Impostures are less tolerable than the open Treason of a Cromwell or the Tyranny of the Turk because men may easier endure to be robbed than to be cheated and deprived of their purses or Estates against their will than of their Honour and understanding with consent And as it hath been largely proved that Popery consists in evident disobedience and Rebellion against the Right Heir and Soveraign of the heart And Papists in a greater concern to jump exactly with the old Sexton whose Clock went truer than the Sun so positively also further to clear and evince the Truth to be on the Protestant side in this main point and Issue which is the hinge of the Controversie between us I shall also instance how we Protestants Loyally adhere to our Right guide and Judge and how the heart in all our principles relies on God and none else and on Christ who is the sole foundation of the Church 1 Cor. 3 3 11. and the Rock whereon it is built against which the gates of Hell can never prevail Math. 16.18 We build our Faith upon the Holy Scriptures which are Gods word for hearts to rest on whose Divine Authority themselves dare not deny without being the most convicted Hereticks that ever disturbed Gods Church in any age however they Blaspheme and traduce them before the Vulgar We come to know the Scriptures to be Gods word being not present our selves at passages by the Testimony and tradition of others such a Testimony as is also Divine or nearest to Divine to be relied on by the heart Not upon the Testimony of the Church of Rome by any means who hath so much cracked her credit by legending forgeing expurgating c. for it were a great fault as well as folly in us who profess our Devotion to God and the Truth to confide in the Father of lies or such his followers but upon our own honest Christian Ancestors with other Churches especially the Primitive when most pure and Holy and therefore likest to God and to be believed by consequence from the heart and the rather when seconded with the Testimony of the Holy Spirit to Holy Livers who is God We believe our sences in their own Sphere in many points against the whole world because we believe God in them with our hearts who made our sences and speaks through them Prov. 20.12 We believe beyond sence and can see things absent as if they were present to us when we have Gods word to assure the same to our Faith and consequently to our hearts and can discern Christ present in the blessed Sacrament and the Bread to be present nevertheless in different respects and be assured of both in our hearts through the evidence and strength of God in whom our Faith and sences act and move But in a Religion without the heart as is the Roman It is hard if not impossible to conceive or imagine how any Sacrament of Bread can be at all amongst them without Transubstantiation in the Elements who will not and cannot admit of any other change by the heart and Faith which are not much in use in that Church in this or any other part of worship which shews the root and occasion of that monstrous errour in that carnal Catholick Church which cannot distinguish between the objects of sence and Faith and is observ'd to Apostatize herein from their own Antient Mass which doth We believe plain and manifest Truths of Scripture without need of guides against the Glosses or Sophistry or Authority of the whole world to the contrary for we believe God himself in them with our hearts who requires and deserves to be so believed because God himself leads us by the hand as it were yea with both hands in plain Texts of Holy writ on the one side and his manifest Instincts of good and evil on the other in such manifest duties And when God himself doth speak all the world must hold the tongue while the Sun is above the Horizon Stars and Candles which answer to guides and supplies abscond and give way Hawks and all other Birds quit the Air where the Eagle Towres what Stupidity were it in a man of years and knowledge of the City to ask the way from Charing-Cross to Temple-bar out of Reverence to his guide and distrust of himself in things obscure and Controversiall wherein neither we nor others can clearly and assuredly discern Gods mind and will for the heart to acquiesce in here we make use of Candles and guides and especially our lawful Superiours who are Gods deputies to direct us and all others that resemble God in their gifts or years or places or Major vote For the next to God is as God unto us when God himself cannot be heard and our hearts can rest on them but not with equal assurance as on plain and manifest duties as their importance also is not equal for there is a greater respect of the two due to the Principal than to his deputy In like manner in all Indifferent matters which are the proper Province of the Magistrate for where Scriptures end there humane Laws begin where God withdraws there his Deputies step in we submit to the determinations and publick orders of our lawful Governours as to Gods voice and Authority out of the obedience of our hearts to Christ present in our Superiours to our Faith and regard to the Churches peace which is his image and darling And they that refuse to submit and conform do it in adherence to their conscience as they pretend now conscience without a Rule is an Atheist as is the heart without the Lord and of no use like a Sun-diall in the dark It is not conscience but the Quakers dark-light within and the Rule is Christs Will or to come nearest to his Will which is the utmost satisfaction of the heart now whether we keep nearest to Christ in adhearing stiffly to private fancy or submitting modestly to publick Authority and Major vote is the Question which St. Paul puts of question 1 Cor. 14.33 For Christ is where peace and humility and order is and not where pride and strife and division are and are ever like to be while each prefer themselves not only before their equals which is pride but their Superiours likewise which is disobedience and contempt of Christ in his Magistrates added to it which all true Christian hearts will avoid more than death as being not from God as Papists truly object And so we Protestants hold no Principle or Opinion but what agrees with the mind of God and Christ which was the Rule and measure that was to be agreed upon by both to arrive at Truth and endeavour always to approve our hearts to Christ who alone is their Judge and Soveraign and no mortal man whatsoever believing and considering that as there can be no sin or vertue where there is no Law so a Law were to no effect or purpose without a Judge to reward and punish the observers
natural Allegiance of his consciâ—nce towards Christ and the Truth and his outward duty to his Governours and Fathers at home violating the fift commandment with a Pharisaical corban saying to their peculiar Fathers it 's given to Rome whatsoever you might be profited by us following uncertain traditions before Gods express Law and teaching for Doctrines the commandments of men as our Saviour himself hath timely detected and forwarn'd against this Holy fraud Math. 15.5 for by the same reason that every good wife is to know her own Husband from another and every good Subject his own King from a Forreigner or Usurper and every Souldier his own Commander and Colours by the same duty and conscience every English Christian is to follow his own Church in Christ before another for obedience misplac'd is but Godly transgression or Traiterous Loyalty to the disturbance of the publick besides its own shame and prejudice And by submission to Governours and Synods they were heal'd of the Pelagian Heresie which most annoyed this Church next to Romish Inroades that trode down the whole field and sowed their tares and superstitions from year to year among our best corn this made also our Church to under go several variations about the observation of Easter as times required As for the Arian Heresie and venome which began to Breath a little in these parts upon h Usher p 197. Gratians toleration of divers opinions in Religion it found not the air to agree with it neither did Pelagius or Morgan though born in Brittain and as it is said i idem p. 207. the same day St. Augustine was born in Africk suck k idem p. 215. 224. Pelagii Epist ad Demetr or Propagate his Heresie here but fell into it at Rome by finding Christians to come short of Heathens and abusing Grace to Libertinisme and Wantonness for otherwise he was in great esteem and veneration for his learning and Sanctity with the chief l Usher 221.214 Fathers of the East and West St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom and in the East m Usher p. 215. ended his days having never return'd to his own Country but his Heresie came to be spread here nevertheless in those parts especially that were reduc'd by the Saxon Conquerour by the means of n Bed lib 1. c 17. Agricola a French man the Son of Severianus a Pelagian Bishop and in the rooting of it out amongst the Brittains left behind in Lhoegr Germanus and Lupus French-men likewise did good service as by Neutrality they were better fitted as for instance their first and main success in disputation was about o M. Westm p. 446. St. Albans where Gildas and such as he durst not approach for the Enemy as his complaint is taken notice of by p Camden in St. Albans Camden there being their chiefest Champions sent hither from the Gallican at the request of the Brittish Church signifying her distemper and troubles quaâ—primum fidei Catholicae debere succurri that the Catholick Faith should be assisted as soon as might be such was the loving Communion then between this and that Church and still might be especially with the soundest and learned'st part thereof under frown for Orthodoxy if he who now letteth were once taken fully out of the way 2 Thess 2. But it recover'd it self again after Germanus his time till St. David newly ordained Bishop by the Patriarch of Jerusalem in a publick Synod whereto he was invited held in Wales against it gave it q Usher p. 474. its final overthrow and was made Arch-Bishop of St. David in the same Synod thereupon For the Easter Controversie which was the only materiall point Augustine had to object for the other about Baptism was meer Ceremony and since lost in oblivion it consisted of two parts Doctrinal and Astronomical Doctrinal as in the early Controversie between the Churches of East and West wherein it is most probable the Brittains followed the East before the Synod of q Concil Arelat Can. 1. Arles and Nice determined otherwise and Astronomical between Augustine and the Brittains at this time being much the same difference between stylo veteri stylo novo in our days which the Ignorance of Augustine made to be a Catholick tradition derived from St. Peter and the chief ground and pretence of quarrel to disturb our Churches St. Paul dehorts Christians from observing dayes and Months and times and years Gal. 4 10 very agreeably to the Christian Hypothesis whereby this present world or the old Creation hath its end and period in the death of Christ Sacramentally to our Faith and r 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrys T. 5. Edit Savil. Hom. 53. p. 357. time its Concomitant twinne hath the like end and period with it by consequence Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world why as though living in the world are ye Subject to Ordinances for properly a Christian as a Christian lives not in this world but in Eternity or to use the Apostles expression his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his Conversation and Scene of living is not on Earth but in Heaven with Christ at the right hand of God Phil. 3 20. Col. 3.1 Which Doctrine highly Suits with the nature and genius of the immortal Soul all whose Acts of vice or virtue though as born in the body within the virge of time and place they are Temporal and transitory yet as they are the free-born off-springs of the Soul they carry the features and signatures of Eternity upon them being Eternal as their Parent in the memory of their guilt or merit Not as if the old Creation wherein we still live in the flesh 2 Cor. 10.3 were wholly consumed and transubstantiated in the sight of our rational faculties which a moral Philosopher would justly deride as madness in those that should maintain it but that the whole sublunary and moral nature of all its parts is to be elevated and consecrated to Heavenly uses in this state of Grace and nearer access to God wherein the Church as a new Creature by faith now stands Rom. 5.21 2 Cor. 5.17 Therefore old things are passed away behold all things are become new We Christians eate and drink and obey and rule and mourn and rejoyce and observe dayes and times and feasts as well as the Jews or Heathens did but in another World by faith between the heart and the Lord in whom times persons and degrees and differences of persons meet in one as the whole Hemisphere in the candle of the eye or Diameters in their Center In the World men are Greeks or Barbarians bond or free Male or Female but in the Church Christ is all and in all For as in a degenerate Church or false Christian the present World or his Interest and profit is all in all and Holy Church and Religion and God and Christ and Faith and Sacraments are all Hypocritically and profanely named and used in
the great esteem and contempt that Syberwid and Ansyberwid was and is in still amongst them that have kept their Language and Ancient Customs most free from Forreign mixtures for with such no man can fall under a worse or better character them of Syberw or Ansyberw no greater commendation have they for any man or woman than gwr or gwraig Syberw no greater note of Infamy and unworthyness than Ansyberw which they pronounce as Suber and Ansuber though writ with y which words whatever is their Etymology in their common acception carry a comprehensive signification of several good and evil qualities as ingredients And 1 it is manifest Syberw in the first surface denotes liberality as Ansyberw niggardness but then further it points at the cause and reason of both for 2 such a man is to be allowed Syberw that doth by all men as he would be done by and the contrary is Ansyberw so is he that takes greater measure to himself than he will afford to others so are all that can endure to fare richly while their Neighbours starve by them and Syberw is he that is watchful and resolute against all avaritious inequality and overreaching or unconcernedness for others that be in want and misery so that Syberw is just and mercyful as well as Liberal and Ansyberw unjust and merciless 3 It implies some inequality when a man strives to be kinder ro another than to himself and pinches himself in back and belly to be kind and liberall to many as I have known vety good Women who went habited scare above beggars and of proportionable abstinence in their diet who if they had worn all their large almes upon their backs from year to year which they valued above all gayety and good fare might have appear'd and far'd as splendid as any of their rank and know by this time they made a better choice and herein is the essence and formality of Syberwid and such an engrafted traditional honour and esteem there is for such amongst the Brittains that their names are mentioned with great and cordial dearness as if this were to be a Saint for faith and all vertues are presumed to be in that man or woman where this temper is found and though it may seem unreasonable or at least a work of Superogation to love another above himself yet they judge nothing to be a greater duty and content and blessing as indeed what is more Divine and Honourable and the source all noble actions and rewards exposeing life for Country c. and in their common bargains and measures they abhorr and dread precise and exact equality without some addition or voluntary overplus of kindness to another they deal with above the strict contract and they had rather abate of the price agteed than be disabled to give the said addition as their free guift over and above their bargain which they proverbially call rhád-duw or Gods Grace and Blessing And the giver is as Willing or rather more to give his Rhad-duw into the bargain than the other to receive it 4 It takes in conscience and the heart above all they 'l hardly receive it if it comes not from the heart and from no ends but as a free guift and he that is Ansyberw is therefore hateful with them because esteemed to have no conscience and he that is Syberw from the heart is call'd glan ei galon or clear spirited which is the loveliest Character they judge any man can deserve or receive and probably Syberw comes from Sobrius and Sobrius from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Etymology of it whereby it signifies the preservation of the mind and heart which is done they conceive by nothing more than Syberwid as the mind and soul is destroyed and corrupted by nothing more than Ansyberwid which is the same with Philauâ— or self love as appears by the premises so hateful with St. Paul and our Brittans and with all good men so that by this their imbred tradition received amongst all undegenerate Brittains both high and low they judge honesty and mercy and love to others above themselves as in the case of humility to be their self-preservation and chiefest Interest and surest method to prosper And no wonder they preferr'd this hearty Syberwid before all other vertues it being nothing else but that love which is the fulfilling of the Law or that charity from a pure heart which is the end of the commandment and the total of all Religion for what excellency or degeneracy is there in human or Christian nature that is not contain'd in Syberw and avoided in Ansyberw What is honour in Nobles honestum with Romans 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with Greeks humility and charity with Christians is all comprehended in Syberw And this Brittish Principle and Custom is so undoubtedly Apostolical and Primitive that nothing more is the root and cause of the Arrogance and troublesomness of Popery or of that hollowness and Hippocrisie that hath too much prevail'd in Modern Protestancy and Puritanism it self than the manifest want thereof Some of our degenerate Gentry ought to compare their ignoble and sinful constant healthing and swilling while they can hardly spare a glass of Water to Christ in their poor Neighbour with this sober and salvifical principle of their Progenitours who it is to be believed never met to r Gyrald Cambrens descript Camb. c. 9. drink but in relation to Cymmortha and these are so much Brittains they say in their servile imitations of forreign vitious Customs that the health of an Ansyberw or niggaâ—dly selfish person was never known to go round amongst them but only of the Syberw and generous This character of our Brittish Church in her Doctrines and Rites is exactly the same with that which Å¿ Epiphanius lib 3. in sine Epiphanius gives of the Primitive Catholick which the Church of England this day professes to follow and to retrive which is the same Church with the Ancient Brittish Church the Brittains and the English being the same People not only in Faith and worship but in Laws and bloud and greater alliance in Doctrine and Consanginity to be found between them than between Alexander and Clement modern Italians and Linus and Anacletus their predecessors Ancient Romans as may further appear The Brittish Church therefore appearing from undoubted evidence and their adversaries exceptions to be so sound and Ancient in the substance of her Orthodox Faith to impute schism to it for her distance or departure from the Roman her Junior or to ask where was your Church before Luther is a cavil not only ignorantly groundless but inpudently ridiculous if they pretend to be in their Sences that urge it They may with as much colour of reason object a separation in us from Prester-John or the Church of the Abyssines well known perhaps to our Fore-Fathers when they met at Jerusalem whither both resorted with whom as with all other Churches of Christendom and as many as are allowed
furnish'd for Outward Appearance a true type of his Roman Church to this day gay without to the eye but naked and bare walls within to reason as appears from the Inventory of his furniture and Utensils c Bed lib. 1. c. 29. vasa sacra vestimenta altarium Ornamenta quoque Eeclesiarum Sacerdâ—talia Clericalia indumenta Sanctorum Apostolorum martyrum reliquias nec non codices plurimos in the last place and almost forgot and without the Epithite sacros to assure us they were Bibles Outward and decent Ornaments and Ceremonies in the worship and service of God cannot be justly tax'd or censured unless the whole stress and substance of Religion be placed therein and not in the heart which is much the humour of that Church and was so much the Principle and composition of our Augustine that though the Churches of Christ in Brittain were never so confessedly Ancient and Catholick as to all the Articles of their Faith or unblameable in their Discipline or eminent in their Clergy yet because they differed from Rome about Easter in the manner as before or in not using spittle or the like nasty Ceremony in Baptism perhaps as they do or had not their locks order'd after the like bald-pate manner for the pretence of not Preaching to the Saxons was but a meer artifice and colour nothing would serve the turn or allay his zeal and wrath but their total subversion and dissolution by the help of Pagan Arms and Gods name brought in to abett and countenance this Barbarâ— design and malice by Hypocritical Prophesies anâ— counterfeit Revelations If one using the name of the King of Spain should make an Embassy from that Crown to this now at peace with one another that if the English conform not forthwith to the Spanish mode not only in their habit but the cut of their Hair and the form of their mustachioes they must expect nothing less than the utter destruction of their Church and state from God and man though such a message might justly be look'd upon as the frensy of a mad-man would they be free from censure if they neglected their own security however if it was well known by experience that the like threats had been by dark means executed before their own doors within remembrance of their own History But the Learning and Doctrine of this Pretended Apostle was not more Weak and Rotten in the heart than the right means of propagating it with the mouth was proportionably defective and wanting and had it been sound and Christian if Faith comes by hearing how could he preach to English ears when neither understood the other no more than Duck-Chickens their Hen-dam recalling them from their connatural Element Neither is there any Sermon or Homily of his on record that might worthily entitle him to our conversion as is urg'd by the d Antiquitates Ecclesiast p. 35. learned and judicious in both particulars The guift of tongues and power of miracles here fail'd him where it was most requisite and necessary though else-where where they were frivolous and needless he abounded with them in so much that his careful Pope writes an Epistle to him on purpose not to be e Bed lib 1. c. 31. transported above measure with the many miracles he wrought which yet might be of the same nature with his own Divine Revelation f M. Westm An. 605. and Gods answer in a dream to his Prayer for Trajan to rescue him out of Hell which God had granted with this proviso that he should trouble him no more with his Prayers of that nature for Heathens and who were like to be his Interpreters whilst the Neighbouring Ministers of France were back-ward g Spelman Concil p. 77. in this work as Pope Gregory himself complains judging them unworthy of Christian Communion in the posture they stood to the Brittains that had hir'd them for Auxiliaries as is conjectur'd g Antique Eccles p. 35. by another the terms of repentance and restitution being like to be as much insisted by the one as rejected by the other therefore some French Merchants skill'd in the English through their commerce and Ignorant of the Canons or some mean Minister that might be won to Act for Gaine and Interest against the Rules of the Church and the Principles of his more conscientious Brethren must be the Interpreters and immediate Ghostly Fathers in the English conversion according to this state till in its proper place it shall be proved that the Brittains themselves who best could forgive their own injuries and the Disciples of their Institution were by a reconciling Providence Gods Instruments in this conversion and not our Augustine though it must needs have gone somewhat against the grain with their Chiefs to hold the Brittain's lands from them by the Sword and Heaven by their courtesie which the Intelligence and Avarice of Rome soon found out and is the true reason and not the Jingling Legend of the fair English Slaves sold at Rome in the market that some of the Haughty Saxon â—eptarchs when it was a shame to stand out while most of their subjects were converted and no less an Inconvenience to be introduc'd by the Brittains whom they forc'd from their Inheritances were first set on to send their desires to Rome to have it done by the Pope as appears by h Spelman Concil p. 77. Pope Gregory's Epistle to the King and Queen of France which he readily complied with aspiring to be Universal Bishop about this time by the help of i M. Westm A. 609. 605. Wheeloc in Bed lib. 2. c. 8. Tyrant Phocas and therefore sent Augustine in all hast hither both bethinking of the Worldly purchase of Supremacy and dominion that was to be gain'd right or wrong thereby according to the eternal principles and bent of that degenerate Church carnal ends requiring carnal means as suitable to promote them which is the second point to be cleared in this state 2. By what means our Augustine propagated his equivocal Gospel so far as it was propagated amongst the English It was not by the light of Gods word and the power and demonstration of the spirit approving it self to every ones Conscience which out of its eternal Allegiance to God admits of no Truth without it produce a Divine Ticket along with it which carnal Evangelists and selfish Apostles find too difficult exactly to coin and counfeit Neither was it with the enticeing words of human wisdom and eloquence whereof there was now little cause of fear from our Augustine the one being a Human the other the right Christian method of preaching the Gospel which St. k 1 Cor. 2.4 compared with 2 Cor. 4.2 Paul preferred But his method had several effects to prove it was rather Satanical and Antichristian being carried on with carnal Arts and Craft and Pride and Lying wonders and Blasphemies and Sacriledge and Robbery and Massacre and Murder which cannot be
the most considerable Saxon Kingdoms the Church of Rome had not the least Hand or pretence in their first Conversion though some of its bold seducers will not stick to affirm the English in general had no Christian Faith before Luthers time but what they received Originally from Rome and count them no less than Hereticks for adhering to the Religion of their Fathers which they undoubtedly received through Brittish Teachers from the Apostles which to deny were either great Impudence in such as know this to be true or great Ignorance in such as know it not But it is not however much to be wondered at in them for as Christ's mind and the truth with Christians so the mind of the Pope and the Interest of the Church of Rome with Roman-Catholicks is the rule and measure of their Conscience and affection and their Affirmations and the Eternal standard of good and evil verity an falsity with them incurably while Roman-Catholicks And why the men of that perswasion may not depose any thing in Tribunals against their light and private knowledge of the Truth for the Interest of their Church or at the Catholick suggestion of their guides why not sweare or conspire to any thing in point of Fact as well as believe any thing in point of Faith out of Implicit obedience to Superiours against the dictates of their conscience and the Truth which with them is but a private Spirit not to be followed against the other without danger I cannot see any reason to the contrary but the Roman-Catholick Hypothesis may well beare the consequence and Improvement provided all be carried on with a Lacedemonian skill and wariness with whom stealing was no Crime but to those alone that were caught in the Fact Hitherto we have recounted those Counties in England about 26 or 27 in number with the great City of London touching which the Church of Rome hath nothing to object or upraid the Inhabitants in their Progenitors in the least with any derivation of their first Faith from them and consequently not the least Imputation of Ingratitude or Disobedience or Schism to fasten on them in that respect any more than on the Ancient Brittains themselves Next I will instance in those Provinces wherein they have some pretence and colour out of Bede to insist on somthing to say for themselves and their title of Superiority whether it hold good or not both in the Kingdom of the West-Saxons which was a considerable Territory and in the three other of East-Angles South-Saxons and Kent more inconsiderable in comparison that it may appear to all how that somthing is meer nothing as some of their kind and learned favourers have observ'd and in part confessed For their title over the West-Saxon-Kingdom and the Counties that did belong f Usher 394. thereunto Surrey Southampton Berks Wilts Dorset Somerset Devon Cornwall they alledge that the first Christian King thereof Kinigilsus was converted to the Faith by Roman Ministry by Birinus by name sent thither from Pope Honorius and ordain'd Bishop at Genua It is answer'd this Conversion came to nothing and were it true and Regular and with the leave and liking of the Bishops of this Province yet it ended with that King and with Birinus who left no successor g Bede lib. 3. c. 7. 27. The succeeding King Kenwalch refusing his Fathers Faith was Converted afterwards by the means of Anna King of the East-Angles whither he was driven out of his Kingdom by Penda who saith Polydor g Bede lib. 3. c. 7. 27. satis constat it s sufficiently manifest were of the same Province and Kingdom with the East-Saxons though sometimes govern'd by two several Kings and London was the Royal City and Metropolis of both Nations Kenwalch's Conversion therefore falling out in a Brittish Oswaldian See cannot be well ascribed to Rome Besides Agilbert the first Bishop he used for his Instruction is stil'd by Bede g Bede lib. 3. c. 7. 27. Pontifex ex Hibernia a Bishop out of Ireland though of French descent for there he studied several years and learn't that Divinity which he preach'd to Kenwalch which was Brittish Doctrine by consequence Where it is observable by the way how the greatest Clergy of France for Agilbert afterwards was Archbishop of Paris came over hither to our Britttish Isles to Study Divinity And Wini h polyd Virg. lib. 4 p. 71. who was afterwards made a Partner with him in his Diocess was not from Rome but from h polyd Virg. lib. 4 p. 71. France with whom the Brittish Church held fair Communion as with Ireland i Brittish Bishops and Doctors Famous in France were Apud Usher Mellon first Archbishop of Roan p. 145. Mansuetus first Bishop of Toul in Lorraign p 747. St Winocus p. 1147. St. Winwalocus p 464. St. Leonorius cum 72 discipulis p. 1012. Faustus Reiensis p. 424. Paulus Leonensis p. 558. Sampson Maglorius and Maclovius Archbishops of Dole p. 73 75. Alcumus Rabamus Maurus c. sending to as well as receiving Teachers from them Besides the passage about Birinus is suspicious and Legend-like in several Circumstances and making much against them For it doth not mention what Countrey he was of which never could be known as k W. Malmesbury lib. 2. de Episc Occiden Saxon p. 137. Malmesbury notes besides King l Bede lib. 3. c. 7. Oswald being Recorded to have been at the same time a Suiter for Kinigils Daughter and Godfather to his Faither-in Law at his Baptism It looks not as Improbable that his Conversion was brought about as of most of the Saxon Kings by the zeal and Industry of King Oswald who else was too pious to have that value for Heathen Allyanee And therefore our Birinus might well be an Erinach or a Loegrian-Brittain How else if a Forreigner could he preach and instruct the King who understood nought but English unless King Oswald was a Gospel-Interpreter between them as well in the South as he used in the North and so in effect a Royal Preacher of it to the English from one end of the Land to the other and the tale of Birinus his Italian Ordination looks like the other lusty Affirmation of Bede that makes way for his feates in that Church who in contradiction to himself as well as the truth represents the West Saxons at his arrival amongst them to be l Bede lib. 3. c. 7. Paganissimos altogether Heathenish whereas most of those Counties and some to this day were Ancient Brittish Christians who had Bishops preserv'd amongst them from the time of King Lucius and the Christian Faith from the Resurrestion and the Landing of Joseph of Arimathaea in their Territory besides that the first power of the Saxons over those Counties was through Treaty and Allyance for mutual assistance between Kerdick and Mordred as afore and not by force and Conquest and their confirmation in it by King Arthur with particular
force yet Theonus in that case could but resign his Term but not the rights of his Church forever and Augustine became thereby but a more lawful Brittish Bishop of an Intruding Roman Monk For such a settlement by the Principles of the Church of Rome and all common sence did not change the See to be Roman but constitute Augustine and his successors to be rather Brittish Bishops It 's a whole Kingdom that naturalizes one Forreigner and not one Forreigner a whole Kingdom for so at Rome let him that is Elected to that Chair be French or German or Greek or Barbarian or which were enough to stupifie and unsanctifie any head of a Church let him be a Witch or a Sodomite or an Atheist the vertue of the Roman Chair nevertheless shall naturalize and Purifie and Petrifie this strange man into a right Roman-Catholick Pope and successor of St. Peter Holy and Infallible notwithstanding those forreign disabilities Therefore by their own rule Augustine and his successors were frail Brittish Bishops at best and and hell'd all their Priviledges and Precedencies in that See in the right of their Brittish Chair and not their Roman Mission And what attempts soever they made de facto to erect and prefer that See in Roman Right before all the Ancient and standing See's of Brittain they were all Null and Void and of such Schismatical Malignity and impossibility as were the like Act of any French or Spanish Pope that should go about to raise the Chair of Paris or Toledo from whence he came above the See of Rome and Order appeals from this to those than which in their Principles nothing could be more Heretical and sinful saving perhaps the sin against the Holy Ghost If it be offer'd that the Superiority here acquir'd by Augustine was acquir'd for Rome from whence he came by the same reason the Supremacy at Rome was acquir'd for Jerusalem from whence St. Peter came and that Church to be reviv'd and Rome and all other Churches alike descending to be made subject to it and by consequence to be a Sister not a Mother to our Brittain and a younger Sister too under their common Mother of Sion But this point hath been solemnly determined by Popes themselves in the Controversy between Dole and Tours Which last from the beginning was the acknowledged Metropolis of Little-Brittain till Sampson Archbishop of York or St. David a Itinerar Cambr l. 2. c. 1. saith Cambrensis was driven thither for his refuge by the Saxons about the b Mat. Westminster 561. year 561. who being chosen Bishop of Dole rais'd that See not only to be an Archbishoprick but Superiour likewise to Tours the Original Primate whether by the Priviledge of the Ancient and Imperial See from whence he came and of the Pall he thence brought with him or as Pope Innocent judge afterwards in the Case suggests which makes this President more to fit because the Brittains having about that time erected a new King to themselves against France they took the occasion of Sampson's arrival to erect a new Archbishoprick likewise But this Vetustissima Controversia as d Hoveden Hist part 2. p. 453. Hoveden stiles it came at last to be decided before Pope Innocent the third who out his moderation first propos'd an expedient wherein we may be sure Rome was to be no looser That Dole should continue an Archbishoprick with two suffragans only and receive a Pall from Rome by the hands of Tours whose right it was to be Primate but the Dolensians refusing this offer the Pope in the second year of his Papacy Anno 1199. determin'd for the Ancient Right of the Native against 600 years prescription and above back'd with Princely Authority for the Forreigner So that if our Holy Bishops of Rome would suffer themselves to be guided either by that Golden Rule of doing as they would be done by whereby all reasonable and good men are governed or stand to their own Principles and Decisions whereby the worst and most unreasonable are concluded they would no longer own this so weak and infirm pretence for Supremacy over our Brittish Churches but suffer the Consciences of their obedient Catholicks to be undeluded from this Imposture forever But they ought to be told that the Church of Brittain hath propagated the Faith over more Kingdoms and States of Europe by her own or by Disciples of her own School and Institution than c Usher p. 530. ever Rome did yet never pretended as before was Intimated to any claim of Ecclesiastical Supremacy over other Churches much less Temporal over any Crowns in order to the other upon that account but only maintained her own Soveraignty within her own Province under her own Rightful Governours for the peace and order of her own people that she is Mother Church to Scotland and Ireland is apparent and confessed and no less to England or to the English or Saxons prevailing in Lhoegr was sufficiently proved And it is as manifest she is Mother Church to Germany both High and Low and Grand-Mother to the Churches of its Propagation by consequence What Bede affirms of e Bede l. 3. c. 4. St. Egbert and St. Willibrord f Idem l. 5. c. 10 11 12. both from our Brittish g Usher p. 398. p. 730. Bede l. 5. c. 10 Irish Schools to have first planted the Gospel over Holland and Frizeland and Low Countries acknowledged by the Historians of those parts out of their own h Ubbo Emmius lib. 4. 124. l. 3. p. 99. Usher 398. Annalls and Records For England was the Academy and Nursery of the Gospel to Holland as Vtrecht afterwards by that means to the rest of Germany For hither at there need they sent for a supply of Teachers i Idem p. 127. Quae tum saith Vbbo Emmius of England propter excitata illic Literarum studia viris doctis abundabat ob nuper rcceptum Christi cultum ceu fieri solet caeteris ferè provinciis vicinis in Pietatis zelo erat ferventior quod plurimum hanc ad rem pertinebat eadem fere cum Frisiis adhuc linguâ utebatur Which then abounded with learned men because of the several Schools of Learning there set up and encouraged and were more zealous and Industrious in propagating Piety as is usual than the other neighbouring Provinces because they had then but newly received the Christian Faith themselves and which was very Material to help on their work spoke the same Language with the Frizelanders at that time which we observ'd before to be a great bar and exception throughout against the Legend of the Conversion of the English by Monk Augustine and his Italian followers And in another l Ubbo Emmius l. 3. c. 109. place Religio nova studium literarum c. The English people who before were Barbarous and skilful only in Armes when upon their embracing the Faith they addicted themselves to the study of Learning
its destructive contrary which they rightly understood The toleration and mixture whereof within it would be confusion without a Metaphor The Christian Church whose life and being consists in Holiness can never be more destroyed and stifled than when Scandalous and Licentious lives are consistent with its Profession Nor the Roman whose summum bonum is dominion over their Brethren and Kingdoms and Churches but where Kings and Consciences and Scriptures would have their wills against the Pope And happy were it if Christians were as zealous and skilful Druids to excommunicate all vice and sin as the Papists who are firm to their Idol to excommunicate all Heretical Truths and private judgments and secular Supremacies inconsistent with their pride Whereby the Brittains by this Divine principle in the general were better fitted and prepar'd for Christianity than many others and accordingly received it before all other Nations in these parts as soon as Christ had dislodg'd their Idols they were perfect and regular Christians the former Rules and practices of their Druids serv'd presently as Church Canons to them to walk by which probably is the reason they held our intruding Romanists so close to the other express Canons of the Christian Church as to adjudge and conclude them justly to be no better than Pagans in Christian shape for their manifest violations of them as shall hereafter appear This last as well as the other instances clearly argue a great and near correspondence they had and Traditional participation of Oriental Patriarchal Mysteries and customes and the Hierogliphical meaning of the first dayes work of the Creation wherein light was separated from darkness whence Christian Communion and Excommunication had its exemplar and Idea as the Apostle intimates 2 Cor. 6 14. in which two words and parts the work and whole History of the Primitive Christian Church was compriz'd as is well known to the learned but not to digress Much less could our English Apostles receive their learning from Theodore's successors being entred a good while before upon their work and Province and the course that Rome hereafter takes that the English should be no more instructed or corrupted in their sence by their Neighbouring Brittains but by Rome alone least their Roman Replantation should be again worn out and baffled as it far'd with their first clearly proves that they conceived the Brittains to have been that way too busie I shall set down a Record out of Math. Westm. worthy the consideration of all Generous sober English men as well Roman Catholicks as Protestants that have a love for God or their Countrey whether they consider the design or the event that followed z M Westm Anno 727. Erant Doctrina Scholae Anglorum per Romanos Pontifices interdictae c. There was an interdict upon the learning and Schooles of the English by the Popes of Rome from the time of Augustine by reason of the daily Heresies which sprung up in Brittain from the first arrival of the English whilst Pagans mingled with Christians which defaced the beauty of the holy Conversation of Christianity a Ibid. Vnde Ina consensu voluntate Gregorii Papae c. which discovers near about what time this conscientious Interdict began whereupon Ina by the will and consent of Pope Gregory built an Edifice in the City of Rome which they call the School of the English to which the Kings of England and the Royal Bloud and Bishops and Priests and Clerks should repair to be Instructed in the Catholick Faith and Doctrine lest any thing should be taught awry in the Church of England or contrary to the Catholick Faith that thereby being well settled in the stable Faith they might return afterwards to their people And it was also ordained that Rome-scot or Peter Pence should thence forward be annually paid to St. Peter and the Roman Church that the English there abiding might have wherewithall to subsist A neat device to make England Tributary and that for a gross abuse and blindness brought upon the whole Nation to the end they might the easier be Governed by the Ignorance of Rome according to that Brittish Proverb Brenhin iw un-lhygeidiawg ymyfg deilliaid One eye is a King amongst the stark blind for so it proved in the event not long after as we shall have anon an account of this Paternal Roman care from King Alfred about 100 years after for Ina built this School in 727 Alfred flourished in 860 Willibrord c. Preached to the Germans in 690 in whose time there was scarce an English Clergy-man left in all the land that could understand his Latine Breviary b Spelman Concil 167. That if Pipin or Charlemain had sent hither for Wilfrids and Winfrids and Alguins to teach their Countrey such as were of Romes pure bringing up they might have been as well furnished with Apostles from among the Heathen Boors of Boetia as then from England which was not long after this Roman Reformation of our English education In so much that K. Alfred was fain to send to the Brittains for their helping hand which they and the Irish who were more Neutral were always ready to do †Bede l. 3. ◠27. for nothing though they paid dear to Rome for their Ignorance under the colour and fascination of being Orthodoxly taught which Tribute and Cittadel of shameful Ignorance and slavery the English Nation was by Catholick Arts cajoled to pay and maintain at their own proper charge for about 700 years till Henry the Eight a Brittish Prince discharged and blew it up and whipt the cheats into their own Country for which Providential Relief and Honour to our Church and Nation some drowsie stupid and Enchanted Roman-Catholicks are hardly thankful or contented to this day So it manifestly appears á priori and à posteriori that neither before or after Augustine or Theodore either the English had their learning from Rome but only from our Brittish Church But it is again objected that it is clear and evident from History that the English as also the Irish at this time of the German Propagation and before had come over from the Church of Brittain to the Church of Rome who therefore hath chief right and Title to this Plantation which was effected under its Supremacy and Government I answer It is then as clear that they were of the Church of Brittain before they went over to Rome and we in these days shall confess unto them where our Church was the worst 800 years before Luther if they will confess unto us where there Roman Church was in Brittain or Ireland the best 600 years before Augustine the Monk or Theodore For Titius taken by the Turk at 20 and kept a slave for 30 years among them and recovering his liberty in 50 is the same free man now as at first being always the same man not bound to return to slavery because it hath more years to shew then his freedom of birth hath for it
Malmsb. de Gest Angl. c. 3. beholding to Oswi for Theodore and his Roman successors entrance into it yet more to Eanfled his Queen who perverted him and brought up Wilfrid to be the principal Instrument of this Combustion early pointed out by the finger of Providence amongst the other bad Signes and Omens attending this fatal change that lay long and heavy upon our Church his Fathers house being all on flame to mens thinking and the Neighbours crying fire fire when all the fire that was was his d Idem de Episc Occident l. 3. Mother at that point of time being in labour and delivered of this Firebrand of Brittain 3. By their known useful Engine of Ignorance they have greatly establish'd their Temporal Interest in our Brittish Churches though to the great impair and ruine of mens Spiritual and the contradiction of their own first pretences by after policies For their zealous Propagation of their Catholick Faith ends in an ignorance at last worse than Heathenish or the meer state of Nature which yet shall be stil'd a Catholick state of Grace and Salvation because accommodate to their temporal rule and domination I will assign but two Instances of this their Black-Art that the difference may the better appear between the Brittish propagation of the Christian Faith and that of the Roman and then proceed to shew the Influence of their dark light to help on their Impostures and encroachments Rome was so zealous to enlighten the Saxon Infidelity that the Brittains were adjudged to Massacre and ruine for a pretended denyal of their assistance Sure then in time the Saxons became a knowing people in the Roman School it appears by King Alvred or Alfred's Testimony how Learned the English Clergy in his time were about the year 840. whereby conjecture may be made of the Adeptions of their Roman-Catholick Laity Paucissimi e Spelm. Concil p. 167. citra Humbrum fluvium c. There are very few saith he on this side the River Humber who understand their Breviary in English or can render a Latine Epistle into their vulgar Tongue There are yet fewer beyond Humber not one could I find on the South side of Thames We found out the reason of this strange Ignorance out of f M. Westm Anno 727. M. Westminster before and the benefit redounding to our Nation from the English Colledge at Rome and the Tribute of Peter Pence But it was a Goshen in the Archbishoprick of St. Davids as yet unreduc'd by Rome perhaps whither King Alfred as our most Generous Victorious Kings in England ever car'd least for Rome sent for help and Assistance an Instance of the Amicable correspondence between the West Saxons and the Brittains both to settle his University in Oxon and to translate Boethius De consolatione and other Latine Books for his use saith Malmesbury and to inform him in the right Faith we may be sure The Brittains being skill'd not only in the Latine but in the Greek and Hebrew through their Eastern Communion which caus'd neighbouring Clergy to resort to their Scripture Exposition for so the Isle Hy which was the Seminary of Religion in the North came to be named Jona from St. Columban's g Usher p. 84. p. 696. name in the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 both signifying a Dove so Teilaw or Teilaus St. Davids Successor was also call'd Elius or Eliud and Sampson because of his illuminating wisdom and Doctrine g Usher p. 84. p. 696. Haul in the Brittish and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signiying the same that is the Sun The other is a Modern Instance sufficiently obvious for the like example of an Irish Attendant to a Person of Honour in Wales whom visiting in his troubles for his Loyalty in the late times I desired this Irish Servant appointed to accomodate me for to compare the Irish and Brittish to say the Lords Prayer in Irish but he replyed he could not as neither the Ten Commandments nor the Creed where were you bred and born But I can say them all in Latine And repeated and pronounc'd every word as exactly as the best Critick or Professor but did not understand the meaning of scarce a word in its reference and signification This case which I fear is and hath been too general amongst the Irish Laity since they left their first Brittish Church to stick to Rome suggested to me these considerations That his Ghostly Father or Catechist whose pronunciation he so exactly imitated like a Parrot had more of exact Learning than of Fatherly natural affection or fidelity to this soul under his charge that the Irish laity are deluded out of all Religion and conscience by their Priests which is the highest Cheate and Robbery that can be imagin'd or conceived by such Latine forms and charms and their confidence in their Confessor and the Confessors Implicit obedience to his Superiour and so on to the Pope whereby the Popes will and holy lust and pleasure becomes the Soveraign Law of their hearts and consciences instead of the Law of Christ and the fear of God And no check of conscience or private judgement within must controle or withstand the Counsel or the Command of their spiritual guides whatever it be though it may be a suddain Massacre of Hereticks they prescribe No Minister that belongs to God or owns and fears a Deity would receive or put up such absolute obedience and confidence without renting his cloathes for fear of being guilty of receiving divine honour from the Ignorance of his charge and denying God his Glory No right Disciple of St. Patrick trained up in the holy Scriptures would put such a cursed trust and confidence in any Son of man whatsoever who is a Creature and not God It is as great an Idolatry provoking Gods displeasure against a Nation to change their God for a Priest or a Pope as heretofore in others for the Sun or Moon He that measures good or evil Murder or service done to God by the Doctrines of men and guides more than by the dictates of conscience with Gods Law where God is more surely present doth renounce and change his God for man and is to be renounced for it by all Christians were he our Father or our Brother for we must leave Father and Mother and our dearest friends and our greatest guides to cleave to God Yea it is our safety as well as duty to shun and renounce such Idolaters for who is sure of his life in such company and Principles who take the conclave and its ungodly designs for the rule of conscience Thus are the poor Irish blindly misled by the perfidiousness of their inconsiderate Priests to serve the lusts of men to their misery instead of Christ and his Truth to their Salvation and the Pope is made Christ of Ireland And the poor sincere People are to be pittied and bewail'd who though they be led to Idolatry and Murders by overmuch
worldly design and private ends shall be most Uncatholick and so the Catholicism of their Church is more like to fall and vanish likewise But if they call themselves Catholicks for distinction from Protestants who pass with them but for Hereticks they are again very grossly mistaken in their Criticism For Orthodox b 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Phot. tit 12. c. ◠is contrary to Heretick and Catholick to Jew which was the first and Original sense of this word upon the Gentiles being taken into the Church as well as Jews And Protestants are no more Jews than themselves as is not doubted Nor perhaps so much for they are liker to the Jews in confining Gods Church within the Roman Pale as the other did within their Palestine But we Protestants Catholickly extend and enlarge it to all Nations according to the promises made to Abraham the Catholic◠Fathe◠of many Nations as the name God gave him imports as well as the particular Father of the Jews Therefore the Title Catholick more belongs in Truth and reason to Protestants than to our Romanists who are so restrain'd and Vncatholick and Jewish-like in the bounds of their Church which they so confine to Rome And by their waving the Title Orthodoxe which had been more proper for their distinguishing design they fatally allow Protestants for such and disallow themselves They therefore are in Truth neither Orthodox nor Catholick but only New Roman or a private Earthly Church below or a modern Italian Jerusalem that is in exile and bondage with her Children Not favouring either of the Apostolical purity of the right Christian or the Orthodoxy of the Ancient Roman or the Heavenliness and Spirituality of Jerusalem which is above the Mother of all true Christians who are in Heaven by Faith They are therefore in Truth but New roman-Roman-Catholicks as who should say an Old-New a Particular-universal a Spiritual-carnal a Heavenly-earthly Church made up of Contradiction and Hypocrisy and Earth Whose chief end and Interest is the Advancement and glory of Rome not of Christ high like Kites in their soring pretences to eye Dunghills for prey the better making silly Souls to believe the only way to be saved is to become their Spiritual Slaves and Tributaries and to go to Rome and Heaven to be all one Which with an answerable personal Holiness of life without which none can see God might well be true of the old Apostolical Rome and any other Church agreeing with it in the like sound Rule and Doctrine but it is far from true as to the Modern Apostatical for it is a great and a gross mistake to take or imagine the Church of Rome Ancient and present to be one and the same because of the same Sirname and patch'd Succession for it is not name-sake or Succession which yet goes far with superficial judgments unlike to God that by their principles neglect and lay by the heart but the same soundness of Life and Doctrine or hearts in the same Heaven not feet in the same house or Countrey that make Churches to be the same and true the want whereof or any notorious corruption in Faith or Manners by the rules of Christianity cuts off and debars the Communion of Christians Members much more the Succession of Christian Governours For how can any succeed to be Heads where by the Apostolical Law they are out of capacity to be members of a Christian Church 1 Cor. 5.11 The old Roman Church for the first 400 years before Rome was burnt and several times sack'd and brought to the dust as before did disapprove the wayes and Doctrines of the Modern and consequently its Communion as much as we Protestants for she did not Worship Saints or Images nor slight and suppress the Scriptures under colour of respect nor curtayle Sacraments and Divine Institutions Nor usurp'd upon Christ nor Crowns nor Churches nor Consciences nor upon the liberties of our Brittish Church in particular as they cannot Instance in one Pall or appeal in any Age or History Pope Gregorie's account upon diligent search above 1000 years agoe to omit other Arguments is abundant proof and certainty there was none nor endur'd to carry God about in a Cage and to create as many Christs and Saviours as there be Wafers in Churches and Cities and Altars and every one of equal Deity and Worship to our Saviour in Heaven God blessed for ever which amongst them cannot otherwise fall out as we have shewed but that a Wafer should be Christ and Christ but a Wafer by their Hypothesis which excludes the heart whereby Christ by consequence is excluded and a gross Capernaitical sense of such Spiritual Mysteries as necessarily introduc'd nor made the Authority of man more than that of Scripture the Rule of Faith and Heresie nor burnt fellow Christians for their Errours much less for the same Truths which themselves maintain'd as Protestants are or are in danger dayly to be serv'd by the present nominal Church of Rome with other innumerable Superstitions and Unchristian cruelties and loathsome Fraud and Legends and Infernal Dispensations for sins and duties But was Orthodox in her Faith and Regular and sober and Christian like in all her Church-Rites and Practices and well approved of and acccorded with by this and all Christian Churches by all brotherly love and Communion as the distance of places did permit yea with some preference of honour before many other lesser and obscurer Churches for its Imperial situation and numerous Martyrs yet without any danger of being caught in any Noose by such respect or honourable Appellations which no doubt were return'd to every Church though lesser with the like or greater humility and respect than they were given In which Christ-like victories and contests between Brethren and Churches the Christian ambition did heretofore consist but the present Church of Rome abuses and converts the Christian honour of her equals into aliment and fuel for her Pride not exalting others for their humility as God doth but concluding against them from it through the barbarous forgetfulness of her own mutual Divine and Christian part and no Eulogy shall occur in History but must bespeak Supremacy to her alone and Slavery and Subjection to the rest of Christendom like the Wolf going to School who could discern nothing but Agnus in every word and Syllable and letter pronounced unto him No this Church of Rome is no more the old than a Cock is a French-man because both are Gallus in Latine than there City or their People or their Language is the same being all of a new and a different Situation and dialect and descent The Race of Old Romans are sooner to be met and found in Venice and else-where than in Gothick Rome where more inclination not only after Roman civility but also after Ancient Roman or Protestant Orthodoxy doth appear as some of their wisest Clerks and later Historians have given a tast And the parties in this Bill and Plea for this Roman Supremacy
being not the same what need more answer to it but a motion to be dismissed because the Plaintiff against us is not the same with the old Roman Church and if he were neither hath It nor ever had nor pretended any right of Supremacy over us in Brittain This I say was never the claim of old Christian Rome but the sally and invention of the Antichristian which are as much the same Church as a Wolf and a Lamb are the same Creature It cannot be denyed but that they have still amongst them the ruins and rubbish of old Christianity as well as the other of old Rome and both under like defacement And severall good Creeds and Canons of Councils and Scriptures it self if men were suffered to come at it conveyed unto them from the former Inhabitants or from St. Paul or from Brittain which with the sincerity of the heart may serve we trust to the Salvation of many thousands under that captivity as the wardrob of Comedians might serve honest men for good warmth and covering however by them imployed but to counterfeit persons and passions for a Livelyhood by the Hypocrisie to use that word in his Original and first notation For though Christ and Trinity and other Orthodox Articles of our Faith have place and mention amongst them yet it is not for their sakes so much as in order to their own Carnal designs to give them better countenance amongst deluded Christians what more then is their credit or respect thereby than of parcels of our Scripture standing in the Alcharon and as the Creatures groaning under the bondage of corruption Rom. 8.22 and longing to be deliver'd into Christian and Protestant Libertie and true sacredness from serving or countenancing the lusts and Impostures of Tyrants and false Prophets where Christ it is true is named with no less respect than at Rome but Mahomet among them as the Pope amongst these preferred before him in which preference the essence of Popery and its difference from Protestantism doth consist as before was proved Not to descant more on the servitude of the rest of their Christian Doctrines the Worship and Mass-Book of Modern Rome is not the same as was in use before with the Old but strangely altered and depraved with innumerable Superstitious additions and vain Repetitions Prohibited by our Saviour Matth. 6. Begun particularly and most remarkablely of any another by Pope Gregory who sent Augustine and Vitalian who sent Theodore hither but consummated at last by several Popes into a perfect Oglio and mixture of Judaism and Christianity such as the Alcharon it self was fram'd to be by the heads of Sergius and Mahomet And which is also as remarkable our Gregory pretended extraordinary assistance of Gods Spirit in the recourses of a Pigeon at his ear a Math. West An. 605 Spondan An. 604. n. 5. no less than Mahomet by which allegation in his behalf his Books escaped being burnt and served as he had served the old Statues and Monuments of Rome And for the alterations of their Mass by these two Popes particularly we have the Testimony of their own Platina in the lives of the one and the other b Platina in Gregorio prime Antiphonarium diurnum quam nocturnum composuit Introitum litanias stationum quoque magnum partem c. ejus quoque inventum ut novies Kyrie Eleeson caneretur Haleluja He composed their Antiphonary for day and light the Introitus their Lettany and a great part of their Stations the Repetition of Kyrie Eleeson and Halelujah nine times over was his patticular invention and whereas their Liturgy now requir'd to be us'd in their Vulgar tongue as it had been before the Latine tongue being disused at Rome from about the year 580. he so delighted to continue their service in the Latine now unknown to the vulgar and far therefore from the heart and understanding which is the true genius of Popery that he hides and cramps it further from them with unintilligible charms and Repetitions in Greek and Hebrew And in a Solemn Synod of 25 Bishops Establishes his Superstitious Innovations in sustulit quae nocitura multa etiam addidit quae profutura fidei nostrae videbantur He laid aside much of the Ancient formes as contrary and destructive and added many new in their place as more agreeable to their Modern Faith For how could their Ancient Sober and Orthodox Liturgy well agree with his Heathenish conceptions touching purifying Idol-temples with holy water as we heard before out a Bede l. 1. c. 30. of Bede And his Intercessions for Trajan's Soul in b M. Westm An 592. Hell which perhaps brought Purgatory in time in request and fashion in that new Church and with his new stress laid upon the great vertue of Wollen Palls whereon all their Ordinations and Consecrations and Archiepiscopal and Patriarchal Authorities and consequently their whole New-Roman Church depends Non bene conveniunt c. Sober and grave Religion and Worship and such unjustifiable Doctrines and pueril Infatuations how could they well agree Neither was Vitalianus the other great Restorer of the Romish Religion in England wanting in the like humour to alter and change the simplicity of their Roman Service which before kept close to the Scriptures chiefly for themselves acknowledge this their new mode of Liturgy had not been before in use c Platin in Caelestimo 1 mo ante fieri non consuevit perlectâ enim Epistolâ Evangelio finis Sacrificio imponebatur So that nothing by consequence can be imagined to be more the Liturgy of Ancient Rome than our own common Prayer as it is reformed out of the Mass by retaining the Old-Roman flower and casting away the New-Roman-Catholick bran and trash So that the Popish Religion ought not in any right or reason to be call'd Roman but a new Gothic Church as we find about this time their Ancestors and Founders the Gothes to agree and Symbolize with them Gothi d Platin. in Gregr. 1 mo Gregoâ—â— opera rediâ—re ad unionem Catholicae Ecclesiae or indeed the Gregorian Religion as they also term their Calender as well in respect of the great alteration made thereof at Rome by Pope Gregory both in Doctrine and Worship from the Ancient and Orthodox Roman Church as also of its propagation throughout Churches by his means and missions to the great e Antiquiâ— Eccles p. 42. corruption of Christendom and particularly amongst us in Brittain to the great wrong of the English who before had been rightly grounded and principled in the right and truly Catholick Faith by Brittish Ministry And here we have the Incunabula the first spring and beginning of Popery whose first entrance through Monk Augustine by Commission from this Pope Gregory was under no good Planet or Circumstances being near about the time that Pope Boniface was declar'd the Universal Bishop oâ— Antichrist in the sense of Pope Gregory in the Case of another as before and
denying our implicit obedience and submission to him But if Christ be God than we are safe and have the truth of our side and their errours are the more dangerous And both these Masters especially of contrary wills as it evidently appears cannot be obeyed together for there cannot be two Kings in the same Kingdom nor two Suns in the same Firmament nor two immortal Souls in the same man But it will be alledged as a Salve 1. That Gods commands in Scripture or Conscience bind not Christians but through the Pope who is to interpret them for us least we mistake and where they seem to cross his will to explain them otherwise to us or to dispense with our obedience in that Case which is an usual practice at Rome though it makes but one Master out of two and the Pope to be chief alone and Christ to stand but for a Cypher or as a Minor whose will is involv'd in his Guardian Viccar hereby the Sun is measured by the Dyal and not the Dial by the Sun It makes Conscience and Scriptures the greatest gifts of Heaven useless to Christians unless the Pope stand by in every place of the World to be consulted with by every Soul which is Christs mind in all cases and scruples And sets up man instead of Christ and confesses the Idolatry and gives up the Cause This contrivance of assuming power to interpret the mind and word of God against the plain sense thereof being the first known invention of Satan in Paradice who was the Father of Antichrist for which our Romanists ought to suspect themselves in the Imitation least they discover themselves too much 2. The second Salve will be that out of obedience to Christ who is in Heaven afar off they yield this obedience to the Pope as his Viccar on Earth as a more near and visible officer under him over them supposing not granting this feigned trust and Deputation It 's against the nature of any trust for him that is trusted to act contrary to the Interest of him that trusted him and to be followed against his Principal St. Paul would be followed by others as far as he followed Christ and no further 1 Cor. 11.1 The Radical cause of Popery lyes in the exclusion of the heart and Judgment and taking the outside to be the man and the measure of all concerns and values which by consequence must be Earthly and Carnal and answering only to the outward man But where the heart which is the man is the chief measure and faith in the heart the only evidence to judge by Christ in Heaven in his Majesty is more near and visible to such a Soul than his Holiness on Earth can be to any Roman Catholick doing Reverence to his Toe for the private end or principle that suggests this respect is nearer to his Soul than his person is to whom it is performed For our Conceptions within are nearer to us than the objects without and our actions proceed immediatly from our conceptions Princes respects and dread would be scant and inexpedient if their persons were no greater in our reasons and conceptions than they are to the eye and sense And were it true and certain that if such a Vicar were set by Christ over his whole Church which can never be proved yet out of obedience to the Soveraign we ought not to obey but shake off such an Officer that should lead us to Rebellion against him that is over him and us The Souldiers under command ought not to obey that General that went about to depose his Prince But if it could be supposed that a Prince did or could intrust any Officer with such absolute power as to interpret all commands and orders directed to him in his own sense against their plain and common meaning and to over-rule all his subjects against all the parts of their Allegiance at his pleasure to act against the known will of his Soveraign and neither to be accountable for such Treasons then the case were much altered for such a King had resigned his Crown in effect to such an Officer who were now to be absolutely obeyed without reservation of Allegiance to another And in such manner the Pope becomes Soveraign to such instead of Christ who believe he is to be obeyed against the Laws of God and men And St. Paul was mistaken in his Doctrine that Christ alone was that Lord and Soveraign and no other man but not mistaken however in his early praediction and warning that the time should come when there should be a falling away and a man of sin revealed who should exalt himself above all that is called God and as God sit in the Temple of God whereof every Christian Soul wherein Christ dwells by his Holy Spirit is so much the more for that the body of a Christian is Gods Temple 1 Cor. 6.19 and more yet the Christian Church which comprizes both And he manifestly St. Pauls Antichrist who sits and Lords it in such a Temple To trample under feet the Glories of this present World to despise the frowns and favours of Princes to adhere to God and Truth all must allow and confess to be highly pious and praise worthy and superlatively Heroick but to hazard all upon a Religion that is a manifest Irreligion and to make Conscience to act against Conscience and Truth to jar with Truth and God to be contrary to himself This were to fall into the like detestable abominations with them of old in St. Paul Who did evil that good might come of it whose damnation is just saith he Rom. 3.8 A fearful sentence from so mild a mouth or of some late zealots in our days who subverted our Laws and Government to exalt Christs Kingdom This were not courage or magnanimity but inconsiderate ignominious rashness condemnable in Shops and Markets This were not Catholick zeal or good Conscience but liker the strong Delusion of Antichrist 2 Thes 2.11 An Omen and fore-runner of further wrath and destruction to be inflicted by the jealousie and indignation of Heaven upon such as forget their Allegiance to their Redeemer preferring a deceiver before him who ought not to have been compared to the Son of God at all or the first mention of his blasphemous pretences to the Perogatives of Christ and his Soveraignty in mens hearts ought to have been attended rather with renting of cloaths and a suddain horrour and indignation and-a-God-forbid but that the needs of deluded souls which himself Redeemed with his precious bloud required the matter to be laid open and enlarged for their rescue and undeceiving but that daily experience teacheth as well as Antient memories that any lust or Avarice or Ambition or revenge or self end or the Sun and Moon or stocks and stones without keeping due watch and ward upon our hearts may and have often invaded and domineer'd in Christ Throne in the soul when deserted by God as much as this Romish perkin Warbeck whose
Conversion of the Isle of Man to the Brittish Culdees Usher 642. Man together in a miraculous manner which was his Christian retaliation to his enemies Whose reward is great with God and the greater by this that he hath the less of praise from men his very Adorers since his plantation was long obscur'd by a Romish Fog that still lasts upon it never ceasing to defame and traduce his Divine work with Superstitious descriptions and unworthy Legends though intended perhaps for Honour In 451. †Usher p. 978. Gildas Albanius born at Arcluit in Beda's time called Alcluid that is a Town upon the River Cluid now Dunbritton Inhabited then by the Brittains preach'd to and converted the North parts of Scotland beyond the Hills whether Ninias before had not reach'd And after him in 565. St. Columba of Irish Birth and Brittish Doctrine and Institution assisted by u Idem 540. Constantine Duke of Cornwall repenting of his Adulteries and Murthers upon the reproofs of Gildas Badonicus and taking orders perfected the Conversion of the Picts Serfus one of the Culdees and consequently of Brittish either Birth or Principle promoting the same work as far as the Orcades About the Year 560. St. Kentigerne y p. 686. Nephew to King Arthur and Founder of St. Asaph returned to his Bishoprick of Glasco and preached first the Gospel to the English though enemies permitted upon (f) Histor Brit. lib. 8. C. 9. M. Westm 489. submission and fealty under Octa and Ebusa Sons of Hengist newly conquer'd by Aurelius Ambrosius to live in that Brittish Territory between the Friths and the Wall where they suffer'd the Brittains before being worsted by them to reside upon like submission About 596 what by divisions among themselves what by great invasions by Gormond from Ireland as well as by the Saxons in their bowels what by a great and Epidemical Plague and Jaundize and the entrance of Monk Austin the greatest Plague of all two of their Candlesticks were removed Thadiock Arch-Bishop of the See of York and Theon of London being forc'd from their Sees and charge with the Clergy and Gentry from their Estates and Homes to retire for their safety into the parts of Wales and Cornwall and Ireland very probably none staying behind but the Peasantry at the Terms and for the conveniencies and interest of the conquerour York faring best of the two Sees for the Cambrian (m) Usher p. 1005. Kingdom or Cumberland called Valentia with Scotland or old Albany which formerly had been parcels of the See of York stood yet entire and safe under the Protection of their own Kings and Princes who were able to defend their Religion and Territories both from Pagan and Romish Encroachments about this time infesting them But in the See of London and the body of Lhoegr as the Brittains still call England the Inhabitants that remain'd behind Tributaries to the Saxon Conquerour were to retain their Faith between the heart and God after their Clergy were expell'd by the procurement of Rome as is to be suspected unless some lurked behind in cognitò as is usual for their comfort and assistance or the Pagan Conquerours as we shall see anon gave them toleration of Religion either by Grace or Articles as did Irmericus in Kent and Penda in Mercia and Kerdic in West Saxony c. whereof Bede takes little notice though he could not and doth not wholly conceale the passages But then as the loss of one sense adds strength to the other and the shutting of one eye enlarges the others Candle Ireland grew rich and famous upon this dispersion and accession of learned men into its Teritories for refuge whereby it became about this time the University as it were of these Western parts of Europe for the Christian Orthodox Religion and term'd Insula Sanctorum the Island of Saints whither recourse was made for Spiritual knowledge from all parts and Kingdoms and Wales and its Sees and Abbies was no less stock'd with choice of Able-men and particularly the famous Monastery of Bangor-is-y coed where we find about this time above two thousand learned Monks living together in a holy Fraternity all Subject to the Metropolitical See of St. David whither the Chair was removed from Caerleon by the Authority of King Arthur and a Synod about the year 521 These in 602 gave Augustine the Monk a meeting about Worcester where the pretended Supremacy of the Church of Rome with its superstitious Innovations were Synodically disclaimed and rejected Augustines design being to seize our Brittish Churches as it were by occupancy and to subject them to Rome under colour of Conversion For that their Sees were made too hot to hold Thadiock and Theon at the arrival of Augustine or not long before is some Argument that the Pagan fury was made to burn the fiercer with Roman-Catholick bellows and that the believing Brittains who needed not their Conversion must veil their Ancient Metropolitan Chair of St. David or Caerleon likewise to an upstart See of Romes erection as Austine expected this manifestly proves and discovers it was their Temporal Dominion and superiority which by them is call'd the Catholick Faith that was the chief aim of Rome by all Inhumane and Unchristian Arts to propagate here in Brittain And if we were constrained to submit in part and for a time to their yoke and superstition when the Crown in our Kings for a time was miss-led by their influence and were freed from the same yoke in H. 8. when the Crown was better rectified by Providence we stand as we were holding fast our Liberty with a better conscience than they could usurp it from us being now under no Tye or obligation to Rome either for our Faith or errours not for our first Faith which we never had from them nor for some latter superstitions which we restor'd back unto them continuing a right Church from first to last because when we were at the worst we were as Orthodox as themselves who corrupted us and recovering our clearness again from their forc'd mud and mixture we continue as well English as Brittains now mutually Incorporated to profess the same Faith which was planted here above sixteen hundred and odd years ago not only before Lutâ—er was born but before Rome it self had its Christian being SECTION VI. Brittain had not the Faith from Pope Eleutherius THe first point being thus clear'd It becomes as clear we had not our Faith from Pope Eleutherius by King Lucius and were the Epistle and the Persons contemporary it makes more against them than for them whereof the sum is this You desired of us to send you the Roman Laws which you would use in the Kingdom of Brittain we can never disallow Gods Laws but may Caesars You have lately by Divine mercy received the Law and Faith of Christ you have with you in the Kingdom both the New and Old Testament whence by the advice of your Peers and the Council of
Boethius l. 9. p. 171. That because they deserted the Religion of their Fathers and violated the Worship of their Gods perinde atque Brittannis atque Scotis se hostem futurum that he would be their enemy no less than to the Brittains and the Scots And lost his life at last in his Holy War against the East-Angles having lost an eye before in Scotland and a great Army at Bangor where he was also wounded breathing out his impious Soul like Julian only better for his constancy but not inferiour for his Heathenish Cruelty Deorum Religionis Protector Christiani Nominis Hostis ut vixi morior m Ibid. p. 172. I dye as I lived the Protector of the Religion of the Gods and the enemy of Christ and all his Christians who therefore was a very fit and useful Instrument for Monk Augustine to comply with for the destruction of the true Christian Religion here in Brittain that opposed the Roman and to plant his Popery instead and accordingly made use off If therefore the English were not all converted in their Hearts under Arthur and Aurelius because of the force It may well be presumed from the contrary reason that the Heart it self did not hold out against the Divine power of the same Ministry acting in its external weakness and exinanition God by his great Providence having us'd all means both harsh and easie to soften and chafe the hard and stubborn hearts of the English to receive his Gospel and shap'd and cast the Brittish Nation for their use and the use of all Germany through them into the mould as it were of Christs first and second coming to work and make impression upon them if it were possible either of the two wayes With this difference that here Humility came after Power to to win by Intreaty what it could not compass by command and force as there Power will come after Humility to bruise with irresistable destruction what it could not prevail upon by Grace and love And when all would not do delivered them over to Popery as it were to Satan or Antichrist to be chain'd in spiritual slavery and darkness with many other Nations for about a thousand years And then visited them again in mercy with the comfortable light and Glorious Liberty of the Reformation handed also to them by their Kings when they came to be of Brittish race to try their love to truth once more before his last stroke and Eternal destruction of the Impenitent and Incorrigible But nothing of the former passages though the truth thereof hath left sufficient markes and effects behind it in Saxon Laws and Homilies extant quite dissonant to Popery in several principles as shall hereafter be mention'd how remarkable soever occurrs in Bede's Popish History not a word of n Munster Cosm p. 552. Offa the Son of Ethelfred preaching the Gospel to the Germans beyond the Rhine Anno 603. and building Offenburg and Schuttern as Munster Notes nor o Ibid. p. 580. St. Columbanus our Irish Monk of whom the same Munster saith Certò Constat We have certain knowledge of his propagating the Gospel far and wide through Germany the passages being within the time and business of his History and for the Honour of this Land only tending too much to discover that the Gospel was preached by the Brittains to the Saxons in the houses of their Fiercest Kings which Right to that Nation was against Bede's Theme and humour to acknowledge But Ethelfred and Oswald being both Princes of his Countrey and Climate he is Civil to them and endeavours to do Right to both respectively in Magnifying the Vertues of King Oswald which are undenyable to Superstition And Palliating and lessening the wickedness of Ethelfred which was as notorious to Indignity seldom doing the least Right to the Brittains the enemies of his Nation and of his Catholick Faith as he openly stiles them lib. 5. c. ult Saving sometimes out of unavoidable necessity and for other ends and Interests as where he is to commend the way and Religion of the Scots and Irish for whom he had greater kindness The Brittish Faith whence the other deriv'd and stifly kept to is inevitably extoll'd by consequence Or when he mention'd the good work of Augustine in repairing Canterbury Church whither Queen Bertha resorted he had like to have betrayed and discovered to a sagacious smell how all then stood How much the Christian Brittish Religion was received and flourished in Kent before the coming of Augustine So the West Saxon Kingdom shall be all in darkness p Bede lib. 3. c. 7. Paganissimi when Birinus comes to convert it but when Aldhelmus is to do exploits in bringing them over to the Roman Easter it shall be very q Idem lib. 5. c. 19. full again of Brittish Christians whom he is to reduce and such is his Conversion of all Mercia by Diuma and but two or three more and the like of the other Heptarchies yet no Ecclesiastical Writer is now more Classic and Authentick than Bede nor any passage of Church Antiquity to be well credited without his attestation so beneficial was his Partiality to the Roman-church to his Reputation and Authority in the World Therefore the other mixt Conversion of the English and full completion or confirmation of the former by Brittish Ministy and Doctrine but not all Brittish persons shall be clear'd out of Bede their own Author against our Romanists and irrefragably evinc'd by cross examination of his History whereby it will appear that the English under God owe their Conversion to the Brittains and others and not to Rome And that Augustine came hither to no better end than to destroy the true Religion like a messenger of Antichrist or at least miserably to corrupt it with adulterate mixtures and Superstitions And the positive proofs out of Bede of the Gospel being preached and planted among the English upon mixt account and especially Northward where the English did most abound and the Brittains were least intermixt amongst them are not so much Proofs and undenyable Instances as Divine Miracles and over-ruling Providences and the manifest Finger of God calling not only for Assent but Astonishment and Admiration That not only Augustin's plantation at York and Kent should be totally extirpated as it were by Divine Retaliation by the same means and method himself contrived and set on foot to destroy our Brittish Church But the Sons of Edelfred swho was Augustine's Executioner to Massacre the Brittish Clergy are made by Gods controlling power the chief Patrons and Propagators of the Brittish Faith over most part of England and Oswald the best of them who for his own virtues was no doubt rewarded with rest and Glory permitted by Gods severity and hatred of his Fathers Murders at Bangor to be slain and mangled and quarter'd by his enemies in view well nigh and sight of that very place And the Brittains by excess of wrong and cruelties from their enemies
So then due separation and distinction is to be made now between the parts and degrees of liberty and Captivity and how much of the Talent these laid out they may be computed to have had from Brittain and how much from Rome It was demonstrated before from their own exceptions that the Brittains had the Christian Catholick Faith Entire and Complete amongst them saving the Easter Calendar and the Roman Tonsure and Baptism-spittle and subjection to the Pope and the love of lyes and Legends and growing superstition which followed the hearts resignation from God to man and this was the case of Bede and all his Disciples as well as of Willibrord and Winifrid yea of all the Plantations in the Churches of England and Germany who had the substantial part of Catholick Religion entirely derived to them and undeniably from the Brittains as from the fountain head but as for the mud and mire and misery of Idolatry Superstition and spiritual bondage and slavery which they received by way of Augmentation to it none can deny but that solely and Eternally all that is owing to the Church of Rome Schismatically disturbing the Plantations of Brittain If it be an obligation that the Enemy hath sowen his tares in the same feild where the Master sowed good seed Math. 13.28 Therefore all English and Germans were true and perfect Christians as many as were ever so upon the score of the Brittains only but Roman-Catholicks upon the score of Rome But it is replyed if they had not their learning nor Doctrine yet nothing is more express in the History but that they had their License and Authority to Preach the Gospel to the German-Heathens from the Pope by which Wilfrid was made a Bishop and Winifrid Legate of Germany with the honour of the Pall which also was conferred on Egbert Archbishop of York who first set the others on For answer it were hard if settled Churches could not obey Christ in Converting Souls or confirming Brethren by the obligation of charity without particular leave and License from the Pope or that Ignorant souls must perish Eternally upon any neglect in procuring or unreasonableness in the vending and price for such a License Can Antichrist be far from such Merchandizing besides the two Ewaldi d Bede l. 5. c. 11. Spondan An. 694. 696. began and ended their Ministry without such License and their Martyrdom was honoured with Miracles e Ubbo Emm. lib. 4 p. 131. Bed 5. c. 11. And Suidbert took no mission but from Wilfrid in England There is some further mystery to be found in this License office we 'le search into it by degrees we meet in the story three helping hands which contributed their several assistances to the German Conversion The Kings and Major-Dome's of France the English at home the Pope at Rome f Ibidem Magdeb. Cent. 8. c. 10. p. 822. Pipin and Martel and Charlemain did good service with Armes and bounty subduing the Heathen obstructors and founding Bishopricks to encourage the promotors The g Bonifacij Epistl English at home had publick fasting and prayer that God might bless their Ministry upon the Saxons and Germans their own flesh and bloud themselves besides their labour and pain hazarded their lives daily in the work and several perished out-right in it But the Pope assisted only with his License and Aurhority and Letters of recommendations and Palls which with Romanist is more than all yet he spared them little Money for Winifrid h Spondan A. 724. n. 2. had his necessaries towards cloths and Books and subsistence supplyed and sent him out of England the Pope cannot be therefore justly said to do much more herein than Poets towards Heroes by extolling their noble works at home with pleasure which the other did abroad amidst dangers and difficulties many have praised Robin-Hood who never shot in his bow but unless he had parted with treasure as did Charlemain or taken part of the labour he could do no more nor so much for he was not skilled in the German Language as our English or Saxons were but he had as great an aim to their subjection as we had for their Salvation i M. Westm A. 609. Phocas his Patent for the Universal Bishop was not to lye Idle And when as they win many sincere and unwary souls to this day to surrender themselves to serve their ends how much more might they then when their Arts were less detected and Politicians love to have holy and sincere men for their Instruments to work with and the ambitious shal be tamper'd with according to their inclination to set such on and preferments and Palls shall begin all as Egbert for such service as also for bringing over the Scots and Irish from their Brittish Traditions to Subject themselves to Rome k Baron Tom. 9. p. 110 hath a Pall conferred upon him at York which from Paulimus his departure for about 30 years that See had wanted l Usher p. 87. H. Lhuyd frag p. 55. Elbodus was wrought off to betray North-Wales to be under Rome with the like bait of honour to be made Archbishop there and they are never weary at these temptations And so through m Bede lib. 5. c. 11 Pipin the Popes great favourite Willibrord is brought to Rome for his Consecration there and likewise Winifrid is prevailed upon by such encouragements to sow Rebellion having Ments conferred upon him over the head of the lawful Bishop of the place because given to hunting and raised into an Arch-Bishoprick and Primacy which may not seem strange when the chief Master of this part of the confederacy the Pope himself arrives at his Grandeur for him and his successors through acting and encouraging Rebellion n Magd. c. 8. c. 9 p. 544. Math. Westm An. 726. seque Pope Gregory the third Excommunicates his Liege Sovereign Leo Isaurus and forbids him Tribute and subjection in the West upon a difference between them in the point of worshiping Images wherein yet the Pope was in the wrong and the Emperour in the right but the true reason was the Pope was weary of his Exarchs at Ravenna and he had now an interest and a back with the Major-Dome's of France to secure his Treason o Baron Tom. 9 p. 79 Magd. cent 8. c. 10 p. 684. by entring into a League with them while the Emperours subject who shall be well rewarded and exalted in time for it for Chilperick and the Royal line of Clodoveus the first Christian King of France shall be deposed by the next p Spondan A. 751. Pope Zacharia for no cause but Innocence and dulness to make Rome for Pipin to be not a Protector but a perjur'd Usurper of the Throne wherein our q Ubbo Emm. Coronam Septrumque Pipino c. Spond 75 752. Boniface and r Magd. Cent. 8. c. 10. p. 725. Burchard Å¿ Spond A. 791. n. 3. though Sainted at Rome were equally
only is an acknowledg'd duty and an indelible behaviour and Instinct in the Souls and Consciences of Heathens as they may be satisfied at large by Seneca without fear of any Heretical Pravity But seeing it is made evident they did not receive their Religion from the Romanists but from the Brittains or Irish and Scotch of Brittish Institution and extraction and what they did receive was not Corn but Tares not sound food of the Soul but poison rather That they nevertheless against truth and modesty and Breeding are ever minding and upbraiding our English Nation with this no Courtesie of theirs or their Progenitors and calling for everlasting Tribute and perpetual obedience and subjection from us for their endless molestations and corruptions This use however may at lest be made of this their disingenuity and impatience That as on the one hand they through folly and impertinence Cancel their own supposed merits by their minding and dunning and that with such frequency and loudness enough to make men deaf with such depredations and reprisals and plagiums or Soul-stealing and other revengeful attempts and distresses upon us for want of their supposed due Rent enough to make the meekest their enemies out of Indignation being guilty thereby of an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Self-felony against themselves and their Interest overthrowing their title of Supremacy by their own Act through unskilful management so on the other it is matter of much content and gladness and ease of heart unto us that our Ancestors some descents agoe have return'd back unto them all the Errours and Superstitions we ever here received or had them thrust upon us to silence the cause if not the impudence and conscience if not the cry And if I rightly guess at the minds of our Superiours by their designes and the profession of some of our late chiefest a Dr. Hammond of Shism p. 160. Pillars we will give them leave to search every Corner of our Church and where they find any one Doctrine or Rite or Article that hath not a Brittish Apostolical stamp and mark upon it but bears the mark or Armes of the Goods and Chattels of Monk Augustine on them or any of his intruding Successors we are content for quietness sake for who can endure everlasting dunning and upbraiding and that without any cause or colour that they seise and take them to themselves with all our hearts and we shall not think our selves poorer or further from Salvation by it but pray God that they may be nearer Neither is it very advisable in them to keep such a din with the little or noe merits of their Ancestors lest they become thereby responsible in all equity for their great wrongs and mischiefs for reparations of injuries may be demanded where returnes for Courtesies cannot as it is more consonant to nature for Creatures to complain than for God to upbraid or for weak Children to cry upon the least cause than for Parents to complain for the greatest and for their monstrous pride and hypocrisie and scandalls and murthers and Schismatical usurpations and the utter destruction what in them lay which ill became Christians and Catholicks of the Ancient Orthodox Apostolical Faith among the Brittains and of the same afresh after replanted among the English or Saxons by Brittish Ministry and the Corruption of our Rites Customes Ordinations Manners with their Roman-Catholick mixtures and Superstitions The Invasion of our Brittish Sees Dignities Monasteries and Ancient Ecclesiastical endowments b Apud Usher p. 125. by our Brittish Kings though the preheminence and influence of their New See of Canterbury settled and continued here by force and Schism as to them against all Laws and Canons and Civilities and Christian same to the extinction or suppression of our Ancient Archiepiscopal Brittish Sees of London and York and St. Davids at last which kind of attempt upon their Ancient Chaire of Rome would they have brooked with patience And not rather attempted the removal or prevention by any means though indirect and Rebellious and Hellish to the endangering of all Christendom rather then fail as is too well known by experience And which further aggravates their Diabolical Impudence and unconscionable Antichristian encroachments is their pretending at last their unjust usurpations which every day and year they continued were multiplied into new wrongs by time and Age to have changed their Nature and to be become a righteous title Bonae Fidei of unquestionable Supremacy which for the oppress'd to shake off by lawful means and the miraculous assistance of Divine Providence respecting in his own time the groans and cryes of harrass'd Innocence is no less than the great Crime of Schisme and Ecclesiastical Rebellion and Pollution of our Land in departing from the Catholick Faith And that a Thief by smothering his light and holding fast his Stollen Goods against his Conscience becomes an Honest-man at last and the Honest-man a Villain for challenging or recovering his own by just and lawful means That Mahomet by so many years prescription by his Sword and Imposture hath now good right and title to his Domination and Tyranny over the Eastern Churches and that it were an ungodly Schisme in the poor Graecians to accept of any deliverance from their long and miserable slavery either from Cod or man For we do not and cannot deny Romes Intrusion and inroads upon our Brittish Church and the consequent corruption of several of our Traditions and Ancient Rites in publick at lest and for a time when they swayed our Chairs and soil'd and disturb'd our Ordinations and Successions with their Roman mixture for well it was if our Ancestors were able within door then and in their hearts to retain their Ancient Rites and principles by Orall Tradition as they term it from devout Parents to their Sons yet our Ordinations received from them in such times were as good and as valid as any they had or now have amongst themselves but we have reason to count them our ill fate and grievance for otherwise our own had continued pure and regular and Brittish from the Resurrection to this present And yet their violent Imposition of hands in those dayes in the place and right of our Brittish Bishops was their guilt not ours who resisted it while we were able and greatly rejoyce at our deliverance from it and by no means if it be Gods will would return under it any more And God measures all by the heart especially in matters of Church and Religion according to my Text it s the sincerity and untaintedness of the heart makes the best Catholick 1 Tim. 1.5 And what was done unjustly stands undone and what by force and necessity was yielded to against the heart and will was not yielded to in reason For id sit quod jure fit is a Law Maxime and Tyrants are but great Lords of Nullities by the exemption of the will and Soul from and the frown of Heaven upon all bruitish unjustice and
that to affect to be universal Bishop and Soveraign of all Churches both name and thing was impious and Sacrilegious and Antichristian and cryed out that Antichrist was nigh coming when John Bishop of Constantinople began to usurp such a Title If therefore by Romish principles all Churches that derive their Palls from thence are thereby subject to their Chaire and those that never had Palls from thence as Brittain and other Churches by consequence in the like case were to be made subject likewise because they had none by Pope Gregories instructions to his Missionary And so by having or not having all Churches became subject by this Artifice Therefore it is manifest Gregory by this Act made himself that universal Bishop he so much abhorr'd though not in name and title yet in effect and reality which is more and Antichrist by consequence Therefore we affirm the Romish Faith in England is to be shunn'd and disown'd by all true Christians because its first plantation was from an Antichristian strein and Original by the confession of its first founder who if Popes be Infallible as they do and must believe in that Church was Antichrist Infallibly by his own Infallible determination Lastly not one but all the Popes f Apud Dr. Hammond of Schisme p. 105. of Rome at their Creation make a solemn vow and profession to observe inviolably all the Ordinances made in the eight first general Councils where nothing is more unanimously provided for and secur'd by all Anathema's imaginable than the Ancient Immunities of Provinces against Invaders and Intruders and of our Brittish Church by consequence whose Rights therefore could not be touch'd nor violated by any of them without incurring the acknowledg'd curse of the Catholick Church and the condemnation of their Holinesses themselves for Faithlesseness and Perjury out of their own mouths What temptation can there now be to any sober Christian to renounce an Ancient and Orthodox good Church and his own Mother for another in a Forreign Countrey which stands condemned by God and the whole Christian World and by it self And these condemnations too visibly executed upon it with a probatum est in a stupendious degeneracy beyond all Heathenism not only in point of Ignorance and gross deliberate errours putting out the Candle of knowledge upon themselves and all in the room for no good ends for many hundreds of years untill the Reformation But in their so liberally Licensing and dispensing in themselves and others that is making nothing of any iniquity or Incest or breach of Faith or Treason or Gods Anathema's in order to their Catholick interest and gain which office of faculties and libertinism the worst and rudest of Heathens never dreamed of Who knowing the judgment of God that they who do such things are worthy of death not only do the same themselves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 allow and approve that others may do them Rom. 1.32 which is so far from being Christian that no Heathens have been found or known more professedly Satanical or Antichristian Seeing therefore to contract our Argument to three undenyably positions The Catholick Church is still in being and its Canons unrepeal'd And the Church and Province of Brittain is likewise still surviving with Ancient Metropolitical Rights appertaining to it And the Clergy of Rome are dayly intruding upon us not only without the Invitation of this Province though it is their Interest and perhaps their secret practice to try by Cap or Pall or preferment what Wilfrids or Egberts or Elbods they can allure to betray Church and Countrey but against manifest and publick dissent declar'd by Laws and highest penalties What Holy Orders can such men have who are declared by the Catholick Church to be neither Clergy nor Christians for such disorder the scandalous ill consequences we have salv'd before as to the Innocent and charg'd them on their Authors or what validity or power or comfort to the Conscience can there be in their indulgences or Pardons or Consecrations any more than if Butchers or Town Bedles did absolve or Cats laid their paws upon their credulous Disciples enur'd by long custome to be abus'd SECTION XV. A short Diquisition into the Cause and character of the Roman Apostacy in its Leaders and Followers from History and Prophecy and Practice ANd though they thus refuse to be Impal'd from invading our Brittish Liberties by either Conscience or Canons or contradictions which are receiv'd bounds with all other men and Christians in the World and leaving reason seem to appeal to Club or Craft by consequence which would look very Barbarously Heretical in Protestants yet neither are they to conceive themselves Singular in such Magnanimous and Lawless adventures and usurpations for no thief ever came to the Gallows nor Traitor to the Scaffold nor cheat to the Pillory nor Malefactor to the wheel nor any sinner whatsoever to shame and damnation everlasting but for the like obstinate exaltation of their lust and Pride above the Laws of God and men only with this difference the one sin in the Night the other in the Day the one with guilt and fear and shame and somtimes with repentance but the other with open face and Catholick confidence and Sanctity Fathering all their evils upon Christ and St. Peter without hope of Repentance for to amend or change their manners would be to Apostatize from their Apostolical Faith and Principles An abominable new-found evil of Monstrous visage like a Gorgon of Pernicious influence like a Plague of hopeless Cure like a Gout for here light hath Communion with darkness which all reason and Religion and Order were Ordain'd to sever and the Wolf and the Lamb shall lie together and keep their natures and Civil and Wild and Humble and Proud and Regular and Lawless and Holy and Unconscionable and Catholick and Schismatical and Apostolical and Atheistical shall be Consistent and Church and the World and God and Mammon and Christ and Satan be of one Piece enough to distract Innocent beholders not used to monsters with so horrible a Specter and strike them dead with the Antipathy Cicero wanted words fully to express such disorder and confusion Totius autem Injusticiae nulla est capitalior quam eorum qui dum maximê fallunt id agunt ut boni viri esse videantur Of all Injustice and wrong there is none so Abominably Pernicious as that which would sanctifie it self Had he been a Christian he had allowed it the Epithite of Antichristian The like sight made another clear-spirited Heathen start beyond the Pole in his fright Vltra Sauromatas fugere hinc libet Glacialem Oceanum and chuse to be out of the World than live near the Immusical Notes and grating contradictions of debauch'd Curii dissolute Stoicks Sordid Nobles Holy Hypocrites And for its infection as nothing is more abhorr'd so nothing is sooner catching nor more seises the vitals and blunts the edge of Conscience and overthrows all the Laws of the soul The
president of a Holy Pope or Prelate promoting his privare lusts and Interest jure Divino shall affect and Assimilate whole Kingdoms Provinces Churches and all degrees of men both Secular and Spiritual all Politicians Libertines Rebels and Carnal Christians whether within or without his Holiness obedience to take after the example and Pattern when once known to become their Own Popes to License their own Crimes and Cruelty and Treachery for their gain and advantage as well as He having so great an example for Apology and excuse and the like deceitful heart to prompt them to it and under the shelter of Sola fides as well as that of Sola Ecclesia both of the same mould and spring both shall drive on their ungodly designs and be justified Saints and good Catholicks in their own esteem and vote amidst all their Hypocrisie and Rebellion nevertheless whatever they be in Christ's who is their Judge And the end of Christianity is hereby defeated and the Gospel and Baptism reversâ—d and every mans Will is his own Bible and the Rule of his Neighbours Rights and his Soveraigns duty self-love his wisdom and Religion and Charity and Loyalty gon out of fashion and request and all are Popes but none are Christians whereas Christ neither in his own person nor his Disciples nor his Laws gave the least Countenance or example for such Encroachments upon Kingdoms or Brethren He allowed his rights to Caesar and consequently his external Supremacy to every Prince in his own Territory his greatest Apostles kept their own bounds and line and did not build upon their Neighbours foundations Rom. 15.20 2 Cor. 10.16 Gal. 2.7 Thou shalt not Covet thy Neighbours House c. is is one of his greatest Laws and Maxims daily inculcated upon all his Christians without exception And his Apostles forwarn and testifie That he is the avenger of all such that oppress or over-reach their Brethren in any matter 1 Thess 4.6 But nothing is more the Profession or Custom of Rome than over-reaching and Intruding into other mens rights and building upon other's foundations and Senior Churches and thrusting their Sickle into other mens Harvests rather then keep honestly and peaceably at home within their appointed bounds and want their Peter-Pence Yea rather then fail by any sinfull ignoble Arts whatsoever confederating with Pagans against Christians setting on Subjects against their Princes and Princes against Subjects and the People against one another not to mention poisons secret murders Massacres Powder-Plots c. And which is the greatest violence to mens faculties and common sence and makes mens ears to tingle at the Blasphemy and hearts to tremble at such Atheistical Insurrections and contempt of the Soveraigns of Heaven and Earth This invasion of Neighbours must be the Catholick Cause this wrong and injustice must be Gods own Will and Commission and St. Peters Charter the chief Robbers and Rebels in the design the choysest Saints and Catholick Champions of Christ who according to St. Paul was the Avenger of all such but according to our Popes is made the Patron and approver Whereby their Repentance and Cure becomes morally impossible not only because recovery with them were disease or their departure from the Faith and their amendment after Christ's mind a damnable State and Condition but also because Reason and Conscience are gagg'd and the faculties of their soul wholly lockâ—d up from helping to their Conversion Heathens were easier recoverable than Papists from their Idols because in the one there was a reserv'd Allegiance to God and the Truth left in their souls for Arguments to work upon but in the Roman Heathenism that Allegiance is so fix'd and settled in the Pope as God that the soul is to regard no Truth or Oracle whatsoever of God himself against him Papists are more Pope's people than God's people and their reasons and Consciences by consequence bound more to follow guides and the Will of the Pope than to follow Truth or the Will of God Socrates is my Friend and Plato is my Friend but Truth is more my Friend than either was the Heathen Liberty Truth is my Friend and Conscience is my Friend but my Ghostly Father and Guide is more my Friend then all is the Popish slavery In the Roman Religion man is to be regarded above God yea most are not allowed to give any hearing to God at all who speaks in his Scriptures which ever were and are esteem'd Gods Word in all Christendom whatever they be at Rome Papists to our sight are Gods rational Creatures as other men and Christians be but in reason they are but parcells of the Pope detach'd from God As Tangier to the eye is in Africa but by fiction of reason in England to whom it is subject A Papist therefore being more the Popes subject than Gods is hardly reclaim'd by any Truth which is but the voice or will of God as of a Potentate more Forreign and remote and weaker as to him than God who is the strongest of all to all the World besides Esdr 4. And his rational faculties ordain'd to take the part of truth are kept prisoners from doing it any service yea are listed and impress'd to obstruct and batter it as Canons taken and master'd by an enemy and turn'd to do execution upon Friends whereof the Divines and Parasites of that Church in many voluminous learnedly vain Discourses in defence of gross Errours against plain Truths have given a considerable instance to the World Now how this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or falling away from God and truth 2 Thess 2.3 came first to pass and that once great and glorious Church and its Angels to leave their first Station and to be tumbled down into their Papal pit of darkness and seduction next to the Infernal where in the one as in the other both sorts take a miserable pleasure to continue according to the Brittish saying y cyw y fegur yn Vffern yn Vffern y myn ef fôd but a far greater pleasure and triumph to ensnare as many Souls as they can to bear them company and participate in their plague is sufficiently clear in History and strangely describ'd to the life in Prophecy And to begin with the first Pride and a high stomack had a chief hand in both the falls and founder'd patience in the latter with an insatiable avarice and ambition in the Fathers of this Church after the vain pomp and glory of this world which the children of Christs School are instructed early to renounce that it pleased God in his deep wisdom and Justice to deliver them over to a reprobate sense and an infatuated mind to be a curse and plague to themselves and the rest of Christendom for many years for their sterility and ungratitude under the Gospel of his Son And as it was with the Fox in the Fable who long strove in vain to repass out of the Granary through the same hole with a full belly through which he had entred in
Inferiour either in Piety or Parts or Prowess And change their Truths for Lyes their Bibles for Legends and Christ for a Pope and the Creator for a Creature Can any of our Gracious Princes and Defenders in whose protection under God we trust suffer their people while not backward to assist them with their Prayers and Lives and Fortunes both them and their posterity to be thus enslav'd under a Forreign yoak which neither they nor their Fathers were able to bear and so long strugled against and in the end not without success And such an indignity and violence to be offer'd to the Ancient honour and rights of this our Brittish Church and Nation For manifest it is that the remnant in Wales are the undoubted Heires and Successors of the Ancient Brittains who since their Incorporation are in all reason and honour to be defended in their Priviledges and immunity by the whole English Nation for in a body the right or wrong of any part is within the sense and concern of the whole and the weaker it is the more and especially by our Princes and chief Nobles being of the same descent Yeâ— the Body and Major part of the English themselves were proved to be descendants from the Ancient Brittains and by right of Bloud and Faith as well as Armes to succeed into their places and possessions and priviledges and aire and humour and their Infirmities and divisions in some part as their vertues in most and bound therefore to repel these Roman encroachments from themselves by self-preservation which is a strong â—ye upon all mankind and from their Children by Paternal trust which is stronger as the same obligations upon our Princes in whom all rights and trusts of private men and Fathers concenter is strongest of all And this new Roman Catholick Faith or Fraud rather hath enlarg'd the Royal Office and duty to one part of Princely care and circumspection which Justinian never dream'd of For besides the defence of their people from Forreign Invasion and Captivity by their Armes and Puissance and from Domestic broiles and disorder by their Laws and wisdom in which two parts the Emperour compriz'd and circumscrib'd the Imperial charge There is a third Protection of their flock now incumbent upon them upon the same equity and reason their preservation from Forreign Imposture which contains both the other evils in its womb and draws home-bred confusion and hostile Subjugation and slavery along with at its heels and therefore in point of necessity fit for Princely encounter and prevention but in point of Honour much more it being a greater excellency to be wise than to be strong and couragious for the Souldier gives place to his General and our Sheriffs obey our Judges and of the two miseries it is more Ignominious and disgraceful to be over-seen than overcom as they are ever like to be who will be guided by any Mortals here-say against their knowledge and regulated Conscience And it may wonder'd what good is to be seen or gain'd by our return to Popery so destructive of Publick Peace and Eternal Salvation and so derogatory and disloyal towards Divine Soveraignty as well as human as hath been prov'd all along to whom Princes themselves ow an Original exemplarâ—y obedience and fidelity as Subjects ow to them a secondary by way of consequence and Copy There is much manifestly to be lost by the change of inestimable Knowledge and pretious Liberty and valuable Wealth and Treasure great will be the damage and detriment the Incongruity greater The Impossibility to sober men and Christians the greatest of all What though every man be Lord of his own Purse to give away what is his own how and to whom he pleases yet he cannot be thus Liberal in the encouragement of Vice and Imposture without a blot and censure upon his understanding Nor betray and necessitate his fellows for condition though not for folly to the like contribution and disbursement without great dishonesty and sacriledge if he be private person or if a Superiour in Publick trust without High and Blasphemous Perfidiousness for to explain these Epithites the wrong of private men upon others of the same condition is not an assault on their rights alone but on God whose they are and all their rights by consequence whom they mutually represent to one another 1 Cor. 8.12 as they undergo the correlative habitude and fashion of Creatures upon themselves by consequence like their faces Gods Images seen by one another but out of sight unto themselves But the wrongs and breach of trusts in Superiours towards their Subjects trusting under the shadow of their wings is like the case of God proving untrue to his Creatures whereof there can be no conception made without Blasphemy nor is there any manner of Instance or track to be found thereof throughout the whole regular Creation neither the weakest nor wildest Creatures being ever found false or unnatural to their own dependants only miscreant Tyrants and Parents and Governours without bowels are they alone who Blaspheme the Divine Character they bear by being as God in their persons but as Satan in their deportment Acting a Deity that hath neither Grace nor Goodness nor Truth which is the highest Abomination and stupendiously monstrous Blasphemy that can be conceiv'd or represented which God will rebuke But the Incongruity increases further for what were such a change but selling our Birth-right for a mess of Catholick poison and preferring Italian Hypocrisie before English and Brittish Truth a rotten Disease before sound Health a Painted Face before a natural Beauty or for chast and Noble Matrons to become Hand-maids to Courtezans or Grave Judges to be Secretaries to Theives or Gentry and great Nobles to be Pages to Mountebanks or Kings and Emperours a Life Guard to Rebels and High-way-men Xanthe retro propera versaeque recurrite limphae the World will be as orderly when Rivers flow back to the tops of Mountains and the Globe of the Earth enlightens the Sun and the Stars and the Beasts of the Field who are without heart or understanding are to Instruct mankind And the Impossibility to the sober is yet greatest of all such a change being very improbable in fate and most impossible in reason God who is Irresistible in his Judgements is as Omnipotent in his mercies towards his People His Church flourish'd here in Brittain more or less and without Romish defilement for 600 years that is from the Resurrection to Monk Augustine's entrance It was afterwards sorely visited and condemn'd to Popish darkness and Captivity for great sins for the space of 800 years and visited again in mercy at the Reformation God's departure upon displeasure Ebbs according to hundreds but his return in mercy flows according to thousands to those that love him or whom he loves though we are unworthy yet he is all mercy and Truth and it is not to be doubted but we have had our Abrahams Isacks and Jacobs in our Brittish Israel who
dyed in their hope and trust for us for whose sake he 'l continue his goodness to their seed but though his wrath ebb'd 800 years his Grace and mercy wherein he delights to abound and exceed hath not stowed yet full 200 years or is he unable to perfect what he hath begun He that can work a Resurrection from the dead cannot he accomplish a Restoration to a living and surviving People yea and great confusion to all opposers of it No good man ought to envy or hinder the longed for mercies of God to a Nation no great man can and if having his descent alike from the same People how can such be deem'd either good or great but rather miserably unnaturall and deservedly unfortunate and improsperous Earthly Potentates may not give stop to God's tides King Edgar tryed but fail'd their timely retreat will be their greatest safety and Wisdom how many mistaken Politicians have been drowned and Shipwrack'd in such clandestine contrary Councils No Emperour on Earth can command it to be night after the Sun is risen where God is for us we need not fear any seduc'd Dust and Ashes that may appear against us It is likewise most impossible in reason unless in case of Gods great desertion and extraordinary curse The radical difference between Protestants and Papists as was Stated from the beginning and Instanc'd in all along lyes herein that the one take Christ the other the Pope or his pretended Vicar for their Messia or the Lord of their Hearts and Judgements The Protestants who live by faith as all true Christians do and ever did hold firm their Allegiance to their invisible Soveraign in Heaven The Papists who love to live more by sence and show through dis-regard to Faith and the Heart change their Heavenly Soveraign for a visible Christ on Earth which Rebellion can never succeed nor be done no not when it is done already Should not be in the holy Language is shall not be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which thing shall not be done say the Sons of Jacob touching the Ravishment of their Sister Dina already committed Gen. 34.7 The Soveraignty of Christ and the Allegiance of the soul to God and the Truth are Divine Eternal Establishments not to be alter'd by human pleasure they can no more be changed by the corruption of men or the combination and Clandestine Counsels of Conclaves and Politicians and seduced Grandees than the Constitution of Kingdoms or the Laws of Nations be repealed and changed by Conventicles of Pismires some rash attempt may be made while mens souls are besides themselves or drunk and intoxicated with Idols and vitious Customs but to no more effect than casting caps against the Moon which can never reach it or spitting against the wind which returns into the face or defiance of the Laws and Government by a strong Knot of High-way-men whose end in all likely-hood must be Repentance or Hell and Tyburn Which is further confirm'd by good Authorities the King of Prophets within the Church Psal 2. Why do the Heathens or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eph. 2.12 rage and the People Imagine a vain thing The Kings of the Earth set themselves and the Rulers take Counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed or Messia saying Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us away with these invisible fanatick Lords and Laws of Souls and Consciences Let none in Heaven or Earth be obeyed in matters of Religion or Conscience but a Pope in Temporal matters but a Prince He that sitteth in Heaven shall laugh the Lord shall have them in derision to shew the Pittiful ridiculousnes and vanity of such void attempts And the Prince of Philosophers without the Church in his Golden Book of vertue and vice perceiv'd and affirm'd this Truth that the one is in it self 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 commendable and lovely and the other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eternally deformed and censurable let men or Laws conspire what they can to the contrary And the unanimous consent and suffrage of all mens Souls and Counsciences to this particular points at the true cause hereof an indelible immediate Allegiance in every heart to God and the truth alone and a deafness to all other Forreign power whatsoever against him Yea and an accuser of it self under any such delinquency For Children and Clownes shall discern and condemn such disloyal deviations in their Prince whom they reverence and the Prince in himself being above all but not above the Soveraign of his heart Men of Honour or Reverence arriveing or supporting their Grandeur by the means and countenance of Vice upon the like Loyalty shall be despis'd by every mouth in the Streets and the Consciences of troubled silent Servants at home that dare not and of their own that dare and will reprove This loyalty and disloyalty against Heaven is such an eternal unalterable measure of mens Misery and bliss that Chast rags will not envy the condition of unclean Silks and Sattin but those shall often wish for the peace and pure content of these The Soul till drown'd in Lusts or gagg'd by Antichristian Tyranny never skrinks from its Heavenly Loyalty while it is a Soul it is for Christ It never deserts this Soveraign till it morally ceases to be a Soul Which is the reason a priori that Popery or the seduction of men from their Loyalty to Christ to slavery to a Mortal can never be well promoted without Debauchery which must first precede to extinguish the Soul Its obedience afterwards shall be blind implicit and servile like that of beasts that have no understanding nothing shall be its Conscience and Religion more but its Carnal Interest and gain and pleasures and complyance with its new false Christ for a false Salvation for human Nature cannot dispense to be without all Religion and Superstition too Its state and condition therefore is a state of enmity and rebellion against God whose Laws it neither is nor can b◠subject to Rom. 8.7 And therefore all its Actions and designes are null and void and damn'd in Law and also in Fact when Gods patience is out either by its timely or eternal Recantation either by Repentance here or durance hereafter for all cross and Irregular wills must at last come up to Christs will the judge of quick and dead either with or against their wills and know their true Soveraign at last either by life or death Rom. 8.6 13. Whereby the true ground appears for our Reduction of this Controversy from the beginning to one single point of obedience or disobedience to the right Soveraign of the heart For so doth the wisest of Kings reduce all Divine and human concern and wisdom into one Principle of Loyalty to God The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom Prov. 1.7 And not only the beginning but complement and perfection For he is the wisest and soberest Christian who hath not the Pope but Christ most