverseness of the hearts of Sectaries O wonderfull Patience of God! Did not this mans heart tremble or smite him to write so horrid so impudent a reproach against so many precious Saints of God Durst he thus attempt to rob the Lord of the fruit of his blood and to vilifie his Jewels and as Rabshakah to reproach the Israel of God to attempt to pluck them out of Christs hand that are given him by his Father and to shut them out of heaven that are redeemed and made heirs by so dear a Price and to spit in their faces whom Christ hath washed with his blood Did he not fear that dreadfull threatning of Christ Mat 18. 6. but who so shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me it were better for him that a milstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea Though I see so much impiety among the Papists I dare not say I dare not think that God hath not some Holy ones among them It s dangerous condemning those that Christ will Justifie and making his members to be the members of the Devil and abusing so grosly the apple of his eye If I see a man live wickedly I dare say that he is of a wicked life but I dare not say that All are so unless it be among men whose principles I am sure are inconsistent with godliness and I know that they hold those principles practically or prevalently And therefore I must say again that I have been acquainted with some Papists learned and unlearned The unlearned few of them knew what Christianity was nor whether Christ were God or Man Male or Female nor whether ever he was the King Prophet or Priest of the Church nor for what end he dyed nor what faith or repentance is but were infidels under the name of Papists or Catholicks The learned and unlearned live in some gross sin or other either all or neer all that I have been acquainted with The better sort would ordinarily swear by their Lady and by the Mass and sometime greater oaths The rest were some fornicators or adulterers some drunkards or revellers and gamesters or such like And never had I the happiness to be acquainted with one that would speak experimentally and savourily of the work of Grace upon his soul of the life of faith of communion with God and of the life to come but their Religion lay in being the Popes subjects and in fasting on Fridayes and in Lent from some sorts of meat and in saying over so many Ave Maries Pater Nosters or the like and in observing dayes and hours and Cereremonies Yet I again say I fully believe that there be better among them though I am not acquainted with them But if these men that never heard of a Protestant Saint and that conclude there is no one saved but a Papist and build their salvation on this as an Article of their faith had known but those that I have known and yet know they would either have been of another mind or have been left unexcusable in a malicious reproaching of the Saints of the most high I bless the Lord that I can truly say that I know many and many that as far as the heart of another can be known by words and a holy life do live in much communion with God whose souls are daily longing after him and some of them that have vacancy from worldly necessities spending much of their lives upon their knees having had many a special extraordinary return to their importunate requests whose delight is in the Law of the Lord in which they meditate day and night which is lockt up among the Papists Whose hearts smite them for vain words or thoughs or the loss of a few minutes of time that live in exemplary humility meekness and self-denyal bearing wrongs patiently and doing good to as many as they can as the servants of all contemning the Riches and Honours of the world mortifying the flesh and some of them longing to be dissolved and to be with Christ in whom the world never knew either once drunkenness fornication or one rash oath or any other gross sin that I could ever hear of And is it certain that all these shall be damned because they believe not in the Pope Nay is it not certain by Promise that all such shall be saved I must again profess that when the Papists lay their faith and cause on this that their Church is Holy and ours and all other are every man unholy it s almost all one to me
that changes may be and yet the time and Authors be unknown is from the instance of other Churches that have been corrupted or subverted by Innovations and yet the time and authors are unknown You accuse the Churches in Habassia of many errors your selves and you are not able to tell us when they came in or who introduced them The same may be said of the Georgians Armenians Egyptians yea and of the Greeks and Russians Can you tell us when and by whom each error was introduced that corrupted the Churches mentioned in the Scripture as Corinth Philippi Coloss Thessalonica Ephesus Laodicaea and the rest you know you can give us no better an account of this then we can of the Authors of your Corruptions nor so good You know that among the Primitive Fathers whose writings are come to our hands many errors had the Major vote as that of the Corporeity of Angels which your second General Council at Nice owned and their Copulation with women before the flood the Millenary conceit and many more which you confess to be errors Tell us when any of these came in if you can unless you will believe that Papias received the last from John and then it s no error Who did first bring the Asian Churches to celebrate Easter at a season differing from yours Who first brought the Brittains to it Nay we know not certainly who first Converted many Nations on earth nor when they first received their Christianity and how then should we know when they first received each error And we find that good men did bring in Novelties and what was by them introduced as indifferent would easily by custom grow to seem Necessary and what they received as a doubtfull opinion would easily grow to be esteemed a point of Faith The Presbyters and whole Clergy of Neocaesarea were offended with Basil for his Innovations viz. for bringing in a new Psalmodie or way of singing to God and for his new order of Monasticks and they told him that none of this was so in Gregories dayes and what answereth Basil He denyeth not the Novelty of his Psalmodie but retorts again on them that their Letany also was new and not known in the time of Gregory Thaumaturgus yea saith he How know you that these things were not in the dayes of Gregory For you have kept nothing unchanged to this day of all that he was used to you see what chopping and changing was then in the Church among all sorts when such an alteration was made in less then forty years Yet Basil would not have unity to be laid on any of these things but addeth But we pardon all these things though God will examine all things only let the principal things be safe Basil Epist 63. Isidore Pelusiota lib. 1. Epist 90. saith that the Apostles of the Lord studying to restrain and suppress unmeet loquacity and shewing themselves Masters of modesty and gravity to us did by wise Council permit women to sing in the Churches But as all Gods documents are turned into the contrary so this is turned to dissoluteness and the occasion of sin For they are not affected with deep compunction in singing Divine Hymns but abusing the sweetness of the singing to the irritating and provoking of lust they take it for no better then stage-play songs therefore he adviseth that they be suffered to sing no more Here you see 1. That changes had happened about many Divine things 2. That he adviseth himself the introducing of this novelty that women be forbidden singing in the Church because of the abuse though he confess it a wise Apostolick Order So that for Novelty by good men to creep into Gods worship is not strange 3. Moreover the Nature of the thing may tell all the world that neither you nor we can be accountable of the beginning of every error that creepeth into the Church For 1. The distance of time is great 2. Historians are not so exact and what they tell us not neither you nor we can know 3. Much History is perished 4. Much is corrupted by your wicked forgeries as hath been oft proved to you 5. Mixtures of Fables have hindred the credit of much of it 6. Nations are not individual persons but consist of millions of individuals And as it is not a whole Nation that is converted to the faith at once so neither is it whole Nations that are perverted to Heresie at once but one receiveth it first and then more and more till it over-spread the whole Paul saith that such doctrine eateth like a Gangrene and that is by degrees beginning on one part and proceeding to the rest 7. As I said before that which is at first received but as an Opinion and an Indifferent thing must have time to grow into a Custom and that Custom maketh it a Law and makes Opinions grow up to be Articles of Faith and Ceremonies grow to be Necessary things You know that this is the common way of propagating opinions in the world 4. I have in another Book shewed you out of many of your own writers the rise of divers of your vanities And Usher hath told the Jesuite more and so he hath told you of your thriving to your present height in his Book de success statu Eccles And so hath Mornay in his Mysterie of Iniquity and Rivet in the Defense of him against Cofferellus and Pet. Molinaeus hath purposely written a Book de Novitate Papismi Antiquitate veri Christianismi shewing the Newness of Popery in the several parts of it To these therefore I remit you for Answer to this Objection 5. Can you tell us your selves when many of your doctrines or practices sprung up When took you up your Sabbaths fast for which you have been condemned by a Council You know that when the twentieth Canon of the Nicene Council was made and when the Canons at Trull were made it was the Practice of the Church through the known world to pray and perform other worship standing and to avoid kneeling on the Lords Day Tell us when this Canon and Tradition was first violated by you and by whom It was once the custom of your Church to give Infants the Eucharist who first broke it off It was once your practice to Communicate in both kinds who first denyed the Cup to the Laity At first it was only a doubtful Opinion that Saints are to be Prayed to and the dead prayed for which came into mens minds about the third or fourth Century But who first made them Articles of faith Augustine began to doubt whether there were not some kind of Purgatory But who first made this also a point of faith Who was it that first added the Books of the Maccabees and many others to the Canon of Scripture contrary to the Council of Laodicaea and all the rest of the concent of Antiquity which Dr. Reignolds Dr. Cosin and others have produced Who was it that first taught and practised the
to these witnesses some more of your worthies August Triumph de Ancon q. 5. art 1. saith To make a new Creed belongs only to the Pope because he is the Head of the Christian faith by whose authority all things belonging to faith are confirmed and strengthened Et Art 2. As he may make a new Creed so he may multiply new Articles upon Articles And in Praefat. sum ad Johan 22. he saith that the Popes power is Infinite because the Lord is great and his strength great and of his greatness there is no end And q. 36. ad 6. he saith that the Pope giveth the Motion of Direction and the sense of Knowledge into all the members of the Church For in him we live and move and have our being And the Will of God and consequently the Popes Will who is his Vicar is the first and chief cause of all motions corporall and spiritual And then no doubt may change without blame Abbas Panormitan in cap. C. Christus de haeret n. 2. saith The Pope can bring in a new Article of faith And Petr. de Anchoran in idic The Pope can make new Articles of faith that is such as now ought to be believed when before they ought not to be believed Turrecremat sum de Eccl. lib. 2. cap. 203. saith that the Pope is the Measure and Rule and Science of things to be believed And August de Ancona shews us that the Judgement of God is not higher then the Popes but the same and that therefore no man may appeal from the Pope to God qu. 6. art 1. And therefore be not offended if we suppose you to have changes A Confutation of a Popish Manuscript on this point Just as I was writing this I received another Popish M. S. sent from Wolverhampton to Sturbridge to which I shall return an answer before I go to the next point Pap. M. S. An Argument for the Church IT will not be denyed but that the Church of Rome was once a most pure excellent flourishing and Mother Church and her faith renowned in the whole world Rom. 1. 8. 6. 16. Whites Def. p. 555. King James speech to the Parliament Whitaker in his Answer to Dr. Sanders Fulk cap. 21. Thes 7. Reynolds in his fifth Conclusion This Church could not cease to be such but she must fall either by Apostacy Heresie or Schism Apostacy is not only a renouncing of the faith of Christ but of the name and Title of Christianity No man will say that the Church of Rome had such a fall or fell so Heresie is an adhesion or fast cleaving to some private or singular Opinion or error in faith contrary to the generally approved doctrine of the Church If the Church of Rome did ever adhere to any singular or new opinion disagreeable to the common received doctrine of the Christian world I pray you satisfie me in these particulars 1. By what General Council was she ever condemned 2. Which of the Fathers ever writ against her 3. By what Authority was she otherwise reproved For it seems to be a thing very incongruous that so great a Church should be condemned by every private person who hath a mind to condemn her Schism is a departure or division from the unity of the Church whereby the bond and Communion held with some former Church is broken and dissolved If ever the Church of Rome divided her self from any body of faithfull Christians or broke Communion or went forth from the Society of any Elder Church I pray you satisfie me in these particulars 1. Whose company did she leave 2. From what body went she forth 3. Where was the true Church she forsook For it appears not a little strange that a Church should be accounted Schismatical when there cannot be assigned any other Church different from her which from age to age since Christs time hath continued visible from whence she departed Thus far the Papists Manuscript An Answer to the foregoing Argument IF the Author of this Argument thinks as he speaks it s a case to be lamented with tears of blood that the Church of Christ should be abused and the souls of men deluded by men of so great ignorance But if he know that he doth but juggle and deceive it s as lamentable that any matter of Salvation should fall into such hands 1. This Argument I have before answered Detect 13. The word Church here is ambiguous and either signifieth 1. A particular Church which is an Association of Christians for personal Communion in Gods worship 2. Or divers such Associations or Churches Associated for Communion by their officers or delegates for unity sake 3. Or else it may signifie some one Mistris Church that is the Ruler of all the rest in the world 4. Or else it may signifie the Universal Catholick Church it self which containeth all the particular Churches in the world The Papist should not have plaid either the blind man or the Jugler by confounding these and never telling us which he means 1. For the first we grant him that Rome was once an excellent flourishing Church And so was Ephesus Hierusalem Philippi Colosse and many more 2. As to the second sence it is humane or from Church custom so to take the word Church for Scripture that I find doth not so use it But for the thing we are indifferent Though it cannot be proved that in Scripture times Rome had any more then a particular Church yet it s all one as to our cause 3. As to the third and fourth senses we deny as confidently as we do that the Sun is darkness that ever in Scipture times Rome was either a Mother to all Churches or the Ruler and Mistris of all or yet the Universal Church it self Prove this and I will turn Papist But there 's not a word for it in the Texts cited but an intimation of much against it Paul calleth Rome a Church and commendeth its faith True but doth he not so by the Thessalonians Colossians Ephesians Philippians c. and John by the Philadelphians Pergamus Thyatira and others as well And will not this prove that Rome was but such a particular Church as one of them The citation of Protestants are done it seems by one that never read them nor would have others read them which makes him turn us to whole books to search for them if we have nothing else to do and to miscited places But we know that all our Divines confess that Rome was once a true and famous particular Church but never the Universall Church nor the Ruler of the world or of all other Churches in Pauls dayes Would you durst lay your cause on this and put it to the tryal Why else did never Paul make one word of mention of this Power and honour nor send other Churches to her to be Governed And now I pray consider to what purpose is the rest of your reasoning What is it to me whether Rome be turned either
adversary will deny it or accuse it Men are in never the more danger of damnation because a Papist or any other partial Sectary will tell them that they shall be damned We believe not that the Pope hath so far the Power of the Keyes of Heaven as that he can keep out whom he please We have a promise of salvation from Christ and then we can bear the threatning of a Pope When Bellarmine judgeth Pope Sixtus damned himself its strange that he should have a power before to dispose of Heaven for others and shut out whom he pleased that must be shut out himself The Novatians Donatists Anabaptists or any such Sect that held the substance of the Christian faith might have pleaded this Argument as well as the Papists for they also have the courage to pass the sentence of damnation upon others if that will serve turn and we have the Charity to say that some of them may be saved 2. If by the Papists own confession Charity be the life of all the graces or holy qualities of the soul and that which above all others proveth a man to be Justified and in a state of salvation then judge by this Argument of their own whether our charitableness or their uncharitableness be the better sign and whether it be safer to joyn with the charitable or the uncharitable yea with them that are so notoriously uncharitable as to condemn the far greatest part of the Church of Christ meerly because they are not Papists 3. When we say that a Papist may be saved it is with all these limitations 1. We say that a Papist as a Christian may be saved but not as a Papist As a man that hath the Plague may Live but not by the Plague 2. We say that Popery is a great enemy and hinderance to mens salvation and therefore that those among them that are saved must be saved from Popery and not by it 3. We say that therefore salvation is a rarer thing among the Papists then among the Reformed Catholicks where it is most difficult it is like to be most rare many more of the Orthodox are like to be saved then of the Papists 4. And we say that where Popery prevaileth against Christianity and so much mastereth the heart and life that the Christian doctrine is not Practically received there is no salvation to be had for such without Conversion Thus is it that we say a Papist may be saved And for my part I will not be the more uncharitable to them for fear of giving them advantage I know Hunnius hath written a Book to prove them no Christians and Perkins hath written another to prove that a Papist cannot go beyond a Reprobate and I must needs say so too of all those in whom Popery is predominant practically and overcometh Christianity But yet I doubt not but God hath thousands among them that shall be saved partly of the common people that are forced to forbear contradicting the Priests and that understand not or receive not all the mysteries of their deceit and partly among the Fryars and Jesuites where some of them take in the venom but speculatively or not predominantly and practically give themselves to Mortification and an holy Life though I have known none such yet when I read the writings of Gerson Kempis Thaulerus Ferus Barbanson Benedictus Anglus the Life of Mounsieur de Renty and such others though I see in some much of error and meer affectation yet I am easily perswaded to believe that they had the spirit of God and that there are many more such among them But I should be sorry if Holiness were not much more common among us and freer from the mixtures of error and affectation 4. And for our saying that they have the Kernel and so much as is necessary to salvation it is true but it is the same Kernel that we hold and we have it undefiled and unpoysoned and the Papists mix it with the venom of their Errors He that hath all things in his meat and drink that I have in mine may yet make it worse then mine if he will put dung or poyson in it When you have all things necessary in a precious Antidote or other Medicine you may soon marr all by putting in more then all as the Papists do The plain truth is the Papists and Reformed Catholicks are both Christians and Christianity is enough to save them that mar it not but keep it practically and predominantly even as a man that takes poyson and he that taketh none are both of them men and he that takes the poyson may be said to have all the same parts and members as the other and yet not be so likely to live as he that lets it alone And I cannot say but many that take it may recover and if you ask me Which be they I say All those that timely cast it up again or else whose strength of Nature prevaileth against it and keepeth it from mastering the Heart or vital Powers shall be recovered and live but those in whom the poyson prevaileth and is predominant shall die So all those Papists that so receive the Errors of Popery as either to cast them up again or that they are not predominant to the subduing of the power of Christian Faith and Holiness by keeping them from being sincere and practical and predominant these shall be saved but not the rest Now if upon these grounds any man shall think that Popery is the safer way because we say that they have all that is necessary to salvation objectively in their Creed and that a Papist may be saved upon the same terms that man may be perswaded that it is safest taking poyson because that he hath all the parts of a man that takes it and possibly nature may prevail and he may live But yet I shall choose to let it alone 5. The same Papists that say that a Protestant cannot be saved do yet maintain that an Infidel may be saved or one that believeth not the very Articles of the Christian faith You will think this strange But I will a little insist on the proof of it to these uses 1. That you may see that their censures proceed from meer design or partiality 2. That you may see that they make believing in the Pope to be more necessary then believing in Christ or in the Holy Ghost 3. That you may see how holy their Church is that admitteth of Infidels 4. That you may see on how fair grounds they deny that we may be one Catholick Church with the Fathers Greeks Egyptians Abassines Armenians Waldensis c. because of some differences when yet they themselves can be one Church with Infidels or such as deny the Articles of the Creed or at least believe them not 5. And that you may see how well their Religion hangs together and also how well they are agreed among themselves even about the essentials of Christianity it self whether they be
of Necessity to salvation or not I before cited the words of Albertinus the Jesuite I shall now give you many more and more fully which Frans à Sancta Clara hath gathered to my hands in his Deus Natura Gratia Problem 15. 16. pag. 109 c. And 1. pag. 110. he tells us himself that the Doctors commonly teach that a just and probable ignorance ought to excuse and that it is probable when one hath a probable foundation or ground as a Country-man when he believes that a thing is lawfull drawn by the Testimony of his Parish Priest or Parents or when a man seeing reasons that are probable on both sides doth choose those which seem to him the more probable which yet indeed are against the truth to which he is otherwise well affected in this case he erreth without fault though he err against the truth and so labour of the contrary ignorance Hither is it to be reduced when the Articles of Faith are not propounded in a due manner as by frivolous reasons or by impious men for then to believe were an act of imprudence saith Aquin. 2. 2. q. 1. ar 4. So that if the truth of Scripture be so propounded as to seem most improbable it is no sin to disbelieve it and if such are excused as by a Parent or Parish-Priest are seduced and that have not a due proposal of the Truth then it must follow that the Heathens and Infidels are innocent that never had Christ proposed any way to them and by their Parents have been taught Mahometanism or Paganism But what if I can prove that even the want of a due proposal is a punishment for their sin and that they ought themselves to seek after the truth and that it is long of their own sins that necessary truths do seem improbable to them will sin excuse sin And pag. 111. he telleth us That as to the Ignorance of things necessary as means to salvation the Doctors differ for Soto 4. d. 5. q. 5. l. denatur grat c. 12. And Vega l 6. c. 20. sup Trid. will have no more explicite faith required now in the Law of Grace then in the Law of Nature Yea Vega loco citato and Gab. 2. d. 21. qu. 2. art 3. 3. d. 21. qu. 3. think that in the Law of Nature and in cases in the Law of Grace a man may be saved with only Natural Knowledge and that the habit of faith is not required And Horantius being of the contrary opinion saith that they are men of great name that are against him whose gravity and great and painfull studies moved him not to condemn them of heresie in a doubtfull matter not yet judged O happy Rome that hath a judge that can put an end to all their controversies And yet cannot determine whether it be Necessary to salvation to be a Christian Yea saith S. Clara Alvarez de Auxil disp 56. with others seems to hold that to Justification is not required the knowledge of a supernatural object at all Other say that both to Grace and to Glory an explicite faith in Christ is necessary as Bonavent 3. d. 25. and others Others say that to salvation at least an explicite faith in the Gospel or Christ is required though not to Grace or Justification And this is the commoner in the Schools as Herera declareth and followeth it And for Scotus S. Clara saith I take him to be of that opinion that is not necessary as a Means to Grace or Glory to have an explicite Belief of Christ or the Gospel ut 4. d. 3. q. 4. he seems at large to prove Pag. 113. he adds What is clearer then that at this day the Gospell bindeth not where it is not authentically preached that is that at this day men may be saved without an explicite belief of Christ for in that sence speaks the Doctor concerning the Jews And verily what ever my illustrious Master hold with his Learned Master Herera I think that this was the Opinion of the Doctor Scotus and the common one which also Vega a faithfull Scotist followeth and Faber 4. d. 3. Petigianis 3. d. 25. q. 1. and of the Thomists Bannes 22. q. 2. a. 8. Cano and others And he gathers it to be the mind of the Council of Trent Ses 6. cap. 4. and adds pag. 113. Its effectually proved by the Doctor from Joh. 15. If I had not come and spoke to them they had not had sin I know the Dictors of the contrary opinion answer that such are not cendemned for the sin of Infidelty precisely but for other sins that binder the illumination and special help of God But verily the Doctor there argueth that the Jews might by circumcision be cleansed from Original sin and saved without the Gospel and accordingly he may argue as to all others to whom the Gospel is not authentically promulgate Else his reason would not hold And our most grave Corduba l. 2. qu. Theol. q. 5. subscribes to this opinion saying since the promulgation of the Gospel an Explicite Belief of Christ is necessary except with the invincibly ignorant to whom an implicite sufficeth to the life of grace but whether it suffice to the life of glory is a probleme but it is more probable that here also an implicite sufficeth Page 114. he addeth the consent of Medina re recta in Deum fide lib. 4. cap. ult and of Bradwardine fol. 62. that an Implicite belief of Christ is sufficient to salvation And pag. 115. he saith that this is the way to the end debates of them that think the Article of the Trinity of Christ of the incarnation c. are necessary to salvation though not to Justification and answering them he saith that such are not formally without the Church You see then formally Insidels are in their Church and may be saved in his opinion And pag. 116. after a blow at Vellosillus he citeth also Victoria Relect. 4 de Indis Richard de Med. Villa 3. 25. art 3. qu. 1. and others for this opinion And tells you what his Implicite faith is to believe as the Church believeth And page 118. he answereth from Scotus the Question Whether such persons may hold the contrary error to the truth that they are ignorant of and saith No out of Scotus while it is preached but in some one place till he know it to be believed as a truth by the Church and then he must firmly adhere to it Which the charitable Fryar applieth to England as excusable for not believing some of their Articles And he citeth Petigianis saying If a simple old woman shall hear a false opinion from a false Prophet as that the substance of the bread remains with Christs body in the Eucharist and believe it doth she sin because of this No This were too hard and cruell to affirm Pag. 119. he citeth Angles and agreeth with him that such as have no knowledge of these things to stir them up are
Religion as if they were so many Articles of our Faith or at least were the common doctrines of our Churches They will not give us leave to do so by them when yet we have much more reason for it For 1. They teach the People that they are bound to believe as their Teachers bid them and they reproach us for confessing that we are not in all points of Doctrine infallible And yet we still confess this fallibility and say in plain terms that we know but in part 2. Divers of their particular Doctors that we use to cite are such as the Pope hath Canonized for Saints and they tell us that in Canonizing he is infallible And therefore an Infallibly Canonized Saint must not be supposed to err in a point of faith 3. They boast so much of Unity and Concent among themselves that we may the better cite particular Doctors And yet we think our selves bound to stand to their own Law in this and to charge nothing on them as the faith of their Church but what their Church doth own and therefore while they refuse to stand to particular Doctors we will not urge them to it for its good reason that all men should be the Professors of their own belief But what reason is there then that we may not have the same measure from them which they expect We profess to take no man nor Council of men for the Lords of our faith but for the Helpers of our faith They tell us that they know not where to find our Religion We tell them it is entirely in the written word of God and that we know no other Infallible Rule because we know no other Divine Revelation supposing what in Nature is revealed They tell us that All Hereticks do pretend to Scripture and therefore this cannot be the Test of our Religion I answer that so all cavillers and defrauders and extortioners may pretend to the Law of the Land to undo poor men by quirks of wit or tire them with vexatious suits And yet it follows not that we must seek another Rule of Right and take the Law for insufficient And what if Hereticks pretend to Tradition to General Councils and the Decretals of the Popes as you know how frequently they do Will you yield therefore that these are an infufficient Rule or Test of your own Religion Open your eyes and judge as you would be judged But I will come to some of the particular Opinions which they charge us with And because I know not a more weighty renowned Champion of their cause then Cardinal Richleiu then Bishop of Lucion I shall take notice of his twelve great errors which he so vehemently chargeth on the Reformed Churches as contrary to the Scripture And sure I shall do much to make clean our Churches if I fully wipe off all the pretended blots of errour that so wise a man could charge upon them In his Defens contra script 4. Ministr Charenton cap. 2. pag. 12. c. he begins his enumeration thus 1. The Scripture saith Jam. 2. that a man is not Justified by Faith only but you say that he is Justified by Faith alone and by Faith only which is found in no place of Scripture and do you not then resist the Scriptures Answ 1. We believe both the words of Paul and James that a man is Justified by Faith without the Deeds of the Law and saved through Faith not of works lest any man should boast Rom. 3. 28. Ephes 2. 8 9. and also that a man is Justified by works and not by Faith only Jam. 2 Did not this Learned man know that we believe all the Bible why then should he charge us with denying that which we retain and publickly read in our Churches as the word of God Did he think that we set so much by Luthers or any mans writings as by the Bible 2. But if he can prove that we understand not these words aright he should have evinced it better then by the use of the words Faith alone For our Churches by Faith alone do profess openly to mean no more then Paul doth by Faith without works And can they find fault with Paul 3. Indeed we are not all agreed upon the fittest Notion of the interest of Faith and works in our Justification but our difference is more in words and notions then matter of which see my Disput of Justification 4. And. why do you not quarrel with your own Cardinal Contarenus de Justif and others of your own that joyn with us in the doctrine of Justification His second Accusation is The Scripture saith that we can Love God with all the heart you say that no man can Love God with all the heart which is no where read in Scripture and yet do you not resist the Scriptures Answ 1. Unprofitable Confusion we distinguish between Loving God with all the Heart as it signifieth the sincerity and predominant degree of Love and so every true Christian hath it and as it signifieth some extraordinary degree above this meer sincerity and so some eminent stronger Christians have it and as it signifieth the highest Degree which is our duty and which excludeth all sinful imperfection And thus we say that no man actually doth Love God perfectly in this life nor do we think he speaks like a Christian that dare say Lord I Love thee so much that I will not be beholden to thee to forgive the imperfection of my Love or to help me against any sinful imperfection of it Your own Followers whom you admire as the highest Lovers of God do oft lament the imperfections of their Love as M. de Renty for instance in his Life But now if the question be only of the posse and not the act we say that the Potentia naturalis is in all and the Potentia Moralis which is the Habit is in the sanctified but this Moral Power is not perfect it self that is of the highest degree and without any sinful imperfection though yet it hath the perfection of sincerity and in some the perfection of an eminent degree And will not this content you His third Accusation is The Scripture saith that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ with the adjunction of those words that signifie a true Body and Blood you say that it is not Christs Body and Blood but only a figure sign and testimony which the Scripture no where saith Answ 1. The Scripture saith not that it is his Body and Blood substantially or by Transubstantiation And we say not as you feign that it is not his Body and Blood but a figure c. For we say that it is his Body and Blood Sacramentally and Representatively as he that personateth a King on some just account is called a King and as in actions of Investiture and Delivery the delivering of a Key is the delivering of the House and the delivery of a twig and turf is the delivery of the Land and the deliverer
as gross as common even an abuse of Cyprians words l. 1. Ep. 3. where Cyprian speaks for the necessity of obeying One in the Church meaning a particular Church as the whole scope of his Epistle testifieth And this man would make them simple believe that he speaks of the Universal Church His Reasons proceed thus First p. 128. c. he tells us that the invisible God thinks meet to Govern the world by visible men Answ And who denies that Christ also governeth his Church by men But he concludeth hence Num alia ratione c. Shall we believe that Christ doth govern his Church in another way then God governeth the whole world Answ Reader doth not this man give up the cause of the Pope and say as much against it fundamentally as a Protestant Saith Boverins We must not believe that Christ doth govern the Church in another way then God doth govern the world But saith common sense and experience God doth not govern the whole world by any one or two or ten Universal Vice-monarch Therefore Christ doth not Govern the Church by any one Universal Vice-monarch His next Reason is Because Christ was a visible Monarch once on earth himself And if the Church had need of a visible Monarch then it hath need of it still Answ 1. Here the Reader may see that it is to no less then to be Christs successor or a Vice-christ that the Pope pretendeth And then the Reason if it were of any worth would as well prove that there must be one on earth still that may give the Holy Ghost immediately and make Articles of Faith de novo and Laws for the Church with promise of Salvation and may appoint new Offices and orders in the whole Church c. And why not one also to live without sin and to die for our sins and rise again and be our Saviour And why not one to give us his own body and blood in the Sacrament 2. Christ himself doth oppose himself to all terrestrial inhabitans saying One is your Master even Christ And what then why Be not ye called Masters But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant And Be not ye called Rabbi for one is your Master even Christ and all ye are Brethren Mat. 23. 8. 9 10 11 12. where most evidently he shews that neither Peter or any of his own Disciples were to be called Masters as Christ was nor was any such to be on earth and so no Vice-christ yea that all his Apostles being Brethren were not to be Masters one to another but servants so that here is a plain bar put in against any of Peters Mastership or Headship of the Universal Church 3. We do on these and many other Reasons deny your consequence It follows not that we must still have a Christ on earth because we once had 4. Christ hath chosen another Vicar though invisible as Tertullian calls him and that is the Holy Ghost whom he sent to make such supply as was necessary by various gifts proportioned to the several states and members of the Church 5. If Christ would have left a Vice-christ upon earth which should have been an Essential part even the Head of his Church he would doubtless have plainly expressed it in Scripture and described his Office and Power and given him directions to exercise it and us directions how to know which is he and to obey him But there is not a word of any such matter in the Scripture nor Antiquity when yet it is a point if true of such unspeakable importance 6. You might at well feign that if it were then necessary to have twelve or thirteen Apostles it is so still and if then it was necessary to have the gift of tongues and miracles it is so still which yet the Pope himself is void of 7. It is not enough for your silly wit to say its fit that Christ have a Successor therefore he hath one but let him that claimeth so high an honour as to be the Vice-christ produce his Commission and prove his claim if he will be believed 8. Christ is still the visible Head of his Church seen in Heaven and as much seen over all the world except Judea and Egypt as ever he was When he was on earth he was not visible at Rome Spain Asia c. He that is Emperor of the Turkish Monarchy perhaps was never personally an hundred miles from Constantinople The King of Spain is no visible Monarch in the West-Indies And if all the world except Judea might be without a Present Christ then why that may not as well as the rest you must give him an account if you will tie him to be here resident 9. And yet if the Pope would usurp no more Power then Christ exercised visibly on earth it would not be all so bad as it is or hath been He would not then divide inheritances nor be a temporal Prince nor wear a Triple Crown nor keep so glorious a Court and Retinue nor depose Princes nor deny them tribute nor exempt his Prelates from it nor from their judgement Seats nor absolve their Subjects from their fidelity c. nor trouble the world as now he doth He would not exercise the power of putting any to death much less would he set up Inquisitions to burn poor people for reading the Scriptures or no being of his mind Pag. 133. He makes Christ the visible Pope while he was on earth and tells us that Promulgating the Gospel sending Apostles instituting Sacraments c. were Pontificalia munera Papal Offices Answ And indeed was Christ a Pope and is the Pope a Christ Jesus I know and Peter and Paul I know but this Vice-christ I know not If indeed the Vice-christ have power to do these Papal works to promulgate a new Gospel to send out Apostles to institute Sacraments c. as Christ did let us but know which be the Popes Sacraments and which be Christs which be the Popes Apostles and which be Christs and which is the Popes Gospel and which is Christs and we shall use them accordingly The Law and Testimony will help us to distinguish them Pag. 134. He comes to prove that Christ hath a Successor and his first proof is from Mic. 2. Let the Reader peruse it and judge without any help of mine what proof there is that the Pope is a Vice-christ The next is in Hosea 1. which speaketh of the return of the Israelites from Captivity Let the Reader make his best on it for the Pope for I think it not worth my labour to confute the Papists impudent perverting such Texts as these By the way he tells us as Card. Richlieu and the rest commonly do that its no dishonour to Christ to have a Deputy no more then for the King of England to have a Deputy or Vice-king in Ireland Answ 1. But our first question is Whether de facto such a thing be Prove that Christ hath Commissioned a
can he not Govern it without a Visible Monarch Why then did the world never hear of such a man Yea the whole world is the Kingdom of Christ himself though not in that special sort as his Church is For all Power in heaven and earth is given him Mat. 28. 18 19. and for that end he Dyed Rose and Revived that he might be Lord of the Dead and Living Rom. 14. 9. and he is made Head over all things to the Chruch Eph. 1. 22 23. And hath this Kingdom an Universal Visible Monarch Yes the Pope is the man Long hath he laid claim to it Princes you see whose hands your Crowns and Kingdoms are in Deceive not your selves they are the Popes For certainly they are all Christs and if he be to be believed he is the Vice-christ and so succeedeth him in the Monarchy of the world But then why doth not this simple Pope lay claim to the Empire of Indostan and Tartarie and China and Constantinople as well as of these smaller Kingdoms of Europe 2. And for the Metaphorical title of an Army I answer It sufficeth that it hath an Universal General in Heaven that can command it twice as well there as the Pope can on earth yea and is as Visible to the Antipodes yea to me as ever the Pope was All the world is Gods Army But I will not say that the Pope or any man is Generall of it save Christ nor will I call him The Lord of Hosts 3. And for the Sheepfold of Christ he ahth appointed particular Shepheards to watch for the several parts of the flock But if one man were to look to all the sheep in the world he would make such work as the Pope would do with the sheep of Christ If you tell us still that Christ is out of sight I answer He is even at hand he is coming he will not be long In the mean time it is the duty of every Pastor to feed the flock of God that is among them not as Lords over Gods Heritage as the Vice-christ would be and when the chief Shepheard doth appear we shall receive the Crown 1 Pet. 5. 1 2 3 4. Peter never dreamed poor man that he was the chief Shepheard himself 4. For the Metaphor of a Family I answer That God can Govern all the Families in the world and when the Pope can do so then all the world shall acknowledge him the Master of the Family Till then we have learned that the whole Family of Heaven and Earth is named of God and of the Redeemer-God-and-Man but not of the Pope of Rome 5. And for the similitude of a Ship I answer One man can Govern a ship of the common size but a ship as big as all the world I think no man but Christ can govern And so confident am I in this opinion that I profess I will not be in that ship as big as the world which the Pope shall undertake to Govern if I do but know how to get out of it Pag. 146. He goes on to tell us that even the bruits have their Governours and instanceth in the Bees Answ I am not well acquainted with Irrational Governours or Governments but seriously it is no Article of my faith that one Bee can Govern all the Bees in the world Nor one Ape all the Apes in the world Let it suffice the Pope that every particular Church be a Bee-hive and every Hive have its proper Governour Next he again tells Prince Charls that we should not deny that to the Church which we see is necessary to all humane Societies Answ Was this man in his wits Have all Societies or any Society an Universal Humane Governour Who is it that is the Universal Chancellor of all the Academics on Earth Who is it that is the Ruler of all the Colledges of Physitians in the world I know what Schoolmaster we have in our own School here but I never heard of an Universal Schoolmaster for all the world nor for all England who is the Universal Governour of all the Companies of Merchants in the world Or who is the Universal King In the Conclusion he gathers up all into seven reasons Why the Church should have a Vice-christ 1. That the militant Church might be like the triumphant who have one Invisible Head Answ 1. Christ is visible to the Church in Heaven 2. When you have proved that any meer man is Christ or Head in Heaven then we will grant that a meer man shall be Christ and Head on earth 3. Earth is not yet fit to be conformed to Heaven in its Government 4. Is it not the truest conformity that Heaven and Earth have one and the same Lord though visible to them and not to us yet ruling us by visible officers 5. But if this will not serve le ts have on earth a visible Government therefore let us have no Pope that is invisible to almost all the world but Pastors that are visible in their particular Churches The second Reason is That the militant Church differ not from it self but as each particular Church hath one Visible Head or Pastor so the whole should have Answ 1. Content if the Pope can shew as good a Commission for the whole and be as able to Govern the whole and will really be present with the whole and visible to them 2. Is the world unlike it self if all the world have not one King as every particular Kingdom hath Or one Schoolmaster as every particular School hath The third Reason is For preserving Unity Answ 1. And well it is done by you And what unity will you keep at the Antipodes Or in the vast dominions of Heathen and Mahometan Princes where Christians are dispersed but you come not neer them 2. We have a better unity already in One God One Christ One Spirit One Gospel One Baptism One Hope c. 3. The Mahometans have more unity then you The fourth Reason is To fulfill the doctrine of the Prophets and Christ Answ You should have better shewed such a doctrine before you had made use of it as a reason The fifth Reason is That the Christian Church may be like the Jewish Answ When the Christian universal Church is no bigger then the Jewish that one may Govern it as well we will hearken to you Let the Pope undertake no larger a Circuit The sixth Reason is That there may be some one Supream judge to punish Bishops and define matters of faith call Councils extinguish heresies and schisms Answ 1. One Christ is enough for the Catholick Church for all these uses I find the Articles of saith as well defined by Christ as by the Vice-christ I have searcht the writings both of Christ and the Vice-christ and in my poor judgement there is no comparison between them nor hath the Pope one jot mended the Scripture 2. And for Heresies and Schisms Christ hath extinguisht many but for ought I see the Pope rather increaseth them In
the fact without the Scripture The Scripture is sufficient to its own use to be Rule of Obedience and Judgement but it is not sufficient to every other use which it was never made for The Law said to Cain Thou shalt not murder But it said not to him Thou hast killed thy brother therefore thou shalt die It was the Judges part to deliver this 3. By this trick they would give a man leave to vent any Blasphemy or do any villany changing but the name But they shall find that the Law intended not bare words but by words to signifie things And if they do the things prohibited or hold the opinions condemned what ever names or words they cloath them with they shall feel the punishment 4. By this they would leave almost nothing provable by the Scripture seeing a Papist or Heretick may put the same into other terms and then call for the Proof of that For example they may ask where God commandeth or instituteth any one of the Sacraments in Scripture And when we tell them where Baptism and the Lords Supper were instituted they may reply that there is no mention of Sacraments and so turn real Controversies into verbal 5. Yea it seems by this they would make all Translations to be of little use And a man might lawfully sin in English because God for bad it only in Hebrew and Greek 6. If this be the way of it let us remember that they must in Reason stand to their own Rules Let them tell us then what Scripture saith that Peter was the Vicar of Christ or the Head of the Catholick Church or the Bishop of Rome or that the Pope is his Successor or that the Pope is the Vice-christ or Universal Bishop Where is there express Scripture for any of this Yea so much as Bellarmines Literal sense 7. And why do not these blind and partial men see that the same course also must be taken with their own Laws And that all their Decretals and Canons are insufficient according to these Rules It 's easie for any Heretick to form up his Error into other words then those condemned by Pope or Council And if you go again to the Pope and get him to condemn those new expressions the men in Mexico may use them long to the detriment of the souls of men before the damnatory sentence be brought to them And when it comes they can again word their Heresie anew The Jansenists in France shew how well the Popes decision of wordy Controversies is understood and doth avail But really if they will hold that no part of the Popes Laws oblige but in the literal sense or that none offend that violate not the Letter they will make a great alteration in their affairs And perphaps any of their subjects may Blaspheme the Pope himself in French Dutch Irish English Slavonian c. because he forbids it only in Latine For if Translations be not Gods Word then they are not the Popes word neither A pretty crochet for a Jesuite It is mendacium and not a Lye that the Pope forbids It is said that a Traytor or Murderer may be hang'd but it is not said that such or such a man shall be hang'd or that he was a traytor or murderer Their common instance is The Scripture no where calls it self the whole word of God nor no where tells us which be Canonical Books c. and yet these are Articles of Faith Answ 1. The Scripture doth call it self the Word of God and signifie its own sufficiency and several Books have particular testimonies to be Canonical 2. Though secondarily so far as Scripture affirmeth its own Divinity it be to be beleived yet Primarily that this is Gods Word and that these are the Books and that they are not corrupted and that they are all c. are points of knowledge antecedent in order of nature to Divine Belief of them There are two great Foundations antecedent to the Matter of Divine Faith The one is Gods veracity that God cannot lie The other is His Revelations that This is Gods Word The first is the Formal Object of Faith The second is a Necessary Medium between the formal object and the subject sine quo non without which there is no possibility of Believing The Material object called the Articles of Faith presuppose both these as points of Knowledge proved to us by their proper evidence And that this is All the Word of God is a meer Consequence from the actual Tradition of this much and no more To give you an undenyable illustration by instance Let us enquire which be the Administring Laws of this Common-wealth And we shall find that 1. The Authority of the Law-givers is none of them for that is in the Constitution before the Administration and it is the formale objectum of every Law which is more noble then the Material object 2. And the Promulgation of these Laws is not it self a Law but a necessary Medium sine quo non to the actual obligation of the Law 3. And that there is no other Laws but these is not a Law but a point known by the non-promulgation of more 4. And that all these Laws are the same that they pretend to be and that they are not changed or depraved since this is not a Law neither but a Truth to be proved by Common Reason from the Evidences that may be brought from Records Practise and abundance more So is it in our Case 1. That God is True and the Soveraign Rector is first a point to be known by evidence the one being the formal object of Faith and the other the formal object of obedience and easily proved by Natural Light before we come to Scripture 2. And that this is Gods Revelation or Promulgation of his Law is a point also first to be proved by Reason not before we see the Book or hear the Word but out of the Book or Doctrine it self propria luce together with the full Historical Evidence and many other reasons which in order of Nature lie before our Obligation fide divina to believe So that this is not Primarily an Article of Faith but somewhat higher as being the Necessary Medium of our believing 3. And that there is no other Law or Faith is not Primarily a Law or Article of Faith but a Truth proved by the Non-Revelation or Promulgation of any other to the world He that will prove us obliged to believe more must prove the valid Promulgation or Revelation of more 4. And that these Books are the same and not corrupted is not directly and primarily an Article of Faith but an Historical verity to be proved as abovesaid And yet secondarily Scripture is a witness to all or most of these and so they are de fide But of this I refer the Reader for fuller satisfaction to my Preface before my second Part of the Saints Rest And thus it is manifest that it is an unreasonable demand of
the Papists to call for express Scripture for these that are not Articles of Faith in proper sence CHAP. XLIV Detect 35. ONE of their Practical Deceits consisteth in the choosing of such persons to dispute with against whom they find that they have some notable advantage 1. Commonly they deal with women and ignorant people in secret who they know are not able to gainsay their falsest silliest reasonings 2. If they deal with a Minister it is usually with one that hath some at least of these disadvantages 1. Either with some young or weak unstudyed man that is not verst in their way of Controversie 2. Or one that is not of so voluble and plausible a tongue as others For they know how much the tonguing and toning of the matter doth take with the common people 3. Or with one that hath a discontented people that bear him some ill will and are ready to hearken to any one that contradicteth him 4. Or else with one that hath fixt upon some unwarrantable notions and is like to deal with them upon terms that will not hold And if they see one hole in a mans way of arguings they will turn all the brunt of the Contention upon that as if the discovery of his peculiar Error or weakness were the Confutation of his Cause And none give them greater advantage here then those that run into some contrary extream They think to be Orthodox by going as far from Popery as the furthest About many notions in the matter of Justification Certainty of Salvation the nature of Faith the use of Works c. they will be sure to go with the furthest And a Jesuite will desire no better sport then to have the baiting of one that holds any such opinion as he knows himself easily able to disgrace One unsound Opinion or Argument is a great disadvantage to the most learned Disputant Most of all the insultings and success of the Papists is from some such unsound passages that they pick up from some Writers of our own as I said before And they set all those together and tell the world that This is the Protestant Religion Just as if I should give the Description of a Nobleman from all the blemishes that ever I saw in any Nobleman As if I have seen one crook-backt another blind another lame another dumb another deaf another a whoremonger another a drunkard c. I should say that A Nobleman is a whoremonger and drunkard c. that hath neither eyes nor ears nor limbs to bear him c. So deal they by Protestants And what a Character could we give of Papists on these terms But I would intreat all the Ministers of Christ to take heed of giving them any such advantage By over-doing and running too far into contrary extreams you will sooner advantage them and give them the day then the weakest Disputants that stand on safer grounds Inconsiderate heat and self-conceitedness and making a faction of Religion is it that carryeth many into extreams when Judgement and Charity and Experience are all for Moderation and standing on safe ground A Davenant a Lud. Crocius a Camero a Dallaeus c. will more successfully confute an Arminian then a Maccovius a so it is here The world sees in the Answer of Knot what an advantage Chillingworth had by his Principles when the Jesuite having little but the reproachful slander of a Socinian name and cause to answer with hath lost the day and shewed the world how little can be said for Popery CHAP. XLV Detect 36. ANother of their Practical frauds is in seeking to Divide the Protestants among themselves or to break them into Sects or poyson the ductile sort with Heresies and then to draw them to some odious practises to cast a disgrace on the Protestant Cause In this and such Hellish practises as this they have been more successful then in all their Disputations But whether the Cause be of Heaven or Hell that must be thus upheld I leave to the considerate to judge What they have done abroad in this way I leave others to enquire that are more fit But we all smart by what they have done at home Yet this I may well say that if their own secular Priests are to be believed as Watson and many more It is their Jesuites that have set many Nations in those flames whose cause the world hath not observed And I may well set down the words of a Priest of their own John Brown aged seventy two in his Voluntary Confession to a Committee of Parliament as it is in Mr. Prins Introduct pag. 202. Saith he The whole Christian world doth acknowledge the prediction which the University of Paris doth foresee in two several Decrees they made Anno 1565. When the Society of Jesuites did labour to be members of that University Hoc genus hominum natus est ad interitum Christianae Reipubliae subvertionem literarum They were the only cause of the troubles which fell out in Muscovie when under pretence to reduce the Latine Church and plant themselves and destroy the Greek Church the poor King Demetrius and his Queen and those that followed him from Polonia were all in one night murdered by the monstrous Usurper of the Crown and the true progeny rooted out They were the only cause that moved the Swedes to take Arms against their lawfull King Sigismund and chased him to Poland and neither he nor his successors were ever able to take possession of Sweden For the Jesuites intention was to bring in the Romish Religion and root out Protestants They were the only cause that moved the Polonians to take Arms against the said Sigismund because they had perswaded him to marry two sisters one after the other both of the house of Austria They have been the sole cause of the war entered in Germany since the year one thousand six hundred and nineteen as Pope Paulus 15. told the General of their Order called Vicelescus for their avarice pretending to take all the Church lands from the Hussites in Bohemia to themselves which hath caused the death of many thousand by sword famine and pestilence in Germany They have been the cause of civil wars in France during all which time moving the French King to take Arms against his own subjects the Protestants where innumerable people have lost their lives as the siege of Rochell and other places will give sufficient proof For the Jesuites intentions were to set their society in all Cities and Towns conquered by the King and quite to abolish the Protestants They were the cause of the murder of the last King of France They were the only projectors of the Gunpowder Treason and their Penitents the actors thereof They were the only cause namely Father Parsons that incensed the Pope to send so many fulminate Breves to these Kingdoms to hinder the Oath of Allegiance and lawfull Obedience to their temporal Prince that they might still fish in troubled waters Their
Heathens Atheists or Infidels These carry their judgement as to the positive part as close as any of the rest and are grown in England to a far greater number and strength then is commonly imagined It is not only Leviathan or his Ocean that is guilty of this Apostasie however they use the name of Christ but abundance that lurk under several names A great while I knew not what to make of this close Generation but now I have found out that which should make a believing tender heart to bleed even gross Infidelity causing them secretly to scorn at Christ and the holy Scripture and the life to come as bitterly as ever Julian did And this is crept so high and spred so far that it is dreadful to those few that are acquainted with its progress Some that have lately professed to turn Papists for what ends I know not are known to be stark Infidels And some that have long gone for leading men with them have satisfied us by their writings that they are Romanists of the most ancient strain even of the Roman Religion that was ancienter then Peter and Paul And many of the unsetled sort of Protestants are so far forsaken of God as to Apostatize to the same condition Montaltus the Jansenian takes the Jesuites for false unworthy calumniators for giving out that they have long had a design at Port-Royal to overthrow the Gospel and set up Infidelity and meer Deism But I am sure they deserve much harder words of us in England between them for doing so much to destroy the Christianity of many in order to the setting up of Popery I do not charge it all and only on the Papists I know the Devil hath more sorts of Instruments then one But that they have had a notable hand in this Apostasie we have good reason to satisfie us Not that they desire that men should be absolutely and finally Infidels But 1. they would make the world believe that all must be Infidels that will not receive the Christian Faith upon the Roman account and terms And in order to this they industriously seek to disgrace the Scripture and overthrow all the grounds of the Faith of such as they dispute with And so make them Infidels in order to the proof of that their affirmation 2. And then they think that they must take them off all Religion as Boverius afore cited to prepare them for the Popish Religion 3. And the malice of some of them is such that they had rather men were Infidels then Protestants or at least they will venture them upon Infidelity in the way rather than not take them off from being Protestants And no wonder when they allow Infidels so much more charity then Protestants as to their salvation as all the Authors cited by S. Clara before do signifie And when Rome burneth Protestants but giveth toleration for Jews And thus by these Devilish devices the Hiders in England that keep close their Religion are discovered at last to be one part of them Infidels or Heathens and another part of them Papists And no wonder if they would lately have introduced the Jews here into England and if they have so many other designs to promote this Apostasie 4. Another sort that Popery hath here hatch or cherished are the Socinians a Sect with whom both Papists and Heathens do joyn hands as the Bond of their Conjunction Yet I know that they were not bred at first by Popery and I know that the genuine Papist that holds fast the Articles of their Faith must needs disown the Socinian But however it comes to pass I am sure there are too many of late self-conceited men innovaters in Philosophie that have reduced their Theologie to their novel Philosophie and expounded Scripture by such conceits as suit with the Socinians I shall say nothing of the Millenaries the Levellers and many such like But here in the close I would desire any Papist that is conscious of the promoting of any of these fore-mentioned abominations to tell us whether this be like to be the way of God Or whether Peter or Paul did ever take such a course as this to plant the Gospel or build up the Church And whether it be like to be the Cause of God that must be maintained by such means Is not their damnation just that say Let us do evill that good may come thereby Should not the means be suited to the end Hath the glory of God any need of a lie This course will never ingratiate your opinions with any wise considerate men This is but working with the Devil for God like one that doth consult with a Witch or Conjurer to find the goods of the Church when they are stoln Do you think God needs the Devils help Or is it like to be help that comes from him But the truth is it is your bad Cause that requires these evils means and it is your bad hearts that set you on work to use them Though you think perhaps that you do God service by it yet you know not what Spirit you are of Christ owneth not such ways as these and therefore his servants will not own them CHAP. XLVI Detect 37. ANother Practical fraud of the Papists is In hiding themselves and their Religion that they may do their work with the more advantage I shall tell you briefly 1. The way by which they do this and 2. The advantage they get by it And 3. Help you to detect them 1. The principal means by which they conceal themselves is By thrusting themselves into all Sects and Parties and putting on the vizor of any side as their cause requireth It 's well known that formerly we had abundance of them that went under the name of Protestants and were commonly called by the name of Church-Papists But there is great reason to think that there are more such now Some of them are Prelatists and some of them call themselves Independants some creep in among the Anabaptists and some go under the cloak of Arminians and some of Socinians and some of Millenaries and all the other Sects before mentioned They animate the Vanists the Behmenists and other Enthusiasts the Seekers the Quakers the Origenists and all the Juglers and Hiders of the times It is they that keep life in Libertinisms and in Infidelity it self Among every one of these parties you may find them if you have the skill of unmasking them 2. Another way of Hiding themselves is by having a Dispensation to come to any of our Assemblies or join in worship with any party good or bad Or else they will prove it lawfull without a Dispensation where the Pope interdicteth it not And their way is this that all the old known Papists especially of the poorer sort shall be still forbidden to come to our Assemblies lest they bring the blot of levity and temporizng on their Religion and lest there should not be a visible party among them to countenance their cause But
the Murdering of Princes and the pretence of power to dispense with oaths of Allegiance and fidelity and who hath actually so oft pretended to disoblige the subjects and expose Princes and their Dominions to the first occupant I know that many of the seculars in England disowned this doctrine But 1. So never did the Pope but hath owned and practised it 2. By disowning it they disown Popery it self if they know what they do For it is an Article of their Faith and so Essential to their Religion as explicitly held and is determined by a Pope and an approved General Council even 12. the fourth at Lateran under Innocent the third as I before recited the words at large in the third Argument against them here I know some of the Papists would perswade the world that it was none but Mariana the Jesuite that wrote for King killing and that it was first condemned by themselves But the Parliament of Paris tells another story of them as it is recited by Thuanus who was President and then present Hist lib. 130. ad an 1604. And Rivet names them Guignardus that wrote in praise of the murder of Henry the third and of Ode Pichenatus Barterius suborned by Varada c. And Albineus the Jesuite did hear the Murderer of Henry the fourth confess before he did the fact and put off the examiners with this answer that God had given him that special gift to forget when once he had absolved a sinner whatsoever was confessed by him And why was it that France did expel the Jesuites and set up a Pillar of Remembrance of their villanies till Henry the fourth would needs gratifie the Pope by calling them in again and told the Parliament that the peril of it should be on him and so it was for it cost him his life And why did the same Parliament of Paris Novemb. 1610. condemn Bellarmines book against Barclay as an engine of treason and rebellion And the Theological faculty of Paris April 4. 1626. condemned Santarellus Book as guilty of the same villany stirring up people to Rebellion and King-killing And May 12. the University confirmed it And March 13. the Parliament condemned the Book to be burnt And it 's worth the reading which Rivet recites of the Answers of the Jesuites in Paris when the Parliament askt them their judgement of that Book viz. Seeing their General had approved the Book and judged the things that are there written to be certain whether they were of the same mind They answered that Living at Rome he could not but approve what was there approved of But say the Parliament What think you Say the Jesuites the clean contrary Say the Examiners But what would you do if you were at Rome Say the Jesuites That which they do that are at Rome At which said some of the Parliament What! have they one Conscience at Rome and another at Paris God bless us from such confessors as these But yet some of the Papists will seem so honest as to say that private men may not kill a King till he be deposed Very true But withall it is their currant doctrine that if once he be excommunicate he is then no King yea or if he be an Heretick and so being no King they may kill the man and not kill the King This is the jugling of these seeming Loyall subjects You may see it in their own writings Suarez advers Sect. Anglic. lib. 6. cap. 4. Sect. 14. cap. 6. Sect. 22 24. Azorius Jesuita Instit Moral part 1. l. 8. c. 13. He that would see more of their mind in this let him read the Mysterium Patrum Jesuitarum and the Jansenians mysterie of Jesuitism and Bishop Rob. Abbots Antilogia ad Apolog. Eudaemojohan But what need we more then the Decrees of a Pope and General Council and the practice of the Church of Rome for so many ages And for the Popes power to absolve them from all oaths of Allegiance and fidelity the foresaid Pope Innocent and his approved General Council have told the world enough of their mind to put us out of doubt of it But leaving abundance of forreign instances I shall mention but one or two at home The Papists have lately had the confidence to affirm that the Powder-plot and the Spanish invasion in one thousand five hundred eighty eight were not upon a quarrell of Religion nor owned by the Pope King James hath said already so much against them in these points that I think it needless to say any more especially also after Bishop Abbots Antilogia but only here to produce one Testimony of their own concerning the Spanish Invasion Cardinal Ossatus in his 87. Epist ad D. de Ville-roy tels us that Pope Clement the eighth one of the best of all the late ones did press for the King of France to join with Spain in the Invasion of England and the Cardinal answered that the King was tied by an Oath to the Queen of England to which the Pope replyed that The Oath was made to an Heretick but he was bound in another Oath to God and the Pope adding withall that Kings and other Princes do permit themselves all things or tolerate themselves in all things which make for their commodity and that the matter is gone so far that it is not or should not be imputed to them or taken for their fault and he alledged the saying of Franciscus Mariae Duke of Urbine that indeed every one doth blame a Noble man or Great man that is no Soveraign if he keep not his Covenants or fidelity and they account him infamous but supream Princes may without any danger of their reputation make Covenants and break them lye betray and perpetrate other such like things This was good Pope Clement the eighth And can we look for better from the rest You see what Oaths and Covenants are with them And that the design was still carried on against the Queen upon account of Religion and the Realm to have been invaded by the Spaniard on that account and that the principal point of the Plot was to prepare a party within the Realm that might adhere to the invaders all this with much more Sir Francis Walsingham that well knew hath testified to Monsieur Critoy in his Letter Cabal part 2. pag. 39. Thuanus a Moderate Papist and a most knowing and impartial Historian tells you lib. 89. p. 248 249. ad an 1588. that the Spaniards pretended to undertake the expedition only for Religion sake and therefore took with them Martin Alarco Vicar general of the Holy Inquisition with abundance of Capuchins and Jesuites and that they had with them the Popes Bull which they were to publish as soon as they landed and that Cardinal Allan was appointed as the Popes Legate to land at the same time and with full power to see to the restoring of Religion And that the said Bull had these expressions that the Pope by the Power given from God by lawfull
offenders is a positive duty which at all times is not a duty but unseasonably performed is a sin For a Magistrate therefore to punish such offenders when it apparently tendeth to hinder the progress of the Gospel and overthrow the peace and safety of the Christian State is not a Duty but a sin Would any of these Objectors be against a Magistrates releasing of a Jesuite out of Prison in exchange for a faithful Minister of the Gospel especially of many as prisoners are commonly exchanged in war If not why should they be against the releasing of such a man to higher ends even to save mens souls To give Liberty is but to Permit or not to Hinder or not to Punish and therefore is but the not-doing of a work when it is unseasonable as Sacrifice is when God requireth Mercy And he that may Permit or forbear to punish may on a just reason promise so to do So that this is but forbearing the punishing of Papists when we cannot punish them without the exceeding hurt of the Church and wrong to many thousand souls But I know I speak all this in vain for the Pope will never consent that Protestants shall sow their seed at Rome lest it quickly unneast him But in the mean time let the Papists here confess if they be reasonable that we have no reason to give Liberty to them that will give none to us or upon unequal terms If they claim a special Title to it as having the juster cause we desire no more then a fair tryall of that and let them that have the juster cause take all 3. Another particular that should here be agreed on is this whether the former be consented to or not That on both sides where the Teachers have any Toleration or forbearance they may be forced by the Magistrate to teach the Ignorant people that adhere to them the great Articles of the Christian faith both words and sense which we are all agreed in Which was Bishop Ushers motion to the Papist Priests in Ireland For saith he among the Papists the people are suffered to perish for want of knowledge the vulgar superstitions of Popery not doing them half that hurt that the ignorance of those common principles of faith doth which all true Christians are bound to learn Serm. at Wansted page 33. 4. Another necessary particular to be agreed on is that we use not bitter invectives against each other nor uncharitable contendings especially in the ears of the ignorant people that have not yet learned the common truths which we agree in but that our Debates be managed only in such Assemblies as are capable of them and in a sober Christian way 5. Another is that such Magistrates that will not grant Toleration may yet on both sides avoid cruelties and inflict no more penalties for matters of meer Religious worship then necessity shall require and that herein they may agree upon some equality in the several Nations And in this let Spain Italy Austria and the rest for shame consent to be as moderate as the Turk and to shut up the doors of their bloody Inquisition 6. Let us all agree to renounce all Treachery and unfaithfulness against the Soveraign Powers and all seditious disturbances of the Peace of Common-wealths 7. Let those afford us the common Love of men that think us not capable of the special Love of Christians and so let us Love our Neighbours as our selves and study to do good and not hurt to one another and give over plotting to undermine one another and destroy one anothers civil interest and get our Neighbours under our feet This much well practiced would do something to the peace of the Christian world CHAP. LV. THE lowest Degree that none but incarnate Devils one would think should resist is this that if we will needs live as enemies yet we may remember that we have all greater enemies and therefore let us give over our wars and let every Nation be quietly governed by their own Laws and Soveraigns and let us all join together against the common enemies of Christ We cannot but know that much of Christs interest lyeth in our hands and that if either party were devoured by the Turk it would be a heavy blow to the Christian cause If God should suffer that proud enemy to come and make a third among us to end our quarrels we must justifie him in his judgements and must to our perpetual shame confess that by our proud and passionate contendings and unpeacebleness and self-seeking we did betray the Christian cause O wonderfull stupidity and impiety of great men and Learned men professing so much zeal for God that they can no more agree nor bear in Love and Compassion with each other nor cease their wars when a raging potent enemy stands over them ready to devour them both Let the Venetians take the honour and we the shame How ever their own Interest may engage them yet materially their wars are more honourable then ours The Pope is eager for a General Peace among his subjects that they may be strenghthened to devour us But it were an honester design that would give him more comfort at last to mediate a Peace among all Christians that in this at least they might be one to oppose the Turk and rescue the Heritage of Christ which he hath oppressed And O what a blessed thing it were if the Jesuites Fryars and Protestants could but agree to join together for the conversion of the poor Indians And either preach in the same or several Countries without seeking the destruction there of one another yea and afford each other help that the English Hollanders and others might send Preachers as well as Merchants into the Indies and we might there contribute our endeavours to propagate the Gospel though in our different wayes not envying hating and hindering each other but remembring we all confess one Christ though not one Vice-christ Conclusion I Have cast out these Proposals meerly to acquaint the peaceable Christian what he should desire that the frame of his heart may be right before God and not with any expectation that they should be so regarded as to procure what they drive at I am not so weak or ignorant of the inconsiderableness of the Proposer or of the selfishness and ungodliness of the world But yet I may lawfully take the comfort of the most uneffecutal desires and endeavours that are honest And for those that would have us Reconciled upon the Grotian terms or upon the French Foundation of a General Council and would have all forced as our Bishops attempted to come over to their way and deny Liberty to the rest that cannot thus close with them and all that think that the Church must have some Visible Head or Soveraign to unite in I shall shew them their errour in a distinct Disputation which I am publishing next to this as a supplement and therein I shall give them such further Proposals for
and so it is apparent unto them yet most that are not members of it do not know it Arrians and Mahometans know us to be men professing such and such Articles of faith but they know not that to be the true faith nor us to be the true Church but judge the contrary In this sence contained in these Propositions it is that Protestants deny the Church to have been alwayes Visible and not as the Papists commonly mistake them Prop. 4. We are agreed that this Catholick Church is but One There are not two Visible nor two Mystical Catholick Churches Nor are the Mysticall and Visible two Bellarmine might have spared all his labour that he hath bestowed in vain upon this point to prove that the Visible and Invisible are not two Catholick Churches The Protestants are further from that Opinion then the Papists and it is more suitable to the Popish Interest and Cause to be of that Opinion then to the Protestants If it were not that they are past learning by the advantage of their Infallibility and especially of one man and one so mean condemned by them and that it is unlawfull to be a Teacher of Error I could tell them of a new device by the advantage of this distinction of Catholick Churches for the modelling their mistakes into a more specious plausible form then now it appeareth in to the rest of the Churches But we are glad of their company in any Truth and therefore will not disagree from them in that which makes against themselves One Objection I once heard a Learned Anabaptist cast in our way viz. There may be a Visible Church of hypocrites therefore the Mystical and Visible may be two Answ But the Question was of the Catholick Church and not of a particular Church We confess that some members of the Catholick Church are Mystical and Visible in the several respects before mentioned and that some are Visible and not Mystical or as Bellarmine well calls them Dead Members and not Living and that the Church as Visible is more comprehensive then the Church as Regenerate or Invisible and yet all but One Church though it have more members in it in one respect then in another And we confess that its possible for twenty or an hundred of these Dead members to constitute a particular Church by themselves though it is not usual for Visible Churches to be without Living members and so there may be a particular Visible Dead Member Analogically called a Member or a particular Visible Church that is thus Dead and these be parts of the Catholick Church as Visible But yet there is not two Catholick Churches One Visible and the other Invisible one alive and the other Dead In a Corn field there are 1. Good Corn. 2. Stricken blasted Corn that hath a name and shew but in deed no Corn. 3. Tares darnell cockle and such weeds It is called A Field as it conteineth them all It is called a Corn field only from the Corn. The Univocal proper parts of a Corn field is the Corn only The Visible and Analogical parts are also the blasted ears The darnel and cockle are no parts but noxious accidents There are not two fields of Corn one of true Corn and the of other blasted ears And yet the Corn field taken largely and Analogically hath more parties in it then true Corn and you may perhaps have some particular sheavs that are wholly of that which is blasted which you will call a sheaf of Corn Analogically only but a sheaf of weeds you will not at all call a sheaf of Corn. Even so in the Catholick Church there are sincere Christians which are true and living members and there are Hypocrites which are Analogically members and there are locally mixed many that by denying essential points of the Christian faith or by notorious Impiety do declare themselves to be weeds and no members of the Church at all Prop. 5. We are also Agreed that this One Visible Catholick Church is One Political Holy Society as united in Jesus Christ the Head who teacheth and ruleth it by his Ministers and other Officers in the several parts according to the necessity of each We call it One Political Society 1. Principally because that all the Church is united in this One Soveraign or Head the Lord Jesus and therefore it is called his body 2. They have all the same holy doctrine of faith and Law to live by and be judged by 3. They have all Church Officers of the same sort under Christ to teach and govern them 4. They have all the same kind of Holy Ordinances as Reading Preaching Praying Praise Sacraments c. appointed them by the Lord. 5. They are all engaged in One and the same Holy Covenant to the Lord More might be mentioned and shall be God willing in a peculiar Treatise of Catholicism or the Catholick Church And though Christ himself be not now seen among us yet may he truly be called a Visible Head For 1. He sometime lived visibly on earth 2. And is now the Visible King of all the Church as he is in the Heavens Though we see him not the Celestiall Inhabitants do It is but little of the world that seeth the Pope any more then they see Christ If one unseen to us may be a pretended Visible Head the other may be truly so So that the Body Head Laws Worship c. being Visible so is the Policy Prop. 6. We are agreed also that all these Christians and particular Churches are obliged by Christ even by the very Law of Nature and the ends of their calling and the General Laws of the Gospell to live in as much Love and Unity and Peace as they can and to hold as full and extensive communion as they can that is as far as their work requireth and their Capacity will permit and enable them those that are cohabitans and members of one Congregation must hold local communion in that Congregation unless Necessity prohibite Those that through distance are uncapable of joining in the same Assemblies should yet be conjoined 1. In the same Lord Faith Baptism Covenant Profession 2. In the same bond of Christian special Love 3. In the use of the same sort of holy worship as to the Substance though they differ in circumstances as in the Word Prayer Praises Sacraments c. 4. And in one sort of Church Officers and Government And as far as we have to do with each other all this should be manifested and we should readily own one another as Brethren and true Churches notwithstanding lesser differences Prop. 7. To these ends it is meet that the Bishops or Pastors of the Churches should hold in way of Association as frequent Assemblies as is needfull for the maintaining of mutual Love and Correspondency and right understanding of each other and to manifest their unity and assist each other in the work of God that it may be the more successfully carried on by united strength against
a General Council a faction might promote any heresie or carnal interest and no Churches would be so enslaved as those that send at the dearest rates Italy and a few more parts at Trent would over-vote all the Churches of East and South and set up what interest or opinion they please And so if one corner of the Church can err all may err for all the Council Where there is an equal interest there should be an equal power in Councils which will certainly be otherwise 4. If the Pope be he that must call General Councils we shall have none till it will stand with his interest And if he have not the power of calling them no one else hath for none pretendeth to it And if they must be called by universal consent three hundred years is little enough for all the world to treat of the time place and other circumstances and consent 5. And if the Pope must call them he will easily by the very choice of the place procure the accomplishment of his own designs 6. Those that think it the Popes prerogative to call a Council do also affirm as I before shewed in the express words of Binnius and others that a Council hath no more power then the Pope will give them and that when they are convened by him and have done their work it is all of no Validity if he allow it not If he approve one half that half is valid and his approbation will make their Decrees the Articles of our faith when as the other half which he disapproveth shall not be worth a straw And is it not a most foolish thing for all the world to put themselves to so much charge to defray the expenses of their Bishops and hazzard their lives and lose their labours at home for so many years and hazzard the Churches by their absence when for ought they know the Bishops of the whole Christian world do but lose all their labour and nothing shall be valid if they please not the Pope of Rome And is it not most abominable justice in him thus to put all the world to trouble and cost and hazzard the Churches and the Pastors lives for nothing when if the infallible spirit be only in himself he might have done the work himself and saved all this cost and labour 7. By what Justice shall all the Catholick Church be obliged by the Decrees of such a General Council Is it by Law or Contract If by Law it is by Divine Law or by Humane If by Divine let it be shewed that ever God made such a Government for the Catholick Church and then take all If by Humane Laws it is impossible and therefore not to be affirmed For no Humane Soveraign hath power to make Laws for all the world If you say is it by contract then 1. All those Nations that thought not meet to send any Bishops to the Council will be free 2. And so will all those be that sent Bishops who dissented from the rest For contract or Consent bindeth none but Contracters or Consenters And so England is not bound by the Council of Nice Ephesus Calcedon Constantinople c. 8. By what Justice shall any people be required to send Delegates on such terms as these to Councils or to stand to their definitions when they have done When our faith and souls are preciouser things then so boldly to cast upon the trust of a few Delegates so to be chosen and employed What Bishops other Countries will choose we know not And for our own 1. In almost all Countries it is the Princes that choose or none must be chosen but who they will which is all one 2. If the Bishops choose it s those that are highest with the secular power that will have the choice who perhaps may choose such as are contrary to the judgement of most of that Church that is thought to choose them Most Nations have a Clergy much at difference The Remonstrants and Contramonstrants in Holland would not have chosen like members for the Synod In the Bishops days men of one mind were chosen here in England to Convocations The next year we had a Learned Assembly that put down the Prelacy for which a Convocation had formed an Oath to be imposed on all Ministers but a little before And why should the judgment of the Prelates be taken for the judgement of the Church of England any more then the other when for number learning and piety to say the least they had no advantage laying aside ignorant ungodly men in point of number Till the Spanish match began to be treated on the Bishops of England were ten if not twenty to one Augustinians Calvinists or Antiarminians Now the Arminians would be thought the Church of England and their doctrine agreeable to the doctrine of that Church Would they not accordingly have differed if they had been sent to a General Council How bitterly are the Articles of the Church of Ireland decryed by the Arminian Bishops since sprung up both in Ireland and England so that if Delegates be sent to any Council they may speak the minds of those that sent them which perhaps is the King or a small prevailing party but not of the rest which perhaps may the best and most If Jeremiah of Constantinople be of a Council he will go one way If Cyril be of a Council he will go another way And his counterfeit Successor undo what he did 9. No Church that sendeth three or four Bishops to represent a thousand or two thousand Pastors can be sure how those Bishops will carry it when they come thither For ought we know they may betray our cause and cross their instructions They may be perverted by the reasonings of erroneous men or bribed by the powerfull And to cast our faith on so slender an assurance is little wisdom 10. If consent only bind us to the Decrees of Councils to submit to them as our Rule then is Posterity bound that did not consent as their Fathers did or are they not If not we are free If yea by what bond And then why do not the Grotians in Ireland and England obey the Antiarminian Decrees of the Churches in both Did not the Church of England send Bishop Carlton Bishop Hall Bishop Davenant afterward a Bishop Dr. Ward Dr. Goad and Balcanquall Episcopal Divines to the Synod of Dort and so England was a part of that Synod And yet the Grotians and Arminians think not themselves bound to receive the Doctrine of that Synod nor to forbear reproaching it 11. It is unjust that any especially most of the Churches should be obliged by the votes of others and oppressed by Majority meerly because their distance or poverty or the age or weakness of their Pastors disableth them to send any or an equal number or to defray the charge of their abode c. Ah if good Pope Zachary or Archbishop Boniface had considered that the essence or unity of the Church
without my own asking his opinion by that Learned Judicious man Arch-Bishop Usher a man well known to be acquainted with the Judgement and practice of the Antients if any other whoever His words were these Councils are not for Government but for Unity not as being in order of Government over the several Bishops but that by consultation they may know their duty more clearly and by agreement maintain Unity and to this end they were anciently celebrated Himself a Primate recommended to others these moderate Principles And this middle way of Reverend Usher is the true healing Mean between them that would have properly Governing Councils and them that would have none or think them needless or but indifferent things But yet as is before mentioned in the tenth Proposition consequentially we are obliged to perform the Agreements of these Councils if they be agreeable to the General Rules of the Scriptures or if our performance be not forbidden by the Word of God Because we are under the General obligation to do all things in as much unity concord and peace as we can Gal. 2. per totum 1 Cor. 3. 5 22. 2 Cor. 13. 11. 1 Cor. 1. 10. 4. 6. Mat. 20. 25. Phil. 3. 16. 4. 2. Mat. 23. 8 9 10. 1 Pet. 5. 3. And I grant that Pastors are related to the Universal Church as well as to a particular and are to have a common care of the whole though they have a special charge only of their particular flocks Therefore many Pastors in a Synod are Pastors as well as disjunct and therefore their acts are authoritative Governing Acts as to the flock But 1. to the Pastors themselves they are not properly Governors no more in Synods then out 2. And as to the flocks they are not in a direct superiour order above their particular Pastors but only from their concord are accidentally more to be regarded and obeyed then a single Pastor as a Colledge of Physitians is more to be regarded then a single Physitian not as being of higher authority but of greater credit in cases where men must be trusted 5. A Council consisting of Bishops or Pastors that by distance are not uncapable of ordinary local Communion whether it be a General Council as they are commonly called which are not such properly or National or Provincial 1. As they are Christians singly have a Judgement of Discerning what is sound Doctrine and whom to judge Catholicks and fit for their Communion And 2. As they are single Pastors they have the Judgement of Direction what Doctrine to recommend as found to their people limited to the Superiour Direction of God by his Word and whom they must hold or not hold Communion with And this is an Authoritative Direction which may be accompanyed with a Commanding as an Herald or Pursevant may command in the Princes name 3. And as they are many Pastors in Council assembled they have a Judgement of Concord or Power to enter solemnly into Consultations for mutual information and then into Agreements for the right performance of their duty in recommending that which is sound Doctrine to their people and receiving the true members of the Catholick Church and rejecting such as are to be rejected So that the most General Councils of true Pastors caeteris paribus are to be most reverenced by the Princes and people and in cases where they are sure it is lawful to follow their Agreements though they be not satisfied of the necessity of it à natura rei they ought to follow them on the account of unity and also in cases meerly doubtful to them in point of Doctrine to be ballanced by their judgements rather then by the Judgement of single Pastors and more then by any other humane judgement caeteris paribus which exception I add because a smaller Assembly yea a single Pastor or private man speaking according to the Word of God is to be believed and regarded more then the greatest Assembly contradicting the Word yet we are not easily to think without evident proof that one man should be rather in the right then so many seeing it is easier for one to err then so many and the promises are more to the publick then any single persons so far as they can be known to others And yet an Assembly of an hundred or twenty or ten apparent humble holy Judicious men is likelier to be in the right and more to be regarded then an Assembly of a thousand ignorant unlearned wicked Bishops One clear eye may see further then ten thousand purblind ones Act. 6. 5. Act. 5. 34. 1 Thes 2. 14. 1 Cor. 11. 16. 14. 33. 10. 32. 6. As the properest matter for such General Assemblies to Consult and Agree upon is General things as What Doctrine is sound and what unsound in General what persons in General fit for the Churches Communion and what unfit c. so smaller Assemblies that are capable of ordinary personal Communion and know the persons and circumstances of the cases are fittest to consult and agree whether such or such particular persons are fit for their own Communion yea and for their Churches Communion in difficult cases And also may consult and agree what Doctrines and practises to recommend to their own people as most agreeable to the Word of God And thus far these two sorts of Synods may be said to have a power of Judging viz. ad hoc in order to such agreements and practice Act. 6. 5 6. Rom. 15. 26 27. 2. Cor 8. 19. 7. The Postors of particular Worshipping Churches are the Authorized Guides Rulers or Teachers of those Churches and each Member thereof and must first discern in their own minds and next if they be many over a Church Agree among themselves and then teach the people what is to be believed and practised and with whom in General and in Particular to hold Communion and whom to avoid and may charge the people in Christs name to obey their just directions and when they have done must themselves execute their own part herein as by avoiding the Rejected and not delivering them the Symbols or Sacrament of Communion c. And though they must consult with neighbor Churches for carrying on the work of God in unity and to the best advantage of the Common cause yet are they not under the proper Government of them or any Assemblies Ecclesiastical though obliged in all just things to Agree with them So that Canons as Canons I mean the Conclusions of such Assemblies are but properly Agreements and not Laws though by consequence they may be said to oblige or rather we by another Law obliged to accord and practise them Heb. 13. 17. 1 Thes 5. 12 13. 1 Cor. 4. 1 2. Act. 20. 28. 8. The work of Councils how large so ever is not to make new Scriptures to be the Rule of our Faith and Life nor to make new Articles or Doctrines of Faith nor to frame God a new Worship in whole
strongest and last dying sin in all and giveth strength to all the rest What hope then of Unity while every man hath a numerically different Center Principle End and so few forsake it and devote themselves to God the common Center and End of the Saints and those few so Imperfectly permitting self to live and do so much within them And though the Papists have devised a way to make this sand into a rope or cement innumerable selves together by finding out such a Carnal Head and Center where every man may find his own Carnal Interest involved in the Interest of that Head and his body and so may have a carnal unity of a multitude of carnal ones to glory in Yet Christ is another kind of Head and Center condemning and destroying carnal self and commanding all his followers upon pain of damnation to deny it though to nature it be the dearest thing in the world No wonder therefore if the number of his Adherents be few and the unity of those that center in him be less conspicuous and glorious in the world With strong Desires therefore but Low Expectations I propound these terms of Unity to the Church as knowing how many thousand of the Dark and selfish will not only neglect them and reject them but rise up against them if they come into their hands with no small self-conceited confidence and scorn But the Church is the Lords who hath purchased it by his blood his Interest in it is more then mine it is infinitely dearer to him then to me his wisdom is fittest to dispose of the success of our endeavours to determine of the season and measures of its cure He is the Physitian and hath undertaken the work and in the fittest way and time will perfect it and be the finisher as well as the Author of our faith The eye of the chief Shepheard is even now upon all his scattered flock and of those that are given him to be saved he will lose none he is neither insufficient for them nor careless of them but will gather into one the Elect that are dispersed and present them all pure unblamable and spotless to his Father at the last and as much as they seem now to us to be uncurably divided we shall then see them perfectly healed and united and made up One Glorified Body of our Head For that blessed Marriage day of the Lamb and the Glory of the New Jerusalem we therefore Pray and Hope and Wait in our passage through this sinful and distracted world THere are three common sayings in which I am much delighted that conduce to the Illustration of what I have said 1. Servanda in Necessariis Unitas In non-necessariis libertas in utrisque charitas Vulg. 2. Contra Rationem nemo sobrius Contra Scripturam nemo Christianus Contra Ecclesiam nemo pacificus August Scripture is the test of Christianity and must shew us sound in the faith though the Church may shew us Peacable 3. Vnitatem Querit Homo Socialis Invenit Catholicus Speculativus Possidet Sanctus Charitativus  Vetitatem  Philosophia  Theologia  Religio  Felicitatem  Natura  Fides Historica  Charitas Therefore to seek for Unity Verity or Felicity by the loss or destruction of Sanctity Religion Charity is really to renounce oppose and lose them Satisfaction to certain CALUMNIATORS I Am informed from London and several parts of the Land that some of my Books having lately been sold at excessive rates by the Booksellers it is somewhat commonly reported that it is caused by my excessive gain which say they is at least three or four hundred pounds a year I thank the Lord that doth not only employ me in his service but also vouchsafe me the honor and benefit of being evil-spoken of for doing him the best service that I can Mat. 5. 11 12. 1 Pet. 4. 13 14 15 16. Blessed Augustine was put to vindicate himself by an oath from the infamy of a covetous design which was raised by one godly woman upon a disorderly action of other men and to that end he wrote his 225. Epistle I find no call to use his oath but yet I judge it my duty to imitate him in patience and in rescuing the slanderers from their sin that they abuse not their souls by uncharitable surmises nor their tongues by false reports To which end I give them this true information The two first Books I printed I left to the Booksellers Will for all the rest I agreed with them for the fifteenth Book to give to some few of my friends hearing that some others agreed for the tenth Sometime my fifteenth Book coming not to an hundred and sometime but to few more when of Practical Books I needed sometime 800. to give away Because I was scarce rich enough to buy so many I agreed with the Bookseller my Neighbour to allow 18. d. a Ream which is not a penny a quire out of his own gain towards the buying of Bibles and some of the practical Books which he printed for the poor Covenanting with him that he should sell my Controversal Writings as cheap and my Practical Writings somewhat cheaper then books are ordinarily sold To this hour I never received for my self one penny of mony from them for any of my Writings to the best of my remembrance but if it fell out that my part came to more than I gave my friends I exchanged them for other Books My accounts and memory tell me not of â—â—li that ever was returned for me on these accounts which was on literary occasions so that my many hundreds a year is come to never a penny in all but as abovesaid in some exchange of Books And the price I set on my Books which I exchanged for theirs at the dearest rates is as followeth Treat of Conversion 2. s. Treat of Crucifying the World 2. s. Disput of Justificat 2. s. 4. d. The Call to the Unconverted 8. d. Disput of saving Faith 5. d. Of the Grotian Religion 6. d. Directions for sound Conversion 1. s. 8. d. Disput of Right to Sacraments Edit secund 2. s. 4. d. These are all my bargains and my gains And I chose the honestest Booksellers that I could meet with according to my small measure of wit and acquaintance who told me they still made good their Promises And now censorious Slanderer tell me what thou wouldst have had me to have done more If I had got Food and Rayment out of my own hard labors had it been unlawful or dishonourable when Booksellers get so many hundred pounds by one Book that never studied nor spent their time and cost for it as I have done And yet dost thou reproach me that receive not a groat But because I will not oblige my self to the same course for the future and that thou mayst know at what rates I serve thee let me tell thee that in these labors early and late my body is wasted my precious time laid out and somewhat of my Estate and somewhat of the labor of my friends I cannot have twenty quire of my writing well transcribed under fifty pounds And who shall pay for this or maintain me in thy service I have troubled a Neighbour-Minister in the tedious work of transcribing my Characters for some books for which neither he nor I had ever one penny These personal matters are unsavory to me and I take it for a great injury that thou puttest upon me a necessity of mentioning them But I have yielded this once to thy unrighteous importunity that thou mayest hereafter learn what to believe and utter and make more conscience of thy censures and reports And that thou mayst have the utmost relief that I can procure thee for the time to come I shall agree with my Booksellers to sell all that I publish at three farthings a sheet and to print the price of every book at the bottom of the Title page October 11. 1658. Farewell Richard Baxter * The Right Honourable the Earl of Lauderdaile a person whose eminent Godliness and Learning occasioneth the sorrow of his Countrey that is deprived of him in such days as these when Piety is so much esteemed Dr. Hammond on 1 Tim. 3. e. saith And such all the particular Churches of the whole world considered together under the supream Head Christ Jesus disspensing them all by himself administring them severally not by any one oeconomus but by the several Bishops as inferiour Heads of Unity to the several bodies so constituted by the several Apostles in their plantations each of them having an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a several distinct Commission from Christ immediately and subordinate to none but the supream donor or plenipotentiary It was one of the Reasons of the Council of Carthage to P. Celestine to prove the invalidity of the Papal judgements up on appeals from other Countries because the witness necessary to a just decision could not go far The Papists confess that Pope and Council cannot make new Articles of faith in se but quoad nos only And they say they have received by Tradition the doctrines which they teach