Christ to be the Head of all Christian Unity or that Church to be the conservatory for ever of all Christian Truth more than any other Bishop or Church of the Apostles ordaining or planting Where I find almost as many absurdities hudled together as words For first what signifies the Bp. of Rome was not appointed by Christ Christ was not on earth when St. Peters Successors in the See of Rome sate there and when he ordained St. Peter chief of the Apostles Saint Peter was not yet Bishop of Rome Next if he meanes that St. Peter was not appointed by our Saviour as the Head of Christian Unity St. Hierom's testimony I suppose will be as good as the Doctors word who tels us Inter duodecim c. Amongst the twelve one was chosen that A HEAD being constituted the OCCASION OF SCHISM MIGHT BE TAKEN AWAY Where we see expresly Saint Peter the Popes Predecessor was advanced to be HEAD and this to take away occasion of Schism that is to be HEAD OF CHRISTIAN UNITY Thirdly hence also follows that Christian Unity is conserved by him more than by any other Bishop contrary to the Doctors assertion Fourthly he equivocates in the word Roman Church and takes in it a sence which he knowes we never mean't Our acception of it being of the Universal Church communicating with the Mother Church of Rome his of the private Diocess of Rome it selfe Fifthly it is groundless to affirm even of this private Church of Rome it selfe that she is not the conservatory of Christian Truth more than any other since the Doctor cannot but know the Fathers are of a contrary beleefe holding that the two chief Apostles dying there bequeathed to that Church as a sacred Legacy a greater vigour of Christian Tradition Again Histories and Fathers witnessing so unanimously her firm persistance above the rest objections often urged by our Authors to that purpose the Doctor might at least have afforded us one testimony of the contrary besides his own bare saying Lastly what is the Doctors intent in saying Christ did not appoint the Church of Rome conservatory for ever of all Christian truth What meanes this canting Parenthesis for ever As if Christ might perhaps appoint her to conserve truth for a while but meant after some time to discharge her of that office But this Parenthesis the Doctor reserved for a starting-hole that he might at pleasure cry out she had erred when he had found out some odd testimony which with the help of an id-est-clause might overthrow the Authority of the whole World His second Defence for relinquishing the means to preserve Unity of Faith which we charge them with is this that The way provided by Christ and his Apostles for preserving the Unity of Faith c. is fully acknowledged by their Reformation Which way sayes the Doctor is made up of two Acts of Apostolical Providence First their resolving upon some few heads of efficacy to the planting of Christian life through the world and preaching and depositing them in every Church Secondly their establishing an excellent subordination of Church-officers c. As for the first of these Acts as he calls them of Apostolical Providence if these two Heads he speaks of as thus deposited be indeed sufficient to form a Christian life in order to the attainment of Eternal bliss and that they came down certainly to us by this depository way at first in the Churches and so derived successively age by age Dr. Hammond is suddenly become a Proselyte and a plain Papist For we neither say we have any point of Faith superfluous for the Community of the Faithful nor that those we have came to us by any other meanes than seruando depositum by preserving uncorrupted those necessary doctrines thus deposited But I fear much when the matter comes to scanning Mr. Hammond in this his doctrine neither goes to Church nor stayes at home but halts very lamely in the mid-way He stayes not at home for his Church of England is so far from holding the points deposited by the Apostles in Churches a certain way to preserve Unity of Faith that nothing is more abominable to her than the name of Tradition This appeares by the sixth Article or Canon of Queen Elizabeth's female-headed General Council where the Scripture is made the sole ground of Faith and nothing affirmed as necessary to Salvation but what is built upon it whereas the Doctor here builds points necessary to salvation for sure those few heads of special efficacy to the planting a Christian life can be no lesse upon their preaching and depositing them in the Churches nay more the Unity of Faith that is Faith it self for Faith if not one is none upon this way of depositing Yet for all this he will not goe to Church neither though he stay not at home For ask him are those few Heads all that are necessary he will tell you nâ— yet which be those necessary Heads how many and why no more were thus delivered since this he sayes is A WAY TO PRESERVE UNITY IN FAITH and on the other side he sees what multiplicity is bred by the diverse interpretations of Scripture ask him I say these questions and no particular account can he give you only he had a mind to say somthing in geneneral lest he might be thought to have utterly contemned all Traditions Again these Churches in which were deposited those few Heads of such special eefficacy to plant Christian life were they infallible that is such as we may certainly trust to in their preserving that depositum if they were they might as well be infallible in other necessary points also and so the Doctor hath slipt by good hap into our Rule of Faith and though hoodwink't goes to Church again But if they be not infallible that is connot certainly tell us that they delivered us the right depositum and the same they received then the Drremaines as he is and hath brought nothing to his purpose For since Unity of Faith cannot be preserved without some efficacious meanes of bringing it down to us inerrably true unless this depositing was such as must upon necessity continue for ever which is that we call Infallibility or Indefectibility of the Church the providence of the Apostles had been very sleight and nothing at all to the Doctors purpose that is it had been no efficacious way to preserve Unity of Faith He addes afterwards And all this is asserted and acknowledged by every true son of the Church of England as zealously as is pretended by any Romanist Here again the Doctor seemes to step forwards towards the Church and to draw a great troup of backward unwilling Protestants after him For if they hold as I conceive he meanes by these words the doctrines deposited in the Church as zealously as the Romanists they must hold them as of Faith for so farre our well-grounded zeal carries us and that the depositary is so trusty as
it cannot deceive us Now you see the Doctor is got as farre as the Church-door But when he heares them within the Church talk that a company of men can be Infallible he leaps you back at one jump as far as the Sceptick Schooles of the Heathen Academicks But how could Mr. Hammond imagine this pretence sufficient to acquit him from Scism in renouncing the way to preserue Unity of Faith or to prove that he and his fellowes still fully acknowledged it The way to preserve Unity of Faith held by all the Christian world before their breach was the beleefe of the Churches Infallibility and we think mans wit cannot invent a better for that End Either then this must be the way to preserve Unity in Faith or some other if this you manifestly broke and rejected it as hath been shewn and as the 19th Article of Queen Elizabeths new Creed professedly declares if some other whatever it is it must needs include a fallibility and uncertainty in the Church of the doctrine she teaches Wherefore either evidence to us that a professed and beleeved fallibility can be a better way to preserve Unity in Faith than a beleefe of Infallibility or else grant that renouncing the latter you renounced the best and most efficacious way to conserve such an Unity The second way to preserve Unity in Faith here mentioned by the Doctor as fully and zealously acknowledged by him his fellows is the establishment by our Saviour and his Apostles of an excellent subordination of all inferiour Officers of the Church to the Bishop in every City of the Bishops in every province to their Metropolitans of the Metropolitans in every region or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to Patriarchs or Primates allowing also amongst them such a primacy of Order or Dignity a◠might be proportionable to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c Thus the Doctor In answer to which w◠will examine a while whether this way thu◠laid out be indeed the way to preserve Unity i◠Faith For if notwithstanding this subordination no Priest is bound to beleeve his Bishop nor Bishop his Metropolitan nor Metropolitan his Patriarch how can this conduce to the Unity of Faith But peradventure he will say this subordination in obedience is a great help to keep out errours and then if this be so we must take into consideration how this point relates to Unity of Government as it is a means to conserve Truth the breaking of which Unity is called Schism So the question in that case is reduced to the examine how his subordination provides against Schism Let us admit then that all the world were made up of Churches governed in this Order as the Doctor hath put them I would ask if in the time of the Arian Heresie a Priest had dissented from his Bishop an Arian but yet consented with his Metropolitan had it been schism in so doing The Doctor must answer No for the Metropolitan being of higher Authority than the Bishop the adherence to him would more secure the Priest from schism than the relinquishing the Bishop could endanger him Next if a Bishop dissent from an heretical Metropolitan but consents with a Catholick Patriarch is it yet Schism Surely no since the same reason clears him that cleared the Priest before Again if the Metropolitan dissent from his own Primate or Patriarch but agree with all the rest is it yet schism Certainly no for the collection of all the rest being of greater Authority than any one in particular can by consequence more excuse him than the other can condemn him Hitherto then we have found none of the Doctors Amulets against Shism Let us proceed If a Patriarch dissent from the first from the Doctors 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but yet concedes to all the rest is it yet schism The Doctor answers no For in regard he owed the other onely something more of a civil respect as a younger brother does an Elder without any inferiority to him in Command or Jurisdiction it cannot be a Schism Forwards still Suppose some Nation or some Patriarch dissent from a General Council is it yet Schism still the Dr. answers No for in his third Chapter which branch't Schism into all its Species he put no such schism as that against a General Council How then hath Mr. Hammond by this new way provided against Schism if according to this Subordination all the Church may fall together by the eares and all may find lawful excuses to secure them from being Scismaticks since the oeconomy of that distracted Family is so order'd that neither any one in particular nor any in common have any tie to hold them to the rest without which ty of consent in matters of faith this imagin'd subordination can no way be a meanes to preserve Unity of Faith and conquently the Drs. Church government without some stronger obligation to knit up all this Order in an Unity is not an Act of Providence either worthy our Saviour or his Apostles But what is become of the King or Emperour all this while is he no body now who before was the Chief It seemes the Apostles made no reckoning of him in all their Providence It is wonderful Mr. Hammond should so forget himself and proceed so inconsonantly to his own grounds that whereas before the King was Chief Governour Head of the Church Supreme in Ecclesiastical matters over and above both Metropolitans and Patriarchs c. Now in treating the Government of the Church instituted to preserve the Unity of Faith he thinks the Head of the Church whom he had formerly exalted above all that is called HOLY not worth the mentioning Does he think the Unity of such a Head conduces nothing to the preservation of Unity in Faith which yet he grants to a far more inferiour Bishop or accounts he it a small sin for a Patriarch to dissent from so Sacred a Head of his Church and his lawful Superiour nay Supreme in Ecclestastical matters and to whom the rightful power as the Doctor told us in those things legally pertaines Yet Mr. Hammond had good reason to omit it For though he may talk of and advance that doctrine in common so to escape the Supremacy of the Pope for you must conceive that he had rather have even a Bramble rule over their Church than that all o're spreading Cedar the Bishop of Rome yet he declines it as handsomely as he can when he should apply that doctrine to particulars as is seen in our present case For indeed who would not laugh at him if he had told us as he must had he introduced the King that it was the heighth of Schism to dissent in a point of Faith from a Thing which neither the Catholikes nor yet Protestants as you here see acknowledge but a kind of a Lay-Elder an Office which were it not three dayes older might seem borrowed from their dearly beloved brethren the Presbyterians Yet the Doctor is grown kind and allows
or at least that year was pure again For it cannot be imagin'd the doctrine of that Council was pure but the beleefe of the Faithful in that Age taught by those Pastors which there resided must be pure also Far more consonant then to their grounds is the doctrine of the Puritans denying promiscuously all Antiquity than to pick and cull out at pleasure what serves their turn as doe the Protestants and to like and reject allow and disallow what makes for or against them without giving any evident reason why they put such a difference In vain therefore does the Doctor like a very Saint pretend in behalfe of their Church an unaffected ignorance though they should mistake being conscious to himselfe what pitiful shifts he makes use of in stead of grounds In vain does he hope that this ruliness as he calls it and obedience of theirs will render them approvable to God unless they can render God an approved reason why they will at pleasure hold his sacred Spouse the Church holy in one Age and adulterate in another and shape and fashion Christs seamless coat according to the mode of their ever-changing fancy Lastly most vainly doe they hope this ruliness in holding to the first 300. yeares will lead them into all truth unless they could shew that all the points of Truth between them and us were professedly treated and decided in those times and the decision on their side He ends in a preaching manner with extolling the humble and docible temper of his Church Truly Mr. Doctor it is a wonderful commendation to your Church that she is yet to bee taught Pray when will she be at age to leave going to School when will she be out of her prentice-like tutorage and set up for her selfe to professe truth as a Church should do I thought a Church should have been Columna firmamentum veritatis the Pillar and firm foundation of Truth but yours is like the hinge of a door or a weather-cock docibly turning with every wind of doctrine How doe you think the Puritans or any other Sect should in reason yeeld any Authority to your Church since she professes her selfe yet learning her Faith that is as yet knowes it not If it be such a commendation in your Church to be docible I suppose it is so in others and consequently in the whole Church and then I pâ—ay who must teach her or what greater Professor is there on Earth of the knowledge of Christs Faith to whom the Universal Church may submit her selfe as dociâ—le Perhaps you will say that one particular Church must sisterly and charitably assist and teach another that is though each be ignorant it selfe yet like the blind leading the blind they must all be supposed mutual Mistreâ—ses and consequently all learned But let us examine a little further this docible and humble temper of your youngling Church Is it dâ—ciblenesse or humility think you to forsake a Mistress who had all the qualities which could give â—er Authority and fall to teach your selves new reformed doctrines without any Authority at all Such is the humble dâ—ciblenesse of your Church Is it docibleness to cast off the Authority of 14. General Councils and the consent of Christendome for twelve hundred yeares and rely upon your own judgments to interpret the rest as you list This is the so much brag d on docibleness and humble temper of your Church Parallel to the former or rather far ouâ—vying them though of a contrary strain is that most heroick Act of your docible humility to be willing to hold things concerning your eternal salvation upon the Authority of the four General Councils or the Doctors and Church of the first 300. yeares which Drs. and Councils notwithstanding it is an Article of your Faith that they are fallible And as for the Church of those times that it was fallible your selfe grants for you confesse that the same Church erred in the fourth Age. Now to hold Articles or points of Faith upon that Authority which it is an Article of Faith may deceive me is such a magnanimous piece of docible humility as I dare be bold to say in the Doctors behalfe neither the Apostles nor any Saint in the succeeding Church durst ever own Neither can the present Catholikes whom some who neither understand their own nor Catholike grounds laugh at as blindly humble and obedient to the Church lay claim to such an incomparable degree of humility proper and peculiar to the Protestants onely For we pretend not Faith certain but upon a deemed INFALLIBILITY in the Authority assuring it so as though they may be supposed blameable by you for failing in their grounds that is in believing the Church infallible yet they cannot be condemned for proceeding inconsequently upon those groundâ— for an infallible Authority deserves a firm assent But to stand to the acceptation of matters of Faith which you pretend most certain upon an Authority confessed by your selves uncertain is such a condiscension of humility such a prostrating your proper knowledge as is not onely a blindly-capâ—ivating your Judgment but even an utter renouncing all judgment prudence and common sence not a submitting the reason by a voluntary winking at objections but a quite extinguishing and perfect putting out of the very Eye of reason it selfe and is all one as if a man should say For any thing I know such a one may lye in what he tells mee yet neverthelesse I will strongly perswade my selfe that all hee sayes is most certainely true Yet this humility the Doctor calls here a special mark of the Church of Englands Reformation And surely you have reformed well since you have not only reform'd the Unity you before enjoy'd into distractions the Faith you formerly profest into new-fangled misbeleefes but your former reason and judgment into present folly and fancy What is said of your accepting the four Councils c. may also bee apply'd to your private interpretitions of Scripture which found your Faith which Faith you will have to be certain and firm though the persons Interpretation it is built on be fallible and obnoxious to errour The pious words in your own behalfe with which you close up your Chapter spoken in an Elegiack tone are very moanfully moving words out of a pulpit rhetorical enough for women not rational enough to satisfie any prudent man You professe you would preserve the Unity of the Apostolical Faith and primitive practises as entire as Christs body or garments Good Mr. Hammond leave mocking your Readers and tell us why the Primitive times must needs just end then when the Church began to flourish and the Fathers to write against your doctrine And as for Christs body or garments I see no such great respect in you or your Churches doctrine allow'd towards holy Reliques that I should be willing to trust those sacred pledges to your unhallowed hands from whose rude usage his mystical Body his Church Faith its Rule
not onely overthrown ours but all Religion not onely acquitted your self of Schism but also quite taken away all possibility of being a Schismatick since no Authority can with any face or conscience oblige to a belief of which her self is not certain But I doubt not you make your self sure of the conquest not apprehending any but Saints and Angels in Heaven and God himself to be infallible To which you adde of your own invention impeccable as your custom is never to speak of our Tenet without the disgraceful addition of some forged calumny or other imposed upon us But that none else should be infallible except those you mention I much wonder I thought the Apostles had been also infallibly assisted when they pen'd the sacred Writ and peach'd the Gospel I thought also our Saviour when he sent them to teach and promised them his assistance had said He would remain with them always even till the end of the world that is with the succeeding Church I thought there had been some means to be infallibly-certain that such and such Books were Gods Word and genuine Scripture without an Angel Saint or Christs coming from Heaven or the Doctors private-spirited opinion which he will call God Neither do I doubt but the Doctor himself will grant it impossible That all the Protestants in England should be fallible or mistake in witnessing whether twenty years ago there were Protestant Bishops or no and that such was the Tenet and Government of their Church at that time Yet a thousand timeâ— greater evidence have we of the indefectibility of the Churches Faith and her infallibility As you may to your amazement see if you will but open your eyes in that incomparable Treatise of Rushworth's Dialogues vindicated from all possible confute by that excellent Apology for it writ by the learned Pen of Mr. Thomâ—â— White in his Friends behalf whose Dialogues he set forth enlarged and defended against your acute Friends Faulkland and Digby Persons who did not use to treat Controversies iâ— such a dreaming shallow way as it hath been your misfortune to do here nor stand Preaching to their adversary when they should Dispute To these Dialogues and their Apology I refer you that you may know what to do if you confute them solidly and demonstrate plainly That our Church is liable to Error you will eternally silence us and clear your selves But take heed you bring not whimpering probable may-be's and onely-self-granted suppositions for proofs These might serve your turn in your first Book which might hope for the good fortune to scape without answering but in your second and after you are told of it it will fall short of satisfactory Remember Mr. Hammond that you granted â— cheerful obedience and submission of your judgments and practices to your Superiors under penalty oâ— not being deemed true Disciples of Christ. If this be real as I wish it were then what easier condescension and deference to the judgment of Superiors can be imagined then to submit oneâ— private judgment when he has onely probability to the contrary Evidence therefore demonstrable evidence you must give in of the Churches erring ere your pretence that you were obliged by her to subscribe to Errors can take place and so excuse you from Schism But as your profession of the obligation you have to submit your judgment to the Church renders your probable Reasons insufficient to fall to judge her so God be praised your own self acknowledged fallibility will secure us from the least fear of your Demonstrations Yet unless you do this you undo your cause for if the Church could not erre she could need no reforming So that your Preaching of Reformation is vain your Faith vain and by consequence your selves Schismaticks and an Ace more SECT 4. Concerning the ground of Unity groundlesness of Schism and of Dr. Hammonds manner of arguing to clear himself of the later ALl that is material in the Doctors second Chapter is sum'd up in these two heads that the Church does ill in obliging men to subscribe against their present perswasion and That the Church which they left was erroneous and so obliged them to the subscription of Errors Upon these two notes as on a base-ground he runs division all along this Chapter repeating them so often in each Paragraph that I was forced to omit my intended method at present not making a Countet-sermon to each in order but bringing together his dispersed Doctrine into Heads and then confuting them not doubting but the Leaves and Branches which counterfeit some small flourish of devotion will quickly fade into Hypocrisie when the sapless roots are pluckt up from their rotten ground The former of them hath been discovered in the former Section to be worse then weak his manner of arguing from the second shall be laid open in this But because I perceive Mr. Hammond very much unacquainted with our grounds why our Church obliges her sons to rest in her belief and continue in her Communion thinking her doubtless very discourteous that will not leâ— her subjects in civility as the modest and moderate Church of England does hold and do what they list I will at present undeceive him somewhat in that point having a better occasion to do it more largely hereafter First The Doctor stumbles much and as Ignorance iâ— ever the Mother of admiration thinks Master Knot 's Inference very strange that the Church iâ— infallible otherwise men might forsake her Communion Whereas on the contrary I not onely think it strange to infer otherwise but as great an absuâ—dity as can be imagined for why may not meâ— forsake the Communion of the Church if they may forsake her Doctrine since it is impossible to preserve the former if he renounce the latter and why may they not forsake her Doctrine if she have no Power nor Authority â—o tie them to the belief of it and how can she have any Authority to binde them to the belief of it if she her self knows not certainly whether it be true oâ— no that is be not infallible Or what man living who hath so much wit as to raise or understand the difficulty can possibly so degenerate from Reason which is his nature as to submit it in believing things above his Reason and which concern his eternal Salvation upon such an Authority as may perhaps lie and so damn him for believing her since Without true Faith it is impossible to please God Hence follows by an inevitable consequence that since the Church pretends and hath ever pretended to have a Promise from Christ of a perpetual assistance from Error if Christ have made good that promise that is if she be infallible then her obliging her sons to rest in her Faith is most plainly evidenced to be charitable just and necessary because in that case it were both mens obligation and also their greatest good to believe so qualified a Mistress Whereas on the other side any other Congregation
his own private interpretation of Scripture nor the Church he is in is infallible or secured from Error by any promise of Christ. The denying this Infallibility therefore Mr. Doctor is the greatest crime we charge you with but you free of your Suppositions suppose it your chief virtue and put it for the ground of all your excuse In this Infallibility is founded all the power of the Church obliging to belief the inviolableness of her Government the unjustifiableness of any Schism the firm security that Faith is certain and lastly whatever in the Church is sacred The Doctor therefore in clearing himself by denying the Infallibility of the Church does the self-same as if some discontented subject having first out-lawed himself by denying the Laws and rejecting the Government of England and afterwards becoming obnoxious to those Laws by Robbing Murthering c. should endeavot to plead Not guilty by alledging That though indeed the English Subjects who accept the Laws and allow the Government of England are liable to punishment if they offend against them Yet I saith he who suppose this Government Tyrannical and these Laws unjust especially having a present perswasion and thinking in my Conscience they are so cannot be obliged to keep them and therefore must not be accounted a factious man nor be liable to punishment if I break them What will become of this malefactor Master Doctor your Logick clears him But the Reader and I am perswaded wiser judgments will think him more highly deserving the Gallows for refusing subjection to the Laws and Government and you more deeply meriting Excommunication for rejecting the Churches Infallibility the onely ground of her Authority then for all the rest of your particular faults which issue from that false principle But it is pretty to observe how the Doctor never clears himself from Schism upon any other grounds then those which if admitted would prove all the Malefactors in the World innocent and make it lawful nay an obligation in Conscience to dissolve the whole Fabrick of the Worlds Government So true it is That the very position of a Fallibility of Faith first lays and in time hatches the Cockatrice Eggs of both Atheism and Anarchy SECT 5. Containing some Observations upon Mr. Hammonds third Chapter of the Division of Schism WHen I had perused his third Chapter with intent to see what it might contain worth the answering finding scarce any thing which made either against us or for him I thought I had mistaken the Title of his Book but looking back I found it to have indeed this Inscription OF SCHISM A DEFENCE OF THE CHVRCH OF ENGLAND AGAINST THE EXCEPTIONS OF THE ROMANISTS BY H. HAMMOND D. D. So that now I remain'd satisfied what was the Title but much more unsatisfied to find my expectation so totally deluded and that in a large Chapter containing thirty six pages almost a full quarter of the Book not five words were found which touched the question directly nor could in any way be a preparative to it So as we have here 66 pages of 182. well towards half the Book premised by the Doctor to introduce the Question like the Mindian Gate too large an entrance for so narrow a Corporation Frivolous then had been the long Preamble of this Chapter had it been to the purpose and tended to the Question but if it be found nothing at all to the Question but to wave and conceal the main and indeed sole matter which concerns it nay more to have prevaricated from the very scope for which he would seem to intend it then I will leave it to the Reader to imagin what commendations this Chapter and its Author doth deserve Our Question is of Schism In this Chapter he undertakes to shew the several sorts of it which therefore he divides into Schism against Fraternal Charity and Schism against some one particular Governor as in the People against a Priest or Deacon in those against a Bishop in Bishops against their Arch-Bishops in Arch-Bishops against their Primate or Patriarch and there he stops lest if he had ascended a step higher to the Authority of the Pope he should have said more truth then will serve his turn For you must know he has a deep design against Antichrist and is resolved that half a score odd stories or some few words and unwarrantable practices of discontented persons especially being cited in Greek shall utterly overthrow him in despite of manifest practice of Antiquity clouds of testimonies from Fathers and the Doctrine of the Catholick Church of whose fallibility he is far from even pretending to any infallible Evidence But that we may manifest what we laid to his charge that all this long Chapter is but waste-paper the Reader may please to take notice that the Schism we charge the Protestants with is not of the peoples Schism against a Deacon or Presbyter nor of a Deacon or Presbyters Schism against a Bishop nor any link in that chain of Schisms which he there enumerates but we accuse them and their Fore-Fathers the first Reformers First of a Breach or Schism from the whole Catholick Church This is without controversie the Schism of Schisms and which in the first hearing of the word Schism objects it self to our understanding as being simply properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such whereas the other are nothing but particular refractory disoâ—â—diences in comparison of this and may well consist with your obedience to the Universal Church This this I say is the chief and main Schism we impute to his fellow Protestants yet the Doctor in his present Book entituled Their Defence from Schism takes no notice of the chief thing he ought to clear them of will not have it come into play nor allow it a place in his Division as if it were either none at all or else such a slight one as was not worth taking notice of Strange that he could use such prolixity in trifling Schisms impertinent to the present discourse and not afford the least mention to the greatest Schism of all when the scope and aim of his Chapter necessarily required it and the Question forcibly exacted it Strange that he could remember even the peoples Schism against a Deacon or Presbyter and forget that which breaks from the whole body of the Universal Church But the Doctor is more carefull to preserve his own Copy-hold then the Churches Free hold for according to his division and Doctrine in this Chapter his Parishoners would be Schismaticks for disobeying him or a puny Deacon but neither he nor the Deacon Schismaticks at all for disobeying the whole Church And thus the Dr. has established his own Authority to be more inviolable then the Popes and by this one Division has quite conquered and got the upper-hand of Antichrist Secondly What is become of General Councils all this while Have not they as great an Authority as any private Patriarch Primate Arch-Bishop Bishop Dr. Hammond or a Deacon Far grâ—â—ter
undeniably evident For it was never said to Iames Iohn Philip c. in particular by name and in the singular I will give thee the Keys much less after such a solemn manner as was to St. Peter First With a particular blessing and encomium of him Blessed art thou in the singular Simon Bar jona for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee but my Father which is in Heaven Then alluding to his name in particular And I say unto thee again the singular that Tu es Petrus c Thou art Peter and super hanc Petram upon this Rock will I build my Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it Then follows And I will give unto thee still in the singular the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven c. Necessarily therefore it must be granted That something was said to St. Peter in particular and that solemnly and upon particular occasion sprung from St. Peters own person Vers. 16. which was not said to any other Apostle in particular And since this saying was a promise it follows That a promise of some thing was made to St. Peter in particular Wherefore seeing this thing promised was the giving the Keys of Heaven it follows that the promise of giving the Keys of Heaven was made to St. Peter in particular Neither will the Doctors proving that they were given afterwards in common to the rest prejudice this at all for there is no difficulty but the same thing may be given to many in common and yet to some one of those many in a more particular manner Now then this promise being made not onely to all the Apostles in general but also to St. Peter in particular it is most consonant to reason and worthy our Saviour not onely to perform his promise but also to perform it according to the tenor and manner in which he promised But the Doctor cannot or will not finde any performance in particular but wholly omits it and indeed it was dangerous for it was our best and most express Testimony and instead of it produces onely a performance to them all in general Whereas Iohn 21. 15 16 17. he might have seen it expresly recommended and encharged upon St. Peter particularly and by name once twice thrice with as many repetitions of his name particularizing him over and over Feed my Lambs Feed my sheep feed my sheep And least such an one as Mr. Hammond should after so many expresly-peculiar designations doubt yet there might be an equality our B. Saviour asks St. Peter Amas me plus his Dost thou love me more then these which manifestly puts a particularity comparison and inequality in Saint Peter from and above the rest of the Apostles in the interrogatory and therefore the inference upon its resolution Feed my sheep encharged upon him as an argument of this greater love and the cause of this trust must in good consequence of reason be unequal and particular in Saint Peter in comparison of the other Apostles These and some others are the Testimonies from Scripture which to speak with the least every impartial man will see that even taken in themselves they sound much to our advantage and the prejudice of our Adversaries but interpreted by the Catholick Church according to her never-erring rule of Faith give us an infallible certainty that they express a Primacy in St. Peter whatever the Doctors private judgment imagines or ghesses to the contrary In a word the result of all Dr. Hammonds Answer is That our Saviour promised indeed in particular but did not perform as he had promised that is particularly but in common onely That is by such a solemn and singularly applied promise he made good St. Peter expect great matters as any man in reason would by such a carriage and then when it came to performance quite deluded his expectation giving him no more then the rest of his fellows It follows in the Doctor The applying the words particularly to Saint Peter hath one special energy in it and concludes That the Ecclesiastical power of Oeconomy or Stewardship in Christs house of which the Keys are the token Isa. 22. 21. belongs to single persons such as St. Peter was and not to Consistories or Assemblies That whatsoever St. Peter acted by virtue of Christs power thus promised he should be fully able to act himself without the conjunction of any other and that what he thus did clave non errante no one or more men on Earth could rescind without him which is a just ground of placing the power Ecclesiastical in the Prelate not in the Presbytery c. This is Master Hammonds Corollary out of the former Texts out of which ploughing with our Heiser he concludes against the Presbyterians But first since those words are particularly applied to St. Peter all that is implied in those words are particularly also appliable to him and this being the Donation of the Keyes it follows That the Donation of the Keys and whatever is consequent out of that Donation or signified by those Keys is particularly applied to him but the Keys are the token saith the Doctor of Ecclesiastical Oeconomy or Stewardship in Christs house This Office therefore must be particularly applied to St. Peter and seeing those words were no otherwise particularly applied to St. Peter then by our Saviours speaking them to him in the singular and in a singular manner as he did it follows That our Saviour told St. Peter in the singular and in a singular manner that he should be steward of his house Also since all particularizing is a kinde of exception from an universality or community and the universality or community before whom our Saviour spoke it and from whom any kinde of exception could be imagin'd to be there made was the other Apostles it follows That St. Peter was particularized out of that community for the office of Steward in Christs house Again since the Keys are the token as the Doctor proves of the Ecclesiastical Oeconomy and Stewardship in Christs house and however we read that the effect of the Keys that is power of binding and loosing was given to others yet it is no where exprest in Scripture that the Keys themselves the badge of that Office were given to the rest even in common for it s no where read â—â—bis dabo claves it follows manifestly That if our Saviour kept his word to St. Peter since he promised him the signal token of that Office of Steward he performed it to him making him Steward of his house and by the delivery of the Keys installing him in that charge so as onely St. Peter was installed and if the Doctor will needs contend the rest were he must confess withal that he hath no ground for it since he will never read either of such a promise or performance made by our Saviour that he would give the Keys themselves which onely are the badge of that Function to any of the rest Thirdly
as clear as the most palpable matter of Fact can make a thing visible to the eyes of the World that there was indeed at least a material breach or Schism by you made from that Body which communicated with the Church of Rome and of which Body you were formerly as properly and truly a part as a Branch is of a Tree To which adde your proofs out of the Fathers in your first Chapter affirming No just cause can be given for a Schism and it will follow that your own words clearly convince and your own proofs evidently conclude you to be formally Schismaticks I will put the Argument in form to make it more plain onely premising That material Schism as far as it concerns us at present is the extern action of breaking from a community Formal the causlesness or unjustifiableness of that material Fact which must needs be criminal because it admits no just excuse to plead in its behalf Then thus No Separation from the whole Body of Christians can possibly be justified say the Fathers by you alleaged Chap. 1. Sect. 8. But your Separation was from the whole Body of Christians Therefore impossible to be justified Where all the evasion I can imagin in your behalf is to distinguish the Major That the Fathers meant Criminal Separation or the Crime of Schism could have no just cause given for it not the material and external fact of Schism But first this makes the Fathers very shallow to go about to shew That no just cause can be alleaged for the crime of Schism since every one knows there can be no just excuse possible for any crime Next the Fathers there alleaged pretend to particularize some special viciousness in Schism and are to that end produced by the Doctor But there is no speciality in Schism above other sins to say That no just excuse can be given for the crime of it since the like may be said of all sins as well as it The fact of Schism therefore it is which they call unjustifiable the same fact which with a large narration you here set down and acknowledge that they said it voted it swore it taking a great deal of pains to prove those whom you undertook to defend to be voluntary deliberate and sworn Schismaticks Now all the Testimonies alleaged by your self against Schism come in troops bandying against you and your cause as strongly as if they had been expresly gathered to that purpose As that a Schismatick is à semet-ipso damnatus self-condemned which you have here very learnedly performed as I lately shewed That ultrò ex Ecclesia se eâ—icerent they cast themselves voluntarily out of the Church c. Quomodo tâ— Ã tot gregibuâ— scidisti Excidisti enim teipsum How hast thon cut off thy self from so many flocks For thy self hast cut off thy self of which accusation your fifth Paragraph infers the confession Your own voluntary recession from us and our Government by your self here acknowledged is an indelible token and as it were a visible ear-mark that you are a stray sheep and a run-away à toâ— gregibus from the flock This badg of a Voluntary Recession your Church must always necessarily carry about her Nor will you ever be able to wipe it off with all the specious Id Ests or Criticisms your wit can invent SECT 9. The nature of Schism fetch t from it's first grounds and the material part of it fastened upon the Protestants TO lay this charge of Schisme yet more home to the Protestants we will open more clearly the nature of Schism and describe it more exactly that the Reader may see how perfectly the Protestant Church is cast in the mold of it For the better conceiving of which it will be necessary to shew first what it is which makes the Sons of the Catholike Church like brethren live together in Unity and this will lead us into the consideration first of the formal Unity it self and secondly of the Reason and Ground of this Unity The Unity it selfe consists in two things one is the submitting to and communicating in one common Head or Government the Authority of which if it be establish't in an undoubted possession as it was at the beginning of Mr. Drs Reformation is as necessary to the Ecclesiastical Community as the acknowledgement of the Undoubted Supreme Magistrate is necessary for the Unity of any temporal Common-wealth The second is the communication of the member-churches with one another consisting in the acknowledging the same Articles of Faith and using the same Sacraments c. To these was added anciently communicatory letters which afterwards by reason of the perfect colligation of the several members with their Head was neglected as unnecessary And these two Unities may be conceived again either negatively or positively By negative Communion in the same Head I mean a not disacknowledging only of the supreme Pastor or at least such an indifferent acknowledgment as having no tie upon it may be at pleasure refused and the Authority rejected As likewise negative communication between the member-Churches imports either a â—leight not denying of communion or such an acceptance and embracing of it as having no obligation may at pleasure be turned into disacceptance and disavowing On the contrary these two communications are then called positive when there is a positive obligation to acknowledge that Head and communicate with the other Churches And this is that which can only make a Church and found Church-government Or rather indeed there can be no Government imaginable either spiritual or corporal without such positive communion for a company of men without an expresse and positive obligation to obey their Superiors and comport themselves towards their fellows according to the laws may indeed be called a multitude such as is aâ—eâ—vus â—apâ—dum an heap of stones but not an Army City Commonwealth or Church which imply connexion and order Neither is the obligation of only Charity sufficient though in it selâ—e a great Ciment of Unity but it must be a visible one resulting out of the very Nature of Government which is visible and exterior Besides Charity extends universally to all even those out of the Church and therfore cannot be that proper peculiar and sole tie which unites the Faithfull as they are a Common-wealth of Beleevers The second thing is the Reason of this double Union or rather of this double positive obligation of Unity in the Church which to conceive more clearly the Reader may please to consider that a Christian is a Christian by his Faith and so a Congregation of Christians is a Community of the Faithfull Whence it followes that the Unity of the Faithfull as such being in Faith their faith must be one the ground therefore of the Unity of their faith is the ground of the Unity of the faithfull but the infallibity of the Church is the ground of the Unity of faith Therefore the same Infallibility is the reason of the Unity or positive
Communion of the Faithful This Rule therefore broken or rejected dissolves all positive Communion amongst Christians both in Faith and Sacraments For what tie could they possibly have to communicate in any thing consequent to Faith as Sacraments Government or any good work unless they first communicate in faith the rule and ground of those Sacraments Government and good works and how can they communicate in faith if there be no Infallibility to binde them to an Unity in it The denying therefore of this Infallibility is the reason of all Schism and even of Heresie too nay it selfe is the Heresie of Heresies opening a liberty for every man to embrace his owne new-fangled opinions and introducing principles of incertitude and at best probability in Religion whose natural course is to wander at last into a Civil kind of Atheism Nor can there be any rational pretence to oblige mens consciences to a Religion whose conâ—est uncertainty must needs infer an absolute abolishment of all Church discipline and content it selfe with a meer voluntary obedience that is legitimaâ—e all Schism by taking away the very possibility of Schismatizing Another reason may be given why the denying this infallibility perverts quite overthrows all unity in Church-government For the preservation of the Churches unity in government being essential to Religion that is to the Art of breeding up mankind to know and love God it cannot possibly be conceived to be of humane but divâ—ne institution and therefore being taught and instituted by Christ belongs to Faith and so requires to be recommended by the same never-eâ—ring Rule which teaches us the rest of his Doctrine He therefore that denies this Infallibility hath no sufficient reason to beleeve the Article of the Churches Government and consequently will easily finde evasion to excuse his obedience to her commands The Unity of the Church being thus clearly delivered there needs no new task to shew what Schism is it being nothing else but the unknitting and dissolving these several manners of this Unity and Communion and in breaking aâ—under that tye and obligation by which these Unions of the several members with one another and of all with the Head are firm'd and made inviolable What remaines to be done is onely to shew that this Anatomy of Schism is the perfect picture nay the very Sceleton of the carkasse-Church of England and that they have infring'd the lawes of Unity in all the aforesaid manners And as for the first which is the Unity of all the Members under one Head or Chief Bishop and Pastour of the Church in whom at the time of the breach all the Hierarchical Order was summed up as in the highest top of that Heaven-reaching Climax you confesse here Sect. 5. that you cast it out of this Island The Authority I say of the chief Pastourship of the Bishop of Rome to which you and the whole Church you were then in were subject acknowledged by you not Patriarchal onely but a large step higher to wit universally extended over all Patriarchs and the whole Church was that which you cast out and subtracted your selfe from its obdiencee If then you will hold to your former grounds so largely to your disadvantage laid in your third Chapter that it is Schism in a Deacon or Priest to disobey a Bishop in a Bishop to refuse subjection to his Aroh-Bishop c. How will you excuse your selves from Schism in rejecting the Authority of the Head of the Church unless you can evidence that Authority null that is that Doctrine false to which you had been subject ever since your first Conversion as to a more superiour Governour than either Bishop Arch-Bishop Primate or Patriarch In vaine then was your long frivolous digression that Kings may erect and translate Patriarchates since a greater Authority than a Patriarch was rejected by you and cast out of this Island which no King ever pretended to erect and remove at pleasure In vain do you think to shelter your Schism under the wings of the Regal power since your King being at that time actually under the Pope as far as concerned Ecclesiastical matters and acknowledging his supreme Pastourship lies himself as deeply obnoxious to the charge of Schism as you his subjects and followers or rather much more as being the Ringleader of the breach So as no plea is so unwarrantable as to bring him for your excuse who is the person accounted most guilty and who needs a plea himself for his own far more inexcusable Schism and disobedience But what excuse you bring or not bring concerns us not at present onely this remains certain and acknowledg'd that you cast out of the Island that Supreme Authority in which at that time the Faithful of the Church you were in communicated and in which chiefly consisted the Unity of the Hierarchical Government arising orderly and knit np peaceably in acknowledgment of and subjection to that One Head Whether you did this justly or no belongs to the formal part of Schism and shall be discussed in the following Section Next for what concerns the Unity of one member-Member-Church with another it is no lesse evident you have broke asunder all positive Communion not in Government onely as hath been shewn but in Faith and Sacraments with all Churches which communicated with the See of Rome whom before your Schism you 〈◊〉 the onely and sole true Members of Christs mystical Body That you broke from their Communion in Government hath been already manifested from your rejecting her Supreme Governour in the subjection to whom they all communicated Nor is it less evident that you have broke from their Faith as appeares from the irreconcileable diversity of the points of Faith between us and the large difference between your 39. Articles and our Council of Trent Nor has the Unity you and those Churches had in Sacraments escaped better Five of them being par'd away as unnecessary the sixth transelementated from the sacred price of our Redemption into the egena elementa of bread and wine and the seventh onely that is Baptism with much adoe remaining inviolate lest you should forfeit the name of Christians also together with the reality If the denial of these and your styling the best act of our Religion to wit the the oblation of the Unbloudy Sacrifice in your 31. Article a blasphemous fiction and pernicious imposture and lastly if your persecuting us to death be signes of a positive communion with us then killing may be called kindness and railing votes against us may perhaps be styled Communicatory letters with us All Communication then both positive and negative with the Church you were in formerly was by you renounced yet at least some pretence of excuse had been producible if departing out of that Church you had either kept or renew'd Communion with some other which was acknowledged by all the World or at least by your selves before the breach to have been a true one But you can pretend no such thing as
Folio on the Bible 167 15 How Doctor H will have the allowance of a House to dwell in and Meat to eat the erection of a Primacy 172 16 The Doctor constant to his Principles putting the strongest Argument in the Rear 173 17 The Doctor cryes he is out of his way when he comes to a Passage he cannot get over 177 18 How Doctor Hammond blows and sups all at once 187 19 The Doctor as valiant as Sir Iohn Falstaff 211 20 Doctor Hammonds two sorts of Gifts given and not-given 214 21 How the Doctors ill-favored c. dashes out the best 221 22 Dr. H. like the Fellow that thought the Sun set at the next Town 226 23 The Doctors confusion for Methods sake 230 24 Dr. H. neither goes to Church nor stays at home 233 c. 25 The Doctors courteous point of Faith obliging all the Apostles under pain of Damnation to make a leg to St. Peter 241 26 The Doctors wise appointment of time and place for his Duel in a Wilderness and a daâ—k night 246 27 A magnanimous piece of docible humility in Dr. H. and his Church 251 28 How the world must needs look upon Dr. Hammond as another St. Iohn Baptist 254 29 The Doctors Logick proving Protestants no Schismaticks because they have all Noses on their faces 270 30 How Dr Hammonds Church keeps open house for all comers 273 31 The Doctor never meddles with any point but he blunders and destroys all the Reason that ever concerns it 277 32 The Doctors Goliahs sword has no more edg then a Beetle 278 33 Dr. Hammonds artificial incomparable nonsence 286 c. And for digestion a solid Postpast under the slight name of Down-Derry THE Introduction IT bred in me at first some admiration why the Protestant Party who heretofore seem'd still more willing to skirmish in particular Controversies then bid battle to the main Body of the Church or any thing which concern'd her Authority should now Print Books by Pairs in defence of their disunion from her and subducing themselves from her Government Especially at this time when it were more seasonable for the Church of England as they entitle themselves to denounce to those many minute Sects gone out of their Communion the unreasonableness of their Schism then plead the reasonableness of their own and to threaten them with the Spiritual Rod of Excommunication unless they return then cry so loud Not guilty after the lash has been so long upon their Shoulders But the Reason of the latter I mean why their Pens rather decline to endeavor the reducing their own Desertors I conceive is because no colourable pretence can possibly be alleaged by the Protestants why they left us but the very same will hold as firm nay much more for the other Sects why they left them For that we pressed them to believe false Fundamentals Dr. Hammond and his Friends will not say since they acknowledge ours a true Church which is inconsistent with such a lapse They were therefore in their opinion things tolerable which were urged upon them and if not in the same rank yet more deserving the Church should command their observance then Copes or Surplisses or the Book of Common-Prayer the allowance whereof they prest upon their Quondam-Brethren The Reason of the former that is their earnestness at this time to clear themselves from the imputation of Schism I conjecture to be the self-consciousness of feeling at length the smart of their own folly in the present dissipation of their Church proceeding from their leaving that Body in which alone is found the healthful vigor of Peace-maintaining Discipline the want of which causes all their distractions Yet not willing to acknowledge an inveterate Error they seek to cover the deformity of their breach with the veil of innocency that that which evidently causes their misfortune may at least seem not to have been their fault And indeed this is the last game they have to play for after their coy conceit of an Invisible Church was unmasked and found plainly to be nothing but a blinde Chimera and less then a Conventicle After that by consequence a visible Church was found necessary to perpetuate a line of Successive Governors without obedience to which they saw by dear experience all Order would be level'd into Anarchy After the consideration of this had oblig'd them to grant that to raise a Schism or to subtract ones self from Obedience to those Governors was in a high manner destructive to Gods Church and therefore a sin deserving the deepest damnation in the abetters and maintainers of it as also in their voluntary adherents Lastly since it was most manifestly acknowledged on all sides That our Church was that Body of Christianity in whose Bowels their Predecessors the first Reformers were bred with whom onely and no other community in the world before the Rupture was made they communicated and from which Body by little and little they became and now are totally disunited they saw plainly and Dr. Hammond will not stick to grant it That no Sacrifice remained to expiate that hainous sin of Schism in the present Protestants but to wipe off the Aspersion from themselves and lay the occasion of the breach at the doors of the Catholick Church This is the scope as far as I understand of Dr. Hammonds Book at which I aym this Answer Only solicitous that he was so tedious in things acknowledged by both parties or which little or nothing concern'd the main point in question as to make up three parts of his Books of these trifles And of the very hinge of the Controversie which is When and why the Schism began to say so little and so weakly that being the chief knot to be untied in this difficulty But since the Doctor will have it otherwise I must be content in most of the Book to Answer meer words that is to fight with the air at least when any thing occurs which may seem to have some mixture of a solider element I shall allow it such a reflexion as I conceive in Reason it may deserve I am his Friend and will goe along with him hand in hand through his whole Book Not that the solidness of the Treatise it self requires so exact a proceeding but the weakness of less-understanding Readers who suspect frivolous things that bear a bulk and a specious shew of Words to be important unless the Answerer either out-word them or manifest them plainly to be impertinent of which as the former is far from my intent so the later must for the reason alledged be a part of my present Task and consequently I hope a satisfactory Plea for my seeming unnecessary tediousness to the more judicious Reader SCHISM DISARM'D THE FIRST PART Containing an Answer to the four first CHAPTERS SECT 1. Notes upon Dr. Hammonds first Chapter of the Danger and Sin of Schism HIS first Chapter is most of it a good Sermonlike preparative to his ensuing Theme Who
really apprehended by him to whom they are thus proposed to be false it is hard to affirm that that man can lawfully subscribe and therefore rather then do it the Doctor makes account he may remain out of Communion and that lawfully too This is the Doctors assertion which indeed might serve out of a Pulpit to an Auditory that he would claw with giving them that sweet and as they esteem it Christian liberty of holding what they list but to any judicious person that knows what Government is it is in reality the sublimated quintessence of perfect Non-Religion and Anarchy The Position comes to this That none should be condemned or punished by his Governors for not-doing that the contrary whereof he thinks is to be done To give which Position the least shadow of likelihood the Doctor is necessarily obliged to prove first That no Pride Interest or Passion can make one think wrong and consequently culpable in so thinking which if the Doctor do he will work wonders and with a turn of his hand convert this world of miserable sinners into a Heaven of pure and perfect Saints But let us hear an Argument or two upon the Doctors principles An ambitious or proud man blinded by his Passion begins to think and really true that the long established Government of the Commonwealth is tyrannical and upon this thought he proceeds to jumble all the Land into intestine Seditions and to dismount the Governors from the top of Authority and as he tells you conscientiously too that is with a perfect perswasion according to his present Passion Force him not to subscribe to obey his lawful Magistrate saith the Doctor he may not do it lawfully it is against his Conscience A revengeful or malicious man thinks that in all right and reason he may endamage the party that offered the affront and upon the lawfulness of his so doing while his humor possesses him he would lay his Soul Controle him not saith the Doctor he is in an â—rror but yet governs himself at present according to Conscience he may not lawfully subscribe or â—eal a pardon contrary to his present perswasion The Anabaptist thought himself nearly touched in Conscience to cut off the heads of his Mother and Sister for kneeling at the Communion Urgâ—… him not to the contrary saith the Doctor 〈◊〉 cannot lawfully spare them it is against his preseâ—… perswasion The Puritans following the Protestants example refuse obedience to the Church of England seeing in her so many dregâ—… of Popery remaining Unjustly did the Church of England saith the Doctor in obliging them to her obedience and cutting off poor Bastâ—… wicks Burtons and Prynnes Ears who did according to their Conscience or present perswasion Neither will it avail you to Answer that these were told by Gods Law that their actâ—… were unwarrantable and therefore were culpable For it is easie to reply that you were as much and as earnestly commanded by God to hear the Church and obey your lawful Superiors and incurred a far greater sin if you did not to wit the sin of Schism which your selfe unfortunate Pen has out of the Fathers described to be a venomous compound swoln with the mixt poyson of all sorts of Vices The Reader will by this see to what a pass this Doctors Logick would bring the world if his Position should take place That no man should be obliged to or punished for anything against his present perswasion which he terms his Conscience The contrary to which that I may a little more elucidate from its first grounds the Reader may please to consider That this present perswasion which a man is so fixt in may either begin in the Understanding or proceed from the Will If in the Understanding it must be onely a perfect demonstration that can beget in it so firm an adherence and then being rational it is not onely excusable but laudable Otherwise it is an irrational resolvedness sprung from a passionate distorsion of the interessed Will pushing and exciting the Understanding without due deliberation first to pitch upon and afterwards pertinaciously to adhere to a thing more then the light of Reason it self gives Which being in the Will vicious is consequently as all other Vices are culpable liable to correction and by correction reformable So as Licet non possumus opinari quando volumus that is Although we cannot deem or think a thing true but we must have some Motive or other true or false why we think so yet with this it well consists that a perverse affection in the Will may blinde and lead astray the Understanding by proposing false Motives for true ones And therefore when the Will by deserved punishment is whipt out of her viciousness the Native lustre of the Understanding will quickly disenvelop its self from the cloud of mistake in which the Passion exhaled vapors had enwrapt her You see then Doctor which perhaps you never reflected on before A man may be obliged to retract a present perswasion and however he pretends Conscience for his excuse be punished too if he does not since his bad will was the cause of his erroneous judgment as the cases of the fore-mentioned Malefactors your Clients have as I hope by this time better informed you But perhaps you would not have this method used in matters of Religion And why not Unless the violating the ever-sacred Authority of Christs Church and renouncing the main support of all Religion the Rule of Faith things in the conserving of which the eternal salvation of mankinde consists be less deserving punishment in the offenders or less worth taking notice of by the Governors of the Church then the wrong of thirteen-pence half-penny is by the Laws and Governors of the Commonwealth The result then of your discourse comes to this That all your dwindling suppisitions anâ— may bees which you wisely put down foâ— proofs and sometimes for grounds remain still in question or rather unquestionably unsupposable Your tenderness of Conscience not to sin against God in subscribing to the errors forsooth of his Church which he hath commanded you to hear onely Pharasaical arrogancy and singularity in you which makes you think and style at pleasure any thing Error which the whole Church holds if contrary to your private judgment Lastly Our pretended making Communion impossible will be found to be onely a self-opinionated pride in you and of all pride 's the most miserable and filly to adhere so pertinaciously against Evidence of Authority to a few obscure scraps of writers speaking on the by and your own self acknowledged fallibility All these and whatever pretences you here in sinuate will all lie at your doors and loudly call you Schismaticks unless you can evidence with most perfect demonstrations that those things were Errors which the Church obliged you to subscribe to that is that the Churches doctrine was or is erroneous and consequently her self not infallible This if you evidence I shall grant you have
signifie a lesser Province Whereas first it is evident to common sence that the lot of an Apostleship is nothing but the charge and office of an Apostle Secondly It is most manifestly shewn to be nothing else by the whole intent and transaction of the business which was not to allot one of them a lesser Province but to chuse a twelfth Apostle Thirdly The subsequent effect of the casting lots no less manifests it delivered us in this tenor of words The lot fell on Matthias and he was numbred with the eleven Apostles nor and thereupon he got the Government of a lesser Province Fourthly It is most plainly opposite to Scripture for in the seventeenth verse of this very Chapter St. Peter useth the self-same phrase 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. which the Doctor makes here stand for lesser Provinces to express Iudas his dignity whence he fell and in which as the very place cited by the Doctor manifests the Apostles desired another should succeed but no man ever dream'd that Iudas had a lesser Province assigned him It is therefore point-blank opposite to Scripture to writh the words to this Interpretation Fifthly This supposed the Doctor is contradictory to himself to imagine that in which St. Matthias succeeded Iudas a lesser Province since he acknowledged before That this division of Provinces was made after our Saviours Ascension and consequently Iudas who was dead ere his Resurrection had no such Province in which another might succeed him Sixthly It is most notoriously contrary to all Antiquity and consequently either manifesting a most shameful ignorance or wilful malice in so mistaking it For whosoever gave but a glance into those studies will plainly discern That the Apostles distributing themselves into several Provinces was done a long time after the coming of the Holy Ghost whereas this installing of St. Matthias into his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which he will have lesser Provinces was manifestly before the coming of the Holy Ghost as whoso reads the end of this Chapter and the beginning of the next will clearly discover Lastly It is against your own translation which expresses that The room of this Ministration and Apostleship from which Judas hath gone astray which your special gift of interpreting Scripture makes signifie St. Matthias his lesser Province So that all accounts made up concerning this place alledged the result is That this first Evidence or rather the Ground of Dr. Hammonds future Evidences is so strong and unmovable that it alone resists the whole World being evidently opposite to common sence repugnant expresly to Scripture injuriously contrary to all Antiquity prevaricating from the translation of their own Church and lastly contradictory to the Doctor himself But Humanum est errare No man but is subject to Error he will make amends doubtless for this mistake in the next Testimony SECT 8. The Examination of Doctor Hammonds second Evidence That the Apostles had distinct Provinces so to prejudice St. Peters Universal Pastorship HIs next Ground from Scripture to put it out of doubt that the Apostles had even then particular Provinces exclusively to one another That St. Peter calls the going to those lesser Provinces 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to go to his proper place or assignation Good Reader view but the place alledged and wonder St. Peter speaks there of Iudas his prevaricating from the Apostleship and going to Hell which is there cal'd his proper place to receive his eternal damnation and the Doctor calls it Going to his proper place or assignation for the witnessing the Resurrection and proclaiming the Faith or Doctrine of Christ to the World So as now the Doctor hath found Iudas a Diocess amongst the Devils and by his blasphemous interpretation would have St. Matthias succeed him So blinde is Schism when it is grown to an inveterateness that a proof of Quidlibet è quolibet is a sufficient Argument nay an Evidence to legitimate disobedience of which these two Testimonies the Ground of this Chapter are most pitiful proofs And now can any man that entitles himself a Preacher of Gods Word have the face to appear in the Pulpit to interpret those Sacred Oracles after he hath been challenged and discovered to have so wilfully and shamefully abus'd and corrupted them And alas kinde Readers and dear Countrymen how tender a sence of your misery it must forcibly breed in any charitable heart to think upon what slender reeds your present Faith by which alone you hope for salvation depends and relies These are the men for no priviledge is annext to your first Reformers and Teachers more then to Mr. Hammond these I say are they to believe whose interpretations of Scripture you have left the sence and faith of the whole world to follow whose false call you have abandoned and forsaken the cherishing and gathering wings of your tenderest Mother the Catholick Church to stray up and down in a disordered wilderness of distractions That Church under whose care your prudent and pious Ancestors for so many hundreds of years were brought up in a secure unanimity and settledness of belief That Church in whose bosome they died and from whose holy Arms they quietly delivered their happy Souls into the hands of their Redeemer her ever-blessed Spouse That Church whose Authority was under-propt with the strongest supports which can possibly be imagin'd to strengthen the frailty and settle the fickleness of humane belief in a most firm and constant adherence to supernatural truths such as are the Motives of a never-interrupted Apostolical Succession Universality Sanctity Unity in Faith Uniformity in Practice the ever-constantly-self-like Order in Hierarchical Government the exactness in Discipline the Possession of and Skill in the Sacred Writ the Conversion of all Nations and ours amongst the rest the Splendor and Reverence she observes in her Ceremonies and Administring the Sacraments the long-enjoy'd continuance of the Belief of Infallibility the learning and multitude of her Doctors and Fathers the unmoved constancy of her Martyrs the Angelical Purity and Seraphical devotion of her religious Sons and Daughters the higher and more elevated strain of piety in those Cherubins in flesh her sublime and Heaven-soaring Contemplatives the eminently good and charitable acts proper fruits of that Tree many remainders whereof our thankless and ungrateful Countrey still enjoys And lastly all these with many more by a conspicuous visibleness to the eye easie to be known and most of them actually acknowledged by our very enemies This Church I say and all those pregnant Motives greater then which the world cannot afford nor mans wit invent to oblige to a secure belief you have slighted and suffer your dear Souls to lie at stake under the most dangerous accusation of a grievous Schism without having any better game to play or any other excuse to alleage in counterpoize of so many weighty Motives then onely the bare fidelity and skilfulness of some few private men such as is this Doctor who pretend to
in the 23 Section that this is affirmed and intended by Balsamon to all Canons in general as the judgement of learned men in his notes on the sixteenth Canon of the Council of Carthage hath already been answered and shown that it is not Balsamon who affirms it but other men neither doth he call them learned men as the Doctor here imposes on him but onely says that some men say the Emperor can do such and such things And he adds that those persons proceed upon this ground that the Emperor may do lawfully whatever he lists His last Paragraph for which as his former custom was he reserves the best of his strength proves that this right of Kings to be head in Ecclesiastical affairs cannot be alienated by prescription The testimony he introduces is of one Sayr a late Monk who wrote his Book at Rome a man likely to speak much in the Doctors behalf whose opinion in case he should say any thing against us being but of a private Casuist may with the like facility be rejected as alleadg'd But what says honest Sayr he tells us that when prescription is neither of the Law of Nature nor the divine Law nor the Law of Nations but onely the civil and Canon Law there it extends no farther then every supreme Prince in his Realm by his Law is supposed to will that it shall be extended and therefore that no subject can prescribe exemption from making appeal to his King or that his Prince may not punish him when Reason and Iustice requires Let the testimony it self be what it will what was the Doctor dreaming on when he produced it Marry he dreamt two things First that the Pope had heretofore prescribed against the Kings of England in their pretended right of being head in Ecclesiastical matters next this prescription of the Pope hath not its force from any thing but a Canon or Civil Law These two points the Doctor dreamingly supposes to be certain principles and it is discourtesie in us not to grant them gratis for fear we should spoil his learned Conclusion What a shame is this for a Doctor of Divinity whereas every boy that hath been but two years at Cambridge knows he is first to establish his premises firmly ere he can claim any certainty of truth in his Conclusion to suppose his premises true and upon that grant kindly made by himself to himself conclude at pleasure what he lists And what an unconscionable piece of affected ignorance is this to bring a Testimony which could not possibly be applyed to his purpose without proving the two former self-made suppositions and yet to neglect that necessary task and conclude in these vain words It were easie to apply this distinctly to the confirming of all that hath been said but I shall not expatiate It is now become an old excuse with the Doctor to cry he is out of his way when he comes to a passage he cannot get over but all-to-be-labours things frivolous and which his self-laid grounds once supposed would be out of question Thus you see an end of his sixth Chapter which was totally built upon this ground that the Authority of Head of the Church was no more then Patriarchal and consequently needed in rigour of dispute no other reply but onely to deny the supposition and bid him prove it What has been answered to each particular was onely to let the Reader see how inconsequently and weakly he builds even upon his own foundations SECT 8. A Reply to Doctor Hammonds Narrative Confession of his Schism THe Doctor having laid his tottering grounds for the Kings Supremacy in Ecclesiastical affairs by alleadging some Testimonies expresly against himself and his cause and not one expresly for them but what his fellow-schismaticks afforded him Next having supposed upon his own strongly-dreaming imagination without one direct place of any Authentick writer against clouds of most plain Testimonies from Fathers and Councils frequent in our Controvertists and not touched by him in way of answer against the most visible practice and universal belief of the whole Catholick world that the Pope is onely a private Patriarch and hath no right of Jurisdiction over the universal Church And lastly out of a few Testimonies witnessing de facto that Kings did erect and remove Patriarchates without any word excluding the Churches precedent orders having concluded that such a power belonged de jure to Kings and was annext to a Crown These three things most gravely supposed he goes about to clear the Church of England from the imputation of casting off obedience to the Bishop of Rome at the Reformation which is the intent of this Chapter But first he lays down at large the whole history of Schism ommitting onely the main things that might disgrace it and by what degrees or steps this miserable Kingdom and Church came to renounce the obedience to those Ecclesiastical superiors who had by their own confession for eight or nine hundred years steered that-then-secure Barque in a calm unity of Faith and which Authority all the then present world except King Henry's now friend but late Antagonist Luther acknowledged and submitted to First he tells us this was done by the Clergy in a Synod recognizing the King to be supreme Head of the Church of England Secondly By their submitting themselves to the King and thirdly the definition of the Universities and Monasteries after debate that the Pope had nothing to do more in England then any other extern Bishop that is nothing at all And all this in this sort concluded subscribed and confirmed by their corporal oaths which word corporal was well put in for their Souls and Consciences never went along with it was afterwards turn'd into Acts of Parliament in which it was resolved upon the question to defie the Pope and all his works In answer to which though a bare narration how a Schism was made deserve none yet to devoid it of al excuse it may pretend to I object first that it did not originally spring from Conscience no not even an erroneous one but from manifest malice and viciousness Next that the Kingdoms assent to this il originiz'd breach was not free And thirdly that though both these were granted yet this act of theirs so largely laid out by Doctor Hammond is truly and properly a Schism and entitles them schismaticks nay the more the Doctor dilates upon it the more schismatical he makes the breach of which the two latter himself though never so loath must acknowledge unless he will deny his own words To begin with the first all the world knows that till King Henry violenced the breach all England both Clergy and Laity were as equally and as peaceably conjoyned to the Catholike Church under the government of her supreme Pastour the Bishop of Rome as either France or Spain are now neither did they ever express any scrupulosity that they had remained under such a Government ever since the Conversion of their first
Fore-fathers nor were scandalized at the then received Doctrine of the Church holding as a point of Faith that the Pope was its Head but abominated the contrary as sacrilegious and schismatical The first urger of the breach then was the King as is also acknowledged let us see then what or who urg'd him that so we may trace the schism to its first original and shew the new-born brat its right Parent As for the King while his blood was yet in due temper and not over-heated with passion that is while his Conscience was uncorrupted it is well known he was as humble a son to the Church and her supreme Pastour the Bishop of Rome as any King in Christendom is at this present admitting appeals thither and his jurisdiction here nay indeed more officiously obedient then any King now-adays can pretend writing or else causing to be set out in his name a Book against Luther in defence of the Roman-Catholick Faith and the Popes Authority which that Apostate rejected for which work also he received in recompence from the Pope the title of Defender of the Faith inherited by the succeeding Kings though they have forfeited the claim to it by disavowing the fact which deserved it What was King Henries judgment of the Popes Universal Authority till he fell into passion is easie to be seen in his own Book where he strongly and rationally proves it in these words Negare Lutherus non potest quin omnis Ecclesia fidelium Sacro-Sanctam sedem Romanam velut Matrem Primatemque recognoscat ac veneretur quaecunque saltem neque locorum distantiâ neque periculis interjacentibus prohibetur accessu Quamquam si vera dicunt qui ex India quoque veniunt huc Indi etiam ipsi tot terrarum tot marium tot solitudinum plagis disjuncti Romano tamen Pontifici se submittunt Ergo si tantam tam latè fusam potestatem neque Dei jussu Pontifex neque hominum voluntate consecutus est sed quâ sibi vi vendicavit dicat velim Lutherus quando in tantae ditionis erupit professionem Num potest obscurum esse initium tam immensae potentiae praesertim si intra hominum memoriam nata sit Quod si rem dixerit unam fortasse aut duas aetates superare in memoriam vobis redigat ex Historiis Alioqui si tam vetusta sit ut rei etiam tantae obliteratae sit origo Legibus omnino cautum esse cognoscat ut cujus jus omnium hominum memoriam ita supergreditur ut sciri non possit cujusmodi habuerit initium censeatur habuisse legitimum Vetitumque esse constat omnium consensu Gentium ne quae di◠manserunt immota moveantur Luther cannot deny but all the Church of the faithful acknowledges and venerates the See of Rome as their Mother and Chief at least whatsoever Church is not hindred from coming thither by distance of place or dangers in the way Although if credit may be given to those who come from the Indies even the very Indians separated by such vast Lands Seas and Wildernesses submit themselves to the Bishop of Rome Wherefore if the Pope hath obtained so great and far-spread an Authority neither by the command of God nor the will of men but hath arrogated it to himself by some violence I would know of Luther when and at what time the Pope broke forth into the profession of so ample a Iurisdiction Can the beginning of such a vast power be obscure Especially if it were born within the memory of man But if he shall say this power exceeds one or two ages let him bring it into our memory by histories Otherwise if it be so ancient that the original of a matter even of so great importance be worn out of memory then let him know it is expresly provided for by the Laws that his right and title which so transcends all memory of man as it cannot be known how it began is judged to have had a lawful original and it is manifest that the consent of all Nations forbid those things should be moved which have long remained setled and firm Thus was King Henry affected and in this affection continued till he found an itching I conceive not too conscientious to his darling Anne Bullen she being too crafty to forgoe the glittering offer of a Crown made unto her by the love-besotted King he grew straight perplext in minde for his former marriage began to think it unlawful though till now neither he nor any in the world ever scrupled it The devotion he bore to his Saint Anne Bullen put a new heat of Religion into his tender heart his restless Conscience alas perswaded him that his marriage with Katherine although confirmed by two and twenty yeers continuance and sealed with the endearing pledge of issue must needs be disanuld The Pope was urged to dispence with his second marriage though his former wife lived King Henry wooed intreated bribed then grew into choller and at last plainly threatned a Schisme unless the Pope would grant and justifie his unlawful desire Here now if the Romish Religion were made up onely of Policy as those think whose eys her prudent and heaven-ordered Government dazles into a blind envy of her priviledges the Pope should rather have sought pretences to yeeld to this unwarrantable request then have denyed it with the loss of a Kingdom from his Jurisdiction but the common Father of the Church more considered unless we will give way to the suspicious Reports of enemies what detriment and scandal to the whole world was likely to result from such an impious example in so eminent a person then consulted with flesh and blood how to second his desire or cloak his grant with the outside of a dangerous necessity He first counselled friendly then reprehended him Fatherly at last refused his consent absolutely Upon this King Henry grew furious put away his most pious and vertuous Lady Queen Katherine whose Angelical Sanctity and Dove like patience he always continued to honour when as he beheaded her assumed Rival Her disenthronement was Anna Bullens enstalment The marriage was celebrated with a divorce of our poor Country from the Church Appeals to Rome denied under pain of death The Popes Authority which had remained inviolable ever since we English were by its means converted utterly rejected nay the very name of Pope rased out of all the Books in England Monasteries and Religious Houses pulled down or robbed their Revenues given by their devout Founders to pious uses confiscare and consecrared to the Kings riotous Lust. Subscriptions forced to a new and till that time unheard of Church-Government a Secular Head of an Ecclesiastical Body they that would not subscribe disgraced or put to death Thus the Reformation was first set on foot and this lust of King Henry was so fruitful that it at once begot Tyranny Rapine the Reformation Adultery Protestancy at least the embrio of it Sacriledge Queen Elizabeth
and Schism And though the Doctor excuses the imputation of King Henries Sacriledge saying That Sacriledge is no more Schism then it is Adultery yet it is enough if he grant as he must That both his Sacriledge and his Schism were born of the same mother-occasion the Kings lust and so though the Doctor say That facies non omnibus una Yet I answer Nec diversa tamen qualem decet esse sororum their faces not the same Nor different yet as sisters well became Neither is this all to shew that the first occasion of the breach was not Conscience The King himself desired oftentimes afterwards a reconcilement which being not possible without revoking all he had done despair made him resolve Over shooes over boots to make the rupture still wider while he lived though at his death when it was no time to dally the care of his Soul now out-weighing the pleasure of his Body he with extream grief of heart repented him of his Schism By this one may see how justly the Doctor pretended Pag. 18 19 as an excuse of his Schism The care of their Conscience and the not-admitting any sin which the Church may oblige them to subscribe to whereas if the original of the breach be this as it most evidently is then I cannot conceive the Church obliged the ring leader of it to any sin in bidding him keep his own wife But if you pretend another which by the whole scope of this Chapter you seem not to do it will be found to have no nobler an extraction then the former onely perhaps the carnal sin in him may be changed into a spiritual one in you that is King Henries lust into your self-conceited pride and refractory disobedience which may indeed outâ—vy and excel him though not excuse you But perhaps your grounds which before absolved the Rebel Out law and Anabaptist will absolve him too by saying it was King Henries present perswasion that his wife was to be put away and then comes in the whole eighth Paragraph of the second Chapter to plead for the adulterous King thus Nay though the error be really on his side yet if the doctrines so proposed that he ought to keep his wife as the condition of Communion be indeed agreeable to truth but yet be really apprehended by him to whom they are thus proposed to be false and disagreeable it will even in that case be hard to affirm That that man may lawfully subscribe or Kâ—-Henry lawfully keep his wife contrary to his present perswasion Thus much for the first thing I undertook to shew that the original of this breach proceeded not from Conscience the second will also appear no less manifest That the progress and promoting of it was altogether as unconsciencious The second consideration which renders this Schism more inexcusable in the now Protestants is That when it first was brought into this Kingdom it was no free choice of the Ecclesiastical State which could the Doctor prove he would think it perhaps of some weight The King using all means both by perswasions and force to make men subscribe persecuting continually those that refused and putting to death many upon the same score among the rest those two Lights of our Nation for learning and piety Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas Moor most intimate with the King and in the sincerest loyalty addicted to him till their knowing conscienciousness made them refuse to subscribe lest they might at once prejudice Loyalty and Religion by a preposterous obedience But what need more proofs since the Doctor grants here Section five That it is easie to believe that nothing but the apprehension of dangers which hung over them by a Praemunire incurred by them could probably have inclined the Clergy to subscribe thus he Though blowing and supping both at once he striaght-way addes That the Reasons or Arguments offered in debate were the causes as in all charity we are to judge of their decision Whereas I cannot see any reason why the Doctor should be so uncharitably charitable as to judge them not onely weak but to have been hardned and lost for the future all feeling of Conscience for their lapse since the fore-going fear bears the weight of a strong prejudice against the clear Verdict of Conscience and the future recantation of all the Bishops who then subscribed in Queen Maries time and their persisting in Queen Elizabeths days rather evidences That the curb being removed which misled them it was Conscience which made them return and strength and force of Conscience which made them afterwards persevere in the same judgment The third thing I am to prove and make the Doctor confess is That there was a breach made which denominates them truly and properly Schismaticks The first part is so clear that it needs no proof since the very deed bears witness For first your self acknowledge you renounced the Authority of the Roman See and cast it out of this Iland Which Authority yet you must acknowledge likewise That all the whole World which before the breach you held the onely good Christians submitted to as sacred and descended from Christs institution which Authority was known and held both by them and your selves till then to be over both you and your King in Ecclesiastical matters and had enjoyed the possession of that Claim confessedly eight or nine hundred years nor this upon title onely of a Patriarchate your Conversion or Grant of Kings but of an Universal Primacy and Pastorship over the whole Church by Christs grant and before your conversion was dream'd on Lastly The Government of the Church thus established was held by all those whom before that day you accounted the onely Faithful as of Divine Right and a point of Faith and that the denial of it twisted into one crime both Heresie and Schism A manifest breach then and Schism there was made by you first from that supreme Ecclesiastical Governor under whom both you and your Ancestors till that time had ever-continued and next from the Universality of Christians by erecting to your selves a new structure of Church-Government which all the vast Congregation of these from whom you broke detested and abhorred as Sacrilegious and Schismatical Singularity therefore most clearly manifested it self in your new Church-Government and if singularity be opposite to a community of which Communion is the Form it follows evidently That your singularity destroyed Communion and so was formally Schism Again if multitudes of things of the same species cannot be made one otherwise then by the unity of order it follows That what dissolves this order dissolves the unity and so causes a breach or Schism But you manifestly unravelled all the then constituted order of Gods Church by casting out of the Kingdom the supreme Authority in which as in a knot the other several ends were sum'd and tied up therefore you also unravelled and broke asunder its unity This then as it is acknowledged by you so in it self is
Communication with any Church either true or even fals For first at your dawning or rather twilight in King Henry's dayes for your progress hath not been to noon-day-light but to midnight you had nothing at all to doe with any other Church in Christendom Since that time though you have indeed a kinde of Communication with some few of your fellow Schismaticks yet if well examin'd it is negative onely Faction against Rome initiates you into so much friendship as to converse with the Calvinists sometimes to call them Brethren somtimes to be merry with your doublejug Companions in the Synod of Dort of whose drunken and beastly behaviour wallowing worse then swine in their own vomits I have heard a Pillar of your own Church scandalously complain having too much spirit of draff forced by them into his queaâ—ier stomach Though I say you may thus communicate with them in eating and drinking in which acts * before you made All Communion consist yet any other positive tie and obligation either with them or any others to conserve you in Communion so as you may be said to make up one Ecclesiastically-politick Body united by some inviolable Order such an obligation I say could never be discover'd between you and any other Church good or bad true or fals The Greek Church holding almost all that we doe and scarce two points with you which are against us as your friend Alexander Rosse hath particularly told you The Lutherans hold much more with us in opposition to you than with you in opposition to us The Calâ—inists are excluded by the most understanding Protestants from their Church since they admit not the Government of Bishops held by the others to be of Divine Right nor the Protestants Fundamental or as the Doctor calls it The Bottome of the Foundation of the Reformation to wit that the King is Head of the Church The 39. Articles which as the Kings Supremacy is the Imprimis so these are all the Items of the Protestants Faith obtain not a total admission from any Church but themselves nor amongst themselves neither their great Champion Mr. Chillingworth rejecting them at his pleasure Nor is there any visible form of Government uniting them all together but they are forced to fly sencelesly to an invisible one either of onely Christ in Heaven or onely Charity pretences to gull the easie vulgar not to satisfie prudent men who know that the Church though it be a spiritual Common-wealth breeding up Soules to a state of a future Eternity yet while it is here on earth it is a Common-wealth of Christians visibly comporting or discomporting themselves in order to Christs laws of which the Church is the Keeper and Conserver and therefore it must have visible Governours without expecting a miraculous recourse to Christ in Heaven to resolve emergent difficulties or to cherish and punish her weldemeaned or misdemeaned subjects But for a more full demonstration that the Church of England has no perfect Communion with the Greek Lutheran Calvinist or any other Church I refer the Reader to the learned Exomologâ—sis or Motives c. of Mr. Cressy a late Protestant Dean but now Religious of the ancient and holy Order of St. Benet where the Doctor may also read among other controversies excellently treated the charge of Schism sufficiently prov'd against his Church Perhaps the Doctor will alledge that their positive Communion with other reformed Churches consists in the acknowledgment of Gods Word and the holding to it But I would ask him whether he means they agree in the Name of Gods Word or in the Thing or Sence of it If in the Name onely then all that have the title of Christians that is all Hereticks and Schismaticks in the World are of one Communion nothing being more rife in their mouths and pens than wrong alledged testimonies out of the Bible the bare name then is not sufficient it must be the Thing that is the sence and meaning of Gods Word in which he must make their positive Communion consist but since they have no one certain known and commonly acknowledged Rule by which to interpret Gods word and fetch out the true inward sence lurking in the imperspicuous bark of the letter it followes they have no positive way or meanes to communicate in the same sence and therefore no positive unity can be grounded on that pretence And it would be as sencelesse to object that they communicate at least in fundamentals found in Gods word since the Scripture not telling them they cannot tell certainly themselves which points are fundamentals which not all being there with equal authority and like tenour delivered and proposed to them And if we should goe to reason to know what are fundamentals surely reason would give it that the rules of Faith and Government are more fundamental than all the rest No positive communion therefore have they with our Church as little with their fellow schismaticks it being the nature of boughs separated not to grow together into one tree after they have once lost connection with the root Where they are cut off there they lie and though for a short time they retain some verdure and some little moystning sap counterfeiting life that is as much Religion as serves them to talk of God and Christ yet after a while they wither roâ— and molder away into an hundred atomes of dust or else if they chance to be gathered up or taken away sooner they serve for nothing but to be thrown into the fire SECT 10. That the reforming Protestants were and are guilty of the formal part of Schism THat you have made then a material breach or schism is as evident as fact and reason can make the most manifest thing to the clearest understanding The formality of schism comes next to be enquired into which consists in its injustifiablenesse or doing it without just causes or motives which consequently unlesse you can shew you must unavoidably be concluded formal schismaticks And though the testimonies of the Fathers which you formerly produced affirming that there can be no just cause given of schism render all further proof unnecessary yet to make this matter stil more manifest I desire Mr. Hammond in the Churches behalfe that he would give me leave to summon him to the Bar of Reason that we may see what he can answer for himselfe and his friends whose defence here he undertakes Cath. Do not you know that the Church in whose bowels your ancestors til K. Henry began the breach were bred had no other form of Government then that which now is of the Bishop of Rome held chiefe Pastour of the universal Church and supreme in Ecclesiastical matters and that til the breach was made you held as sacred and were under that government Dr. I pretend not to deny it for this is the very authority I told you in my 7. c. 5. sect we cast out of this Island Besides Kings can erect and remove Patriarchates at
pleasure Cath. Do not answer Dr. de Cepis when we ask de alliis you might have sav'd your labour in a great part of your Book wher you slipt the question and digrest to Patriarchs Our question is not of Patriarchal but of Papal Authority and so we ask you whether it be not evident that this Papal Authority was in actual possession of this Islands subjection at the time of the breach and so had been for 900 yeers ever since Pope Gregory sent Austin the Monk to convert the Saxons forefathers to us English Dr. I know no Authority he ever had in England more than Patriarchal Cath. Do not you know that the Popes Authority then acknowledged in England was held above Patriarchs and therefore more then Patriarchal and that you grant you cast out of this Island not a Patriarchal Authority only but a Papal one Dr. True but the pretended Authority was usurpt and not according to Gods Ordinance Cath. How know you it was usurpt wil bare probabilities be a sufficient ground to renounce an authority so long establisht in possession held sacred ever before and to which your selves were till then subject wil I say a meer probability that perhaps that authority was not sacred but unjust serve your turn to excuse you from disobedience in renouncing it Dr. No Sir we have evidence it was unjust and that the Church we were brought up in erred in that point of beliefe Cath. This evidence of yours must either be a Demonstration from natural reason or an undeniable testimony either divine or humane Dr. I doe not pretend natural demonstration but we have evident testimonies against it Cath. Can you manifest that those testimonies and the like may be said of Arguments from natural reason have not been answer'd twenty times over by our Writers and in case they have can you shew that you have replied upon all their answers so as they bear now no probable shew of satisfaction if not you cannot call your testimony an evidence Next are you certain that our Authors cannot produce an hundred testimonies for one of yours or at least an equal number and those seeming as expresly or more to make for us as yours doe for you If so your testimonies are at least counterpois'd with the weight of ours and so cannot make an evidence but hang only in the hovering scales of a doubtfull probability Thirdly are your testimonies such that they are of greater weight than the judgment of all the Catholick world holding the Pope Head of the Church as our greatest adversaries the Puritans say for twelve hundred years or as you say two hundred years later are they of that weight to over-ballance so far-extended so numerous and so learned an Authority If not they are so far from evidences that they fall short of being probabilities Dr. I see you will hold to no authority but that of your own Church and this is a method of security beyond all Amulets Cath. And good reason too unless you can shew us a greater Dr. A greater we have id est Gods word out of which we can evidence that your Church we were brought up in was fallible yea en'd in many points and particularly in this of the Popes Supremacy Cath. You cannot with any face pretend an evidence from Scripture against us unless you can evidence a greater faculty and meanes to interpret those Oracles in you or your first Reformers than there was in the Church you left And since these meanes are either supernatural light or natural parts and knowledge you must evidence an advantage above us in one of these And first as for natural knowledg you cannot be ignorant that at the time of the breach the Catholick Church had an hundred Doctors for one of yours what an unproportion'd advantage then must that number swel to if all the learned men in the many foregoing ages without any one of your Sect then unheard of to counterballance them be heaped into one Bulk and those too such as your selves must acknowledge far more eminent in Schoole Divinity study in Scripture and all kinde of Learning both divine and humane than any of King Henry's fellow-reformers were ever deemed or if you stiffely deny an advantage we as stiffely pretend it and so leave it a drawn maâ—ch for what concernes their parts yet you your selves must giant you are incomparably overpower'd in the numerous multitude of them In natural meanes then of interpreting Scripture our extraordinary advantage over your Reformers makes it an impudence in them to pretend their advantage evident It must be then an evidence of a supernatural faculty in interpreting Gods word better than their Superiours and Pastors which can make them pretend to a clear knowledge thence that our Church hath err'd But since no supernatural thing that is latent and invisible in it selfe can be evidenced or acknowledged to be such without some exteriour token exceeding the power and skill of nature as are miracles gift of tongues c. none of which you can lay claim to it followes that neither your reforming forefathers nor your selves can produce evidence of any better meanes either supernatural or natural to interpret Scriptures than the Church you left therefore no evidence that they more truely interpreted it than that Church therfore none thence that the Church err'd therefore none from divine Authority and no humane authority being found comparable to that of the Church it followes they can have as little evidence from thence Evident therefore it is that you neither had nor now have any evidence at all but onely a probable perhaps that the Church erred which being too sleight a Reason to shake off subjection to an authority so long establish't and held as a point of Faith by the present and past world consequently they who upon no better grounds should shake it off are guilty of a most rash and grievous disobedience and Schism But your selfe here confesse Sect. 5. that you cast this Authority out of this Island without power to evidence that that Church erred as hath been shewn What excuse then can you alledge to clear your Father-Reformers and your selfe from a most irrational and selfe-condemning Schism nay more heresie Dr. At least they had such proofes as they thought evident and bred in them a present perswasion that the Church hath erred which they could not in conscience goe against and therefore it was hard dealing to punish them with Excommunication for proceeding conscientiously according to their present perswasion Cath. I doubt not but they might have a present perswasion that the Church hath err'd but I doubt much whether this present perswasion be sufficient to excuse them either from sin or punishment For this perswasion of theirs is either rational or irrational if rational a sufficient reason may be render'd why they deny'd so qualified a Government and reason it selfe telling us that no reason less than evidence is sufficient it would follow that evidence may
be rendred that the Government was injust ' which as you see could not Irrational therefore was that present perswasion of theirs and if so not sprung from reason therefore from unreasonable passion that is from vice therefore sinful and obnoxious to punishment as all other like perswasions are which make men think and act against their duties and obligations Besides all the Logick we have hitherto heard assures us nothing can convince the understanding but evidence and therefore men take so much paines about the moods and figures that the discourse may prove evident wherefore whatsoever assent comes not out of Evidence must come from our will and wilfulnesse and by consequence cannot be free from desert of punishment if it happen to be wrong and wrongfull Neither availes it to pretend invincible ignorance since no man living if free from a proud spirit can be so sottish as not to know that it is his obligation to obey his Superiors so long setled in the possession of their command till most open and undeniable Evidences and not seeming ones onely should discover that Authority null And if the obligation be of belief he must condemn the Churches judgment in not seeing the falsity of her doctrine and prefer his own before millions more learned who liv'd and dy'd in that faith which savours too strong of a self-conceited pride or else imagin so little sincerity left in the Church that all see and wilfully adhere to a known falshood but himselfe which is a plain sign of a rash and Pharisaical presumption And are not those punishable yet the Doctor would stroke such a fellow on the head and give him sugar plums for following his present perswasion and self-conceit which he nicknames conscience Nay he highly applauds his first Reformers whose conscience no doubt was tainted with the same leaven The Material Schism then which was manifestly your fact is made formal by your want of evidence that the doctrine was erroneous and consequently her Government violable Both which joyn'd together give you in plain termes your own name of flat proper and formal Schismaticks and entitle you to all the bed-roll of vices and curses which you hoarded up for your self and your friends in your first Chapter SECT 11. The Doctors argument that the Popes power in England was deriv'd under the Kings Concession refuted BUt it is now high time to returne to overlook the work who after the declaration of the matter of fact confesses no great hold can be taken from the freeness of the Clergy's determination and therefore the whole difficulty devolves to this one enquiry whether the Bishop of Rome were Supreme Head or Governour of the Church of England in the reign of King Henry the eighth That is we are come about again to the beginning of the Book But I am mistaken he tells us he hath largely disproved in his Chap. 4 5 6. all pretensions from St. Peters Supremacy and from Englands Conversion to whose particular answers I refer the Reader for full satisfaction and he has now invented a new ground of the Popes Supremacy in England to wit the voluntary Concession of our Kings What the Doctor meanes I cannot imagine Some particular priviledges and as I may say pious curtesies have out of a special respect been granted by our Kings to that See to whom they owe their first knowledge of Christ and his Law but these are not the thing in debate The right of Supreme Authority is our question now who ever held this to come from the Concession of our Kings Yet this ayr-beating Champion of Schism first fancies this to be our tenet and then beats it all to dirt He is as valiant as Sir Iohn Falstaff let him tell his own story and hee 'l make you beleeve he has kill'd eleven Enemies when but one opposed him We onely found the Popes Primacy upon his Succession to St. Peter This is the onely adversary-point the Doctor is to combate which he hath most weakly opposed with grosse mistakes palpable contradictions to Scripture and pinning all the words that made for his purpose to every testimony as hath been shew'd But to counterfeit a triumph he makes every trivial thing done either by or about the Pope to be the very ground of his Primacy and then falls to work and impugnes them as really as if he thought we held them The Pope cannot doe any good action or convert a Nation but that must be the ground of his Universal Pastorship over us and be impugned accordingly A beggerly penny cannot be given to the Pope by our Kings for pious uses and out of a gratefull obligation but the poore Peter-pence and such like petty grants must presently be the Popes Universal Authority given him by the Concession of our Kings and that as such must be impugned The Kings of England France c. cannot be said by G de Heimburgh to be free from swearing obedience to the Pope at their instalment an obligation peculiar to the Empire of Germany but presently the Doctor concludes hence an absolute power in our Princes I suppose he means in Ecclesiastical matters for in temporal none denies it so as now the very ceremony of swearing obedience to the Pope is become the very granting of the formal universal Pastorship and they that doe it not are concluded to be free from the Popes Jurisdiction though he knows well enough that the King of France who as he confesses performes no such ceremonious courtesie towards him acknowledg'd notwithstanding himselfe subject to him as the Head of Gods Church Lastly which he touches here againe he cannot read in some Authors that Kings de facto executed the erecting and removing of Patriarchates though the testimony doe not exclude the Churches fore ordering it but presently the Popes Universal Power must be supposed to be transdignifi'd into a private Patriarchate and as a Patriarchate impugned Thus nothing can come amiss to the Doctor Every argument he undertakes to manage is equally strong and unresistable A pot gun will serve him to batter downe the walls of Rome He was borne a Controvertist and it is an even wager whether hee be better in the gift of Use and Applicatioon or in the Art of Dispute and Consutation Next comes another Dilemma or forked Argument which though proceeding on the former false supposition needs no answer yet for the Readers recreation we will afford a glance First it is observable that he never brings this bug-bear Argument upon the stage but when he has made a Prologue for it of some forg'd supposition of his own and then the Thing in vertue of that acts and talkes through the vizard of a mistake and yet ere it comes to a Conclusion the Doctors weak reason cracks to make both ends meet The summe of it is this that The Authority of the Pope was either originally in our Kings so as they could lawfully grant it to the Pope or not if not then the grant
was invalid If it were then either the same power remaines still in the King to dispose of it to some other or else it does not remaine in him and then is his power diminish't and so the Act is againe invalid I answer the Authority of the Pope was never held by concession of our Kings in any other sence than this that our Kings as all other Christian Kings did yeelded him what they held as of Faith to be due to him that is Supremacy in Ecclesiastical matters and therefore that they not onely lawfully granted it but could not deny it except most unlawfully Therfore their act of yeelding to it was not invalid but very valid for what it was intended which was to expresse their obligation in deferring to the Head of the Church what was his due Wherefore he cannot dispose of it to any other or remove it since the Papacy which is the thing in question was never imagin'd at any private Kings disposal till Doctor Hammonds time Again his inference that if it were in the Kings Power the same Power remaines still in them to dispose of it is as groundless as the former for we see by experience that Kings often diminish their power by yeelding sometimes Forts sometimes an Island or Country to an over-powering enemy and yet that act of theirs held valid notwithstanding Then to prove this assertion as the fellow that put foure kinds of men that pray some that pray for others and not for themselves othersome for themselves not others some for themselves and others but some neither for themselves nor others or the Preacher upon the Text seek and you shall finde put four kinde of seekers some that seek and finde not others that finde and seek not others that both finde and seek but others that neither seek nor find So the Doctor tells us here that there are two sorts of gifts one that is so given that it is given another that is so given that it is kept with the giver that is not given And then brings for an instance this curious peece of Philosophy Thus the Sun communicates his beames and with them his warmth and influence and yet retaines all which it thus communicates and accordingly withdraweth them againe This Book as the Reader must conceive is the Doctors Enâ—yclopoedia encompassing at once the whole world of Sciences He hath before given us notice of Scriptures Fathers Councils History Law Greek Hebrew Grammar and Criticismes now he gives here a proof of Philosophy and knowledge of Nature and lets thee understand so strange a truth as no man unlesse he were out of his wits could imagine to wit that the very beames sent hither by the Sun are notwithstanding retain'd there still and therefore are in more far-distant places at the same time so granting that the ordinary course of Nature performes more in a creature than he will grant Gods omnipotency can work in the glorify'd body of our Lord Creator in the ever-blessed Sacrament Nay more he assures us that the Sun ACCORDINGLY withdraweth them again What he meanes by ACCORDINGLY in that place I cannot tell lesse can I understand how the Sun withdrawes his beames again I see indeed effects in Nature of warmth witnessing that they remain here incorporated in other bodies but I see no natural causes to bandy the Suns beames back to him much lesse pullyes and long strings in the Sun to withdraw them as the Doctor expresses it accordingly too But the Doctor had fram'd his observation from the accesse and recesse of the beames of a candle in his own eyes when he was drowsie and dreamt it seemes â—â—at night that the eye of Heav'n had the like faculty Your next parity from God Almighty shoots beyond the mark No bargain can be made with him by reason of his Universal Dominion over his creatures by which they may challenge a proprietary right to his gifts therefore none with Kings over their fellow-creatures that is something impious unless you had moderated the harsh-sounding expression Neither are we properly our own for so we might dispose of our own life at pleasure and the Book of your Donne holding selfe-murder lawful might pass as allowable whose wit knew better how to maintain a Paradox and with more plausible grounds then you doe your Faith But the truth is that God never takes away what he gives but is then said to take away any thing when he withholds his bountifull hand from a further bestowing it This supposed he tells us the King retaines yet the power granted to the Pope and so may dispose of it to a Bishop of his own and that the Kings power frees them from that obedience and cleares the whole businesse of Schism Alas what a weak reed you catch at to secure you from falling into the gulfe of Schism Huic ipst partono opus est quem defensorem paras Your Patron the King needs a Patron himselfe You should first evidence that the King might lawfully renounce the so long possessed so universally acknowledg'd authority over himselfe as well as his subjects in Ecclesiastical matters ere you lanch forth into such selfe-said and selfe-authoriz'd Conclusions otherwise to run widly forwards on your own seign'd and false suppositions first that his title of Universal Pastor comes by Concession of our Kings next that our Kings were not found subject to that Authority and thirdly which is yet higher that our Kings are over that Authority and can dispose of it at pleasure such voluntary talking as this I say is better for a Sermon to your good women where all Coine goes currant than for a controversie where no progress is allowable but what is already made good by undeniable testimonies and well-grounded Reasons He shuts up the Paragraph with talking of the Popes willingness to enlarge his Territory True Sir the Church is his Territory which he is dayly both willing and industrious to enlarge by converting barbarous Nations to Christs Faith as he did once ours amongst the rest for which you are so thanklesly disacknowledging This Territory we hope and pray may be enlarged beyond the envy of all maligners till all the Ends of the Earth and plenitudo Gentium the whole company of the Gentiles shall see the salvation of God Among whom the Church that Heaven-planted Tree which beares folia ad saâ—itatem Gentium is even at this day spreading out her sacred branches and the Authority of her Head goes on not intensively but extensively enlarging while your poor broken bough rootless and sapless shrinks dayly into nothing resolved already into its first principles of a few seditious disobedient spirits whom at first common hatred and then fragrant factiousness against the Church held together now that being a far off and such a common interest not so necessary the spirit of Schism kept in a while by humane policy begins at length to work and like a swelling torrent scornes to be held in by a weak bank
no doubt bid God give his foes a rap Then then it was that that second Solomon Robert Wisedom inspired questionless from Heaven warbled out that melodious and exquisit hymn which with a sweet twang closes up the book of Psalmes Preserve us Lord by thy dear word From Turk and Pope defend us Lord. And the rest of that devout piece able to ravish any Christian heart to hear it These and such other rarities of Reformation were then added as harmonious Epithalamiums to this under-age Bride-Church to celebrate her espousals or marriage with her Infant-Head After this the Dr. treates of the Reformation made under Queen Elizabeth in his 15. Paragraph consisting of five or six lines on either side a long Parenthesis which Parenthesis tells us partly strange news that Queens as well as Kings have according to our Laws Regal Power partly open fictions that this plenitude of power is as well in Sacred as Civil affairs and that they have this by the Constitution of our Monarchy Whereas he cannot but know there had been many a Monarch in England ere their Schismatical Laws were made which first allowed the King a plenitude of power in sacred matters In the next place he touches the ordination of their new created Bishops evidenced as he saith out of the records to have been performed according to the ancient Canons by the imposition of the hands of the Bishops Yet this modest evidencing Record durst never shew its head for about fifty years notwithstanding the outcries made by Catholicks against the pretended ordinations of Protestant Bishops and strong presumptions to the contrary till at length when the memory of that present age was past which might discountenance that pretence and argue it of impudence out steps a new old Record assuring us that they were regularly ordained And this is the firmest Basis the Protestant Ministry or Bishops have to witnesse that they have any more Authority to preach then an Anabaptistical Zelot whose profession is perhaps a Weaver his Calling his own Intrusion his Pulpit a Tub and his Diocesse a Conventicle But suppose you had a material Mission from the hands of Catholick Bishops and that Mr. Mason had vindicated you in this point yet can either Mr. Mason or any else even pretend to manifest that those Catholick Bishops gave you a Mission that is sent and Authorised you to preach Protestant Doctrines or could do it in case they would having no such power from the Church from whom they have all their power Unlesse you evidence this both Mr. Mason and Dr. Hammond may as well say nothing For since they gave you no such authority as you make use of that is to preach against the formerly received Faith nor sent you any such errand as you now declare and preach it follows that whatever you do to prejudice and extinguish that doctrine to propagate which they meant your Mission is done onely upon your own head without any authority but your own selfe-assumed licentiousnesse to talk and say what you list not derived from the consecrated hands of your Catholick Ordainers but from your own unhallowed schismatical hearts But Mr. Dr. is always afraid where no fear is answering at large here a supposed objection of ours against Q. Elizabeth for unchairing some Bishops and installing others But alas I am more courteous to the Queen than the Doctor imagines and think no worse of her but onely that in that fact she did after kind for supposing her once the Head of Schisinaticks and Chief-Bishopesse of their Church I see no reason but she should depose Bishops Catholikely affected and install heretical ones and in a word she and her Bishops voâ—e and act whatever they thought good and I cannot tell what should hinder them since the now rejected Authority of Gods Church could not All the superstructures of the Reformation then which the Doctor so often and so largely in this Chapter hath shown to be done regularly I grant him to have been done as regularly as his own heart could wish or mans wit imagine for the Authority of the Church being schismatically renounced and the infallible rule of Faith which could onely oblige men to an unanimous beleefe being broken and rejected these grounds I say being layed I yeeld that the superstructure not onely of their heresie but even of Lutheranism Zuinglianism Calvinism Arminianism Puritanism Brownism Socinianism Presbyterianism Anabaptism with those of Quakers and Adamites but even of Turcism and Atheism were all very regular orderly rational and connatural superstructures upon the forelaid foundations The ruine of all Faith must needs accompany the renouncing of Certainty Yet I had forgot to let the Reader see how the Doctor excuses the Queen for devesting some Bishops of their dignity and his excuse is because those Bishops refused to take the oath of Supremacy concluding that therefore she dealt justly in devesting those Bishops which thus refused to secure her Government or to approve their fidelity to their lawfull Soveraign By which one may see the Doctor knowes not the difference between the oath of Allegiance and the oath of Supremacy The oath of Allegiance or fidelity was instituted expresly for that purpose what needed she then presse them to take the oath of Supremacy to approvâ— their Fidelity or Allegiance cannot one be a true subject to his King by acknowledging him his Liege Soveraign unless he will take his oath he is Head of the Church As if neither any of the former Kings of England nor any of the Catholike Princes that now are or ever have been had so much as one true subject because none of them takes the Oath of Supremacy What followes is onely a narration how the Schism went on and the rent was made worse At length he shuts up this Chapter by pronouncing an absolute Negative of their guiltiness of Schism from this one evidence that all was done by those to whom and to whom onely the rightful power legally pertained to wit the King and Bishops of this Nation So as the King must be Head of the Church that 's concluded hoagh all the world say and swear the contrary though himselfe have not brought one express word to prove it Nay more he hath EVIDENCE it is no Schism because the King and the Bishops voted it as if whatsoever the King and Bishops vote let it be what schismatical doctrine it will though Socianism and Turcism it must not be schismatical so blind is prejudice that it can neither see without its own spectacles nor beyond its own narrow limits The Doctor discourses all this Chapter long as if he made account all the world were comprised in one poor corner of it England like the home-bred fellow that thought the Sun set at the next town if a King or Queen here with a few Bishops partly out of feare partly out of favour some out of malice and contradicted by others decree any thing it makes the case irrefragable
in the Doctors judgment Not considering which yet any prudent man would that the whole world whom before they accounted onely Catholick and in which had been hundreds of Kings Queens and Bishops nay perhaps thousands for one of theirs had ever condemned by their contrary beliefe these Votes and Acts to bee scismatical and heretical Besides this King before the breach acknowledging himselfe subject to that Authority in Ecclesiastical matters as all Catholick Kings now doe and as all his Ancestor-Kings ever since Englands conversion had done it must be as I have told you often most apparent evidence and such as greater cannot be imagin'd which may warrant him to exalâ— himselfe above the Popes Authority so long setled in possession and that in those very things in which before he was acknowledgedly under him especially the contrary verdict of such an universality as I have before mention'd with its weight not to be counterpois'd preponderating and mightily prejudicing any pretence of Evidence Again if the thing were evident how happened it that no Christian King till the time of King Henry the eighth and in his time none but he should discern this clear evidence unless perhaps though they say love is blind yet his desire to Anna Bullen did open his eyes in such miraculous manner that he saw by the heavenly light of her bright star-like eyes that the Pope was Antichrist his Authority unlawful and himselfe who was then found under it in Ecclesiastical matters to be indeed above it in case the Popes spiritual power should cross his carnal pleasure To conclude my answer to this Chapter I would ask two things of Mr. Doctor one is in case a King should have broke from the Church and brought in Schism into his Country whether it could probably be perform'd in any other manner than the very method by which their Reformation was introduced The other is whether the Reformation be yet perfectly compleat or rather that Queen Elizabeth swept the Church indeed but left the dust sluttishly behind the door if it be not yet compleat I would gladly know how far this Reformation and Receding from Rome may proceed and what be the certain stints and limits of this rowling Sea which it may not pass For I see no reason in the Doctors grounds but if the secular powers think it convenient they may reform still end wayes as they please nay even if they list deny Christ to be God an acute Socinian will solve very plausibly all the objections out of Scripture and produce allegations which I doubt not he will make far stronger than the Doctor doth his against the Pope nor will there want some obscure testimonies out of Antiquity and express ones from the Arrian Hereticks to evince the Tenet if this then were voted by a King some of his Bishops and a Parliament the Doctor must not disobey and hold Christs Divinity since the thing was done by them to whom as the Doctor sayes rightfull power legally pertain'd They having no infallibility then may happen to vote such a thing and the Doctor having no infallible certainty to the contrary ought not recede from his lawful Superiours so as upon these grounds all religion may be reformed into Atheism and the infallibility of the Church once denied the temporal Power hath no reason to have his rightful authority stinted but at pleasure to make Reformation upon Reformation from generation to generation per omnia saecula saeculorum THE THIRD PART Containing the answers to the foure last Chapters of Dr. Hammonds Schism SECT 1. Doctor Hammonds second sort of Schism and his pretence that they retain the way to preserve Unity in Faith refuted MAster Hammond hath at length finish't his greatest task and done preaching of the first species of Schism as it is an offence against the subordination which Christ hath by himselfe and his Apostles setled in the Church and is now arrived to the second sort as it signifies an offence against the mutual unity peace and charity which Christ left among his Disciples This Schism against Charity for methods sake as he tells us he divides into three species The first is a Schism in the Doctrine or Traditions a departure from the unity of the Faith once delivered to the Saints from the institutions of Christ of the Apostles and of the Universal Church of the first and purest times whether in Government or practises c. Where first this methodical Dr. makes Faith and Charity all one putting his Schism against Faith for the first species of his Schism against mutual Charity Next he ranks also the rejecting Christs Institution of Government under this second species of Schism against Charity which most evidently was the first General Head of Schism hitherto treated of that is of the Offence against Subordination setled by Christ in the Church For Christ could not settle such a subordination in the Church but he must at the same time institute the Government of the Church since there can be neither subordination without Government nor Government without subordination So as now the Schism against Government is come to be one of the Schisms against mutual Charity and to mend the matter comprehended under the same Head with Schism against Faith Was ever such a confusion heard of And yet all this is done saith the Doctor for methods sake But to proceed the second species of his Schism against mutual Charity is an offence against external peace and Communion Ecclesiastical Where I find as much blundering as formerly For these words must either signifie an Offence against Superiors and Governors of the Church and then it is again co-incident both with the first general Head of Schism which dissolves the subordination of the Churches subjects and also with the first particular species of Schism against mutual Charity which according to the Doctors method included a breach from the Government instituted by Christ. Or else they must signifie an Offence against the mutually and equally-due correspondence and Charity which one fellow-member ought to have to another and then it falls to be the same with his third and last species which he calls The want of that Charity which is due from every Christian to every Christian. So that if the jumbling all the Bells together in a confused disorder may be called musical then the Doctors division may be styled methodical After this he subdivides this first species to wit Schism against Faith into A departure from those Rules appointed by Christ for the founding and upholding truth in the Church and into The asserting particular doctrins contrary to Christs and the Apostolical pure Churches establishment But first he cleares himselfe of the former of these by answering our suggestion as he calls it that in casting out the Authority of the Bishop of Rome they have cast off the Head of all Unity To which he tells us the answer is obvious First that the Bishop of Rome was never appointed by
that the Scripture grants to S. Peter some Primacy of Order or Dignity If so Mr. Hammond then for any thing you know it may be a Primacy of Iurisdiction And it stands onely upon the certainty of your and our interpretation of Scripture whether it signifie such a Primacy or no. Neither indeed could it be any other if any hold may be taken from your words For S. Peter as you grant and as the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Simon the first of the Apostles plainly evidence had some kind of Primacy then given him and if it were then given him he then had it that is he had it in our Saviours life time but you told us before that S. Iohn had the dignity of place which is the same with Primacy of Order before all others in Christs life time even before S. Peter himself The Primacy then which S. Peter had in Christs life time must be some other Primacy and what Primacy could this be but the Primacy of Iurisdiction Again if by this Primacy he allows S. Peter he means such a precedency as hath any effect or efficacity in the Church according to the nature and degree of a Primacy this is all the substance of the Popes Authority and all that is held by us as of Faith but if he means by Primacy there a meerely inefficacious and dry Presidency and Precedency of Order such as is with us the walking on the right hand or sitting first at a Table without any superiority more than a courteous deference of the rest then the Doctor must imagine our Blessed Saviour had no better thing to do when he made S. Peter the first but to take order for feare the good Apostles should fall to complement who should sit go or speak in the first place and consequently this tenet being an Act of our Saviours register'd in Scripture must bee a courteous point of Faith obliging all the Apostles under pain of damnation to be civil and make a leg to S. Peter In the next paragraph the Doctor is full of feares and jealousies and makes a great doubt that the subjection of this Church to the Authority of the Bishop of Rome will never be likely to tend to the Unity of the whole And why think you so Mr. Doctor doe you not find evidently that the Church before Luther and K Henry renounced the said Authority enjoy'd most perfect peace and tranquillity as those who are under that government doe most blessedly now and on the contrary that after that Authority was rejected nothing has succeeded the rejecters but perpetual turmoiles schisms divisions and subdivisions into Sects and daily mutations in Faith and Government as far as the temporal sword did not hinder them Is not this as evident as all History and even our very eyes can witnesse a truth Lastly doe not the present distractions you now groan under awake you to see that the source of all your misery springs from the leaking Cistern of Schism you have digg'd for your selves Did your Ancestours find so little Unity under the Government of the Roman Catholike Church or have you found such a constant Unity since you left it that you can presume the re-admitting that Government is never likely to tend to Unity Yet you cannot think otherwise unlesse all other Churches of Christians paid that subjection too Do you your obligation why should their backwardnes in their duties make you deny yours Besides whom doe you call Christians all that cry Lord Lord that is professe the name of Christ but deny the onely certain Rule to come to the knowledge of his Law such as were the Gnosticks Carpocratians Donatists Socinians and all the heresies that ever arose since the infancy of the Church or doe you mean by the word Christians onely those qui faciunt voluntatem Patris doe the will of our heavenly Father that is all that hear the Church or have a certain and common Rule to know what Christs Law is if so all these acknowledge subjection to the Head-Bishop of Rome never denied by any but those who at the same time they denied it cast themselves out of the Church refusing to hear her You say the Eastern Churches had not acknowledg'd it ere your departure Admit they had not can their pattern warrant you more than it can warrant the Arrians Nestorians Eutychians c. unless you be certain they did well in it They rejected it indeed and for their reward were by all the Christian world till you falling into the same fault began to call them Brothers and by all your Ancestours justly held and called Schismaticks Yet when they were in their right mood they admitted it as much as any Roman-Catholike as appeares in the Acts of the Florentine Council to which they subscribed nay even when they were disgusted and refused Unity they acknowledged the power of the Bishop of Rome as appeares by a testimony of Gerson cited by your friend Bishop Bramhall against himselfe in his just vindication of the Church of England p. 101. which witnesses that the Greeks departed from the then-Pope with these words Wee acknowledge thy power we cannot satisfie your covetousness live by your selves His second doubt is that the Bishop of Rome is not able to administer that vast Province I wonder how he did of old and why he may not do the same again as well as formerly But the Dr. calls it a politick probleme whether hee can or no and would have it judged by those who are by God entrusted with the Flock Id est saith he by the Princes the nursing Fathers in every Church It is indeed a politick probleme that is a question concerning Government but since it concernes Government Ecclesiastical it falls not under the scanning of temporal Politicians The Christian Common-wealth would be brought to a pretty pass if the Government of Gods Church so long acknowledged as left by Christ and continued in the Church 300. yeares by their own confession ere there were any Christian Princes should anew be call'd into question by humane policy But these two words of Scripture Nursing Fathers make it plain to the Doctor satisfy'd with any thing himself fancies that the Government and Jurisdiction over the Church belongs to Kings as if to nurse cherish and foster were to rule order govern and command or as if Ioseph who was Foster-father to our Saviour was as good as or the same with God Almighty who was his true Father And I wonder where this Doctor ever read that our Saviour entrusted the Government of his Church and Ecclesiastical affaires to any but the Apostles Ecclesiastical persons or that any held Nero the Heathen Emperour to have right and title o be Head of the Church Again if our Saviour left that authority with his Apostles I would gladly know by what new Orders from Christ it came to be transfer'd from their Successors into the hands of secular Princes But the Doctor has
by his former words brought the matter at length to a finall decision The question is whether it be sitting the Pope should rule over the whole Church which none denies but a few schismatical Princes he comes to take up the controversie and tels us those very Princes for all Catholike Princes have already determined the contrary must decide the truth of the businesse As if an Umpire being to arbitrate a quarrel about the Authority of the Vice-chancellour of Oxford opposed by the Major his Competitor should take up the businesse by saying it was a politick probleme belonging to the Government of the University and so ought to bee decided by none but the Major SECT 2. Of Dr. Hammonds evasion in recurring to the first 300. yeares and concerning the humble and docible temper of his Church HAving thus cleared the Protestants for renouncing the Rules of Faith which was part of his well-divided Schism against mutual Charity as far as it concernes Faith he is come to treat next of the second part of that first species of mutual Charity which concernes Faith to wit of the particular doctrines in Faith in which he sayes he doubts not but to approve himselfe to any that will judge of the Apostolical Doctrines and Traditions by the Scriptures and consent of the first 300. years or the four General Councils c. which is a very plausible and pithy piece of shuffling expressing a plain tergiversation from approving himselfe willing to do any thing but to wave and shift the Question For first we must judge of Apostolical doctrines and Traditions by Scripture I ask are those doctrines clearer exprest in Scripture than they are in the depositories of the Churches by which he told us before they were brought down to us or no If they be clearer in Scripture what needed we those depositives at all and to what end does that Apostolical Providence serve If not how can we judge of them by Scripture which speakes more obscurely of them Again since we must judge of Apostolical doctrines by Scripture what rules does the Doctor give us to settle our judgement when things are cleare in Scripture and when not for we see many men who govern themselves by fancy think that evident which another judges to have no apparence of truth And for my part I even despair of bringing clearer proofes from Scripture than that S. Paul converted Iewes and S. Peter Gentiles which yet you saw could give the nice Doctor no satisfaction Another tergiversation is his standing onely to the first 300. yeares where the Authors being scarce by reason of the Churches obscure state under persecution and hardly any occasion to speak of the late risen controversies between us he hopes no great matter can be concluded against him thence where scarce any thing is found that concernes our quarrel As if being to fight a Duel with an Adversary he would stand to the appointment of no place and time but onely in a wildernesse and a dark night where they might be sure never to meet or being met never see one another No better is his standing to the four first Councils onely which were all call'd upon other occasions and so touch not any point of debate between us except onely on the by and therefore obscurely the best testimonies out of which have been already objected by him and solved by us But why onely foure since all Councils are of equal Authority there being nothing found to authorize the first foure but was found in the fifth sixth c. So that this challenge of the Drs. is all one as if an Arian Heretick would be judged by no place in Scripture whether Christ were God or no but out of the Proverbs of Solomon where nothing is found concerning that point dilating much upon the praises of Solomon and what a most pure and uncorrupted piece of Scripture that Book is but producing no Evidence in the world why the other Books of Scripture were not as pure and sacred as it But the Doctor escapes not so he has engag'd himselfe by this as he thought secure grant further than he imagines His allowing of foure Councils to examine his Faith by is an acknowledgement that he admits the Authority of Councils as sacred and binding He must either then shew EVIDENCE that the 5th Council erred or that the Church and her Pastors had declined from the faith of the foregoing Age or else he is obliged to accept it and so the rest under the penalty of forfeiting the title of a good Christian for no lesse blot will fall to his share who rejects an Authority held sacred by himselfe without most clear Evidence of a just exception As he who acknowledges the Authority of Parliament by admitting the Acts of some as valid Lawes is bound by the very acknowledgment of some to accept all the rest unless an open Evidence convince their Votes not to have been free or that there was some other known defect in the managing of them Onely in this latter a far lesse Evidence will serve the turn the Authority of Parliament being but humane whereas the other was held and acknowledged to bee sacred But indeed the truth is hee accepts not even of those four because he thinks Councils to be of Authority but because he thinks there is no doctrine in these against his Fancy or Faith or if any he hopes he can make a shift to shuffle it off In the mean time gaining a very great patronage and countenance to his cause in pleading it relies on such highly authoriz'd supports No candider than the former is his evasion of being judged by the purest Ages which in reality signifies onely such times wherein nothing was treated against those heresies which afterwards cling'd together to compound Protestantism This is manifest by his admitting 300. yeares next after Christ no more by which he excludes the fourth and fifth Ages yet at pleasure admits the fourth General Council held about the middle of the fifth Age. So that the whole Church must be imagin'd to be first pure then impure afterwards pure again according as the supposition of it suits best for the Doctors purpose If none of their particular heresies were rife and therefore not condemned in the first obsure 300. years presently the Dr. cries up those Ages for pure But the Church in the next Age having now got rid of persecution became pester'd with home-bred factions and heresies which made the Fathers of the Church take pen in hand vigorously confuting them and some of the Doctors tenets among the rest Hereupon the Doctor presently decries that Age as impure popish corrupted But then in the middle of the fifth age was call'd a Council which chanced to treat nothing professedly of the errours afterwards embraced by the Protestants nay more had a certain passage in it which I have before cleared serving them to blunder in against the Pope Immediately that Council was sacred and that age
Sacraments Government nor any thing though never so sacred left by our Saviour hath found any security SECT 3. An examination of some common notes produced by Dr. Hammond to particularize his Clients to bee no Schismaticks HIs 9th Ch. undertakes to clear his Church from the 2d sort of his Schism against mutual â—â—arity to wit from that Schism which is against extern Peace or Communion Ecclesiastical And first he alledges for his plea that they have retain'd the right form of Government c. So that now Schism against Subordination or Government for they are all one which was the first general Head of Schism and also comprehended under the first species of the second Head as appeares C. 8. S. 2. is by the Doctors accurate method come to be under the second species also of the same second General Head Which is all one as if dividing vivens into Sensitive and Insensitive and then subdividing the Genus of Sensitive into the two Species of Rational and Irrational or Man and Beast he should first treat of Insensitive the first Genus and that done fall in hand with Sensitive the second and then under each Species of that returne to treat professedly of Insensitive again that is to speak of Trees Shrubs and Herbs when he should speak of men and creatures endued with sence Surely Doctor Hammond is more methodical in his Sermons otherwise the World must needs look upon him as another S. Iohn Baptist because hee preaches in a Wilderness But let us follow him through all his Mazes distinguish't by no orderly path but what his own inconstant and desultorious track makes First then he tells us that they retaiâ— the Form of Government in and under which the Apostles â—ounded Ecclesiastical Assemblies or Communion viz. that of the Bishop and his inferioâ— Officers in every Church As if the Arian Hereticks who denied Christ to be God and almost all heresies that ever broke from Gods Church did not retain afterwards the Authority of their own Bishops But what availed it either them or you but to the greater danger of damnation if you adhered to those Bishops who had rejected the Authority of their former Superiours and taught you doctrines contrary to the Order of Gods Church without whose order much lesse against it they had no Authority to teach at all Again you tell us of one piece of your Government that of Bishops constituted indeed by the Apostles but you tell us not of the main hinge of your Churches Government which is of the King being its Head and Supreme in Ecclesiastical matters This is the sum and top of your Churches Government put us not off with an odd end of it This is that for substituting which in stead of the Ecclesiastical Head you rejected wee charge you of Schism and breach of Communion Ecclesiastical for in so doing you cut Gods Church into as many single headed and consequently diverse-bodied and disparate Congregations as there are Kingdoms in Christendome Shew us that this your Novelty in Government was practised by the Apostles in their Assemblies or instituted by them or their Blessed Master and then you will say something to the point Remember your purest times of the first 300. yeares shew us that all that time the Church was ordered by the Emperours Presidency or that this Government was instituted by Christ and his Apostles If you cannot then tell us how comes it to be held now as a chief point of Faith You may not in reason think to uphold your self your by testimonies out of the following ages unles you wil disavow your own grounds for those ages were as you say all impure Lay your hand then on your heart Mr. Hammond and tell us in good sadness if you be not gravell'd in your own doctrine while you maintain this new Lay Ecclesiastical Government His second plea is that as they maintain the Order of Bishops so they submit to the exercise of it acknowledging the Authority of those Governors In answer to which no new thing is to be said this being the very same with the former only First changed into Secondly For the obeying submitting to and acknowledging the due Authority of Governours is the very formal maintaining and accepting the Government which was his first branch So as this is another orderly production of the Drs. methodical Head which vents it selfe in first secondly thirdly c. upon all occasions though both his first second and third bee the selfe-same formal thing His third plea is that they observe the circumstances necessary to the assembling themselves for publick worship First that of place Churches Secondly that of time the Lords day primitive Festivals As if all Schismaticks in the World doe not meet at some set times and in some appointed and set places Thirdly Formes of prayer and praises almost all out of our Mass and Breviary Celebration of Sacraments onely five of them being quite abolish't and three quarters of the sixth Sacramentals Copes and Surplisses which you might by the same principles call rags of Rome Preaching against Christ and his Church such doctrine as none ever sent you or your first Fore-fathers to preach Cathechising infecting and imbuing tender and easie minds with your tainted doctrine Fourthly that of Ceremonies such as the practice of the Primitive Church hath sent down recommended to us Pray by whom did she send them down and recommend them to you Examine wel and you shall find that the same authority recommended to you many more as from her though you only accepted of what you thought convenient Lastly that of discipline to binde all to these performances Doubtlesse all Sects in the world impose some obligation upon their subjects to keep them together else they could not bee a Sect. Yet that your tie either to that or any thing else concerning Government is as slack as may be is manifest out of the slender provision made against Schism according to the Protestant grounds See Part 3. Sect. 1. as I have shewn in my answer to the fore-going Chapter Neither are you beholding to your doctrine for any discipline sufficient to hold you together in Unity a professed fallibility is too weak for that but to the secular Power the threat of whose sword held you in awe for a while but as soon as that Power was dissolv'd your slack-sinew'd Church which no tie either in Reason or Conscience held together bewrayed its composition and like the statue seen by Nabuchadonosor fell all to pieces It were not amiss ere I leave these three pleas already mentioned to take a second survey of them that the Reader may visibly perceive how less than nothing this Doctor hath said either to his or indeed any purpose To make this discovery sincere we must mark his intent and scope in this Chapter which is to free or clear their Church from the breach of Commmunion Ecclesiastical which he makes to consist in such and such things Now
alter old ones then you must either grant our Church in the fifteenth age to have been no Church which you dare not affirm for fear of spoiling your own mission or else grant that you were more bound to hold the Ceremonies recommended by her than those which descended from the Primitive times Since our Church could better see what was expedient for her present circumstances than the Primitive could foresee so long before hand what was likely to be convenient for future ages SECT 4. Of Doctor Hammonds charitablenesse in admitting all to his Communion and our pretended Uncharitablenesse for refusing to goe to their Assemblies IN the fifth place the Doctor professes like a good charitable man as hee is that they exclude no Christian from their Communion that will either filially or fraternally embrace it with them No truly to give your Religion its due it is a wonderful civil and courteous profession and admits all the old condemned Heresies into Communion provided they but professe Christ whatever points else they deny it matters not Nay it is sufficient if they call themselves Christians though all the world else calls them Hereticks yet your kind hearted Church cannot but friendly entertain them You keep open house for all commers The doctrine of Oportet haereses esse There must bee heresies is changed by your boon behaviour into It is impossible there should be heresies For whereas the world heretofore understood those to be Hereticks who held the letter of the Scripture and some points of Christianity but deny'd others which were the tenets of the Universal Church at that time you have now quite chang'd the former notion and think none to bee excluded from Communion that is none to be Hereticks that bear the name of a Christian so as though they deny all points of Christs doctrine yet professe Christs name and the outward letter of the Scripture let them come and welcome Anabaptists Brownists Presbyterians Quakers Carpocratians perhaps Arians nay even Simon Magus himselfe all these sew'd together only with the aiery sound of the word Christian will serve for broken-ware pieces to patch up Doctor Hammonds motley Church For since they hold to his grounds that is to professe Christs name and the letter of the Scripture he cannot in any reason admit some and refuse the rest Again the Doctor is willing to admit any that will filially or fraternally embrace communion with them that is all that will be either under them or at least not above them but is loath to admit communion with any that will paternally communicate with them that is be over and govern them No take heed of that as much courtesie as you please but not a dram of humility obedience nor subjection to Superiours These peace-preserving virtues would quite break the neck of Schism and Faction If there bee any such over-powering Authority though never so long setled in possession over the Countrey and acknowledged and beleeved by all Christians in never so many ages to bee of divine institution yet presently the spirit of Schism in the first place endeavours to break asunder the bonds of this paternal communion to pluck it down to the ground and cast it out of the Island You are willing you say to admit all to your Assemblies that acknowledge the foundation laid by Christ and his Apostles You love mightily to talk plausible words in the aire and in general as if you made account your Readers should bee all fooles to search no further than the empty sound of your universal sayings not applying them to the thing in question Good Mr. Doctor tell me what it is to acknowledge the foundation laid by Christ and his Apostles Is it to acknowledge Scripture All heresies in the world fly onely to it and make it their armour-house to oppugn Christ and his Church Arians and Socinians most of all and yet they can deny Christs Godhead So as by this means indeed you will have store of communicants Is it the true sence of the Scripture then truth being one and falshood manifold if their interpretation be different from yours both cannot bee true and consequently both acknowledge not the foundation left by Christ for falsifying his word cannot be that foundation Again if this bee the foundation left by Christ you must have some certain and known Rule to come by the true sence of the Scriptures else you cannot be certainly assured who acknowledge this foundation and so admit rashly to your Communion you know not whom Is it perhaps the true sence of Scripture but restrain'd to fundamentals still the same difficulty remaines unlesse you have some certain Rule to distinguish and sort out the Essentials from points of less importance to talk much of fundamentals and never tell us which are they is but a shuffling trick of a mountebank and very unbecomming a grave Divine Or is this Foundation perhaps the solid sence of Christs law written and planted in the tables of mens hearts by the Apostles and thence by a welllink't chain of Universal Tradition derived to our times If so you must admit onely Catholikes and exclude all the rest since onely they hold this foundation Or rather indeed since you deny this way of bringing down Faith to bee sufficient which Catholikes hold as a certain and infallible Rule it followes that if you will goe conseqently to your own grounds you must not admit them neither since this is not the by-you acknowledged foundation laid by Christ and his Apostles It remaines then that you are willing to admit all those that shall say they have the Foundation laid by Christ and his Apostles and then you cannot doubt but to have the brotherly fellowship of all hereticks and schismaticks in the world that have been are or shall bee since all pretend strongly in general termes to acknowledge that Foundation Nor is hee lesse devoutly charitable in the following words that they earnestly desire to bee admitted to the like freedome of external Communion with all the members of all other Christian Churches as oft as occasion makes us capable of that blessing of the one heart and the one lip This it is to bee so inured to a drowsy sounding vein of preaching Quodlibets till a man hath humm'd and drumm'd away all reason out of his head Speak sence man and let your pretended Charity come clad in Truth or else I must justly suspect it to bee nothing but Pharisaical hypocrisie I hate contradictions though told me in never so pious a tone Was it ever heard that any Catholike deny'd you Communion if you were capable of that blessing of one heart the same interiour beleefe and one lip the same exteriour profession To what purpose then are those seemingly pious words produc'd Leave off paying us with this hollow language empty of sence render your selves capable of that blessing in your actions renounce and repent your disobedience to your so-long-acknowledg'd Superiours Repeal your schismatical ordinances against
Christs Church Re-acknowledge a certainty in Faith which is now brought by your professed uncertainty to the very brink of Atheism Return to the never-erring Rule of Faith the voice of the Church which held you for eight or nine hundred yeares in the firm and undivided Unity of the same beleef Doe I say this efficaciously and then you shall be freely cordially and with open armes received into Communion by them who would willingly though they lovingly reprehend you to make you reflect on your errours not onely spend empty words but even lay down their lives to procure your Salvation Sixthly the Doctor charges us that the only hindrances which obstruct external Communion are wholly imputable to us which hee proves first because the Pope excommunicated all those Catholikes that went to the Protestant Assemblies in the tenth year of Queen Elizabeth And was it not well done think you This has ever been the constant practice of Gods Church to enjoyn the Faithful to abstain from the Communion of those who maintained a different that is an heretical doctrine The simpler sort of Catholikes were gull'd by you to beleeve you had onely turn'd into English what was in Latine before and therefore out of an unwariness went to your Churches which lately had been theirs and not out of love to your new reformed doctrine Till at length the Father of the Church thought fit to disabusethem from the errour into which your false perswasions had led them and forbid them the same room who were not of the same company And I wonder how it can stand with reason or sence that holding you hereticks we should let the poore people goe to your Assemblies to bee taught false doctrine Nay even Nature it selfe seems to interdict such an unnatural commerce that Catholikes who held the Bishop of Rome's Supremacy of Divine Institution Mass and the rest of our doctrines from which you receded sacred should goe to your Congregations to hear the first rail'd against as Antichristian the second as Idolatrous and a blasphemous fiction the rest as erroneous and pernicious deceits Blame not then Mr. Hammond Nature Reason and the Pope for hindering this confusion which you call external Communion but rather blame your selves for introducing new doctrines whence result such incompossible and inconsistent practices Yet the Doctor tells us that from this prohibition proceeding from the Popes Excommunication it is visibly consequent that they were cast out and cannot be said to separate Sure it must bee a temper of shame above brazen to tell us this now in the tenth year of Queen Elizabeth whereas himself hath laid out knot by knot how the Unity of the Church in which they were formerly was unloosed or rather violently broken in the time of King Henry the eigthth King Edwards Protectour and all the first ten yeares of this Queen To which though enough and more then enough has been said yet I will once more presse it home to the Dr. and then leave him to his wordish shifts and the Reader to be his Judge You and your King also were once members of the Roman Catholike Church and subject to the Authority of the Pope This Authority you confess C. 7. S. 5. you cast out of this Island But a rejection of an Authority is a recession from that Authority therefore you are guilty of a recession from the formerly-acknowledg'd Authority So far for Government Now for Doctrines and Practices You once beleeved and practised as the Roman Catholike Church to wit when you were in her That you reformed you confess and C. 7. S. 14. call your reformations recessions from the doctrines and practises of Rome A recession therefore was made by you both from the former Government as also the former doctrines and practises But a recession is a voluntary departure as plain sence evidences therefore you made a voluntary departure from the formerly-acknowledg'd government doctrines and practises of Rome Now then to tell us so long after and after so large a narrative confession of your own to the contrary that you departed not but were cast out as if nothing had been done by you till the tenth year of Queen Elizabeth is such a piece of forgetfulness as could onely be peculiar to Dr. Hammond But I perceive the Doctor thinks there is no Schism till the Pope have actually excommunicated as if there might not bee a criminal departure from the former Faith its Rule Sacraments and the Churches Government before the Church comes with her spiritual rod of Excommunication to whip the Offender From all these I have already manifested that you had divided and by so doing made your selves uncapable of Communion with the former Faithful Upon this it was necessary to separate the Faithful from you in divine offices and therefore both just and fitting to excommunicate you as well to punish you who were long before schismaticks for your crime as to warn the sounder flock to abstain from your contagious communion Neither can you blame us for excommunicating you whom your own grounds here delivered clear in that point from any imputation of Rigour Your selfe confessing that you rejected Roman Catholikeâ— from your assemblies and censur'd them upon theiâ— avowed contumacy against the orders of your Church Let us know then why our Church might not doe the same and with much more reason to you who were once members of her and whose recession from her orders and contumaciouâ— persisting still your selfe will witness shew us I say why she had not as great Authority â—ver those who were once hers as yourâ— claimes over those who were never yours oâ— if you cannot then grant you were justlâ— excommunicated by her once and remain aâ— justly excommunicated still until you disavoâ— that contumacy which obstructs your Communion His second Reason why wee hindred the external Communion as he calls that confusion is our imposing such conditions on our Communion that they cannot subscribe without sinning or seeming to sin against conscience And what sin or seeming to sin is this think you the beleefe of Doctrines or Approbations of Practises which they neither beleeve nor approve of The question is not Mr. Doctor whether you beleeve or approve of them or no but whether it were your own sinful pride of understanding which made you and your first reformers disbelieve all their teachers and think themselves understood more of Gods mind than all the world before them and yet when they had done acknowledg'd themselves but fallible in their contrary beleefe that is uncertain whether they or their teachers were in the right and is not this a wise ground for any schollar to disbelieve his Master or any child to disobey his father and mother If it were pride which made you think otherwise as truly no man knowing the grounds you build your reformation upon and how the greatest and most learned authority this world could shew opposed you can in reason judge any other then it
is not innocency in you nor a sufficient excuse for your not-Communion that you doe not believe these doctrines but it is your sin and the root of all your misery and schism that you correct not that vice and so leave off that erroneous judgement which misleades you from the truth usurping the office of your spiritual guide the holy Catholick Church Free the soul then first of that vice and then you 'l stand in no need to offer violence to your minds nor be afraid to make an unsound confession the feare of which you pretend for your excuse But of this I have said already more then was needful Yet Mr. Hamond is ready to contest and maintain his negatives by grounds that all good Christians ought to be concluded by I hear again a sound of words in general hovering in the aire But what are those grounds in particular by which he will contest his doctrines he tells us in his last Paragrapraph that they are proofes from Scriptures or the first Writers those of the first 300. yeares or the four General Councils But let us ask first by whose interpretation of Scripture he will contest his Negatives hee will tell you by his own or some few others like himselfe which not professing themselves Infallible he must tell you also hee is uncertain whether it be right or no And is not this a wise ground to contest his Negatives by against the positive doctrine of Gods Church But let us ask whether he thinks our Saviours command to hear the Church bee a ground by which all Christians ought to bee concluded Perhaps after much shaking his head between loathness to reject our Saviours words and unwillingnesse to grant any thing to the Church he will answer yes the Church of the first 300. yeares Then ask him again who taught all good Christians that they should hear the Church of the first 300. years onely and then stop their ears against her perpetually for the future hee is gravell'd Again ask him whether those first three century of yeares treat of all late sprung Negatives Hee must tell you No they do not treat all our nâ—w controversies but he will praise them notwithstanding to put you â—ft your question and tell you they are the purest and most primitive times Ask him next why hee recurs to such obscure times and stark dumb in our present controversies and hee must answer if he will speak out candidly that durum telum necessitas necessity drives him to adhere to them All the following Ages except that holy year in which was celebrated the Council of Chalcedon inveighing most impurely against his new doctrine Thus the Dr. chuses obscurity for the Patron of his cause which can bee no Sun to reveal truth though it may serve for a dark hole to hide falshood Neither can hee from his grounds pretend otherwise to contest his Negatives than by meer negative arguments so as the inference must bee this Our points of doctrine were not contradicted by the Writers of the first 300. yeares therefore they are true This is the utmost he can conclude thence whereas to make this illation valid he must first prove that all truths about Faith were debated in those dayes next that all which was debated then is come downe certainly to our times Neither of which he will bee able to manifest Will not any judicious Reader think such Rules as these like to binde all good Christians to bee concluded by them Dr. Hammonds interpretations of Scripture Councils and Fathers that say nothing or else very litle on the by concerning the question And lastly negative arguments To omit that the Writers of those his primitive times speak as much and as efficaciously against the Doctors cause as is imaginable their present circumstances should invite or give them occasion To end then this Chapter with the Doctors words something alter'd these pitiful evasions and unwarrantable shifts put together and applied to this matter will manifestly charge him with an apparent guilt of this second branch of the second sort of Schism SECT 5. Our pretended Uncharitableness in judging and despising others retorted upon the Objecters IN his tenth Chapter hee gives us a short Sermon concerning the third species of Schism which is against mutual charity divided by him into two Heads of judging and despising others both which hee very charitably disclaimes in behalfe of their Church and would very courteously present us with them But to omit his pious formalities and come to grounds Doe you think it is uncharitablenesse to judge as our Saviour judg'd that is to beleeve what he said to be true Our Sauiours judgment is that if any one doe not heare the Church let him be to thee as a heathen or a publican If therefore we see with our eyes that you acknowledge no Church to be heard and yet proceed not to such harsh termes as our Saviour himselfe hath laid down to us I hope you will impute it to us as a great moderation and not as uncharitablenesse Now that you did not hear the Church when you broke from ours and much lesse since is most evident For your first Reformers most manifestly receded from the former acknowledged Government Rule of Faith Sacraments Doctrines and practises of the Roman Catholike Church of which you were then a member as hath been shewn and acknowledg'd and she teaching them the contrary then it could not bee said they heard her when they began their Reformations Neither did they joyn themselves with any other Church whom they might bee said to hear nor was this doctrin taught by the very Church of England it selfe in the former age since their Forefathers held and taught them a contrary beleefe Evident then it is that those few who in the time of King Henry the 8th adhered to his lust-born Reformation neither communicated with nor heard any Church at all but began a new Church a new Government a new Faith and new practises both without and against the command of that Church which both they and their Forefathers ever since that Church first taught them Christianity held to be the onely true Christian Congregation How can we then seeing evidently they heard not any Church judge otherwise then that our Saviours words are true that is that they are in a sad condition and you much fadder who have not returned whence they receded but followed their steps and have made the breach wider unlesse perhaps you think or hope the crime is lesse because there is now a greater multiplicity of offenders which harden one another to obstiâ—acy by their number Next is it uncharitablenesse not to renounce that Rule of Faith in which clearly is founded â—ll the Certainty we have of Christs Law and all the hopes of our salvation to wit the inerrability of our Church beleeved by our Ancestors ever since Christs doctrine first dawn'd to the dark world Yet this which witnesses your doctrine heretical wee must
absolutely renounce ere wee can deem you other than Hereticks Either wee must judge the highest Tribunal in the world upon whose living voice wee build all Faith and true sence of the Scriptures to have lyed that is wee must judge our highest Superiours Pastours Teachers and Church to be erroneous in Faith and heretical or else we must judge you our equals at most and till you out-law'd your selves her subjects to be truly criminal and rightly condemned Thirdly Unus Deus una Fides unum Baptisma there is but one Faith as there is but one God That your Faith and ours cannot be one is most evident All our whole Church condemning yours as heretical and yours when the humour takes them as much detesting ours as erroneous Nay the most dreadful sacrifice of our Saviours Body and Bloud our Holy of Holies reviled and abhorred by your Church as a blasphemous fiction and pernicioâ—â— imposture Both our Faiths therefore cannot be one and consequently one of them is none but erreur against Faith which if firmly adhered to as it is must be Heresie either your Faith then or ours under penalty of maintaining a contradiction must necessarily bee held as heresie Now comes this Doctor and accuses us for the most uncharitable men in the world because wee will not judge our own Faith heretical and so free theirs Remember our Saviours words Mr. Dr. He that believes not is judg'd already Joyn this to Una Fides and our contradicting one another in most important points of Faith and you must necessarily conclude that neither of us if hee bee certain he beleeves and has that one Faith can make conscience of judging the other since the other is judged already in receding from or not having the true Faith Nay if he judge him not to be already judged he must judge himself to be in the same state of a self-judg'd unbeleever or rather on the contrary hee must make conscience of not judging him for such but by a colloguing piece of courtesie draw him into eternal perdition and himselfe follow him for his uncharitable connivence Thus you see the Dr. never meddles with any point but he blunders and destroys all the reason that ever concerns it Neither is it Charity but partly fear of most open shame partly ignorance of any grounds or what belongs to a Church or a Government which makes him not judge us to bee both Hereticks and Schismaticks since one of us must be such and he has a good mind to give us these new Titles whom hee very angrily here calls his vaunting enemies But as the former body of our Church out of which their few Reformers receded standing and remaining still one and the same together with that plain and common notion that a tree is not said to be broken from a branch but the branch from the tree-leaves them so much light of apprehension as not to dare to call us schismaticks so the acknowledg'd antiquity of our doctrine ever persisting the self-same and the confessed innovation of theirs frights them though unwillingly from styling us Innovators and Hereticks Fourthly our judging you may indeed seem to bee errour but malice and uncharitablenesse it cannot For since the grounds of our Faith which necessarily oblige us to judge thus of you and all such were held by us as firmly before you were ever dream'd of as at present you cannot object that wee invented new grounds to conclude so hardly of you in our thoughts nor that they were purposely and maliciously aymed at your then-unhatch'd Congregation So as you may if you please pretend that all the grounds on which wee hold our Faith Gods word and its true Interpretation are erroneous and therefore that our so judging of you necessarily springing from those Grounds is an errour yet malice or uncharitablenesse you cannot call it since wee cannot hinder the consequence from following without denying the grounds which infer it that is without denying the certainty and truth of all our Faith And me thinkes the zeal of our Missionaries to reduce others from the ill state wee conceive them in with daily hazarding and often laying down actually their lives for that end both in this Countrey and many others should transfer the charge of Uncharitablenesse to your colder partâ— for sure it can bee no lesse to judge them uncharitable who so readily and willingly lay down their dearest lives to redeem the soules of their very enemies and persecutors from a beleeved danger Yet this is the Doctors Goliah's sword as he calls it wherewith he threatned to give a fatall wound Though in truth I can discern no more edge in it than in a Beetle S. Cyprians testimony of Neminem damnantes neminem a communione nostrâ arcentes Condemning no man nor driving any from his Communion was spoken of himselfe of his own temper towards the rest of Gods Church acknowledged by himselfe to be such and that in the point of Rebaptization of Infants which though held stiffely by himselfe yet his charity so moderated his zeal that hee exprest his indifferency in those alledged words Neither had he reason to deny Communion to other Catholikes for a private opinion onely till the Church had interpos'd her Authority But where did the Doctor read either in S. Cyprian or any other Father that they admitted to their Communion those who had been condemned as Schismaticks and Hereticks by all the Churches in communion with the See of Rome as were the Protestants Unlesse hee can shew this hee abuses most absurdly that holy and learned Father by seeming to make him allow a promiscons admission of all Sects let them be what they please which savours more of Doctor Hammonds spirit who would have all come to his Church thas call themselves Christians than of Blessed S. Cyprians who knew better what belonged to Church-order and discipline But I thought there was one of the Drs mysteries in it when I saw the words of the Father alledged to an end so inâ—onsonant to his Doctrine without quotation of any place Book Chapter or Epistle But Mr. Hammond will have the thing between us to bee onely differences in opinion and indeed if that supposition that the onely ground of all our Faith in which consists our main difference were but an Opinion as on his part it is not I see no reason why either hee or I should trouble our selves to write Books in defence of an Opinionative Faith it were better in that case to eat drink shake hands and be merry nor trouble our selves with thinking whether there bee a Heav'n or no which wee can never come the ground of Faith being but an Opinion to any certain knowledge of In the last place of his first Part of this Schism hee tells us we beg the question in calling them Schismaticks because they deny it and offer to prove the contrary Certainly Mr. Hammond has been so long in the Pulpit that hee has forgot the fashion of
the Universities where there is no disputation but the one affirmes and the other denies and the Defendant holds his Conclusion for true till the Opponent proves the contrary without being judged to incur the fault of begging the question Besides to what dark holes you run for clear proofes we have already shewn and till you can shew us a greater Authority to acquit you than is the Churches Tribunal which condemned you your denying it will but double the fault not clear it especially since the material fact of Schism that is dividing from the persons with whom you formerly communicated cannot bee deny'd however you may pretend the intention or cause of it to be doubtful or obscure Ere I leave this first part of judging otherâ—â— I desire the Reader to fancy in his own minde as perfect a Schismatick as can bee imagin'd and therfore deservedly cast out by the Church which done let him read this Doctors tenth Chapter and hee shall easily perceive that hee has not brought one word for himselfe which the other justly-condemned schismatick may not with as good reason make use of So easily it is discoverable by the manner of weapon the Dr. wears whose side he is on and whose banner he fights under His second charge of Schism against mutual Charity is that we despise and set at nought the Brother Good Brother Doctor tell mee how we despise you We pity you indeed seeing the calamities you are fallen into by your former fault as also to see you persist still obstinately blind in the midst of your punishment But despise you wee doe not Yet you conclude the cause by the effect that is our casting you out of the Church and therefore say the guilt lies on our side EUGE QUANTI EST SAPERE Let us put the demonstration a posteriori in form and you shall see the invincibleness of it They who cast others out of the Church despise them and are guilty of schism against Charity But the Roman Church cast us out of the Church Therefore they despise us and are guilty of schism against Charity By which account no Church can condemn any one of schism but shee must bee a schismatick her selfe whereas wee did not cast them out but upon their avowed contumacy against the orders of our Church which the Doctor himselfe holds as a reason sufficient for the Protestant to excommunicate Catholikes Where you see the first Proposition can onely be sustained by making this shameless assertion good that no man can cast another out of the Church but he must despise him and consequently bee guilty of unchartiableness and schism But the Doctor argues as if a Rebel should confess at large that indeed he rejected the Authority of the Supreme Magistrate and receded from the former Lawes and Customes of the Common-wealth yet notwithstanding they must not punish him and his company or if they doe they are guilty of faction sedition dissention and despising their fellowes What King now could bee so hard-hearted as to punish a Rebel defending himself with such a wise solid and rational plea The Doctor confess'd that they rejected the Authority of the Pope formerly acknowledg'd to bee Supreme that they receded from the doctrines and practises of Rome of which Church they were a little before members and subjects and when he has done tells this Church it must not punish them nor excommunicate them or if she doe she is guilty of schism uncharitableness of despising and setting at nought the Brother But pray Mr. Doctor what schism is it after you had run away from the Church ever since King Henry fell in love to tell you in the tenth year of Queen Elixabeth when she saw you would not mend but grew daily worse and worse that she could no longer forbear to punish your pertinacious disobedience After this the Doctor crouds together a great company of advantages of our Religion with which wee pre-possesse our subjects though the Doctor mistakes in some and which hee sayes are so many reasons why they doe not set us at nought and despise us First the advantage of our education True indeed we are taught to obey our Superiors and hear our Pastors Secondly the prescribed credulity to all that the Church shall propose Good Mr. Dr whom should the Faithful beleeve in telling them the sence of Gods word if not the Church such pitiful guessing Southsayers as you Are not our Saviours words Hear the Church and I am with you ever till the end of the world plaine enough and sufficient to secure their credulity to such a Heav'n-assisted-Mistress And indeed how can you think those who cannot employ sufficient time to study out their Faith should be otherwise instructed than by Credulity Look whether your Proselytes doe not rely even upon your private Authority so natural and necessary is it there should bee an Authority to governe weak people Thirdly the doctrine of infallibility That is wee tell them Faith is certain and hath certain grounds a grievous accusation Fourthly the shutting up the Scriptures in an unknown Languge That is taking order that the unlearned nor unstable pervert them not to their own damnation Fifthly the impossibility that the multitude should search or examine Tradition with their own eyes That is the Doctor is utterly ignorant what Tradition is Is it such an impossible matter for the meanest person that hath age enough to know what doctrine was held by Christians ten yeares agoe or for them that liv'd ten yeares agoe to know what was held 20 years since and so forth Especially Faith not being a meer speculation but shewing it selfe in practise which proclames that heavenly law of Grace so openly that all must see it except such as neither have no eyes or wilfully shut them This Sir is the main mystery of Tradition which you imagin'd wee kept reserved like the Ark of the Testament and Mose's Tables from the sight of the people Sixthly The prosperous estate of the Roman Church and the persecutions and calamities of yours I see wee are in some sence beholding to our good fortune or your misfortune for your chariritablenesse But you complain for nothing what persecution suffer you in England in comparison of the Catholikes What Laws make it Treason to become a Protestant as they do to bee reconciled to the Catholike Religion What Oaths are impos'd on Protestants to renounce their Faith under pain of high Treason and forfeiture of their Estates as in those of Supremacy and Abjuration against Catholikes Read over the large Volume of Penal Statutes made in the dayes of your Dominion and you shall find that Catholikes can neither be married nor baptiz'd nor taught at home nor sent abroad nor maintain'd by their parents while they live nor buried when they dye without incurring the danger of a Premunire or some other severe penalty In all these I am confident your kind of Protestancy never endured the least punishment but a light cross is enough
in Bishops and Presbyters rightly ordained and multitudes rightly baptized none of which have fallen off from their profession Where the last words are most certainly true if he means that none of those who yet stand have as yet fallen off which I conceive is his meaning for all these who have not stood have fal'n off which are enow to shew of what mettal their Church was made and whether more have fal'n or stood let the Doctor judge But as for the rest of his selfe-congratulation it is a miserable piece of self flattery and which his own grounds quite discountenance For if a Church be a Congregation of the Faithful and Faith as S. Paul argues comes by hearing hearing from preaching preaching from mission or being sent which mission is an Act of Iurisdiction it follows that if their Bishops and Presbyters have now no Iurisdiction then the Protestants have neither lawful mission preaching hearing faith nor consequently Church Now that they can claim no Iurisdiction followes out of their own grounds for when we urge them upon what Authority they cast off the former Ecclesiastical Superior governing Gods Church in chief they run for their defence to the secular Power to which they attribute supreme Iurisdiction in matters Ecclesiastical within this Island It is acknowledg'd saith the Dr. C. 7. S. 2. that the Papal Power in Ecclesiastical Affaires was both by Acts of Convocation of the Clergy and of Parliament cast out of this Kingdome Thus you see he recurs to a power meerly secular in the Parliament for renouncing and abolishing a spiritual power and Jurisdiction held before greater than ever the Protestant Prelacy was imagin'd Meerly secular I say for the Doctor confesses here that it is easie to believe that nothing but the apprehension of dangers which hung over them could probably have inclined the Clergy to that their first Act And how great influence this apprehension of danger might have over the secular part of the Parliament is easie to be determined since they saw the gravest Patriot in the Kingdome in danger of death for holding against the Kings new pretended Title and many others for the same respect most cruelly persecuted A Parliament therefore meerly of Seculars and those such as can in no wise be presum'd free was held by you of sufficient Authority to renounce a Jurisdiction deemed formerly much higher and known to bee almost ten times longer setled in possession than your Prelacy I see not therefore why a secular power should not bee in your grounds sufficient to abolish a jurisdiction which onely leaned and relied on a secular support But what was done in King Henry's dayes being disannul'd again by both the spiritual and secular power in Queen Maries Reign must necessarily bee held of you invalid if you will goe consequently to your own grounds Let us then examine the resurrection of your Church by a Parliament held in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth In which Parliament to omit the small title the Queen had to the Crown being born of a second bedfellow whilst King Henry's former Wife was yet alive and declared illegitimate both by the whole Parliament and her own Fathers Act were wanting the spiritual Lords the Bishops who were for their Religion kept at that time in prison For which reason when a Quere was raised about the beginning of the late long Parliament whether Acts made without Bishops were valid it is said to have been resolved affirmatively upon this ground because otherwise the Protestant Religion voted by a Parliament in which was no Bishops would be invalid also I see not then what great advantages could be in that Parliament to Vote out the greater Authority of the Pope or give your new-made Bishops ordained God knowes how Iurisdiction but the same may be pretended by a succeeding Parliament to deprive them and set up a new Form of their own Certain it is that you acknowledge the Secular Power for the Source and first Fountain of your Iurisdiction Since then the present Secular Power has put a stop to your father Ordination and disannul'd your former Iurisdiction your own grounds conclude you de facto no Church for if you have no Iurisdiction you can have no influence of power over the Layity and so no spiritual Common wealth made up of Bishop as Head and Pastour and of the Layity as body and flock And as for the present this general suspension should we say no more of your Ecclesiastical power makes you de facto no Church so in time the very inward right it selfe which you pretend may be justly extinguish't For since your Jurisdiction confessedly depends on the secular Authority it followes if this be suspended or abolish't that must needs share in the same fate Now all the world agrees that not onely the possession of a secular power may be interrupted by force but the Right it selfe in time be absolutely lost and the new Government however at first introduc't be at length purged of its original blemishes into a clear and unquestionable Title In which case certainly your Church would be no more visible in England than it is now at Geneva Which sufficiently differences your condition from that of the Primitive Christians or the present English Catholikes they claiming a Jurisdiction underived from the secular power In vain therefore would it be to tell us their Character remains and therfore they are stil Bishops and Presbyters since the character can only entitle them to a name the thing being gone to wit their power of Iurisdiction and consequently their Mission For if they have no Authority to teach and preach more than the Layity they are level'd into an equal pitch with them so as now they cannot bee said to bee a body but a company of mutually distracted parts not an orderly Church or Congregation but a rude and indigested Chaos of Confusion It is not then Mr. Doctor your serving God in private Families which wee object to you for being an invisible Church which you run upon in your 5. Sect. but that which your self confesse here that Now all Order Form Bishops and Liturgy is thrown out of your Church together It is your want of Pastoral and Episcopal Authority which makes us conclude you no Church Yet so good is your Logick that in the next paragraph you think though Bishops be abolish't yet in case this come not through your fault it cannot be charged against you so as though all Prelacy and Superiority be taken away that is though there be none that have power to preach and teach and all be reduc'd into an equally-level'd Anarchy yet as long as it happens not through your fault yen are still a Church As if Doctor Hammond should say though his body were cut into millions of incoherent Atomes yet as long as this happens not through his fault it is still a well-ordered Body ID EST it is still Hammond The parts of Gods Church are compacted into a
Whole by Order and as much depend upon Spiritual Superiours having power to teach and preach Christs Law as the Common-wealth doth on Secular Magistrates to preserve their temporal Lawes and govern according to them without this order the Whole is dissolved the Body is lost the Church is gone Doubtless Mr. Doctor it is not the fault or choice of the present Protestants that they are thus bassled and persecuted which yet you have spent this whole Chapter except onely the first Paragraph to prove so needs no such great and large disproose to manifest that that which is so much against mens wills should bee their Choice and Crime Yet wee may justly impute your Churches ruine to the sandiness of her foundation which being the Authority of the secular Governors must render her liable to change as often as the unconstant wind of temporal circumstances shall alter the former Government or as oft as the former Government yet remaining shall see it necessary for the present peace or conveniences of the Common wealth to introduce or admit the more prevailing sway of a new Religion But I foresee that the Doctor to avoid this objection will cling in with us and call the Antichristian and Idolatrous Romanists their dear Brethren and tell them they acknowledge their Iurisdiction and Mission to come from them desiring them not to reject them now in their greatest necessity but let them seem to have an Authority deriv'd from the Apostles by their meanes proffering that they in courteons recompence will acknowledge Rome to bee a true Church This indeed is ordinary with them but yet as frivolous still as the former For the Authority which our Church could give you was onely to teach and preach Catholike Doctrine and ordain others to doe the same to govern the Catholike flock and to preserve them in the anciently received Unity of Faith The Authority to doe these could come indeed from us and so if any who pretend to have received Iurisdiction from us continue to execute and govern themselves by that Commission so far they are warranted by the former Authorization but if they went beyond their Commission nay more acted quite contrary to their Commission I wonder what Iurisdiction or Mission they can pretend as derived from us Our question then is of such a power as your Bishops pretend to and exercised that is of bearing the Ensign of a Squadron of the Churches Enemies Preaching an opposite Doctrine to the Church which you pretend to have impower'd you and ordaining others to doe the same Evident it is that the Roman Catholike Church which is the only spiritual power you can think to have any Iurisdiction or Mission from never gave you this Authority wherefore it must come to you from the meer secular Power on this Power therfore is built all the Authority you have to act as Protestants or in order to the Protestant Church and consequently the whole building of your Church was erected onely and solely upon this uncertain and sandy foundation This made Mr. Hooker one of the best and perhaps the most prudent Writer of all that profession affirm of their Church that it was not likely to continue more than fourscore years nor could he judge otherwise seeing it bear evidently the Principles of corruption and mutability in its very constitution to wit the materia prima of a secular Basis which continually exposed it to a mortality as the formes of Government should have their ever-limited period and discovering the professors and Governours of it to bee none of those to whom our Saviour promised his perpetual assistance to the end of the world How much happier then would you be if leaving this fleeting and unbodied shadow you would return and unite your selves to the Catholike Church Which enjoying this promise from our Saviour of an indefectible perpetuity not onely experiences the certain faithfulness of that promise in a large continuance of 1600. yeares but also sees with Evidence perhaps more than scientifical that the walls of this Hierusalem are built upon such strong foundations that the Church and the Authority and Jurisdiction of her Governours can never fail or decay since they rely not on the slippery and weak prop of the temporal power for their Authority but on those who received it from the eternal never-altering Fountain of all power with Commission to delegate and transmit it with an uninterrupted succession to the future Governours of the Church till wee all meet in the Unity of Glory Nor is the means of transmitting this Heavenfounded Jurisdiction to Posterity less certain than is the law of grace written in the hearts of the faithful in indelible characters that inviolable Rule of Faith a Rock too adamantine to be undermin'd by human policy Let then her enemies though even Princes rage as much as they please nay even bandy and conspire together to subdue this free-born Kings Daughter to their prophane yoke her Jurisdiction as it ever hath so will it ever remaine secure and inviolate being independent of them and by reason of the state of Eternity her end and aym of a superiour order to their Authority which was instituted only for the rightly dispencing the transitory goods of this world Your parallel of the Jews suffering under the Zelot's fury or the old Roman yoke which you make account is so evident that the Reader will supercede all necessity of making it up I conceive to aym very little or nothing at your purpose For though they intruded unfit men into the Priestly dignity yet they did not actually neither could they possibly take away the Jurisdiction of the High Priest because this Jurisdiction was not given them by those secular powers but by God himself the contrary of all which happens in your case as has been shewn For the Jurisdiction of your Bishops may be taken away by the same Parliamentary power that set it up That it was not their guilt nor yours neither wee willingly grant and I wonder you could imagine us so unwise as to object that to be your voluntary Crime which you cannot but know we hold to bee your involuntary punishment Your wishes and prayers for peace and communion among all who are called Christians are no less ours and this not in words only but in efficacious endeavours and in several Nations with daily labours and extreamest hazards to reduce the straying flock to their safely-guarded fold Nay this Communion is so vehemently desired and thirsted after by us that we are ready to buy it at any rate except the forfeiture of the Certainty of Faith and its Rule the forfeiture of which is the loss of our own Communion also If Mr. Hammond can perswade himself and his friends to return to this Rule of Faith the Churches Infallibility which onely can unite us in the same stedfast belief of Christs Doctrine and to acknowledg the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome in the acknowledgment of which consists the constant
unity of Church-government then not onely we but all the Angels and Saints in heaven who rejoyce at the conversion of sinners shall joyn in exalting Jubilees for the Blessed and long wish't for return of òur wandring and self-disinherited Brethren The former of these if Mr. Hammond will not beleeve it I have told him where he may see it as visibly as is possible any thing should be made to the eye of Reason The latter to wit the Popes Supremacy is defin'd in the Florentine Council subscribed to both by the Greek and Latine Churches where what the fourth General Council held at Chalcedon wrote to Pope Leo that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he was over the members of the Church as their Head is more plainly exprest in these words Wee define that the holy Apostolical See and the Bishop of Rome have the primacy over all the world and that the Bishop of Rome is Successour to S. Peter the Prince of the Apostles and truly Christs Vicar and Head of the whole Church and the Father and Teacher of all Christians and that there was given him in S. Peter from Christ a full power to feed direct and govern the Catholike Church To these two points if the Protestant will subscribe that is secure inviolate that which touches the root and most vital and intrinsecal part of the Chruch to wit the Rule of Faith she will not stick to open her outward rind that is offer some violence to her uniformity in indifferent and more extrinsecal practises to re-ingraft their dry and sapless branch which now lies withering into her ever-flourishing body To which if these poor endeavours of mine may in the least contribute I shall for the future not reprehend but congratulate Dr. Hammond for his fortunate Errours and honour his ill grounded reasons as of richest value which by stirring up others to detest them and shew what weak pleas are producible for Schism became the happy occasion of his own and others salvation and of Embosoming the Daughter-Church of England in a Charitable Communion with her dearest Mother by whose painful throwes she was first born to Christ her Spouse at whose breasts shee suck'd the first milk of his Doctrine and from whose arms and ever-cherishing embraces first by the malignity of an ill-govern'd passion next by humane policy shee has been so long separated FINIS DOWN-DERRY OR Bishop BRAMHAL'S Iust Vindication of the Church of England refuted MY choice at first directed me rather to answer Mr. Hammond than my Lord of Derry having observ'd his Book not only to bear a greater vogue in the world but to be inwardly furnished with Arguments more suitable to the profession of a Divine But after I had advanc'd past the mid-way of my journey I met some Protestant friends who though formerly they had still cry'd up the Doctor yet soon as I told them in confidence that an Answer to his Schism would instantly bee ready for the the Press they immediately began to extol the Bishop and demand either a present Reply to him or else they should not spare to conclude the Victory their own When I had exprest how weak and unreasonable their discourse was which if admitted would always judg him to have the right cause that speaks the last word I parted with a promise if in stead of that sport which he far more than the other tempts a wit-at leasure to make with him they would accept of a short Refutation of the substantial passages I should not fail to endeavour their satisfaction which thus I perform Reading with some diligence the Bishops Book I find that as there is much commendable in it for industry so is it expos'd to an unavoidable Check of being Patron to an ill Cause whence it may bee a pattern of wit and labour but little assistance to the truth further than by shewing how weak Errour is But not to spend time and paper in vain let us state the controversie clearly that it may be seen how strongly and pertinently his Discourse proceeds Not that I intend minutely to examine his whole Work whereof the far greater part is little or nothing to our controversie as will appear by the bare stating the Question but onely to say enough for him whom the substance can content without engaging into unnecessary and circumstantial disputes He begins his Book telling us nothing can be objected with more colour of truth against the Church of England than that they have withdrawn themselves from obedience to the Vicar of Christ and separated from the Communion of the Catholike Church And that this crime is justly charg'd upon his Church not onely with colour but with undeniable evidence of fact will appear by the very position of the Case and the nature of his Exceptions As for the first it is unquestionably certain and universally assented to by all Protestants who understand any thing that at the beginning of Henry the eighths Reign nay at his first courting his Protestant Mistress the Church of England agreed with that of Rome and all the rest of her Communion in two Points which were then and are still the Bonds of Unity betwixt all her Members One concerning Faith the other Government For Faith her Rule was that the Doctrines which had been inherited from their Forefathers as the Legacies of Christ and his Apostles were solely to bee acknowledg'd for obligatory and nothing in them to bee changed For Government her Principle was that Christ had made St. Peter First or Chief or Prince of his Apostles who was to be the first Mover under him in the Church after his departure out of this world and to whom all others in difficulties concerning matters belonging to the universal either Faith or Government should have recourse And that the Bishops of Rome as Successors of St. Peter inherited from him this priviledge in respect of the Successors of the rest of the Apostles and actually exercised this power in all those countries which kept Communion with the Church of Rome that very year wherein this unhappy separation began It is no lesse evident that in the dayes of Edward the sixth Queen Elizabeth and her Successors neither the former Rule of Unity of Faith nor this second of Unity of Government which is held by the first have had any power in that Congregation which the Protestants call the English Church This is our chief objection against you As for us our Tenet is That those Churchs who continue in Communion with the Roman are the onely Churches which in vertue of the first Principle above mentioned have the true Doctrine and in vertue of the second the right Government and in vertue of both the unity and incorporation into the Church of Christ necessary for salvation And by consequence Wee hold them onely to make the entire Catholike or Universal Church of Christians all others by misbelief or Schism being excluded Now because no understanding man can deny this to be
the true Charge the only way for a Protestant to clear his Church from Schism is to shew it not guilty of doing this either by disproving the former to be the necessary Rule of Unity in Faith or the latter the necessary Bond of Government both which though they somtimes say yet because in these Books professedly composed for their Vindication from the guilt of Schism they directly and of set purpose handle neither it is clear they intend to shuffle not speak pithily The first Principle which also includes the truth of the second wee hold by this manifest Evidence that still the latter Age could not bee ignorant of what the former beleev'd and as long as it adhered to that method nothing could bee alter'd in it which way of assurance carries with it the Testimony of all that are truly called Christians and this by so ample a memory and succession as is stronger than the stock of human Government and action no right of Law or human Ordinances being able to offer so ample clear and continued a Title They must remember how their Forefathers who began that which they call the Reformation were themselves of this profession before their pretended reform They ought to weigh what reasons their Ancestors should have had to introduce such an alteration They must confesse themselves guilty in continuing the breach unless they can alledge causes sufficient to have begun it had the same ancient Religion descended to these daies For the constant beleefe of the Catholike world both was at the time of your division and still is that these Principles are Christs own ordination recorded in Scripture derived to us by the strongest Evidences that our nature is capable of to attain assurance what was done in Antiquity Evidences inviolable by any humane either power or proof except perfect and rigorous demonstration to which our Adversaries doe not so much as pretend and therefore without further dispute remain unanswerably convicted of Schism And though after this it bee superfluous to say any thing to any Book which does not so much as attempt to demonstrate either of these Points false yet I shall bestow a few thoughts to declare the quality of the Lord of Derry's Arguments not examining them any further than to shew how litle they are to the purpose In his two first Chapters though there bee many things false and more taken up without proof yet I will not touch them because hee onely pretends to settle the Question which is already done for my part And so I will begin my Animadversions where he begins his Arguments in the third Chapter His first proof is because not Protestants but Roman Catholikes themselves made the first separation 1. If it were so how does that acquit you since continuance in a Breach of this nature which cannot be sodered by time is as guilty as the very beginning Now these two Bonds of Unity being of Christs own institution no time can sear the bleeding wound And this because we hold by the fore-declared strength they now must have demonstrations to contradict it as well as the first Separaters 2. How does he prove they were not Protestants because they persecuted Protestants what then did not Luther persecute Carolstadius and Zuinglius doe they not now in Germany and other Countries Lutherans permit no Calvinists Calvinists no Lutherans Did not you persecute Puritans and Brownists Doe you not now complain to bee persecuted by others will you make all these Papists or why are not they Reformers as well as you you will say many of these first breakers died Catholikes True but upon Repeutance Of Gardiner whom you presse so particularly it is recorded that upon his death bed he said Peccavi cum Petro exivi cum Petro sed nondum flevi cum Petro and so fell on a bitter weeping for that offence But in a word is not this renouncing the Pope the most essential point of your Reformation All the rest your good natur'd Religion can either embrace or censure and as occasion serves admit or refuse Communion with the deniers of any other Article never so fundamental this only is indispensable Then be sure wee never hear you again deny but that they who made this first Breach had in them the quintessence of your Reformation and were far less consistent with Catholicism than your modern younger brother Sectaries are with your kind of Protestancy since your selves confess the admittance of the Popes Authority more destructive to you than the denial of Prelacy His second Argument is because in the separation of England from Rome there was no new Law made but onely their ancient Liberties vindicated The first part is so notoriously false that I wonder any one can have the face to pronounce it a Law was made in Henry the 8ths time an Oath invented and exacted by which was given to the King to be Head of the Church and to have all the power the Pope did at that time possess in England That this was a new Law none but impudence it self can deny As for the second part let us see how hee proves it Hee brings divers allegations wherein the Popes pretences were not admitted as being in the prejudice to the State or Church of England What is this man about that hee so forgets the question Doe wee professe the Pope can pretend no more than his right or is the question of this or that particular action of the Popes or does he think a legitimate Authority in common is rejected when the particular faults of them who are in Authority are resisted Is Magistracy or Royalty rejected when Pleas are commenced against Kings or Commonwealths as going beyond their true Jurisdiction Yes but the Pope is expresly deny'd the Power to doe such or such things Why then even by this fact hee is acknowledged to have power in other things since to limit an Authority implyes an admittance of it in cases to which the restraints extend not But hee presses Lawes anciently receiv'd in our Kingdome What is his meaning were not those Lawes in force in the beginning of Henry the eighths Reign or was his breach but the conservation of these Lawes and wee began our Religion there Are there any of these laws which are not equivalently in France Spain Germany Nay Italy it selfe Are none of these therefore Catholikes are they in as little communication with the Pope as Henry the eighth after his breach or the Protestants in Q Elizabeths times How ridiculous how impudent a manner of speaking and arguing is this to force his Readers to renounce their eyes and ears and all evidence In this fifth Chapter hee argues out of the Liberties of the Britannick Churches But first I would know what this belongs to us unless it bee prov'd that their practicks were an obliging precedent to us have wee any Title from the Britannick Churches otherwise than by the Saxon Christians who onely were our Ancestors and by whose conquests and lawes
all that is in the Britannick World belongs to us and is derived to us Yet is this also false For nothing in History is more evident than that the British Churches admitted appellations to Rome at the Council of Sardica And as much as we have Records in our Histories of the Pope Eleutherius so much appeares the Popes Authority in that time And out of St. Prosper contra Collatorem in Chron. Wee have that the Pope Celestinus by his care and sending St. German Vice sua in his own stead freed the Britans from Pelagianism and converted the Scots by Palladius though Venerable Bede as far as I remember does not touch that circumstance But that which is mainly to the purpose is that since the Priviledge wee pretend was one that descends upon the Pope in quality of Successor to St. Peter how far it was executed may be unknown but that it was due none can bee ignorant And here our late Bishop begins to shuffle from the priviledge of St. Peter to the Patriarchal Jurisdiction of the Pope which is another an historical a mutable power and so concernes not our present debate Two objections he makes seem to deserve an answer First That the Welsh or Britans sided with the Eastern Churches against the Roman in the observation of Easter To which I answer 't is true they observ'd not Easter right yet never so much as cited the Eastern Churches in abetment of their practise but onely the custome of their own Ancestors Neither was there any cause of siding wee not hearing it was ever pressed by the Church of Rome after Victor's time to any height The Council of Nice and the Emperour Constantine exhorted the Christian World to it but without any coercitive force And if the Britans resisted or rather neglected them I think wee ought not to say they sided against them but onely did not execute their desires St. Irenâ—us was of the French Church yet testifies this question was no matter of division so that it cannot bee guess'd by this what influence the Roman Church had or had not upon the British It seemes certain also that St. Lupus and Germanus neglected this Point that is thought it not necessary to be corrected however St. Austin seem'd more rigorous And though Palladius sent from Celestinus converted the Scots yet we find some of them in the same practise The second Objection is out of a piece of a worn Welsh Manuscript hoped by the Protestants to bee a Copy of some ancienter Original which though it has already been proved a manifest forgery counterfeited by all likelyhood in Q. Elizabeths time when the English Protestants sought to corrupt the Welsh by Catechisms and other Writings printed and not printed Yet if their great Antiquaries can shew that in St. Gregories time this name Papa or Pope taken by it self without other addition as Papa Urbis Romae c. was put as in later ages for the Bishop of Rome I shall confesse my selfe much surpriz'd If they cannot these very words sufficiently convince the Manuscript to bee a meer Imposture Another suspition against the legitimatnes of this paper naturally arises from this that Sr. Henry Spelman one so diligent in wiâ—ing off the dust from old writings found no other Antiquity in it worth the mention which shrewdly implies the Book was made for this alone And so this demonstrative proof of the Bishop is a conviction of the forgery of some counterfeit Knaue and the easiness of assent in Mr. Mosten and the Knight In his 6th Chapter he pretends three things 1. That the King and Church of England had sufficient Authority to withdraw their obedience from Rome 2ly That they had sufficient grounds for it and 3ly That they did it with due moderation I doubt not but the intelligent Reader understands by the first point that the Bishop meanes to shuffle away the true difficulty and whereas the Question is of the Priviledge given by Christ to Saint Peter and from him descended to the Popes his Successors spend his time about a Patriarchal Authority which wee also acknowledge to be of humane institution And here I must confesse that generally when no body opposes him his Lordship carries it clearly and gives his empty Reader full satisfaction Hee tells you out of Catholike Authors that Princes may resist the oppressions of Ecclesiasticks and themselves have priviledge to exercise Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction That Popes have been convented and deposed That Emperors have changed Patriarchs and that the Kings of England have as much power as Emperors And all this to handle the Question which is not in hand since our dispute is not what can be done in respect of the Popes Patriarchal Authority which the good Bishop himself professes the Pope has renounced these 600. years No doubt but th' other two points will follow the former in missing the Question For admitting the Popes Authority to bee derived from Christ what grounds can there bee for renouncing it or what moderation is the rejjecting it capable of Nay even if it were of humane institution many things there are which cannot bee rejected unless it appear the abuses are not otherwise remediable Suppose then the Christian World had chosen themselves one Head for the preservation oâ—â—o precious a Jewel as Unity in Religion how great absurdities must that Head commit what wrongâ— must it doe to cause it selfe to bee justly deposed and not onely the Person deposed but the very Government abolish't Suppose again that this alteration should â—ee made by some one party of the Christian Common-â—ealth which must separate it selfe from the assistance and communication of the â—â—st of Christianity ought not far weightier causes bee expected or greater abuses committed Suppose thirdly that by setting aside this Supreme Head eternal dissentions will inevibly follow in the whole Church of Christ to the utter ruine of faith and good life which our Saviour thought worth the comming down from Heaven to plant among us and then tell mee whether the refusal to comply with the humours of a lustful Prince be ground enough â—o renounce so necessary an Authority Let the Bishop bee now asked whether Kings deserve to bee deposed and Monarchy it selfâ— rejected for such abuses as hee gathers against the Pope or whether there may not easily bee made a collection of as many an I great misgovernments against the Court of England or any other Country Let him remember whether like abuses were not alledged against his own Parliamentary-Prelacy when it was put down Will hee justifie that if the mâ—â—demeanours pretended against them had been true the extirpation of Prelacy had been lawfull Surely hee would find out many remedies which hee would think necessary to bee first tryed and Sâ—â—ggin should as soon haue chosen a tree to bee hanged on as â—hee have ended the number of expedients to be â—â—yed before hee would give his assent to the extirpation of Episcopacy It is then of little concern to
pang and sollicitude before they durst open their doors They could neither eat nor sleep in any other security than that which a good Conscience gave them But the cruelst part of all was to defame us of Treason First you make a Law that to acknowledge the Successor of S. Peter had a common superintendency over the Church was Treason and then brand us for Traitors Should a Presbyterian or Independent Power make it Treason to acknowledge Prelacy would you think it reasonable presently to conclude all the older-fashion'd Protestants Traitors Nor can I perswade my selfe I offer any violence to Charity if I plainly and roundly charge you that in all this you proceeded flatly against your Consciences it being impossible you should really judge the bare receiving Orders beyond Sea to be Treason which is abundantly convinc't by your very offer of pardon nay sometimes preferment if hee whom you made the people beleeve was a dangerous and bloody Traitor would but go to Church with you For what Priest dyed for being a Priest but hee might have rescu'd himselfe at the last hour by such submission What Priest was so bad whom you were not ready to entertain with honour if hee would take party with you So unlucky is his Lordship in this Chapter that whatever his intention is he absolves us or at least condemns himselfe if he would be understood as the Letter of his Exceptions sounds he absolutely clears our Religion of a calumny which the Protestants most injuriously charge upon us that our vassalage to the Pope destroyes our subjection to our Prince citing so many instances where Catholikes remaining such have disobey'd the Pope If he on purpose layes his sense to bee ambiguous of which I have some jealousie because hee uses that jugling phrase in effect then hee absolutely proves himselfe a Deceiver In short if he mean honestly he justifies us if otherwise every honest man will condemn him But whatever his inward meaning is the Case open'd will declare it self Christ being to build his spiritual Kingdom upon the Basis not onely of the Roman Monarchy then flourishing but of a multitude of Kingdomes either bred out of the destruction of that or originally independent and distinct from it which in process of time should embrace his Faith saw it necessary to make such a band of Unity betwixt the Churches of which his spiritual Empire was to be integrated that it neither should be offensive to temporal Princes nor yet unprovided of meanes to keep the Church in such amity as to be able to work like the Congregation of Hierusalem which had Cor unum animam unam For this reason he gave the principality among his Apostles to S. Peter and consequently to his Successors among theirs The effect of this Principality was that when publick meetings of Bishops were necessary all emulation who should have recourse to the other was taken away since it was known all were to defer to him meet as and where was most fitting for him Again if any inconvenience fel among Christians there wanted not one who was by office to look to it though in the place where it fell out there were no superior Authority to curb the offenders This one Seat might by the ordinary providence of Almighty God keep a continuance of Succession from S. Peter to the end of the World whereas the vicissitude of humane nature permitted not the like to be done to all the Sees where all the rest of the Apostles had signed their Faith by their precious death Hence 't is the See of Rome is invested with the special priviledge of Mother and Mistress of the Church But not to dive into all or the questionable consequences of this Primacy this onely I intend to insist upon that it is the hinge upon which all the common government and unity in Faith Sacraments Ceremonies and communication of spiritual Fraternity depends which being removed the Church vanishes into a pure Anarchy no one Province or Country having the least obligation to any other to repair to it to obey it to make Meetings and common Ordinances with it So that the whole frame of the Church will be utterly dissolv'd ceasing to be a Church and becomming a ruinous heap of stones precious indeed in themselves but without order shape or connexion By this it clearly followes whatever is the truth of those Questions which our Bishop reckons up to have been disputed between other Christian Countries and the Papacy that as long as this Principality wee speak of is acknowledged so long there is an Unity in the Christian Church all particular Churches being by this subordination perfectly one both with their Head and among themselves This is the bridle our Saviour put in the mouth of his Church to wield it sweetly which way he pleased No dissention in Faith or Discipline nay not any war among Christian Princes could annoy the World if this Authority were duly preserved and governed Many excellent effects we have seen of it and more the world is likely to enjoy when the admirable conveniences of it shall bee unpassionately understood What Christian Prince can chuse but be glad to have an Arbitrator so prudent so pious so disinteressed as a good Pope should be to reconcile differences and to hinder bloodshed either in his own people or between his neighbours And who sees not that the Popes office and condition among those who reverence him is perfectly proper for such an effect beyond the hopes of wisedom that had not known th'exprience of it What a desperate attempt then is it to bite at this bridle and strive to put the whole Christian World in confusion This is your crime in this consists your Schism in this your impiety and wickedness Agreeing then that this is the substance of the Papacy temporal preheminences and wealth being but accidental to it wee shall presently see all those arrows which the Bishop shoots against us fall directly on his own head For if the Papacy stand firm and strong in all those Countries that have resisted the Pope when they conceived hee encroach'd on their ' liberties it is evident notwithstanding all such disputes the Being and Nature of one Church is entirely conserved they all governing themselves in an Unity of Faith and Sacraments and Correspondence like one Body as is visible to any that will but open his eyes and so are Members of one Christian Community Whereas the Reform as they call it has cut off England from all this communication and correspondence and made it no part of any Church greater than it self and by consequence that can pretend to Universality and Catholicism but a headless Synagogue without Brotherhood or Order if joyned with any other it is not in a common head but with the tayles of opposition to the Roman Catholike No more can the several Protestant Churches be allow'd to compose one Body than all the ancient Hereticks did nay than Turks and Iewes and