end the. p. 288. l. 24. for left r. lest p. 297. l. 17. for them r. the. p. 314. r. Paulus 5. p. 356. l. 31. r. hatchets p. 362. l. 28. r. at last p. 365. l. 8. for may r. many l. 33. r. Maldonate p. 397. l. 30. r. the other of l. 32. for parties r. straw p. 409. l. 32. r. in the. l. 36. blot out none p. 422. l. 13. r. presided p. 426. l. 17. blot out of p. 432. l. 33. for had r. had not p. 434. l. 4. for to r. as p. 435. l. 1. r. members p. 433. l. 29. blot out a. p. 452. l. 20. r. But when the. A Key for Catholicks To open the juglings of the Jesuits and satisfie all that are but truly willing to understand whether the cause of the Romane or the Reformed Churches be of God and to leave the Reader utterly unexcusable if after this he will be a Papist CHAP. I. THE thoughts of the divided state of Christians have brought one of the greatest and constantest sadness to my Soul that ever it was acquainted with especially to remember that while we are quarrelling and plotting and writing and fighting against each other so many parts of the world about five of six remain in the Infidelity of Heathenism Judaism or Mahometanism where millions of poor souls do need our help and if all our strength were joyned together for their Illumination and Salvation it would be too little Oh horrible shame to the face of Christendom that the Nations are quietly serving the Devil and the Turk is in possession of so many Countries that once were the Inheritance of Christ and that his Iron yoak is still upon the necks of the persecuted Greeks and that he stands up at our doors in so formidable a posture still ready to devour the rest of the Christian world and yet that instead of combining to resist him and vindicate the cause and people of the Lord we are greedily sucking the blood of one another and tearing in pieces the body of Christ with furious hands and destroying our selves to save the enemy a labour and spending that wit that treasure that labour and that blood to dash our selves in pieces on one another which might be nobly and honestly and happily spent in the cause of God These thoughts provoked me to many an hours consideration How the wounds of the Church might be yet healed And have made it long a principal part of my daily Prayers that the Reconciling Light might shine from Heaven that might in some good measure take up our differences and that God would at last give healing Principles and dispositions unto men especially to Princes and the Pastors of the Church But the more I studied how it might be done the more difficult if not impossible it appear'd and all because of the Romane Tyranny the Vice-Christ or pretended Head of the Church being with them become an essential part of it and the Subjection to him essential to our Christianity it self So that saith Bellarmine de Eccles l. 3. c. 5. No man though he would can be a Subject of Christ that is not subject to the Pope and this with abundance of intolerable corruptions they have fixed by the fancy of their own Infallibility and built upon this foundation a worldly Kingdom and the temporal Riches and Dignity of a numerous Clergy twisting some Princes also into the Interest so that they cannot possibly yield to us in the very principal points of difference unless they will deny the very Essence of their New Christianity and Church and pluck up the foundations which they have so industriously laid and leave men to a suspicion that they are fallible hereafter if they shall confess themselves mistaken in any thing now and unless they will be so admirably self-denying as to let go the temporal advantages which so many thousands of them are interested in And whether so much light may be hoped for in so dark a generation or so much love to God and self-denyal in millions of men so void of self-denyal is easie to conjecture And we cannot in these greatest matters come over to them unless we will flatly betray our Souls and depart from the Unity of the Catholick Church and from the Center of that Unity to unite with another called the Romane Catholick Church in another Center And if we should thus cast away the Truth and Favour of God and sin against our Knowledge and Conscience and so prove men of no Faith or Religion under pretence of desiring a Unity in Faith and Religion yet all would not do the thing intended but we should certainly miss of these very ends which we seek when we had sold the Truth and our Souls to obtain them For there is nothing more certain then that the Christian World will never unite in the Romane Vice-Christ nor agree with them in their Corruptions against plain Scripture Tradition Consent of the ancient Church against the Reason and common sense of Mankind This is not by any wise man to be expected Never did the universal Church or one half of it center to this day in the Romane Soveraignty And why should they hope for that which never yet was done When they had their Primacy of Place to be the Bishop of the first Seat and first of the Patriarcks it made the Pope no more a Soveraign and a Vice-Christ then the King of France is Soveraign to the Duke of Saxony or Bavaria or then the Senior Justice on the Bench is the Soveraign of the rest and yet even this much he never had but from the Romane Empire What claim did he ever lay in his first Usurpations to any Church without those bounds It was the Empire that raised him and the Empire limited his own Usurpations Saith their own Reinerius or whoever else Cont. Waldens Catal. in Biblioth Patr. To. 4. pag 773. The Churches of the Armenians and Aethiopians and Indians and the rest which the Apostles converted are not under the Church of Rome Yea in Gregories days they found the Churches of Brittain and Ireland both strangers and adversaries to their Soveraignty insomuch as they could not procure them to receive their Government nor change so much as the time of Easter for them no nor to have Communion with them at last Anno 614. Laurentius their Arch-Bishop here wrote this Letter with Mellitus and Justus to the Bishops and Abbots in all Scotland that is Ireland While the Sea Apostolick after its manner directed us to preach to the Pagan Nations in these Western parts as in the whole world and we happened to enter this Island called Brittain before we knew them believing that they walked after the manner of the universal Church we reverenced both the Brittains and the Scots in great Reverence of their Sanctity But when we knew the Brittains we thought the Scots were better But we have learnt by Daganus the Bishop in this forementioned Island and by
by force The Pastors are the Judges of Heresie and Vice ad hoc thus far so as to judge who shall be Denounced by themselves unmeet for the Churches Communion and Judges of sound Doctrine so far as to resolve what is by themselves to be taught to the people and Judges of that Magistrate so far as to determine whether he be a fit subject for their Administrations and Communion For every man is to judge when he is to act and execute in these cases and therefore when the Question is Who is to be tolerated or forcibly restrained the Magistrate is the only Judge and the Minister but a teacher But the Question is whom should I admit or not admit to my Communion and whom should I perswade and require the Church to avoid or to receive Here the Pastors are the Judges And when the Question is Whether the Pastor go according to Gods Word or not here the people have Judicium Discretionis and cannot be forced though they ought to obey where they see not sufficient reason to the contrary Mat. 28. 18 19. Heb. 13. 17. 1 Thes 5. 12. 1 Cor. 4. 1. Luk. 12. 42 44. 1 Sam. 28. 18. Dan. 9. 8 10. Joh. 20. 23. 2 Chron. 36. 14 15 16. 19. The honor and power of the Pastors is for their work And so great is that work that as to fleshly accommodations it layeth us under abundance more trouble then the power and honor affordeth us relief from All true Pastors therefore should be so far from striving for Power Greatness and Rule and extent of their Diocess as matters of advantage that they should still look on their Power but as Power to thresh or plough or sow or reap a Power to give alms to all the poor in the Town to visit all the sick to cure mad men that will abuse me c. such a Power to labor and suffer in doing good And thus he that will be the Greatest but think of no other kind of greatness but a power to become the servant of all If men had these true apprehensions of the Episcopal office they would be no more forward in contending for power and large Diocesses then now they are in contending who shall Instruct most of the ignorant or go to the poor ungodly families to further their reformation or intreat beseech exhort most of the obstinate from man to man or who should relieve the most of the poor of all the Countrey about And if this be it they contend for they may Rule without a Commission from the Prince Who will hinder them that hath any fear of God 1 Cor. 4. 9 10 11 12 13 16. Act. 20. 18. to the end 2 Cor. 1. 24. Mark 10. 44. 1 Thes 2 9. Luk. 10. 2. 20. No man is called by God to more work then he can possibly do nor should desire and undertake more And therefore if Prelates and Councils and Popes would but conscionably bethink them of the work what it is and how to be done of what weight and how strict will be the account and then consider how they can do it our differences would quickly be at end For though godly men would put off no service they can do yet when they lookt on the undertaking of these Impossibles they would tremble to think on it All conscionable men are sensible of their weakness and the weight of the work and say who is sufficient for these things And I dare say the strongest of them all would feel the weight of the burden of one Parish and be readyer to beg and seek about for help then to contend for a a larger Diocess unless as the meer necessity of the Church for want of laborers might call them to labor in other parts Duty supposeth Authority and Authority supposeth ability and opportunity even natural ability and mental qualifications Psal 131. 1 2. 2 Cor. 2. 16. BY this much you may see what Unity may be expected in the Church on earth 1. A unity of internal Faith and Love and Spirit among all real Christians 2. A Unity of Profession all professing the same Belief that is of the word of God in General and of the Creed and Essentials of Religion in particular and as many more of the particular truths as they can reach 3. A Unity of Professors in local communion in the same Assemblies in Gods publick Worship in the Word Prayer Praises Sacraments c. Where they cohabite or have opportunity for such communion 4. Among those that are out of our reach or being neer us yet differing in some smaller things where a difference is tolerable we may yet in word writing and deed own each other as Brethren and combine for the promoting of the common good and the commonly received truths and duties So that we have in these four the unity of the spirit in the bond of Peace One Body the Catholick Church comprehending all properly called Christians One Spirit The sanctifying Spirit of Christ One Hope of our calling One Promise or Gospel and One Heaven and End One Lord even Christ the only Head of the Church One Faith Both objective in Scripture and the Creed and subjective specifical which is our Reception of Scripture doctrine and of Christ with his benefits One Baptism entring all one and the same Covenant with Christ to be his and take him for our Lord and Saviour renouncing the world the flesh and devil and signifying this by external washing in the name of that Father Son and Holy Ghost One God and Father Our Creator Preserver our End and Happiness Ephes 4. 3 4 5. And is all this Nothing to you that seemed so much to Paul that unless you have also an Earthly Universal Head and an Unity in Ceremonies wherein all must be of your mind and conform to you as if you were Gods you will revile at our divisions and run to Rome for further Unity HAving laid down those Grounds or Principles on which the Unity and Peace of the Church must be built there appears not any great need of adding any more for the reducing these to practice if these were but received the way of practice would be obvious But briefly I shall lay down these few Propositions implyed in those exprest before 1. Let every man profess his belief of the Holy Scriptures in General and in particular of all that Scripture hath exprest to be of Necessity to Salvation by denouncing death to them that have it not And let them also Profess to consent that God be their God and Christ their Saviour and the Holy Ghost their Sanctifier and that they renounce the flesh the world and Devil resolving to live a holy life And let this be by a credible way of Professing And all that do thus let us esteem love and use them as Christians till they some way plainly disown this Profession 2. Let every such Baptized Professor owning also the Ministry Church and Worship Ordinances plainly required
in Scripture be a member of some particular Church where he may worship God in the Communion of Saints 3. Let those that make not the foresaid Christian Profession be excluded the number of Christians and those that own not the Fundamentals of communion the Church Ministry Word Prayer Praise Sacrament of Communion be taken as unmeet for actual communion with us though yet we censure them not to be no Christians 4. Let those that are obstinate and impenitent in any Errors contrary to the said Profession and Ordinances or in actual gross sin or discovering an ungodly heart be rejected by the Church after due admonition and patience 5 Let all the Pastors Associate and hold constant correspondency according to their neerness and opportunity for helping and strengthening each other and unanimous carrying on the work of Christ 6. Let these Associations have standing Presidents where the peace of the Church requireth it 7 Let no particular Pastors set up any thing in Gods publick Worship which is not Necessary and may tend to make divisions by driving tender Consciences from his communion 8. Let Associations forbear making Laws to others and imposing as Governours and let them make Agreements for certain Duty and not Laws that pretend to make new duties and let them Agree on nothing unnecessary 9. Let them study Holiness as much as Peace and keep clean themselves and their societies as far as they can and look at labour and suffering and not at any other honour and power but what is for duty and let them look abroad and help the dark parts within their reach and lay out themselves freely and industriously for God and have the chief regard to the most publick good 10. Let him that is justly cast out of one Church be received by none into communion till he be reconciled and if they suspect that he is unjustly cast out let him not be received till the Church that cast him out be heard and the injury or his Repentance manifest 11. Let those that cannot hold local communion because of some smaller practical difference as gestures words c. and yet agree in the foresaid Profession and Fundamentals of Communion yet own each other professedly as Brethren and maintain Love and communion in other respects 12. Let all differing Christians consult and agree how to hold their differences so as may least prejudice the common truths which all receive and as may least hinder the salvation of the ungodly or offend the weak 13. Let none judge or defame each other till they are heard and see they have sufficient cause by certain proof And then admonish them and bring the cause to the Association before they proceed further 14. Let the correspondency of Pastors extend as far as there is Capacity Opportunity and need We cannot correspond with the Antipodes nor much with the Ethiopians nor such remote parts there is seldom opportunity and seldom necessity of actual correspondence with forreign Nations But yet when publick occasions require it the publickest cases being the weightiest we should by Delegates or Messengers from several Associations perform our duties in all such correspondencies whether in Councils or otherwise 15. If any members of our Churches travail into other parts they should take Certificates or Communicatory Letters that they may be admitted to the communion of the Churches where they travail or abide 16. The chief consultations for General Peace and effectual promoting the healing of the Churches and the propagation of the Gospel into the unbelieving parts of the world should be done by Christian Princes by their Agents and though Ministers are fit to be partly their Agents in such consultations yet not meerly as Pastors but as fit men employed by their Princes He that lives to see but this much reduced to practise will see a better unity and peace in the Church then ever was or will be attained by an earthly Head and Judge of the Universal Church whether Pope or Council or then the Agreement of the five Patriarks and the later Primates and Metropolitans will procure Let us be content with one Head and one Heart and center there but though the fingers and toes be more we can well bear it Take up with the Holy Scriptures as the sufficient Rule Let the Profession of that be the mark of a believer and all such believers be taken to be as they are the Catholick Church and no faction Schismatically and presumptuously confine it to themselves Let this Intellectual Unity of faith be seconded with a cordial Unity of Holy Love to Christ and his Members that so our Unity may begin at the Head and Heart and not perversly at the fingers and toes of smaller matters or at the hair and nails of Ceremonies and indifferent Modes Let this be manifested in Professions of Love and publick ownings of the Catholick Brotherhood and of Christians as Christians and by publick disclaiming all selfishness and partiality and private Interests and all reproachfull words and writings and by actual communion as far as we can Let the Worship of God be performed in such holy simplicity that none may be driven from the sacred Assemblies and let the people be suffered to go the same way to heaven as Peter and Paul did go themselves and lead their hearers in Let us not be ambitious of Church Union or Communion with those that ought to be cast out of the Church and whom we are in Scripture commanded to avoid but let the three attributes of Holy Catholick and Apostolical be still affixed to the Church and be practically considered and those considerations issued in The Communion of Saints And then we shall have so much Unity and Peace as may honour the Christian Religion and strengthen us in the way to our Perfect Peace which is not to be expected in this dark diseased imperfect world This is the way and none but this But is there any hope that while men are as they are such healing Truths should be received and obeyed Yes by here and there a man who shall have the Peace of their peaceable Affections and Endeavours but not by the most either of the people or the Pastors let the evidence of the truth be never so clear Who can expect any great success of such Proposals that knows the world till the time come when Light shall go forth with an absolute resolution to prevail God is one and all that Deny themselves and center in him must needs be One But self is as various and numerous as Persons are And this self is the Heart of the Natural man and the Center of all the unsanctified And every self is a grain of Sand that 's hardly made coherent with another The Darkest mind is self-conceited and the poorest child or beggar is self-affected and high and low Princes and people have self-interests which draw them several waves And in the sanctified this self is mortified but in part and is the first living and
Believed in this our own Profession as well as you are in yours when you make the Decrees of Popes and Councils to be your Law and Rule and Tests We perform therefore more then you demand You ask us Where was our Church before Luther And we answer Where our Religion was You ask us Where was that and we tell you Where ever the Christian Religion was and the Holy Scriptures were received This were enough for us in answer to your Question But we do more We tell you not only where our Church and Religion was but where there were men that owned not your grand Corruptions no more then we What can you demand more of us when you call for a succession of Protestants then that we tell you of a succession of Christians which are of our Religion and which were no Papists yea against Popery which therefore were of our integrity And who knoweth not that the foresaid Abassines Armenians Egyptians Greeks c. are against your Papal Soveraignty Infallibility and all that is by us renounced as Essential to Popery O but say the Juglers these are not Protestants they differ from you in many particulars I answer Call them by what name you please they are not only Christians but also Anti-papists or free from Popery and then they are of our Religion and Church But indeed must the world be made believe that all that we Believe is essential to our Religion and that no man that differeth from us can be of our Religion be the difference never so small But say they tell us of a Church that professes your 39 Articles Silly deceivers Do not those very Articles profess that The Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation so that whatever is not read therein nor may be proved thereby is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an Article of the Faith or be thought requsite or necessary to Salvation Art 6. We never took these Articles instead of the Scripture but the Articles and all Protestants profess the Scripture to be the only Rule and Test of their Faith and Religion The substance of the 39 Articles may easily be proved to have been successively held by the Church from the beginning but it is not incumbent on us to prove that every word in the writings of every Divine or Church hath been so continued no more then you will own the writings of any Divines or Provincial Synods of your own as being the Rule of your Faith As you profess that the Decrees of Popes and general Councils approved by him besides the Scriptures are the Rule and Test of your Religion so do we profess that the Scriptures alone with the Law of Nature is the Rule of ours But what say they will you be of the same Church with Nestorians Eutichians and other Hereticks I Answ 1. We will not take all for Nestorians or Eutichians that a railer can call such that never knew them nor can prove it 2. Hereticks indeed that deny any essential part of Christianity are no Christians anh therefore none of the Church that we are of but if you will call those Hereticks that have all the essentials of Christianity because they err in lesser points we know that there are such in the Catholick Church We will be none of them our selves if we can escape it yet indeed have no hope of escaping all error till we are perfect in knowledge But we will not run out of the family of God because there are children and sick persons in it Nor will we for sake the Catholick Church because there are erring persons in it O but saith the Papist We acknowledge not your distinction of points Essential and not Essential all points of Faith are Essential with us and of necessity to Salvation Answ Reader thou shalt see here such impudent and faithless jugling as may make thee blush to think that Christianity hath such professors 1. The Outside of their assertion damneth no aess then all the world that live to the use of Reason 2. The Inside of their deceitful meaning is almost clean contrary and leaveth Heathens and Infidels in the Church or in a state of salvation as well as Christians 3. It leaveth no one Article of faith essential to a Christian or to one that shall be saved and leaveth the Church an Invisible thing clean contrary to their own assertions of its Visibility 4. And when they have thus wrangled themselves into a wood of contradictions and Unchristian absurdities the wisest of them say as we say in the main point All this I will now manifest to thee 1. The Out-side of their assertion is that Every point that we are bound to belive by a Divine faith is fundamental or essential to Christian faith or of necessity to salvation And if so then no man breathing can be saved For no man knoweth all that he is bound to know And no man believeth that which he understandeth not It is impossible to believe that such a Proposition is a truth distinctly and actually when I understand not what the Proposition is And that we all know but in part even what we are obliged to know no man will deny but he that is mad by pride or faction All that God hath revealed in his word is the matter of our faith There is to man can say I have no culpable ignorance of any one Truth of God that I should believe Had we been more perfect in our diligent studies and prayers and use of all means and had we never sinfully grieved the spirit that should illuminate us to say nothing of our Original sinfull darkness there is not one of us but might have known more then we do If sin of the will and life be consistent with true faith then some sin in the understanding is consistent with faith But the former is true therefore c. But according to the out-side of their doctrine no man that hath any sinfull ignorance and consequently unbelief in his understanding can be saved that is no man in the world If he that thinks he knowth any thing knoweth nothing as he ought to know 1 Cor. 8. 2. what shall be said of these men that think they and all the Church do know all things that they ought to know and that their understandings have no sin And must we needs be of that faith that damneth all men and of that Church where none are saved 2. As the Out-side of their Assertions is made for a bug-bear to frighten fools so that the In-side as expounded by many of them is that Heathens and Infidels may be of their Church or saved and that nothing of the Chrian faith at all is necessary to salvation is plain For they ' tell us that they mean that all points are of necessity where they are sufficiently proposed and mens ignorance is not invincible but where there is no sufficient proposal but mens ignorance is invincible or
do so by the Scriptures 2. And can any Learned Papists be so ignorant as not to know that the Arrians pretended the Authority of General Councils and so do many other Hereticks and that the Authority of Pope and Councils are frequently pretended for contrary opinions among them and may be pretended by many an Heretick And will they therefore grant that the Decrees of Popes and Councils are no sufficient discovery of their Faith If Hereticks pretending to your Test of Faith disprove not that to be your Faith then Hereticks pretending to our Rule and Test of Faith which is the Holy Scripture is no proof that it is not our Rule of Faith I do therefore conclude that the Proof of a Succession of such Churches as have received the Holy Scriptures is a valid proof of a succession of Churches of our Religion seeing we have no Religion doctrinally but the Holy Scriptures And this as far as modesty will permit I challenge all the Jesuites on Earth to confute with any solid Reasons yet adding that we do ex superabundanti prove a succession also of Churches that never owned Popery even the greatest part of the Christian world But let these men themselves but prove to us a succession of their Church even such as they require of us Let them prove that from the Apostles days the Catholick Church or any one Congregation of twenty men did hold all that now their Councils and Popes have Decreed and are esteemed Articles of their Faith and I am contented to be their bondslave for ever or to bear a fagot or be used by them as cruelly as their malice can invent or flames or their strappado's execute Let my Head be at their Mercy if they can but prove that Succession of Popery as they require us to do of Protestancy or as I have produced of our Churches and Religion In the 15th and 16th Detection I have more largely spoken to them of this point to which I refer the Reader In the very principal point of their Papal Soveraignty they have nothing but this gross deceit to cheat the world with The Roman Emperors divers ages after Christ did give the Bishop of Rome a Primacy in their Empire and hence these men would perswade us that even from Christ they have had a Soveraignty over all the Christian world Wink but at these small mistakes and they have won the Cause 1. Suppose but Christs Institution to stand in stead of the Emperors 2. Suppose divers hundred years after Christ to have been in the Apostles days 3. Suppose Primacy to be Soveraignty or Universal Government 4. But especially grant them that the Roman Empire was all the Christian world and then they have made good that part of their Cause That there were many Nations without the reach of the Roman Empire that had received the Christian Faith is past doubt Socrates lib. 1. c. 15. saith that Thomas chose Parthia Bartholomew chose India Matthew Ethiopia to plant the Gospel in but the middle India was not converted till Constantines days by Frumentius and Edesius and Iberia by a Maid So Euseb l. 3. c. 3. tells us of Thomas his Preaching to the Parthians and Andrew to the Scythians Et in vit Const l. 4. c. 8. that there were many Churches in Persia cap. 91. how Constantine wrote for them to the King Godignus and others of them maintain that the Abassines did receive the Gospel from the beginning Besides Scotland and many other Countries that were not under the Roman Power And none of these were Governed by the Pope These three Arguments against the Papal Cause I shall here premise to more that follow 1. If all that part of the Christian world that was out of the reach of the Roman Empire did never submit to the Soveraignty of the Pope then hath he not been successively or at any time the actual Head of the Universal Church But the Antecedent is most certain therefore so is the Consequent How an old woman the Emperors Mother of Habassia did baffle their Jesuites by asking them How it came to pass if obedience to the Pope be necessary to salvation that they never had heard from him till now I have told you after from themselves If Primacy were Soveraignty and Emperors and Councils were Gods yet the Indians Abassines Persians and many more in the East and the Scots and Irish and Danes and Sweeds and Poles and Muscovites and most of Germany in the West and North should be no subjects of the Pope 2. If the Rule and Test of the Faith of Papists never had a Real Being or no succession from the Apostles then their Faith and Church hath either no Real Being or no such Succession But the Antecedent is true as I prove It is either General Councils or Popes or the Church Essential as they use to call it that is the Whole Body that is the Rule of their Faith If it be General Councils 1. They had no being from the Apostles till the Council of Nice therefore the Rule of the Papists Faith was then unborn 2. Yea they never had a being in the world There was never any thing like a General Council since the days of the Apostles to this day The first at Nice had none save one John of Persia who its like was some persecuted Bishop that was fled or if one or two more its not material but the Bishops of the Empire and out of the Western parts so few as was next to none The following Councils as Constantinop 1. c. were only out of one piece of the Empire The Council of Trent I disdain to reckon among the modester pretenders to an Universality 2. And if it be not General Councils but the Pope that is the Rule of their Faith then 1. Their Faith hath been interrupted yea and turned to Heresie and to Infidelity when the Pope hath so turned 2. And why then do they tell our people that they take not the Pope for the Rule of their Faith 3. If it be the Major part of the Universal Church 1. It 's known that two to one are against them or at least the Greater part therefore by that Rule their Faith in the Papal Soveraignty is false 2. And yet it would be hard if a man must be of no Belief till he have brought the world to the pole for it Argum. 3. If all the stir that the Papists make in the world for the Papal Government be but to rob Christian Princes and Magistrates of their Power then are they but a seditious Sect But the Antecedent is apparent For there are but two sorts of Government in the Church The one is by the Word applyed unto the Conscience which worketh only on the willing either by General exhortations as in Preaching or by personal application as in Sacraments Excommunication and Absolution And this is the work of the present Pastors and cannot be performed by the Pope Nor would he be
being false Popes who are not to be written in the Catalogue of the Roman Popes but only for the marking out of such times And what kind of Cardinals Priests and Deacons think you we must imagine that these monsters did choose when nothing is so rooted in nature as for every one to beget his like And Genebrard that spleenish Papist li. 4. Sec. 10. saith In this one thing that age was unhappy that for neer one hundred and fifty years about fifty Popes did wholly fall away from the virtue of their ancestors being rather irregular and Apostatical then Apostolical So that the Church of Rome had not then either a Holy or Apostolical Head And Pope Adrian the sixth himself writeth De Sacram. Confir Art 4. that there have many Popes of Rome been Hereticks And two or three several General Councils did condemn Pope Honorius for an Heretick And if I should tell you but what their own writers say of the wickedness of the Roman Clergy in many ages and of the wickedness of the Roman people of the large summs of money that the Pope hath yearly for the licensed or tolerated Whore-houses in Rome you would think that the body of the particular Roman Church were neer kin to the Head and therefore not the Holy Mistris of all Churches But perhaps some will say that the Pope was holy because his Office was Holy though his person vicious Ans 1. If this be the Holiness of the Catholick Church mentioned in the Creed then the Institution of offices is it that makes it Holy and while the office continueth the Holiness cannot be lost 2. Then let them prove their Holiness by Saints no more 3. Let them not then delude the people but speak out and tell them that they mean such Holiness as is consistent with Heathenism or Infidelity Murders Sodomie and may be in an incarnate Devil Is this the Holiness of the Catholick Church Object But you may have unholy persons among you also that yet say you are of the true Church Answ But they are no Essential part of the Catholick Church which we believe and therefore it may be a Holy Church though they be unholy But the Pope is an Essential part of the Roman Church which they believe in and therefore it can not be Holy if he be unholy Object By this means you leave no room for the Church of Rome or any Papist in the Catholick Church which is truly Holy Answ Not as Papists so they can be no members of it But if with any of them Christianity be predominant and prevail against the infection of Popery so that it practically extinguish not Christianity then as Christians they may be members of the Church and be saved too but not as Papists CHAP. VII Argum. 5. THE true Catholick Church of Christ is but One The pretended Roman Catholick Church is more than One Therefore the pretended Roman-Catholick Church is not the true Catholick Church of Christ The Major is confessed The Minor I prove thus 1. Where there are two Heads or Soveraign Powers specifically distinct there are two Societies or Churches But those called Papists or the Roman Catholick Church have two Heads or Soveraign Powers specifically distinct Therefore they are two Churches The Major is granted by all Politicians who do without contradiction specifie Common-wealths and other Political Societies from the Soveraign Powers and so the Monarchical Aristocratical and Democratical are several Species The Belgian Common-wealth and the French be not specifically the same The Minor hath two standing proofs so visible that he must be blind indeed that cannot see them First there are the many Volumes that are written by both sides for their several forms Bellarmine Gretsor and the rest of the Italian faction proving that the Pope is the chief Power and above a General Council and the seat of Infallibility and not to be judged by any being himself the Judge of the whole world And the other party proving that a General Council is above the Pope and that he is to be judged by them and may be deposed by them If any say that they are but few and no true Catholicks of this Opinion I answer then a General Council are but few and no true Catholicks which yet is said by them to represent the whole Catholick Church For the General Council of Constance and of Basil have peremptorily asserted it and repeat it over and over yea the Council of Basil say Ses ultim that Not one of the skilfull did ever doubt but that the Pope was subject to the Judgement of a General Council in things that concern faith And that he cannot without their consent dissolve or remove a General Council yea and that this is an Article of faith which without destruction of salvation cannot be denyed and that the Council is above the Pope defide and that it cannot be removed without their own consent and that he is an heretick that is against these things See Binnius page 43. 79. 96. And Pope Eugenius owned this Council ibid. page 42. And for the Council of Constance Martin the fifth was chosen by it and present in it and personally confirmed it in these words Quodomnia singula determinata conclusa decreta in materiis fidei per praesens concilium conciliariter tenere inviolabiliter observare volebat nunquam contraire quoquo modo Ipsaque sic conciliariter facta approbat ratificat non aliter nec alio modo that is what they did as a Council and not what private members did you see then even General Councils representing the Catholick Church do not only say that a Council is above the Pope but make it an Article of faith and damn those that deny it What then is become of Bellarmine and the rest of their champions But perhaps you 'l say they are but few on the other side I answer yes Not only most Popes and the Italian Clergy and the predominant party of Papists but another General Council even that at the Lateran under Julius 2. and Leo 10. expresly determine on the contrary that the Pope is above a General Council So that here is not only an undenyable proof that General Councils are fallible by their contradicting each other and that there is a Necessity of rejecting some of them and consequently that the Foundation of Popery is rotten but also here is one Representative Catholick Church against another Representative Catholick Church and one Council for one Species of Soveraignty and another for another Species of Soveraignty So that undoubtedly it is not the same Church that had two heads of several sorts 2. And the Nations that are on both sides to this day are a proof beyond denyall of their division The French on one side and the Italians on the other and other nations divided between both So that the thing which they call by one name is two indeed But so is not the true Catholick Church Object
bound to unite and assist each other in such works What is to be accounted Heresie the Law of God sufficiently determineth And what particular persons are to be Judged hereticks and excommunicated according to that Law the particular Pastors that are on the place can better decide then a Pope that is a thousand or five thousand miles off and cannot hear the witnesses And do you not your selves decide almost all such cases through the world that is of your subjection by the present Pastors or Bishops and not by the Pope And why may not we do so then as well as you 9. But if you lay all upon your Popes or Councils Infallibility I desire you but to read my third Disputation in a Book against Popery called the Safe Religion and then believe that Infallibility if you can I should think my self a miserable man if I were not my self more Infallible then many of your Popes have been Every Christian while such is infallible in his belief of the Christian faith And the Scripture is an infallible ground of our belief 10. Is it not a plain Judgement of God upon you that while you make the Scripture so dark and not intelligible and cry up the Necessity of a living Judge you should not only swarm with differences among your selves but should be utterly disagreed and at a loss to know who is this Judge of Controversies one saying it is the Pope and another that its the Council and what the better are you for saying There must be a Judge as long as you cannot tell Who it must be It s not only uncertain among you Whether Pope or Councill be the Infallible Judge but also which is a true Pope and which is a lawfull General Council For fourty years at least together the Church could not know the true Pope but the more learned and conscionable men were divided Nor is it known to this day Frequently the strongest hath carried it and success been his best title Nay General Councils themselves knew not the right Pope The Council at Constance and Basil knew not the right Pope They of Basil thought Felix the fifth the true Pope and Eugenius no Pope But friends and strength confuted a General Council and proved deposed Eugenius the Pope And for Councils themselves who knows which to take for currant and of Authority What Catalogues have you of reprobated Councils and of doubtfull Councils and partly approved partly reprobate and who knows which and how far but only that is approved that pleaseth the Pope and that reprobate that displeased him and yet perhaps approved by a former Pope So that you are all in a confusion and uncertain about your true Popes and General Councils And if you knew them yet what a loss are you at to know their Decrees and Canons What a Fardel of false Decretall Epistles have you thrust upon the world as Blondell Dalleus Reignolds and others have fully proved Forsooth decretals that use a translation of the Scripture that was formed a long time after the death of the supposed Authors of those Epistles And Decretals which make mention of persons and things that were many score or hundred years after the death of the said Authors These are your new Scriptures and by these our faith must be regulated and our controversies decided And your Canons are abundance of them as uncertain some of your own will have but twenty Canons of the first General Council at Nice some will have the new found rabble of additions Much more uncertainty or certain forgery there is in the Canons called the Apostles and the like we may say of abundance more And now I appeal to all the impartial Reason in the world whether your voluminous apocriphal uncertain faith that needs a living Judge and cannot find one or agree upon him and that leaves your controversies still undecided be a liker way to peace and unity then our short and plain Articles and infallible Scripture faith that hath less matter of contention and better means to prevent it even faithful Teachers and Judges in every Church and Commonwealth which shall so far determine as may preserve the peace of those societies levaing the final full Decision of all to the Eternal Judge that is even at the door 11. Yea and is not Gods hand of Judgement yet more observable against you that when your Popes and Councils have past their judgement the several Sects are unable to understand them witness the late sentence against the Jansenists of which the persons that seem to be condemned say that there is no such thing or words in all Jansenius writings as the Pope saith are in him and condemneth as his and the Controversie is as far from a decision as if the Pope had held his peace Yea your great Disputer here in England Thomas White the Novelist is the same for all the Popes determination Take another instance in the forementioned Case Whether the Pope or Council be supream The Councils of Constance and Basil determined it one way as de fide and yet that made no end of the Controversie The Council of Lateran and Pope Leo determined it the other way and yet it is a Controversie after two contrary decisions and some say one way and some the othe and some say It is yet undecided for fear of angring the French by casting them off as Hereticks Another instance The Council at Basil Sess 36. pag. 80. in Binnius hath fully determined the Controversie between the Franciscans and Dominicans about the Virgin Maries immaculate conception and yet it is undetermined still and Thomas White presumes to affirm that Certainly there is no Tradition for it nor any probability that ever the Negative will be defined Apolog. for Tradit pag. 64 65 66. yea he carryeth it as boldly out as if never Council had made or medled with it I will therefore recite the words of the Council which are these A hard question hath been in divers parts and before this holy Synod about the Conception of the glorious Virgin Mary and the beginning of her Sanctification some saying that the Virgin and her soul was for some time or instant of time actually under Original sin others on the contrary saying that from the beginning of her Creation God loving her gave her grace by which preserving and freeing that blessed person from the Original spot we having diligently looke into the authorities and reasons which for many years past have in publike relation on both sides been alledged before this holy Synod and having seen many other things about it and weighed them by mature consideration do Define and Declare that the doctrine affirming that the glorious Virgin Mary the Mother of God by the singular preventing and operating grace of God was never actually under Original sin but was ever free from all Original and actual sin and was holy and immaculate is to be approved held and embraced of all Catholikes as godly and Consonant
it it is not Simony though he that resigns do look at the money as his Principal end and so Tannerus p. 115. But the Jansenists think otherwise Father Gaspar Hurtado saith that an Incumbent may without mortal sin wish the death of him that hath a pension out of his living and a son his fathers death and may rejoyce when it happens so it proceed only from a consideration of the advantage accrewing to him thereby and not out of any personal hatred pag. 136. But the Jansenists believe not this Layman the Jesuit and Pet. Hurtado thinks that a man may lawfully fight a duell accepting the challenge to defend his honour or estate Pag. 138. But the Jansenist thinks otherwise Sanchez and Navarrus allow a man to murder his adversary secretly or dispatch him at unawares to avoid the danger of a duell p. 140. And Molina thinks you may kill one that wrongfully informs against us in any Court and Reginaldus that you may kill the false witnesses which the prosecutor brings And Tannerus and Emanuel Sa that you may kill both witnesses and judge which conspire the death of an innocent person But so think not the Jansenists Henriquez saith one man may kill another who hath given him a box on the ear though he run away for it provided he do it not out of hatred or revenge and that by that means a gap be open for excessive murther destructive to the State And the reason is a man may as well do it in pursuance of his reputation as his goods and he that hath had a box on the ear is accounted dishonourable till he hath killed his enemy And Azorius saith Is it lawfull for a person of quality to kill one that would give him a box on the ear or a bang with a stick some say not But others affirm it lawfull and for my part I think it probable when it cannot be avoided otherwise For if it were not the reputation of innocent persons were still exposed to the insolency of the malicious pag. 142 143 144. many other are of the same mind in so much that Father Lessius saith It is lawfull by the consent of all Casuists to kill him that would give a box on the ear or a blow with a stick when a man cannot otherwise avoid it p. 145. Father Boldellus saith It is lawfull to kill him that saith to you thou lyest if a man cannot right himself otherwise And Lessius saith If you endeavour to ruine my reputation by opprobrious speeches before persons of honour and that I cannot avoid them otherwise then by killing you may I do it According to modern Authors I may nay though the crime you lay to my charge be such as I am really guilty of it being supposed to have been so secretly committed that you cannot discover it by ways of justice T is proved if when you would take away my reputation by giving me a box on the ear it is in my power to prevent it by force of arms the same defence is certainly lawfull when you would do me the same injury with your tongue Besides a man may avoid the affront of those whose ill language he cannot hinder In a word honour is more precious then life but a man may kill in defence of his life ergo he may kill in defence of his honour pag. 146. But the Jansenists are against all this Escombar saith that regularly it is lawfull to kill a man for the value of a crown according to Molina p. 151. Father Amicus saith It is lawfull for a Church-man or a Religious man to kill a detractor that threatens to divulge the scandalous crimes of his community or himself when there is no other means left to hinder him from doing it as if he be ready to scatter his calumnes if not suddenly dispatched out of the way p. 152 153. And Caramovel in his Fundamental Theologie takes it for certain and thence concludes that a Priest not only may kill a detractor on certain occasions but sometimes ought to do it And yet the peevish Jansenist believeth none of this But I must stop you may read in the said Jansenians Mysterie of Jesuitism a volumn of such passages of the Jesuites allowing men to give and receive the Sacrament when they come that day from Adultery and allowing a man to eat and drink as much as he can with his health and discharging men from a Necessity of Loving God unless it be once in their lives or as others say upon Holy-daies or as Hurtado de Mendoza once a year or as Conink once in three or four years or as Henriquez once in five years or as Anthon. Sirmond not at all so we do not hate him and do obey his other commands with abundance more Now Reader I would here leave it to thy consideration whether all these differences among the Papists are so small as to be no matters of faith And I intreat you to read over the forementioned Book the Mysterie of Jesuitism and then judge whether Papists or the Reformed Catholicks are more at unity among themselves Well! but suppose the loving of God the avoiding murder bribery and the like be no matter of faith at Rome yet I have not done with them so I desire to know whether the holy Scripture be matter of faith or not They dare not deny but it is Well! and what is the Scripture but the words ut signa and the sense or matter ut res significata And are the Papists agreed among themselves about either of these no For the words it s well known how some of the best Learned of them have stood for the preheminence of the Hebrew and Greek Texts and others and the most for the vulgar Latine And that vulgar Latine Translation hath been altered and altered again by them And after many others comes Pope Sixtus the fift and makes it so compleat that the Church is required to use his Edition yet after him comes Pope Clement the eighth and mends it in many hundred if not thousand places and imposes this upon the Church which of these Popes was Infallible I am sure they much differ in their Translations And for the sense of scripture though men must swear to take Scripture in the Churches sense yet will not any Pope or Council to this day tell us the sense of them either by giving us an infallible Commentary or by deciding the many thousand differences that are among their Commentators Do not all these Commentators forswear themselves having sworn those that lived since the Council of Trent to expound Scripture in the sence of the Church and only according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers And why doth not the Pope decide these controversies seing it is their happiness to have such a Judge of Controversies to keep them all of a mind But perhaps they will say that all these Scriptures be not matters of faith No! where are we then what is matter of
that know them to be of Divine Revelation we easily grant you that But that is not because the Things themselves are simply necessary to Salvation but because a Belief of Gods veracity and the Truth of all that he Revealeth in general is of necessity and he that Believeth that God is True verax cannot chuse but believe all to be True which he knows God revealeth He that thinketh God to be a Lyar in one word doth not believe his veracity and so hath no Divine faith at all And therefore you need not fear lest any one should be guilty of not believing that which they know is the word of God but those that take God to be a Lyar and that is those that take him not to be God and so are Atheists But still the thing of Absolute necessity is but first to believe in General that God is true in all his word secondly and to believe the truth of the essential points of Christianity in particular embracing the Good propounded in them Now its true that secondarily all known Truths are of necessity to be believed because else our General belief of Gods veracity is not sincere But yet we must say that antecedently even to that person these superadded truths were not of Necessity to his Salvation to be believed because they were not of such Necessity to be Known and if they had not been known you would say your selves there had not been such Necessity of Believing them But if you go further and say that all that were obliged to know them or that had opportunity or the Revelation if the truth and yet did not and thereupon deny them culpably are in a state of death I deny that and shall prove it false It s true that a wilfull refusing the Light because men love darkness rather then light is a certain sign of a graceless wretch But every culpable ignorance and unbelief is not Damning ignorance or unbelief 1. Otherwise no man should be saved For no man is void of culpable ignorance and consequently of culpable unbelief Had we never been wanting in the use of means there 's no man but might have known more then he doth Is there any one of you that dare refuse to ask God forgiveness of your ignorance unbelief or the negligence that is the culpable cause of them or that dare say you need no pardon of them 2. If you plead for venial sin how can you deny a venial unbelief upon venial ignorance But then I pray you learn more wit and piety 1. then to say that your venial unbelief or sin is no sin save as Analogically so called or 2. then to say it deserves a pardon or deserves not everlasting punishment But if you will call it venial because being consistent with the true Love of God and habitual Holiness and saving faith the Law of Grace doth pardon it and not condemn men for it thus we would agree with you that there is veniall sin but then you must yield us that there is venial unbelief 3. And we easily prove all this from the Law of God It is the nature of the preceptive part to constitute Duty only and the violation of that is sin But it is the sanction the promise and threatning that Determines of the Reward and Penalty Now it is only the old Law of works that makes the Threatening as large as the prohibition condemning man for every sin but so doth not the Law of Grace The precept still commandeth Perfect obedience and so makes it a duty but the promise maketh not perfect obedience the condition of Salvation but Faith Repentance and sincere Obedience though imperfect The Law of Nature still makes everlasting Death due to every sin But it is such a Due as hath a Remedy at hand provided and offered in the Gospel and is actually remedyed to all true believers So that as it is not every sin that will damn us though damnation be due to it because we have a present Remedy so it is not every culpable ignorance or unbelief that will damn us though it deserve damnation because the Gospel doth not only not damn us for it but pardons it by acquitting us from the condemnation of the Law All this may teach you not only to mend your abominable doctrine about Mortal and veniall sin but also to discern the reason why a man may deny some points of faith that are not of the essence of Christianity and yet not be damned for it because the Law of Grace doth not condemn him for it though he be culpable because the Law of Grace may command further then it peremptorily condemneth in case of disobedience It is the Promise that makes faith the Condition of Life though it be the Precept that makes it a duty Now it saveth not as a performed Duty directly because the precept gives not the Reward but as a performed Condition And therefore unbelief condemneth not effectually as a meer sin directly but as such a sin as is the violation or non-performance of that condition But it is not a belief of every thing that is preceptively de fide which is made the condition of life CHAP. XVII Detect 8. ANother of their Juglings is to extoll the judgement of the Catholick Church as that which must be the ground of faith and the decider of all Controversies And to this end they plead against the sufficiency of Scripture and bend all the force of their arguings and designs as if all their hope lay in this point and as if it were a granted thing that the day is theirs and we are lost if the Catholick Church be admitted to be the Judge Hence it is that they cry out against private faith and opinions and call men to the faith of the Church and perswade the poor people that the Church is for them and we are but branches broken off Well we are content to deal with them at their own weapon and at that one in which they put their trust For our parts we know that the true Catholick Church nor any member of it in sensu Composito cannot err in any of the Essentials of Christianity for then it would cease to be the Church But we have too much reason to Judge that it is not free from error in lesser things But yet for all that in the main cause between the Papists and us we refuse not their judgement Nay we turn this Canon against the Canoneers and easily prove that the Papists cause is utterly lost if the Catholick Church be Judge But is it the Ancient Church or the present Church that must decide the cause Well! It shall be which you will For the most Ancient Church in the Apostles dayes we are altogether of its belief and stand to its decision in all things and if you prove we mistake them in any thing we shall gladly receive instruction and be reclaimed To them we appeal for our Essentials and Integrals And for some
we have your own Confessions I have elsewhere mentioned some Canus Loc. Theol. lib. 6. cap. 7. fol. 201. saith Not only the Greeks but almost all the rest of the Bishops of the whole world have vehemently fought to destroy the Priviledge of the Church of Rome and indeed they had on their side both the Arms of Emperors and the greater number of Churches and yet they could never prevail to abrogate the Power of the one Pope of Rome Mark here whether the Catholick Church was then your subjects when the greater number of Churches and most of the Bishops of the whole world as well as the Greeks were against you and vehemently fought against your pretended priviledges Rainerius supposed contra Waldenses Catal. in Bibliotheca Patrum Tom. 4. pag. 773. saith The Churches of the Armenians and Ethiopians and Indians and the rest which the Apostles converted are not under the Church of Rome Read and blush and call Baronius a parasite What would you have truer or plainer And what Controversie can there be where so many Nations themselves are witnesses against you And you may conjecture at the numbers of those Churches by what a Legate of the Popes that lived among them saith of one Corner of them Jacob. Ã Vitriaco Histor Orient cap. 77. that the Churches in the Easterly parts of Asia alone exceeded in multitude the Christians both of the Greek and Latine Churches Alas how little a thing then was the Roman Catholick Church If all this were not enough the Tradition of your own Catholick Church is ready to destroy the Papacy utterly For that a General Council is above the Pope and may judge him and depose him and that is de fide and that its Heresie to deny it and that all this is so jure that ne unquam aliquis peritorum dubitavit no wise man ever doubted of it all this is the judgement of the General Council of Basil with whom that of Constance doth agree And whether these Councils were confirmed or not they confess them lawfully called and owned and extraordinary full and so they were their Catholick Church Representative and so the Popes Soveraignty over the Council is gone by I radition but that 's not the worst For if a free General Council should be called all the Churches in the world must be equally there represented And if they were so then down went the usurped Head-ship of the Pope For we are sure already that most of the Churches in the world are against it and therefore in Council they would have the Major vote And thus by the concession of the Roman Representative Catholick Church the Pope is gone by Tradition So that by that time they have well considered of the matter me thinks they should be less zealous for Tradition CHAP. XXI Detect 12. ANother of the Roman frauds is this They perswade men that the Greeks the Protestants and all other Churches were once under their Papal soveraignty and have separated themselves without any just cause and therefore we are all schismaticks and thereforefore have no vote in general Councils c. A few words may serve to shew the vanity of this accusation 1. Abundance of the Churches were so strange to you that they had not any notable communion with you 2. The Greek Churches withdrew from your Communion but not from your subjection If any of the Patriarcks or Emperours of Constantinople did for carnal ends at last submit to you it was not till lately nor was it the act of the Churches nor owned nor of long continuance So that it was your Communion and not your subjection that they withdrew from 2. And as for us of the Western parts we answer you 1. We that are now living our Fathers or our Grand-fathers were not of your Church and therefore we never did withdraw 2. There were Churches in England before the Roman Power was here owned And therefore if it was a sin to change the first change was the sin when they subjected themselves to you and not the later in which they returned to their ancient state 3. And for the Germanes or English or whoever did relinquish you they have as good reason for it as for the relinquishing of any other sin If they did by the unhappiness of ill education or delusion submit to the usurped Soveraignty of the Pope they had no reason to continue in such an error Repentance is not a Vice when the thing Repented of is a vice Justifie therefore your usurpation or else it is in vain to be angry with us for not adhering to the usurper and the many corruptions that he brought into the Church CHAP. XXII Detect 13. ANother deceit that they manage with great confidence is this say they If the Church of Rome be the true Church then yours is not the true Church and then you are Shismaticks in separating from it But the Church of Rome is the true Church For you will confess it was once a true Church when Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans and if it ceased to be a true Church tell us when it ceased if you can If it ceased to be a true Church it was either by heresie or Schism or Apostacy but by none of these therefore c. A man would think that children and women should see the palpable fallacy of this Argument and yet I hear of few that the learned Papists make more use of But to lay open the shame of it in brief I answer 1. The deceit lieth in the ambiguity of the word Church As to our present purpose observe that it hath these several significations 1. It is taken oft in Scripture for one particular Church associated for personal communon in Gods Worship And thus there were many Churches in a Countrey as Judea Galatia c. 2. It is taken by Ecclesiastical writers often for an Association of many of these Churches for Communion by their Pastors such as were Diocesan Provincial National Churches whereof most were then ruled by Assemblies where a Bishop Archbishop Metropolitan or Patriarck as they called them did preside 3. It is taken oft in Scripture for the Body of Christ the holy Catholick or Universal Church containing all true Believers as mystical or all Professors of true faith as visible 4. It is taken by the Papists oft for one particular Church which is the Mistris or Ruler of all other Churches And now I come to apply these in answer to the argument 1. If the Question be of a true particular Church we grant you that the Church of Rome was a true and noble Church in the daies of Paul and long after and thus Paul owneth it in his Epistle as a true Church And to the question when it ceased to be a true Church I answer 1. What matter is it to us whether it be reasoned or not any more then whether Corinth Ephesus Coloss Thessalonica or Jerusalem be true Churches or ceased In charity we regard them all
my Lecture-day from Thursday to Friday that I change my Religion or the worship of God These are our great changes Well I will you now hear whether the Papists or we be the greatest Changlings 1. Some just changes they have made themselves that they know well enough are as great as ours It was so common in the antient Church to Pray only standing on every Lords day and not to kneel at all in any part of the worship of that day that it was taken for an universal Tradition and to kneel was taken for a great sin and condemned by General Councils many hundred years after Christ and yet the Church of Rome and other Churches as well as we have cast off this pretended Tradition violated this Decree of General Councils and forsaken this universal Custom of the Church And the Papists receive the Eucharist kneeling for all this Law and Custome In the primitive Church and in Tertullians dayes a Common Feast of the Church was used with the Lords Supper and the Sacrament taken then But now this Custom is also changed It was then the Custom to sing extempore in the Congregation to Gods praise But now Rome it self hath no such Custom It was once the Custom to give Infants the Lords Supper but now Rome it self hath cast off that Custom Once it was a Canon that Bishops must not read the books of Gentiles Concil Carthag 4. which yet Paul made use of and the Papists now do too much value Abundance such changes might be mentioned greater then ours in which we are justified by the Papists themselves 2. But they have yet other kind of changes then these They have changed the very Essence of the Catholick Church in their esteem they have changed the Officers the Doctrine the Discipline the Worship and what not as though they had been born for change to turn all upside down In the Primitive times the Church had no universal Monarch but Christ but they have set up a new universal Monarch at Rome In the primitive times the Catholick Church was the Universality of Christians and they have changed it to be only the subjects of the Pope In the Primitive times Rome was but a particular Church as Jerusalem and other Churches were but they have changed it to be the Mistris of all Churches For many hundred years after Christ the Scripture was taken to be a sufficient Rule of faith but they have changed it to be but part of the Rule In the antient Church all sorts were earnestly exhorted to read or hear and study the Scripture in a known tongue but they have changed this into a desperate restraint proclaiming it the cause of all Heresies In the antient Church the Bread and Wine was the Body and Blood of Christ Representative and Relative but they have changed it into the real Body and Blood Heretofore there was Bread and Wine remaining after the words of Consecration but they have changed so that there remaineth neither Bread nor Wine but the qualities and quantity without the substance and this must be believed because they say it against Scripture and Antiquity and in despight of sense it self In the antient Church the Lords Supper was administred in both kinds bread and wine to all but they have lately changed this into one kind only to the people denying them one half of the Sacrament Of old the Lords Supper was but the Commemoration of the sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross and a Sacrament of our Communion with him and his members but now they have changed it into a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the quick and dead and in it they adore a piece of Bread as very God with Divine worship Of old men were taught to make daily confession of sin and beg pardon and when they had done all to confess themselves unprofitable servants but now they are so changed that they pretend not only to be perfect without sin and to Merit by the Condignity of their works with God but to supererogate and be more perfect then innocency could make them by doing more then their duty Of old those things were accounted sins deserving Hell and needing the blood of Christ for pardon which now are changed into venial sins which properly are no sins and deserve no more then temporal punishment Of old the Saints had no proper merits to plead for themselves and now men have some to spare for the buying of souls out of Purgatory Of old the Pastors of the Churches were subject to the Rulers of the Commonwealth even every soul not only for wrath but for Conscience sake was obliged to be subject but now all the Clergy are exempted from secular Judgement and yet the secular power is subject to them for the Pope hath power to depose Princes and dispossess them of their Dominions and put others in their rooms and dissolve the bonds of Oaths and Covenants in which the subjects were obliged to them and to allow men to murder them by stabbing poysoning c. If you do not believe me stay but till I come to it and I shall give you yet some further proof Would you have any more of the Popish Changes Why I might fill a volume with them Should I but recite all the changes they have made in Doctrines and all that they have made in Church Orders and Discipline and Religious Orders and their Discipline and in Worship and Ceremonies I should be over tedious their very Liturgy or Mass-book hath been changed and made by changes such abundance of additions it hath had since the beginning of it What changes Sixtus the fift and Clement the eighth made in their Bibles I told you before as also what changes they have had in the election of their Popes And now I am content that any impartial man be judge whether Papists or the Reformed Churches are the more mutable and unsetled in their Religion and which of them is at the greater certainty firmness and immutability CHAP. XXIV Detect 15. ANother fraud of the Papists which they place not the least of their confidence in is this They perswade the people that our Church and Religion is but new of the other dayes invention and that theirs is the only old Religion And therefore they call upon us to give them a Catalogue of the professors of our Religion in all ages which they pretend we cannot do and ask us where our Church was before Luther To this we shall give them once more a brief but satisfactory answer I. We are so fully assured that the oldest Religion is the best since the date of the Gospell that we are contented that our whole cause do stand or fall by this tryall Let him be esteemed of the true Religion that is of the oldest Religion This is the main difference between us and the Papists We are for no Religion that is not as old as the dayes of the Apostles but they are for the Novelties and Additions of
Professors of our Religion therefore c. But all this will not serve them without a Catalogue and telling them where our Church was before Luther To this we further answer we have no peculiar Catholick Church of our own for there is but one and that is our Church Wherever the Christian Church was there was our Church And where-ever any Christians were congregate for Gods worship there were Churches of the same sort as our particular Churches And wherever Christianity was there our Religion was For we know no Religion but Christianity And would you have us give you a Catalogue of all the Christians in the world since Christ Or would you have us as vain as H. T. in his Manuall that names you some Popes and about twenty professors of their faith in each age as if twenty or thirty men were the Catholick Church Or as if those men were proved to be Papists by his naming them This is easie but silly disputing In a word Our Religion is Christianity 1. Christianity hath certain Essentials without which no man can be a Christian and it hath moreover many precious truths and duties necessary necessitate praecepti and also necessitate medii to the better being of a Christian Our being as Christians is in the former and our strength and increase and better-being is much in the latter From the former Religion and the Church is denominated Moreover 2. Our implicite and actuall explicite Belief as the Papists call them must be distinguished or our General and our particular Belief 3. And also the Positives of our Belief must be distinguished from the implyed Negatives and the express Articles themselves from their implyed Consectaries And now premising these three distinctions I shall tell you where our Church hath been in all Ages since the birth of Christ 1. In the dayes of Christ and his Apostles our Church was where they and all Christians were And our Religion was with them in all its parts both Essential and perfective That is we now Believe 1. All to be true that was delivered by the Apostles as from God with a General faith 2. We believe all the Essentials and as much more as we can understand with a Particular faith 3. But we cannot say that with such a particular faith we believe all that the Apostles believed or delivered for then we must say that we have the same degree of understanding as they and that we understand every word of the Scriptures 2. In the dayes of the A postles themselves the Consectaries and implied Verities and Rejections of all Heresies were not particularly and expresly delivered either in Scripture or Tradition as the Papists will confess 3. In the next ages after the Apostles our Church was the one Catholick Church containing all true Christians Headed by Jesus Christ and every such Christian too many to number was a member of it And for our Religion the Essential parts of it were contained both in the Holy Scriptures and in the Publick Professions Ordinances and Practices of the Church in those ages which you call Traditions and the rest of it even all the doctrines of faith and universal Laws of God which are its perfective parts they were fully contained in the holy Scriptures And some of our Rejections and Consectaries were then gathered and owned by the Church as Heresies occasioned the expressing of them and the rest were all implyed in the Apostolical Scripture doctrine which they preserved 4. By degrees many errors crept into the Church yet so that 1. Neither the Catholick Church nor one true Christian in sensu composito at least did reject any essential part of Christianity 2. And all parts of the Church were not alike corrupted with error but some more and some less 3. And still the whole Church held the holy Scripture it self and so had a perfect General or Implicite belief even while by evill consequences they oppugned many parts of their own profession 5. When in process of time by claiming the universall Soveraignty Rome had introduced a new pretended Catholick Church so far as their opinion took by superadding a New Head and form there was then a two fold Church in the West the Christian as Christian headed by Christ and the Papal as Papal Headed by the Pope yet so as they called it but one Church and by this usurped Monarchy as under Christ endeavoured to make but one of them by making both the Heads Essential when before one only was tolerable And if the Matter in any part may be the same and the same Man be a Christian and a Papist and so the same Assemblies yet still the forms are various and as Christians and part of the Catholick Church they are one thing and as Papists and members of the separating sect they are another thing Till this time there is no doubt of our Churches Visibility 6. In this time of the Romish Usurpation our Church was visible in three degrees in three severall sorts of persons 1. It was visible in the lowest degree among the Papists themselves not as Papists but as Christians For they never did to this day deny the Scriptures nor the Ancient Creeds nor Baptism the Lords Supper nor any of the substance of our Positive Articles of Religion They added a New Religion and Church of their own but still professed to hold all the old in consistency with it Wherever the truth of holy Scriptures and the ancient Creeds of the Church were professed there was our Religion before Luther But even among the Papists the holy Scriptures and the said Creeds were visibly professed therefore among them was our Religion And note here that Popery it self was not ripe for a corruption of the Christian faith professed till Luthers opposition heightned them For the Scripture was frequently before by Papists held to be a most sufficient Rule of faith as I shewed before from the Council of Basil and consequently Tradition was only pleaded as conservatory and expository of the Scripture but now the Council of Trent hath in a sort equalled them And this they were lately driven to when they found that out of Scripture they were unable to confute or suppress the truth 2. At the same time of the Churches oppression by the Papacy our Religion was visible and so our Church in a more illustrious sort among the Christians of the most of the world Greeks Ethiopians and the rest that never were subject to the usurpation of Rome but only many of them took him for the Patriarch primae sedis but not Episcopus Ecclesiae Catholicae or the Governour of the Universall Church So that here was a visibility of our Church doubly more eminent then among the Romanists 1. In that it was the far greatest part of the Catholick Church that thus held our Religion to whom the Papists were then but few 2. In that they did not only hold the same Positive Articles of faith with us but also among their Rejections did Reject the chief of the Popish errors as we do Besides many particular points named in my Safe Religion they Rejected with us the Popes Catholick Monarchy the pretended Infallibility of the Pope or his Councils the new form of the Papall Catholick Church as
John Baptist that was dead not only before Rome had a Church but also before the time that Bellarmine and his Brethren pretend that Peter received his Commission to be the universall Head And did not this writer know that Protestants can give him the same names as for them and if printing them be proof their proof is as good If it be not what proof shall we have Our proof is the Holy Scriptures written by the Inspiration of the Holy Ghost in those times Thence we prove that the first Church held the same belief as we have yea though it be not incumbent on us we will thence prove that the Catholick Church was not then Papists Why else do we still appeal to Scriptures and they refuse to stand to the tryal of it any otherwise then as expounded by the Pope but that we are confident and they diffident of them We know the Apostles faith from the Apostles but the Papists will not know it but from the present Church of Rome They tell you the Apostles were for them but how know we that Why by the testimony of the next age and where is that testimony Why the third age received it and how is that proved Why because the fourth age was of their mind And how prove you that Why in the upshot because the present age is of their mind Why but most Christians of the present age are against them yea but they are none of the Church It is only the present Church of Rome Well! but the present Church of Rome represented in a General Council may err I but the Pope cannot in Cathedra and in approving a Councill So that the summ is this If the Pope himself may be judge the Apostles were Papists But if the Apostles may be heard themselves they were none I make no doubt though Bellarmine deny it but other Churches can prove as good a succession as the Romane as to Bishops And poor Bellarmine after all is fain to give up this Mark as insufficient to prove a true Church Lib. ◠de Eccles cap. 8. Dico secundò Argumentum à successione legittna adferri à nobis praecipuè ad probandum non esse Ecclesiam ibi non est haec successio quod quidem evidens est ex quo tamen n◠colligitur necessario ibi esse Ecclesiam ubi est successio By his own confession then succession will not prove the Romanists a true Church But as to a succession of Religion and a continuation of the Catholick Church for my part I am so far from declining it in argumentation that I here solemnly profess to all the Papists that shall read these words that AS SOON AS I SHALL SEE ANY CERTAIN PROOF BY CATALOGUE OR ANY OTHER WAY THAT THE CATHOLICK CHURCH HATH SUCCESSIVELY FROM AGE TO AGE BEEN PAPISTS I WILL TURN PAPIST WITHOUT DELAY AND I CHALLENGE THEM TO GIVE US SUCH PROOF IF THEY CAN. Nay if they will prove that in the first age alone or the second or third alone the Catholick Church were Papists I am am resolved to turn Papist Nay I am most confident they cannot prove that in any one age to this day the Catholick Church were Papists And as to H. Ts. Catalogue I return him further answer that no one named by him in the first age had any one of their errors And no one named by him to the year four hundred I may add to the year six hundred if his false catalogue be truly corrected was a Papist so well hath he proved the Popish Succession But for the plainer opening of this I shall add the discussion of another of their deceits CHAP. XXV Detect 16. ANother notable fraud of the Papists is to confound all their own errors and corruptions together and then to instance in some of those errors that are common to them with some others and to omit the Essentiall parts of Popery And so they would make the world believe that if they prove the Antiquity of any points in difference between them and us they do thereby prove the antiquity of Popery and so of the succession And so they would make our Religion also Essentially to consist in every inferiour difference between us Suffer them not therefore thus to juggle in the dark but distinguish between the Essentials of Popery or the main difference between them and us and the other errors which are not proper to them alone Thus Bellarmine opens his jugling lib. 4. de Eccles cap. 9. where he pleadeth Antiquity of Doctrine as a Note of the true Church And saith he Jam duobus modis c. Two wayes we may by this Mark prove our Church 1. By shewing the sentences of the Ancients by which we confirm all our tenets and refute our adversaries But this way saith he is most prolix and obnoxious to many calumnies and objections Mark Papists and take heed of appealing to Antiquity The other way saith he is shorter and surer by shewing first from the confession of the adversaries that our tenents are the doctrine of all the antients c. And indeed if the weakness or rashness of any Protestants be the Papists strength its time for us to be more prudent but if it be the Papists unhappiness that cannot understand the antients in the antients but only from the Pope or the Protestants the Fathers are faln into the hands of Babies as well as the Scriptures and the Protestants have too little wit if they will join with the Pope in an abusive interpreting the Fathers for the Papists And thus Bellarmine proceeds to cite Calvin and the Centurists as giving them the Fathers But wherein Forsooth in the point of Free-will Limbus Concupiscence Lent Lay baptism in necessity c. And therefore by our Confessions Antiquity is for the Papists And this is their shortest and surest way The more fools we then Is not here great diffidence in the Fathers when they have more confidence in our sayings then their writings But this jugling will not serve the turn Take up the Essentials of Popery and prove a Catholick succession of them and you shall win the day In Explication of my former professions I here again solemnly promise and protest that WHEN EVER I SEE A VALID PROOF OF A CATHOLICK SUCCESSION OF THESE FOLLOWING POINTS I WILL PRESENTLY TURN PAPIST OR OF ANY ONE OF THEM I WILL TAKE UP THAT ONE And I provoke the Papists that boast of Tradition Succession and Antiquity to do this if they are able 1. Let them prove a Catholick Succession or continuation of this point that The Pope of Rome is appointed by Christ to be the universall Monarch Soveraign Governour Head of the Catholick Church and the Vicar of Christ on earth and holding the place of God himself whom all must obey 2. And that the true and only Catholick Church is a Society thus headed and Governed by the Pope and that no man is a true member of the Catholick Church that is
25. Tertul. cont Marcion Carm. lib. 4. cap. 7. Athanas Tom. 2. Epist 39. Et in Synops Sacr. scrip Hilar. Pictav Explanat in Psalmos Cyril vel Johan Hierosol Catech. 4. Concil Laodic Can 59. Epiphan haeres 8. 76. de Mensur ponderib Greg. Nazianz. Carmin de veris genuinis libris SS Amphiloch in Balsam pag. 1082. Hieronym in Prolog in lib. Reg. Prol. in lib. Solom Et Epist ad Laetam passim Ruffinus in Symbolum But what need I cite any more when Dr. Cosin hath done it in a volume purposely where this allegation also of the third Conc. Carthag is answered AND now having shewed you that Papists cannot prove any Catholick Succession or Continuation or Tradition of their Religion let us consider of their silly shift by instancing in some by-points common to them with others Of which I shall say the less because I have spoke to it already in my Safe Religion And before I mention any particulars remember that I have proved before that ignorance or difference about many points not essential to Christianity may consist with our being of one Religion and Catholick Church and therefore such differences are nothing to the point of succession of the Catholick Church or Religion This is plain to any reasonable man And that the Papists may see that for their parts they have nothing to say against it I shall add to what is said that they tolerate or plead for the toleration of greater differences among themselves which yet they affirm to consist with the unity of faith I will now give you but an instance or two The Jesuits maintain that if a man do but believe in their Pope and Church as infallible he may not only as some say be ignorant of some Article of the Creed it self and yet be a true Catholick yea and be saved but also believe a false Article as from God and the Church The former is commonly taught not only by such as Suarez that say the Article of Christs Descent into Hell is not to all of Necessity to Salvation but by many others in the Doctrine of Implicite faith The later clause you may see among others in Franc. Albertinus the Jesuite Corollar pag. 250. where his objectors put this case Suppose twenty Bishops preach to a countrey man a false Article as if it were spoken by God and the Church that proposal of the twenty Bishops is so sufficient that the Countrey man prudently formeth an evident practical judgement and morally certain to believe with a speculative assent the Article proposed by the twenty Bishops for the Authority of God as the formal reason Three absurdities seem hence to follow 1. That the Countrey man should be obliged under mortall sin to believe the twenty Bishops and so the precept of faith should bind to believe a falshood 2. The Countrey man should be in Gods Grace without faith In Grace because he commits no mortal sin yea he obeys the command of believing Yet without faith because he believes a falshood opposite to faith and so loseth faith 3. God should concur to deceive To the first Albertinus answereth that it s no Absurdity that the command of faith do oblige to believe a falshood it being not per se but per accidens To the second he saith that the Countrey man doth not lose his grace or faith because the falshood believed is not formally opposite to the true faith but materially Here you see that a man may hold an Article opposite to the faith materially and yet not only be a true Christian in grace and faith but also in so doing obey by accident the command of believing so be it he believe in their Church And if that be so with what face can these men say that our Church or Religion is new or not the same with the Greeks c. when we have the same formal Object of faith and differ in no Essential Material point See here their lubricity and partiality One Instance more The second Council of Nice that decreed for Image-Worship doth yet expresly decree that Latria Divine worship is to be given only to God Thomas Aquinas sum 3. q. 25. art 3. 4. purposely maintaineth that Latria Divine Worship is to be given to the Image of Christ and to the Cross that he dyed on and to the sign of that Cross Here is an Article of their faith expresly contradicted And yet Aquinas is a member of their Church And if any say he is no member it s proved past doubt for the Pope hath Canonized him for a Saint So that now it is a part of their Religion to take him for a true believer And Albertinus hath as he thinks proved that though in many other matters of fact the Pope be fallible yet in the Canonizing of Saints he is infallible because of some promise of Gods speciall assistance if one knew where to find it Abundance of such Instances might be brought that prove that the Papists own men as true believers that deny or contradict Articles of their faith But what need we more then that France and thousands elswhere are yet members of their Church that deny the Laterane and Florentine definition for the Popes Supremacy above a General Council and when most Papists hold that Angels are incorporeal contrary to the definition of the said second Council of Nice And therefore by their own law nay much more we may well say that those were of our Religion that differed from us in nothing that is indeed or our esteem Essential to the faith Now to a few particulars 1. The Papists tell us that Fulk confesseth that Hierom Austin Ambrose c. held the invocation of Saints H. T. p. 49. Answ 1. If any hold that they should desire the departed Saints to pray for them as they do the living we have reason enough to take it for their error but it s no proof that they are not of the same Church and Religion with us As long as they give no part of that adoration or honour to Saints which is proper to God the Father Son or Holy Ghost it is not inconsistent with true Faith and Christianity 2. But yet we must tell you that the Primitive Church was unacquainted with the Romish prayer to Saints Till the end of the fourth Century they are not able to prove that ever three men if any one were for any prayer to the Dead at all except such a conditional speech in an Oration as Greg. Nazianzen hath If holy souls have any care or feeling of such things as these receive this Oration Orat. 11. I intreat the Reader that needeth information of the way of Antiquity in this point to read Bishop Ushers Answer to the Jesuite on this point page 418 c. Where he saith that for nine parts of the first four hundred years he dare be bold to say that the Jesuite is not able to produce so much as one true testimony out
taken or catcht How think you now in the Judgement of Augustine and Gerson whether there have any Novelties been brought into the Church and whether all your Presumptions and burdens and as Gerson calls them halters for souls have come from the Apostles or are your own When all is thus overcome with Novelty do you make any question whether any thing be new It seems that Bernard thought that humane Traditions were too much befriended when he thus describeth the Assemblies that he approveth Epist 91. Such a Council do I delight in in which the Traditions of men are not obstinately defended or superstitiously observed but they do diligently and humbly enquire what is the good and well pleasing and perfect will of God And it seems to me that General Councils by error introduced Novelties when Later Councils were fain to undo what the former had done For so doth blessed Augustine profess they did saying De Baptis cont Donat. lib. 2. cap. 6. And Councils themselves that are gathered through several Regions or Provinces do without any scruple yield to the authority of more plenary Councils that are gathered out of the whole Christian world and those same plenary Councils do often yield or give place the former to the later when by some experiment of matters that which was shut is opened and that which lay hid is known Sure here are alterations made even by General Councils that correct one another And what should hinder the Introduction of Novelty when General Councils do so often err Nay if such Councils be Morally and Interpretatively the whole Church as the Papists say then the whole Church doth err in the reception of some Novelty before they declare it by their decrees If you say that General Councils cannot err nor introduce such Novelties your Champion Bellarmine and many of your own will give you the Lie saith he De Concil lib. 2. cap. 11. Neque potest c. It cannot be answered that those Councils erred because they were not lawfull that is the Arrian and other Heretical General Councils at that at Sirmium Millanie Ariminum Ephesus several at Constantinople dissallowed by the Papists For to most of them there was nothing wanting but the Popes assent Yea the second at Ephesus was altogether like that at Basil For both were called by the Pope in both of them the Popes Legate was present at the beginning from both of them the Popes Legate shortly after went away in both of them the Pope was excommunicated and yet that the Council of Ephesus erred the adversaries will not deny Hence he concludeth that the chief Power Ecclesiastical is not in the Church nor in the Council the Pope being removed formaliter vel suppletivè And what should hinder when there is but one mans vote against it even the Popes but that Novelty and error may enter at any time and when that one man is oft so wicked and Heretical as he is For General Councils are but a meer name and mockery The packing of them shews it the Paucity and nonUniversality of them shews it The Management of their affairs shews it They do nothing since the Papal reign but what the Pope will excepting the condemned Councils They have no Being till he Will nor make any Decrees but what he Will Nor are their Decrees of any further power then he is pleased to give them So that his Will is the sense of the General Council or universal Church I need not turn you for this to Sleidan or Uergerius Bishop of Trent that tell us the Holy Ghost came to that Council in a Cloak-bag from Rome nor to Espensaeus in Tit. 1. pag. 42. seeing Bellarmine speaks it out De Concil lib. 2. cap. 11. saying We must know that the Pope is wont to send Legates instructed concerning the judgement of the Apostolick seat with this Condition that if the Council do consent to the Judgement of the Apostolick seat it shall be formed into a Decree If not the forming of the decree shall be deferred till the Pope of Rome being advised with shall return his answer And saith Bellarmine de Concil lib. 2. cap. 11. In the Council of Basil Ses 2. it was decreed by common consent together with the Popes Legate that a Council is above the Pope which certainly is now judged erroneous And the Council of Lateran and Florence decreed the contrary And Pighius saith Hierarch Eccles l. 6. that the Councils of Constance and Basil went about by a new trick and pernicious example to destroy the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy and instead of it to bring in the Domination of a promiscuous confused popular multitude that is to raise again Babylon it self subjecting to themselves or to the community of the Church which they falsly pretended that they Represent the very Head and Prince of the whole Church and him that is the Vicar of Christ himself in this his Kingdom and this against Order and Nature against the clearest light of Gospel verity against all Authority of Antiquity and against the undoubted Faith and Judgement of the Orthodox Church it self Mark Papists General Councils with the Popes Nuncio may bring in Novelties in faith against the clearest light of the Gospel and the full Consent of Antiquity and yet these Councils affirmed their opinions to be de fide and the contrary to be Heretical and Damnable and contrary to all Antiquity You see then that Novelties are among you in matters of faith And the French to this day are guilty of those Novelties and also charge their Adversaries with Innovation Nay what will you say if General Councils themselves are but Novelties though they are the foundation of the faith of one half of the Papists as the Pope is of the other I say not so but judge whether your Champion Pighius say so Hierarch Eccles lib. 6. cap. 1. fol. 230. where he saith that Concilia universalia non habent Divinam c. General Councils have not a Divine or Supernatural Original but meerly an humane Original and are the Invention of Constantine a Prince profitable indeed sometimes to find out in Controversie which is the Orthodox and Catholick truth though to this they are not necessary seeing its a readyer way to advise with the Apostolick seat How now Sirs Is your Representative Church the foundation of your faith a Novelty of Constantines invention and yet are you in the old way and must we be put to prove you to be Novelists Do you think those Popes did go the Old way of whom Alvarus Pelagius speaks de planctu Eccles art 15. lib. 2. that they succeeded in authority but not in Sanctity intruding themselves procuring bargaining c. building Towers and Palaces in Babylon that is in Rome according to Hierom Some foul innovation sure they were guilty of that so re-edified Babylon So that this is my first proof that you are Novelists from the General Accusations of others and Confessions of your own 2. Another proof
which are not destructive to the Essentials of Christianity but only to some Integral part And there is a schism that doth not unchurch men as well as a schism that doth of which this is no place to treat But ad hominem me thinks your own writers put you hard to it who conclude as Bellarmine and many more do though Alphonsus à Castro and others be against it that Hereticks and Schismaticks are no members of the Church And Melch. Canus Loc. Theol. lib. 4. cap. 2. fol. 117. saith that that Hereticks are no parts of the Church is the common conclusion of all Divines not only of those that have written of late but of them also that by their Antiquity are esteemed the most Noble This is attested by Cyprian Augustine Gregory the two Councils of Lateran and Florence Rightly therefore did Pope Nicolas define that the Church is a collection of Catholicks If this be true it is an Article of faith And then Alphonsus à Cast and all of his mind are Hereticks and lost men And I pray you note what a case you are in Two Approved General Councils have determined that a Heretick is no member of the Church But multitudes of your own writers and Pope Adrian and many more of your Popes have judged that a Pope may be a Heretick and consequently no member of the Church And consequently judge what 's become of your Church when an Essential part of it is no part of the Church Your common shift which Canus ibid. and others fly to is that He must be a judged Heretick before he is dismembred But 1. Sure that is but for manifestation to men for before God he is the same if men never judge him 2. Where the case is notorious the offendor is ipso jure cut off 3. Then it is in the Popes Power to let whole millions of Hereticks to be still parts of the Church And so the world shall be Christians or no Christians as he please and why may he not let Turks and Infidels on the same grounds be parts of the Church For he may forbare to judge them if that will serve 4. Then all the Christians in the world that the Pope hath not yet judged and cast out are members of the Church And then millions and millions are of the Church that never were subjects of the Pope If you say It is enough that there is a General condemnation of all that are guilty as they are I answer then it is enough to cut off a Pope that there was a General condemnation against such as he 5. But if all this satisfie you not yet I told you before that two or three Councils and three Popes did all judge Pope Honorius guilty of Heresie and consequently both Popes and General Councils have judged that a Pope may be an Heretick therefore you have been judged Heretical in your Head which is an essential part of your Church And thus I have shewed you what is the schism of the Church of Rome which being but a part hath attempted to cut off all the rest and so hath made a new pretended Catholick Church As a part of the Old Church which consisteth of all Christians united in Christ we confess all those of you still to be a part that destroy not this Christianity But as you are new gathered to a Christ-Representative or Vicar General we deny you to be any Church of Christ If you be Church members or saved it must be as Christians but never as Papists For a Papist may be a Christian but not as a Papist And if yet you cannot see the Church that you separate from open your eyes and look into much of Europe and all over Asia almost where are any Christians look into Armenia Palestine Egypt Ethiopia and many other Countries and you shall find that you are but a smaller part of the Church If you will not believe what I have before proved of this hear what your own say Anton. Marinarins in the Council of Trent complaineth that the Church is shut up in the Corners of Europe and yet Domestick enemies arise that waste this portion shut up in a corner Sonnius Bishop of Antwerp in Demonstrat Relig. Christian lib. 2. Tract 5. c. 3. saith I pray you what room hath the Catholick Church now in the habitable world scarce three elnes long in comparison of that vastness which the Satanical Church doth possess If yet you boast that you have the same seat that formerly you had I answer so have the Bishops of Constantinople Alexandria and others whom you condemn And we say as Gregory Nazianz Orat. de land Athanasii It is a succession of Godliness that is properly to be esteemed a succession For he that professeth the same doctrine of faith is also partaker of the same throne But he that embraceth the contrary belief ought to be judged an adversary though he be in the throne This indeed hath the name of succession but the other hath the Thing it self and the Truth And he next addeth such words as utterly break your succession in pieces saying For he that breaketh in by force as abundance of Popes did is not to be esteemed a successor but rather he that suffereth force nor he that breaketh the Laws but he that is chosen in manner agreeable to the Laws nor he that holdeth contrary tenets but he that is endued with the same faith Unless any man will call him a Successor as we say a sickness succeedeth health or darkness succeedeth light and a strom succeeds a calm or madness or distraction succeedeth prudence Thus Nazianz pag. 377. We conclude therefore with one of your own Lyra Glos in Math. 16. Because many Princes and chief Priests or Popes and other inferiors have been found to Apostatize the Church consisteth in those persons in whom is the true knowledge and confession of Faith and Verity And so much to this empty Manuscript CHAP. XXXVI Detect 27. ANother of their Deceits is this To charge us with introducing New Articles of faith or points of Religion because we contradict the New Articles which they introduce and then they require us to prove our doctrines which are but the Negatives of theirs We receive no Doctrines of faith or worship but what was delivered by the Apostles to the Church These men bring in abundance of New ones and say without proof that they received them from the Apostles And because we refuse to receive their Novelties they call our Rejections of them the Doctrines of our Religion and feign us to be the Innovators And by this device it is in the Power of any Heretick to force the Church to take up such as these men call New points of faith If a Papist shall say that besides the Lords Prayer Christ gave his Disciples another Form or two or three or many or that he gave them ten New Commandments not mentioned in the Bible or that he oft descended after his Ascension and
both and a great part that its necessary to neither And you see here the benefit of having an Infallible Living judge of controversies and expounder of Scriptures and how admirably he hath ended all their differences And again I say If formally these Unbelievers are in their Catholick Church they shall give us leave to say that the Greeks and other Eastern and Southern Christians are in the same Catholick Church as we are when we differ not so much And when they have made the Non-belief of Articles of the faith consistent with salvation they will never while they breath be able to confute him that on the same grounds affirmeth the contrary belief consistent with salvation in case of the same want of teaching and sufficient means And by this time I hope you see of how small moment the Popish Censures are when they judge that a Protestant cannot be saved It s true that S. Clara here judgeth otherwise but 1. It s said his Book was burnt or condemned at Rome for it 2. He alloweth Infidels as much 3. And he proveth himself a Heretick by it at Rome seeing a General Council and Pope have determined the contrary even that it is necessary to salvation to be a subject of the Pope of Rome CHAP. XXXVIII Dètect 29. ANother of their Deceits and I think the most successfull of all the rest is Their suting their Doctrines and Government and Worship to the fleshly humours of the ungodly by which means the Greatest and the Most are alwayes like to be on their side When on the contrary our Doctrine Discipline and worship is all so contrary to carnal interest and conceits that we are still like to lose the most if not the greatest and consequently to be a persecuted people in the world This is their unanswerable Argument By this means they captivate the Nations to their Tyranny The Most are every where almost licentious sensual worldly and unsanctified Wise men and Godly men are few in comparison of the rest of the world And it is the multitude commonly that hath the strength and the Great ones that have the wealth So that I confess I take it for a wonder of mercy that they are not Lords in every Countrey and that the Reformed Catholicks be not used every where as they be in Spain and Italy For where they have but opportunity to shew themselves the Principles and Practises of the Papists are such as will be most likely to win the Rabble rout to them and make them Masters of the multitude and of all except a few believing Heavenly persons For the flock is little that must have the Kingdom And then when they have got the multitude thus to follow them and club'd the rest into prisons or burned them in the flames they reckon of this as one of the surest Evidences that they are the Catholick Church because forsooth they are the greater number in the Countries where they have advantage and it is but a few whom they were able to persecute or burn as Hereticks that were against them The very Argument of the Jews against Christ and his Disciples The Reasons why they have not by this Policie won the Christian world to their side are under God the great Defender of the innocent these four 1. Because in the Eastern and Southern Churches they have not had opportunity to lay their snares as they have had here in the West And also those Churches have too many corruptions and neglects at home for the gratifying of the worser sort 2. Because God hath been pleased in some places so to bless the endeavours of the smaller part as to enable them against the multitude to preserve some liberty 3. Because God hath sometime given Wise and Godly Princes to the people that will not be cheated with the Popular deceits 4. And principally because that the Papal Tyranny is directly contrary to Princes Rights so that its only those that are blinded by ignorance or strengthened by an extraordinary league with Rome or forced by the multitude of Popish subjects and neighbours that put their necks into the Romish yoke For what by the Popes pretended Power in temporals at least in ordine ad spiritualia and what by his excommunicating Princes and his pretended power to depose them and give their kingdoms to another and to absolve their subjects from their oaths and fidelity which is an Article of their faith agreed on by the Pope and General Council Later sub Innoc. 3. cap. 3. and what by his exempting the Clergy from their Princes Power and what by the pilling their Countries for money and what by their doctrine and practises of murdering Princes that are not of their mind by these and many other Evidences they have awakened many of the Princes of the earth to look about them and consequently to befriend the Truth against these Tyrannous Usurpers Had it not been for these helps under God we had not been like to have a name where they can reach nor to have had liberty to breath in the common air It would be a voluminous work to shew you how all the Doctrines Government and worship of the Papists is suted to the humor of the sensual multitude and fitted to take with ungodly men I shall but instance in twenty particulars which are far from all 1. The Reformed Catholicks hold that none should be taken into the Church by Baptism unless themselves or their Parents if they be Infants do make Profession of the Christian faith and of an holy life for the time to come and seem to understand what they say and do and be serious in it which exasperateth the grosly ignorant and ungodly when we deny them this Priviledge of Believers But the Papists admit of the ignorant ungodly and such as believe not explicitely in Christ as you heard even now and so please the people and fill their Church 2. The Orthodox hold that Baptism giveth Remission of sin to none but true believers and their seed The Papists perswade many millions more that all their sins are not only pardoned but actually abolished ex opere operato in their Baptism which is comfortable News to such ungodly souls 3. The Protestants say that Original sin liveth after Baptism in some degree though it reign not or condemn not those that are true believers and that Concupiscence that is all inordinacy of the sensual appetite or inordinate inclination to sensual objects is a sin The Papists tell them that when once they are baptized there is no such thing in them as Original sin and that Concupiscence is no sin at all 4. The Orthodox hold that none are to be admitted to the Eucharist and Communion of the Church therein but those that believe actually or profess so to do the Articles of the faith and understand the nature of the Sacrament and live according to the Laws of Christ But the Papists give it to all and drive men to the Sacrament so that
Religion as if they were so many Articles of our Faith or at least were the common doctrines of our Churches They will not give us leave to do so by them when yet we have much more reason for it For 1. They teach the People that they are bound to believe as their Teachers bid them and they reproach us for confessing that we are not in all points of Doctrine infallible And yet we still confess this fallibility and say in plain terms that we know but in part 2. Divers of their particular Doctors that we use to cite are such as the Pope hath Canonized for Saints and they tell us that in Canonizing he is infallible And therefore an Infallibly Canonized Saint must not be supposed to err in a point of faith 3. They boast so much of Unity and Concent among themselves that we may the better cite particular Doctors And yet we think our selves bound to stand to their own Law in this and to charge nothing on them as the faith of their Church but what their Church doth own and therefore while they refuse to stand to particular Doctors we will not urge them to it for its good reason that all men should be the Professors of their own belief But what reason is there then that we may not have the same measure from them which they expect We profess to take no man nor Council of men for the Lords of our faith but for the Helpers of our faith They tell us that they know not where to find our Religion We tell them it is entirely in the written word of God and that we know no other Infallible Rule because we know no other Divine Revelation supposing what in Nature is revealed They tell us that All Hereticks do pretend to Scripture and therefore this cannot be the Test of our Religion I answer that so all cavillers and defrauders and extortioners may pretend to the Law of the Land to undo poor men by quirks of wit or tire them with vexatious suits And yet it follows not that we must seek another Rule of Right and take the Law for insufficient And what if Hereticks pretend to Tradition to General Councils and the Decretals of the Popes as you know how frequently they do Will you yield therefore that these are an infufficient Rule or Test of your own Religion Open your eyes and judge as you would be judged But I will come to some of the particular Opinions which they charge us with And because I know not a more weighty renowned Champion of their cause then Cardinal Richleiu then Bishop of Lucion I shall take notice of his twelve great errors which he so vehemently chargeth on the Reformed Churches as contrary to the Scripture And sure I shall do much to make clean our Churches if I fully wipe off all the pretended blots of errour that so wise a man could charge upon them In his Defens contra script 4. Ministr Charenton cap. 2. pag. 12. c. he begins his enumeration thus 1. The Scripture saith Jam. 2. that a man is not Justified by Faith only but you say that he is Justified by Faith alone and by Faith only which is found in no place of Scripture and do you not then resist the Scriptures Answ 1. We believe both the words of Paul and James that a man is Justified by Faith without the Deeds of the Law and saved through Faith not of works lest any man should boast Rom. 3. 28. Ephes 2. 8 9. and also that a man is Justified by works and not by Faith only Jam. 2 Did not this Learned man know that we believe all the Bible why then should he charge us with denying that which we retain and publickly read in our Churches as the word of God Did he think that we set so much by Luthers or any mans writings as by the Bible 2. But if he can prove that we understand not these words aright he should have evinced it better then by the use of the words Faith alone For our Churches by Faith alone do profess openly to mean no more then Paul doth by Faith without works And can they find fault with Paul 3. Indeed we are not all agreed upon the fittest Notion of the interest of Faith and works in our Justification but our difference is more in words and notions then matter of which see my Disput of Justification 4. And. why do you not quarrel with your own Cardinal Contarenus de Justif and others of your own that joyn with us in the doctrine of Justification His second Accusation is The Scripture saith that we can Love God with all the heart you say that no man can Love God with all the heart which is no where read in Scripture and yet do you not resist the Scriptures Answ 1. Unprofitable Confusion we distinguish between Loving God with all the Heart as it signifieth the sincerity and predominant degree of Love and so every true Christian hath it and as it signifieth some extraordinary degree above this meer sincerity and so some eminent stronger Christians have it and as it signifieth the highest Degree which is our duty and which excludeth all sinful imperfection And thus we say that no man actually doth Love God perfectly in this life nor do we think he speaks like a Christian that dare say Lord I Love thee so much that I will not be beholden to thee to forgive the imperfection of my Love or to help me against any sinful imperfection of it Your own Followers whom you admire as the highest Lovers of God do oft lament the imperfections of their Love as M. de Renty for instance in his Life But now if the question be only of the posse and not the act we say that the Potentia naturalis is in all and the Potentia Moralis which is the Habit is in the sanctified but this Moral Power is not perfect it self that is of the highest degree and without any sinful imperfection though yet it hath the perfection of sincerity and in some the perfection of an eminent degree And will not this content you His third Accusation is The Scripture saith that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ with the adjunction of those words that signifie a true Body and Blood you say that it is not Christs Body and Blood but only a figure sign and testimony which the Scripture no where saith Answ 1. The Scripture saith not that it is his Body and Blood substantially or by Transubstantiation And we say not as you feign that it is not his Body and Blood but a figure c. For we say that it is his Body and Blood Sacramentally and Representatively as he that personateth a King on some just account is called a King and as in actions of Investiture and Delivery the delivering of a Key is the delivering of the House and the delivery of a twig and turf is the delivery of the Land and the deliverer
from or disobeyeth the uncharitable Clergy but he is stigmatized for an Heretick and charged with almost as much wickedness as their mouths are wide enough to utter and the ears of other men to hear What horrid things have they spoken of the poor Waldenses and Albigenses and Bohemians Of Luther Oecolampadius Calvin and who not Though I have had applauding flattering Letters from some of them that tryed whether I were flexible and ductile yet I doubt not but I shall have my share my self before they have done with me I wonder I hear not of it before now Hence among other reasons its like that Mr. Pierce became so destitute of Charity as to disgorge his sould of so many bitter reproaches and calumnies against the Puritans and Presbyterians whom if he know not he sinneth but as Paul did but if he know he terrifieth us from his principles by the fruits that which shews the want of Charity shews the want of saving Grace and consequently the want of right to Glory Hence it is that the greatest Schismaticks are the commonest accusers of their Brethren with schism Pharisaically saying I thank thee Lord that I am not as other men nor as these Schismaticks Hence also it is that so many learned well-meaning Papists do so pervert their studies and endeavors and abuse and lose and worse then lose their wits and parts to draw men to their way compassing Sea and Land to make a Romish Proselite especially of a Prince or man of power interest or ability to serve them What pains take they to draw Nations to their minds and to embroil the world in contentions and confusions to attain their ends What horrid persecutions Massacres and barbarous inhumane cruelties have multitudes of men of learning and good parts and natures been ingaged in by the very Principle that I now confute and for the promoting of their kind of Unity and Concord in wicked and impossible ways 7. Besides this it takes men off from seeking the true Peace of the hurch while they mistakingly pursue a false peace The Devil the cunning Enemy of Concord hath not a more effectual way to take men off from the ways and means of holy Concord then by starting them a false game and causing them to lay out all their labor to build a Babel when they should be building Zion Oh what a blessed state might the Church be in if all the Jesuites Fryers Prelates Priests and others had laid out that labor for a righteous possible Unity and Peace in Gods appointed way which they have vainly and impiously laid out to unite the world in a Vice-christ or Vice-god Fore seeing and at present feeling many of these calamitous consequences to the Church I think it of exceeding moment that mens judgements should be rectified that are misled concerning the nature of the unity of the Church Still professing that to me they are the dearest Christians and nearest to my heart that are most for Unity and Concord so it be in Christ and upon righteous possible conditions CHAP. II. The true State of the Controversie and how much we grant HAving given you an account of the Occasion and Motives that produced this Disputation I shall now briefly state the Controversie between us And because the terms are all plain and my sense of them explained in the fore-going part I shall think no more here necessary then to tell you in certain Propositions How much we Grant and How far we are Agreed and then to tell you what it is that we deny and wherein we differ Prop. 1. We are Agreed that Christ hath a true Catholick Church on earth and ever hath had since first he planted it and ever will have to the end of the world and that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it or hath it ever had an Intercision for a day or an hour and that this Church is so far Infallible as that it never was nor ever will be ignorant of or erroneous against any Article of faith or part of obedience that is of absolute Necessity to salvation otherwise by that error it should have ceased to be the Church of Christ Prop. 2. We are agreed that this Catholick Church in respect of the Internal faith and charity of the Members and their Communion with Christ by the quickening Spirit on his part and holy sincere returns of devotion on theirs may be called Mystical or Invisible The thing is utterly undenyable though some Papists in the perversness of contentious Disputations seem to deny it And doubtless when they assert that Christ hath no Invisible Church they must mean it simply and not quoad haeo interiora or else they speak against all sense and Reason No man is simply Invisible but every man as to his soul is Invisible Prop. 3. We are Agreed that this Catholick Church in regard of the outward Profession of this Inward Faith and Holiness and in regard of the discernable numbers of persons making this Profession hath ever been visible since first it began to be visible And that the visibility hath never had any intercision If some Protestanss say otherwise it 's clear that this is all that by the common judgement of Protestants is maintained viz. That Christians and the Catholick Church containing the Professing Christians through the world have ever since their first planting had a visible being but yet 1. That the Visibility was not such but that Hereticks as the Arrians did might make a controversie of it whether they or the true Christians were the Church indeed and by their greater numbers or Power might blind men that they should not see which was the true Church 2. And that in the Catholick Church some parts may be much more corrupt and others much more pure and the Purer part be so much the lesser and oppressed and vilified by the more corrupt that the most part should not discern their Purity but take them as they did the Waldenses for Hereticks 3. And that two parts or more of this Catholick Church may so fall out among themselves as that one of them shall deny the other to be part of the Catholick Church when yet they really for all that censure remain parts of it as much as they And hereupon may grow a contest between them which of the two is the true Catholick Church and one part may say It is we and not you and the other may say It is we and not you and no man shall be able to discern which of the two is the Catholick Church because it is neither of them but each are a part 4. And though the Bodies of the members are visible and their Worshipping actions Visible and their Profession audible yet the faith Professed is not Visible nor the Truth of their Profession or of their Christianity or Church Truth being the object of the Intellect and not of sence 5. And though the true members of the Church do know the true Church
and so it is apparent unto them yet most that are not members of it do not know it Arrians and Mahometans know us to be men professing such and such Articles of faith but they know not that to be the true faith nor us to be the true Church but judge the contrary In this sence contained in these Propositions it is that Protestants deny the Church to have been alwayes Visible and not as the Papists commonly mistake them Prop. 4. We are agreed that this Catholick Church is but One There are not two Visible nor two Mystical Catholick Churches Nor are the Mysticall and Visible two Bellarmine might have spared all his labour that he hath bestowed in vain upon this point to prove that the Visible and Invisible are not two Catholick Churches The Protestants are further from that Opinion then the Papists and it is more suitable to the Popish Interest and Cause to be of that Opinion then to the Protestants If it were not that they are past learning by the advantage of their Infallibility and especially of one man and one so mean condemned by them and that it is unlawfull to be a Teacher of Error I could tell them of a new device by the advantage of this distinction of Catholick Churches for the modelling their mistakes into a more specious plausible form then now it appeareth in to the rest of the Churches But we are glad of their company in any Truth and therefore will not disagree from them in that which makes against themselves One Objection I once heard a Learned Anabaptist cast in our way viz. There may be a Visible Church of hypocrites therefore the Mystical and Visible may be two Answ But the Question was of the Catholick Church and not of a particular Church We confess that some members of the Catholick Church are Mystical and Visible in the several respects before mentioned and that some are Visible and not Mystical or as Bellarmine well calls them Dead Members and not Living and that the Church as Visible is more comprehensive then the Church as Regenerate or Invisible and yet all but One Church though it have more members in it in one respect then in another And we confess that its possible for twenty or an hundred of these Dead members to constitute a particular Church by themselves though it is not usual for Visible Churches to be without Living members and so there may be a particular Visible Dead Member Analogically called a Member or a particular Visible Church that is thus Dead and these be parts of the Catholick Church as Visible But yet there is not two Catholick Churches One Visible and the other Invisible one alive and the other Dead In a Corn field there are 1. Good Corn. 2. Stricken blasted Corn that hath a name and shew but in deed no Corn. 3. Tares darnell cockle and such weeds It is called A Field as it conteineth them all It is called a Corn field only from the Corn. The Univocal proper parts of a Corn field is the Corn only The Visible and Analogical parts are also the blasted ears The darnel and cockle are no parts but noxious accidents There are not two fields of Corn one of true Corn and the of other blasted ears And yet the Corn field taken largely and Analogically hath more parties in it then true Corn and you may perhaps have some particular sheavs that are wholly of that which is blasted which you will call a sheaf of Corn Analogically only but a sheaf of weeds you will not at all call a sheaf of Corn. Even so in the Catholick Church there are sincere Christians which are true and living members and there are Hypocrites which are Analogically members and there are locally mixed many that by denying essential points of the Christian faith or by notorious Impiety do declare themselves to be weeds and no members of the Church at all Prop. 5. We are also Agreed that this One Visible Catholick Church is One Political Holy Society as united in Jesus Christ the Head who teacheth and ruleth it by his Ministers and other Officers in the several parts according to the necessity of each We call it One Political Society 1. Principally because that all the Church is united in this One Soveraign or Head the Lord Jesus and therefore it is called his body 2. They have all the same holy doctrine of faith and Law to live by and be judged by 3. They have all Church Officers of the same sort under Christ to teach and govern them 4. They have all the same kind of Holy Ordinances as Reading Preaching Praying Praise Sacraments c. appointed them by the Lord. 5. They are all engaged in One and the same Holy Covenant to the Lord More might be mentioned and shall be God willing in a peculiar Treatise of Catholicism or the Catholick Church And though Christ himself be not now seen among us yet may he truly be called a Visible Head For 1. He sometime lived visibly on earth 2. And is now the Visible King of all the Church as he is in the Heavens Though we see him not the Celestiall Inhabitants do It is but little of the world that seeth the Pope any more then they see Christ If one unseen to us may be a pretended Visible Head the other may be truly so So that the Body Head Laws Worship c. being Visible so is the Policy Prop. 6. We are agreed also that all these Christians and particular Churches are obliged by Christ even by the very Law of Nature and the ends of their calling and the General Laws of the Gospell to live in as much Love and Unity and Peace as they can and to hold as full and extensive communion as they can that is as far as their work requireth and their Capacity will permit and enable them those that are cohabitans and members of one Congregation must hold local communion in that Congregation unless Necessity prohibite Those that through distance are uncapable of joining in the same Assemblies should yet be conjoined 1. In the same Lord Faith Baptism Covenant Profession 2. In the same bond of Christian special Love 3. In the use of the same sort of holy worship as to the Substance though they differ in circumstances as in the Word Prayer Praises Sacraments c. 4. And in one sort of Church Officers and Government And as far as we have to do with each other all this should be manifested and we should readily own one another as Brethren and true Churches notwithstanding lesser differences Prop. 7. To these ends it is meet that the Bishops or Pastors of the Churches should hold in way of Association as frequent Assemblies as is needfull for the maintaining of mutual Love and Correspondency and right understanding of each other and to manifest their unity and assist each other in the work of God that it may be the more successfully carried on by united strength against
all oppositions Prop. 8. These Associations should so far know the members Associated as is necessary to the holding of a Christian Communion with them and therefore should not admit all into their Association but such as either produce the Evidences of sound faith and Holy life or literas communicatorias certificates from credible members of their communion that the persons are fit for their Communion Prop. 9. These Associations are principally for the Union and Communion of Churches and therefore must apply themselves to the maintaining and promoting of Unity Prop. 10. Such Associations should therefore have their set times of frequent meeting in Synods for Ordinary help of one another besides extraordinary meetings on extraordinary occasions which none should neglect Prop. 11. We agree that such Associated Pastors may have their Moderators either pro tempore or stated at the cause requireth And that it is no great matter whether he be called a President Bishop Moderator c. in which all should have liberty so far as that the peace of the Church be not cast away for such names Prop. 12. We are also agreed that whatsoever shall be concluded in order to the Union and Communion of Churches in any of these Synods the particular Associated Members must observe they being thereto obliged by Vertue of those General precepts thet require us to do all in Unity and Concord and with one mind and mouth to glorifie God and to avoid divisions c. Except they be such things as cannot be obeyed unless we violate the Law of God Thus far the Canons that is Agreements of lesser Synods or greater are obligatory Prop. 13. We are also Agreed that when ever the good of the Church requireth it there may be Greater Assemblies also held consisting of many of these conjunct or speciall members delegate by the rest And that this course should extend as far as our capacity will allow in needfull cases Prop. 14. Lastly we shall grant that where Pastors cannot through distance or other Impediments hold Synods or any particular Churches cannot send any competent members to such Synods yet may they when its needfull by messengers certifie each other of their faith professions practises and particular doubts and cases and so hold communion in some degree owning each other as Brethren in one Lord and by such intercourse of Messengers and Letters as we are capable of assisting and seeking assistance from each other As Basil and the rest of the Eastern Bishops did to the Western in their distress while they had hope And the faith of all the Churches that are neer enough for any externall communion being thus known their Literae Communicatoriae may be valid and satisfactory when any member passeth into other parts Thus far I hope we are Agreed This much I am sure we hold our selves But now the difference followeth We hold that this Universal Church which is one in Christ their Head as the world is one Kingdom in God the absolute Soveraign King is by Christ distributed into many Congregations dispersed over the face of the Earth and that these as several Corporations in one Kingdom have all their particular Governours and Order All forcible Government we ascribe to the Magistrate and deny it to the Pastors of the Church And that teaching and Guidance which is called Ecclesiastick Government we suppose is the work of every Pastor in his flock and the Ordering of the communion of Churches by Canons Agreements and their execution in part is the work of Synods And as in this Kingdom all the Free-schools are governed by the Schoolmasters who are all under the Prince and Laws without any General Schoolmasters to Teach or Oversee and Rule the rest and without Synods too though they may meet when their mutual Edification requires it and yet all the Schools in England are in Peace because no Archscoolmasters presume to rob the Magistrate of his power Even so we judge that if Pastors do but Teach and Guide their severall flocks and the Magistrate keep and use his power of forcible Government that is in seeing that they do their Offices faithfully and no Archpastors presume to take the power of the Magistrates out of their hands the Churches may have quietness and peace still allowing a greater Necessity of Communion and so of Synods among Churches then among Schools and reserving the rod to the secular power And we concieve that most of the stir that Popes and Popish Prelates have made about Church Government hath been but to rob the Magistrate of his due and to become themselves the Church-Magistrates through the world But that the Church hath any Politicall Universal Head but Christ alone either a Vice god or Vice-Christ either Pope or Council that any one is as Pope Julius saith of himself in the place of God the maker of all things and Laws this we deny That the whole Church on Earth is so one Political Society as to be under any one terrestial numericall Head whether personal or collective Pope Council or Patriarks having power of Legislation or judgement over the whole and by whom each member is to be Governed this we deny and think it as absurd and much more sinfull as to affirm that all the world must needs have one Visible Monarch under God to represent him and that he is no subject to the God of Heaven that acknowledgeth not this Visible Universall Monarch We deny that the Church is such a Society We deny that it hath such an Head We deny that it hath any such universal Humane Laws We deny that the parts of it are to be conjoyned by the subordinate Officers Cardinals Patriarks Archbishops or what ever of such an usurping Soveraign We affirm that no Christian should fancy or assert that any such Head and Order for unity is appointed by Christ or that it is Desirable or Rome to be the better liked of because it pleadeth for such an Order or vainly boasteth of such of an unity or that any should dare to contrive the promoting of it Yea we maintain that such fancies and contrivances are the most notable means of the division or desolation of the Churches And that it is the notable hinderance of the unity of all the Christian Churches that such a false Head and Center of unity is set up and an Impossible Impious unity pleaded for and furiously sought by fire and sword instead of the true desirable unity And that the Churches will never have true unity and peace if these principles of theirs be not disgraced and disowned and the true principles better understood I shall now give you some Arguments for our Assertion and then in the End shall give you the true Grounds and Means of unity CHAP. III. Our Arguments for the Negative IN the management of the Arguments for the Negative I shall principally deal with them that would Head the Church with a Council that is would make the Church to be autonomicall and be
division nor discontent Lay the Churches peace upon no new humane Impositions if you would have it hold Peruse Rom. 14. and the other Text last cited 1 Cor. 6. 12. 11. The Churches Peace or Unity must not be laid on any bare words of mans devising It 's not a work for Councils or Prelates to form the Christian doctrine in new methods and terms and then to force others to subscribe or use those very terms If the same men that refuse this be willing to subscribe to the whole Scripture or to a Confession in Scripture terms you may force him to no more Object But Hereticks will subscribe to Scripture Answ 1. They must wrest it then or wrest their Consciences And by either or both these shifts they may also subscribe to any of your Confessions 2. If his Heresie be latent in his mind you know it not nor can call him an Heretick nor doth it hurt the Church If it he published or preached to others let civil Governors question him for corporal punishment and let the Associate Pastors question him to his Reformation or Rejection You will have a better ground to reject him for delivering falsehood in his own words then for not subscribing to Truth in your words when he subscribed the same Truth in Gods Words There is no Unity to be expected if you will so far depart from the Scripture sufficiency as to make any more for sense or phrase of absolute necessity to our peace By phrase or terms I mean either the same numerically as in the Original or equipollent as in translations And I say not that it 's necessary to the unity of the Church that every word in Scripture Original or Translations be subscribed to for some may doubt of the corruption of a word or Book But that no more is necessary If all Scripture be not of that degree of Necessity much less humane additions Isa 8. 20. 1 Tim. 3. 17. 2 Tim. 1. 13. 1 Cor. 9. 5. 1 Tim. 6. 20. Act. 20. 32. 12. The Churches Unity Peace must not be laid upon all Divine Truths as not on lesser darker points which neither the being nor well-being of Christianity is concerned in so much as to rest upon them Phil. 3. 15 16. Rom. 14. 15 17 20. Heb. 5. 11 12 13 14. 1 Cor. 7. 19. Gal. 5. 6. 6. 15. Col. 3. 11. 13. We ought to love and esteem as Christians and members of the Catholick Church all those that profess to believe the Essentials of Christianity and to be sanctified by the Spirit of God and lead a holy upright life so they make a credible profession not evidently contradicted by words or deeds though these persons may differ from us in many lower points of Doctrine Worship or Government 1 Cor. 1. 2. Eph. 6. 24. Gal. 6. 15 16. Phil. 3. 16. Rom. 15. 1 2. 14. 1 2. 1 Cor. 8. 9. 14. We ought so to manage the Worship of God in our particular solemn Assemblies that no sober peaceable Christian may be repulsed or forced from our local Communion through differences in things of indifferent nature Heb. 8. 5. Mat. 15. 9. Rom. 14. 13. 14 1. 2 Cor. 11. 3. Joh. 4. 23 24. 15. If any Churches differ from us in Ceremonies or smaller things or if any particular Christians differ so that they cannot in conscience hold local Communion with us in the same Assemblies for Worship E. G. if we sit at the Lords Supper and they dare not take it without kneeling if we sing a version of the Psalms which they scrup'e to joyn in If we permit none to joyn that will not conform in disputable things in such cases though it be first our duty to do our best to remove all offences yet if that cannot be done we may and ought in several Assemblies to take each other for Brethren and of the same Catholick Church so be it we all hold the same essentials of Faith and Godliness and walk accordingly and especially if we also hold those weighty superstructures that the welfare of the Church is most concerned in Though here were few or no instances of this case in the days of the Apostles when divisions were not so great as now yet the general rules in the fore-cited Texts do prove it 16. Ecclesiastical Ministerial Government by whomsoever exercised must not degenerate into a secular coercive Government nor may we use carnal weapons nor meddle by force with mens bodies or estates nor yet can we oblige the Magistrate to do it meerly to execute our censures or without sufficient Evidence to prove it his duty nor can we oblige the people against the Word of God clave errante so that neither Bishop nor Council hath any such power as is properly decisively Judicial obliging to execution be the sentence right or wrong But our people must know that though we be their Guides or Rulers yet are we but Ministers and that they have a higher power to regard and must not obey us against the Lord but in and for him The Power of Pastors therefore is not like Magistrates or absolute Judges as is said before but like a Physitian in his Hospital or in an infected City among his Patients and like a Reader of any Science to voluntary Scholars in his School and as an Embassador to them to whom he is sent So that our Governing being but by the Word and on the Conscience is of the same nature with our Directing 1 Pet. 5. 3. Luke 22. 25 26. 3 Joh. 9. 10. 1 Cor. 4. 1 2. 17. Magistrates are Governors of the Church even as a Church and of Christians as Christians though not Absolutely nor in the same respects by the same means to the same neerest Ends as Pastors Magistrates must force us to our duty and punish us if we be wicked or negligent even as Pastors and cast us out of our Benefices and deny us encouragements if we be insufficient so that ad hoc the Magistrate is the only Judge what is sound doctrine and what heresie what Ministers are sufficient or insufficient culpable or not I say ad hoc so far as to Judge who shall have publick Liberty and Countenance and who shall be punished restrained and discountenanced Thus far the Mastrate is Judge in Religion besides that Judgement of Choice which every private man hath And therefore the Princes of the Christian world should hold some correspondencies like General Councils among themselves by their agents for carrying on the work of Christ and much of the unity and prosperity of Christians lyeth on their hands Isa 49. 23. Psal 2. 12. Rom. 13. 1 2 3 4. 1 King 2. 27 35. 2 King 18. 4. 2 King 23. 8 20. 2 Chron. 14. 3 5. Josh 1. 8. 1 Tim. 2. 2. 18. Yet are the Pastors of the Church in their places Rulers or Guides of Princes and Magistrates that is we Guide them by Doctrine and Church discipline as they Rule us
Scriptures 3. To let Pastors and other Subjects know what sence of Scripture the Magistrate will own within his Dominions 4. And to let the Pastors and the world know what sence in the principal Points we are agreed in But still we take not our Confessions for our Divine Rule and therefore if there be any errour in a Confession there is none in the Rule of our Religion and consequently none in the Religion which we all agree in but only in such a persons or Churches exposition of the Rule which yet among Christians is not in any essential Point 3. Understand well what is the Catholick Church that when the Papists ask you what Church you are of or call to you to prove its antiquity or truth you may give them a sound and Catholick answer The Catholick Church is the whole number of true Christians upon earth for we meddle not now with that part which is in Heaven It is not tyed to Protestants only nor to the Greeks only much less to the Romanists only or to any other party whatsoever but it comprehendeth all the members of Christ and as visible it containeth all that profess the Christian Religion by a credible profession If the Christian Religion may be known then a man may know that he is a Christian and consequently a member of the Catholick Church But if the Christian Religion cannot be known then no man can know which is the Church or which is a Christian All Christians united to Christ the Head are this Catholick Church If you tye the Church to your own party and make a wrong description of it you will ensnare your selves and spoil your belief and your defence of it 4. Run not into extreams mix not any unsound principles with your Religion For if you do the Papists will cull out those and by disgracing them will seem to disgrace your Religion 5. Use not any unsound Arguments to defend the Truth For if you do the truth will suffer and seem to be overthrown by the weakness of your Arguments 6. Joyn not with those men that cast out any Ordinance of God because the Papists have abused it Reformation of corrupted Institutions is not by the Abolition of them but by the Restauration of them There are few things in use among the Papists themselves as parts of worship but may lead us up to a good original or tell us of some other real Duty which did degenerate into these 7. Joyn not with those ignorant unpeaceable self-conceited womanish rabious Divines or private men that pour out unworthy reproaches at godly men among our selves as if they were Hereticks or such as the Churches should dis-own For these are they that please the Papists and harden them in their Error and offend the weak They think they may call us Hereticks or Blasphemers by authority when we call one another so Such Railers teach them what to say and play their game more effectually then they could do their own When they are alluring the simple people how soon will they prevail if they can but prove their charge against us from the pens of Protestants themselves Having told you on what grounds you must make good your cause against them I shall next give you three or four easie Arguments some of them formerly given you by which even the weakest may prove that Popery is but deceit CHAP. III. Argum. 1. IF there be any godly honest men on earth besides Papists then Popery is false and not of God But there be godly honest men on earth besides Papists therefore Popery is false and not of God The Major is proved thus It is an Article of the Popish faith that there are no godly honest men on earth besides Papists therefore if there be any such Popery is false By godly honest men I mean such as have true love to God and so are in a state of salvation The Antecedent I prove thus 1. Their very definition of the Church doth make the Pope the Head and confine the membership only to his subjects making the Roman Catholick Church as they call it the whole 2. But yet lest any ignorant Papists say I may be a Roman Catholick without believing that all others are ungodly and shall be damned I will give it you in the Determination of a Pope and general Councll Leo the tenth Abrog Pragm sanct Bull. in the 17 th General Council at the Laterane saith And seeing it is of necessity to salvation that all the faithful of Christ be subject to the Pope of Rome as we are taught by the testimony of divine Scripture and of the holy Fathers and it is declared in the Constitution of Pope Boniface 7. c. And Pope Pius the second was converted from being Aenaeas Sylvius by this Doctrine of a Cardinal approved by him at large Bull. Retract in the Vol. 4. of Binnius p. 514. I came to the Fountain of Truth which the holy Doctors both Greek and Latine shew who with one voyce say that he cannot be saved that holdeth not the unity of the holy Church of Rome and that all those vertues are maimed to him that refuseth to obey the Pope of Rome though he lye in sack cloth and ashes and fast and pray both day and night and seem in the other things to fulfill the Law of God So that if a Pope and General Council be false then Popery is false For their infallibility is the ground of their faith and they take it on their unerring authority But if the Pope and a General Council be to be believed then no man but a subject of the Pope can be saved no though he fast and pray in sack-cloth and ashes day and night and seem to fulfill the rest of the Law of God It s certain therefore that if any one of you that call your selves Romane Catholicks do not believe that all the world shall be damned save your selves you are indeed no Romance Catholicks but are Hereticks your selves in their account for you deny a principal Article of their faith and deny the Infallibility of the Pope with a General Council which is your very Foundation And therefore we find that even in the great charitable work of reducing the Abassines the Jesuite Gonzalus Rodericus in his speech to the Emperours mother laid so great a stress on this point that when she professed her subjection to Christ he told her that None are subject to Christ that are not subject to his Vicar Negavi Christo subjici qui ejus vicario non subjicitur Godignus de reb Abassin Lib. 2. c. 18. in Roderic liter p. 323. And Bellarmine saith de Eccl. l. 3. c. 5. that no man though he would can be subject to Christ that is not subject to the Pope that is he cannot be a Christian And therefore Card. Richlieu then Bishop of Lusson tels the Protestants that they were not to be called Christians And Knot against Chillingworth with abundance more of them
to doubt whether I have the love of God my self then to conclude all the Christians in the world save the Papists to be the heirs of damnation CHAP. IV. Argum. 2. THat Doctrine is not true nor of God which teacheth men to renounce all Christian Love and Works of Christian Love towards most of the Christians upon earth But so doth the Doctrine of Popery therefore it is not of God If their Error were meerly speculative it were the less but here we see the fruits of it and whither it tends The major Proposition is plainly proved from John 13. 35. By this shall all men know that ye are my Disciples if ye have love one to another Col. 1. 4. It must be a Love to all the Saints 1 Thess 4. 9. But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you for ye your selves are taught of God to love one another This special Love is the Commandment of Christ the new Commandment without this no man can be a Lover of God nor be loved of him as a Member of Christ as you may see 1 John 3. 11 12 14 23. 4. 7 8 11 12 20 21. 2 John 5. John 13. 34. 15. 12 17. 1 Pet. 1. 22. He that loveth not a Christian as a Christian with a special love you may see in these Texts is none of the Sons of God And that the Papists teach men to deny this special Christian Love to most Christians in the world I prove They that teach men to take most true Christians in the world for no true Christians but for Hereticks or ungodly persons that shall be damned do teach them to deny the special love and works of love to most true Christians But thus do the Papists therefore c. How can a man love him as a Christian or a godly man whom he must take to be no Christian or an ungodly man It s true they may yet love them as Creatures and so they must the Devils and they may love them as men and so they must the Turks and Heathens But no man can love him as a member of Christ whom he believes to be no member of Christ but of the Devil And all Papists are bound to this uncharitableness by their Religion even by the Pope and general Council And so as Christ bindeth his servants to Love one another with a special Love so the Pope and Council bind the Papists not to love the most true Christians with a special Christian love they cannot do it without being Hereticks themselves or overthrowing the foundation of Popery And here you have a taste of the Popish Charity when they boast above all things of their Charity I must profess it is their horrible inhumane uncharitableness that seems to me their most enormous crime And also you may see here the extent of their Good works which they so much Glory in He that is bound not to love me as a Christian is bound to do nothing for me as a Christian So that they will not give a cup of cold water to a Disciple in the name of a Disciple unless he be also a Disciple of the Pope nor can they love or relieve Christ in his servants when they are bound to take them as none of his servants and so the special Love and Charity of a Papist extendeth to none but those of their own Sect and such a Charity the Quakers and Anabaptists and Familists have as eminently as they Let them take heed lest they hear In as much as you did it not to one of the least of these you did it not to me CHAP. V. Argum. 3. THat Doctrine which teacheth men to destroy or undo them whom Christ hath bound them to love as Christians and absolveth Subjects from their Allegiance to their Princes and requireth the deposing of them and committing the Government of their Dominions to others because they are judged to be Hereticks by the Pope yea or if they will not destroy and extirpate such as he calleth Hereticks I say this Doctrine is not of God nor such as Christian Princes should smile upon But such is the Doctrine of Popery therefore c. I know that a Paper entituled An explanation of the Roman Catholikes Belief and other the like do seem to renounce the opinion of breaking faith with Hereticks and of promise breaking with Magistrates It seems they think they owe no more obedience to their Magistrates then they promise But as I refer the Reader to what King James and his defenders have said on this point besides many more so I shall now give you but the words of one of their own approved General Council 12. the fourth at the Laterane under Innocent 3. as Binnius and others of their own record it In the first Chapter they set down their Catholike faith two Articles of which are 1. That no man can be saved out of their Universal Church And 2. That the bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar are transubstantiate into the Body and Blood of Christ the appearances remaining And in the third Chapter they say We excommunicate and anathematize every heresie extolling it self against this holy orthodox Catholike faith which we have before exponed condemning all hereticks by what names soever they be called And being condemned let them be left to the present secular Powers or their Bailifs to be punished the Clergy being first degraded of their Orders and let the goods of such condemned ones be confiscate if they be Lay-men but if they be Clergy men let them be given to the Churches whence they had their stipends And those that are found notable only by suspition if they do not by congruous purgation demonstrate their innocency according to the considerations of the suspition and the quality of the person let them be smitten with the sword of Anathema and avoided by all men till they have given sufficient satisfaction and if they remain a year excommunicate let them then be condemned as hereticks And let the secu'ar powers in what Office soever be admonished and perswaded and if it be necessary compelled by Ecclesiastical censure that as they would be reputed and accounted Believers so for the defence of the faith they take an Oath publikely that they will study in good earnest according to their power to exterminate all that are by the Church denoted hereticks from the Countries subject to their Jurisdiction So that when any one shall be taken into Spiritual or Temporal power he shall by his Oath make good this Chapter But if the temporal Lord being required and admonished of the Church shall neglect to purge his Countrey of heretical defilement let him by the Metropolitan and other Comprovincial Bishops be tyed by the bond of Excommunication And if he refuse to satisfie within a year let it be signified to the Pope that he may from thenceforth denounce his Vassals absolved from his fidelity and may expose his Countrey to be seised
on by Catholikes who rooting out the hereticks may possess it without contradiction and may keep it in the purity of faith saving the right of the principal Lord so be it that he himself do make no hinderance hereabout and oppose any impediment and the same Law is to be observed with them that are not principal Lords And the Catholikes that taking the sign of the Cross shall set themselves to the rooting out of the hereticks shall enjoy the same indulgences and holy priviledges which were granted to those that go to the releif of the holy land Moreover we Decree that the believers receivers defenders and favourers of Hereticks shall be excommunicate firmly decreeing that after any such is noted by excommunication if he refuse to satisfie within a year he shall from thence forth be ipso jure infamous and may not be admitted to publike Offices or Councils or to the choice of such nor to bear witness And he shall be intestate and not have power to make a will nor may come to a Succession of inheritance And no man shall be forced to answer him in any cause but he shall be forced to answer others And if he be a Judge his sentence shall be invalid and no causes shall be brought to his hearing If he be an Advocate his Plea shall not be admitted If a Notary or Register the Instruments made by him shall be utterly void and damned with the damned Author And so in other the like cases we command that it be observed Thus they go on further commanding Bishops by themselves or their Arch-deacons or other fit persons once or twice a year to search every Parish where any Heretick is found to dwell and put all the Neighbourhood to their Oaths whether they know of any Hereticks there or any private meetings or any that in life and manners do differ from the common conversation of the faithful c. And the Bishops that neglect these things are to be cast out and others put into their places that will do them And Pope Gregory 7. l. 4. Epist 7. expresly stirs up the people to cast off their Princes saying And for the conspiracy of Hereticks and the King we believe it is not unknown to you that are near them how it may be impugned by the Catholike Bishops and Dukes and many others in the German parts for the faithful of the Church of Rome are come to such a number that unless the King shall come to satisfaction they may openly profess to choose another King and observing Justice we have promised to favour them and will keep our promise firm c. The sum of all is that all that the Pope calls Hereticks must be condemned and destroyed and all Kings Princes or Lords that will not execute his sentence and root them out must be disposessed of their Dominions and the subjects absolved from their fidelity whatever Oaths they had taken and all others that do but favour or receive them be utterly undone I fetch not these things out of the writings of the Protestants nor from any private Doctors of their own but from the very words of a General Council confirmed by the Pope and unquestionably approved by them And abundance the like might be produced And many ages saw this doctrine put in execution when the Emperors of Germany were deposed by the Pope and the Subjects absolved from their Allegiance as the many volumes written in those times and published together by Goldastus testifie And the King of France or any other that tolerate any of the supposed Hereticks may see what a censure they are exposed to if meer necessity were not their security Perhaps some will say that this Decree was not de fide but a temporary precept Answ When a precept requireth duty it may be a point of Faith to believe it Precepts are the Objects of Faith at least as they are assertions that the thing commanded is our duty It is an Article of faith that God is to be loved and obeyed and our Superiors to be honoured and our Neighbour to be loved and Charity to be exercised c. The Creation the Incarnation of Christ his death resurrection ascension glorification intercession his future Judgement the Resurrection of the body c. are all matters of fact and yet matters of faith too If practicals be not Articles of faith then we have no Articles of faith at all for all our Theology and Religion is practical Do Papists murder poor Christians by the thousands and yet not fide divina believe that it is their duty so to do Either it is a duty or a sin or indifferent If a sin woe to their Pope and Council and if this be no sin with them I know not why the world should be troubled by them with the name of sin If it be indifferent what then shall be called sin If they can swallow such Camels as the blood of many thousand Christians what need they strain at Gnats and stick at private Murders or Fornication or Lying or Slandering any more then the Jesuit Casuists do that are cited by the Jansenian in his Mysterie of Jesuitism But if these Murders and deposing Kings be indeed a duty how can they know it to be so but by Believing And indeed if a General Council and the Pope are to be believed who give it us with a Decernimus firmiter statuimus then it is doubtless a point of faith and if they are not to be believed then Popery is all but a meer deceit Object 2. But may we not be Roman Catholikes though we joyn not with them in this point Have not many such renounced it and so may we Answ If you renounce the Decrees of a Pope and General Council you renounce your Religion in the very foundation of it and cannot be Papists if you know what you do but are in the Roman account as errant Hereticks as those that they have tortured and burnt to ashes though here in England where they cannot handle you as they would do they dare not tell you so And if you may renounce the Decrees of a Pope and General Council when they say It is a duty or lawful to extirminate all as Hereticks that believe not Transubstantiation and to seize upon the Lands of Princes that will not do it and to deliver them to others that will and absolve their Vassals from their fidelity I say if you may renounce them in this why may not we have as free leave to renounce them in other things as groundless CHAP. VI. Argum. 4. THE true Catholike Church is Holy the Church of Rome hath for many generations been unholy therefore the Church of Rome was not in any of those Generations the true Catholike Church The Major Proposition is an Article of the Creed professed by themselves as much as by us I Believe the Holy Catholike Church The unholiness of the Church of Rome I prove undenyably thus If an Essential part of
to Church-worship Catholike faith right reason and sacred Scripture and that henceforth it shall be lawful for no man to preach and teach the contrary Is not this plain Defining Obj. But this was not an approved Council Answ 1. It was owned by Pope Eugenius himself And here once for all I prove that the Council of Basil was approved by the Pope for Pope Felix the fift one of the best Popes that ever Rome had this thousand years approved it in this point not only by accepting their election but in express terms professing firmly to hold the faith of the Councils of Constance and Basil and to keep it inviolate to a tittle and confirm it with his soul and blood promising faithfully to labour to defend the Catholick faith and for the execution and observation of the Decrees of the Councils of Constance and Basil swearing to prosecute the celebration of Generall Councils and confirmation of Elections according to the Decrees of the Holy Council of Basil See Binnius Ses 40. page 87. If they say that Felix was not a true Pope I answer then Martin the fifth chosen by the Councill at Constance was no true Pope and then where is your succession These things are plain and cannot be denyed though unconscionable shifters that argue according to their Wills may find words to be guile the simple 2 It seems then your Catholick Church representative is nothing if one man like it not One more instance How largely hath the Council of Trent dealt about originall sin And yet the foresaid Thomas White ibid. saith thus If the People were taught Original sin is nothing but a Disposition to evil or a natural weakness which unless prevented brings infallibly sin and damnation and that in it self it deserves neither reproach nor punishment as long as it proceeds not to actual sin the heat of vulgar devotion would be cooled c. See here a meer Pelagian issue of all the Determinations about Originall sin which they should swear to believe CHAP. XV. Detect 6. AND by this that hath been said you may see what to think of their glorying in their Unity and accusing our Divisions One of the principal arguments that they prevail by is by telling the people into how many sects we are divided and that the Catholick Church is but one but we are many and here they will tell you of all the names they can reckon up Presbyterians Independants Anabaptists Antinomians Arminians Socinians Quakers and what not And they will tell you that all this Division comes by departing from the Roman Catholick Church every man being left to be of what Religion his fancy leadeth him to for want of an universal Judge of controversies And they will ask you what reason you have among all these Sects to believe one of them rather then another So that they would perswade you that there is no way for Unity but by turning to be Papists that we may be united in the Pope of Rome To all this deceit for it is no better we give them our full answer in these Propositions 1. It is not every kind of unity that is desirable but Unity with truth and honesty and safety It s easier to agree in evil then in good for evil findeth more friendship with corrupted nature and hath more servants in the world The wicked are more agreed and far more in number of one mind then the Godly are The Mahometans are far more agreed and that in a far greater number then the Papists are The Devils have some agreement in their way They are all agreed to hate Christ and his members and to seek night and day whom they may devour It is easier to agree in a Papists work then in ours To ceater carnally in a sinfull and oft a most wicked man to agree in certain forms and ceremonies which flesh and blood is glad to delude themselves with instead of the Life of faith and Love its easie to agree in such a carnal religion To spare the labour and time of study and searching after truth and to cast their souls upon the faith of others even the Pope or a Council this is an easie thing for lazy ungodly men to agree in But to make the Truth our Own and get the Law of Christ written in our own hearts and to live upon it and walk in the light and embrace all those truths that are most against our fleshly inclination and interest this is not so easie for corrupted nature to agree upon 2. Christ hath told us that it is a little flock to whom he gives the Kingdom Luke 12. 32. and that the gate is strait and the way narrow that leads to life and few there be that find it and the gate is wide and the way broad that leads to destruction and many there be that enter at it And therefore it is no great wonder if error and sin have the greater number 3. And yet for all this I dare boldly say that there is a far more excellent Unity and Concord among the true Reformed Catholicks then among the Papists and that they do but cheat poor souls with the falfe pretence of unity And this I shall make appear to you as followeth 1. As I have said before they are utterly divided and disagreed about that very power in which they should unite and which they pretend must agree them in all other things One half of them are for the Soveraignty of a Pope and the other of a General Council and that as a point of faith So that there is no possibility of Union with them that are divided in the very point in which they invite us to Unite with them If the eye be dark how shall the body see If they cannot agree about that power that they say must agree them in all things else what hope of an agreement with them But for our parts we are all agreed that Christ only is the head of the Church and in him we all unite 2. With us they are usually but here and there a stragling person or some few half-witted self-conceited Novices that fall off and disagree from us in any thing that destroyeth salvation But with the Papists Princes are against Princes and Nations against Nations and which is much more General Councils against General Councils even in the Foundation of their faith So that let the General Councils be never so full and learned and justly called yet if they be against the Popes Soveraignty over them the other party call them but Conciliabula false Councils and Conventicles Of how great moment this difference is let the learned Cajetane be a witness who in his Oration in the Council at the Laterane under Leo 10. inveighing against the Councils at Pisa Constance and Basil makes one to be Babel and the other Jerusalem 3. As I proved before the Papists are divided into two several pretended Catholick Churches by making themselves two Soveraigns but so are not we For
them when they turn to the same sects from you Nor no more then you bred the Lutherans far better men They went out from you and yet you bred them not But on the other side you cherish those as part of your Church which differ from you in your fundamentals so that the Pope dare not unchurch or disown them as the French c. but so do not we 16. Our Unity is in Positives and theirs is in Negatives Ours is a Unity in faith and theirs is in not believing the contrary And so dead men may have a fuller Unity in the grave then the Papists have 17. Our Union is Divine having a Divine Head and Center and Divine Doctrine and Law in which we agree But the Papists is humane having a carnal Head and Center and Humane Decrees and Canons for its matter and Rule 18. They have not so sure a means of retaining men in their unity as we have Let experience be Judge of this For where one hath forsaken our Unity and Communion I suppose hundreds if not thousands have forsaken theirs as France Belgia Germany Sweden Denmark Poland Hungary Transilvania England Scotland Ireland c. can witness and if themselves might be believed the Greek Church and all or almost all the Christians else in the world have gone from their unity And yet will they glory in the effectualness of their means of unity Why then did they not retain all these Nations in their unity 19. Moreover indeed they have very little Religious unity at all among them for its force and terror that keeps men in their Church And who can tell under such violence how many stick to them in Conscience and willingly He that will forsake their Religion in Spain must be tormented and burnt at a stake and in other Countreys where they have full power he must be at least undone So that 1. Theirs is a unity of bodies more then of minds 2. And their union is not procured by the Pope as Pope but by the temporal sword which the Pope hath usurped over some countreys and which deluded Princes use by his perswasion in other Countreys What a jugling deceit then is this to perswade poor souls that the only way to unity is to Center in the Pope of Rome and that this is the most effectual means of ending differences when in the mean they make so little use of it and place so little confidence in it themselves but uphold their unity by the Magistrates sword And if this be the way we have Magistrates among us as well as they that can as effectually compell men to unity as far as their Judgements tell them it is fit And besides this force it is the riches and preferment of their Clergy with their immunity from secular power the like that is the means of their unity But it is the light of holy Scripture opened by a faithfull Ministry and countenanced by Christian Magistracy without tyranny that is our means of unity If the Papal Headship be so effectuall a means of unity as they pretend and if they are so much of a mind as they say let them give us leave but to preach one 12. moneths in Spain and Italy if they dare or let them give men leave without fire and sword to choose their Religion 20. And yet besides all this and after all this tyranny they have more difference among themselves then we have or then all the Christians that I hear of in the world And to hide the Infamy of their differences they tolerate them and extenuate them For differences in Discipline and order of Worship they allow abundance of sects called Orders that men and women may choose which they please And the voluminous differences of their Schoolmen Casuists and Commentators they say are not in matters of faith But call them what you will they are many of them greater differences then are with us I pray read over the Jansenians Mysterie of Jesuitism and take notice of the differences between the Jesuites and them in Case Divinity and judge whether they be small And let it not offend your ears if I recite some of their Differences in that Papists own words as he cites the Jesuites and tells you where to find what he saith Pag. 89. Filintius the Jesuite holds that if a man have purposely wearied himself with satisfying a whore that he might be dispensed with from fasting on a fasting day he is not obliged to fast But the Jansenians think otherwise Basilius Pontius Bunny the Jesuites teach that a man may seek an opportunity of sinning primò per se when the spiritual or temporal concernment of our selves or our neighbours inclineth him thereto But the Jansenists think the contrary Pag. 91. Eman. Sa the Jesuite holds that a man do what he conceives lawfull according to a probable opinion though the contrary be the more certain and for this the Opinion of one grave Doctor is sufficient And Filintius the Jesuite held that it is lawfull to follow the less probable opinion though it be the less certain and that this is the common opinion of modern authors Pag. 95. And yet the Jansenists are against it Layman the Jesuite holds that If it be more favourable to them that ask advice of him and more desired it is Prudence to give them such advice as is held probable by some knowing person though he himself be convinced that it is absolutely false But the Jansenists are against this Pag. 96. Bunney the Jesuite holds that when the patient follows a probable opinion the confessor is bound to absolve him though his judgement be contrary to that of the penitent and that he sins mortally if he deny him absolution Myster of Jesuit pag. 97. But the Jansenists deny this Father Reginaldus and Cellot hold that the modern Casuists in questions of Morality are to be preferred before the antient Fathers though they were nearer the Aposiles times Pag. 98. But the Jansenists think otherwise Pope Gregory the fourteenth declareth Murderers unworthy to have Sanctuary in Churches But the Jesuits and Jansenists agree not who are the Murtherers The 29 Jesuites in their Praxis page 600. by murderers understand those who have taken money to kill one treacherously and that those who kill without receiving any reward but do it only to oblige their friends are not called murtherers But the Jansenists think otherwise No marvail if you cannot understand the Scripture without a judge when you can no better understand your judge no not what he means by a murtherer Vasquez the Jesuite saith that in this Question rich men are obliged to give alms out of their superfluity though the affirmative be true yet it will seldom or never happen that it is obligatory in point of practice Pag. 105. But the Jansenists think otherwise Valentia the Jesuite Tom. 3. p. 2042. holds that If a man give money not as the price of a Benefice but as a Motive to resign
sensible Image made of any sensible matter but such an Image as is to be conceived with the understanding Origen against Celsus lib. 7. page 373 384 386. 387. is large and plain against this use of Images as the Protestants are And the Eliber Concil C. 36. saith Placuit picturas in Ecclesia esse non debere ne quod colitur aut adoratur in parietibus depingatur It seemeth good to us that Pictures ought not to be in the Church lest that which is worshipped or adored should be painted on Walls Some Papists would sain find a sense for this anon contrary to the words But Melch Canus plainly saith that the Council did not only imprudently but impiously make this law to take away Images Loc. Theol. lib. 5. cap. 4. conc 4. I shall cite no more but intreat the Reader that is willing to be informed how much Antiquity was against the Papists in the points of Images to peruse only Dallaeus de Imaginibus and Usher in his Answer to the Jesuite and Sermon to the Parliament And I provoke the Papists to confute what is in them alledged if they can H. T. hath no better shift to salve their credit Manual page 319 320. then to set their own Schoolmen and General Council together by the ears The second Council of Nice that did most for Images did openly renounce the adoring them with Divine honour and Tharasius solemnly professed Duntaxat in unum verum Deum latriam fidem se referre reponere They did refer and repose faith and divine worship in the true God alone But Aquinas sum 3. q. 25. a. 3. 4. maintaineth as I before observed that the Image of Christ and the Cross and the sign of the Cross are to be worshipped with Divine worship And what saith H. Turbervile to this Why This is a meer school opinion and not of faith with us Urge not therefore what some particular Divines say but hearken to the Doctrine of Gods Church Very good Is not this so gross a kind of jugling that would never down if devout ignorance and implicite faith had not prepared the stomacks of the people 1. You see here that to contradict the Determination of a General Council is not of faith with them But it is not against your faith Do you give leave to meer school opinions to contradict General Councils See here what 's become of the Popish faith If the Determinations of Councils be not Articles of faith with you then you have no faith but give up your cause And if they be then Aquinas and his followers are Hereticks 2. And then see what 's become of the Popes Infallibility in Canonizing Saints that have sainted Thomas Aquinas that proves a Heretick by your Law so that your cause is gone which way ever you turn you 3. And then see what it is to pray to Saints when some of them are made Hereticks by your own Laws 4. And then also see at what Unity the Church of Rome is among themselves when it is the very common doctrine of their learned Schoolmen which contradicteth a General Council Are you not well agreed that while 5. And lastly note what a Holy Church you have when the common sort of your most learned Divines are thus made Hereticks See Bishop Ushers allegations of Th. Arundels Provincial Council at Oxford 1408 ex Guil. Linewood lib 5. And Jac. Naclantus in Rom. cap. 1. fol. 42. saith We must not only confess that the faithfull in the Church do worship before the Image as some cautelously speak but that they adore the Image without any scruple yea and that they worship it with the same worship as the Prototype so that if it be worshipt with Divine worship the Image must have Divine worship And Cabrera in 3. part Thom. qu. 25. art 3. disp 2. num 15. there cited by Usher saith that it is of faith that Images are to be worshipped in Churches and without and we must give them signs of servitude and submission by embracing lights offering incense uncovering the head c. 2. That Images are truly and properly to be adored with an intention to adore themselves and not only the samplars represented in them This Conclusion is against Durandus and his followers whose opinion by the Moderns is judged dangerous rash and savouring of Heresie and M. Medina reporteth that M. Victoria reputed it heretical but our conclusion is the common one of Divines If Images be improperly only adored then they are not to be adored simply and absolutely which is manifest Heresie And if Images were to be worshipped only by way of Remembrance because they make us remember the samplars which we thus adore as if they were present it would follow that all creatures are to be adored with the same adoration as God which is absurd 3. The Opinion of Saint Thomas that the Image must be worshipped with the same act of adoration as the samplar which it representeth is most true most pious and very consonant to the decrees of faith Thus Cabrera who adds that this is the doctrine of Thomas and all his Disciples and almost all the old Schoolmen and particularly of Cajetan Capreolus Paludanus Ferrariensis Antoninus Soto Alexand. Ales Albertus Magnus Bonaventura Richardus de media villa Dionysius Carthusianus Major Marsilius Thom. Waldensis Turrecremata Clichtovaeus Turrian Vasquez c. And Azorius saith It is the constant opinion of Divines Institut Moral tom 1. lib. 9. cap. 6. Yea in the Roman Pontifical published by the Authority of Clement the eighth it is expressed that The Legates Cross shall have the right hand because Divine worship is due to it See here whether the Pope himself be not an Heretick and the Pontifical contain not heresie and the whole rabble of the Schoolmen hereticks by contradicting the determination of the General Council at Nice 2. which H. T. citeth and the doctrine which he saith is the doctrine of Gods Church such is the faith and unity of the Papists But they will say still that though all these worship the very Cross and Images themselves and that with Divine worship yet there be some of a better mind that do but worship God by the Image such as H. T. c. Answ And do you think that rational Pagans did not know as well as you that their Images were not Gods themselves and so worshipped them not as Gods but as the representers and instruments of some Diety Lactantius Instit lib. 2. cap. 2. brings them in saying thus Non ipsa c. We fear not them but those whom they represent and to whose names they are consecrated And Arnobius thus Deos per simulachra veneramur It is the Gods that we worship by Images And Augustine thus reporteth the Pagans sayings in Psal 96. Non ego lapidem c. I do not worship that stone nor that Image which is without sense And in Psal Psal 113. cono 2. Nec simulachrum nec daemonium
must be done to reduce them into Practice 1. THE first General Ground is this Peace and Holiness must be carried on together Yea Peace must be sought as a Means to Holiness and therefore Holiness which is the End must be preferred The wisdom that is from above is first Pure then Peaceable Gentle easie to be intreated c. Jam. 3. A man may be saved that cannot attain Peace with men and therefore we are commanded to seek it as an uncertain good Rom. 12. 18. If it be possible as much as in you lyeth live peacably with all men But no man can be saved without Holiness Heb. 12. 14. Follow Peace with all men and Holiness without which no man shall see God There is a kind of Unity among Devils For if Satan were divided against Satan how could his Kingdom stand Mat. 12. There is a Peace in a state of misery and sin which hindereth mens recovery For when the strong man armed keeps his house the things that he possesseth are in Peace It is a state of greatest danger on earth to be United in evil and to have Peace in a way of sin And therefore it is no wonder if there be more lovers of Peace then of Holiness and more that will cry out of our Divisions then of our ungodliness and more that cry out of so many Religions then of irreligiousness and ungodliness For nature may make a man in love with Unity and Peace but not with Holiness for with that it is at Enmity Hence it is that we hear so many Worldlings Swearers Drunkards Whoremongers cry up unity and cry down so many minds and wayes And hence it is that so many such wicked livers do turn Papists on supposition that there is more unity with them And so the Popish party among us are the sink into which the filth and excrements of our Churches are emptyed 2. The second General Ground From hence it followeth that the first closure of the members of the Church must be upon principles of Faith and Holiness and therefore only between the Professors of Faith and Holiness And therefore we ought not to be solicitous of obtaining a Unity with open ungodly men For what Communion hath light with darkness or what concord hath Christ with Belial If men will not agree with us in the great Principles of Godliness nor join with us in avoiding crying sins and living an Holy life it is they that are the Separatists and withdraw from our communion If they will not come to us in Piety we must not come to them in Impiety And to attempt a union with them in Government and Ceremonies when we cannot bring them to a Union with us in seeming Godliness is as vain as to attempt to an Association with the dead and to make a marriage with a stinking Corps It is therefore but a carnal stir that Papists and some Reconcilers make to have a Union so General as shall take in the most impious rabble that ought to be excommunicated and should conjoin the living and the dead And therefore in some cases we are all called to separate by him that calleth us in other cases to unity And he tels us that he came not to send peace with such but division 3. The third General Ground Unity and Peace are such excellent things and so much depend upon Love and Holiness and suppose also so much Illumination that the perfection of them is reserved for Heaven and as it is but a small measure of Illumination and Love and Holiness that is here attainable in comparison of that which we shall have in heaven so it is but a small measure of Peace and Concord And therefore though our desires and endeavours should go as high as we can yet our expectations on earth must not fly too high This hath been my own error I have not sufficiently considered that perfect Peace as well as perfect Holiness is the prerogative of Heaven and that true Peace will be imperfect while the Light and Vertue which is supposed to it is imperfect And it is a blind absurd conceit of them that wonder we have not perfect Unity when yet they murmur at Piety and think a little may serve the turn and any sin is tolerable that 's directly against God but not disunion So much for the General Grounds The Particular Grounds are these following 1. Ground IT is the Prerogative of the Lord Jesus to be the only Head and Soveraign of the Church And his will revealed is our Law and in him only must we center and not in any Vicarious Universal Head And from him must all receive their power and all must worship God according to his praescript Eph. 4. 3 4 5. 1. 21 22. Mat. 28. 18 19. Col. 1. 18. Acts 4. 12. 3. 22. 7. 37. Mat. 3. 17. 1 Cor. 3. 5 22. 1 Cor. 1. 12. Gal. 2. 9 10. 2. Gr. The Holy Scriptures with the Law of Nature are the only Laws of Christ unless as he may possibly by extraordinary Revelation oblige some person to a particular duty not contrary to that word but left undetermined which yet is so rare a thing that men must not rashly presume of such a matter 1 Tim. 1. 3. Gal. 1. 7 8. 9. Isa 8. 20. 1 Cor. 4. 6. 2 Tim. 3. 17. Deut. 12. 32. Mat. 15. 9 11. 3. It is the prerogative of Christ himself to be the supream absolute and final Judge of the sence of his own Laws and of the causes that are to be tried thereby And therefore it is treasonable folly to attribute any of this to man and to cry out for an Absolute Judge of Controversies here on earth when one saith This is the sence of Scripture and another saith that is the sence saith the Papist But who shall be Judge To which I answer How far man is Judge I shall tell you in the next but the Absolute Judge and the final Judge is only Christ He that made the Law is the proper Judge of the sence of his own Laws Do you not know that Christ will come to judgement and that all secrets must then be opened by him and he must decide what man cannot Man is to Judge but in tantum ad hoc secundum quid limitedly so far as he must execute but Christ only Judgeth entirely finally and absolutely 2 Cor. 4. 3 4 5. 1 Tim. 5. 24. Jam. 4. 11 12. 1 Pet. 1. 17. 2. 23. 1 Cor. 2. 15. Act. 23. 3. 1 Cor. 13. 9 10 11 12. Mark 7. 9 13. 4. All Councils whether General or Provincial or Classical which consist of the Bishops or Pastors of several Churches met together are appointed and to be used directly but gratiâ Unitatis Communionis Christianae and not directly gratia regiminis for the Governing of Pastors in order to Unity and Communion and not as a Regimental as to the Pastors This Proposition which is of exceeding consequence was voluntarily asserted to me