Tradition of which the testimony of any present Church is but a little part So that here you fall into the Fallacy à dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter For in effect this is the sense of your Argument Unless the Church be infallible we can have no certainty of Scripture from the authority of the Church Therefore unless the Church be infallible we can have no certainty hereof at all As if a man should say If the Vintage of France miscarry we can have no Wine from France Therefore if that Vintage miscarry we can have no Wine at all And for the incorruption of Scripture I know no other rational assurance we can have of it than such as we have of the incorruption of other ancient Books that is the consent of ancient Copies such I mean for the kind though it be far greater for the degree of it And if the Spirit of God give any man any other assurance hereof this is not rational and discursive but supernatural and infused An assurance it may be to himself but no argument to another As for the Infallibility of the Church it is so far from being a proof of the Scriptures incorruption that no proof can be pretended for it but incorrupted places of Scripture which yet are as subject to corruption as any other and more likely to have been corrupted if it had been possible than any other and made to speak as they do for the advantage of those men whose ambition it hath been a long time to bring all under their authority Now then if any man should prove the Scriptures uncorrupted because the Church says so which is infallible I would demand again touching this very thing that there is an infallible Church seeing it is not of it self evident how shall I be assured of it And what can he answer but that the Scripture says so in these and these places Hereupon I would ask him how shall I be assured that the Scriptures are incorrupted in those places seeing it is possible and not altogether improbable that these men which desire to be thought infallible when they had the government of all things in their own hands may have altered them for their purpose If to this he answer again that the Church is infallible and therefore cannot do so I hope it would be apparent that he runs round in a circle and proves the Scriptures incorruption by the Churches infallibility and the Churches infallibility by the Scriptures incorruption and that is in effect the Churches infallibility by the Churches infallibility and the Scriptures incorruption by the Scriptures incorruption 28. Now for your observation that some Books which were not always known to be Canonical have been afterwards received for such But never any book or syllable defined for Canonical was afterwards questioned or rejected for Apocryphal I demand touching the first sort whether they were commended to the Church by the Apostles as Canonical or not If not seeing the whole Faith was preached by the Apostles to the Church and seeing after the Apostles the Church pretends to no new Revelations how can it be an Article of Faith to believe them Canonical And how can you pretend that your Church which makes this an Article of Faith is so assisted as not to propose any thing as a divine Truth which is not revealed by God If they were how then is the Church an infallible keeper of the Canon of Scripture which hath suffered some Books of Canonical Scripture to be lost and others to lose for a long time their being Canonical at least the necessity of being so esteemed and afterwards as it were by the law of Postliminium hath restored their Authority and Canonicalness unto them If this was delivered by the Apostles to the Church the point was sufficiently discussed and therefore your Churches omission to teach it for some ages as an article of faith nay degrading it from the number of articles of faith and putting it among disputable problems was surely not very laudable If it were not revealed by God to the Apostles and by the Apostles to the Church then can it be no Revelation and therefore her presumption in proposing it as such is inexcusable 29. And then for the other part of it that never any book or syllable defined for Canonical was afterwards questioned or rejected for Apocryphal Certainly it is a bold asseveration but extreamly false For I demand The Book of Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom the Epistle of S. James and to the Hebrews were they by the Apostles approved for Canonical or no If not with what face dare you approve them and yet pretend that all your doctrin is Apostolical Especially seeing it is evident that this point is not deducible by rational discourse from any other defined by them If they were approved by them this I hope was a sufficient definition and therefore you were best rub your forehead hard and say that these Books were never questioned But if you do so then I shall be bold to ask you what Books you meant in saying before Some Books which were not always known to be Canonical have been afterwards received Then for the Book of Macchabes I hope you will say it was defined for Canonical before S. Gregories time and yet he lib. 19. Moral c. 13. citing a testimony out of it prefaceth to it after this matter Concerning which matter we do not amiss if we produce a testimony out of Books although not Canonical yet set forth for the edification of the Church For Eleazar in the Book of Machabees c. Which if it be not to reject it from being Canonical is without question at least to question it Moreover because you are so punctual as to talk of words and syllables I would know whether before Sixtus Quintus his time your Church had a defined Canon of Scripture or not If not then was your Church surely a most vigilant keeper of Scripture that for 1500. years had not defined what was Scripture and what was not If it had then I demand was it that set forth by Sixtus or that set forth by Clement or a third different from both If it were that set forth by Sixtus then is it now condemned by Clement if that of Clement it was condemned I say but sure you will say contradicted and questioned by Sixtus If different from both then was it questioned and condemned by both and still lies under the condemnation But then lastly suppose it had been true That both some Book not known to be Canonical had been received and that never any after receiving had been questioned How had this been a sign that the Church is infallibly assisted by the Holy Ghost In what mood or figure would this conclusion follow out of these Premises Certainly your flying to such poor signs as these are is to me a great sign that you labour with penury of better arguments and that thus to catch at shadows and bulrushes
will and encounter with human probabilities being backed with the strength of flesh and blood and therefore conclude that it was farther necessary that this supernatural knowledge should be most certain and infallible To this I answer that I do heartily acknowledge and believe the Articles of our Faith be in themselves Truths as certain and infallible as the very common Principles of Geometry and Metaphysicks But that there is required of us a knowledge of them and an adherence to them as certain as that of sense or science that such a certainty is required of us under pain of damnation so that no man can hope to be in the state of salvation but he that finds in himself such a degree of faith such a strength of adherence This I have already demonstrated to be a great error and of dangerous and pernitious consequence And because I am more and more confirmed in my perswasion that the Truth which I there delivered is of great and singular use I will here confirm it with more reasons And to satisfie you that this is no singularity of my own my Margent presents you with a a M. Hooker in his answer to Travers his supplication I have taught that the assurance of things which we believe by the word is not so certain as of that we perceive by sence And is it as certain Yea I taught that the things which God doth promise in his word are surer unto us than any thing we touch handle or see But are we so sure and certain of them If we be why doth God so often prove his promises unto us as he doth by arguments taken from our sensible experience We must be surer of the proof than the thing proved otherwise it is no proof How is it that if ten men do all look upon the Moon every one of them knows it as certainly to be the Moon as another but many believing one and the same promises all have not one and the same fulness of perswasion How falleth it out that men being assured of any thing by sence can be no surer of it than they are whereas the strongest in faith that liveth upon the earth had always need to labour and strive and pray that his assurance concerning heavenly and spiritual things may grow increase and be augmented Protestant Divine of great authority and no way singular in his opinions who hath long since preached and justified the same doctrin 4. I say that every Text of Scripture which makes mention of any that were weak or of any that were strong in faith of any that were of little or any that were of great faith of any that abounded or any that were rich in saith of encreasing growing rooting grounding establishing confirming in faith Every such Text is a demonstrative refutation of this vain fancy proving that faith even true and saving faith is not a thing consisting in such an indivisible point of perfection as you make it but capable of augmentation and diminution Every Prayer you make to God to encrease your faith or if you conceive such a prayer derogatory from the perfection of your faith The Apostles praying to Christ to encrease their Faith is a convincing argument of the same conclusion Moreover if this doctrin of yours were true then seeing not any the least doubting can consist with a most infallible certainty it will follow that every least doubting in any matter of faith though resisted and involuntary is a damnable sin absolutely destructive so long as it lasts of all true and saving faith which you are so far from granting that you make it no sin at all but only an occasion of merit and if you should esteem it a sin then must you acknowledge contrary to your own Principles that there are Actual sins meerly involuntary The same is furthermore invincibly confirmed by every deliberate sin that any Christian commits by any progress in Charity that he makes For seeing as S. John assures us our faith is the victory which overcomes the world certainly if the faith of all true Believers were perfect and if true faith be capable of no imperfection if all faith be a knowledge most certain and infallible all faith must be perfect for the most imperfect that is according to your doctrin if it be true must be most certain and sure the most perfect that is cannot be more than most certain then certainly their victory over the World and therefore over the flesh and therefore over sin must of necessity be perfect and so it should be impossible for any true believer to commit any deliberate sin and therefore he that commits any sin must not think himself a true believer Besides seeing Faith worketh by Charity and Charity is the effect of Faith certainly if the cause were perfect the effect would be perfect and consequently as you make no degrees in Faith so there would be none in Charity and so no man could possibly make any progress in it but all true believers should be equally in Charity as in Faith you make them equal and from thence it would follow unavoidably that whosoever finds in himself any true Faith must presently persuade himself that he is perfect in Charity and whosoever on the other side discovers in his Charity any imperfection must not believe that he hath any true Faith These you see are strange and portentous consequences and yet the deduction of them from your Doctrine is clear and apparent which shews this Doctrine of yours which you would fain have true that there might be some necessity of your Churches Infallibility to be indeed plainly repugnant not only to Truth but even to all Religion and Piety and fit for nothing but to make men negligent of making any Progress in Faith or Charity 5. As for that one single reason which you produce to confirm it it will appear upon examination to be resolved finally into a groundless Assertion of your own contrary to all Truth and experience and that is That no degree of Faith less than a most certain and infallible knowledge can be able sufficiently to overbear our will and encounter with humane probabilities being backt with the strength of Flesh and Blood For who sees not that many Millions in the World forgoe many times their present ease and pleasure undergo great and toilsom labours encounter great difficulties adventure upon great dangers and all this not upon any certain expectation but upon a probable hope of some future gain and commodity and that not infinite and Eternal but finite and temporal Who sees not that many men abstain from many things they exceedingly desire not upon any certain assurance but a probable fear of danger that may come after What man ever was there so madly in love with a present penny but that he would willingly spend it upon any little hope that by doing so he might gain an hundred thousand pound And I would fain know what gay probabilities you could
pretend is the true sense of them When you have produced certain grounds for all these things I doubt not but it will appear that we also may have grounds certain enough to believe our whole Religion which is nothing else but the Bible without dependence on the Churches infallibility Suppose you should meet with a man that for the present believes neither Church nor Scripture nor God but is ready and willing to believe them all if you can shew some sufficient grounds to build his faith upon will you tell such a man there are no certain grounds by which he may be converted or there are If you say the first you make all Religion an uncertain thing If the second then either you must ridiculously perswade that your Church is infallible because it is infallible or else that there are other certain grounds besides your Churches infallibility 46. Obj. The Holy Scripture is in it self most true and infallible but without the direction and declaration of the Church we can neither have certain means to know what Scripture is Canonical nor what Translations be faithful nor what is the true meaning of Scripture Ans But all these things must be known before we can know the direction of your Church to be infallible for no other proof of it can be pretended but only some Texts of Canonical Scripture truly interpreted Therefore either you are mistaken in thinking there is no other means to know these things but your Churches infallible direction or we are excluded from all means of knowing her direction to be infallible 47. Obj. But Protestants though they are perswaded their own opinions are true and that they have used such means as are wont to be prescribed for understanding the Scripture as Prayer conferring of Texts c. Yet by their disagreement shew that some of them are deceived Now they hold all the Articles of their faith upon this only ground of Scripture interpreted by these rules and therefore it is clear that the ground of their faith is infallible in no point at all Ans The first of these suppositions must needs be true but the second is apparently false I mean that every Protestant is perswaded that he hath used those means which are prescribed for understanding of Scripture But that which you collect from these suppositions is clearly inconsequent and by as good Logick you might conclude that Logick and Geometry stand upon no certain grounds that the rules of the one and the principles of the other do sometimes fail because the disagreement of Logicians and Geometricians shew that some of them are deceived Might not a Jew conclude as well against all Christians that they have no certain ground whereon to relie in their understanding of Scripture because their disagreements shew that some are deceived because some deduce from it the infallibility of a Church and others no such matter So likewise a Turk might use the same argument against both Jews and Christians and an Atheist against all Religions and a Sceptick against all reason Might not the one say Mens disagreement in Religion shews that there is no certainty in any and the other that experience of their contradictions teacheth that the rules of reason do sometimes fail Do not you see and feel how void of reason and how full of impiety your sophistry is And how transported with zeal against Protestants you urge arguments against them which if they could not be answered would overthrow not only your own but all Religion But God be thanked the answer is easie and obvious For let men but remember not to impute the faults of men but only to men and then it will easily appear that there may be sufficient certainty in reason in Religion in the rules of interpreting Scripture though men through their faults take not care to make use of them and so run into divers errors and dissentions 48. Obj. But Protestants cannot determine what points be fundamental and therefore must remain uncertain whether or no they be not in some fundamental error Ans By like reason since you acknowledge that every error in points defined and declared by your Church destroys the substance of Faith and yet cannot determine what points be defined it followeth that you must remain uncertain whether or no you be not in some fundamental error and so want the substance of Faith without which there can be no hope of Salvation But though we cannot perhaps say in particular thus much and no more is fundamental yet believing all the Bible we are certain enough that we believe all that is fundamental As he that in a receipt takes twenty ingredients whereof ten only are necessary though he know not which those ten are yet taking the whole twenty he is sure enough that he has taken all that are necessary 49. Ad § 29. Obj. It is generally delivered by Catholick Divines that he who erreth against any one revealed truth tâ—seth all Divine Faith Now certainly some Protestants must do so because they hold contradictions which cannot all be true Therefore some of them at least have no divine faith Ans I pass by your weakness in urging Protestants with the authority of your Divines Yet if the Authority of your Divines were even Canonical certainly nothing could be concluded from it in this matter there being not one of them who delivers for true doctrin this position of yours thus nakedly set down That any error against any one revealed truth destroys all divine faith For they all require not your self excepted that this truth must not only be revealed but revealed publickly and all things considered sufficiently propounded to the erring party to be one of those which God under pain of damnation commands all men to believe But if the Reader will be at the pains he may see this vain fancy confuted out of one of the most rational and profound Doctors of your own Church I mean Estius upon the third Book of the Sententes the 23. Distinct and the 13. Section beginning thus It is disputed whether in him who believes some of the Articles of our Faith and disbelieves others or perhaps some one there be faith properly so called in respect of that which he does believe 50. But if Protestants have certainty they want obscurity and so have not that faith which as the Apostle saith is of things not appearing This argument you prosecute in the next Paragraph but I can find nothing in it to convince or perswade me that Protestants cannot have as much certainty as is required to faith of an object not so evident as to beget science If obscurity will not consist with certainty in the highest degree then you are to blame for requiring to faith contradicting conditions If certainty and obscurity will stand together what reason can be imagined that a Protestant may not entertain them both as well as a Papist Your bodies and souls your understandings and wills are I think of the same
contemporaries and by writings wrote indeed by some but approved by all of them taught their Christian posterity to the Worlds End how all these ends and that which is the End of all these ends Salvation is to be atchieved And these means the Providence of God hath still preserved and so preserved that they are sufficient for all these intents I say sufficient though through the Malice of Men not always effectual for that the same means may be sufficient for the compassing an end and not effectual you must not deny who hold that God gives all men sufficient means of Salvation and yet that all are not saved I said also sufficient to determine all controversies which were necessary to be determined For if some controversies may for many Ages be undetermined and yet in the mean while men be saved why should or how can the Churches being furnished with effectual means to determine all Controversies in Religion be necessary to Salvation the end it self to which these means are ordained being as experience shews not necessary Plain sense will teach every man that the necessity of the means must always be measured by and can never exceed the necessity of the end As if eating be necessary only that I may live then certainly if I have no necessity to live I have no necessity to eat If I have no need to be at London I have no need of a Horse to carry me thither If I have no need to Fly I have no need of Wings Answer me then I pray directly and Categorically Is it necessary that all Controversies in Religion should be determined or is it not If it be why is the question of Predetermination of the immaculate conception of the Popes indirect power in temporalties so long undetermined if not what is it but Hypocrisie to pretend such great necessity of such effectual means for the archieving that end which is it self not necessary Christians therefore have and shall have means sufficient though not always effectual to determine not all controversies but all necessary to be determined I proceed on farther with you and grant that this means to decide controversies in Faith and Religion must be indued with an Universal Infallibility in whatsoever it propoundeth for a Divine truth For if it may be false in any one thing of this nature in any thing which God requires men to believe we can yield unto it but a wavering and fearful assent in any thing These grounds therefore I grant very readily and give you free leave to make your best advantage of them And yet to deal truly I do not perceive how from the denial of any of them it would follow that Faith is Opinion or from the granting them that it is not so But for my part whatsoever clamour you have raised against me I think no otherwise of the Nature of Faith I mean Historical Faith than generally both Protestants and Papists do for I conceive it an assent to Divine Revelations upon the Authority of the revealer Which though in many things it differ from Opinion as commonly the Word Opinion is understood yet in some things I doubt not but you will confess that it agrees with it As first that as Opinion is an Assent so is Faith also Secondly that as Opinion so Faith is always built upon less evidence than that of Sence or Science Which assertion you not only grant but mainly contend for in your sixth Ch. Thirdly and lastly that as Opinion so Faith admits degrees and that as there may be a strong and weak Opinion so there may be a strong and weak Faith These things if you will grant as sure if you be in your right mind you will not deny any of them I am well contented that this ill-sounding Word Opinion should be discarded and that among the Intellectual habits you should seek out some other Genus for Faith For I will never contend with any man about Words who grants my meaning 8. But though the Essence of Faith exclude not all weakness and imperfection yet may it be enquired whether any certainty of Faith under the highest degree may be sufficient to please God and attain Salvation Whereunto I answer that though men are unreasonable God requires not any thing but Reason They will not be pleased without a down weight but God is contented if the Scale be turned They pretend that Heavenly things cannot be seen to any purpose but by the mid-day-light But God will be satisfied if we receive any degree of light which makes us leave the Works of Darkness and walk as Children of the Light They exact a certainty of Faith above that of Sence or Science God desires only that we believe the conclusion as much as the premises deserve that the strength of our Faith be equal or proportionable to the credibility of the Motives to it Now though I have and ought to have an absolute certainty of this Thesis All which God reveals for truth is true being a proposition that may be demonstrated or rather so evident to any one that understands it that it needs it not Yet of this Hypothesis That all the Articles of our Faith were revealed by God we cannot ordinarily have any rational and acquired certainty more than moral founded upon these considerations First that the goodness of the precepts of Christianity and the greatness of the promises of it shews it of all other Religions most likely to come from the Fountain of goodness And then that a constant famous and very general Tradition so credible that no Wise Man doubts of any other which hath but the Fortieth part of the credibility of this such and so credible a Tradition tells us that God himself hath set his Hand and Seal to the Truth of this Doctrine by doing great and glorious and frequent miracles in confirmation of it Now our Faith is an assent to this conclusion that the Doctrine of Christianity is true which being deduced from the former Thesis which is Metapyhsically certain and from the former Hypothesis whereof we can have but a Moral certainty we cannot possibly by natural means be more certain of it than of the weaker of the premises as a River will not rise higher than the Fountain from which it flows For the conclusion always follows the worser part if there be any worse and must be Negative Particular Contingent or but Morally certain if any of the Propositions from whence it is derived be so Neither can we be certain of it in the highest degree unless we be thus certain of all the principles whereon it is grounded As a man cannot go or stand strongly if either of his Legs be weak Or as a building cannot be stable if any one of the necessary Pillars thereof be infirm and instable Or as If a meassage be brought me from a man of absolute credit with me but by a messenger that is not so my confidence of the Truth of the Relation
And whether she can set us down such interpretations of all obscurities in the Faith as shall need no farther interpretations If she cannot then she hath not that power which you pretend she hath of being an Infallible Teacher of all Divine verities and an infallible interpreter of obscurities in the Faith for she cannot teach us all Divine verities if she cannot write them down neither is that an interpretation which needs again to be interpreted If she can Let her do it and then we shall have a writing not only capable of but actually endowed with both these perfections of being both so compleat as to need no Addition and so evident as to need no Interpretation Lastly whatsoever your Church can do or not do no man can without Blasphemy deny that Christ Jesus if he had pleased could have writ us a rule of Faith so plain and perfect as that it should have wanted neither any part to make up its integrity nor any clearness to make it sufficiently intelligible And if Christ could have done this then the thing might have been done a writing there might have been indowed with both these properties Thus therefore I conclude a writing may be so perfect a Rule as to need neither Addition nor Interpretation But the Scripture you acknowledge a perfect Rule for as much as a writing can be a Rule therefore it needs neither Addition nor Interpretation 8. You will say that though a writing be never so perfect a Rule of Faith yet it must be beholden to Tradition to give it this Testimony that it is a Rule of Faith and the Word of God I answer First there is no absolute necessity of this For God might if he thought good give it the attestation of perpetual Miracles Secondly that it is one thing to be a perfect Rule of Faith another to be proved so unto us And thus though a writing could not be proved to us to be a perfect rule of Faith by its own saying so for nothing is proved true by being said or written in a Book but only by Tradition which is a thing credible of it self yet it may be so in it self and contain all the material Objects all the particular Articles of our Faith without any dependance upon Tradition even this also not excepted that this Writing doth contain the rule of Faith Now when Protestants affirm against Papists that Scripture is a perfect rule of Faith their meaning is not that by Scripture all things absolutely may be proved which are to be believed For it can never be proved by Scripture to a gainsayer that there is a God or that the Book called Scripture is the Word of God For he that will deny these Assertions when they are spoken will believe them never a whit the more because you can shew them written But their meaning is that the Scripture to them which presuppose it Divine and a Rule of Faith as Papists and Protestants do contains all the material Objects of Faith is a compleat and Total and not only an imperfect and a partial Rule 9. But every Book and Chapter and Text of Scripture is Infallible and wants no due perfection and yet excludes not the Addition of other Book of Scripture Therefore the perfection of the whole Scripture excludes not the Addition of unwritten Tradition I answer Every Text of Scripture though it have the perfection belonging to a Text of Scripture yet it hath not the perfection requisite to a perfect Rule of Faith and that only is the perfection which is the subject of our discourse So that this is to abuse your Reader with the ambiguity of the word Perfect In effect as if you should say a Text of Scripture may be a perfect Text though there be others beside it therefore the whole Scripture may be a perfect Rule of Faith though there be other parts of this Rule besides the Scripture and though the Scripture be but a part of it 10. The next Argument to the same purpose is for Sophistry Cosin German to the former When the first Books of Scripture were written they did not exclude unwritter Tradition Therefore now also that all the Books of Scripture are written Traditions are not excluded The sense of which Argument if it have any must be this When only a part of the Scripture was written then a part of the Divine Doctrine was unwritten Therefore now when all the Scripture is written yet some part of the Divine Doctrine is yet unwritten If you say your conclusion is not that it is so but without disparagement to Scripture may be so without disparagement to the truth of Scripture I grant it but without disparagement to the Scriptures being a perfect Rule I deny it And now the Question is not of the Truth but the perfection of it which are very different things though you would fain confound them For Scripture might very well be all true though it contain not all necessary Divine Truth But unless it do so it cannot be a perfect Rule of Faith for that which wants any thing is not perfect For I hope you do not imagine that we conceive any Antipathy between Gods Word Written and unwritten but that both might very well stand together All that we say is this that we have reason to believe that God de Facto hath ordered the matter so that all the Gospel of Christ the whole Covenant between God and Man is now Written Whereas if he had pleased he might so have disposed it that part might have been written and part unwritten but then he would have taken order to whom we should have had recourse for that part of it which was not written which seeing he hath not done as the Progress shall demonstrate it is evident he hath left no part of it unwritten We know no man therefore that says It were any injury to the written Word to be joyned with the unwritten if there were any wherewith it might be joyned but that we deny The fidelity of a Keeper may very well consist with the Authority of the thing committed to his Custody But we know no one Society of Christians that is such a faithful Keeper as you pretend The Scripture it self was not kept so faithfully by you but that you suffered infinite variety of Readings to creep into it all which could not possibly be Divine and yet in several parts of your Church all of them until the last Age were so esteemed The interpretations of obscure places of Scripture which without Question the Apostles taught the Primitive Christians are wholly lost there remains no certainty scarce of any one Those Worlds of Miracles which our Saviour did which were not written for want of writing are vanished out of the memory of men And many profitable things which the Apostles taught and writ not as that which S. Paul glances at in his second Epistle to the Thesalon of the cause of the hindrance of the coming of
by Have you been trained up in Schools of subtilty and cannot you see a great difference between these two We receive the Books of the New Testament as they are commonly received and we receive those that are commonly received because they are so To say this were indeed to make being commonly received a Rule or Reason to know the Canon by But to say the former doth no more make it a Rule than you should make the Church of England the rule of your receiving them if you should say as you may The Books of the New Testament we receive for Canonical as they are received by the Church of England 45. You demand upon what infallible ground we agree with Luther against you in some and with you against Luther in others And I also demand upon what infallible ground you hold your Canon and agree neither with us nor Luther For sure your differing from us both is of it self no more apparently reasonable than our agreeing with you in part and in part with Luther If you say your Churches Infallibility is your ground I demand again some Infallible ground both for the Churches Infallibility and for this that Yours is the Church and shall never cease multiplying demands upon demands until you settle me upon a Rock I mean give such an answer whose Truth is so evident that it needs no further evidence If you say This is Universal Tradition I reply your Churches Infallibility is not built upon it and that the Canon of Scripture as we receive it is For we do not profess our selves so absolutely and undoubtedly certain neither do we urge others to be so of those Books which have been doubted as of those that never have 46. The Conclusion of your Tenth § is That the Divinity of a writing cannot be known from it self alone but by some extrinsecal Authority Which you need not prove for no Wise Man denies it But then this authority is that of Universal Tradition not of your Church For to me it is altogether as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the Gospel of Saint Matthew is the Word of God as that all which your Church says is true 47. That Believers of the Scripture by considering the Divine matter the excellent precepts the glorious promises contained in it may be confirmed in their Faith of the Scriptures Divine Authority and that among other inducements and inforcements hereunto internal arguments have their place and force certainly no man of understandeng can deny For my part I profess if the Doctrine of the Scripture were not as good and as fit to come from the Fountain of goodness as the Miracles by which it was confirmed were great I should want one main pillar of my Faith and for want of it I fear should be much staggered in it Now this and nothing else did the Doctor mean in saying The Believer sees by that glorious beam of Divine light which shines in Scripture and by many internal Arguments that the Scripture is of Divine Authority By this saith he he sees it that is he is moved to and strengthened in his belief of it and by this partly not wholly by this not alone but with the concurrence of other Arguments He that will quarrel with him for saying so must find fault with the Master of the Sentences and all his Scholars for they all say the same 48. In the next Division out of your liberality you will suppose that Scripture like to a corporal light is by it self alone able to determine and move our understanding to assent yet notwithstanding this supposal Faith still you say must go before Scripture because as the light is visible only to those that have eyes so the Scripture only to those that have the Eye of Faith But to my understanding if Scripture do move and determine our Understanding to assent then the Scripture and its moving must be before this assent as the cause must be before its own effect now this very assent is nothing else but Faith and Faith nothing else than the Understandings assent And therefore upon this supposal Faith doth and must originally proceed from Scripture as the effect from its proper cause and the influence and efficacy of Scripture is to be presupposed before the assent of Faith unto which it moves and determines and consequently if this supposition of yours were true there should need no other means precedent to Scripture to beget Faith Scripture it self being able as here you suppose to determine and move the understanding to assent that is to believe them and the Verities contained in them Neither is this to say that the Eyes with which we see are made by the light by which we see For you are mistaken much if you conceive that in this comparison Faith answers to the Eye But if you will not pervert it the Analogy must stand thus Scripture must answer to light The Eye of the Soul that is the Understanding or the faculty of assenting to the bodily Eye And lastly assenting or believing to the Act of seeing As therefore the light determining the Eye to see though it presupposes the Eye which it determines as every Action doth the Object on which it is imployed yet it self is presupposed and antecedent to the Act of seeing as the cause is always to its effect So if you will suppose that Scripture like light moves the understanding to assent The Understanding that 's the Eye and Objection which it works must be before this influence upon it But the Assent that is the belief whereof the Scripture moves and the understanding is moved which answers to the Act of seeing must come after For if it did assent already to what purpose should the Scripture do that which was done before Nay indeed how were it possible it should be so any more than a Father can beget a Son that he hath already Or an Architect build an House that is built already Or than this very world can be made again before it be unmade Transubstantiation indeed is fruitful of such Monsters But they that have not sworn themselves to the defence of Error will easily perceive that Jam factum facere and Factum infectum facere are equally impossible But I digress 49. The close of this Paragraph is a fit cover for such a Dish There you tell us That if there must be some other means precedent to Scripture to beget Faith this can be no other than the Church By the Church we know you do and must understand the Roman Church so that in effect you say no man can have Faith but he must be moved to it by your Churches Authority And that is to say that the King and all other Protestants to whom you write though they verily think they are Christians and believe the Gospel because they assent to the truth of it and would willingly Die for it yet indeed are Infidels and believe nothing The Scripture tells us The Heart of man
that the Church shall certainly keep this depositum entire and sincere without adding to it or taking from it for this whole depositum was committed to every particular Church nay to every particular Man which the Apostles converted And yet no man I think will say that there was any certainty that it should be kept whole and inviolate by every man and every Church It is apparent out of Scripture it was committed to Timothy and by him consigned to other faithful men and yet S. Paul thought it not superfluous earnestly to exhort him to the careful keeping of it which exhortation you must grant had been vain and superfluous if the not keeping of it had been impossible And therefore though Irenaeus says The Apostles fully deposited in the Church all truth yet he says not neither can we infer from what he says that the Church should always infallibly keep this depositum entire without the loss of any truth and sincere without the mixture of any falshood 149. Ad § 25. C. M. proceeds and tells us That beside all this the Doctrine of Protestants is destructive of it self For either they have certain and infallible means not to Err in interpreting or not If not Scripture to them cannot be a sufficient ground for infallible Faith If they have and so cannot Err in interpreting Scripture then they are able with infallibility to hear and determine all Controversies of Faith and so they may be and are Judges of Controversies although they use the Scripture as a Rule And thus against their own Doctrine they constitute another Judge of Controversies besides Scripture alone C. H. And may not we with as much reason substitute Church and Papists instead of Scripture and Protestants and say unto you Besides all this the Doctrine of Papists is destructive of it self For either they have certain and infallible means not to Err in the choice of the Church and interpreting her decrees or they have not If not then the Church to them cannot be a sufficient but meerly a phantastical ground for infallible Faith nor a meet Judge of Controversies For unless I be infallibly sure that the Church is infallible how can I be upon her Authority infallibly sure that any thing she says is infallible If they have certain infallible means and so cannot Err in the choice of their Church and in interpreting her decrees then they are able with Infallibility to hear examine and determine all Controversies of Faith although they pretend to make the Church their Guide And thus against their own Doctrine they constitute another Judge of Controversies besides the Church alone Nay every one makes himself a chooser of his own Religion and of his own sense of the Churches decrees which very thing in Protestants they so highly condemn and so in judging others condemn themselves 150. Neither in saying thus have I only cried quittance with you but that you may see how much you are in my debt I will shew unto you that for your Sophism against our way I have given you a Demonstration against yours First I say your Argument against us is a transparent fallacy The first part of it lies thus Protestants have no means to interpret without Error obscure and ambiguous places of Scripture therefore plain places of Scripture cannot be to them a sufficient ground of Faith But though we pretend not to certain means of not Erring in interpreting all Scripture particularly such places as are obscure and ambiguous yet this methinks should be no impediment but that we may have certainmeans of not Erring in and about the sense of those places which are so plain and clear that they need no Interpreters and in such we say our Faith is contained If you ask me how I can be sure that I know the true â—â—aning of these places I ask you again can you be 〈◊〉 that you understand what I or any man else says They that heard our Saviour and the Apostles Preach could they have sufficient assurance that they understood at any time what they would have them do if not to what end did they hear them If they could why may we not be as well assured that we understand sufficiently what we conceive plain in their writings 151. Again I pray tell us whether you do certainly know the sense of these Scriptures with which you pretend you are led to the knowledg of your Church If you do not how know you that there is any Church Infallible and that these are the Notes of it and that this is the Church that hath these Notes If you do then give us leave to have the same means and the same abilities to know other plain places which you have to know these For if all Scripture be obscure how come you to know the sense of these places If some places of it be plain why should we stay here 152. And now to come to the other part of your dilemma in saying If they have certain means and so cannot Err methinks you forget your self very much and seem to make no difference between having certain means to do a thing and the actual doing of it As if you should conclude because all men have certain means of Salvation therefore all men certainly must be saved and cannot do otherwise as if whosoever had a Horse must presently get up and Ride Whosoever had means to find out a way could not neglect those means and so mistake it God be thanked that we have sufficient means to be certain enough of the truth of our Faith But the Priviledge of not being in possibility of Erring that we challenge not because we have as little reason as you to do so and you have none at all If you ask seeing we may possibly Err how can we be assured we do not I ask you again seeing your Eye-sight may deceive you how can you be sure you see the Sun when you do see it Perhaps you may be in a dream and perhaps you and all the men in the World have been so when they thought they were awake and then only awake when they thought they Dreamt But this I am sure of as sure as that God is good that he will require no impossibilities of us not an Infallible nor a certainly unerring belief unless he hath given us certain means to avoid Error and if we use those which we have will never require of us that we use that which we have not 153. Now from this mistaken ground that it is all one to have means of avoiding Error and to be in no danger nor possibility of Error You infer upon us as an absurd conclusion That we make our selves able to determine Controversies of Faith with Infallibility and Judges of Controversies For the latter part of this inference we acknowledge and embrace it We do make our selves Judges of Controversies that is we do make use of our own understanding in the choice of our Religion But this if it be
Creed without the former can be possibly guarded from falling into them and continuing obstinate in them Nay so far is this Creed from guarding them from these mischiefs that it is more likely to ensnare them into them by seeming and yet not being a full comprehension of all necessary points of Faith which is apt as experience shews to misguide men into this pernitious error That believing the Creed they believe all necessary points of faith whereas indeed they do not so Now upon these grounds I thus conclude That Creed which hath great commodities and no danger would certainly be better then that which hath great danger and wants many of these great commodities But the former short Creed proposed by me I believe the Roman Church to be Infallible if your doctrin be true is of the former condition and the latter that is the Apostles Creed is of the latter Therefore the former if your doctrin be true would without controversie be better than the latter 83. Whereas you say If the Apostles had exprest no Article but that of the Catholick Church she must have taught us the other Articles in particular by Creeds or other means This is very true but no way repugnant to the truth of this which follows that the Apostles if your doctrin be true had done better service to the Church though they had never made this Creed of theirs which now we have if instead thereof they had commanded in plain terms that for mens perpetual direction in the faith this short Creed should be taught all men I believe the Roman Church shall be for ever Infallible Yet you must not so mistake me as if I meant that they had done better not to have taught the Church the substance of Christian Religion for then the Church not having learnt it of them could not have taught it us This therefore I do not say but supposing they had written these Scriptures as they have written wherein all the Articles of their Creed are plainly delivered and preached that Doctrin which they did preach and done all other things as they have done besides the composing their Symbol I say if your doctrin were true they had done a work infinitely more beneficial to the Church of Christ if they had never composed their Symbol which is but an imperfect comprehension of the necessary points of simple belief and no distinctive mark as a Symbole should be between those that are good Christians and those that are not so but instead thereof had delivered this one Proposition which would have been certainly effectual for all the aforesaid good intents and purposes The Roman Church shall be forever Infallible in all things which she proposes as matters of Faith 84. Whereas you say If we will believe we have all in the Creed when we have not all it is not the Apostles fault but our own I tell you plainly if it be a fault I know not whose it should be but theirs For sure it can be no fault in me to follow such Guides whether soever they lead me Now I say they have led me into this perswasion because they have given me great reason to believe it and none to the contrary The reason they have given me to believe it is because it is apparent and confest they did propose to themselves in composing it some good end or ends As that Christians might have a form by which for matter of Faith they might profess themselves Catholicks So Putean out of Thomas Aquinas That the faithful might know what the Christian people is to believe explicitly So Vincent Filiucius That being separated into divers parts of the world they might preach the same thing And that that might serve as a mark to distinguish true Christians from Infidels So Cardinal Richlieu Now for all these and for any other good intent I say it will be plainly uneffectual unless it contain at least all points of simple belief which are in ordinary course necessary to be explicitly known by all men So that if it be a fault in me to believe this it must be my fault to believe the Apostles wise and good men which I cannot do if I believe not this And therefore what Richardus de sancto Victore says of God himself I make no scruple at all to apply to the Apostles and to say Si error est quod credo à vobis deceptus sum If it be an Error which I believe it is you and my reverend esteem of you and your actions that hath led me into it For as for your suspicion That we are led into this perswasion out of a hope that we may the better maintain by it some opinions of our own It is plainly uncharitable I know no opinion I have which I would not as willingly forsake as keep if I could see sufficient reason to induce me to believe that it is the will of God I should forsake it Neither do I know any opinion I hold against the Church of Rome but I have more evident grounds than this whereupon to build it For let but these Truths be granted That the authority of the Scripture is independent on your Church and dependent only in respect of us upon universal Tradition That Scripture is the only Rule of Faith That all things necessary to salvation are plainly delivered in Scripture Let I say these most certain and divine Truths be laid for foundations and let our superstructions be consequent and coherent to them and I am confident Peace would be restored and Truth maintained against you though the Apostles Creed were not in the world CHAP. V. The ANSWER to the Fifth CHAPTER Shewing that the separation of Protestants from the Roman Church being upon just and necessary causes is not any way guilty of Schism 1. AD § 1.2 3 4 5 6 7. In the seven first Sections of this Chapter there be many things said and many things supposed by you which are untrue and deserve a censure As 2. First That Schism could not be a Division from the Church or that a Division from the Church could not happen unless there always had been and should be a visible Church Which Assertion is a manifest falsehood For although there never had been any Church Visible or Invisible before this age nor should be ever after yet this could not hinder but that a Schism might now be and be a Division from the present Visible Church As though in France there never had been until now a lawful Monarch nor after him ever should be yet this hinders not but that now there might be a Rebellion and that Rebellion might be an Insurrection against Sovereign Authority 3. That it is a point to be granted by all Christians that in all ages there hath been a visible Congregation of faithful people Which Proposition howsoever you understand it is not absolutely certain But if you mean by Faithful as it is plain you do free from all error in faith then
devise to dissuade him from this Resolution And if you can devise none what reason then or sense is there but that a probable hope of infinite and Eternal Happiness provided for all those that obey Christ Jesus and much more a firm Faith though not so certain in some sort as sense or science may be able to sway our will to obedience and encounter with all those temptations which Flesh and Blood can suggest to avert us from it Men may therefore talk their pleasure of an absolute and most infallible certainty but did they generally believe that obedience to Christ were the only way to present and eternal felicity but as firmly and undoubtedly as that there is such a City as Constantinople nay but as much as Caesars Commentaries or the History of Salust I believe the lives of most men both Papists and Protestants would be better than they are Thus therefore out of your own Words I argue against you He that requires to true Faith an absolute and infallible certainty for this only Reason because any less degree could not be able to overbear our will c. imports that if a less degree of Faith were able to do this then a less degree of Faith may be true and Divine and saving Faith But experience shews and reason confirms that a firm Faith though not so certain as sense or science may be able to encounter and overcome our will and affections And therefore it follows from your own reason that Faith which is not a most certain and infallible knowledge may be true and Divine and saving Faith 6. All these Reasons I have imployed to shew that such a most certain and infallible Faith as here you talk of is not so necessary but that without such a high degree of it it is possible to please God And therefore the Doctrines delivered by you § 25. are most presumptuous and uncharitable viz. That such a most certain and Infallible Faith is necessary to Salvation necessitate Finis or Medii so necessary that after a man is come to the use of reason no man ever was or can be saved without it Wherein you boldly intrude into the judgment seat of God and damn men for breaking Laws not of Gods but your own making But withal you clearly contradict your self not only where you affirm That your Faith depends finally upon the Tradition of Age to Age of Father to Son which cannot be a fit ground but only for a Moral Assurance nor only where you pretend that not alone Hearing and Seeing but also Histories Letters Relations of many which certainly are things not certain and infallible are yet Foundations good enough to support your Faith Which Doctrine if it were good and allowable Protestants might then hope that their Histories and Letters and Relations might also pass for means sufficient of a sufficient Certainty and that they should not be excluded from Salvation for want of such a Certainty But indeed the pressure of the present difficulty compelled you to speak here what I believe you will not justifie and with a pretty tergiversation to shew D. Potter your means of moral certainty whereas the Objection was that you had no means or possibility of infallible certainty for which you are plainly at as great a loss and as far to seek as any of your Adversaries And therefore it concerns you highly not to damn others for want of it lest you involve your selves in the same condemnation according to those terrible Words of S. Paul Inexcusabilis es c. In this therefore you plainly contradict your self And lastly most plainly in saying as you do here you contradict and retract your pretence of Charity to Protestants in the beginning of your Book For there you make profession that you have no assurance but that Protestants dying Protestants may possibly die with contrition and be saved And here you are very Peremptory that they cannot but want a means absolutely necessary to Salvation and wanting that cannot but be damned 7. The third Condition you require to Faith is that our assent to Divine Truths should not only be unknown and unevident by any humane discourse but that absolutely also it should be obscure in it self and ordinarily speaking be void even of supernatural evidence Which words must have a very favourable construction or else they will not be sense For who can make any thing of these words taken properly that Faith must be an unknown unevident assent or an assent absolutely obscure I had always thought that known and unknown obscure and evident had been affections not of our Assent but the Object of it not of our belief but the thing believed For well may we assent to a thing unknown obscure or unevident but that our assent it self should be called therefore unknown or obscure seems to me as great an impropriety as if I should say your sight were green or blew because you see something that is so In other places therefore I answer your words but here I must answer your meaning which I conceive to be That it is necessary to Faith that the Objects of it the points which we believe should not be so evidently certain as to necessitate our understandings to an Assent that so their might be some merit in Faith as you love to speak who will not receive no not from God himself but a penny-worth for a penny but as we some obedience in it which can hardly have place where there is no possibility of disobedience as there is not where the understanding does all and the will nothing Now seeing the Religion of Protestants though it be much more credible than yours yet is not pretended to have the absolute evidence of sense or demonstration therefore I might let this Doctrine pass without exception for any prejudice that can redound to us by it But yet I must not forbear to tell you that your discourse proves indeed this condition requisite to the merit but yet not to the essence of Faith without it Faith were not an act of obedience but yet Faith may be Faith without it and this you must confess unless you will say either the Apostles believed not the whole Gospel which they preached or that they were not eye-witnesses of a great part of it unless you will question S. John for saying that which we have seen with our Eyes and which our hands have handled c. declare we unto you nay our Saviour himself for saying Thomas because thou seest thou believest Blessed are they which have not seen and yet have believed Yet if you will say that in respect of the things which they saw the Apostles assent was not pure and proper and meer Faith but somewhat more an assent containing Faith but superadding to it I will not contend with you for it will be a contention about words But then again I must crave leave to tell you that the requiring this condition is in my judgment a plain
every one of these infallible as well as the Roman For though he make a Panegyrick of the Roman Church in particular and of the rest only in general yet as I have said for point of direction he makes them all equal and therefore makes them choose you whether either all fallible or all infallible Now you will and must acknowledge that he never intended to attribute infallibility to the Churches of Ephesus or Corinth or if he did that as experience shews he Erred in doing so and what can hinder but then we may say also that he never intended to attribute infallibility to the Roman Church or if he did that he Erred in doing so 38. Ad § 20 21 22 23. The sum of your discourse in these Sections if it be pertinent to the Question must be this Want of Succession of Bishops and Pastors holding always the same Doctrine and of the forms of ordaining Bishops and Priests which are in use in the Roman Church is a certain mark of Heresie But Protestants want all these things Therefore they are Hereticks To which I answer That nothing but wnat of truth and holding Error can make or prove any man or Church Heretical For if he be a true Aristotelian or Platonist or Pyrrhonian or Epicurean who holds the Doctrine of Aristotle or Plato or Pirrho or Epicurus although he cannot assign any that held it before him for many Ages together why should I not be made a true and Orthodox Christian by believing all the Doctrine of Christ though I cannot derive my descent from a perpetual Succession that believed it before me By this reason you should say as well that no man can be a good Bishop or Pastor or King or Magistrate or Father that succeeds a bad one For if I may conform my will and actions to the Commandments of God why may I not embrace his Doctrine with my understanding although my predecessor do not so You have above in this Chapter defined Faith a free Infallible obscure supernatural assent to Divine Truths because they are revealed by God and sufficiently propounded This definition is very phantastical but for the present I will let it pass and desire you to give me some piece of shadow or reason why I may not do all this without a perpetual Succession of Bishops and Pastors that have done so before me You may judge as uncharitably and speak as maliciously of me as your blind zeal to your Superstition shall direct you but certainly I know and with all your Sophistry you cannot make me doubt of what I know that I do believe the Gospel of Christ as it is delivered in the undoubted Books of Canonical Scripture as verily as that it is now day that I see the light that I am now writing and I believe it upon this Motive because I conceive it sufficiently abundantly superabundantly proved to be Divine Revelation And yet in this I do not depend upon any Succession of men that have always believed it without any mixture of Error nay I am fully persuaded there hath been no such Succession and yet do not find my self any way weakned in my Faith by the want of it but so fully assured of the truth of it that not only though your Devils at Lowden do tricks against it but though an Angel from Heaven should gainsay it or any part of it I persuade my self that I should not be moved This I say and this I am sure is true and if you will be so Hypersceptical as to persuade me that I am not sure that I believe all this I desire you to tell me how are you sure that you believe the Church of Rome For if a man may persuade himself he doth believe what he doth not believe then may you think you believe the Church of Rome and yet not believe it But if no man can Err concerning what he believes then you must give me leave to assure my self that I do believe and consequently that any man may believe the aforesaid truths upon the aforesaid motives without any dependence upon any Succession that hath believed it always And as from your definition of Faith so from your definition of Heresie this fancy may be refuted For questionless no man can be an Heretick but he that holds an Heresie and an Heresie you say is a Voluntary Error therefore no man can be necessitated to be an Heretick whether he will or no by want of such a thing that is not in his power to have But that there should have been a perpetual Succession of Believers in all points Orthodox is not a thing which is in your power therefore our being or not being Hereticks depends not on it Besides what is more certain than that he may make a streight line who hath a Rule to make it by though never man in the World had made any before and why then may not he that believes the Scripture to be the Word of God and the Rule of Faith regulate his Faith by it and consequently believe aright without much regarding what other men either will do or have done It is true indeed there is a necessity that if God will have his Words believed he by his Providence must take order that either by Succession of men or by some other means natural or supernatural it be preserved and delivered and sufficiently notified to be his Word but that this should be done by a Succession of men that holds no Error against it certainly there is no more necessity than that it should be done by a Succession of men that commit no sin against it For if men may preserve the Records of a Law and yet transgress it certainly they may also preserve directions for their Faith and yet not follow them I doubt not but Lawyers at the Barr do find by frequent experience that many men preserve and produce evidences which being examined oftimes make against themselves This they do ignorantly it being in their power to suppress or perhaps to alter them And why then should any man conceive it strange that an erroneous and corrupted Church should preserve and deliver the Scriptures uncorrupted when indeed for many reasons which I have formally alleged it was impossible for them to corrupt them Seeing therefore this is all the necessity that is pretended of a perpetual Succession of men Orthodox in all points certainly there is no necessity at all of any such neither can the want of it prove any man or any Church Heretical 39. When therefore you have produced some proof of this which was your Major in your former Syllogism That want of Succession is a certain mark of Heresie you shall then receive a full answer to your Minor We shall then consider whether your indelible Character be any reality or whether it be a Creature of your own making a fancy of your own imagination And if it be a thing and not only a Word whether our Bishops and Priests have
condition with ours And why then may not we be certain of an obscure thing as well as you 51. But then besides I am to tell you that you are here every where extreamly if not affectedly mistaken in the Doctrin of Protestants who though they acknowledge that the things which they believe are in themselves as certain as any demonstrable or sensible verities yet pretend not that their certainty of adherence is most perfect and absolute but such as may be perfected and increased as long as they walk by faith and not by sight And consonant hereunto is their doctrin touching the evidence of the objects whereunto they adhere For you abuse the world and them if you pretend that they hold the first of your two principles That these particular Books are the word of God for so I think you mean either to be in it self evidently certain or of it self and being devested of the motives of credibility evidently credible For they are not so fond as to be ignorant nor so vain as to pretend that all men do assent to it which they would if it were evidently certain nor so ridiculous as to imagine that if an Indian that never heard of Christ or Scripture should by chance find a Bible in his own Language and were able to read it that upon the reading it he would certainly without a miracle believe it to be the word of God which he could not chuse if it were evidently credible What then do they affirm of it Certainly no more than this that whatsoever man that is not of a perverse mind shall weigh with serious and mature deliberation those great moments of reason which may incline him to believe the Divine authority of Scripture and compare them with the light objections that in prudence can be made against it he shall not chuse but find sufficient nay abundant inducements to yield unto it firm faith and sincere obedience Let that learned man Hugo Grotius speak for all the rest in his Book of the Truth of Christian Religion which Book whosoever attentively peruses shall find that a man may have great reason to be a Christian without dependence upon your Church for any part of it and that your Religion is no foundation of but rather a scandal and an objection against Christianity He then in the last Chapter of his second Book hath these excellent words If any be not satisfied with these arguments abovesaid but desires more forcible reasons for confirmation of the excellency of Christian Religion let such know that as there are variety of things which be true so are there divers ways of proving or manifesting the truth Thus is there one way in Mathematicks another in Physicks a third in Ethicks and lastly another kind when a matter of fact is in question wherein verily we must rest content with such Testimonies as are free from all suspicion of untruth otherwise down goes all the frame and use of History and a great part of the art of Physick together with all dutifulness that ought to be between parents and children for matters of practice can no way else be known but by such Testimonies Now it is the pleasure of Almighty God that those things which he would have us to believe so that the very belief thereof may be imputed to us for obedience should not so evidently appear as those things which are apprehended by sense and plain demonstration but only be so far forth revealed as may beget faith and a perswasion thereof in the hearts and minds of such as are not obstinate That so the Gospel may be as a touchstone for tryal of mens judgments whether they be sound or unsound For seeing these arguments whereof we have spoken have induced so many honest godly and wise men to approve of this Religion it is thereby plain enough that the fault of other mens infidelity is not for want of sufficient testimony but because they would not have that to be had and embraced for truth which is contrary to their wilful desires it being a hard matter for them to relinquish their honours and set at naught other commodities which thing they know they ought to do if they admit of Christs Doctrin and obey what he hath commanded And this is the rather to be noted of them for that many other historical narrations are approved by them to be true which notwithstanding are only manifest by authority and not by any such strong proofs and perswasions or tokens as do declare the history of Christ to be true which are evident partly by the confession of those Jews that are yet alive and partly in those companies and congregations of Christians which are any where to be found whereof doubtless there was some cause Lastly seeing the long duration or continuance of Christian Religion and the large extent thereof can be ascribed to no human power therefore the same must be attributed to miracles or if any deny that it came to pass through a miraculous manner this very getting so great strength and power without a miracle may be thought to surpass any miracle 52. And now you see I hope that Protestants neither do nor need to pretend to any such evidence in the doctrin they believe as cannot well consist both with the essence and the obedience of faith Let us come now to the last nullity which you impute to the faith of Protestants and that it is want of prudence Touching which point as I have already demonstrated that wisdom is not essential to faith but that a man may truly believe truth though upon insufficient motives So I doubt not but I shall make good that if prudence were necessary to faith we have better title to it than you and that if a wiser than Solomon were here he should have better reason to believe the Religion of Protestants than Papists the Bible rather than the Council of Trent But let us hear what you can say 53. Ad § 31. You demand then first of all What wisdom was it to forsake a Church confessedly very ancient and besides which there could be demonstrated no other Visible Church of Christ upon earth I answer Against God and truth there lies no prescription and therefore certainly it might be great wisdom to forsake ancient Errors for more ancient Truths One God is rather to be followed than innumerable worlds of men And therefore it might be great wisdom either for the whole Visible Church nay for all the men in the world having wandred from the way of Truth to return unto it or for a part of it nay for one man to do so although all the world besides were madly resolute to do the contrary It might be great wisdom to forsake the Errors though of the only Visible Church much more the Roman which in conceiving her self the whole Visible Church does somewhat like the Frog in the Fable which thought the Ditch he lived in to be all the World 54. You demand again
live and die in it is as dangerous as to shoot a gulf which though some good ignorant souls may do and escape yet it may well be feared that not one in a hundred but miscarries 7. Ad § 5. In this Section I observe first this acknowledgment of yours That in things necessary only because commanded a probableignorance of the commandment excuses the party from all fault and doth not exclude Salvation From which Doctrin it seems to me to follow that seeing obedience to the Roman Church cannot be pretended to be necessary but only because it is commanded therefore not only an invincible but even a probable ignorance of this pretended command must excuse us from all faulty breach of it and cannot exclude Salvation Now seeing this command is not pretended to be expresly delivered but only to be deduced from the word of God and that not by the most clear and evident consequences that may be and seeing an infinity of great objections lies against it which seem strongly to prove that there is no such command with what Charity can you suppose that our ignorance of this comand is not at the least probable if not all things consider'd plainly invincible Sure I am for my part that I have done my true endeavour to find it true and am still willing to do so but the more I seek the farther I am from finding and therefore if it be true certainly my not finding it is very excusable and you have reason to be very charitable in your censures of me 2. Whereas you say That besides these things necessary because commanded there are other things which are commanded because necessary of which number you make Divine infallible faith Baptism in Act for Children and in desire for those who are come to the use of Reason and the Sacrament of Confession for those who have committed mortal sin In these words you seem to me to deliver a strange Paradox viz. That Faith and Baptism and Confession are not therefore necessary for us because God appointed them but are therefore appointed by God because they were necessary for us antecedently to his appointment which if it were true I wonder what it was beside God that made them necessary and made it necessary for God to command them Besides in making faith one of these necessary means you seem to exclude Infants from Salvation For Faith comes by hearing and they have not heard In requiring that this Faith should be divine and infallible you cast your Credentes into infinite perplexity who cannot possibly by any sure mark discern whether their Faith be Divine or human or if you have any certain sign whereby they may discern whether they believe your Churches infallibility with Divine or only with humane faith I pray produce it for perhaps it may serve us to shew that our Faith is Divine as well as yours Moreover in affirming that Baptism in act is necessary for Infants and for men only in desire You seem to me in the latter to destroy the foundation of the former For if a desire of Baptism will serve men in stead of Baptism then those words of our Saviour Unless a man be born again of water c. are not to be understood literally and rigidly of external Baptism for a desire of Baptism is not Baptism and so your foundation of the absolute necessity of Baptism is destroyed And if you may gloss the Text so far as that men may be saved by the desire without Baptism it self because they cannot have it why should you not gloss it a little farther that there may be some hope of the salvation of unbaptized infants to whom it was more impossible to have a desire of Baptism than for the former to have the thing it self Lastly for your Sacrament of Confession we know none such nor any such absolute necessity of it They that confess their sins and forsake them shall find mercy though they confess them to God only and not to men They that confess them both to God and men if they do not effectually and in time forsake them shall not find mercy 3. Whereas you say that supposing these means once appointed as absolutely necessary to salvation there cannot but arise an obligation of procuring to have them you must suppose I hope that we know them to be so appointed and that it is in our power to procure them otherwise though it may be our ill fortune to fail of the end for want of the means certainly we cannot be obliged to procure them For the rule of the law is also the dictate of common reason and equity That no man can be obliged to what is impossible We can be obliged to nothing but by vertue of some command now it is impossible that God should command in earnest any thing which he knows to be impossible For to command in earnest is to command with an intent to be obeyed which is not possible he should do when he knows the thing commanded to be impossible Lastly whosoever is obliged to do any thing and does it not commits a fault but Infants commit no fault in not procuring to have Baptism therefore no obligation lies upon them to procure it 4. Whereas you say that if Protestants dissent from you in the point of the necessity of Baptism for Infants it cannot be denied but that our disagreement is in a point fundamental If you mean a point esteemed so by you this indeed cannot be denied But if you mean a point that indeed is fundamental this may certainly be denied for I deny it and say that it doth not appear to me any way necessary to Salvation to hold the truth or not to hold an error touching the condition of these Infants This is certain and we must believe that God will not deal unjustly with them but how in particular he will deal with them concerns not us and therefore we need not much regard it 5. Whereas you say the like of your Sacrament of Pennance you only say so but your proofs are wanting Lastly whereas you say This rigour ought not to seem strange or unjust in God but that we are rather to bless him for ordaining us to Salvation by any means I answer that it is true we are not to question the known will of God of injustice yet whether that which you pretend to be Gods will be so indeed or only your presumption this I hope may be questioned lawfully and without presumption and if we have occasion we may safely put you in mind of Ezekiel's commination against all those who say thus saith the Lord when they have no certain warrant or authority from him to do so 8. Ad § 4. In the fourth Paragraph you deliver this false and wicked Doctrin that for the procuring our own salvation we are always bound under pain of mortal sin to take the safest way but for avoiding sin we are not bound to do so but may follow the opinion
over all other Churches That the African Churches in S. Austins time should be ignorant that the Pope was Head of the Church and Judge of Appeals jure divino and that there was a necessity of Conformity with the Church in this and all other points of Doctrin Nay that the Popes themselves should be so ignorant of the true ground of this their Authority as to pretend to it not upon Scripture or universal Tradition but upon an imaginary pretended none-such Canon of the Council of Nice That Vincentius Lirinensis seeking for a guide of his Faith and a preservative from Heresie should be ignorant of this so ready one The Infallibility of the Church of Rome All these things and many more are very strange to me if the Infallibility of the Roman Church be indeed and were always by Christians acknowledged the foundation of our Faith And therefore I beseech you pardon me if I choose to build mine upon one that is much firmer and safer and lies open to none of these objections which is Scripture and universal Tradition and if one that is of this Faith may have leave to do so I will subscribe with hand and heart Your very loving and true Friend W. C. A TABLE OF Contents Note that the first Figure refers to the Chapter the other to the divisions of each Chapter A. PRotestants agree in more things than they differ in by believing the Scripture chap. 4. div 49.50 We have as many rational means of Agreement as the Papists c. 3.7 8. Papists pretend to means of agreement and do not agree c. 3.3 4 5 6. Not necessary to find a Church agreeing with Protestants in all points Ans pref 19. c. 5.27 Antiquity vainly pleaded for Romish Doctrins and Practices since many Errors are more ancient than some of their Doctrins c. 5.91 The Apostolick Church an Infallible Guide to which we may resort being present to us by her Writings c. 3.69 80. That the Church has power to make new Articles of Faith asserted by the Romish Doctors c. 4.18 This one Article I believe the Roman Catholick Church to be Infallible if their Doctrin were true would secure against heresie more than the whole Creed c. 4.77 78 79 83. Christs assistance promised to the Church to lead her into more than necessary truths c. 5.61 62. Atheism and irreligion springs easily from some Romish Doctrins and Practices Pref. 7 8. S. Austins saying Evangelio non crederem c. how to be understood c. 2.54 97 98 99. S. Austins Testimony against the Donatists not cogent against Protestants c. 2.163 S. Austins words No necessity to divide unity explained c. 5.10 The Authors vindication from suspition of Heresiâ— Pref. 28. The Authors motives to turn a Papist with answerâ— to them Pref. 42.43 B. The Bible which is the Religion of Protestants to be preferred before the way of Romish Religion shewed at large c. 6. from 56. to 72. Inclusive C. The Calvinists rigid Doctrin of Predetermination unjustly reproached by Papists who communicate with those that hold the same c. 7.30 To give a Catalogue of our Fundamentals not necessary nor possible Ans Pref. 27. c. 3.13 53. Want of such a Catalogue leaves us not uncertain in our Faith c. 3.14 Papists as much bound to give a Catalogue of the Churches proposals which are their Fundamentals and yet do it not c. 3.53 Our general Catalogue of Fundamentals as good as theirs c. 4.12 c. 7.35 Moral certainty a sufficient Foundation of Faith c. 2.154 A Protestant may have certainty though disagreeing Protestants all pretend to like certainty c. 7.13 What Charity Papists allow to us Protestants and we to them c. 1.1 3 4 5. A Charitable judgment should be made of such as err but lead good lives c. 7.33 Protestant Charity to Ignorant Papists no comfort to them that will not see their errors c. 5.76 The Church how furnished with means to determin Controversies c. 1.7 11. Commands in Scripture to hear the Church and obey it suppose it not infallible c. 3.41 We may be a true Church though deriving Ordination and receiving Scripture from a false one c. 6.54 Common truths believed may preserve them good that otherwise err c. 7.33 Conscience in some cases will justifie separation though every pretence of it will not c. 5.108 Concord in damned errors worse than disagreement in controverted points c. 5.72 The Consequences of mens Opinions may be unjustly charged upon them c. 1.12 c. 7.30 What Contradictions Papists believe who hold Transubstantiation c. 4.46 All Controversies in Religion not necessary to be determined c. 1.7 156. c. 3.88 How Controversies about Scripture it self are to be decided c. 2.27 Controversies not necessary to be decided by a Judicial sentence without any appeal c. 2.85 That the Creed contains all necessary points and how to be understood c. 4.23 73 74. Not necessary that our Creed should be larger than that of the Apostles c. 4.67 70 71 72. Whether it be contrary to the Creed to say the Church may fail c. 5.31 D. S Dennis of Alexandria's saying explained about not dividing the Church c. 5.12 To deny a Truth witnessed by God whether always damnable Ans Pref. 9. The Apostles depositing Truth with the Church no argument that she should always keep it sincere and intire c. 2.148 Of Disagreeing Protestants though one side must err yet both may hope for salvation Ans Pref. 22. c. 1.10 13 17. Two may disagree in a matter of faith and yet neither be chargeable with denying a declared Truth of Gods Ans Pref. 10. Differences among Protestants vainly objected against them c. 3.2 3 5. c. 5.72 No reason to reproach them for their differences about necessary Truths and damuable Errors c. 3.52 What is requisite to convince a man that a Doctrin comes from God Ans Pref. 8. Believing the Doctrin of Scripture a man may be saved though he did not believe it to be the word of God c. 2.159 The Donatists error about the Catholick Church what it was and was not c. 3.64 The Donatists case and ours not alike c. 5.103 The Roman Church guilty of the Donatists Error in perswading men as good not to be Christians as not Roman Catholicks c. 3.64 Papists liker to the Donatists than we by their uncharitable denying salvation out of their Church c. 7.21 22 27. E. English Divines vindicated from inclining to Popery and for want of skill in School-Divinity Pref. 19. How Errors may be damnable Ans Pref. 22. In what case Errors damnable may not damn those that hold them c. 5.58 c. 6.14 In what case Errors not damnable may be damnable to those that hold them c. 5.66 No man to be reproached for quitting his Errors c. 5.103 Though we may pardon the Roman Church for her Errors yet we may not sin with it c. 5.70 Errors of the Roman Church that endanger salvation to be forsaken though they are not destructive of it c. 7.6
heareth Christ and he that despiseth him despiseth Christ They urge out of John 14. ver 15 16. I will ask my Father and he will give you another Paraclete that he may abide with you for ever even the Spirit of Truth But here also what warrant have we by you to understand the Church of Rome whereas he that compares v. 26. with this shall easily perceive that our Saviour speaks only of the Apostles in their own persons for there he says going on in the same discourse The Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my name he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said to you which cannot agree but to the Apostles themselves in person and not to their Successors who had not yet been taught and therefore not forgotten any thing and therefore could not have them brought to their remembrance But what if it had been promised to them and their Successors had they no Successors but them of the Roman Church this indeed is pretended and cried up but for proofs of it desiderantur Again I would fain know whether there be any certainty that every Pope is a good Christian or whether he may not be in the sence of the Scripture of the World If not how was it that Bellarmine should have cause to think that such a rank of them went successively to the Devil III. A Conference concerning the Infallibility of the Roman Church Proving that the present Church of Rome either errs in her worshipping the Blessed Virgin Mary or that the Ancient Church did err in condemning the Collyridians as Hereticks 1. Demand WHether the Infallibility of the Roman Church be not the foundation of their Faith which are members of that Church Answ The Infallibility of the Church is not the foundation but a part of their Faith who are members of the Church And the Roman Church is held to be the Church by all those who are members of it Reply That which is the last Reason why you believe the Scripture to be the written Word of God and unwritten Traditions his unwritten word and this or that to be the true sense of Scripture that is to you the foundation of your Faith and such unto you is the Infallible Authority of the Roman Church Therefore unto you it is not only a part of your faith but also such a part as is the foundation of all other parts Therefore you are deceived if you think there is any more opposition between being a part of the faith and the foundation of other parts of it than there is between being a part of a house and the foundation of it But whether you will have it the foundation of your faith or only a part of it for the present purpose it is all one 2. Demand Whether the Infallibility of the Roman Church be not absolutely overthrown by proving the present Roman Church is in error or that the Ancient was Answ It is if the Error be in those things wherein she is affirmed to be infallible viz. in points of Faith Reply And this here spoken of whether it be lawful to offer Tapers and Incense to the honour of the Blessed Virgin is I hope a Question concerning a point of Faith 3. Demand Whether offering a Cake to the Virgin Mary be not as lawful as to offer Incense and Tapers and divers other oblations to the same Virgin Answ It is as lawful to offer a Cake to her honour as Wax-Tapers but neither the one nor the other may be offered to her or her honour as the term or object of the Action For to speak properly nothing is offered to her or to her honour but to God in the honour of the Blessed Virgin For Incense it is a foul slander that it is offered any way to the Blessed Virgin for that incensing which is used in the time of Mass is ever understood by all sorts of people to be directed to God only Reply If any thing be offered to her she is the Object of that oblation as if I see water and through water something else the water is the object of my sight though not the last object If I honour the Kings Deputy and by him the King the Deputy is the object of my action though not the final object And to say these things may be offered to her but not as to the object of the action is to say they may be offered to her but not to her For what else is meant by the object of an action but that thing on which the action is imployed and to which it is directed If you say that by the object of the action you mean the final object only wherewith the action is terminated you should then have spoken more properly and distinctly and not have denied her simply to be the object of this action when you mean only she is not such a kind of object no more than you may deny a man to be a living creature meaning only that he is not a horse Secondly I say it is not required of Roman Catholicks when they offer Tapers to the Saints that by an actual intention they direct their action actually to God but it is held sufficient that they know and believe that the Saints are in Subordination and near Relation to God and that they give this honour to the Saints because of this relation And to God himself rather habitually and interpretative than actually expresly and formally As many men honour the Kings Deputy without having any present thought of the King and yet their action may be interpreted an honour to the King being given to his Deputy only because he is his Deputy and for his relation to the King Thirdly I say there is no reason or ground in the world for any man to think that the Collyridians did not chuse the Virgin Mary for the object of their worship rather than any other Woman or any other Creature meerly for her relation to Christ and by consequence there is no ground to imagine but that at least habitually and interpretative they directed their action unto Christ if not actually and formally And Ergo if that be a sufficient defence for the Papists that they make not the Blessed Virgin the final object of their worship but worship her not for her own sake but for her relation unto Christ Epiphanius surely did ill to charge the Collyridians with Heresie having nothing to impute to them but only that he was informed that they offered a Cake to the honour of the Blessed Virgin which honour yet they might and without question did give unto her for her relation unto Christ and so made her not the last object and term of their worship and from hence it is evident that he conceived the very action it self substantially and intrinsically malitious i. e. he believed it a sin that they offered to her at all and so by their action put her in the
requiring men upon only probable and Prudential motives to yield a most certain assent unto things in humane reason impossible and telling them as you do too often that they were as good not believe at all as believe with any lower degree of Faith be not a likely way to make considering men scorn your Religion and consequently all if they know no other as requiring things contradictory and impossible to be performed Lastly Whether your pretence that there is no good ground to believe Scripture but your Churches infallibility joyn'd with your pretending no ground for this but some Texts of Scripture be not a fair way to make them that understand themselves believe neither Church nor Scripture 9. Your Calumnies against Protestants in general are set down in these words Chap. 2. § 2. The very doctrine of Protestants if it be followed closely and with coherence to it self must of necessity induce Socinianism This I say confidently and evidently prove by instancing in one Error which may well be termed the Capital and Mother-heresie from which all other must follow at ease I mean their Heresie in affirming that the perpetual visible Church of Christ descended by a never interrupted Succession from our Saviour to this day is not infallible in all that it proposeth to be believed as revealed truths For if the Infallibility of such a publick Authority be once impeached what remains but that every man is given over to his own wit and discourse and talk not here of holy Scripture for if the true Church may err in defining what Scriptures be Canonical or in delivering the sense and meaning thereof we are still devolved either upon the private Spirit a foolery now exploded out of England which finally leaving every man to his own conceits ends in Socinianism or else epon natural wit and judgment for examining and determining what Scriptures contain true or false Doctrine and in that respect ought to be received or rejected And indeed take away the authority of Gods Church no man can be assured that any one Book or parcel of Scripture was written by Divine Inspiration or that all the Contents are infallibly true which are the direct Errors of Socinians If it were but for this reason alone no man who regards the eternal salvation of his Soul would live or die in Protestancy from which so vast absurdities as these of the Socinians must inevitably follow And it ought to be an unspeakable comfort to all us Catholicks while we consider that none can deny the infallible authority of our Church but jointly he must be left to his own wit and ways and must abandon all infused Faith and true Religion if he do but understand himself aright In all which Discourse the only true word you speak is This I say confidently As for proving evidently that I believe you reserved for some other opportunity for the present I am sure you have been very sparing of it 10. You say indeed confidently enough that the denyal of the Churches infallibility is the Mother-heresie from which all other must follow at ease which is so far from being a necessary truth as you make it that it is indeed a manifest falshood Neither is it possible for the wit of man by any good or so much as probable consequence from the denialaof the Churches Infallibility to deduce any one of the ancient Heresies or any one Error of the Socinians which are the Heresies here entreated of For who would not laugh at him that should argue thus Neither the Church of Rome nor any other Church is infallible Ergo The Doctrine of Arrius Pelagius Eutyches Nestorius Photinus Manichaeus was true Doctrine On the other side it may be truly said and justified by very good and effectual reason that he that affirms with you the Popes Infallibility puts himself into his hands and power to be led by him at his ease and pleasure into all Heresie and even to Hell it self and cannot with reason say so long as he is constant to his grounds Domine cur it a facis Sir Why do you thus but must believe white to be black and black to be white vertue to be vice and vice to be vertue nay which is a horrible but a most certain truth Christ to be Antichrist and Antichrist to be Christ if it be possible for the Pope to say so Which I say and will maintain howsoever you daub and disguise it is indeed to make men apostate from Christ to his pretended Vicar but real Enemy For that name and no better if we may speak truth without offence I presume he deserves who under pretence of interpreting the Law of Christ which Authority without any word of express warrant he hath taken upon himself doth in many parts evacuate and dissolve it So dethroning Christ from his dominion over mens consciences and instead of Christ setting up himself In as much as he that requires that his Interpretations of any Law should be obeyed as true and genuine seem they to mens understandings never so dissonant and discordant from it as the Bishop of Rome does requires indeed that his Interpretations should be the Laws and he that is firmly prepared in mind to believe and receive all such Interpretations without judging of them and though to his private judgment they seem unreasonable is indeed congruously disposed to hold Adultery a venial sin and Fornication no sin whensoever the Pope and his adherents shall so declare And whatsoever he may plead yet either wittingly or ignorantly he makes the Law and the Law-maker both stales and obeys only the Interpreter As if I should submit to the Laws of the King of England but should indeed resolve to obey them in that sence which the King of France should put upon them whatsoever it were I presume every understanding man would say that I did indeed obey the King of France and not the King of England If I should pretend to believe the Bible but that I would understand it accordingly to the sense which the chief Mufty should put upon it who would not say that I were a Christian in pretence only but indeed a Mahumetan 11. Nor will it be to purpose for you to pretend that the precepts of Christ are so plain that it cannot be feared that any Pope should ever go about to dissolve them and pretend to be a Christian For not to say that you now pretend the contrary to wit that the Law of Christ is obscure even in things necessary to be believed and done and by saying so have made a fair way for any foul interpretation of any part of it certainly that which the Church of Rome hath already done in this kind is an evident argument that if she once had this Power unquestioned and made expedite and ready for use by being contracted to the Pope she may do what she pleaseth with it Who that had lived in the Primative Church would not have thought it as utterly improbable
Pictures That the Church hath Authority in determining Controversies of Faith and to interpret Scripture about Freewil Predestination Universal Grace That all our Works are not Sins Merit of good Works Inherent Justice Faith alone doth not justifie Charity to be preferred before knowledg Traditions Commandments possible to be kept That their thirty nine Articles are patient nay ambitious of some sence wherein they may seem Catholick That to Alledge the necessity of Wife and Children in these days is but a weak Plea for a Married Minister to compass a Benefice That Calvinism is at length accounted Heresie and little less than Treason That Men in Talk and Writing use willingly the once fearful Names of Priests and Altars That they are now put in mind that for exposition of Scripture they are by Canon bound to follow the Fathers which if they do with sincerity it is easie to tell what Doom will pass against Protestants seeing by the confession of Protestants the Fathers are on the Papists side which the Answerer to some so clearly demonstrated that they remained convinced In fine as the Samaritans saw in the Disciples countenances that they meant to go to Hierusalem so you pretend it is even legible in the Fore-heads of these Men that they are even going nay making hast to Rome Which scurrilous Libel void of all Truth Discretion and Honesty what effect it may have wrought what credit it may have gained with credulous Papists who dream what they desire and believe their own dreams or with ill-affected jealous and weak Protestants I cannot tell But one thing I dare boldly say that you your self did never believe it 21. The truth is they that run to extreams in opposition against you they that pull down your Infallibility and set up their own they that declaim against your Tyranny and exercise it themselves over others are the Adversaries that give you the greatest advantage and such as you love to deal with whereas upon Men of temper and moderation such as will oppose nothing because you maintain it but will draw as near to you that they may draw you to them as the Truth will suffer them such as require of Christians to believe only in Christ and will Damn no Man nor Doctrine without express and certain warrant from Gods Word upon such as these you know not how to fasten but if you chance to have conference with any such which yet as much as possibly you can you avoid and decline you are very speedily put to silence and see the indefensible weakness of your cause laid open to all Men. And this I verily believe is the true Reason that you thus rave and rage against them as foreseeing your time of prevailing or even of subsisting would be short if other adversaries gave you no more advantage than they do 22. In which perswasion also I am much confirmed by consideration of the Silliness and Poorness of those suggestions and partly of the apparent vanity and Falshood of them which you offer in justification of this wicked Calumny For what if out of Devotion towards God out of a desire that He should be Worshiped as in Spirit and Truth in the first place so also in the Beauty of Holiness what if out of fear that too much Simplicity and Nakedness in the publick Service of God may beget in the ordinary sort of Men a dull and stupid irreverence and out of hope that the outward State and Glory of it being well disposed and wisely moderated may ingender quicken encrease and nourish the inward reverence respect and devotion which is due unto Gods Sovereign Majesty and Power What if out of a persuasion and desire that Papists may be won over to us the sooner by the removing of this Scandal out of their way and out of an Holy Jealousie that the weaker sort of Protestants might be the easier seduced to them by the Magnificence and Pomp of their Church-service in case it were not removed I say what if out of these considerations the Governors of our Church more of late than formerly have set themselves to adorn and beautifie the places where Gods Honour dwells and to make them as Heavenly as they can with Earthly Ornaments Is this a sign that they are warping towards Popery Is this Devotion in the Church of England an argument that She is coming over to the Church of Rome Sir Edwin Sands I presume every Man will grant had no inclination that way yet He Forty Years since highly commended this part of Devotion in Papists and makes no scruple of proposing it to the imitation of Protestants little thinking that they who would follow his Counsel and endeavour to take away this disparagement of Protestants and this Glorying of Papists should have been censured for it as making way and inclining to Popery His Words to this purpose are excellent Words and because they shew plainly Survey of Religion that what is now practised was approved by Zealous Protestants so long ago I will here set them down 23. This one thing J cannot but highly commend in that sort and Order They spare nothing which either cost can perform in enriching or skill in adorning the Temple of God or to set out his Service with the greatest Pomp and magnificence that can be devised And although for the most part much Baseness and Childishness is predominant in the Masters and contrivers of their Ceremonies yet this outward State and Glory being well disposed doth ingender quicken increase and nourish the inward reverence respect and Devotion which is due unto Sovereign Majesty and Power And although I am not ignorant that many Men well reputed have embraced the thrifty Opinion of that Disciple who thought all to be wasted that was bestowed upon Christ in that sort and that it were much better bestowed upon him on the Poor yet with an eye perhaps that themselves would be his quarter Almoners notwithstanding I must confess it will never sink into my Heart that in proportion of Reason the allowance for furnishing out of the Service of God should be measured by the scant and strict rule of meer necessity a proportion so low that Nature to other most bountiful in matter of necessity hath not failed no not the most ignoble Creatures of the World and that for our selves no measure of heaping but the most we can get no rule of expence but to the utmost Pomp we lift Or that God himself had so inriched the lower parts of the World with such wonderfull varieties of Beauty and Glory thut they might serve only to the Pampering of Mortal Man in his Pride and that in the Service of the High Creator Lord and giver the outward Glory of whose higher Pallace may appear by the very Lamps that we see so far off Burning gloriously in it only the Simpler Baser Cheaper Less Noble Less Beautiful Less Glorious things should be imployed Especially seeing as in Princes Courts so in the Service
of God also this outward State and Glory being well disposed doth as I have said ingender quicken increase and nourish the inward reverence respect and Devotion which is due to so Sovereign Majesty and Power Which those whom the use thereof cannot persuade unto would easily by the want of it be brought to confess for which cause I crave leave to be excused by them herein if in Zeal to the common Lord of all I choose rather to commend the vertue of an Enemy than to flatter the vice and imbecility of a Friend And so much for this matter 24. Again what if the Names of the Priests and Altars so frequent in the Ancient Fathers though not in the now Popish sense be now resumed and more commonly used in England than of late times they were that so the colourable argument of their conformity which is but nominal with the Ancient Church and our inconformity which the Governors of the Church would not have so much as nominal may be taken away from them and the Church of England may be put in a State in this regard more justifiable against the Roman than formerly it was being hereby enabled to say to Papists whensoever these Names are objected we also use the Names of Priests and Altars and yet believe neither the Corporal Presence nor any Proper and propitiatory Sacrifice 25. What if Protestants be now put in mind that for exposition of Scripture they are bound by a Canon to follow the Ancient Fathers which whosoever doth with sincerity it is utterly impossible he should be a Papist And it is most falsly said by you that you know that to some Protestants I clcarly demonstrated or ever so much as undertook or wentabout to demonstrate the contrary What if the Centurists be censured somewhat roundly by a Protestant Divine for affirming that the keeping of the Lords day was a thing indifferent for two Hundren Years Is there in all this or any part of it any kind of proof of this scandalous Calumny 26. As for the points of Doctrine wherein you pretend that these Divines begin of late to falter and to comply with the Church of Rome upon a due examination of particulars it will presently appear First that part of them always have been and now are held constantly one way by them as the Authority of the Church in determining Controversies of Faith though not the Infallibility of it That there is Inherent Justice though so imperfect that it cannot justifie That there are Traditions though none necessary That Charity is to be preferred before knowledg That good Works are not properly meritorious And lastly that Faith alone justifies though that Faith justifies not which is alone And Secondly for the remainder that they every one of them have been Anciently without breach of Charity disputed among Protestants such for example were the Questions about the Popes being the Antichrist the Lawfulness of some kind of Prayers for the Dead the Estate of the Fathers Souls before Christs Ascension Freewil Predestination Universal Grace the Possibility of keeping Gods Commandments The use of Pictures in the Church Wherein that there hath been anciently diversity of opinion anongst Protestants it is justified to my hand by a witness with you beyond exception even your great Friend M. Brerely whose care exactness and fidelity you say in your Preface is so extraordinary great Consult him therefore Tract 3. Sect. 7. of his Apology And in the 9 10 11. 14. 24. 26. 27. 37. Subdivisions of that Section you shall see as in a mirror your self proved an egregious calumniator for charging Protestants with innovation and inclining to Popery under pretence forsooth that their Doctrine begins of late to be altered in these points Whereas M Brerely will inform you they have been anciently and even from the begininng of the Reformation controverted amongst them though perhaps the Stream and Current of their Doctors run one way and only some Brook or Rivulet of them the other 27. It remains now in the last place that I bring my self fairly off from your foul Aspersions that so my Person may not be any disparagement to the Cause nor any scandal to weak Christians 28. First upon Hearsay you charge me with a great number of false and impious Doctrines which I will not name in particular because I will not assist you so far in the spreading of my own undeserved defamation but whosoever teaches or holds them let him be Anathema The Summ of them all is this Nothing ought or can be certainly believed farther than it may be proved by evidence of Natural Reason where I conceive Natural reason it opposed to supernatural Revelation and whosoever holds so let him be Anathema And moreover to clear my self once for all from all imputations of this nature which charge me injuriously with denial of Supernatural Verities I profess sincerely that I believe all those Books of Scripture which the Church of England accounts Canonical to be the Infallible Word of God I believe all things evidently contained in them all things evidently or even probably deducible from them I acknowledge all that to be Heresie which by the Act of Parliament primo of Q. ELIZ. is declared to be so and only to be so And though in such points which may be held diversly of divers men salvâ Fidei compage I would not take any Mans Liberty from him and humbly beseech all men that they would not take mine from me Yet thus much I can say which I hope will satisfie any man of reason that whatsoever hath been held necessary to Salvation either by the Catholick Church of all ages or by the consent of Fathers measured by Vincentius Lyrinensis his rule or is held necessary either by the Catholick Church of this age or by the consent of Protestants or even by the Church of England that against the Socinians and all others whatsoever I do verily believe and embrace 29. But what are all Personal matters to the business in hand If it could be proved that Cardinal Bellarmine was indeed a Jew or that Cardinal Perron was an Atheist yet I presume you would not accept of this for an Answer to all their writings in defence of your Religion Let then my actions and intentions and opinions be what they will yet I hope truth is nevertheless Truth nor reason ever the less Reason because I speak it And therefore the Christian Reader knowing that his Salvation or Damnation depends upon his impartial and sincere judgment of these things will guard himself I hope from these Impostures and regard not the Person but the cause and the reasons of it not who speaks but what is spoken Which is all the favour I desire of him as knowing that I am desirous not to persuade him unless it be truth whereunto I persuade him 30. The last Accusation is That I answer out of Principles which Protestants themselves will profess to detest whch indeed were to the purpose
exception against a Physitian that himself was sometimes in and recovered himself from that Disease which he undertakes to cure or against a Guide in a way that at first before he had experience himself mistook it and afterwards found his error and amended it That noble writer Michael de Montai'gne was surely of a far different mind for he will hardly allow any Physitian competent but only for such Diseases as himself had passed through And a far greater than Montai'gne even he that said Tu conversus confirma fratres when thou art converted strengthen by Brethren gives us sufficiently to understand that they which have themselves been in such a state as to need Conversion are not thereby made incapable of but rather engaged and obliged unto and qualified for this Charitable Function 41. The Motives then hitherto not answered were these 42. I. Because perpetual visible profession which could never be wanting to the Religion of Christ nor any part of it is apparently wanting to Protestant Religion so far as concerns the points in contestation II. Because Luther and his followers separating from the Church of Rome separated also from all Churches pure or impure true or false then being in the world upon which ground I conclude that either Gods promises did fail of performance if there were then no Church in the World which held all things necessary and nothing repugnant to Salvation or else that Luther and his Sectaries separating from all Churches then in the World and so from the true if there were any true were damnable Schismaticks III. Because if any credit may be given to as credible records as any are extant the Doctrine of Catholicks hath been frequently confirmed and the opposite Doctrine of Protestants confounded with supernatural and Divine Miracles IV. Because many points of Protestant Doctrine are the damned Opinions of Hereticks condemned by the Primitive Church V. Because the Prophecies of the Old Testament touching the Couversion of Kings and Nations to the true Religion of Christ have been accomplished in and by the Catholick Roman Religion and the Professors of it and not by Protestant Religion and the Professors of it VI. Because the Doctrine of the Church of Rome is conformable and the Doctrine of Protestants contrary to the Doctrine of the Fathers of the Primitive Church even by the Confession of Protestants themselves I mean those Fathers who lived within the compass of the first 600. years to whom Protestants themselves do very frequently and very confidently appeal VII Because the first pretended Reformers had neither extraordinary Commission from God nor ordinary Mission from the Church to Preach Protestant Doctrine VIII Because Luther to Preach against the Mass which contains the most material points now in controversie was persuaded by reasons suggested to him by the Devil himself disputing with him So himself professeth in his Book de Missa Privata That all men might take heed of following him who professeth himself to follow the Devil IX Because the Protestant cause is now and hath been from the beginning maintained with grosse falsifications and Calumnies whereof their prime Controversie writers are notoriously and in high degree guilty X. Because by denying all humane Authority either of Pope or Councils or Church to determine Controversies of Faith they have abolished all possible means of suppressing Heresie or restoring Unity to the Church These are the Motives now my Answers to them follow briefly and in order 43. To the first God hath neither drecreed nor foretold that his true Doctrine should de facto be alwaies visibly professed without any mixture of falshood To the second God hath neither decreed nor foretold that there shall be alwaies a visible Company of Men free from all Error in it self Damnable Neither is it alwaies of necessity Schismatical to separate from the external Communion of a Church though wanting nothing necessary For if this Church supposed to want nothing necessary require me to profess against my Conscience that I believe some Error tho never so small and innocent which I do not believe and will not allow me Her Communion but upon this condition In this case the Church for requiring this condition is Schismatical and not I for separating from the Church To the third If any credit may be given to Records far more creditable than these the Doctrine of Protestants that is the Bible hath been confirmed and the Doctrine of Papists which is in many points plainly opposite to it confounded with Supernatural and Divine Miracles which for number and Glory out-shine Popish pretended Miracles as much as the Sun doth an Ignis fatuus those I mean which were wrought by our Saviour Christ and his Apostles Now this Book by the Confession of all sides confirmed by innumerous Miracles foretels me plainly that in after Ages great Signs and Wonders shall be wrought in confirmation of false Doctrine and that I am not to believe any Doctrine which seems to my understanding repugnant to the first though an Angel from Heaven should teach it which were certainly as great a Miracle as any that was ever wrought in attestation of any part of the Doctrine of the Church of Rome But that true Doctrine should in all Ages have the testimony of Miracles that I am no where taught So that I have more reason to suspect and be afraid of pretended Miracles as signs of false Doctrine then much to regard them as certain arguments of the truth Besides setting aside the Bible and the Tradition of it there is as good story for Miracles wrought by those who lived and died in opposition to the Doctrine of the Roman Church as by S. Cyprian Colmannus Columbanus Aidanus and others as there is for those that are pretended to be wrought by the Members of that Church Lastly it seems to me no strange thing that God in his Justice should permit some true Miracles to be wrought to delude them who have forged so many as apparently the Professors of the Roman Doctrine have to abuse the World To the Fourth All those were not a See this acknowledged by Bellar de Scrip Eccles in Philastrio by Petavius Animad in Epiph de inscrip operis By S. Austin Lib. de Haeres Haer. 80. Hereticks which by Philastrius Epiphanius or S. Austine were put in the Catalogue of Hereticks To the Fifth Kings and Nations have been and may be Converted by Men of contrary Religions To the Sixth The Doctrine of Papists is confessed by Papists contrary to the Fathers in many points To the Seventh The Pastors of a Church cannot but have Authority from it to Preach against the abuses of it whether in Doctrine or Practice if there be any in it Neither can any Christian want an ordinary commission from God to do a necessary work of Charity after a peacable manner when there is no body else that can or will do it In extraordinary cases extraordinary courses are not to be disallowed If some
Sacramentalibus doct 3. fol. 5. and he shall be fully satisfied that I have done you no injury For many of you hold the Popes Proposal Ex Cathedra to be sufficient and obliging Some a Council without a Pope Some of neither of them severally but only both together Some not this neither in matter of manners which Bellarmine acknowledges and tells us it is all one in effect as if they denyed it sufficient in matter of Faith Some not in matter of Faith neither think this Proposal Infallible without the acceptation of the Church Universal Some deny the Infallibility of the Present Church and only make the Tradition of all Ages the Infallible Propounder Yet if you were agreed what and what only is the Infallible Propounder this would not satisfie us nor yet to say that All is Fundamental which is propounded sufficiently by him For though agreeing in this yet you might still disagree whether such or such a Doctrine were propounded or not or if propounded whether sufficiently or only insufficiently And it is so known a thing that in many points you do so that I assure my self you will not deny it Therefore we constantly urge and require a particular and perfect Inventory of all these Divine Revelations which you say are sufficiently propounded and that such a one to which all of your Church will subscribe as neither redundant nor deficient which when you give in with one hand you shall receive a particular Catalogue of such Points as I call Fundamental with the other Neither may you think me unreasonable in this demand seeing upon such a particular Catalogue of your sufficient Proposals as much depends as upon a particular Catalogue of our Fundamentals As for example Whether or no a man do not Err in some point defined and sufficiently proposed and whether or no those that differ among you differ in Fundamentals which if they do One Heaven by your own Rule cannot receive them All. Perhaps you will here complain that this is not to satisfie your demand but to avoid it and to put you off as the Areopagites did hard Causes ad diem longissimum and bid you come again a Hundred Years hence To deal truly I did so intend it should be Neither can you say my dealing with you is injurious seeing I require nothing of you but that what you require of others you should shew it possible to be done and just and necessary to be required For for my part I have great reason to suspect it is neither the one nor the other For whereas the Verities which are delivered in Scripture may be very fitly divided into such as were written because they were necessary to be believed Of which rank are those only which constitute and make up the Covenant between God and Man in Christ and then such as are necessary to be believed not in themselves but only by accident because they were written Of which rank are many matters of History of Prophecy of Mystery of Policy of Oeconomy and such like which are evidently not intrinsecal to the Covenant Now to sever exactly and punctally these Verities one from the other what is necessary in it self and antecedently to the writing from what is but only profitable in it self and necessary only because written is a business of extream great difficulty and extream little necessity For first he that will go about to distinguish especially in the story of our Saviour what was written because it was profitable from what was written because necessary shall find an intricate peice of business of it and almost impossible that he should be certain he hath done it when he hath done it And then it is apparently unnecessary to go about it seeing he that believes all certainly believes all that is necessary And he that doth not believe all I mean all the undoubted parts of the undoubted Books of Scripture can hardly believe any neither have we reason to believe he doth so So that that Protestants give you not a Catalogue of Fundamentals it is not from Tergiversation as you suspect who for want of Charity to them always suspect the worst but from Wisdom and Necessity For they may very easily Err in doing it because though all which is necessary be plain in Scripture yet all which is plain is not therefore written because it was necessary For what greater necessity was there that I should know S. Paul left his Cloak at Troas than those Worlds of Miracles which our Saviour did which were never written And when they had done it it had been to no purpose There being as matters now stand as great necessity of believing those truths of Scripture which are not Fundamental as those that are You see then what reason we have to decline this hard labour which you a rigid Task-master have here put upon us Yet instead of giving you a Catalogue of Fundamentals with which I dare say you are resolved before it come never to be satisfied I will say that to you which if you please may do you as much service and this it is That it is sufficient for any Mans Salvation that he believe the Scripture That he endeavour to believe it in the true sense of it as far as concerns his Duty And that he conform his Life unto it either by Obedience or Repentance He that does so and all Protestants according to the Doctamen of their Religion should do so may be secure that he cannot Err Fundamentally And they that do so cannot differ in Fundamentals So that notwithstanding their differences and your presumption the same Heaven may receive them All. 28. Ad 20. § Your Tenth and last request is to know distinctly what is the Doctrine of the Protestant English Church in these points and what my private Opinion Which shall be satisfied when the Church of England hath expressed her self in them or when you have told us what is the Doctrine of your Church in the Question of Predetermination or the Immaculate Conception 29. Ad 21. and 22. § These answers I hope in the judgment of indifferent men are satisfactory to your Questions though not to you For I have either answered them or given you a reason why I have not Neither for ought I can see have I flitted from things considered in their own nature to accidental or rare Circumstances But told you my Opinion plainly what I thought of your Errors in themselves and what as they were qualified or malignified with good or bad Circumstances CHAP. I. The ANSWER to the First CHAPTER Shewing that the Adversary grants the Old Question and proposeth a New one And that there is no reason why among Men of different Opinions and Communions one Side only can be saved 1. AD 1. § Protestants are here accused of uncharitableness while they accuse you of it and you make good this charge in this manner Protestants charge the Roman Church with many and great Errors judge reconciliation of their
cannot but be rebated and lessened by my diffidence in the Relator 9. Yet all this I say not as if I doubted that the Spirit of God being implored by devout and humble Prayer and sincere obedience may and will by degrees advance his servants higher and give them a certainty of adherence beyond their certainty of evidence But what God gives as a reward to believers is one thing and what he requires of all men as their duty is another and whathe will accept of out of grace and favour is yet another To those that believe and live according to their Faith he gives by degrees the spirit of obsignation and confirmation which makes them know though how they know not what they did but believe And to be as fully and resolutely assured of the Gospel of Christ as those which heard it from Christ himself with their Ears which saw it with their Eyes which looked upon it and whose hands handled the Word of Life He requires of all that their Faith should be as I have said proportionable to the motives and Reasons enforcing to it he will accept of the weakest and lowest degree of Faith if it be living and effectual unto true obedience For he it is that will not quench the smoaking Flax nor break the bruised Reed He did not reject the Prayer of that distressed man that cried unto him Lord I believe Lord help my unbelief He commands us to receive them that are weak in Faith and thereby declares that he receives them And as nothing avails with him but Faith wich worketh by love So any Faith if it be but as a grain of Mustard seed if it work by love shall certainly avail with him and be accepted of him Some experience makes me fear that the Faith of considering and discoursing men is like to be crackt with too much straining And that being possessed with this false Principle that it is in vain to believe the Gospel of Christ with such a kind or degree of assent as they yield to other matters of Tradition And finding that their Faith of it is to them undiscernable from the belief they give to the truth of other Stories are in danger either not to believe at all thinking not at all as good as to no purpose or else though indeed they do believe it yet to think they do not and to cast themselves into wretched agonies and perplexities as fearing they have not that without which it is impossible to please God and obtain Eternal happiness Consideration of this advantage which the Devil probably may make of this Phansie made me willing to insist somewhat largely upon the Refutation of it 10. I return now thither from whence I have digressed and assure you concerning the grounds afore-laid which were that there is a Rule of Faith whereby controversies may be decided which are necessary to be decided and that this rule is Universally infallible That notwithstanding any Opinion I hold touching Faith or any thing else I may and do believe them as firmly as you pretend to do And therefore you may build on in Gods name for by Gods help I shall always embrace whatsoever structure is naturally and rationally laid upon them whatsoever conclusion may to my understanding be evidently deduced from them You say out of them it undeniably follows That of two disagreeing in matter of Faith the one cannot be saved but by Repentance or Ignorance I answer by distinction of those terms two dissenting in a matter of Faith For it may be either in a thing which is indeed a matter of Faith in the strictest sense that is something the Belief whereof God requires under pain of damnation And so the conclusion is true though the Consequence of it from your former premisses either is none at all or so obscure that I can hardly discern it Or it may be as it oftens falls out concerning a thing which being indeed no matter of Faith is yet overvalued by the Parties at variance and esteemed to be so And in this sense it is neither consequent nor true The untruth of it I have already declared in my examination of your Preface The inconsequence of it is of it self evident for who ever heard of a wilder Collection than this God hath provided means sufficient to decide all Controversies in Religion necessary to be decided This means is Universally infallible Therefore of two that differ in any thing which they esteem a matter of Faith one cannot be saved He that can find any connection between these Propositions I believe will be able to find good coherence between the Deaf Plantiff's Accusation in the Greek Epigram and the Deaf Defendants Answer and the Deaf Judges Sentence And to contrive them all into a formal Categorical Syllogism 11. Indeed if the matter in agitation were plainly decided by this infallible means of deciding Controversies and the Parties in variance knew it to be so and yet would stand out in their dissention this were in one of them direct opposition to the Testimony of God and undoubtedly a damnable sin But if you take the liberty to suppose what you please you may very easily conclude what you list For who is so foolish as to grant you these unreasonable Postulates that every emergent Controversie of Faith is plainly decided by the means of dicision which God hath appointed and that of the Parties litigant one is always such a convicted Recusant as you pretend Certainly if you say so having no better warrant than you have or can have for it this is more proper and formal uncharitableness than ever was charged upon you Methinks with much more Reason and much more Charity you might suppose that many of these Controversies which are now disputed among Christians all which profess themselves lovers of Christ and truly desirous to know his Will and do it are either not decidable by that means which God hath provided and so not necessary to be decided Or if they be yet not so plainly and evidently as to oblige all men to hold one way or Lastly if decidable and evidently decided yet you may hope that the erring part by reason of some Vail before his Eyes some excusable ignorance or unavoidable prejudice does not see the Question to be decided against him and so opposes not that which He doth know to be the word of God but only that which You know to be so and which he might know were he void of prejudice Which is a fault I confess but a fault which is incident even to good and honest men very often and not of such a gigantick disposition as you make it to fly directly upon God Almighty and to give him the Lie to his Face 12. Ad 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16. § In all this long discourse you only tell us what you will do but do nothing but reserve them to the Chapters following and there they shall be examined The Sum of all collected by
knoweth no Man but the Spirit of Man which is in him And who are you to take upon you to make us believe that we do not believe what we know we do But if I may think verily that I believe the Scripture and yet not believe it how know you that you believe the Roman Church I am as verily and as strongly persuaded that I believe the Scripture as you are that you believe the Church And if I may be deceived why may not you Again what more ridiculous and against sense and experience than to affirm That there are not Millions amongst you and us that believe upon no other reason than their Education and the authority of their Parents and Teachers and the Opinion they have of them The tenderness of the subject and aptness to receive impressions supplying the defect and imperfection of the Agent And will you proscribe from Heaven all those believers of your own Creed who do indeed lay the Foundation of their Faith for I cannot call it by any other name no deeper than upon the Authority of their Father or Master or Parish Priest Certainly if these have no true Faith your Church is very full of Infidels Suppose Xaverius by the Holiness of his Life had converted some Indians to Christianity who could for so I will suppose have no knowledge of your Church but from him and therefore must last of all build their Faith of the Church upon their Opinion of Xaverius Do these remain as very Pagans after their Conversion as they were before Are they brought to assent in their Souls and obey in their Lives the Gospel of Christ only to be Tantalized and not saved and not benefited but deluded by it because forsooth it is a man and not the Church that begets Faith in them What if their motive to believe be not in reason sufficient Do they therefore not believe what they do believe because they do it upon sufficient motives They choose the Faith imprudently parhaps but yet they do choose it Unless you will have us believe that that which is done is not done because it is not done upon good reason which is to say that never any man living ever did a foolish action But yet I know not why the Authority of one Holy Man which apparently has no ends upon me joyned with the goodness of the Christian Faith might not be a far greater and more rational motive to me to embrace Christianity than any I can have to continue in Paganism And therefore for shame if not for Love of Truth you must recant this fancy when you write again and suffer true Faith to be many times where your Churches Infallibility has no hand in the begetting of it And be content to tell us hereafter that we believe not enough and not go about to persuade us we believe nothing for fear with telling us what we know to be manifestly false you should gain only this Not to be believed when you speak truth Some pretty Sophisms you may happily bring us to make us believe we believe nothing but Wise men know that Reason against Experience is alwaies Sophistical And therefore as he that could not answer Zeno's subtilties against the existence of Motion could yet confute them by doing that which he pretended could not be done So if you should give me a hundred Arguments to persuade me because I do not believe Transubstantiation I do not believe in God and the Knots of them I could not unty yet I should cut them in pieces with doing that and knowing that I do so which you pretend I cannot do 53. It is superfluous for you to prove out of S. Athanasius and Austine that we must receive the sacred Canon upon the credit of Gods Church Understanding by Church as here you explain your self The Credit of Tradition And that not the Tradition of the Present Church which we pretend may deviate from the Ancient but such a Tradidition which involves an evidence of Fact and from Hand to Hand from Age to Age bringing us up to the times and Persons of the Apostles and our Saviour Himself commeth to be confirmed by all these Miracles and other Arguments whereby they convinced their Doctrine to be true Thus you Now prove the Canon of Scripture which you receive by such Tradition and we will allow it Prove your whole Doctrine or the Infallibility of your Church by such a Tradition and we will yield to you in all things Take the alledged places of S. Athanasius and S. Austin in this sense which is your own and they will not press us any thing at all We will say with Athanasius That only four Gospels are to be received because the Canons of the Holy and Catholick Church understand of all Ages since the perfection of the Canon have so determined 54. We will subscribe to S. Austin and say That we also would not believe the Gospel unless the Authority of the Catholick Church did move us meaning by the Church the Church of all Ages and that succession of Christians which takes in Christ himself and his Apostles Neither would Zwinglius have needed to cry out upon this saying had he conceived as you now do that by the Catholick Church the Church of all Ages fince Christ was to be understood As for the Council of Carthage it may speak not of such Books only as were certainly Canonical and for the regulating of Faith but also of those which were only profitable and lawful to be read in the Church Which in England is a very slender Argument that the Book is Canonical where every body knows that Apocryphal Books are read as well as Canonical But howsoever if you understand by Fathers not only their immediate Fathers and Predecessors in the Gospel but the succession of them from the Apostles they are right in the Thesis that whatsoever is received from these Fathers as Canonical is to be so esteemed Though in the application of it to this or that particular Book they may happily Err and think that Book received as Canonical which was only received as Profitable to be read and think that Book received alwaies and by all which was rejected by some and doubted of by many 55. But we cannot be certain in what Language the Scriptures remain uncorrupted I HIL Not so certain I grant as of that which we can demonstrate But certain enough morally certain as certain as the nature of the thing will bear So certain we may be and God requires no more We may be as certain as S. Austin was who in his second Book of Baptism against the Donatists c. 3. plainly implies the Scripture might possibly be corrupted He means sure in matters of little moment such as concertain not the Covenant between God and Man But thus he saith The same S. Austin in his 48. Epist clearly intimates a Neque enim sic posuit integritas atque notitia literarum quamlibet illustris Episcopi
true Priest he cannot possibly escape damnation Such a man for his comfort you tell first you that will have mens Salvation depend upon no uncertainties that though he verily believe that his sorrow for sins is a true sorrow and his purpose of amendment a true purpose yet he may deceive himself perhaps it is not and if it be not he must be damned Yet you bid him hope well But Spes est rei incertae nomen You tell him secondly that though the party he confesses to seem to be a true Priest yet for ought he knows or for ought himself knows by reason of some secret undiscernable invalidity in his Baptism or Ordination he may be none and if he be none he can do nothing This is a hard saying but this is not the worst You tell him thirdly that he may may be in such a state that he cannot or if he can that he will not give the Sacrament with due Intention and if he does not all 's in vain Put case a man by these considerations should be cast into some agonies what advice what comfort would you give him Verily I know not what you could say to him but this that first for the Qualification required on his part he might know that he desired to have true sorrow and that that is sufficient But then if he should ask you why he might not know his sorrow to be a true sorrow as well as his desire to be sorrowful to be a true desire I believe you would be put to silence Then secondly to quiet his fears concerning the Priest and his intention you should tell him by my advice that Gods goodness which will not suffer him to damn men for not doing better than their best will supply all such defects as to humane endeavours were unavoidable And therefore though his Priest were indeed no Priest yet to him he should be as if he were one and if he gave Absolution without Intention yet in doing so he should hurt himself only and not his penitent This were some comfort indeed and this were to settle mens Salvation upon reasonable certain grounds But this I fear you will never say for this were to reverse many Doctrines established by your Church and besides to degrade your Priesthood from a great part of their honour by lessening the strict necessity of the Laities dependance upon them For it were to say that the Priests Intention is not necessary to the obtaining of absolution which is to say that it is not in the Parsons power to damn whom he will in his Parish because by this Rule God should supply the defect which his malice had caused And besides it were to say that Infants dying without Baptism might be saved God supplying the want of Baptism which to them is unavoidable But beyond all this it were to put into my mouth a full and satisfying answer to your Argument which I am now returning so that in answering my objection you should answer your own For then I should tell you that it were altogether as abhorrent from the goodness of God and as repugnant to it to suffer an ignorant Lay-mans Soul to perish meerly for being misled by an undiscernable false Translation which yet was commended to him by the Church which being of necessity to credit some in this matter he had reason to rely upon either above all other or as much as any other as it is to damn a penitent sinner for a secret defect in that desired Absolution which his Gostly Father perhaps was an Atheist and could not give him or was a villiain and would not This answer therefore which alone would serve to comfort your penitent in his perplexities and to assure him that he cannot fail of Salvation if he will not for fear of inconveniencies you must forbear And seeing you must I hope you will come down from the Pulpit and Preach no more against others for making mens Salvation depend upon fallible and uncertain grounds lest by judging others you make your selves and your own Church inexcusable who are strongly guilty of this fault above all the men and Churches of the World whereof I have already given you two very pregnant demonstrations drawn from your presumptions tying God and Salvation to your Sacraments And the efficacy of them to your Priests Qualifications and Intentions 69. Your making the Salvation of Infants depend on Baptism a Casual thing and in the power of man to confer or not confer would yield me a Third of the same nature And your suspending the same on the Baptizers intention a Fourth And lastly your making the Real presence of Christ in the Eucharist depend upon the casualties of the Consecrators true Priesthood and Intention and yet commanding men to believe it for certain that he is present and to adore the Sacrament which according to your Doctrine for ought they can possibly know may be nothing else but a piece of Bread so exposing them to the danger of Idolatry and consequently of Damnation doth offer me a Fisth demonstration of the same conclusion if I thought fit to insist upon them But I have no mind to draw any more out of this Fountain neither do I think it Charity to cloy the Reader with uniformity when the Subject affords variety 70. Sixthly therefore I return it thus The Faith of Papists relies alone upon their Churches infallibility That there is any Church infallible and that theirs is it they pretend not to believe but only upon prudential motives Dependance upon prudential motives they confess to be obnoxious to a possibility of erring What then remaineth but Truth Faith Salvation and all must in them rely upon a fallible and uncertain ground 71. Seventhly The Faith of Papists relies upon the Church alone The Doctrine of the Church is delivered to most of them by their Parish Priest or Ghostly Father or at least by a company of Priests who for the most part sure are men and not Angels in whom nothing is more certain than a most certain possibility to Err. What then remaineth but that Truth Faith Salvation and all must in them rely upon a fallible and uncertain ground 72. Eighthly thus It is apparent and undeniable that many Thousands there are who believe your Religion upon no better grounds than a man may have for the belief almost of any Religion As some believe it because their Forefathers did so and they were good People Some because they were Christened and brought up in it Some because it is the Religion of their Country where all other Religions are persecuted and profcribed Some because Protestants cannot shew a perpetual succession of Professors of all their Doctrine Some because the service of your Church is more stately and pompous and magnificent Some because they find comfort in it Some because your Religion is farther spread and hath more Professors of it than the Religion of Protestants Some because your Priests compass Sea and Land to gain
Testament I believed by Fame strengthened with Celebrity and Consent even of those which in other things are at infinite variance one with another and lastly by Antiquity which gives an Universal and a constant attestation to them But every one may see that you so few in comparison of all those upon whose consent we ground our belief of Scripture so turbulent that you damn all to the Fire and to Hell that any way differ from you that you profess it is lawful for you to use violence and power whensoever you can have it for the planting of your own Doctrine and the extirpation of the contrary lastly so new in many of your Doctrines as in the lawfulness and expedience of debarring the Laity the Sacramental Cup the lawfulness and expedience of your Latine Service Transubstantiation Indulgences Purgatory the Popes infallibility his Authority over Kings c so new I say in comparison of the undoubted Books of Scripture which evidently containeth or rather is our Religion and the sole and adequate object of our Faith I say every one may see that you so few so turbulent so new can produce nothing deserving authority with wise and considerate men What madness is this Believe them the consent of Christians which are now and have been ever since Christ in the World that we ought to believe Christ but learn of us what Christ said which contradict and damn all other parts of Christendom Why I beseech you Surely if they were not at all and could not teach me any thing I would more easily persuade my self that I were not to believe in Christ than that I should learn any thing concerning him from any other than them by whom I believed him at least than that I should learn what his Religion was from you who have wronged so exceedingly his Miracles and his Doctrine by forging so evidently so many false Miracles for the Confirmation of your new Doctrine which might give us just occasion had we no other assurance of them but your Authority to suspect the true ones Who with forging so many false Stories and false Authors have taken a fair way to make the Faith of all Stories questionable if we had no other ground for our belief of them but your Authority who have brought in Doctrines plainly and directly contrary to that which you confess to be the Word of Christ and which for the most part make either for the honour or profit of the Teachers of them which if there were no difference between the Christian and the Roman Church would be very apt to make suspicious men believe that Christian Religion was a humane invention taught by some cunning Impostors only to make themselves rich and powerful who make a profession of corrupting all sorts of Authors a ready course to make it justly questionable whether any remain uncorrupted For if you take this Authority upon you upon the six Ages last past how shall we know that the Church of that time did not Usurp the same Authority upon the Authors of the six last Ages before them and so upwards until we come to Christ himself Whose questioned Doctrines none of them came from the Fountain of Apostolick Tradition but have insinuated themselves into the Streams by little and little some in one Age and some in another some more Anciently some more lately and some yet are Embrio's yet hatching and in the Shell as the Popes Infallibility the Blessed Virgins immaculate conception the Popes power over the Temporalities of Kings the Doctrine of Predetermination c. all which yet are or in time may be imposed upon Christians under the Title of Original and Apostolick Tradition and that with that necessity that they are told they were as good believe nothing at all as not believe these things to have come from the Apostles which they know to have been brought in but yesterday which whether it be not a ready and likely way to make men conclude thus with themselves I am told that I were as good believe nothing at all as believe some points which the Church teaches me and not others and some things which she teaches to be Ancient and Certain I plainly see to be New and False therefore I will believe nothing at all Whether I say the foresaid grounds be not a ready and likely way to make men conclude thus and whether this conclusion be not too often made in Italy and Spain and France and in England too I leave it to the judgment of those that have Wisdom and Experience Seeing therefore the Roman Church is so far from being a sufficient Foundation for our belief in Christ that it is in sundry regards a dangerous temptation against it why should I not much rather conclude Seeing we receive not the knowledg of Christ and Scriptures from the Church of Rome neither from her must we take his Doctrine or the Interpretation of Scripture 102. Ad § 19. In this number this Argument is contained The Judge of Controversies ought to be intelligible to learned and unlearned The Scripture is not so and the Church is so Therefore the Church is the Judge and not the Scripture 103. To this I answer As to be understandible is a condition requisite to a Judge so is not that alone sufficient to make a Judge otherwise you might make your self Judge of Controversies by arguing The Scripture is not intelligible by all but I am therefore I am Judge of Controversies If you say your intent was to conclude against the Scripture and not for the Church I demand why then but to delude the simple with Sopistry did you say in the close of this § Such is the Church and the Scripture is not such but that you would leave it to them to infer in the end which indeed was more than you undertook in the beginning Therefore the Church is Judge and the Scripture not I say Secondly that you still run upon a false supposition that God hath appointed some Judge of all Controversies that may happen among Christians about the sense of obscure Texts of Scripture whereas he has left every one to his liberty herein in those words of S. Paul Quisque abundet in sensu suo c. I say Thirdly Whereas some Protestants make the Scripture Judge of Controversies that they have the Authority of Fathers to warrant their manner of speaking as of * Contra Parmen l. 5. in Prin. Optatus 104. But speaking truly and properly the Scripture is not a Judge nor cannot be but only a sufficient Rule for those to judge by that believe it to be the word of God as the Church of England and the Church of Rome both do what they are to believe and what they are not to believe I say sufficiently perfect and sufficiently intellible in things necessary to all that have understanding whether they be learned or unlearned And my reason hereof is convincing and demonstrative because nothing is necessary to be believed
23. The next § argues thus For many Ages there was no Scripture in the World and for many more there was none in many places of the World yet men wanted not then and there some certain direction what to believe Therefore there was then an Infallible Judge Just as if I should say York is not my way from Oxford to London therefore Bristol is Or a Dog is not a Horse therefore he is a Man As if God had no other ways of revealing himself to men but only by Scripture and an infallible Church * See Chrysost Hom. 1. in Mat. Isidor Pelus l. 3. ep 106. and also Basil in Ps 28. and then you shall confess that by other means besides these God did communicate himself unto men and made them receive and understand his Laws see also to the same purpose Heb. 1.1 S. Chrysostome and Isidorus Pelusiota conceived he might use other means And S. Paul telleth us that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 might be known by his Works and that they had the Law written in their Hearts Either of these ways might make some faithful men without either necessity of Scripture or Church 124. But D. Potter says you say In the Jewish Church there was a living Judge indowed with an absolute infallible direction in cases of moment as all points belonging to Divine Faith are And where was that infallible direction in the Jewish Church when they should have received Christ for their Messias and refused him Or perhaps this was not a case of moment D. Potter indeed might say very well not that the high Priest was infallible for certainly he was not but that his determination was to be of necessity obeyed though for the justice of it there was no necessity that it should be believed Besides it is one thing to say that the living judge in the Jewish Church had an infallible direction another that he was necessitated to follow this direction This is the priviledge which you challenge But it is that not this which the Doctor attributes to the Jews As a man may truly say the Wise men had an infallible direction to Christ without saying or thinking that they were constrained to follow it and could not do otherwise 125. But either the Church retains still her infallibility or it was devested of it upon the receiving of Holy Scripture which is absurd An Argument methinks like this Either you have Horns or you have lost them but you never lost them therefore you have them still If you say you never had Horns so say I for ought appears by your reasons the Church never had infallibility 126. But some Scriptures were received in some places and not in others therefore if Scriptures were the Judge of Controversies some Churches had one Judge and some another And what great inconvenience is there in that that one part of England should have one Judge and another another especially seeing the Books of Scripture which were received by those that received fewest had as much of the Doctrine of Christianity in them as they all had which were received by any all the necessary parts of the Gospel being contained in every one of the four Gospels as I have proved So that they which had all the Books of the New Testament had nothing superfluous For it was not superfluous but profitable that the same thing should be said divers times and be testified by divers witnesses And they that had but one of the four Gospels wanted nothing necessary and therefore it is vainly inferred by you that with Months and Years as new Canonical Scriptures grew to be published the Church altered her rule of Faith and judge of Controversies 127. Heresies you say would arise after the Apostles time and after the writing of Scriptures These cannot be discovered condemned and avoided unless the Church be Infallible Therefore there must be a Church infallible But I pray tell me Why cannot Heresies be sufficiently discovered condemned avoided by them which believe Scripture to be the rule of Faith If Scripture be sufficient to inform us what is the Faith it must of necessity be also sufficient to teach us what is Heresie seeing Heresie is nothing but a manifest deviation from and an opposition to the Faith That which is straight will plainly teach us what is crooked and one contrary cannot but manifest the other If any one should deny that there is a God That this God is omnipotent omniscient good just true merciful a rewarder of them that seek him a punisher of them that obstinately offend him that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Saviour of the World that it is he by obedience to whom men must look to be saved If any man should deny either his Birth or Passion or Resurrection or Ascension or sitting at the right Hand of God his having all Power given him in Heaven and Earth That it is he whom God hath appointed to be Judge of the Quick and the Dead that all men shall Rise again at the last Day That they which believe and repent shall be saved That they which do not believe or repent shall be damned If a man should hold that either the keeping of the Mosaical Law is necessary to Salvation or that good works are not necessary to Salvation In a word if any man should obstinatly contradict the truth of any thing plainly delivered in Scripture who does not see that every one which believes the Scripture hath a sufficient means to discover and condemn and avoid that Heresie without any need of an infallible guide If you say that the obscure places of Scripture contain matters of Faith I answer that it is a matter of Faith to believe that the sense of them whatsoever it is which was intended by God is true for he that does not do so calls Gods Truth into question But to believe this or that to be the true sense of them or to believe the true sense of them and to avoid the false is not necessary either to Faith or Salvation For if God would have had his meaning in these places certainly known how could it stand with his wisdom to be so wanting to his own will and end as to speak obscurely or how can it consist with his Justice to require of men to know certainly the meaning of those words which he himself hath not revealed Suppose there were an absolute Monarch that in his own absense from one of his Kingdoms had written Laws for the Government of it some very plainly and some very ambiguously and obscurely and his Suctjects should keep those that were plainly written with all exactness and for those that were obscure use their best diligence to find his meaning in them and obey them according to the sense of them which they conceived should this King either with justice or wisdom be offended with these Subjects if by reason of the obscurity of them they mistook the sense of them and
a crime is common to us with you as I have proved above and the difference is not that we are choosers and you not choosers but that we as we conceive choose wisely but you being wilfully blind choose to follow those that are so too not remembring what our Saviour hath told you when the Blind lead the Blind both shall fall into the Ditch But then again I must tell you you have done ill to confound together Judges and infallible Judges unless you will say either that we have no Judges in our Courts of Civil judicature or that they are all Infallible 154. Thus have we cast off your dilemma and broken both the Horns of it But now my retortion lies heavy upon you and will not be turned off For first you content not your selves with a moral certainty of the things you believe nor with such a degree of assurance of them as is sufficient to produce obedience to the condition of the new Covenant which is all that we require Gods Spirit if he please may Work more and certainty of adherence beyond a certainty of evidence But neither God doth nor man may require of us as our Duty to give a greater assent to the conclusion than the premises deserve to build an infallible Faith upon Motives that are only highly credible and not infallible as it were a great and heavy building upon a Foundation that hath not strength proportionable But though God require not of us such unreasonable things You do and tell men they cannot be saved unless they believe your Proposals with an infallible Faith To which end they must believe also your Propounder your Church to be simply Infallible Now how is it possible for them to give a rational assent to the Churches infallibility unless they have some infallible means to know that she is infallible Neither can they infallibly know the infallibility of this means but by some other and so on for ever unless they can dig so deep as to come at length to the Rock that is to settle all upon something evident of it self which is not so much as pretended But the last resolution of all is into Motives which indeed upon examination will scarce appear probable but are not so much as avouched to be any more than very credible For example if I ask you why you do believe Transubstantiation What can you answer but because it is a Revelation of the prime Verity I demand again how can you assure your self or me of that being ready to embrace it if it may appear to be so And what can you say but that you know it to be so because the Church says so which is Infallible If I ask what mean You by your Church You can tell me nothing but the Company of Christians which adhere to the Pope I demand then lastly Why should I believe this Company to be the Infallible Propounder of Divine Revelation And then you tell me that there are many Motives to induce a Man to this belief But are these Motives lastly infallible No say you but very credible Well let them pass for such because now we have not leisure to examine them Yet methinks seeing the Motives to believe the Churches infallibility are only very credible it should also be but as credible that your Church is Infallible and as credible and no more perhaps somewhat less that her Proposals particularly Transubstantiation are Divine Revelations And methinks You should require only a Moral and Modest assent to them and not a Divine as you call it and Infallible Faith But then of these Motives to the Churches Infallibility I hope you will give us leave to consider and judge whether they be indeed Motives and sufficient or whether they be not Motiues at all or not sufficient or whether these Motives or Inducements to your Church be not impeached and opposed with Compulsives and enforcements from it or lastly whether these Motives which You use be not indeed only Motives to Christianity and not to Popery give me leave for distinction sake to call your Religion so If we may not judge of these things how can my judgment be moved with that which comes not within its cognizance If I may then at least I am to be a Judge of all these Controversies 1. Whether every one of these Motives be indeed a Motive to any Church 2. If to some whether to Yours 3. If to Yours whether sufficient or insufficient 4. Whether other Societies have not as many and as great Motives to draw me to them 5. Whether I have not greater reason to believe you do Err than that you cannot And now Sir I pray let me trouble You with a few more Questions Am I a sufficient Judge of these Controversies or no If of these why shall I stay here why not of others Why not of all Nay doth not the true examining of these few contain and lay upon me the examination of all What other Motives to your Church have you but your Notes of it Bellarmine gives some 14. or 15. And one of these fifteen contains in it the examination of all Controversies and not only so but of all uncontroverted Doctrines For how shall I or can I know the Church of Romes conformity with the Ancient Church unless I know first what the Ancient Church did hold and then what the Church of Rome doth hold and lastly whether they be conformable or if in my judgment they seem not conformable I am then to think the Church of Rome not to be the Church for want of the Note which she pretends is proper and perpetual to it So that for ought I can see Judges we are and must be of all sides every one for himself and God for us all 155. § 26. C. M. I ask whether this Assertion Scripture alone is Judge of all Controversies in Faith be a Fundamental point of Faith or no I HIL I answer This assertion that Scripture alone is Judge of all Controversies in Faith if it be taken properly is neither a Fundamental nor Unfundamental point of Faith nor no point of Faith at all but a plain falshood It is not a Judge of Controversies but a Rule to Judge them by and that not an absolutely perfect Rule but as perfect as a written Rule can be which must always need something else which is either evidently true or evidently credible to give attestation to it and that in this case is Universal Tradition So that Universal Tradition is the Rule to judge all Controversies by But then because nothing besides Scripture comes to us with as full a stream of Tradition as Scripture Scripture alone and no unwritten Doctrine nor no Infallibility of any Church having attestation from Tradition truly Universal for this reason we conceive as the Apostles persons while they were living were the only Judges of Controversies so their Writings now they are dead are the only Rule for us to judge them by There being
from the Act and Object in general if the Habit be special from the Act and Object in special Then for the motive to a thing that it cannot be of the Essence of the thing to which it moves who can doubt that knows that a motive is an efficient cause and that the efficient is always extrinsecal to the effect For the fourth that Gods Revelation is alike for all Objects It is ambiguous and if the sense of it be that his Revelation is an equal Motive to induce us to believe all objects revealed by him it is true but impertinent If the sense of it be that all objects revealed by God are alike that is alike plainly and undoubtedly revealed by him it is pertinent but most untrue Witness the great diversity of Texts of Scripture whereof some are so plain and evident that no man of ordinary sense can mistake the sense of them Some are so obscure and ambiguous that to say this or this is the certain sense of them were high presumption For the 5. Protestants disagree in things equally revealed by God! In themselves perhaps but not equally to them whose understandings by reason of their different Educations are fashioned and shaped for the entertainment of various Opinions and consequently some of them more inclined to believe such a sense of Scripture others to believe another which to say that God will not take into his consideration in judging mens Opinions is to disparage his goodness But to what purpose is it that these things are equally revealed to both as the light is equally revealed to all blind men if they be not fully revealed to either The sense of this Scripture Why are they then baptized for the dead and this He shall be saved yet so as by fire and a thousand others is equally revealed to you and to another interpreter that is certainly to neither He now conceives one sense of them and you another and would it not be an excellent inference if I should conclude now as you do That you forsake the formal motive of Faith which is Gods Revelation and consequently lose all faith and unity therein So likewise the Jesuits and Dominicans the Franciscans and Dominicans disagree about things equally revealed by Almighty God and seeing they do so I beseech you let me understand why this reason will not exclude them as well as Protestants from all faith and unity therein Thus you have failed of your undertaking in your first part of your Title and that is a very ill omen especially in points of so streight mutual dependance that we shall have but slender performance in your second assumpt Which is That the Church is Infallible in all her Definitions whether concerning points Fundamental or not Fundamental 26. Ad § 9.10 11. I grant that the Church cannot without damnable sin either deny any thing to be true which she knows to be Gods truth or propose any thing as his truth which she knows not to be so But that she may not do this by ignorance or mistake and so without damnable sin that you should have proved but have not But say you this excuse cannot serve for if the Church be assisted only for points fundamental she cannot but know that she may err in points not fundamental Ans It does not follow unless you suppose that the Church knows that she is assisted no farther But if being assisted only so far she yet did conceive by error her assistance absolute and unlimited or if knowing her assistance restrained to fundamentals she yet conceived by error that she should be guarded from proposing any thing but what was fundamental then the consequence is apparently false But at least she cannot be certain that she cannot err and therefore cannot be excused from headlong and pernicious temerity in proposing points not fundamental to be believed by Christians as matters of Faith Ans Neither is this destruction worth any thing unless it be understood of such fundamental points as she is not warranted to propose by evident Text of Scripture Indeed if she propose such as matters of Faith certainly true she may well be questioned Quo Warranto She builds without a foundation and says thus saith the Lord when the Lord doth not say so which cannot be excused from rashness and high presumption such a presumption as an Embassador should commit who should say in his Masters name that for which he hath no commission Of the same nature I say but of a higher strain as much as the King of Heaven is greater than any earthly King But though she may err in some points not fundamental yet may she have certainty enough in proposing others as for example these That Abraham begat Isaac that S. Paul had a Cloak that Timothy was sick because these though not fundamental i. e. no essential parts of Christianity yet are evidently and undeniably set down in Scripture and consequently may be without all rashness proposed by the Church as certain divine Revelations Neither is your Argument concluding when you say If in such things she may be deceived she must be always uncertain of all such things For my sense may sometimes possibly deceive me yet I am certain enough that I see what I see and feel what I feel Our Judges are not infallible in their judgments yet are they certain enough that they judge aright and that they proceed according to the evidence that is given when they condemn a Thief or a Murderer to the Gallows A Travelleris not always certain of his way but often mistaken and does it therefore follow that he can have no assurance that Charing-Cross is his right way from the Temple to White-Hall The ground of your error here is your not distinguishing between actual certainty and absolute infallibillty Geometricians are not infallible in their own Science yet they are very certain of those things which they see demonstrated And Carpenters are not infallible yet certain of the straightness of those things which agree with their Rule and Square So though the Church be not infallibly certain that in all her definitions whereof some are about disputable and ambiguous matters she shall proceed according to her Rule yet being certain of the infallibility of her Rule and that in this or that thing she doth manifestly proceed according to it she may be certain of the Truth of some particular Decrees and yet not certain that she shall never decree but what is true 27. Ad § 12. Obj. But if the Church may err in points not fundamental she may err in proposing Scripture and so we cannot be assured whether she have not been deceived already Ans The Church may err in her proposition or custody of the Canon of Scripture if you understand by the Church any present Church of one denomination for example the Roman the Greek or so Yet have we sufficient certainty of Scripture not from the bare testimony of any present Church but from Universal
And he more likely to err than any other because he may err and thinks he cannot and because he conceives the Spirit absolutely promised to the succession of Bishops of which many have been notoriously and confessedly wicked men Men of the World whereas this Spirit is the Spirit of Truth whom the world cannot receive because he seeth him not neither knoweth him 38. Ad § 16. To this Paragraph which pretends to shew that if the Catholick Church be fallible in some points it follows that no true Protestant can with assurance believe the Universal Church in any one point of Doctrin I Answer Though the Church being not Infallible I cannot believe her in every thing she says yet I can and must believe her in every thing she proves either by Scripture Reason or Universal Tradition be it Fundamental or be it not Fundamental This you say we cannot in points not Fundamental because in such we believe she may err But this I know we can because though she may err in some things yet she does not err in what she proves though it be not Fundamental Again you say we cannot do it in Fundamentals because we must know what points be Fundamental before we go to learn of her Not so but I must learn of the Church or of some part of the Church or I cannot know any thing Fundamental or not Fundamental For how can I come to know that there was such a Man as Christ that he taught such Doctrin that he and his Apostles did such miracles in confirmation of it that the Scripture is Gods Word unless I be taught it So then the Church is though not a certain Foundation and proof of my Faith yet a necessary introduction to it 39. But the Churches infallible direction extending only to Fundamentals unless I know them before I go to learn of her I may be rather deluded than instructed by her The reason and connexion of this consequence I fear neither I nor you do well understand And besides I must tell you you are too bold in taking that which no man grants you that the Church is an infallible directer in Fundamentals For if she were so then must we not only learn Fundamentals of her but also learn of her what is fundamental and take all for fundamental which she delivers to be such In the performance whereof if I knew any one Church to be infallible I would quickly be of that Church But good Sir you must needs do us this favor to be so acute as to distinguish between being infallible in fundamentals and being an infallible guide in fundamentals That there shall be always a Church infallible in fundamentals we easily grant for it comes to no more but this that there shall be always a Church But that there shall be always such a Church which is an infallible Guide in fundamentals this we deny For this cannot be without setling a known infallibility in some one known society of Christians as the Greek or the Roman or some other Church by adhering to which Guide men might be guided to believe aright in all Fundamentals A man that were destitute of all means of communicating his thoughts to others might yet in himself and to himself be infallible but he could not be a Guide to others A man or a Church that were invisible so that none could know how to repair to it for direction could not be an infallible guide and yet he might be in himself infallible You see then there is a wide difference between these two and therefore I must beseech you not to confound them nor to take the one for the other 40. But they that know what points are Fundamental otherwise than by the Churches authority learn not of the Church Yes they may learn of the Church that the Scripture is the word of God and from the Scripture that such points are fundamental others are not so and consequently learn even of the Church even of your Church that all is not fundamental nay all is not true which the Church teacheth to be so Neither do I see what hinders but a man may learn of a Church how to confute the Errors of that Church which taught him as well as of my Master in Physick or the Mathematicks I may learn those rules and principles by which I may confute my Masters erroneous conclusions 41. But you ask If the Church be not an infallible teacher why are we commanded to hear to seek to obey the Church I Answer For commands to seek the Church I have not yet met with any and I believe you if you were to shew them would be your self to seek But yet if you could produce some such we might seek the Church to many good purposes without supposing her a Guide infallible And then for hearing and obeying the Church I would fain know whether none may be heard and obeyed but those that are infallible Whether particular Churches Governors Pastors Parents be not to be heard and obeyed Or whether all these be Infallible I wonder you will thrust upon us so often these worn-out Objections without taking notice of their Answers 42. Your Argument from S. Austine's first place is a fallacy A dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter If the whole Church practise any of these things matters of order and decency for such only there he speaks of to dispute whether that ought to be done is insolent madness And from hence you infer If the whole Church practise any thing to dispute whether it ought to be done is insolent madness As if there were no difference between any thing and any of these things Or as if I might not esteem it pride and folly to contradict and disturb the Church for matter of order pertaining to the time and place and other circumstances of Gods worship and yet account it neither pride nor folly to go about to reform some errors which the Church hath suffered to come in and to vitiate the very substance of Gods worship It was a practice of the whole Church in Saint Austines time and esteemed an Apostolick Tradition even by Saint Austine himself That the Eucharist should be administred to Infants Tell me Sir I beseech you Had it been insolent madness to dispute against this practice or had it not If it had how insolent and mad are you that have not only disputed against it but utterly abolished it If it had not then as I say you must understand Saint Austines words not simply of all things but as indeed he himself restrained them of these things of matter of Order Decency and Uniformity 44. Obj. But the Doctrines that Infants are to be baptized and those that are baptized by Hereticks are not to be rebaptized are neither of them to be proved by Scripture And yet according to S. Austine they are true Doctrins and we may be certain of them upon the Authority of the Church which we could not be unless the
believing them for every obligation ceases when it becomes impossible Who can doubt but the Primitive Christians to whom the Epistles of the Apostles were written either of themselves understood or were instructed by the Apostles touching the sense of the obscure places of them These Traditive interpretations had they been written and dispersed as the Scriptures were had without question been preserved as the Scriptures are But to shew how excellent a Keeper of the Tradition the Church of Rome hath been or even the Catholick Church for want of writing they are all lost nay were all lost within a few Ages after Christ So that if we consult the Ancient Interpreters we shall hardly find any two of them agree about the sense of any one of them Cardinal Perron in his discourse of Traditions having alledged this place for them Hold the Traditions c. tell us we must not answer that S. Paul speaks here only of such Traditions which though not in this Epist to the Thessalonians yet were afterwards witten and in other Books of Scripture because it is upon occasion of Tradition touching the cause of the hinderance of the coming of Antichrist which was never written that he lays this injunction upon them to hold the Traditions Well let us grant this Argument good and concluding and that the Church of the Thessalonians or the Catholick Church for what S. Paul writ to one Church he writ to all were to hold some unwritten Traditions and among the rest what was the cause of the hinderance of the coming of Antichrist But what if they did not perform their duty in this point but suffered this Tradition to be lost out of the memory of the Church Shall we not conclude that seeing God would not suffer any thing necessary to Salvation to be lost and he has suffered this Tradition to be lost therefore the knowledge or belief of it though it were a profitable thing yet it was not necessary I hope you will not challenge such authority over us as to oblige us to impossibilities to do that which you cannot do your selves It is therefore requisite that you make this command possible to be obeyed before you require obedience unto it Are you able then to instruct us so well as to be fit to say unto us Now ye know what withholdeth Or do you your selves know that ye may instruct us Can ye or dare you say this or this was this hindrance which S. Paul here meant and all men under pain of damnation are to believe it Or if you cannot as I am certain you cannot go then and Vaunt your Church for the only Watchful Faithful Infallible Keeper of the Apostles Traditions when here this very Tradition which here in particular was deposited with the Thessalonians and the Premitive Church you have utterly lost it so that there is no Footstep or print of it remaining which with Divine Faith we may rely upon Blessed therefore be the goodness of God who seeing that what was not written was in such danger to be lost took order that what was necessary should be written S. Chrysostoms counsel therefore of accounting the Churches Traditions worthy of belief we are willing to obey And if you can of any thing make it appear that it is Tradition we will seek no farther But this we say withal that we are persuaded we cannot make this appear in any thing but only the Canon of Scripture and that there is nothing now extant and to be known by us which can put in so good Plea to be the unwritten Word of God as the unquestioned Books of Canonical Scripture to be the written Word of God 47. You conclude this Paragraph with a sentence of S. Austin's who says The Church doth not approve nor dissemble nor do these things which are against Faith or good Life and from hence you conclude that it never hath done so nor never can do so But though the argument hold in Logick à non posse ad non esse yet I never heard that it would hold back again à non esse ad non posse The Church cannot do this therefore it does it not follows with good consequence but the Church does not this therefore it shall never do it nor can never do it this I believe will hardly follow In the Epistle next before to the same Januarius writing of the same matter he hath these words It remains that the thing you inquire of must be of that third kind of things which are different in divers places Let every one therefore do that which he finds done in the Church to which he comes for none of them is against Faith or good manners And why do you not infer from hence that no particular Church can bring up any Custom that is against Faith or good manners Certainly this consequence has as good reason for it as the former If a man say of the Church of England what S. Austin of the Church that she neither approves nor dissembles nor does any thing against Faith or good manners would you collect presently that this man did either make or think the Church of England infallible Furthermore it is observable out of this and the former Epistle that this Church which did not as S. Austin according to you thought approve or dissemble or do any thing against Faith or good Life did yet tolerate and dissemble vain superstitions and humane presumptions and suffer all places to be full of them and to be exacted as nay more severely than the commandments of God himself This S. Austin himself professeth in this very Epistle This saith he I do infinitely grieve at that many most wholesom precepts of the Divine Scripture are little regarded and in the mean time all is so full of so many presumptions that he is more grievously found fault with who during his octaves toucheth the Earth with his naked Foot than he that shall bury his Soul in Drunkenness Of these he says that they were neither contained in Scripture decreed by Councils nor corroborated by the Custom of the Universal Church And though not against Faith yet unprofitable burdens of Christian Liberty which made the condition of the Jews more tolerable than that of Christians And therefore he professes of them Approbare non possum I cannot approve them And ubi facultas tribuitur resecanda existimo I think they are to be cut off wheresoever we have power Yet so deeply were they rooted and spread so far through the indiscreet devotion of the People always more prone to superstion than true Piety and through the connivence of the Governors who should have strangled them at their Birth that himself though he grieved at them and could not allow them yet for fear of offence he durst not speak against them multa hujusmodi propter nonnullarum vel sanctarum vel turbulentarum personarum scandala devitanda liberius improbare non audeo Many of these things for fear of
scandalizing many holy persons or provoking those that are turbulent I dare not freely disallow Nay the Catholick Church it self did see and dissemble and tolerate them for these are the things of which he presently says after the Church of God and you will have him speak of the true Catholick Church placed between Chaffe and Tares tolerates many things Which was directly against the command of the Holy Spirit given the Church by S. Paul To stand fast in that liberty wherewith Christ hath made her free and not to suffer her self to be brought in bondage to these survile burdens Our Saviour tells the Scribes and Pharisees that in vain they Worshiped God teaching for Doctrines mens Commandments For that laying aside the Commandments of God they held the Traditions of men as the washing of Pots and Cups and many other such like things Certainly that which S. Austin complains of as the general fault of Christians of his time was parallel to this Multa saith he quae in divinis libris saluberrima praecepta sunt minus curantur This I suppose I may very well render in our Saviours Words The commandments of God are laid aside and then tam multis presumptionibus sic plena sunt omnia all things or all places are so full of so many presumptions and those exacted with such severity nay with Tyranny that he was more severely censured who in the time of his Octaves touched the Earth with his naked Feet than he which drowned and buried his Soul in Drink Certainly if this be not to teach for Doctrines mens Commandments I know not what is And therefore these superstitious Christians might be said to Worship God in vain as well as Scribes and Pharisees And yet great variety of superstitions of this kind were then already spread over the Church being different in divers place This is plain from these Words of S. Austin of them diversorum locorum diversis moribus innumerabiliter variantur and apparent because the stream of them was grown so violent that he durst not oppose it liberiùs improbare non audeo I dare not freely speak against them So that to say the Catholick Church tolerated all this and for fear of offence durst not abrogate or condemn it is to say if we Judge rightly of it that the Church with silence and connivence generally tolerated Christians to worship God in vain Now how this tolerating of Universal superstition in the Church can consist with the assistance and direction of Gods omnipotent spirit to guard it from superstition and with the accomplishment of that pretended Prophesie of the Church I have set Watchmen upon thy Walls O Jerusalem which shall never hold their peace Day nor Night besides how these superstitions being thus nourished cherished and strengthned by the practice of the most and urged with great violence upon others as the commandments of God and but fearfully opposed or contradicted by any might in time take such deep Root and spread their Branches so far as to pass for Universal Customs of the Church he that does not see sees nothing Especially considering the catching and contagious nature of this sin and how fast ill Weeds spread and how true and experimented that rule is of the Historian Exempla non confistunt ubi incipiunt sed quamlibet in tenuem recepta tramitem latissimè evagandi sibi faciunt potestatem Examples do not stay where they begin but tho at first pent up in a narrow Tract they make themselves room for extravagant wandrings Nay that some such superstition had not already even in S. Austins time prevailed so far as to be Consuetudine universae Ecclesiae roboratum confirmed by the Custom of the Universal Church who can doubt that considers that the practice of Commiunicating Infants had even then got the credit and authority not only of an Universal Custom but also of an Apostolick Tradition 49. But now after all this ado what if S. Austin says not this which is pretended of the Church viz. That she neither approves nor dissembles nor practises any thing against Faith or good Life but only of good men in the Church Certainly though some Copies read as you would have it yet you should not have dissembled that others read the place otherwise vix Ecclesia multa tolerat tamen quae sunt contra Fidem bonam vitam nec bonus approbat c. The Church tolerates many things and yet what is against Faith or good Life a good man will neither approve nor dissemble nor practise 50. Ad § 17. That Abraham begat Isaacc is a point very far from being Fundamental and yet I hope you will grant that Protestants believing Scripture to be the Word of God may be certain enough of the truth and certainty of it For what if they say that the Catholick Church and much more themselves may possibly Err in some unfundamental points it is therefore consequent they can be certain of none such What if a wiser man than I may mistake the sense of some obscure place of Aristotle may I not therefore without any arrogance or inconsequence conceive my self certain that I understand him in some plain places which carry their sense before them And then for points Fundamental to what purpose do you say That we must first know what they be before we can be assured that we cannot Err in understanding the Scripture when we pretend not at all to any assurance that we cannot Err but only to a sufficient certainty that we do not Err but rightly understand those things that are plain whether Fundamental or not Fundamental That God is and is a rewarder of them that seek him That there is no Salvation but by Faith in Christ That by repentance and Faith in Christ Remission of sins may be obtained That there shall be a Resurrection of the Body These we conceive both true because the Scripture says so and Truths Fundamental because they are necessary parts of the Gospel whereof our Saviour saies Qui non crediderit damnabitur All which we either learn from Scripture immediately or learn of those that learn it of Scripture so that neither Learned nor Unlearned pretend to know these things independently of Scripture And therefore in imputing this to us you cannot excuse your self from having done us a palpable injury 52. Ad § 19. To that which is here urged of the differences amongst Protestants concerning many points I answer that those differences between Protestants concerning Errors damnable and not damnable Truths Fundamental and not Fundamental may be easily reconciled For either the Error they speak of may be purely and simply involuntary or it may be in respect of the cause of it voluntary If the cause of it be some voluntary and avoidable fault the Error is it self sinful and consequently in its own nature damnable As if by negligence in seeking the Truth by unwillingness to find it by Pride by obstinacy by desiring that Religion should
savour wherewith shall it be Salted it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast forth and to be trodden under Foot So the Church may be by Duty the Pillar and Ground that is the Teacher of Truth of all truth not only necessary but profitable to Salvation and yet she may neglect and violate this Duty and be in fact the teacher of some Error 78. Fourthly and lastly if we deal most liberally with you and grant that the Apostle here speaks of the Catholick Church calls it the Pillar and ground of Truth and that not only because it should but because it always shall and will be so yet after all this you have done nothing your Bridge is too short to bring you to the Bank where you would be unless you can shew that by truth here is certainly meant not only all necessary to Salvation but all that is profitable absolutely and simply All. For that the true Church alwaies shall be the maintainer and teacher of all necessary truth you know we grant and must grant for it is of the essence of the Church to be so and any company of Men were no more a Church without it than any thing can be a Man and not be reasonable But as a Man may be still a Man though he want a Hand or an Eye which yet are profitable parts so the Church may be still a Church though it be defective in some profitable truth And as a Man may be a Man that has some Boyls and Botches on his Body so the Church may be the Church though it have many corruptions both in Doctrine and practice 79. And thus you see we are at liberty from the former places having shewed that the sense of them either must or may be such as will do your Cause no service But the last you suppose will be a Gordian knot and ties us fast enough The words are Eph. 4.11 12 13. He gave some Apostles and some Prophets c. to the consummation of Saints to the work of the Ministry c. Until we all meet into the Unity of Faith c. That we be not hereafter Children wavering and carried up and down with every wind of Doctrine Out of which words this is the only argument which you collect or I can collect for you There is no means to conserve unity of Faith against every wind of Doctrine unless it be a Church universally Infallible But it is impious to say there is no means to conserve unity of Faith against every wind of Doctrine Therefore there must be a Church universally Infallible Whereunto I answer that your major is so far from being confirmed that it is plainly confuted by the place alledged For that tells us of another means for this purpose to wit the Apostles and Prophets and Evangelists and Pastors and Doctors which Christ gave upon his Ascension and that their consummating the Saints doing the work of the Ministry and Edifying the body of Christ was the means to bring those which are there spoken of be they who they will to the unity of Faith and to perfection in Christ that they might not be wavering and carried about with every wind of false Doctrine Now the Apostles and Prophets and Evangelists and Pastors and Doctors are not the present Church therefore the Church is not the only means for this end nor that which is here spoken of 80. Peradventure by he gave you conceive is to be understood he promised that he would give unto the worlds end But what reason have you for this conceit Can you shew that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hath this signification in other places and that it must have it in this place Or will not this interpretation drive you presently to this blasphemous absurdity that God hath not performed his promise Unless you will say which for shame I think you will not that you have now and in all Ages since Christ have had Apostles and Prophets and Evangelists for as for Pastors and Doctors alone they will not serve the turn For if God promised to give all these then you must say he hath given all or else that he hath broke his promise Neither may you pretend that the Pastors and Doctors were the same with the Apostles and Prophets and Evangelists and therefore having Pastors and Doctors you have all For it is apparent that by these names are denoted several Oâ—ders of men clearly distinguished and diversified by the Original Text but much more plainly by your own Translations for so you read it some Apostles and some Prophets and other some Evangelists and other some Pastors and Doctors and yet more plainly in the parallel place 1 Cor. 12. to which we are referred by your Vulgar Translation God hath set some in the Church first Apostles secondarily Prophets thirdly Teachers therefore this subterfuge is stopped against you Obj. But how can they which died in the first Age keep us in Unity and guard us from Error that live now perhaps in the last This seems to be all one as if a Man should say that Alexander or Julius Caesar should quiet a mutiny in the King of Spains Army Ans I hope you will grant that Hippocrates and Galen and Euclid and Aristotle and Salust and Caesar and Livie were dead many Ages since and yet that we are now preserved from Error by them in a great part of Physick of Geometry of Logick of the Roman story But what if these men had writ by divine Inspiration and writ compleat bodies of the Sciences they professed and writ them plainly and perspicuously You would then have granted I believe that their works had been sufficient to keep us from error and from dissention in these matters And why then should it be incongruous to say that the Apostles and Prophets and Evangelists and Pastors and Doctors which Christ gave upon his Ascension by their writings which some of them writ but all approved are even now sufficient means to conserve us in Unity of Faith and guard us from Error Especially seeing these writings are by the confession of all parts true and divine and as we pretend and are ready to prove contain a plain and perfect Rule of Faith and as the * Perron Chiefest of you acknowledge contain immediatly all the Principal and Fundamental points of Christianity referring us to the Church and Tradition only for some minute particularities But tell me I pray the Bishops that composed the Decrees of the Council of Trent and the Pope that confirmed them are they means to conserve you in Unity and keep you from Error or are they not Peradventure you will say their Decrees are but not their Persons but you will not deny I hope that you owe your unity and freedom from Error to the Persons that made these Decrees neither will you deny that the writings which they have left behind them are sufficient for this purpose And why may not then the Apostles
writings be as fit for such a purpose as the Decrees of your Doctors Surely their intent in writing was to conserve us in unity of Faith and to keep us from Error and we are sure God spake in them but your Doctors from whence they are we are not so certain Was the Holy Ghost then unwilling or unable to direct them so that their writings should be fit and sufficient to attain that end they aimed at in writing For if he were both able and willing to do so then certainly he did do so And then their writings may be very sufficient means if we would use them as we should do to preserve us in unity in all necessary points of Faith and to guard us from all pernitious Error 81. If yet you be not satisfied but will still pretend that all these words by you cited seem clearly enough to prove that the Church is Universally infallible without which Unity of Faith could not be conserved against every wind of Doctrin I Ans That to you which will not understand that there can be any means to conserve the unity of Faith but only that which conserves your authority over the Faithful it is no marvel that these words seem to prove that the Church nay that your Church is universally Infallible But we that have no such end no such desires but are willing to leave all men to their liberty provided they will not improve it to a Tyranny over others we find it no difficulty to discern between dedit and promisit he gave at his Ascension and he promised to the Worlds end Besides though you whom it concerns may happily flatter your selves that you have not only Pastors and Doctors but Prophets and Apostles and Evangelists and those distinct from the former still in your Church yet we that are disinteressed persons cannot but smile at these strange imaginations Lastly though you are apt to think your selves such necessary instruments for all good purposes and that nothing can be well done unless you do it that no unity or constancy in Religion can be maintained but inevitably Christendom must fall to ruin and confusion unless you support it yet we that are indifferent and impartial and well content that God should give us his own favours by means of his own appointment not of our choosing can easily collect out of these very words that not the Infallibility of your or of any Church but the Apostles and Prophets and Evangelists c. which Christ gave upon his Ascension were designed by him for the compassing all these excellent purposes by their preaching while they lived and by their writings for ever And if they fail hereof the Reason is not any insufficiency or invalidity in the means but the voluntary perversness of the Subjects they have to deal with who if they would be themselves and be content that others should be in the choice of their Religion the servants of God and not of men if they would allow that the way to Heaven is no narrower now than Christ left it his yoak no heavier than he made it that the belief of no more difficulties is required now to Salvation than was in the Primitive Church that no Error is in it self destructive and exclusive from Salvation now which was not then if instead of being zealous Papists earnest Calvinists rigid Lutherans they would become themselves and be content that others should be plain and honest Christians if all men would believe the Scripture and freeing themselves from prejudice and passion would sincerely endeavour to find the true sense of it and live according to it and require no more of others but to do so nor denying their Communion to any that do so would so order their publick service of God that all which do so may without scruple or hypocrisie or protestation against any part of it joyn with them in it who does not see that seeing as we suppose here and shall prove hereafter all necessary Truths are plainly and evidently set down in Scripture there would of necessity be among all men in all things necessary unity of Opinion And notwithstanding any other differences that are or could be unity of Communion and Charity and mutual Toleration By which means all Schism and Heresie would be banished the World and those wretched contentions which now rend and tear in pieces not the Coat but the Members and Bowels of Christ which mutual pride and Tyranny and cursing and killing and damning would fain make immortal should speedily receive a most blessed Catastrophe But of this hereafter when we shall come to the question of Schism wherein I perswade my self that I shall plainly shew that the most vehement accusers are the greatest offenders and that they are indeed at this time the greatest Schismaticks who make the way to Heaven narrower the yoak of Christ heavier the differences of Faith greater the conditions of Ecclesiastical Communion harder and stricter than they were made at the beginning by Christ and his Apostles they who talk of Unity but aim at Tyranny and will have peace with none but with Slaves and Vassals In the mean while though I have shewed how Unity of Faith and Unity of Charity too may be preserved without your Churches Infallibility yet seeing you modestly conclude from hence not that your Church is but only seems to be universally Infallible meaning to your self of which you are a better judge than I Therefore I willingly grant your conclusion and proceed 86. As for your pretence That to find the meaning of those places you confer divers Texts you consult Originals you examin Translations and use all the means by Protestants appointed I have told you before that all this is vain and hypocritical if as your manner and your doctrin is you give not your self liberty of judgment in the use of these means if you make not your selves Judges of but only Advocates for the doctrin of your Church refusing to see what these means shew you if it any way make against the doctrin of your Church though it be as clear as the light at noon Remove prejudice even the ballance and hold it even make it indifferent to you which way you go to heaven so you go the true which Religion be true so you be of it then use the means and pray for Gods assistance and as sure as God is true you shall be lead into all necessary Truth 88. Whereas you say that it were great impiety to imagin that God the lover of Souls hath left no certain infallible means to decide both this and all other differences arising about the interpretation of Scripture or upon any other occasion I desire you to take heed you commit not an impiety in making more impieties than Gods Commandments make Certainly God is no way obliged either by his promise or his love to give us all things that we may imagine would be convenient for us as formerly I have proved at large
It is sufficient that he denies us nothing necessary to Salvation Deus non deficit in necessariis nec redundat in superfluis So D. Stapleton But that the ending of all Controversies or having a certain means of ending them is necessary to Salvation that you have often said and supposed but never proved though it be the main pillar of your whole discourse So little care you take how slight your foundations are so your building make a fair show And as little care how you commit those faults your self which you condem in others For you here charge them with great impiety who imagine that God the lover of Souls hath left no infallible means to determine all differences arising about the interpretation of Scripture or upon any other occasion And yet afterwards being demanded by D. Potter why the Questions between the Jesuits and Dominicans remain undetermined You return him this cross interrogatory Who hath assured you that the point wherein these learned men differ is a revealed Truth or capable of definition or is not rather by plain Scripture indeterminable or by any Rule of Faith So then when you say it were great impiety to imagine that God hath not left infallible means to decide all differences I may answer It seems you do not believe your self For in this controversie which is of as high consequence as any can be you seem to be doubtful whether there be any means to determin it On the other side when you ask D. Potter who assured him that there is any means to determine this Controversie I answer for him that you have in calling it a great impiety to imagine that there is not some infallible means to decide this and all other differences arising about the Interpretation of Scripture or upon any other occasion For what trick you can devise to shew that this difference between the Dominicans and Jesuits which includes a difference about the sense of many Texts of Scripture and many other matters of moment was not included under this and all other differences I cannot imagine Yet if you can find out any thus much at least we shall gain by it that general speeches are not always to be understood generally but sometimes with exceptions and limitations 89. But if there be any infallible means to decide all differences I beseech you name them You say it is to consult and hear Gods Visible Church with submissive acknowledgment of her Infallibility But suppose the difference be as here it is whether your Church be Infallible what shall decide that If you would say as you should do Scripture and Reason then you foresee that you should be forced to grant that these are fit means to decide this Controversie and therefore may be as fit to decide others Therefore to avoid this you run into a most ridiculous absurdity and tell us that this difference also whether the Church be Infallible as well as others must be agreed by a submissive acknowledgment of the Churches Infallibility As if you should have said My Brethren I perceive this is a great contention amongst you whether the Roman Church be Infallible If you will follow my advice I will shew you a ready means to end it you must first agree that the Roman Church is Infallible and then your contention whether the Roman Church be Infallible will quickly be at an end Verily a most excellent advice and most compendious way of ending all Controversies even without troubling the Church to determine them For why may not you say in all other differences as you have done in this Agree that the Pope is supream head of the Church That the substance of Bread and Wine in the Sacrament is turned into the body and blood of Christ That the Communion is to be given to Lay-men but in one kind That Pictures may be worshipped That Saints are to be invocated and so in the rest and then your differences about the Popes Supremacy Transubstantiation and all the rest will speedily be ended If you say the advice is good in this but not in other cases I must request you not to expect always to be believed upon your word but to shew us some reason why any one thing namely the Churches Infallibility is fit to prove it self and any other thing by name the Popes Supremacy or Transubstantiation is not as fit Or if for shame you will at length confess that the Churches Infallibility is not fit to decide this difference whether the Church be infallible then you must confess it is not fit to decide all Unless you will say it may be fit to decide all and yet not fit to decide this or pretend that this is not comprehended under all Besides if you grant that your Churches infallibility cannot possibly be well grounded upon or decided by it self then having professed before that there is no possible means besides this for us to agree hereupon I hope you will give me leave to conclude that it is impossible upon good ground for us to agree that the Roman Church is Infallible For certainly light it self is not more clear than the evidence of this syllogism If there be no other means to make men agree upon your Churches Infallibility but only this and this be no means then it is simply impossible for men upon good grounds to agree that your Church is Infallible But there is as you have granted no other possible means to make men agree hereupon but only a submissive acknowledgment of her Infallibility And this is apparently no means Therefore it is simply impossible for men upon good grounds to agree that your Church is Infallible 90. Lastly to the place of S. Austin wherein we are advised to follow the way of Catholick Discipline which from Christ himself by the Apostles hath come down even to us and from us shall descend to all posterity I answer That the way which S. Austin speaks of and the way which you commend being divers ways and in many things clean contrary we cannot possibly follow them both and therefore for you to apply the same words to them is a vain equivocation Shew us any way and do not say but prove it to have come from Christ and his Apostles down to us and we are ready to follow it Neither do we expect demonstration hereof but such reasons as may make this more probable than the contrary But if you bring in things into your now Catholick Discipline which Christians in S. Austins time held abominable as the Picturing of God and which you must confess to have come into the Church Seven Hundred Years after Christ if you will bring in things as you have done the half Communion with a non obstante notwithstanding Christ Institution and the practice of the Primitive Church were to the contrary If you will do such things as these and yet would have us believe that your whole Religion came from Christ and his Apostles this we conceive a
Commandments and the possibility of keeping them the necessity of imploring the Assistance of Gods Grace and Spirit for the keeping of them how far obedience is due to the Church Prayer for the Dead The cessation of the Old Law are all about Agenda and so cut off upon the first consideration 34. Secondly the Question touching Fundamentals is profitable but not Fundamental He that believes all Fundamentals cannot be damned for any Error in Faith though he believe more or less to be Fundamental than is so That also of the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son of Purgatory of the Churches Visibility of the Books of the New Testament which were doubted of by a considerable part of the Primitive Church until I see better reason for the contrary than the bare authority of men I shall esteem of the same condition 35. Thirdly These Doctrines that Adam and the Angels sinned that there are Angels good and bad that those Books of Scripture which were never doubted of by any considerable part of the Church are the word of God that S. Peter had no such primacy as you pretend that the Scripture is a perfect rule of Faith aad consequently that no necessary Doctrine is unwritten that there is no one Society or succession of Christians absolutely Infallible These to my understanding are truths plainly revealed by God and necessary to be believed by them who know they are so But not so necessary that every Man and Woman is bound under pain of damnation particularly to know them to be Divine Revelations and explicitely to believe them And for this reason these with innumerable other points are to be referred to the third sort of Doctrines above mentioned which were never pretended to have place in the Creed There remains one only point of all that Army you Mustred together reducible to none of these Heads and that is that God is and is a Remunerator which you say is questioned by the denial of merit But if there were such a necessary indissoluble coherence between this point and the Doctrine of merit methinks with as much reason and more charity you might conclude That we hold merit because we hold this point Then that we deny this point because we deny merit Beside when Protestants deny the Doctrine of Merits you know right well for so they have declared themselves a thousand times that they mean nothing else but with David that their well doing extendeth not is not truly beneficial to God with our Saviour when they have done all which they are commanded they have done their duty only and no courtesie And lastly with S. Paul that all which they can suffer for God and yet suffering is more than doing is not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed So that you must either misunderstand their meaning in denying Merit or you must discharge their Doctrine of this odious consequence or you must charge it upon David and Paul and Christ himself Nay you must either grant their denial of true Merit just and reasonable or you must say that our good actions are really profitable to God that they are not debts already due to him but voluntary and undeserved Favours and that they are equal unto and well worthy of Eternal Glory which is prepared for them As for the inconvenience which you so much fear That the denial of Merit makes God a giver only and not a rewarder I tell you good Sir you fear where no fear is and that it is both most true on the one side that you in holding good Works meritorious of Eternal Glory make God a rewarder only and not a giver contrary to plain Scripture affirming that The gift of God is Eternal Life And that it is most false on the other side that the Doctrine of Protestants makes God a giver only and not a rewarder In as much as their Doctrine is That God gives not Heaven but to those which do something for it and so his gift is also a Reward but withal that whatsoever they do is due unto God beforehand and worth nothing to God and worth nothing in respect of Heaven and so Mans work is no Merit and Gods reward is still a Gift 36. Put the case the Pope for a reward of your Service done him in writing this Book had given you the Honour and means of a Cardinal would you not not only in humility but in sincerity have professed that you had not merited such a reward And yet the Pope is neither your Creator nor Redeemer nor Preserver nor perhaps your very great Benefactor sure I am not so great as God Almighty and therefore hath no such right and title to your Service as God hath in respect of precedent obligations Besides the work you have done him hath been really advantagious to him and lastly not altogether unproportionable to the forementioned reward And therefore if by the same work you will pretend that either you have or hope to have deserved immortal Happiness I beseech you consider well whether this be not to set a higher value upon a Cardinals Cap than a Crown of immortal Glory and with that Cardinal to prefer a part in Paris before a part in Paradise 37. As for your distinction between Heresies that have been and Heresies that are and Heresies that may be I have already proved it vain and that whatsoever may be an Heresie that is so and whatsoever is so that always hath been so ever since the publication of the Gospel of Christ The Doctrine of your Church may like a Snow-ball increase with rouling and again if you please melt away and decrease But as Christ Jesus so his Gospel is yesterday and to day and the same for ever 38. Our Saviour sending his Apostles to preach gave them no other Commission than this Go teach all Nations Baptizing them in the Name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you These were the bounds of their Commission If your Church have any larger or if she have a Commission at large to teach what she pleases and call it the Gospel of Christ let her produce her Letters patents from Heaven for it But if this be all you have then must you give me leave to esteem it both great sacriledg in you to forbid any thing be it never so small or ceremonious which Christ hath commanded as the receiving of the Communion in both kinds and as high a degree of presumption to enjoyn men to believe that there are or can be any other Fundamental Articles of the Gospel of Christ than what Christ himself commanded his Apostles to teach all men or any damnable Heresies but such as are plainly repugnant to these prime Verities 39. Ad § 16 17. The saying of the most Learned Prelate and excellent man the Arch-Bishop of Armach which shall be set down at the end of N.
revocation of the former For had you made the matter of Faith either naturally or supernaturally evident it might have been a fitly attempered and duly proportioned object for an absolute certainty natural or supernatural But requiring as you do that Faith should be an absolute knowledge of a thing not absolutely known an infallible certainty of a thing which though it is in it self yet is it not made appear to us to be infallibly certain to my understanding you speak impossibilities And truly for one of your Religion to do so is but a good Decorum For the matter and object of your Faith being so full of contradictions a contradictious Faith may very well become a contradictious Religion Your Faith therefore if you please to have it so let it be a free necessitated certain uncertain evident obscure prudent and foolish natural and supernatural unnatural assent But they which are unwilling to believe nonsense themselves or to persuade others to do so it is but reason they should make the Faith wherewith they believe an intelligible compossible consistent thing and not define it by repugnances Now nothing is more repugnant than that a man should be required to give most certain credit unto that which cannot be made apppear most certainly credible and if it appear to him to be so then is it not obscure that it is so For if you speak of an acquired rational discursive Faith certainly these Reasons which make the object seem credible must be the cause of it and consequently the strength and firmity of my assent must rise and fall together with the apparent credibility of the object If you speak of a supernatural infused Faith then you either suppose it infused by the former means and then that which was said before must be said again for whatsoever effect is wrought meerly by means must bear proportion to and cannot exceed the vertue of the means by which it is wrought As nothing by water can be made more cold than water nor by fire more hot than fire nor by honey more sweet than honey nor by gall more bitter than gall Or if you will suppose it infused without means then that power which infuseth into the understanding assent which bears Analogy to sight in the eye must also infuse evidence that is Visibility into the Object and look what degree of assent is infused into the understanding at least the same degree of evidence must be infused into the Object And for you to require a strength of credit beyond the appearance of the Objects credibility is all one as if you should require me to go Ten Miles an hour upon a Horse that will go but five to discern a man certainly through a mist or cloud that makes him not certainly discernable To hear a sound more clearly than it is audible to understand a thing more fully than it is intelligible and he that doth so I may well expect that his next injunction will be that I must see something that is invisible hear something inaudible understand something that is wholly unintelligible For he that demands ten of me knowing I have but five does in effect as if he demanded five knowing that I have none and by like reason you requiring that I should see things farther than they are visible require I should see something invisible and in requiring that I believe something more firmly than it is made to me evidently credible you require in effect that I believe something which appears to me incredible and while it does so I deny not but that I am bound to believe the truth of many Texts of Scripture the sense whereof is to me obscure and the Truth of many Articles of Faith the manner whereof is obscure and to humane understandings incomprehensible But then it is to be observed that not the sense of such Texts not the manner of these things is that which I am bound to believe but the truth of them But that I should believe the Truth of any thing the truth whereof cannot be made evident with an evidence proportionable to the degree of Faith required of me this I say for any man to be bound to is unjust and unreasonable because to do it is impossible 8. Ad § 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. Yet though I deny that it is required of us to be certain in the highest degree infallibly certain of the truth of the things which we believe for this were to know and not believe neither is it possible unless our evidence of it be it natural or supernatural were of the highest degree yet I deny not but that we are to believe the Religion of Christ we are and may be infallibly certain For first this is most certain that we are in all things to do according to wisdom and reason rather than against it Secondly this is as certain That wisdom and reason require that we should believe these things which are by many degrees more credible and probable than the contrary Thirdly this is as certain that to every man who considers impartially what great things may be said for the truth of Christianity and what poor things they are which may be said against it either for any other Religion or for none at all it cannot but appear by many degrees more credible that Christian Religion is true than the contrary And from all these premises this conclusion evidently follows that it is infallibly certain that we are firmly to believe the truth of Christian Religion 9. Your discourse therefore touching the fourth requisite to Faith which is Prudence I admit so far as to grant 1. That if we were required to believe with certainty I mean a Moral certainty things no way represented as infallible and certain I mean Morally an unreasonable obedience were required of us And so likewise were it were we required to believe as absolutely certain that which is no way represented to us as absolutely certain 2. That whom God obligeth to believe any thing he will not fail to furnish their understandings with such inducements as are sufficient it they be not negligent or perverse to persuade them to believe 3. That there is an abundance of Arguments exceedingly credible inducing men to believe the Truth of Christianity I say so credibile that though they cannot make us evidently see what we believe yet they evidently convince that in true Wisdom and Prudence the Articles of it deserve credit and ought to be accepted as things revealed by God 4. That without such reasons and inducements our choice even of the true Faith is not to be commended as prudent but to be condemned of rashness and levity 10. But then for your making Prudence not only a commendation of a believer and a justification of his Faith but also essential to it and part of the definition of it in that questionless you were mistaken and have done as if being to say what a man is you should define him A Reasonable
hope for salvation yet without question it might send many souls to heaven who would gladly have embraced the Truth but that they wanted means to discover it Thirdly and lastly she may yet more truly be said to perish when she Apostates from Christ absolutely or rejects even those Truths out of which her Heresies may be reformed as if she should directly deny Jesus to be the Christ or the Scripture to be the Word of God Towards which state of Perdition it may well be feared that the Church of Rome doth somewhat incline by her superinducing upon the rest of her Errors the Doctrin of her own Infallibility whereby her errors are made incurable and by her pretending that the Scripture is to be interpreted according to her doctrin and not her doctrin to be judged of by Scripture whereby she makes the Scripture uneffectuall for her Reformation 20. Ad § 18. I was very glad when I heard you say The Holy Scripture and ancient Fathers do assign Separation from the Visible Church as a mark of Heresie for I was in good hope that no Christian would so belie the Scripture as to say so of it unless he could have produced some one Text at least wherein this was plainly affirmed or from whence it might be undoubtedly and undeniably collected For assure your self good Sir it is a very heinous crime to say thus saith the Lord when the Lord doth not say so I expected therefore some Scripture should have been alledged wherein it should have been said whosoever separates from the Roman Church is an Heretick or the Roman Church is infallible or the guide of Faith or at least There shall be always some Visible Church infallible in matters of Faith Some such direction as this I hoped for And I pray consider whether I had not reason The Evangelists and Apostles who wrote the New Testament we all suppose were good men and very desirous to direct us the surest and plainest way to Heaven we suppose them likewise very sufficiently instructed by the Spirit of God in all the necessary points of the Christian Faith and therefore certainly not ignorant of this Unum Necessarium this most necessary point of all others without which as you pretend and teach all faith is no Faith that is that the Church of Rome was designed by God the guide of Faith We suppose them lastly wise men especially being assisted by the spirit of wisdom and such as knew that a doubtful and questionable guide was for mens direction as good as none at all And after all these suppositions which I presume no good Christian will call into question is it possible that any Christian heart can believe that not one amongst them all should ad rei memoriam write this necessary doctrin plainly so much as once Certainly in all reason they had provided much better for the good of Christians if they had wrote this though they had writ nothing else Methinks the Evangelists undertaking to write the Gospel of Christ could not possibly have omitted any one of them this most necessary point of faith had they known it necessary S. Luke especially who plainly professeth that his intent was to write all things necessary Methinks S. Paul writing to the Romans could not but have congratulated this their Priviledge to them Methinks instead of saying Your Faith is spoken of all the world over which you have no reason to be very proud of for he says the very same thing to the Thessalonians he could not have failed to have told them once at least in plain terms that their Faith was the Rule for all the World for ever But then sure he would have forborn to put them in fear of an impossibility as he doth in his eleventh Chap. that they also nay the whole Church of the Gentiles if they did not look to their standing might fall away to infidelity as the Jews had done Methinks in all his other Epistles at least in some at least in one of them he could not have failed to have given the world this direction had he known it to be a true one that all men were to be guided by the Church of Rome and none to separate from it under pain of damnation Methinks writing so often of Hereticks and Antichrist he should have given the world this as you pretend only sure preservative from them How was it possible that S. Peter writing two Catholick Epistles mentioning his own departure writing to preserve Christians in the Faith should in neither of them commend them to the guidance of his pretended Successors the Bishops of Rome How was it possible that S. James and S. Jude in their Catholick Epistles should not give this Catholick direction Methinks S. John instead of saying he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God The force of which direction your glosses do quite enervate and make unavailable to discern who are the sons of God should have said He that adheres to the doctrin of the Roman Church and lives according to it he is a good Christian and by this Mark ye shall know him What man not quite out of his wits if he consider as he should the pretended necessity of this doctrin that without the belief hereof no man ordinarily can be saved can possibly force himself to conceive that all these good and holy men so desirous of mens salvation and so well assured of it as it is pretended should be so deeply and affectedly silent in it and not one say it plainly so much as once but leave it to be collected from uncertain principles by many more uncertain consequences Certainly he that can judge so uncharitably of them it is no marvel if he censure other inferior servants of Christ as Atheists and Hypocrites and what he pleases Plain places therefore I did and had reason to look for when I heard you say the holy Scripture assigns Separation from the visible Church as a mark of Heresie But instead hereof what have you brought us but meer impertinences S. John saith of some who pretended to be Christians and were not so and therefore when it was for their advantage forsook their Profession They went out from us but they were not of us for if they had been of us they would no doubt have continued with us Of some who before the decree of the Council to the contrary were persuaded and accordingly taught that the convert Gentiles were to keep the Law of Moses it is said in the Acts Some who went out from us And again S. Paul in the same Book forewarns the Ephesians that out of them should arise men speaking perverse things And from these places which it seems are the plainest you have you collect that separation from the Visible Church is assigned by Scripture as a Mark of Heresie Which is certainly a strange and unheard of strain of Logick Unless you will say that every Text wherein it is said that some Body goes
Council of Trent so accordingly on the other side by the Religion of Protestants I do not understand the Doctrine of Luther or Calvin or Melancthon nor the Confession of Augusta or Geneva nor the Catechism of Heidelburg nor the Articles of the Church of England no nor the Harmony of Protestant Confessions but that wherein they all agree and which they all subscribe with a greater Harmony as a perfect rule of their Faith and Actions that is The Bible The Bible I say The Bible only is the Religion of Protestants Whatsoever else they believe besides it and the plain irrefragable indubitable consequences of it well may they hold it as a matter of Opinion but as matter of Faith and Religion neither can they with coherence to their own grounds believe it themselves nor require the belief of it of others without most high and most Schismatical presumption I for my part after a long and as I verily believe and hope impartial search of the true way to Eternal Happiness do profess plainly that I cannot find any rest for the sole of my Foot but upon this Rock only I see plainly and with mine own eyes that there are Popes against Popes Councils against Councils some Fathers against others the same Fathers against themselves a Consent of Fathers of one Age against a Consent of Fathers of another Age the Church of one Age against the Church of another Age. Traditive interpretations of Scripture are pretended but there are few or none to be found No Tradition but only of Scripture can derive it self from the Fountain but may be plainly proved either to have been brought in in such an Age after Christ or that in such an Age it was not in In a word there is no sufficient certainty but of Scripture only for any considering man to build upon This therefore and this only I have reason to believe This I will profess according to this I will live and for this if there be occasion I will not only willingly but even gladly lose my life though I should be sorry that Christians should take it from me Propose me any thing out of this Book and require whether I believe it or no and seem it never so incomprehensible to humane reason I will subscribe it with Hand and Heart as knowing no demonstration can be stronger than this God hath said so therefore it is true In other things I will take no mans liberty of judgment from him neither shall any man take mine from me I will think no man the worse man nor the worse Christian I will love no man the less for differing in opinion from me And what measure I mete to others I expect from them again I am fully assured that God does not and therefore that men ought not to require any more of any man than this To believe the Scripture to be Gods word to endeavour to find the true sense of it and to live according to it 57. This is the Religion which I have chosen after a long deliberation and I am verily persuaded that I have chosen wisely much more wisely than if I had guided my self according to your Churches authority For the Scripture being all true I am secured by believing nothing else that I shall believe no falshood as matter of Faith And if I mistake the sense of Scripture and so fall into Error yet am I secure from any danger thereby if but your grounds be true because endeavouring to find the true sense of Scripture I cannot but hold my Error without pertinacy and be ready to forsake it when a more true and a more probable sense shall appear unto me And then all necessary truth being as I have proved plainly set down in Scripture I am certain by believing Scripture to believe all necessary Truth And he that does so if his life be answerable to his Faith how is it possible he should fail of Salvation 58. Besides whatsoever may be pretended to gain to your Church the credit of a Guide all that and much more may be said for the Scripture Hath your Church been Ancient The Scripture is more Ancient Is your Church a means to keep men at Unity So is the Scripture to keep those that believe it and will obey it in Unity of belief in matters necessary or very profitable and in Unity of Charity in points unnecessary Is your Church Universal for time or place Certainly the Scripture is more Universal For all the Christians in the World those I mean that in truth deserve this name do now and always have believed the Scripture to be the Word of God whereas only you say that you only are the Church of God and all Christians besides you deny it 59. Thirdly following the Scripture I follow that whereby you prove your Churches infallibility whereof were it not for Scripture what pretence could you have or what notion could we have and by so doing tacitely confess that your selves are surer of the Truth of the Scripture than of your Churches authority For we must be surer of the proof than of the thing proved otherwise it is no proof 60. Fourthly following the Scripture I follow that which must be true if your Church be true for your Church gives attestation to it Whereas if I follow your Church I must follow that which though Scripture be true may be false nay which if Scripture be true must be false because the Scripture testifies against it 61. Fifthly to follow the Scripture I have Gods express warrant and command and no colour of any prohibition But to believe your Church infallible I have no command at all much less an express command Nay I have reason to fear that I am prohibited to do so in these Words call no man Master on Earth They fell by infidelity Thou standest by Faith Be not high minded but fear The Spirit of truth The World cannot receive 62. Following your Church I must hold many things not only above reason but against it if any thing be against it whereas following the Scripture I shall believe many mysteries but no impossibilities many things above reason but nothing against it many things which had they not been revealed reason could never have discovered but nothing which by true reason may be confuted many things which reason cannot comprehend how they can be but nothing which reason can comprehend that it cannot be Nay I shall believe nothing which reason will not convince that I ought to believe it For reason will convince any man unless he be of a perverse mind that the Scripture is the Word of God And then no reason can be greater than this God says so therefore it is true 63. Following your Church I must hold many things which to any mans judgment that will give himself the liberty of judgment will seem much more plainly contradicted by Scripture than the infallibility of your Church appears to be confirmed by it and consequently must be so
yet our own Brethren the Century writers acknowledge that in the times of Cyprian and Tertullian private Confession even of thoughts was used and that it was then commanded and thought necessary and then our Ordination you say is very doubtful and all that depends upon it Answer I also omit to answer 1. That your Brother Rhenanus acknowledges the contrary and assures us that the Confession then required and in use was publick and before the Church and that your auricular Confession was not then in the World for which his Mouth is stopped by your Index Expurgatorius 2. That your Brother Arcudius acknowledges that the Eucharist was in Cyprians time given to Infants and esteemed necessary or at least profitable for them and the giving it shews no less and now I would know whether you will acknowledg your Church bound to give it and to esteem so of it 3. That it might be then commanded and being commanded be thought necessary and yet be but a Church Constitution Neither will I deny if the present Church could and would so order it that the abuses of it might be prevented and conceiving it profitable should enjoyn the use of it but that being commanded it would be necessary 4. Concerning our Ordinations besides that I have proved it impossible that they should be so doubtful as yours according to your own principles I answer that experience shews them certainly sufficient to bring men to Faith and Repentance and consequently to Salvation and that if there were any secret defect of any thing necessary which we cannot help God will certainly supply it 19. It is remarkable against what you say § 7. That any small Error in Faith destroys all Faith that S. Austin whose authority is here stood upon thought otherwise He conceived the Donatists to hold some Error in Faith and yet not to have no Faith His words of them to this purpose are most pregnant and evident you are with us saith he to the Donatist Ep. 48. in Baptism in the Creed in the other Sacraments And again Super gestis cum emerit Thou hast proved to me that thou hast Faith prove to me likewise that thou hast Charity Lib. 5. prope initium Parallel to which words are these of Optatus Amongst us and you is one Ecclesiastical conversation common lessons the same Faith the same Sacraments Where by the way we may observe that in the judgments of these Fathers even the Donatists though Hereticks and Schismaticks gave true Ordination the true Sacrament of Matrimony true Sacramental Absolution Confirmation the true Sacrament of the Eucharist true extream Unction or else choose you whether some of these were not then esteemed Sacraments But for Ordination whether he held it a Sacrament or no certainly he held that it remained with them entire for so he says in express terms in his Book against Parmenianus his Epistle Which Doctrine if you can reconcile with the present Doctrine of the Roman Church Eris mihi magnus Apollo 20. Ad § 8. Obj. You say there is un inevitable necessity for us either to grant Salvation to your Church or to entail certain damnation upon our own because ours can have no being till Luther unless yours be supposed to have been the true Church I answer this cause is no cause For first as Luther had no being before Luther and yet he was when he was though he was not before so there is no repugnance in the terms but that there might be a true Church after Luther though there were none for some Ages before as since Columbus his time there have been Christians in America though before there were none for many Ages For neither do you shew neither does it appear that the generation of Churches is Univocal that nothing but a Church can possibly beget a Church nor that the present being of a true Church depends necessarily upon the perpetuity of a Church in all Ages any more than the present being of Peripateticks or Stoicks depends upon a perpetual pedigree of them For though I at no hand deny the Churches perpetuity yet I see nothing in your Book to make me understand that the truth of the present depends upon it nor any thing that can hinder but that a false Church Gods providence over-watching and over-ruling it may preserve the means of confuting their own Heresies and reducing men to truth and so raising a true Church I mean the integrity and the Authority of the word of God with men Thus the Jews preserve means to make men Christians and Papists preserve means to make men Protestants and Protestants which you say are a false Church do as you pretend preserve means to make men Papists that is their own Bibles out of which you pretend to be able to prove that they are to be Papists Secondly you shew not nor does it appear that the perpetuity of the Church depends on the truth of yours For though you talk vainly as if you were the only men in the World before Luther yet the World knows that this is but talk and that there were other Christians besides you which might have perpetuated the Church though you had not been Lastly you shew not neither doth it appear that your being acknowledged in some sense a true Church doth necessarily import that we must grant Salvation to it unless by it you understand the ignorant members of it which is a very unusual Synechdoche 21. Whereas you say that Catholicks never granted that the Donatists had a true Church or might be saved I answ S. Austin himself granted that those among them who sought the Truth being ready when they found it to correct their Error were not Hereticks and therefore notwithstanding their Error might be saved And this is all the Charity that Protestants allow to Papists Therefore the Argument of the Donatists is as good as that of the Papists against Protestants For the Donatists argued thus speaking to the Catholicks Your selves confess our Baptism Sacraments and Faith good and available We deny yours to be so and say there is no Church no Salvation amongst you Therefore it is safest for all to joyn with us 22. S. Austins words are cont lit petil l. 2. c. 108. Petilianus dixit venite ad Ecclesiam populi aufugite Traditores Cont. lit Petil l. 2. c. 108. si perire non vultis Petilian saith come to the Church ye People and fly from the Traditours if ye will not be damned for that ye may know that they being guilty esteem well of our Faith behold I Baptize these whom they have infected but they receive those whom we have Baptized Where it is plain that Petilian by his words makes the Donatists the Church and excludes the Catholicks from salvation absolutely And whereas you say the Catholicks never yielded that among the Donatists there was a true Church and hope of Salvation I say it appears by what I have alledged out of S. Austin that they
good works they requiring Charity as a necessary qualification in him that will be saved what sense is there in saying they cannot make their calling certain by good works They know what salvation is as well as you and you have as much reason to desire it They believe it as heartily as you that there is no good work but shall have its proper reward and that there is no possibility of obtaining the eternal reward without good works and why then may not this Doctrin be a sufficient incitement and provocation unto good works 31. You say that they certainly believe that before any good works they are justified But this is a calumny There is no Protestant but requires to Justification Remission of sins and to Remission of sins they all require Repentance and Repentance I presume may not be denied the name of a good work being indeed if it be rightly understood and according to the sense of the word in Scripture an effectual conversion from all sin to all holiness But though it be taken for meer sorrow for sins past and a bare purpose of amendment yet even this is a good work and therefore Protestants requiring this to Remission of sins and Remission of sins to justification cannot with candor be pretended to believe that they are justified before any good work 32. Obj. You say They believe themselves justified by faith alone and that by that faith whereby they believe themselves justified Answ Some peradventure do so but withal they believe that that faith which is alone and unaccompanied with sincere and universal obedience is to be esteemed not faith but presumption and is at no hand sufficient to justificafication that though Charity be not imputed unto justification yet it is required as a necessary disposition in the person to be justified and that though in regard of the imperfection of it no man can be justified by it yet that on the other side no man can be justified without it So that upon the whole matter a man may truly and safely say that the Doctrin of these Protestants taken altogether is not a Doctrin of Liberty not a Doctrin that turns hope into presumption and carnal security though it may justly be feared that many licentious persons taking it by halves have made this wicked use of it For my part I do heartily wish that by publick Authority it were so ordered that no man should ever Preach or Print this Doctrin that Faith alone justifies unless he joyns this together with it that universal obedience is necessary to salvation And besides that those Chapters of S. Paul which intreat of justification by faith without the works of the Law were never read in the Church but when the thirteenth Chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians concerning the absolute necessity of Charity should be to prevent misprision read together with them 33. Obj. Whereas you say that some Protestants do expresly affirm the former point to be the soul of the Church c. and that therefore they must want the Theological vertue of Hope and that none can have true hope while they hope to be saved in their Communion I Answer They have great reason to believe the Doctrin of Justification by faith only a point of great weight and importance if it be rightly understood that is they have reason to esteem it a principal and necessary duty of a Christian to place his hope of justification and salvation not in the perfection of his own righteousness which if it be imperfect will not justifie but only in the mercies of God through Christs satisfaction and yet notwithstanding this nay the rather for this may preserve themselves in the right temper of good Christians which is a happy mixture and sweet composition of confidence and fear If this Doctrin be otherwise expounded than I have here expounded I will not undertake the justification of it only I will say that which I may do truly that I never knew any Protestant such a soli-fidian but that he did believe these divine Truths That he must make his calling certain by good works That he must work out his salvation with fear and trembling and that while he does not so he can have no well-grounded hope of Salvation I say I never met with any who did not believe these divine Truths and that with a more firm and a more unshaken assent than he does that himself is predestinate and that he is justified by believing himself justified I never met with any such who if he saw there were a necessity to do either would not rather forgo his belief of these Doctrins than the former these which he sees disputed and contradicted and opposed with a great multitude of very potent Arguments then those which being the express words of Scripture whosoever should call into question could not with any modesty pretend to the title of Christian And therefore there is no reason but we may believe that their full assurance of the former Doctrins doth very well qualifie their perswasion of the latter and that the former as also the lives of many of them do sufficiently testifie are more effectual to temper their hope and to keep it at a stay of a filial and modest assurance of Gods favor built upon the conscience of his love and fear than the latter can be to swell and puff them up into vain confidence and ungrounded presumption This reason joyned with our experience of the honest and religious conversation of many men of this opinion is a sufficient ground for Charity to hope well of their hope and to assure our selves that it cannot be offensive but rather most acceptable to God if notwithstanding this diversity of opinion we embrace each ether with the strict embraces of love and Communion To you and your Church we leave it to separate Christians from the Church and to prescribe them from heaven upon trivial and trifling causes As for our selves we conceive a charitable judgment of our Brethren and their errors though untrue much more pleasing to God than a true judgment if it be uncharitable and therefore shall always chuse if we do err to err on the milder and more merciful part and rather to retain those in our Communion which deserve to be ejected than eject those that deserve to be retained 34. Lastly whereas you say that seeing Protestants differ about the point of Justification you must needs infer that they want unity in faith and consequently all faith and then that they cannot agree what points are fundamental I Answer to the first of these inferences that as well might you infer it upon Victor Bishop of Rome and Policrates upon Stephen Bishop of Rome and S. Cyprian inasmuch as it is undeniably evident that what one of those esteemed necessary to salvation the other esteemed not so But points of Doctrin as all other things are as they are and not as they are esteemed neither can a necessary point
Erring persons that lead good lives should be judged of charitably c. 7.33 A man may learn of the Church to confute its Errors c. 3.40 We did well to forsake the Roman Church for her Errors though we afterwards may err out of it c. 5.63 64 65 67 87 92. We must not adhere to a Church in professing the least Errors lest we should not profess with her necessary Doctrin c. 3.56 The Examples of those that forsaking Popish Errors have denied necessary Truths no Argument against Protestants c. 3.63 External Communion of a Church may be left without leaving a Church c. 5.32 45 47. F. Whether Faith be destroyed by denying a Truth testified by God Ans Pref. 25. c. 6.49 c. 7.19 The Objects of Faith of two sorts essential and occasional c. 4.3 Certainty of Faith less than the highest degree may please God and save a man c. 1.8 6.3 4 5. Faith less than infallibly certain may resist temptations difficulties c. 6.5 There may be Faith where the Church and its infallibility begets it not c. 2.49 Faith does not go before Scripture but follows its efficacy c. 2.48 Protestants have sufficient means to know the certainty of their Faith c. 2.152 In the Roman Church the last resolution of Faith is into Motives of Credibility c. 2.154 The Fathers declared their Judgment of Articles but did not require their declarations to be received under Anathema c. 4.18 Protestants did not forsake the Church though they forksook its errors c. 3.11 Sufficient Foundation for faith without infallible certainty c. 6.6 45. What Protestants mean by Fundamental Doctrins c. 4.52 In what sense the Church of Rome errs not Fundamentally Ans Pref. 20. To be unerring in Fundamentals can be said of no Church of one denomination c. 3.55 To say that there shall be always a Church not erring in Fundamentals is to say that there shall be always a Church c. 3.55 A Church is not safe though retaining Fundamentals when it builds hay and stubble on the foundation and neglects to reform her Errors c. 5.61 Ignorance of what points in particular are fundamental does not make it uncertain whether we do not err fundamentally or differ in fundamentals among our selves c. 7.14 G. The four Gospels contain all necessary Doctrins c. 4.40 41 42 43. An Infallible Guide not necessary for avoiding Heresie c. 2.127 The Apostolick Church an Infallible Guide to which we may resort c. 3.69 The Church may not be an Infallible Guide in fundamentals though it be infallible in fundamentals c. 3.39 That the Roman Church should be the only infallible Guide of Faith and the Scriptures say nothing concerning it is incredible c. 6.20 H. The difference betwixt Heresie and Schism c. 5.51 There are no New Heresies no more than new Articles of Faith c. 4.18 37 38. Separation from the Church of Rome no mark of Heresie by the Fathers whose Citations are answered c. 6.22 23 24 25 26 27 2â— 30 31 33 34. No mark of Heresie to want succession of Bishops holding the same Doctrin c. 6.18 41. We are not Hereticks for opposing things propounded by the Church of Rome for divine Truth c. 6.11 12. Whether Protestants Schismatically cut off the Roman Church from hopes of salvation c. 5.38 I. The Jewish Church had no Infallibility annexed to it and if it had there is no necessity that the Christian Church should have it c. 2.141 The Imposing a necessity of professing known errors and practising known corruptions is a just cause of separating from a Church c. 5.31 36 40 50 59 60 68 69. Indifferency to all Religions falsely charged upon Protestants Ans Pref. 3. c. 3.12 The belief of the Churches Infallibility makes way for Heresie Pref. 10. An Infallible Guide not needful for avoiding Heresies c. 2.127 The Churches Infallibility has not the same Evidence as there is for the Scriptures c. 3.30 31. The Churches Infallibility can no way be better assured to us than the Scriptures incorruption c. 2.25 c. 3.27 The Churches Infallibility is not proved from the promise that the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it c. 3.70 Nor from the promise of the Spirits leading into all Truth which was made onely to the Apostles c. 3.71 72. The Churches infallibility not proved from Ephes c. 11 12 13. He gave some Apostles c. till we all come in the Vnity of the Faith c. c. 3.79 80. That God has appointed an Infallible Judge of Controversies because such a one is desirable and useful is a weak conclusion c. 2. from 128. to 136. inclusive Infallibility in fundamentals no warrant to adhere to a Church in all that she proposes c. 3.57 Infallible interpretations of Scripture vainly boasted of by the Roman Church c. 2.93 94 95. Whether the denial of the Churches Infallibility leaves men to their private spirit reason and discourse and what is the harm of it Pref. 12.13 c. 2.110 Traditional Interpretations of Scripture how ill preserved c. 2.10 Interprecations of Scripture which private men make for themselves not pretending to prescribe their sense to others though false or seditious endanger only themselves c. 2.122 Allow the Pope or Roman Church to be a decisive Interpreter of Christs Laws and she can evacuate them and make what Laws she pleases Pref. 10.11 c. 2.1 S. Irenaeus's account of Tradition favours not Popery c. 2.144 145 146. His saying that no Reformation can countervail the danger of a Schism explained c. 5.11 A living Judge to end Controversies about the sense of Scripture not necessary c. 2.12 13. If Christ had intended such a Judge in Religion he would have named him which he has not done c. 2.23 c. 3.69 c. 6.20 Though a living Judge be necessary to determin Civil causes yet not necessary for Religious causes c. 2. from 14. to 22. inclus If there be a Judge of Controversies no necessity it should be the Roman Church c. 3.69 Roman Catholicks set up as many Judges in Religion as Protestants c. 2.116 118 153. A Judgment of discretion must be allowed to every man for himself about Religion c. 2.11 The Protestant Doctrin of Justification taken altogether not a licentious doctrin c. 7.30 When they say they are justified by faith alone yet they make good works necessary to salvation c. 7.30 K. Our obligation to know any divine truth arises from Gods manifest revealing it c. 3.19 L. How we are assured in what Language the Scripture is uncorrupted c. 2.55 56 57. To leave a Church and to leave the external Communion of a Church is not the same thing c. 5.32 45 47. Luthers separation not like that of the Donatists and why c. 5.33.101 Luther and his followers did not divide from the whole Church being a part of it but onely reformed themselves forsaking the corrupt part c. 5.56 Luthers opposing himself to all in his reformation no objection against him c. 5.89 90. We are not bound to justifie all that Luther said
spiritual matters as the City was to other Cities and Countries in temporals I leave it to indifferent men to judge 2. Secondly that they differed not only from the particular Roman Church but also from all other Churches that agreed with it in those doctrins 3. Thirdly I desire you would answer me directly whether the Roman Church taking it for that particular Church be of necessity to be held Infallible in Faith by every Roman Catholick or not To this Question I instantly desire a direct answer without tergiversation that we may at length get out of the cloud and you may say Coram quem quaeritis adsum If you say they are not bound to believe so then it is no Article of Faith nor no certain truth upon which men may safely rest without fluctuation or fear of error And if so I demand 1. Why are all your Clergy bound to swear and consequently your Laity if they have Communion of Faith with them by your own grounds bound to believe That the Roman Church is the Mistris of all other Churches where it is evident from the relation and opposition of the Roman to other Churches that the Roman Church is there taken for that particular Church 2. Secondly why then do you so often urge that mistaken saying of Iraeneus Ad hanc Ecclesiam necesse est omnem convenire Ecclesiam falsely translating it as Cardinal Perron in French and my L. F. in English All Churches must agree with this Church for convenire ad signifies not to agree with but to come unto whereas it is evident for the aforesaid reason that the Roman is here taken for that particular Church 3. Thirdly if that particular Church be not certainly infallible but subject to error in points of faith I would know if any division of your Church should happen in which the Church of Rome either alone or with some others should take one way the Churches of Spain and France and many other Churches another what direction should an ignorant Catholick have then from the pretended Guide of Faith How shall he know which of these Companies is the Church seeing all other Churches distinguished from the Roman may err and seeing the Roman Church is now supposed subject to error and consequently not certain to guard those men or those Churches that adhere unto it from erring 4. Fourthly if that particular Church be not infallible in Faith let us then suppose that de facto it does err in faith shall we not then have an Heretical head upon a Catholick body A head of the Church which were no member of the Church which sure were a very strange and heterogeneous Monster If to avoid these inconveniences you will say that Roman Catholicks must of necessity hold that particular Church infallible in faith I suppose it will evidently follow that S. Austin and S. Cyprian notwithstanding those sentences you pretend out of them were no Roman Catholicks seeing they lived and died in the contrary belief and profession Let me see these absurdities fairly and clearly avoided and I will dispute no more but follow you whithersoever you shall lead me 3. Thirdly I answer that the places alledged are utterly impertinent to the conclusion you should have proved which was That it was impossible that two Societies of Christians divided upon what cause soever in external Communion may be in truth and in Gods account both of them parts of the Catholick Church whereas your testimonies if we grant them all say no more but this That the Societies of Hereticks which are such as overthrow any doctrin necessary to salvation and of Schismaticks which are such as separate from the Churches Communion without any pretence of error in the Church or unlawfulness in the conditions of her Communion I say they prove only this that such Societies as these are no parts of the Church which I willingly grant of all such as are properly and formally Hereticks and Schismaticks from which number I think with S. Austin they are to be exempted Qui quaerunt cautâ sollicitudine veritatem corrigi parati cùm invenerint Whereas I put the case of such two Societies which not differing indeed in any thing necessary to salvation do yet erroneously believe that the errors wherewith they charge one another are damnable and so by this opinion of mutual error are kept on both sides from being Hereticks Because I desire to bring you and others to the truth or to be brought to it by you I thought good for your direction in your intended Reply to acquaint you with these things 1. That I conceive the in your discourse is this That whensoever any two Societies of Christians differ in external Communion one of them must be of necessity Heretical or Schismatical I conceive there is no such necessity and that the stories of Victor and the Bishops of Asia S. Cyprian and Pope Stephen make it evident and therefore I desire you to produce some convincing argument to the contrary and that you may the better do it I thought good to inform you what I mean by an Heretick and what by a Schismatick An Heretick therefore I conceive him that holds an Error against Faith with obstinacy Obstinate I conceive him who will not change his Opinion when his reasons for it are so answered that he cannot reply and when the reasons against it are so convincing that he cannot answer them By the Faith I understand all those Doctrines and no more which Christ taught his Apostles and the Apostles the Church yet I exclude not from this number the certain and evident deductions of them A Schismatick I account him and Facundus Hermianensis hath taught me to do so who without any supposing of error in the conditions of a Churches Communion divides himself either from the obedience of that Church to which he owes obedience or from the Communion of that Church to which he owes Communion 2. Another thing which I thought fit to acquaint you with is this That you go upon another very false and deceitful supposition viz. that if we will not be Protestants presently we must be Papists if we forsake the Church of England we must go presently to the Church of Rome Whereas if your Arguments did conclude as they do not that before Luthers time there was some Church of one Denomination which was the Catholick Church I should much rather think it were the Church of Greece than the Church of Rome and I believe others also would think so as well as I but for that reason which one gives why more men hold the Pope above a Council than a Council above a Pope that is because Councils give no maintenance or preferment and the Popes do Think not yet I pray that I say this as if I conceived this to be your reason for preferring the Roman Church before the Greek for I protest I do not but rather that conceiving verily you were to leave the Church of England to avoid
Christians That it was fit and lawful to deny the Laity the Sacramental Cup That it was expedient and for the edification of the Church that the Scripture should be read and the publick worship of God perpetually celebrated in a language which they understand not and to which for want of understanding unless S. Paul deceive us they cannot say Amen Or is it reasonable you should desire us to believe you when your own Men your own Champions your own Councils confess the contrary Does not the Council of Constance acknowledg plainly That the custom which they ratified was contrary to Christs institution and the custom of the Primitive Church and how then was it taught by Christ and his Apostles Do not Cajetan and Lyranus confess ingenuously that it follows evidently from S. Paul that it is more for edification that the Liturgy of the Church should be in such a Language as the Assistants understand The like Confession we have from others concerning Purgatory and Indulgences Others acknowledges the Apostles never taught Invocation of Saints Rhenanus says as much touching Auricular Confession It is evident from Peter Lombard that the Doctrin of Transubstantiation was not a point of Faith in his time From Pius Mirandula that the Infallibility of the Church was no Article much less a foundation of Faith in his time Bellarmine acknowledges that the Saints enjoying the Vision of God before the day of judgment was no Article of Faith in the time of Pope John the XXII But as the Proverb is when Thieves fall out true men recover their goods so how small and heartless the reverence of the Church of Rome is to ancient Tradition cannot be more plainly discovered than by the Quarrels which her Champions have amongst themselves especially about the Immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin The Patrons of the Negative opinion Cajetan Bannes Bandellus and Canus alledg for it First an whole army of Scriptures Councils and Fathers agreeing unanimously in this Doctrin That only Christ was free from sin Then an innumerous multitude of Fathers expresly affirming the very point in question not contradicted by any of their Contemporaries or Predecessors or indeed of their Successors for many ages All the Holy Fathers agree in this that the Virgin Mary was conceived in Original sin So * In part primum q. 1. Art 8. Dub. 5. Bannes Cajetan brings for it fifteen Fathers in his judgment irrefragable others produce two hundred Bandellus almost three hundred Thus †Disp 51. in Ep. ad Rom. Salmeron That all the Holy Fathers who have fallen upon the mention of this matter with one mouth affirm that the Blessed Virgin was conceived in Original sin So ‖ Lib. VII loc cap. 1. cap. 3. n. 9. Canus And after That the contrary Doctrin has neither Scripture nor Tradition for it For saith he no Traditions can be derived unto us but by the Bishops and Holy Fathers the Successors of the Apostles and it is certain that those ancient writers received it not from their predecessors Now against this stream of ancient Writers when the contrary new Doctrin came in and how it prevailed it will be worth the considering The First that set it abroach was Richardus de Sancto Victore as his country-man * Omnium expresse primus Christiferam virginem originalis noxae expertem tenuit De gestis Scotorum III. 12. Johannes Major testifies of him He was expresly the first that held the Virgin Mary free from Original sin or he was the first that expresly held so So after upon this false ground which had already taken deep root in the heart of Christians That it was impossible to give too much honour to her that was the Mother of the Saviour of the World like an ill weed it grew and spread apace So that in the Council of †Sess XXXVI Basil which Binius tells us was reprobated but in part to wit in the point of the Authority of Councils and in the deposition of Eugenius the Pope it was defined and declared to be Holy Doctrin and consonant to the worship of the Church to the Catholick Faith to right Reason and the Holy Scripture and to be approved held and embraced by all Catholicks and that it should be lawful for no man for the time to come to preach or teach the contrary The custom also of keeping the Feast of her Holy Conception which before was but particular to the Roman and some other Churches and it seems somewhat neglected was then renewed and made Universal and commanded to be celebrated sub nomine Conception is under the name of the Conception Binius in a Marginal note tells us indeed That they celebrate not this Feast in the Church of Rome by virtue of this Renovation cum esset Conciliabalum being this was the act not of a Council but of a Conventicle yet he himself in his Index stiles it the Oecomenical Council of Basil and tells that it was reprobated only in two points of which this is none Now whom shall we believe Binius in his Margin or Binius in his Index Yet in after-times Pope Sixtus IV. and Pius V. thought not this Decree so binding but that they might and did again put life into the condemned opinion giving liberty by their constitutions to all men to hold and maintain either part either that the Blessed Virgin was conceived with Original sin or was not Which Constitution of Sixtus IV. The * Sess V. Council of Trent renewed and confirmed But the wheel again turning and the Negative opinion prevailing The Affirmative was banisht first by a Decree of Paul V. from all publick Sermons Lectures Conclusions and all publick Acts whatsoever and since by another Decree of Gregory XV. from all private Writings and private Conferences But yet all this contents not the University of Paris They as Salmeron tells us admit none to the Degree of Doctor of Divinity unless they have first bound themselves by solemn Oath to maintain the Immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Now I beseech you Mr. R. consider your courses with some indifference First You take Authority upon you against the universal constant unopposed Tradition of the Church for many ages to set up as a rival a new upstart yesterdays invention and to give all men liberty to hold which they please So Pope Sixtus IV. The Council of Trent and Pius V. that is you make it lawful to hold the ancient Faith or not to hold it nay to hold the contrary This is high presumption But you stay not here For Secondly The ancient Doctrin you cloyster and hook up within the narrow close and dark rooms of the thoughts and brains of the defenders of it forbidding them upon pain of damnation so much as to whisper it in their private discourses and writings and in the mean time the New Doctrin you set at full liberty and give leave nay countenance and encouragement to all men to
unless this may pass for one as perhaps it may where reasons are scarce No proposition which contradicts the common judgment of the Fathers can be probable * I should rather subsume but this does so Therefore not probable But it is de fide that our opinion is probable for the Council of Trent hath made it so by giving liberty to all to hold it Therefore without doubt we must hold that it is not whatsoever it seems against the common judgment of the Fathers This argument saith he doth most illustriously convince the followers of the contrary opinion that they ought not to dare affirm hereafter that their opinion flowes from the common judgment and writings of the ancient Doctors His second answer is That whereas Bandillus and Cajetan c. produce general sayings of Irenaeus Origen Athanasius Theophilus Alexandrinus Greg. Nyssen Basil Greg. Naz. Cyprian Hierom Fulgentius and in a manner of all the ancient Fathers exempting Christ alone from and consequently concluding the Virgin Mary under Original sin which Argument must needs conclude if the Virgin Mary be not Christ His answer I say is These Testimonies have little or no strength for did they conclude we must then let us in Gods name say that the Virgin Mary committed also many venial sins For the Scriptures Fathers and Councils set forth in propositions as Universal That there is no man but Christ who is not often defiled at least with smaller sins and who may not justly say that Petition of our Lords Prayer Demitte nobis debita nostra An answer I confess as fit as a Napkin to stop the mouths of his domestick adversaries though no way fit to satisfie their reason But this man little thought there were Protestants in the world as well as Dominicans who will not much be troubled by thieves falling out to recover more of their goods than they expected and to see a prevaricating Jesuit instead of stopping one breach in their ruinous cause to make two For whereas this man argues from the destruction of the Consequent to the destruction of the Antecedent thus If these testimonies were good and concluding then the Virgin Mary should have been guilty not only of Original but also of actual sin But the Consequent is false and blasphemous Therefore the Antecedent is not true They on the others side argue and sure with much more reason and much more conformity to the Ancient Tradition From the Assertion of the Antecedent to the Assertion of the Consequent thus If these testimonies be good and concluding then the Blessed Virgin was guilty both of Original sin and Actual but the Testimonies are good and concluding therefore she was guilty even of actual sins and therefore much more of Original His Third Answer is That their Church hath or may define many other things against which if their works be not depraved there lies a greater consent of Fathers than against the Immaculate Conception and therefore why not this The Instances he gives are four 1. That the Blessed Virgin committed no actual sin 2. That the Angels were not created before the visible world 3. That Angels are Incorporeal 4. That the Souls of Saints departed are made happy by the Vision of God before the day of Judgment Against the first Opinion he alledges direct places out of Origen which he says admit no exposition though Pamelius upon Tertullian and Sixtus Senensis labour in vain to put a good sense on them Out of Euthymias and Theophylact Out of S. Chrysostom divers pregnant testimonies and S. Thomas his confession touching one of them out of the Author of the Questions of the New and Old Testament in S. Austin cap. 75. Out of S. Hilary upon Psa 118. which words yet says he Tolet has drawn to a good construction yet so much difficulty still remains in them Out of Tertullian de carne Christi cap. 7. which he tells us will not be salved by Pamelius his gloss Out of Athanafius out of Irenaeus III. 18. out of S. Austin lib. 2. de Symbolo ad Catech. cap. 5. Whose words yet because they admit says Poza some exposition I thought fit to suppress though some think they are very hard to be avoided Out of Greg. Nyss out of S. Cyprian in his Sermon on the Passion Whose words says he though they may by some means be eluded yet will always be very difficult if we examin the Antecedents and Consequents out of Anselm Rich. de S. Victor S. Ambrose S. Andrew of Hierusalem and S. Bede and then tells us there are many other Testimonies much resembling these and besides many Fathers and Texts of Scripture which exempt Christ only from actual sin and lastly many suspicious sayings against her Immunity in them who use to say that at the Angels Annunciation she was cleansed and purged and expiated from all faults committed by her freewill which saith he though Canisius and others explicate in a pious sense yet at least they shew that either those alledged against the Imaculate conception are as favourable to be expounded Or we must say that a verity may be defined by the See Apostolick against the judgment of some Fathers From these things says he is drawn an unanswerable reason That for the defining the purity of the conception nothing now is wanting For seeing notwithstanding more and more convincing testimonies of Fathers who either did or did seem to ascribe actual sin to the Blessed Virgin notwithstanding the Universal sayings of Scripture and Councils bringing all except Christ under sin Lastly notwithstanding the silence of the Scriptures and Councils touching her Immunity from actual sin seeing notwithstanding all this the Council of Trent hath either decreed Seff VI. c. 23. de Justifical or hath confirmed it being before decreed by the consent of the faithful that the Blessed Virgin never was guilty of any voluntary no not the least sin It follows certainly that the Apostolick See hath as good nay better ground to enrol amongst her Articles the Virgins Immaculate conception The reason is clear for neither are there so many nor so evident sentences of Fathers which impute any fault or blemish to the Conception of the Mother of God as there are in appearance to charge her with actual offences Neither are there fewer Universal propositions in Scripture by which it may be proved that only Jesus was free from actual sin and therefore that the Virgin Mary fell into it Neither can there at this time be desired a greater consent of the faithful nor a more ardent desire than there now is that this verity should be defined and that the contrary Opinion should be Anathematized for Erroneous and Heretical The words of the Council of Trent on which this reason is grounded are these If any man say That a man all his life long may avoid all even venial sins unless by special priviledge from God as the Church holds of the Blessed Virgin let him be Anathema But if the consent of the Church hath prevailed against more clear Testimonies of ancient Fathers even for that which is favoured with no express authority of Scriptures or Councils And if the Council of Trent upon this consent of the faithful hath either defined this Immunity of the Virgin from all actual sin or declared it to be defined Who then can deny but that the Church hath immediate power to define among the Articles of Faith the pious Opinion of the Immaculate Conception His second Example by which he declares the power of their Church to define Articles against a multitude of Fathers and consequently not only without but against Tradition is the opinion that Angels were not created before the Corporeal world was created which saith he is or may be defined though there were more Testimonies of Fathers against it than against the Immaculate Conception So he says in the Argument of his Fifth Chapter and in the end of the same Chapter The Council of Lateran hath defined this against the express judgment of twenty Fathers of which Nazianzen Basil Chrysostome Cyrill Hierom Ambrose and Hillary are part His third Example to the same purpose is the opinion that Angels are Incorporeal against which saith he in the Argument of his sixth Chapter there are more Testimonies of the Fathers than against the Immaculate Conception and yet it is or at least may be defined by the Church and in the end of the Chapter I have for this Opinion cited twenty three Fathers which as most men think is now condemned in the * Firm de summâ Trinitate Lateran Council or at least as †De Angelis lib. 6. Suarez proves is to be rejected as manifestly temerarious His fourth and last Example to the same purpose is The Opinion that the Souls of Saints departed enjoy the Vision of God before the Resurrection Against which he tells us in the first place was the Judgment of Pope John XXI though not as a Pope but as a private Doctor Then he musters up against it a great multitude of Greek and Latin Fathers touching which he says All these Testimonies when * 1. 2. D. 29. cap. 1. Vasquez has related at length he †cap. 3. answers that they might be so explained as to say nothing against the true and Catholick Doctrin Yet if they could not be so explained their Authority ought not to hinder us from embracing that which the Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The same argument I make says Peâ—â— The Fathers and ancient Doctors which are objected against the pious opinion of the Conception of the Virgin may be commodiously explicated or at least so handled that they shall not hurt Notwithstanding though they cannot be explicated some of them that their Testimonies ought not to hinder but that the Sea Apostolick may define the Blessed Virgins preservation from Original sin In fine for the close of this Argument he adds Nolo per plura I will not run through more Examples These that I have reckoned are sufficient and admonishes learned men to bring together other like proofs whereby they may promote the desired Determination FINIS